Ukraine War Complicates Biden Administration’s Military Strategy on China and Russia

The U.S. plans to boost military spending and increase its military presence near Russia in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, while trying to maintain a long-term focus on countering China, current and former officials said.

The Feb. 24 invasion has triggered calls from Republicans and Democrats in Congress for tens of billions more in defense spending, while allies in Europe have described the war as a wake-up call requiring military steps unthinkable only months ago. The Biden administration, however, is seeking to balance what it sees as a pivotal moment for Europe with a desire to keep the U.S. focused on Asia.

“I think it’s a 9/11 event for Europe,” said a senior Pentagon official, who added that while the Pentagon will respond accordingly to what those countries need, the main focus remains on countering Beijing. “I think there is room to enhance our posture alongside our allies in Europe without it being this huge sucking sound that prevents us from being able to focus on China.”

Since 2018, the Pentagon’s strategy has defined China and Russia as primary concerns and North Korea, Iran and violent extremism as secondary threats. That “two-plus-three” approach—two chief adversaries with three secondary ones—was expected to be supplanted by a “one-plus-four” strategy, which put China first and placed Russia among the lesser threats.

Despite the heightened focus on Moscow, a new U.S. defense strategy, which was due to be released earlier this year, had been held up as the Russia crisis brewed. Policy makers all but finished the document late last year and tweaked the language slightly after the invasion, officials said. But they didn’t do a wholesale rewrite of the document, and when it is released in the coming months, the strategy will still assign Russia a secondary priority behind China, according to the Pentagon official.

“China remains in our assessment the only country that can systematically challenge the United States for now and for the rest of this century, that means diplomatically, technologically, economically, militarily, geopolitically,” the official said. “And Russia is not in that camp, they weren’t a year ago, they’re not today.”

The invasion of Ukraine has sparked concerns among top policy, diplomatic and military officials about losing sight of the strategic threat from China, however.

“There is strong pressure in the building not to overdo Russia’s importance over the long term because of Ukraine,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, referring to the Pentagon. “I think that what will ultimately come out will be a watered-down version of where they were going already, which was that China was the priority, including over Russia.”

Even so, Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is forcing U.S. officials to grapple anew with countering two major adversaries at once, a problem that has revived long-dormant Cold War debates about quantity versus quality in apportioning scarce forces between Europe and Asia.

The White House declined to comment on changes to its military strategy, or on a separate, overarching strategy plan, called the national security strategy, which has also been delayed.

While it’s unclear how much additional money would be available to the Pentagon to help ease these trade-offs, both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill say that Russia’s invasion has transformed the debate over military priorities, making a sharp increase in defense spending a virtual certainty.

Republican aides say GOP leaders’ target is more than $800 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget in fiscal year 2023—far above the approximately $740 billion authorized for fiscal year 2022. And some Democrats have signaled they, too, would support a substantial spending boost.

Rep. Elaine Luria (D., Va.), vice chairwoman of the House Armed Services Committee and a former Navy commander, says the U.S. needs to spend 5% of its GDP on defense, up from its current rate of less than 4%.

“I think people are sort of waking up out of the snooze that we were living somewhere in a secure world,” she said.

Even with additional funding, the Pentagon isn’t likely to return to the massive force posture it had permanently deployed in Europe decades ago. But Moscow’s invasion has prompted the alliance to set aside for now restrictions it has observed since the 1990s on basing large numbers of combat troops on the territory of NATO members in Eastern Europe, the officials said.

In deciding which U.S. forces go where, there is less overlap than might be expected, said Douglas Lute, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and a retired Army lieutenant general. Plans for countering China rely heavily on naval and air forces, while deterring Moscow draws on ground troops, primarily from the U.S. Army, which has a limited role in the Pacific, he said.

Some key weapons systems already in short supply, such as Patriot antimissile batteries, unmanned surveillance drones and even submarines and U.S. destroyers equipped with missiles and advanced radar, will be in high demand in both theaters and in the Middle East, forcing the Pentagon to make painful trade-offs.

The U.S. has already rushed more than 15,000 troops to Europe amid the crisis in Ukraine, raising American force levels in Europe to more than 100,000 personnel for the first time in decades. NATO members have also deployed reinforcements to the Baltics, Poland, Hungary and Romania.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met at NATO headquarters last week with his counterparts from other alliance members to discuss beefing up forces even further. They directed military planners from all of the NATO members to draft plans that are likely to be discussed when President Biden meets with other alliance heads of government in Europe this week.

There, Mr. Biden will meet with leaders of the eastern NATO members who are eager for additional American commitments to the region. “We need some defenses, rocket artillery, this is what we need and of course, we would like to have American soldiers here permanently based,” Artis Pabriks, the Latvian defense minister, told reporters in Europe earlier this month.

But until the immediate crisis is over, Pentagon officials are loath to make those kinds of long-term commitments, said a U.S. military official familiar with the planning. “We’re just starting to wrestle with these issues.”

The question that NATO and the U.S. face is how quickly they can shift from a posture that previously relied largely on deterring Russia through political engagement to a more robust military approach, said Michal Baranowski, a senior fellow in Warsaw for the German Marshall Fund, a European think tank.

U.S. forces, he added, are still key, because NATO allies in the east see them as far more of a deterrent to Moscow than troops from other European countries and because Russia itself would see any move against NATO as more risky.

“In some ways, it goes back to a much more Cold War force posture,” Mr. Baranowski said. “For Russia, it’s really the American component that’s key.”

In sorting out the choices, the Biden administration is weighing what portion of any additional forces should come from Germany and other European allies, who have vowed since the Ukraine invasion to sharply increase military budgets after years of falling short of NATO spending goals.

Troops deployed in Eastern Europe will likely be augmented with more ground units equipped with tanks, other armored vehicles, artillery and attack helicopters, instead of the primarily light infantry forces that are already positioned close to NATO’s eastern borders, current and former officials said.

The U.S. Army is expected to supply a large proportion of these additional forces initially, because it is larger and better equipped than most European armies and can deploy faster, even coming from the U.S.

“I expect there will be a rough doubling of the U.S. presence,” said Mr. Lute, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO.

Yet Mr. Lute cautions that the Russian military’s poor showing since the invasion, and failure to achieve any key objectives, has also given pause to American policy makers and military officials.

The Russians are “not 10 feet tall,” he said. “So while NATO has moves to make, we don’t want to overshoot the mark.”