Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, one of Mike Pompeo’s “Club of Five” kooks since their days at West Point, invoking the imagery of the Cold War against the Soviet Union in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, called the Chinese People’s Liberation Army not an army of China, but the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party. “A more capable PLA is a military more able to advance the party’s domestic vision, the one-sided international system Beijing desires, and an economic and foreign-policy agenda that is often inimical to the interests of the U.S. and our allies,” Esper wrote. “As a consequence, all nations that seek the prosperity and security of a free and open order must carefully consider the implications of PLA requests for access, training and technology.” He said that PLA modernization “is a trend the world must study and prepare for—much like the U.S. and the West studied and addressed the Soviet armed forces in the 20th century.”
After describing the U.S. strategy to contain China, Esper called on “all countries to examine—and consider curtailing—their relationships with the PLA to make sure they are not helping advance the Communist Party’s malign agenda toward our collective detriment.”
