Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) warns that China's rapid "peacetime" military buildup is increasingly aimed at pushing the United States away from its Asian allies and even U.S. territory, pressing Republicans to answer what he calls a growing threat to American interests.
Cotton Says Beijing Aims To Push America Back
"Communist China is engaging in one of the biggest military peacetime buildups in history with the clear goal of threatening American interests," the Arkansas Republican wrote Tuesday on X. "Let me be clear: we will not allow a Communist dictator to threaten our friends in East Asia."
In an accompanying video, Cotton said Beijing has spent the past three decades designing a navy, air force, space systems and "novel weapons" to keep the United States from ever repeating the kind of slow build-up it staged against Iraq in 1990–91.
He said those forces are meant to "push us away from treaty partners like South Korea and Japan… and push us away from Taiwan… and even threaten our own territory in places like Guam," arguing that Washington must boost its defense budget and "be crystal clear" that China cannot use force to coerce U.S. allies.
The comment arrives amid recent tensions between Japan and China, which have sharply escalated following comments by the new Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, suggesting Japan would defend Taiwan in a Chinese invasion scenario. This, according to a Reuters account on Tuesday, has led to a diplomatic row after Beijing penned a letter to the United Nations accusing the Japanese Prime Minister of “a grave violation of international law.”
Allies Sound Alarm Over China's Military Expansion
As per an Associated Press report from March, U.S. officials and allies have voiced similar concerns as China's official defense budget rises faster than overall economic growth and funds a rapidly expanding blue-water navy and missile arsenal.
Australia's defence minister this month called China's expansion "the biggest military build-up in the world today," warning it threatens critical sea lanes for Australian trade, as per a separate Reuters report. U.S. intelligence also believes a vast underground complex under construction in western Beijing is intended as a hardened wartime command center, the Financial Times has reported in January.
Cotton Backs Guam Buildup And Faster Procurement
Cotton tied those trends to a long-running U.S. force buildup on Guam, where Washington is relocating Marines from Japan and investing billions in new facilities and missile defenses. He also praised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's recent push to overhaul the Pentagon's acquisition system, which Hegseth has framed around "speed to capability," saying faster procurement is essential to keep pace with Beijing.
Photo by UnImages via Shutterstock
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