Colin Kahl, the Defense Department's undersecretary of defense for policy, should pay more attention in his intelligence briefings and then read some Sun Tzu. The ancient Chinese theorist observed that "if you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
The prospective enemy is China, which knows both its enemy and itself. Its strategy is to fight the United States at the intersection of favorable geography and the application of capable, scaled weapons that take advantage of the U.S. military's overreliance on increasingly vulnerable traditional platforms.
The battle in question is a likely coming war over Taiwan.
The outcome of that battle may heavily shape whether the U.S.-led democratic international order can sustain in the 21st century, along with all its accrued benefits for prosperity and freedom. The alternative is a Chinese-led order centered on feudal mercantilism and totalitarian control. This new global order would subjugate economic and political rights to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party. The stakes are very high. But unfortunately, Kahl, the top Pentagon official for policy development and resourcing, has his head in the sand when it comes to President Xi Jinping and his People's Liberation Army.
WHAT THE US MILITARY DID WELL (AND BADLY) WITH CHINA'S BALLOON
In an interview with Defense News this week, Kahl offered extraordinary overconfidence that China will not attempt an invasion of Taiwan within the next two years and likely far further into the future. This bears note because U.S. military and intelligence officials increasingly do believe that Xi is likely to order an invasion before this decade is out, possibly before 2027. Their assessment is vested in intelligence reporting and comprehensive political and military analysis.
Kahl, however, is unconcerned.
"I don't see anything that indicates that [an invasion] is imminent in the next couple of years," Kahl said. Identifying China's investment in capabilities and strategies designed to counter the U.S. military within the waters west of Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines, Kahl added, "I see nothing that indicates Xi Jinping believes his military is ready to do this. Nothing."
Nothing? That's a very bold statement for someone who holds an office that must wager against unknowns. But Kahl was just getting started. Describing Beijing's calculations, Kahl observed, "I think that they understand well that the United States continues to have pretty significant overmatch in a lot of critical domains."
Do we have an overmatch in air power and missile forces? Negative. The U.S. doesn't have nearly enough of the weapons it needs most for any war over Taiwan. Not enough destroyers, not enough LRASM and JASSM missiles, and certainly not enough attack submarines. The supposed linchpin of U.S. naval air forces, the F-35, lacks the necessary range and munitions payload to be effective in such a conflict. Contrary to the Navy's claims, U.S. aircraft carriers are highly vulnerable to saturated attacks by the PLA's Dongfeng class of ballistic missiles.
At the same time, the PLA has a vast, varied, and growing fleet of aircraft, missiles, and advanced air defense destroyers.
In a conflict with Taiwan, Xi would also have a very high tolerance for casualties. And PLA forces will have far shorter rearm-refuel-repair distances than the U.S. military in any Taiwan conflict. Guam is nearly 21 times farther from Taiwan than is China. Okinawa is closer but smaller and more vulnerable to Chinese attacks. And although the Biden administration deserves significant praise for a recent deal with Manila to establish bases, U.S. wartime basing rights in the Philippines are an open question.
Then came Kahl's most arrogant statement of all.
"The PRC has not fought a war since the 1970s, and the last time they fought, it didn't go so well. And nobody has fought the type of war that people are kind of war-gaming around think tanks in Washington. So, you know, it's kind of like saying that you've got the two teams in the preseason who look like they should be in the Super Bowl, except that one team has never played a single game. And the other team has been playing season after season for decades."
Actually, neither team has played a single game of this type. But only the PLA team has placed a singular focus on defeating the U.S. military in a near-China conflict.
Elbridge Colby, Pentagon lead for the 2018 National Defense Strategy and author of the acclaimed Strategy of Denial, is a little kinder to the Pentagon official. He told me that "Kahl is right that we should not panic. We have advantages. But the attitude we need is not blithe dismissiveness but an all-hands-on-deck sense of urgency. We need a five-alarm fire level of attention if we are to make the changes needed even for five years from now. We should take nothing for granted."
Sadly, Kahl's not on board. Concluding his Defense News interview with a not terribly convincing shake of his fist, Kahl insisted, "Our deterrent capability is meaningful and real right now." Kahn declared that "we can put a lot more time on the clock."
Kahl is a politician first and a strategist second. He showed this when, barely a week before the Biden administration authorized Abrams tanks for Ukraine, Kahl misleadingly suggested that the Abrams was too complicated for Ukrainian forces to use. But his overconfidence on China isn't just alarming, it's damning. Alongside the increasingly hawkish impulses of Xi and the Standing Committee, the PLA's force generation efforts (particularly with ship construction and missile forces) are far superior to U.S. efforts. Indeed, the U.S. military-industrial complex is woefully inadequate even for delivering on existing commitments, let alone matching the PLA's surge. Making matters worse, Taiwan's readiness posture is utterly deficient, and President Joe Biden keeps spreading U.S. forces thin by sending destroyers and F-22s to Europe.
Put simply, if Kahl's sentiment is shared across the Biden administration, Taiwan and the U.S. have a big problem.