In 2020, Mac Thornberry sought to respond to two inquiries: (1) What is the U.S. spending on deterring a Chinese conflict, and (2) Is it sufficient?

Even the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee found them challenging. He wasn’t the only one who asked, either. Thornberry often visited Asia, where friends of the United States have similar concerns. Thornberry was at a loss for what to say to them.

“What do we have to offer?” he said.

Congress had been asking the Pentagon for a report on how much additional funding it required for the Pacific area for the past two years, but they had never been provided. Congress then made a demand for one.

“The attitude was, tell us what you need and we’ll try to help,” Thornberry said during a recent interview. “Well, if they’re not going to tell us, then we’re going to tell them.”

The Pacific Deterrence Initiative was established as a new division of the defense budget by the defense policy bill for fiscal 2021, which was named in honor of departing General Thornberry. PDI wanted to make it simpler to track the money it spent in the region and to pressure the Pentagon to increase its spending there.

Experts say that four years later, PDI has only accomplished one of its two goals. It has undoubtedly increased the transparency of defense expenditure with an emphasis on China, but it hasn’t resulted in much additional investment in the Pacific. As a matter of fact, there is no real funding allocated to the portion of the US defense budget aimed at preventing conflict with China.

“Your priorities are always better reflected in your budget rather than in your rhetoric,” Thornberry said.

The key question in US defense strategy at the moment may be whether or not those two regions align. China has been identified by the previous three administrations as America’s greatest danger, and a growing one at that. However, it’s unclear how much money would be needed to solve it and who will make the final decision—the Pentagon, Congress, or military authorities in the Pacific?

“I don’t think that we are somehow dangerously short of funding for the Indo-Pacific, whether it’s PDI or not,” Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, told Defense News in February.

“We’re going in the right direction, but the question is: Are we going there fast enough?”

A second opinion

It was this inquiry that gave rise to PDI.

Adm. Phil Davidson, the commander of Indo-Pacific Command, appeared before Congress in 2021, one year before he was scheduled to retire. Because of the coronavirus outbreak, Davidson hadn’t spoken before the Senate Armed Services Committee in two years.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., had a brief call and response early on and displayed a series of charts. Wicker asked Davidson to double-check his calculations when he reviewed a document that estimated the quantity of Chinese and American weaponry in the area by 2025.

Three Chinese aircraft carriers to America’s one. Six Chinese amphibious assault ships to America’s two. Fifty-four Chinese combat ships to America’s six.

The admiral confirmed each one.

“Our conventional deterrent is actually eroding in the region,” Davidson said.

What concerned him most was not that Beijing had a more powerful military overall; it was a problem of speed and distance. Taiwan — which the Chinese government considers a rogue province and has threatened to take back by force — is about 100 miles from the mainland. It’s more than 5,000 miles from Hawaii, the headquarters of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

It would take three weeks for the U.S. to rush ships to the area from the West Coast, and around 17 days to do so from Alaska, Davidson estimated. If China launched a rapid invasion, it might overwhelm Taiwan before the U.S. had a chance to arrive.

“The important factor here is time,” he said.

Davidson’s answer, and that of many committee members, was to push America’s forces closer to Taiwan — the military version of a full-court press. But the U.S. didn’t yet have the necessary infrastructure in place. It would need to construct bases, airfields, radars and other buildings along the Pacific islands that arc around Taiwan.

And this would cost money — lots of money.

PDI was, at first, meant to be the source of that money. To understand why, it’s important to understand how the Pentagon writes its budget.

The process depends mostly on the military services — in particular the Army, Navy and Air Force. These services hold about four-fifths of defense spending each year and direct where that money goes.

Their incentives are different from those of the seven geographic combatant commands, who carry out America’s military goals around the world. Given their roles, the commands often focus on shorter-term needs. Hence, the services often don’t fund everything the combatant commands want.

To lawmakers, the gap seemed especially wide in the Pacific, where China has spent the last two decades upgrading its military.

Noticing this problem, lawmakers as far back as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in 2017 wanted to fund Indo-Pacific Command’s goals with a separate account — something Thornberry also later supported.

It didn’t come together until three years later. In May 2020, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee announced plans for a Pacific Deterrence Initiative that would reassure U.S. allies and improve its forces.

It had five goals: to improve presence, logistics, exercises, infrastructure and the strength of partners in the Pacific. The bill also added a voice to the budgeting process. Indo-Pacific Command would now give Congress an annual second opinion on America’s military needs in the region.

There was, however, a structural problem. The lawmakers that created PDI didn’t actually get any money for it. The policy bill named for Thornberry gave the Pentagon about $2 billion in authority for the effort but not permission to spend it. That would’ve required a signoff from the defense appropriations committees, who control the nation’s purse.