Both U.S. National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, and Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that the U.S. must reconsider its deployments in the Asia Pacific region, given the close maritime cooperation between China and Russia. Chinese and Russian vessels have conducted military exercises in the close vicinity of Taiwan since 2022.
Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 2, Kruse said that developments “seen over the last two years, have caused the department to relook at its analysis and become even more concerned about what are our joint-force requirements” in the region. “Even if Russia and China in a military force are not interoperable, they would certainly be cooperative, and we would need to take that into account in force structure and planning,” Kruse said.
