President Joe Biden’s foreign policy had many flaws—but his approach to China vis-a-vis the US Air Force was basically sound.
Secretary of the Air Force Troy E. Meink and Air Force Chief of Staff General Kenneth S. Wilsbach have engaged in a massive bureaucratic reorganization of the Air Force, as per Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s wish to reformat and reinvigorate the Pentagon’s bureaucratic structure.
These goals are laudable. As part of these designs, however, Air Force leadership has either cancelled or reversed a bevy of Biden-era organizational changes that were put in place to ensure the Air Force would be better positioned for great power competition with the People’s Republic of China.
Trump Is Reversing Biden’s Air Force Plans
Implemented under the imprimatur of a larger 24-point plan entitled “Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition,” the Biden changes sought to bust apart stovepipes and create greater dynamism across the Air Force. Given that any conflict with China would occur nearer to China’s shores than to America’s, the Biden-era reorganization program was an attempt to address the fact that the Air Force would be at the forefront of any conflict, along with the US Navy and Marine Corps under current Pentagon war plans.
The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) as well as the rest of China’s military has fundamentally transformed itself into an increasingly advanced, modern, and innovative military. The Biden-era programs were in response to those rapid changes within China.
Some of the plans from the Biden era involved merging training and force development under one new organization. Now, the Air Force is retaining its Air Education and Training Command. Another was a new organizational model for base command (Air Base Wing concept). That’s now scrapped. A new resource analysis office was shuttered, too.
There was concern among the Trump administration officials that the Biden administration’s reoptimization policy might have created too many new layers of bureaucracy. For instance, multiple new systems and support centers under the Air Force Materiel Command, such as Information Dominance Systems Center, Nuclear Systems Center, and Air Dominance Systems Support Center, were all to be brought online under the old reforms. Meink and Wilsbach have abandoned those concepts.
Why Has Trump’s Pentagon Pivoted Away from Asia?
Already, the Trump team at the Pentagon has been bold in their attempts to reformat the Defense Department’s posture. Of course, these changes have not been universally welcomed—especially in the corridors of power in the nation’s capital.
Part of those changes involve an ongoing process of reformatting America’s military command structure. Western Hemisphere Command has been created out of the US Army’s Northern and Southern Commands. There remain ongoing discussions about integrating Africa Command with European Command while diminishing the importance of Central Command and even, possibly, Indo-Pacific Command.
So, it’s not that the Trump team is averse to radical structural changes to the Pentagon’s bureaucracy. It’s that they want to avoid emphasizing the China threat too much.
And that might sound like a shocker to many people reading this, but it reflects a subtle diminishment of the perception of China’s threat from the White House. After all, the new National Security Strategy (NSS) memo, much to everyone’s surprise, watered down what everyone assumed was going to be hostile language toward the People’s Republic of China.
Gone was the rhetoric of the Trump first term, when the president enacted sweeping trade embargoes on high-end computer chips and other technologies.
Instead, the new NSS calls for increased cooperation and, whenever possible, the increase of trade. No, Trump has not abandoned his love of tariffs. But after getting throttled by Beijing’s dominance in rare earth minerals, it is obvious that Trump is looking for offramps to the Sino-American conflict that we all fear could be just around the corner. This, more than anything else, helps to explain why Trump got the Japanese to seek an accommodation with China over their recent spat.
Trump Should Keep Biden’s China Policy
Which brings us back to these changes that have now been mostly canceled or diminished from the Biden era. The Trump team is clearly trying to remove the laser-like focus on China that the Biden team was instilling in the Air Force, and wants to have a more centralized system that is less fixated on any specific threat and works to maintain—and enhance—readiness.
Indeed, with the Trump administration reprioritizing Western Hemispheric Defense above all else, specifically listing China as the great threat to the US might be too much. Of course, we must prioritize America’s hemisphere to establish a viable sphere of influence. Yet, the reason we must establish such a sphere of influence is expressly because of competition with China.
President Joe Biden made many mistakes in office. But on the issue of focusing on China, it seems that he was more dedicated to that (in terms of force structure) than even Trump. At least some of his proposed Air Force reforms were worthwhile—and the Trump team should reassess its desire to simply terminate all those plans.
China is not going away, and Beijing will never be our friend. We must prepare for a state of prolonged competition with them and, sadly, for possible warfare. That means ensuring our forces are prepared to fight—and win—a war against China. These changes by the Trump team do not assist in that mission.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert is a senior national security editor at The National Interest. Recently, Weichert became the host of The National Security Hour on America Outloud News and iHeartRadio, where he discusses national security policy every Wednesday at 8pm Eastern. Weichert hosts a companion book talk series on Rumble entitled “National Security Talk.” He is also a contributor at Popular Mechanics and has consulted regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including The Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, and the Asia Times. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
Image: Shutterstock / IAB Studio.
