At their recent meeting of Xi Jinping and Joe Biden agreed that the United States and China must manage the competition responsibly and keep lines of communication open to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict.
In reality both countries are in involved in complicated but spiralling arms race including U.S. rearmament to deter the Chinese, while China is modernising and enhancing its military capabilities to such an extent that the U.S. fears to be outpaced in the arms race.
In this essay we discuss the U.S. fears and U.S. strategies to alleviate these fears and stay ahead, not the least in relation to a conflict a China-U.S. over Taiwan.
 
Due to the length of the essay, it has been divided into three parts published separately:
 
 Part 1 Declining power of the U.S.
The U.S. not prepared for the big one
Playing war games and losing
A U.S. military in decline
 
Part 2 Preparing for the big one
Vague “National Strategy” of deterrence
Renewing nuclear armament
Building a stronger missile defence
 
Part 3 Questioning U.S. Strategy
Peace rhetoric while preparing for war?
War over Taiwan?
Should allies question U.S. strategy?
War over Taiwan neither in the best interest of Europe nor the U.S


Part 2 Preparing for the big one
 
Vague “National Strategy” of deterrence
When The Department of Defense published their most recent National Defense Strategy including Missile Defense and Nuclear Posture Reviews on October 27, 2022, it placed its primary focus on the need to sustain and strengthen U.S. deterrence against China in collaboration with allies and partners. One wonder if allies and partners have had anything say to the strategy of the U.S,  but perhaps collaboration just means they have to accept the U.S. strategic view.
In the words of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin this means "We're seamlessly integrating our deterrence efforts to make a basic truth crystal clear to any potential foe … That truth is that the cost of aggression against the United States or our allies and partners far outweigh any conceivable gains."
The absolute focus of U.S. is China. Here as described in a lengthy excerpt from the National Defense Strategy:
“Strategic Competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security is the PRC’s coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences.
The PRC seeks to undermine U.S. alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and leverage its growing capabilities, including its economic influence and the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) growing strength and military footprint, to coerce its neighbors and threaten their interests.
The PRC’s increasingly provocative rhetoric and coercive activity towards Taiwan are destabilizing, risk miscalculation, and threaten the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait.
This is part of a broader pattern of destabilizing and coercive PRC behavior that stretches across the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and along the Line of Actual Control.
The PRC has expanded and modernized nearly every aspect of the PLA, with a focus on offsetting U.S. military advantages. The PRC is therefore the pacing challenge for the Department.
In addition to expanding its conventional forces, the PLA is rapidly advancing and integrating its space, counterspace, cyber, electronic, and informational warfare capabilities to support its holistic approach to joint warfare.
The PLA seeks to target the ability of the Joint Force to project power to defend vital U.S. interests and aid our Allies in a crisis or conflict.
The PRC is also expanding the PLA’s global footprint and working to establish a more robust overseas and basing infrastructure to allow it to project military power at greater distances. In parallel, the PRC is accelerating the modernization and expansion of its nuclear capabilities.
The United States and its Allies and partners will increasingly face the challenge of deterring two major powers with modern and diverse nuclear capabilities – the PRC and Russia – creating new stresses on strategic stability “
 
How the U.S. aim to deter China
The National Defence Strategy is surprisingly vague on the substance of deterrence, and on precisely how the U.S. might deter China, but there is lots of rhetoric.
The U.S. will reduce a competitor’s perception of the benefits of aggression relative to restraint. Meaning that the U.S. will try to persuade China that aggression against the U.S. and its allies will not pay.
The U.S. will use deterrence by denial. “To deter aggression, especially where potential adversaries could act to rapidly seize territory, the Department will develop asymmetric approaches and optimize our posture for denial… Over the mid- to long-term, we will develop new capabilities, including in long-range strike, undersea, hypersonic, and autonomous systems, and improve information sharing and the integration of non-kinetic tools.”
The strategy also refers to deterrence by resilience. “The ability to withstand, fight through, and recover quickly from disruption… Cyber resilience will be enhanced by, for example, modern encryption and a zero-trust architecture. In the space domain, the Department will reduce adversary incentives for early attack by fielding diverse, resilient, and redundant satellite constellations.” This was actually one of the important weaknesses shown in the aforementioned war games.
The strategy also includes escalation management, as if escalation might not mean a self-reinforcing vicious spiral. In the rhetoric presented here they talk of “tailored approaches to assess and manage escalation risk in both crises and conflicts, including conducting analysis of escalation pathways and thresholds, and planning for situations with decreased domain awareness and impaired communications.”
Under the heading “Force Planning” the strategy talks of infrastructure investments in the Indo-Pacific and expansion across the region. Perhaps this is related to the apparent problems related to maintenance and repair facilities for instance in Hawaii, and the planned use of bases in Northern Australia.
“In Europe, our posture will focus on command and control, fires, and key enablers that complement our NATO Allies’ capabilities and strengthen deterrence by increasing combat credibility.”
To strengthen and sustain deterrence, and to prevail in conflict “The Department will prioritize a future force that is:

• Lethal: Possesses anti-access/area-denial-insensitive strike capabilities that can penetrate adversary defenses at range.
• Sustainable: Securely and effectively provides logistics and sustainment to continue operations in a contested and degraded environment, despite adversary disruption.
• Resilient: Maintains information and decision advantage, preserves command, control, and communications systems, and ensures critical detection and targeting operations.
• Survivable: Continues generating combat power to support strike capabilities and enablers for logistics and sustainment, despite adversary attacks.
• Agile and Responsive: Rapidly mobilizes forces, generates combat power, and provides logistics and sustainment, even given adversary regional advantages and climate change impacts.

 
Rhetoric and more rhetoric. Llike a vague wish for and hope we will achieve these aims. There is nothing more specific on how this is to be achieved, and what it  will demand of the U.S. and its allies.
The Strategy says it: This NDS (National Dense Strategy) has outlined the courses of action the Department of Defense will take to help meet this challenge. We are confident in success. Our country has faced and prevailed in multi-year competitions with major powers threatening or using force to subjugate others on more than one occasion in the past. Working in service of the American people, and in collaboration with our partners around the world, the men and women of our superbly capable Joint Force stand ready to do so again.”
Perhaps in relying on the ultimate deterrence,  in the shape  of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
 
Renewing nuclear armament
“In 2022 the leaders of the five declared Nuclear Weapon States (France, People’s Republic of China, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, United States (P5)) affirmed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and that nuclear weapons should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.”
Instead of concrete steps to make sure that a nuclear war will not happen by initiating mutual steps to prevent a nuclear armament race and a stronger commitment to nuclear disarmament, there are signs of a renewal of the nuclear armament race in relation to both Russia and China. While not ignoring he formidable Russian nuclear arsenal the main focus in this essay is on China.
“The PRC likely intends to possess at least 1,000 deliverable warheads by the end of the decade. While the end state resulting from the PRC’s specific choices with respect to its nuclear forces and strategy is uncertain, the trajectory of these efforts points to a large, diverse nuclear arsenal with a high degree of survivability, reliability, and effectiveness. This could provide the PRC with new options before and during a crisis or conflict to leverage nuclear weapons for coercive purposes, including military provocations against U.S. Allies and partners in the region.” (Nuclear Posture Review 2022).
In relation to China the Review argues that “it may be necessary to consider nuclear strategy and force adjustments to assure our ability to achieve deterrence and other objectives for the PRC – even as we continue to do so for Russia. Our plans and capabilities must also account for the fact that the PRC increasingly will be able to execute a range of nuclear strategies to advance its goals”
The declarative policy of the U.S. is to maintain a very high bar for nuclear deployment, but as long as nuclear weapons exist “the fundamental role of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our Allies, and partners. The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its Allies and partners.”
The Nuclear Posture Review declares: “We will maintain a flexible deterrence strategy and force posture that continues to clearly convey to the PRC that the United States will not be deterred from defending our Allies and partners, or coerced into terminating a conflict on unacceptable terms. Forces that provide this flexibility include the W76-2 low yield submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, globally-deployable bombers, dual-capable fighter aircraft, and air-launched cruise missiles. Our intent is to prevent the PRC from mistakenly concluding that it could gain advantage through any employment of nuclear weapons, however limited.”
The W76-2 reportedly has the explosive power of around 6,5 kilotons, and replaces existing W76 warheads with a yield of 100 kilotons. The deployment on U.S. nuclear Trident submarines apparently began in 2002.  The idea behind the replacement of a high yield weapon with a low yield weapon is that the U.S. would then be able to have nuclear answer to Russian or Chinese use of tactical nuclear weapons in a regional war.
The problem with this thinking is of course that it potentially gives rise to the spectre of a limited nuclear war, which in itself may be a very dangerous prospect.
The U.S. is also modernizing its nuclear arsenal in other areas. “This includes modernizing U.S. nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe and, with participating NATO Allies, transitioning to a new generation of fighter aircraft, including the U.S. F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. The United States will work with Allies concerned to ensure that the transition to modern DCA [Dual Aircraft Capable] and the B61-12 bomb [An updated air dropped gravity nuclear bomb] is executed efficiently and with minimal disruption to readiness.”
The updated bombs would replace existing bombs bunkered at bases in Germany and Belgium.
In the Indo-Pacific region the Posture Review states “We will work with Allies and partners to identify opportunities to increase the visibility of U.S. strategic assets to the region as a demonstration of U.S. resolve and commitment, including ballistic missile submarine port visits and strategic bomber missions. Greater capability integration is an important goal, as well – to better synchronize the nuclear and non-nuclear elements of deterrence and to leverage Ally and partner non-nuclear capabilities that can support the nuclear deterrence mission.”
Recently it there has been plans for the deployment of strategic bombers to a Northern Australian base. ABC reported that the plans would include deployment up to six of  the nuclear capable aging B52 bombers to Tindal Air airbase south of Darwin.
There also plans for uprated the U.S. nuclear command, control and Communications (NC3) architecture.
In contrast to the National Strategy the Nuclear Posture Review reveal very specific plans for modernizing the nuclear forces of the U.S. Including what might seem to some observers a dangerous possibility of fighting a regional nuclear war.
This certainly does not represent concrete steps to make sure that a nuclear war will not happen, on the contrary. While the rhetorically signalling arms control and nuclear disarmament, the reality today points a multifaceted nuclear race involving Russia, China and the U.S. with additional dangers lurking in the wings from North Korea and Iran.
 
 The US program is certainly comprehensive, with the Review listing these findings (National Posture Review 2022):.

S
Building a stronger missile defence
 In addition to what might be seen as deterrence based upon superior offensive capabilities U.S. strategy also relies on defensive capabilities to deter China, Russia North Korea and to a certain degree also Iran from launching strikes against the U.S. and its allies.
Until recently the main threat may have been Russia, but Chinese offensive capabilities are increasingly important.
“Over the past two decades, the PRC has dramatically advanced its development of conventional and nuclear-armed ballistic and hypersonic missile technologies and capabilities, through intense and focused investment, development, testing, and deployments. … Increasingly sophisticated and proliferated space-based Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) networks, and improved Command and Control (C2) systems, have greatly improved the precision and accuracy of missile systems the PRC would employ to deter and counter U.S. forward presence and operations, especially in the Western Pacific region.” (Missile Defense Review 2022).
This means the U.S. will have strengthen its missile defence against China, not the least in the Indo-pacific region, in order for to make sure that its missile defence capabilities, represent a credible defence against missile attacks.
 
The defence against missile attacks
“Missile defense systems such as the GMD [Gound Based Midcourse Defence System] offer a visible measure of protection for the U.S. population while reassuring Allies and partners that the United States will not be coerced by threats to the homeland from states like North Korea and potentially Iran. In the event of crisis, globally integrated domain awareness capabilities increase warning and allow for flexible decision-making to respond, as necessary and appropriate, with escalatory options such as kinetic strike. Should deterrence fail, missile defenses can help mitigate damage to the homeland and help protect the U.S. population.”
With the present missile defence is no longer sufficient it will be necessary to develop new capabilities. This includes the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI), new “active and passive defenses against regional hypersonic missile threats, and … a persistent and resilient sensor network to characterize and track all hypersonic threats, improve attribution, and enable engagement.”
The U.S. will also continue to strengthen defences for U.S. allies and partners against all regional missile threats from any source.
It is important to emphasize that U.S. neither intend nor is capable of, is defending and defeating “large and sophisticated ICBM, air-, or sea- launched ballistic missile threats from Russia and the PRC.”
Against these threats the U.S. relies on solely on its strategic nuclear deterrence. For instance the SSBNs (The Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear) submarines like the Ohio class and the new Columbia class submarines carrying up to 16 Trident D-5 SLBMs (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles).

 See  also: 
U.S. talking peace but preparing to take on China, Part 1 and
U.S. talking peace but preparing to take on China, Part3 (Forthcoming).

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At their recent meeting of Xi Jinping and Joe Biden agreed that the United States and China must manage the competition responsibly and keep lines of communication open to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict.
In reality both countries are in involved in complicated but spiralling arms race including U.S. rearmament to deter the Chinese, while China is modernising and enhancing its military capabilities to such an extent that the U.S. fears to be outpaced in the arms race.
 
In this essay we discuss the U.S. fears and U.S. strategies to alleviate these fears and stay ahead, not the least in relation to a China-U.S. conflict  over Taiwan.
Due to the length of the essay, it has been divided into three parts to be published separately:
 
Part 1   Declining power of the U.S.
The U.S. not prepared for the big one
Playing war games and losing
A U.S. military in decline
 
Part 2 Preparing for the big one
Vague “National Strategy” of deterrence
Renewing nuclear armament
Building a stronger missile defence
 
Part 3 Questioning U.S. Strategy
Peace rhetoric while preparing for war?
War over Taiwan?
Should allies question U.S. strategy?
War over Taiwan neither in the best interest of Europe nor the U.S

Part 1  Declining power of the U.S.
 
The U.S. not prepared for the big one
"This Ukraine crisis that we're in right now, this is just the warmup … The big one is coming. And it isn't going to be very long before we're going to get tested in ways that we haven't been tested a long time.” Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard, commander of Stratcom (The U.S. Strategic Command) prophesied recently.
Of cause the admiral was taking about the ability to take on China in the future. In his view the outlook was dire, with China was outcompeting the U.S. in a dramatic fashion.
"As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking, … It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are. As those curves keep going, it isn't going to matter how good our [operating plan] is or how good our commanders are, or how good our forces are — we're not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem."
As Commander of Stratcom he was especially concerned that the U.S. nuclear forces might not be able to demonstrate a convincing strategic deterrence in relation to China. Referring also to the threats from Russia and North Korea “vividly illuminating what nuclear coercion looks like and how you, or how you don’t, stand up to that.
In his view the U.S. has to regain the advantage fast. What he envisioned was the ability to act fast and confident, “That’s how we got to the Moon by 1969 … Otherwise China is simply going to outcompete U.S. and Russia isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”
A year earlier the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chíefs of Staff, General Hyten, gave a similar warning, after China had tested its secretive hypersonic missile that “went around the world, dropped of a hypersonic glide vehicle that glided all the way back to China and impacted a target in China.” This Chinese demonstration was certainly a wake-up call for the U.S. military. Prompting General Hyten to warn “The pace they’re moving and the trajectory they’re on will surpass Russia and the United States if we don’t do something to change it. It will happen. So, I think we have to do something.”
 
Playing war games and losing
In a secret wargame in October 2020 simulating a battle between Chinese and U.S. forces over Taiwan the Chinese mauled the U.S. forces. ““Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably. An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we're going to do before we did it” (Gen. Hyten).
Apparently, the wargame showed that the U.S. forces lost the battle because of these decisive factors:
U.S. forces were too aggregated and in “today’s world, with hypersonic missiles, with significant long-range fires coming at us from all domains, if you're aggregated and everybody knows where you are, you're vulnerable” (Gen. Hyten).
In earlier wars like in the Gulf war U.S. were used to have information dominance. “We basically attempted an information-dominance structure, where information was ubiquitous to our forces. Just like it was in the first Gulf War, just like it has been for the last 20 years, just like everybody in the world, including China and Russia, have watched us do for the last 30 years.”
In this wargame the U.S. forces lost their information dominance with the Chinese able to take their cloud-based information system. Turning the table on the U.S. forces knowing where American were, while the Americans lost the ability to know the whereabouts of the Chinese.
Apparently even the advanced F-35 joint Strike fighter proved useless in the tabletop wargames having to be based too close to the enemy.
As a consequence of seeing U.S. forces failing miserably in this and earlier wargames “the military is updating its Joint Warfighting Concept with the new “Expanded Maneuver” strategy that seeks to transform how it fights over the next decade.” (Stars and Stripes).
The military is not alone in playing games. The worsening relations between the U.S. and China, especially in relation to Taiwan have renewed the interest in the question of what might happen in a U.S.-China war over Taiwan. Think tanks have designed their own wargames.
In May 2022 the NBC even sponsored a wargame at the gaming lab at the Center for New American Security (CNAS.) Afterwards airing a short version in their “Meet the Press” program.
The wargame was based upon the assumption that China invaded Taiwan in 2027 as a reaction to a new government in Taiwan declaring permanent independence from China.
In the game the red team representing China initially attempted a quick invasion in the Northern part of Taiwan “to force Taipei to capitulate before the Blue forces [The U.S.] could recover from Red’s opening blow. Red aimed to decapitate Taiwan’s leadership, launch punitive strikes to erode Taiwan’s will to resist, and cut off communications to the island to reduce Taipei’s strategic messaging aimed at rallying international support.” (CNAS).
In the game it proved impossible for China to achieve a quick win due to Taiwan resistance and U.S. involvement. “…neither side was able to decisively win in the initial week of fighting. Both Red and Blue had expended large portions of their inventories of precision long-range missiles, lost many fighter aircraft, and needed to resupply and rearm forces under attack.” (CNAS).
Unexpected and really was scary, both red and blue rapidly became involved in mutual escalation, with the red team attempting to break the American ability to bring reinforcements into battle by bombarding American bases in the first island chain, bases in Japan and even bases in northern Australia, while the blue U.S. team retaliated by bombing points in mainland China (amazonaws.com).

Taking a leaf out of the war in Ukraine the red team then threatened to go nuclear. The blue U.S. team dismissed the threat relying on the U.S. nuclear deterrence. The red team then decided to up the ante by detonating a nuclear weapon off Hawaii.
Well, it was game wasn’t it, although perhaps somewhat over the top. Perhaps for showing off and getting a TV audience’s attention.
More serious was the realisation that the U.S. would have a hard time fighting off a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Observers like a former Airforce Lt. General Deptula said the game demonstrated the need to re-arm and supply Taiwan before any confrontation with China, as “The U.S. military lacks enough systems and equipment “to execute and sustain its own contribution to a successful defense of Taiwan, much less adequately supply Taiwan” (Lt. Gen. Deptula).
Similar observations were made by other observers.
The Center for Strategic & and International Studies (CSIS) is carrying out a several iterations of a similar wargame involving a simulated U.S.-China battle over Taiwan in 2026. The game is ongoing but planned to finish in December 2022.
Insights from most of previous iterations apparently demonstrate that U.S. and Taiwanese forces could prevent the Chinese from taking over Taiwan or at least reach a stalemate, but ultimately the cost would be terrible.
It has been reported that the U.S. in 18 of the existing 22 iterations lost 500 aircraft, 20 surface ships including two aircraft carriers in every round. But at least this game hasn’t involved the use of nuclear weapons.
The existing iterations have shown that if the U.S. decides to get involved in battle to prevent a Chinese takeover of Taiwan it must enhance the deterrence provided by conventional means.
According to CSIS this include supplying Taiwan with weapons now, as it would be almost impossible to provide Taiwan with arms and supplies when a battle has begun.
The games have shown that U.S. bombers armed with long range anti-ship missiles was the most important weapon. Meaning that U.S. should enhance its capabilities in this field.
Another lesson from that game was that the U.S. would lose most aircraft on the ground as they would have to be stationed on forward bases vulnerable to Chines attacks. Meaning that bases had to be hardened.
The amounts of missiles used early in the battle would be prodigious and leading to rapid depletion of the available stockpiles. Thus, there is a need for much larger stockpiles.
Like General Hyten previously mentioned, it is also important to avoid large concentrations of U.S. forces as it might represent an easy target for the multitude of Chinese missiles.
But it is just games is it not? Or is there is more to it? Perhaps such games can set in motion actions by the U.S. that would strengthen U.S. military capabilities and enhance deterrence against a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. Which in itself might actually strengthen the conviction that a battle over Taiwan could be won, and indirectly also strengthen Taiwanese rejection of Chinese unification approaches. Actually, making war over Taiwan more probable.
 A similar view is found in an article published by U.S. China Perception Monitor. The article argues that war games “can dangerously mislead American policymakers and public to misunderstand the risk and current state across the Taiwan Strait. Both the CNAS and the CSIS wargame projects relied on assumptions about strategy and military doctrine that are unwarranted, impractical, or outdated. Meanwhile, the methods used to conduct these wargames were likely more entertaining than they were accurate and constructive.” (Zhang Yilun, uscnpm.org).
 
A U.S. military in decline
War games and military commanders are not alone in warning against a waning U.S. ability to take on China, and the existing and potential challenges it has to take into account, like Russia, North Korea, Iran terrorist groups and the complex consequences of climate change, and dare one mention internal strife in the U.S. itself.
In October 2022 the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a “2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength.”
 In this it argued that
“As currently postured, the U.S. military is at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests. It is rated as weak relative to the force needed to defend national interests on a global stage against actual challenges in the world as it is rather than as we wish it were. This is the logical consequence of years of sustained use, underfunding, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and a profound lack of seriousness across the national security establishment even as threats to U.S. interests have surged.” With the index the think tank attempts to assess “the ease or difficulty of operating in key regions based on existing alliances, regional political stability, the presence of U.S. military forces, and the condition of key infrastructure.”
 All this in order to view the ability to defend the vital interests of the U.S.

• Defense of the homeland;
• Successful conclusion of a major war that has the potential to destabilize a region of critical interest to the U.S.; and
• "Preservation of freedom of movement within the global commons (the sea, air, outer space, and cyberspace domains) through which the world conducts its business.

 
Here first a visual summary of the threats to the vital interest as judged by the think tank.
(Heritage Foundation):

No surprises in this summary. But at least it shows that U.S. military hegemony is being challenged from several directions at the same time. The question then is, is the U.S. military might ready to take on all these threats almost simultaneously? Or in other words is the U.S. ready to go to war with a large part of the World? Or are there alternatives to war, realizing that taking on all these threats might be too much even for the U.S.
Another question to what degree would the rest of the Western World, especially of cause Europe, be ready to support U.S. might and hegemony?
The index being discussed here concentrates mostly on the status of U.S. military might.
In the think tank’s summary of the military capabilities of the U.S. they reach the following aggregate conclusion ((Heritage Foundation):

The conclusion points to an overall weakness in conventional forces, apart for the Marine Corps, but they certainly will not be able to fight major conflicts on their own.
Nuclear capabilities are seen as strong, but it might not matter much given the enormous Russian arsenal and the hasty growth of Chinese nuclear capability, as a nuclear war might result in mutual destruction.
Detailed comparisons with the capabilities of major competitors in a more detailed exposé demonstrate the growing U.S. weakness in conventional forces.
Here a couple of examples.
 
An army comparison shows the U.S. lagging its competitors in land-based missile capabilities.  Some of missiles are capable of delivering non-strategic nuclear weapons. (Heritage Foundation):

An example from a navy comparison, detailing fleet expansion trends (Heritage Foundation):

This shows that at least in the number of ships the U.S navy is really getting behind. In addition, it seems certain that the U.S. is lagging behind China in shipbuilding capacity, which would be important in a drawn-out conflict. China may not have the enormous U.S. nuclear powered carriers, but these carriers on the other hand represent inviting goals for China’s missile capabilities. Where the U.S. has real advantage for a foreseeable time is in the number of nuclear submarines.
 With regard to Air Force the index points to a growing U.S. weakness related to number and age of combat-coded fighters (Heritage Foundation):

Not exactly the impressive view that one might have expected. Although they apparently do not include navy and marine corps fighters. It is worth remembering that the wargames related to a war with China over Taiwan showed that the U.S. might lose around 500 aircraft.
A simple comparison of total numbers still shows U.S. superiority (armed forces.eu):

Recently General Mark Kelly U.S. Air Combat Commander warned China’s PLAA (People’s Liberation Army Airforce) might become the first to field sixth generation aircraft, and thus overtake the U.S. in the latest generation fighters. While the general may be right, it is important to keep in mind, that he is using the possible threat to argue for a speedy introduction of such 6th generation fighters in the U.S.
 
The U.S. must do more to stay ahead. Overall, the Heritage Foundation Index concludes “that the current U.S. military force is at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities. The force would probably not be able to do more and is certainly ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous MRCs [Major regional Conflicts]—a situation that is made more difficult by the generally weak condition of key military allies.”
While this leads the military sources and Heritage Foundation to recommend hasty rejuvenation and expansion of U.S. military capabilities to stay ahead of its competitors, one might perhaps draw another preliminary conclusion. That the U.S. perhaps should not get into a war with China over Taiwan as it might be too costly, and likewise that the U.S. perhaps should look to alternatives.  Instead of believing that it ought to be capable of talking on militarily all the threats it sees in the next decade. In this light it might look outright stupid to drive Russia into a kind of forced rapprochement with China, as the ongoing U.S. proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine is sure to do. 

  Essay to be continued in  Part 2 "Preparing for the big one"