Washington Pulse 

Naïve Take on ‘Peer Competitors’ Risks U.S. Security 

12  2,008 

By Sandra I. Erwin 

Advocates of increased military spending on conventional big-ticket weapons have for years posited that the hardware will be needed to fight future “peer competitors” such as China and Russia. But industry observers are now cautioning that such thinking is simplistic and oblivious to the complicated outlook for U.S. relations with both countries. “We have been using China as the planning foil for quite some time,” says Pierre Chao, a defense industry expert and partner at Renaissance Strategic Advisors. “It’s going to be hard to do that when you are asking China to put a couple of hundred billion dollars into your country,” he says. “On the other hand, the Russians have been doing a very good job reminding us of how crazy they can be and, oh by the way, they’re sitting on 10,000 nukes.” China and Russia each present “entirely different sets of problems,” Chao says.
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