Trump Responds to Think-Tank Report Warning of Rising Chinese Military Prowess

Some military experts disagree with assessment

Soldiers stand on deck of the ambitious transport dock Yimen Shan of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy as it participates in a naval parade near Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong province, on April 23, 2019. Mark Schiefelbein/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump has dismissed a new Australian study suggesting that the Chinese military has presented “an unprecedented crisis” for the United States’ defense strategy. “We have the strongest military in the world right now,” Trump said on Aug. 20 at the White House while meeting with the Romanian president. “Right now, there’s nobody that’s even close to us, militarily. Not even close.”

Trump’s remarks were a response to an Aug. 19 study conducted by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, which warned of an “increasingly uncertain” future for U.S. military interests in the Indo-Pacific region as the Chinese military expands its presence there.

Growing Military Threat

While China is making large-scale investments to advance its military systems and growing “ever more capable of challenging the region order by force,” the report assessed that the United States was facing a crisis due to “an increasingly worrying mismatch between U.S. strategy and resources,” the report stated.