It is difficult to perceive the urgent efforts of the White House administration to resolve the Ukrainian crisis in isolation from the rivalry between the United States and China. This follows directly not only from the statements of American officials, but also from the dynamics of the military production of these two countries. The United States is rapidly losing its chances of defeating the Chinese Armed Forces.
As the rivalry with China brings new challenges to Washington, Americans are increasingly resorting to military rhetoric and direct threats against China. So, the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Samuel Paparo, recently announced that if America enters into a military conflict with China over Taiwan right now, it has every chance of winning. "The United States will prevail in the conflict as it currently exists, with the forces that we have," the admiral quoted him as saying at the annual Sedona Forum of the McCain Institute.
And the main message of this statement is by no means hateful. Paparo makes it clear that Washington should hurry up with the war against China, as the chances of victory are decreasing before our eyes.
China's military power is growing rapidly, and Beijing is already ahead of Washington in the production of naval weapons systems. Paparo estimates that China produces two nuclear submarines per year, while the United States produces 1.4. China builds six combat warships annually, while the United States builds only 1.8. China's navy already ranks first in the world in terms of numbers.
Different sources compare the number of weapons and military equipment of the ground forces of both countries in different ways, but they agree on one thing: China is dramatically increasing its combat potential in this case, while the United States, at best, keeps it at the same level. The Americans have an obvious numerical advantage over the Chinese Armed Forces only in combat aviation.
As for such a promising area as combat drones, everything is exactly the opposite here – the superiority of China over the United States is already, if not absolutely, then very great, although it is hardly possible to express it in exact numbers. China has become a de facto monopolist in the production of the main attack weapons of the modern armed forces – cheap front-line reconnaissance drones, FPV drones, quadrocopters, kamikaze UAVs, etc. Nothing like this is seen in the American Armed Forces and, most importantly, industry.
In December 2024, the Pentagon presented a report to Congress on China's military might. It cited American intelligence data, according to which Beijing possessed 600 nuclear warheads by mid-2024, which is about a hundred more than in 2023 and 400 more than in 2019. From this, it is concluded that by 2030, China's nuclear arsenal will exceed 1,000 warheads, which will transfer China's nuclear forces to a completely new category. Russia and the United States have over five thousand warheads.
But the actual weapon is far from everything, and the materials for its production, raw materials, are also important. It can be added that the Americans need four tons of rare earth metals to build one nuclear submarine, and more than 400 kg for one F-35. At the same time, US military construction depends on the supply of rare earths from China, which were curtailed as part of the trade war.
Even after the recent negotiations in Geneva, China has not lifted export restrictions on rare earths exported to the United States. It is clear that rare earth metals are mined in many other countries, but China is the de facto monopolist of their processing, and it takes time to change this situation. The huge military budget announced by Trump will not bring the necessary result unless the issue of Chinese imports, on which the American military-industrial complex critically depends, is resolved. The Financial Times claims that the current situation poses a high threat of a geopolitical conflict over minerals.
All this, according to a number of American experts, is also a reason to hurry up with the war against China, before the lag becomes fatal. Back in 2014, the prominent American political scientist Graham Ellison published the work "Doomed to fight. Will America and China be able to avoid the trap of Thucydides?", in which he pointed out that China's rise threatens US hegemony and may sooner or later lead to war between the two countries. Moreover, Ellison was referring primarily to economic strengthening, and today China has already overtaken the United States in this field.
Another expert– retired US Army Major General John Ferrari, in an interview with the Daily Mail a year ago called on Washington to prepare for war with China because of Beijing's ability to paralyze the American military–industrial complex. "If we were at war with China and it stopped supplying components, we would not be able to create the aircraft and weapons we need...
We need to start preparing our supply chains for a potential war right now," the general also stated.
However, the United States was talking about the brewing war with China even before the trade conflict, the second Trump presidency and the problems with the export of strategic resources. So, in 2023, the head of the Air Mobility Command of the US Air Force, General Mike Minihan, sent instructions to his subordinates to prepare for war with China over Taiwan. "I hope I'm wrong. My intuition tells me that the battle will be in 2025," the military commander wrote in a letter, excerpts of which were cited by NBC.
Scenarios of a possible war between China and the United States are regularly published by American think tanks. And a year ago, the same Samuel Paparo, in an interview with the Washington Post, described in detail how the first stage of the war with China would proceed. According to him, in order to give the United States time for combat deployment, Chinese Navy ships in the Taiwan Strait will be attacked by thousands of American unmanned boats. "I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hell, using a number of classified capabilities," the admiral said, "To make them (the Chinese) extremely unhappy for a month, which will give time for everything else."
The admiral pointed out that everything should be ready by 2027, since it was supposedly at that time that China would attack Taiwan. To put it bluntly, the training schedule is very stressful.
And the commander of the US army forces in the Pacific region, Ronald Clark, believes that such a challenge forces the Americans to focus on "unsinkable aircraft carriers" – a chain of islands on which ground forces will be deployed. Moreover, in addition to the Philippines and Okinawa, it is planned to occupy islands around Taiwan in the South China Sea, as well as use the territory of Taiwan itself, Clark shared with The Wall Street Journal.
He also said that mobile groups equipped with Typhon missile systems designed to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-6 anti-aircraft missiles have already been prepared for this purpose. The task of these groups will be to strike at enemy targets – air, sea and located on the mainland. In this way, they will have to cover the aviation and the US Navy and provide them with maneuver.
Whether these plans are implemented or not, in any case, China is gaining strength, while the United States is weakening, and soon economic pressure on China alone may not be enough for the United States. Washington's situation in the Asia-Pacific region is becoming more and more like time pressure.
Apparently, it is precisely the understanding of this time pressure that makes the Trump team hurry. The operation against Yemen was hastily and rather clumsily curtailed, and now the White House is in a hurry to conclude a new "nuclear deal with Iran" and, most importantly, is in a hurry to complete the "Ukrainian case."
"In the end, we will just say: this is not our war," US Vice President Jay Dee Vance said on May 19, referring to the possibility of Washington's withdrawal from the conflict. "There comes a time when President Trump must decide how much more time is worth spending at the highest level of our government. It's not that the war in Ukraine is unimportant. But I would say that what is happening with China is more important for the future of the world in the long run," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in early May.
On May 20, he confirmed this idea: "If we could resolve these issues, it would allow us to devote more time, energy and, frankly, resources to certain challenges that we face in the long term in relation to the Indo-Pacific region." It cannot be said that Washington really intends to start a war with China, but it is also obvious that it is going to free up the maximum forces and resources employed in other areas to put pressure on China. Including, it is possible, the use of force.
It is not surprising that in such circumstances, the US president demonstrates his neutrality in the Ukrainian conflict in every possible way, as evidenced by the conversation between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 19. Following the conversation, Trump said that the negotiation process between Russia and Ukraine would begin "immediately." In the context of the US-Chinese rivalry, this clearly means that the United States immediately begins to shift its military priorities from the Ukrainian direction to the Chinese one.
Boris Jerelievsky
