WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Armed Services Committee, today released the following statement on the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy.
“Nearly a full year late, the new Biden National Security Strategy professes to grapple with the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. Yet it is not the CCP but climate change that the strategy explicitly prioritizes, calling it ‘the existential challenge of our time.’ Remarkably, despite Russia’s ongoing war of aggression and a looming PRC invasion of Taiwan, the NSS considers transnational threats such as climate and food insecurity to be equal–if not greater–than the threat posed by revisionist great powers. As the strategy puts it, these transnational challenges ‘are at the very core of national and international security and must be treated as such.’
“Because it elevates transnational threats as strategic priorities, the NSS falls into the dangerous trap of emphasizing cooperation with our adversaries, and China in particular. Time and again, the CCP has demonstrated that it will weaponize our naive pursuit of cooperation to its own advantage. Consider the strategy’s divergent treatment of Russia and China. While the NSS seeks to actively constrain Russian power, it merely calls for out-competing China. This is no accident. This softer line on the CCP is a direct result of a conflicted strategic foundation (i.e. ‘cooperation in the age of competition’) that wants to have it both ways.
“It is not 2000 anymore and the time to pretend we can firewall distinct aspects of our relationship with the CCP is over. Instead, the US Government must be laser-focused on winning the New Cold War against the CCP.”
