House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) is proposing a $3.5 billion plan to deter the Chinese military and reassure U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific region, according to documents obtained by Inside Defense . Details of the "Indo-Pacific Reassurance Initiative" are laid out in Smith's " chairman’s mark " of the fiscal year 2021 defense authorization bill. The general proposition that the Pentagon should direct more resources toward the Indo-Pacific region has increasingly gained bipartisan consensus in recent months...
