China and Russia have sent a “stark signal” that U.S. naval forces will face increasing pressure from Moscow and Beijing, a top Republican argued following joint military exercises by the two regimes near Alaska.
“The scale and complexity of this Russian and Chinese naval deployment is unprecedented,” Senate Armed Services ranking member Roger Wicker (R-MS) said Monday. “While I am glad the U.S. Navy deployed four destroyers and a P-8 aircraft to monitor the fleet, the exercise serves as a stark signal that generational investments in U.S. shipbuilding and ship maintenance to maintain deterrence are more necessary than ever.”
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Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have made a great show of their apparent strategic convergence in recent years, dramatized by high-profile summits and a series of military exercises. If the joint operation stoked Wicker’s demands for a naval buildup, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s team nevertheless maintained an equanimous posture.
“NORAD and NORTHCOM monitored their presence,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters. “They were in international waters. At no point in time were they deemed to pose a threat. And so like any country, they are free to conduct exercises in international airspace, international water.”
Ryder’s response seemed tailored to sidestep Chinese allegations of hypocrisy, as Pentagon officials put a premium on the U.S. ability to operate in international waters around the world, often in defiance of Chinese Communist claims to sovereignty over sensitive routes.
“In the future, the Chinese Navy could conduct more far sea patrols like this, either alone or together with other countries,” retired Chinese military analyst Fu Qianshao told Global Times, a state media outlet. "The Americans should get use[d] to it.”
The appearance last week of an 11-ship flotilla marked "the third joint naval patrol,” as Chinese media termed it, and the second near Alaskan territory in the last year. The Chinese Embassy in Washington released a statement stipulating that “this action is not targeted at any third party and has nothing to do with the current international and regional situation,” but U.S. lawmakers took it as a pointed geopolitical statement.
“The incursion by 11 Chinese and Russian warships operating together, off the coast of Alaska, is yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said Saturday.
The significance of the exercise lies less in its location than in the fact that the two militaries are training together, according to a former top intelligence officer.
“They have done joint naval exercises for many years each summer, but not this far east,” retired CIA analyst John Culver wrote on social media. “Several years ago a Chinese navy formation transited the Aleutians but followed international rules. China routinely protests USN ships following the same rules.”
American policymakers have grown used to a debate about how to reinforce a U.S. Navy that is undersized in comparison to the force contemplated in federal law.
“In only two decades, the PRC has tripled the size of its Navy and is on pace to quadruple to over 400 ships by 2030,” Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, told a Senate panel in March. “Without question, the PRC’s investments in offensive warfighting systems, across all domains, are aimed at the heart of America’s maritime power.”
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So the operation fed immediately into an ongoing debate about President Joe Biden’s budget request for the Navy.
“I look forward to seeing a comprehensive plan to improve America’s ability to manufacture and maintain our most important conventional capability, the Virginia-class submarine,” Wicker said.