NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {P} resident Joe Biden speaks as if he is leading the nation through a period akin to that of the late 1940s, when statesmen like Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, and George Marshall forged the Pax Americana through force of will and daring endeavor. “From the earliest days of my presidency, I have argued that our world is at an inflection point,” Biden wrote in the introduction to his administration’s National Security Strategy. “How we respond to the tremendous challenges and the unprecedented opportunities we face today will determine the direction of our world and impact the security and prosperity of the American people for generations to come.” But although he talks a big game, the president is barely responding to those challenges and opportunities. And thanks to this mismatch between action and rhetoric, this inflection point is becoming a perilous cliff, with America teetering at the edge of disaster.

It is a truism that China is the only bipartisan issue in Washington today. Policy-makers have come to recognize that it poses the most serious threat to global order, political liberalism, and the security of American shores. This threat calls for action. Yet, Biden leads like Bill Clinton traipsing his way through an era of unparalleled American global dominance and economic prosperity. And he’s not alone. He is following a decade-long, bipartisan Washington approach manifested in both elected branches of the federal government.

In dealing with Beijing, three consecutive administrations have inverted Teddy Roosevelt’s guiding aphorism: They have spoken loudly while carrying a feather.

The administration of President Barack Obama famously talked about “a pivot to Asia,” the world’s largest maritime theater, but shrank the Navy’s budget and fleet size.

The administration of President Donald Trump did take one crucial step: It formally and publicly recognized the adversarial character of the U.S.–China relationship and the challenges that China’s rise poses to vital American interests. Its rhetoric was consistently tough on China. But the best word to accurately describe its China policy would be “confusing.” Trump regularized the arms-sales process for Taiwan but believed little could (and perhaps little should) be done to stop Beijing from taking the island if it decided to do so. He recognized inequities in U.S.–China trade relations but adopted policies that arguably impoverished Americans while doing nothing to address those inequities. He blamed China for the Covid-19 pandemic but directed his ire at the World Health Organization.

Nowhere is the unserious approach to China more evident than in the U.S.’s lack of military buildup, for which both elected branches bear responsibility. Since 2013, consecutive administrations and Congresses have gone from talking about the threat of a rising China to emphasizing the urgency of the problem. Most agree that this threat manifests itself primarily in China’s military strength, which has been built up with the aim of occupying and subjugating Taiwan, a longtime U.S. partner and central link in the U.S. forward-defense perimeter. It is puzzling that the U.S. response to this rising threat has been so lethargic.

Both of the Trump administration’s confirmed secretaries of defense admitted that the Pentagon’s budget required a 3 to 5 percent increase every year, adjusted for inflation. But after the first two years, the administration and Congress failed to keep up with this requirement. The Biden administration and Congress have also failed to realize this objective — the Biden administration’s three budget requests have all failed to keep up with the inflation rate, effectively calling for cuts in the department’s budget. Congress, which gets the ultimate say in military spending, has only marginally improved on the administration’s requests.

Congress, of course, is full of cheap China hawks. But rather than address the very loud elephant in the room — a military balance of power that is shifting towards China at a troubling pace — lawmakers have preferred defensive policies that contribute to a sense of urgency about the problem without preparing the United States to grapple with it. The much-celebrated CHIPS Act does not prepare the United States to defend Taiwan; it prepares the United States for the fall of Taiwan. The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024, which has passed through Congress, bans China from buying U.S. farmland and agricultural businesses, but provides $560 million less for Navy shipbuilding than the administration requested. To Beijing, these measures smack of containment. But Congress has failed to match them with a stick big enough to actually do the containing, tempting Beijing to bust out while it still can.

Policy-makers are also sacrificing military capabilities in the pursuit of non-defense objectives. First, the emerging protectionist consensus is adding insult to injury. Congress needs to act to revitalize the defense-industrial base, but “Buy American” provisions will make the U.S. military pay more for less, make allied defenses weaker by forcing them to adopt retaliatory measures, and in the long run harm the U.S. defense-industrial base by reducing its exports. With the China threat looming, the Department of Defense is getting less bang for its already insufficient bucks. Second, the Pentagon is spending those insufficient bucks in ways that don’t redress the growing military imbalance, most notably by transitioning away from fossil fuels to far-more-expensive renewables. The increase in energy costs will be especially burdensome for a nation whose security relies on the forward deployment of its military.

The flaws in the Biden administration’s approach go beyond greening the Pentagon. On four occasions, Biden has intimated that the United States would defend Taiwan if attacked, a striking shift away from Washington’s typical ambiguity on the question. “Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before [2050],” the then-commander of Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Phil Davidson, told Congress in 2021. “And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact in the next six years.” Earlier this year, in a widely distributed memorandum, Air Force general Mike Minihan speculated that “we will fight in 2025” over the fate of the island nation. The sense of inevitability that suffuses Washington may be misguided, but the Biden administration is right to no longer treat cross-Strait conflict as a theoretical, distant-future scenario. Unfortunately, that treatment does not extend beyond rhetoric. Biden officials, with plenty of help from Beijing, have painted a grim picture of cross-Strait stability, yet they act with little urgency. They believe a fight may be coming down the pike, yet they refuse to grow the defense budget, significantly step up bilateral training with Taiwan’s military, or launch the equivalent of an Operation Warp Speed for the defense-industrial base.

At the same time, the Biden administration, just like its two predecessors and Congress, is doing just enough to raise hackles in Beijing. The evolving export-control regime, scrutiny of inbound investment from China, and recent limitations on outgoing investment make for a reasonable effort to limit Chinese access to and development of technologies with national-security implications for the United States. A less constrained approach to sharing and co-developing military technology with allies in the Indo-Pacific is likewise part and parcel of a crucial endeavor to ensure American partners can deter aggression, defend themselves, and fight alongside the United States if war breaks out. Yet Biden sees little need to pair an initiative to hold back the People’s Liberation Army with an initiative to regain a decisive American military advantage. Nor has he paired an initiative to build up allied defenses with an effort to build up America’s own.

This approach might result in the worst of both worlds. There are illuminating historical and contemporary analogies. Over the course of the 1930s, the United States slowly increased its rhetorical and economic pressure on Japan in response to Japan’s invasion of China. But the Tokyo government saw the United States as a paper tiger, with the latter giving no indication it would back up its words with sharpened claws. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese march across Southeast Asia were the ultimate result, as Tokyo sought to eject the United States and the Europeans from the region and secure its resources for Japan. Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is under heavy sanctions. To force the United States into an agreement that would relieve Iran of that burden, Iran and its proxies have escalated their attacks on U.S. forces. America’s refusal to respond with military force has further encouraged such attacks.

We should anticipate a similar outcome in relations with China. “Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement, and suppression of China,” Xi Jinping said in an uncharacteristically straightforward manner this past spring, “which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development.” Troublingly, he has given no indication that he intends to deal with those challenges by addressing the concerns of the United States and its allies. Over three decades, Beijing has been investing in the military tools it needs to forcefully impose its will on others, including the United States. As Xi surveys the geopolitical landscape and perceives a Washington that is clear about its intention to contain Chinese ambitions but is as of yet failing to back that intention with muscle, a sense of urgency may grip him. Their window is narrowing, Chinese leaders may conclude, and they must act before the United States launches a military buildup in earnest.

Yet, the Biden administration’s policy is clear: We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty — but we will not invest in a military capable of doing the job. Ultimately, the American people will pay the costs for this negligence — costs that will be far greater than paying to keep America secure in the first place.

Michael Mazza is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior nonresident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute. Shay Khatiri is a senior fellow at the Yorktown Institute and publishes The Russia-Iran File.