The U.S. military must prepare to confront China and to prevent its communist regime from reshaping the international order in its own image, a new memo from the secretary of defense says.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that communist China seeks to force the international community to acquiescence to its authoritarian demands and must be stopped.
“An increasingly aggressive China is trying to shape the international rules-based system to suit its authoritarian preferences.” Austin said in a March 2 message to the U.S. Armed Forces. “This is a generational challenge, and the Department will rise to meet it.”
“To do so, we must embrace integrated deterrence, which charges us to coordinate our efforts across all war-fighting domains, theaters, and the spectrum of conflict to create new and more complex dilemmas for our adversaries.”…