The Biden administration faces a conundrum as it rethinks the positioning of military forces around the world: How to focus more on China and Russia without retreating from longstanding Mideast threats and to make this shift with potentially leaner Pentagon budgets.
Like the Trump administration, Biden's national security team views China, not militant extremists like al-Qaida or the Islamic State group, as the No.
Commanders see value in deploying forces in smaller groups on less predictable cycles to keep China off balance.
The Trump administration went further by formally declaring that China and Russia, not global terrorism, were the top threats to U.S. national security.
But he said U.S. commanders elsewhere in the world told him the China focus was costing them needed resources.