China’s military potential will surpass that of the United States in the next two decades, Republican Senator James David Vance said in an interview with The New York Times published this Thursday.
In his remarks, Vance cited what he believes is “the most important lesson of World War II, which we seem to have forgotten.” This lesson, the Ohio senator asserts, is that “military power is behind industrial power.”
“We are still, right now, the world’s military superpower, largely due to our industrial power of the 1980s and 1990s. But China is a more industrially powerful country than us, which means it will have a more powerful military within 20 years old,” he said.
These comments were in response to a question from interviewer Ross Douthat, who asked Vance to describe “his perspective on foreign policy.” In this regard, the Republican answered that “realism in the 21st century has three pillars.” The first of them consists of “dealing with other countries based on whether they are good or bad for the interests of the United States.”
“That doesn’t mean you have a moral blind spot, but it means you have to be honest about the countries you’re dealing with, and there’s a complete failure to do that with most of our foreign policy establishment in this moment.” country,” said the senator.
The second pillar of Vance’s perspective is the aforementioned future military supremacy of China, while the third is based on the need to “recognize that we are in a multipolar world and that we need allies to step forward so that we can focus in East Asia, which is where our most important competitor will be for the next 20 or 30 years,” he concludes.
