Thursday, June 6, 2019
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
The US and China on a collision course
Andre Damon
3 June 2019
In a series of provocative
actions, the United States is making clear it is prepared to fight a war to
block Beijing’s rise as an economic and geostrategic competitor.
The “cold war” between the
United States and China took a major step toward becoming a “hot” war over the
weekend at the annual Shangri-La defense summit in Singapore.
The Financial Times, not
known for hyperbole, wrote that “The growing dispute between the US and China on
trade and technology is increasing the risk of military conflict or outright
war.”
At the summit, representatives
of the Pacific nations that would be caught in the crossfire of such a conflict
warned of the imminent possibility of a new Pacific war.
“Our greatest fear, therefore,
is the possibility of sleepwalking into another international conflict like
World War One,” said Philippines Defense Minister Delfin Lorenzana. “With the
untethering of our networks of economic interdependence comes growing risk of
confrontation that could lead to war.”
US officials used the summit
to continue their efforts to encircle China militarily and strangle it
economically, with acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan declaring China
to be “the greatest long-term threat to the vital interests of states across
this region.”
Just days earlier, Vice
President Mike Pence, addressing the graduating class at West Point, predicted
war in the Pacific, in Europe and in the Americas within the graduates’
lifetimes.
“It is a virtual certainty
that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life …
Some of you will join the fight on the Korean Peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific,
where North Korea continues to threaten the peace, and an increasingly
militarized China challenges our presence in the region. Some of you will join
the fight in Europe, where an aggressive Russia seeks to redraw international
boundaries by force. And some of you may even be called upon to serve in this
hemisphere.
“And when that day comes, I
know you will move to the sound of the guns and do your duty, and you will
fight, and you will win.”
The United States’ actions are
extraordinarily reckless and provocative. Seeing a challenge to its dominance,
it is seeking to use every tool at its disposal, including military force, to
compel China’s submission to its will. The United States is simultaneously
escalating conflicts around the world—including its regime change operation in
Venezuela and its dispatch of additional troops to the Middle East to “counter”
Iran—to shore up its flagging global hegemony through military means.
Chinese Defense Secretary Wei
Fenghe responded to the US threats with militarist bluster of his own, saying,
“Should anybody risk crossing the bottom line, the [People’s Liberation Army]
will resolutely take action and defeat all enemies.” He warned the United
States against encouraging Taiwanese separatism, declaring, “If anyone dares to
split Taiwan from China, the Chinese military has no choice but to fight at all
costs.”
The divisions between the
United States and China are centered on the Chinese state initiative called
“Made in China 2025.” The plan envisions a substantial expansion of Chinese
industry into high-value-added and high-technology manufacturing, areas
traditionally dominated by the United States and its allies.
In recent decades, Chinese
companies have made substantial developments in the high-technology sector,
including robotics, mobile phones and IT infrastructure. This development was
expressed most directly in the growth of Huawei, the Chinese mobile phone and
telecommunications firm, which was on track to become the world’s leading
smartphone maker by the end of the year.
Last month, the United States
moved to effectively destroy Huawei as a global competitor to Apple and Samsung
by banning US companies from selling it software and components. Google locked
the company out of the Android operating system and associated services, while
Broadcom and Qualcomm announced they would no longer sell the company chips it
needs to continue production.
The move enjoys broad
bipartisan support beyond the Trump White House. There is an emerging consensus
within the American ruling class that China must be prevented from becoming a
global technological, and thus military, peer of the United States.
The growth of US-China
tensions has overshadowed the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square
massacre. At the summit, Wei defended the bloody crackdown against the 1989
protests by workers and students, declaring the protests were “political
turmoil that the central government needed to quell, which was the correct
policy.”
He continued, “Due to this,
China has enjoyed stability, and if you visit China you can understand that
part of history.”
But three decades of
“stability”—the effective transformation of China into a gigantic sweatshop for
American and world capitalism—has come at a tremendous cost. China is not an
imperialist country. It remains dependent on foreign corporate investment and
finance. Now, it is once again in the crosshairs of a nuclear-armed United
States determined to go to any lengths to secure its global hegemony.
In the immediate aftermath of
the Tiananmen Square massacre, the International Committee of the Fourth
International wrote, “The repression in China is being carried out in the
direct interests of the imperialists. In attacking the Chinese workers, the
bureaucracy is acting as their agent, seeking to restore ‘labor discipline’ and
to repress the mass opposition of the working class to the policies of
capitalist restoration and the rampant exploitation and social inequality which
it has engendered.”
While publicly condemning the
massacre, the first Bush administration secretly made clear to the Chinese
government that the event was an “internal affair” and affirmed the value of
the Sino-American relationship “to the vital interests of both countries.”
The ICFI Statement continued,
“Imperialism gloats over the broken bodies of the Chinese workers, seeking to
exploit them for the purpose of crude anticommunist propaganda, while at the
same time calculating that the brutal state repression will translate into
higher rates of exploitation and even greater profits from the tens of billions
of dollars’ worth of direct investment and joint ventures already operating on
Chinese soil.”
This is precisely what
happened. Following Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour of 1992, in which he
encouraged Chinese entrepreneurs to “get rich,” US investment in China
ballooned, leading to a profit bonanza for American corporations, along with
the fantastic enrichment of the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party,
through the exploitation of the Chinese working class.
The arguments by leading Chinese
figures that an accommodation and partnership with US imperialism would offer a
peaceful road toward China’s national development have proven to be a pipe
dream.
If Chinese officials accept US
demands, it will be a massive blow to the Chinese economy, causing mass
unemployment and engendering protests and political turmoil. But to stand up to
the United States means, sooner or later, to fight a war between nuclear
powers, in which millions dead on both sides would be an optimistic scenario.
Thirty years after the
Tiananmen Square massacre, all the arguments that the laws of imperialism
identified by Lenin after the outbreak of World War I had been superseded by
globalization and technological development have proven false. The capitalist
system, riven by a new scramble for a re-division of the world, is hurtling
toward a new world war.
The only thing standing
between humanity and this catastrophe is the international working class. It is
urgently necessary for the workers of China, the United States and the whole
world to unify their struggles in a common fight against the capitalist system,
which is the root cause of imperialist war. This means building sections of the
International Committee of the Fourth International in China and all over the
world as the vanguard of a working-class movement against imperialist war.
Andre Damon
Global recession coming? Manufacturing DOWN across Asia
Global recession fears grow as
factory activity shrinks
5 MIN READ
LONDON/HONG KONG (Reuters) -
Factory activity contracted across Asia and Europe last month as an escalating
trade war between Washington and Beijing raised fears of a global economic
downturn and heaped pressure on policymakers to roll out more stimulus.
Such growth indicators are
likely to deteriorate further in coming months as higher trade tariffs take
their toll on global commerce and further dent business and consumer sentiment,
leading to job losses and delays in investment decisions.
Some economists predict a
world recession and a renewed race to the bottom on interest rates if trade
tensions fail to ease at a Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan at the end of
June, when presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping could meet.
The U.S.-China trade war,
slumping automotive demand, Brexit and wider geopolitical uncertainty took their
toll on manufacturing activity in the euro zone last month. It contracted for a
fourth month in May - and at a faster pace.
“The additional shock from the
escalated trade tensions is not going to be good for global trade. In terms of
the monetary policy response, almost everywhere the race is going to be to the
downside,” said Aidan Yao, senior emerging markets economist at AXA Investment
Managers.
IHS Markit’s May final
manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index for the euro zone was 47.7, below
April’s level and only just above a six-year low in March.
In Britain, the Brexit
stockpiling boom of early 2019 gave way last month to the steepest downturn in
British manufacturing in almost three years as new orders dried up, boding ill
for economic growth in the second quarter.
After an official gauge on
Friday showed contraction in China, Asia’s economic heartbeat, the Caixin/IHS
Markit Manufacturing PMI showed modest expansion, offering investors some
near-term relief.
The outlook, however, remained
grim as output growth slipped, factory prices stalled and businesses were the
least optimistic on production since the survey series began in April 2012.
Central banks in Australia and
India are expected to cut rates this week, with others around the world are
seen following suit in coming weeks and months.
While U.S. manufacturing is
expected to grow steadily, economists expect the global malaise to eventually
feed back into the U.S. economy. Fed funds rate futures are now almost fully
pricing in a rate cut by September, with about 50 percent chance of a move by
end-July.
J.P. Morgan now expects the
Federal Reserve to cut rates twice this year, a major change from its previous
forecast that rates would stay on hold until the end of 2020.
Meanwhile, Monday’s survey adds
to evidence that the euro zone economy is under pressure and will likely be of
concern to policymakers at the European Central Bank, who have already raised
the prospect of further support.
There is little likelihood of
them hiking interest rates before 2021, according to economists in a Reuters
poll last week. They said the bank’s next policy move would be to tweak its
forward guidance toward more accommodation.
RECESSION FEARS
The trade conflict between
China and the United States escalated last month when Trump raised tariffs on
some Chinese imports to 25% from 10% and threatened levies on all Chinese
goods.
If that were to happen, and
China were to retaliate, “we could end up in a (global) recession in three
quarters”, said Chetan Ahya, global head of economics at Morgan Stanley.
Washington’s new tariff
threats against Mexico last week also contributed to global recession fears,
with stock markets tumbling around the world. The 10-year U.S. Treasuries yield
fell to 2.121%, a nadir last seen in September 2017.
Tensions flared again between
the United States and China at the weekend over trade, technology and security.
China’s Defence Minister Wei
Fenghe warned the United States not to meddle in security disputes over Taiwan
and the South China Sea, while acting U.S. Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan
said Washington would no longer “tiptoe” around Chinese behavior in Asia.
“We take this seriously. It
means that the trade war has not only become a technology war but also a
broad-based business war. There will be more retaliation actions from
China, especially for the technology sector,” said Iris Pang, Greater
China economist at ING.
Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
and Gareth Jones
Missiles spotted over China during navy drill
People in many provinces saw
flying projectiles that could be ICBMs fired from PLA submarines
By ASIA TIMES STAFF
Projectiles were seen in many provinces on Saturday and Sunday morning. Photos: WeChat, Weibo
Glowing projectiles were
spotted lighting up the night sky on the first two nights of June in multiple
provinces in eastern and central China. These comet-like objects flew in curved
trajectories on the horizon and left residents wondering what they were.
Numerous photos posted online
suggest the unidentified flying objects were first seen in the wee hours
of Saturday in provinces such as Shandong, Liaoning and Hebei, at a time when
large portions of the Bohai Sea, plus the Bohai Strait between Shandong and Liaoning,
were cordoned off by the People’s Liberation Army for a massive naval
drill.
Netizens soon suggested
the UFOs streaking across the sky were missiles and projectiles fired by
the PLA in the Bohai Sea, the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea.
Chinese papers reported that
the PLA conducted two military exercises in the Bohai Sea on Saturday and
Sunday, in waters between Shandong and Liaoning.
More sightings of similar UFOs
were reported on Sunday morning, from stargazers living further inland in the
central, landlocked provinces of Shanxi and Henan. This could be an indication
that missiles launched by the PLA traversed no less than 1,000 kilometers,
likely powerful ballistic missiles fired from a submarine.
A photo taken by a resident in
Shandong Province shows a projectile flying past clouds. Photo: Weibo
Some analysts suspect that the
missiles concerned could be the JL-3, a third-generation intercontinental
ballistic missile powered by solid fuel and launched from a submarine in its
final stage of development. It would likely be deployed on a modern Chinese
submarine known as the Type 096.
The JL-3 is rumored to have a range
of up to 12,000 kilometers, meaning that cities on the west coast of the
US like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle were well within its range if
fired from China’s littoral waters in the East China Sea. The JL-3 is a
variant of the land-based DF-41 missile, the buttress of the PLA’s nuclear
deterrence, and can carry multiple warheads.
The drill was held when
China’s Defense Minister Wei Fenghe was in Singapore for this year’s Shangri-La
Dialogue, along with his US counterpart, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick
Shanahan. Wei reportedly warned that the PLA would go to any lengths to defend
China’s sovereignty and territory.
In a combative address, Wei
reasserted Beijing’s position in the South China Sea and vowed a “fight at all
costs” to recapture Taiwan should peaceful attempts to reunify the self-ruled
island fail.
The PLA is also expected to marshal
subs and warships south into the South China Sea for another exercise scheduled
this week.
China issues official warning to students hoping to go to US
Education ministry urges
Chinese citizens to undertake risk assessment before they try to get visas for
America
China is largest source of
international students in US, accounting for around 31 per cent of total
China issued an official
warning on Monday for Chinese students seeking to study in the United States,
amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
The Ministry of Education
urged students and academics to “raise their risk assessment” after an increase
in visa delays and denials for those who have applied to study in the US.
“For a period of time now,
some Chinese students in the US have faced situations where their visas were
restricted, the visa review period was extended, the period of validity was
shortened, or [their applications] were rejected,” it said in a statement,
relayed by the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
“The ministry wants to remind
[Chinese] students and scholars to raise their risk assessment, strengthen
their preventative awareness, and make the appropriate preparations.”
The warning comes as China and
the US have been locked in an intensifying trade war, with Beijing placing the
blame for the deteriorating relationship on Washington over the weekend.
Beyond raising tariffs on
billions of dollars’ worth of goods, the US has blacklisted Chinese telecoms
giant Huawei over national security concerns, with China saying it would launch
an “unreliable entity” list in apparent retaliation.
Meanwhile Chinese students in
fields such as robotics, aviation, engineering, and hi-tech manufacturing – all
key elements of the “Made in China 2025” policy – have faced additional
scrutiny when applying for visas to enter the US.
In June last year a US State
Department official told a Senate hearing that Chinese students in “sensitive
fields” could face additional screening.
Xu Yongji, deputy head of the
international department at China’s Ministry of Education, said on Monday that
13.5 per cent of government-sponsored Chinese students, 182 in total, had been
denied visas to the US in the first quarter of the year.
This reflected a significant
increase from the roughly 3 per cent of students, out of a total of 10,313
applicants, who were unable to study in the US last year, according to the
China Scholarship Council, which funds overseas students.
Xu also said that American
claims that Chinese students were carrying out “non-traditional espionage
activities” abroad and the cancellation of 10-year visas for some academics had
“hurt the dignity of Chinese students in the US”.
He said this had created a
chill in educational exchanges between the two countries that should be
“quickly remedied”.
Meanwhile, Geng Shuang a
spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, told a regular briefing that the US had
imposed “unnecessary restrictions” on people-to-people exchanges, including
students hoping to study abroad, which has sparked “opposition from the
education industries in both countries”.
China is the largest source of
international students in the US, accounting for around 31 per cent of the
total, according to the latest available figures from the US Department of
Homeland Security.
In March, there were 369,364
students from China in the United States.
While the US continues to be
the preferred destination for Chinese students, its appeal has waned slightly
in recent years.
A survey by China’s largest
private education provider, New Oriental Education & Technology Group,
found that 43 per cent of respondents ranked the US as their top choice in
2019, down from 49 per cent two years previously, followed by Britain,
Australia and Canada.
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of
the state-run nationalist tabloid Global Times, tweeted earlier on Monday
that the Chinese government’s warning was a response to the “recent series of
discriminatory measures the US took against Chinese students and can also be
seen as a response to the US-initiated trade war”.
Han Yi, from Beijing-based
consultancy JLL Overseas Education, said he had seen cases where Chinese
students in the US had experienced extended delays in processing their visas
and seen the period of visa validity shortened.
But despite these difficulties
and the ministry’s warning, he did not expect the number of Chinese students
visiting America to decrease significantly.
“A small decrease is
possible,” Han, who graduated from a master’s programme at Ohio State
University, said.
“Historically this is not the
first time this type of thing has happened, so the impact may be limited. We
hope things will improve.”
Liu Weidong, a researcher at
the American studies institute at the China Academy of Social Sciences, said
the current US administration was seeking to decouple from China and targeting
students and academics was one way of achieving this.
“They believe Chinese students
studying in the US are taking advantage of the Americans, or even thieving or
spying,” he said. “But they forget the great contribution of Chinese students
in the past and in the future. Eventually they will face opposition from within
the US.”
Liu, who said some of his
colleagues at the academy had seen their US visas cancelled or been questioned
by the FBI, said that in the short term the restrictions could have some impact
on China’s research and development.
But he continued that this
will force China to “improve its own R&D, reduce its dependence on the US,
and look at increasing cooperation and exchanges with other developed countries”.
“I would suggest that instead
of any retaliatory actions, the Chinese side should be more open and inclusive
to welcome more international and American visitors to win the support of the
rest of the world,” he added.
The US embassy in Beijing did
not immediately comment on the Chinese government’s official warning.
Additional reporting by Jun
Mai and Liu Zhen
Pentagon wants to prepare for war with China, not Iran
The Navy’s War vs. Bolton’s
War
The Pentagon’s Spoiling for a
Fight -- But With China, Not Iran
The recent White House
decision to speed the deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group and other
military assets to the Persian Gulf has led many in Washington and elsewhere to
assume that the U.S. is gearing up for war with Iran. As in the lead-up to the
2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials have cited suspect intelligence data to justify elaborate war
preparations. On May 13th, acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan
even presented top White House officials with plans to send
as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East for possible future combat with
Iran and its proxies. Later reports indicated that the Pentagon might be making plans to
send even more soldiers than that.
Hawks in the White House, led
by National Security Advisor John Bolton, see a war aimed at eliminating Iran’s
clerical leadership as a potentially big win for Washington. Many top officials
in the U.S. military, however, see the matter quite differently -- as
potentially a giant step backward into exactly the kind of low-tech ground war
they’ve been unsuccessfully enmeshed in across the Greater Middle East and
northern Africa for years and would prefer to leave behind.
Make no mistake: if President
Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack Iran, it would do so and, were that
to happen, there can be little doubt about the ultimate negative outcome for
Iran. Its moth-eaten military machine is simply no match for the American one.
Almost 18 years after Washington’s war on terror was launched, however, there
can be little doubt that any U.S. assault on Iran would also stir up yet more
chaos across the region, displace more people, create more refugees, and leave
behind more dead civilians, more ruined cities and infrastructure, and more
angry souls ready to join the next terror group to pop up. It would surely lead
to another quagmire set of ongoing conflicts for American soldiers. Think: Iraq
and Afghanistan, exactly the type of no-win scenarios that many top Pentagon
officials now seek to flee. But don’t chalk such feelings up only to a
reluctance to get bogged down in yet one more war-on-terror quagmire. These
days, the Pentagon is also increasingly obsessed with preparations for another
type of war in another locale entirely: a high-intensity conflict with China,
possibly in the South China Sea.
After years of slogging it out
with guerrillas and jihadists across the Greater Middle East, the U.S. military
is increasingly keen on preparing to combat “peer” competitors China and
Russia, countries that pose what’s called a “multi-domain” challenge to the
United States. This new outlook is only bolstered by a belief that America’s
never-ending war on terror has severely depleted its military, something obvious
to both Chinese and Russian leaders who have taken advantage of Washington’s
extended preoccupation with counterterrorism to modernize their forces and
equip them with advanced weaponry.
For the United States to
remain a paramount power -- so Pentagon thinking now goes -- it must turn away
from counterterrorism and focus instead on developing the wherewithal to
decisively defeat its great-power rivals. This outlook was made crystal clear
by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in testimony before the Senate Armed
Services Committee in April 2018. “The negative impact on military readiness
resulting from the longest continuous period of combat in our nation’s history
[has] created an overstretched and under-resourced military,” he insisted. Our rivals, he added, used those same years to
invest in military capabilities meant to significantly erode America’s
advantage in advanced technology. China, he assured the senators, is
“modernizing its conventional military forces to a degree that will challenge
U.S. military superiority.” In response, the United States had but one choice:
to reorient its own forces for great-power competition. “Long-term strategic
competition -- not terrorism -- is now the primary focus of U.S. national
security.”
This outlook was, in fact,
already enshrined in the National Defense Strategy of the United States of America,
the Pentagon’s overarching blueprint governing all aspects of military
planning. Its $750 billion budget proposal for fiscal year 2020, unveiled on
March 12th, was said to be fully aligned with this approach. “The operations
and capabilities supported by this budget will strongly position the U.S.
military for great-power competition for decades to come,” acting Secretary of
Defense Shanahan said at the time.
In fact, in that budget proposal, the Pentagon made sharp
distinctions between the types of wars it sought to leave behind and those it
sees in its future. “Deterring or defeating great-power aggression is a
fundamentally different challenge than the regional conflicts involving rogue
states and violent extremist organizations we faced over the last 25 years,” it
noted. “The FY 2020 Budget is a major milestone in meeting this challenge,” by
financing the more capable force America needs “to compete, deter, and win in
any high-end potential fight of the future.”
Girding for “High-End” Combat
If such a high-intensity war
were to break out, Pentagon leaders suggest, it would be likely to take place
simultaneously in every domain of combat -- air, sea, ground, space, and
cyberspace -- and would feature the widespread utilization of emerging
technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and cyberwarfare.
To prepare for such multi-domain engagements, the 2020 budget includes $58 billion for advanced aircraft, $35
billion for new warships -- the biggest shipbuilding request in more than 20
years -- along with $14 billion for space systems, $10 billion for cyberwar,
$4.6 billion for AI and autonomous systems, and $2.6 billion for hypersonic
weapons. You can safely assume, moreover, that each of those amounts will be
increased in the years to come.
Planning for such a future,
Pentagon officials envision clashes first erupting on the peripheries of China
and/or Russia, only to later extend to their heartland expanses (but not, of
course, America’s). As those countries already possess robust defensive
capabilities, any conflict would undoubtedly quickly involve the use of
front-line air and naval forces to breach their defensive systems -- which
means the acquisition and deployment of advanced stealth aircraft, autonomous
weapons, hypersonic cruise missiles, and other sophisticated weaponry. In
Pentagon-speak, these are called anti-access/area-defense (A2/AD) systems.
As it proceeds down this path,
the Department of Defense is already considering future war scenarios. A clash
with Russian forces in the Baltic region of the former Soviet Union is, for
instance, considered a distinct possibility. So the U.S. and allied NATO countries
have been bolstering their forces in that very region and
seeking weaponry suitable for attacks on Russian defenses along that country’s
western border.
Still, the Pentagon’s main
focus is a rising China, the power believed to pose the greatest threat to
America’s long-term strategic interests. “China’s historically unprecedented
economic development has enabled an impressive military buildup that could soon
challenge the U.S. across almost all domains,” Admiral Harry Harris Jr.,
commander of the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) and now the U.S. ambassador to
South Korea, typically testified in March 2018. “China’s ongoing military
modernization is a core element of China’s stated strategy to supplant the U.S.
as the security partner of choice for countries in the Indo-Pacific.”
As Harris made clear, any
conflict with China would probably first erupt in the waters off its eastern
coastline and would involve an intense U.S. drive to destroy China’s A2/AD
capabilities, rendering that country’s vast interior essentially defenseless.
Harris’s successor, Admiral Philip Davidson, as commander of what is now known
as the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, or USINDOPACOM, described such a scenario this way in testimony before
Congress in February 2019: “Our adversaries are fielding advanced
anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems, advanced aircraft, ships, space, and
cyber capabilities that threaten the U.S. ability to project power and
influence into the region.” To overcome such capabilities, he added, the U.S.
must develop and deploy an array of attack systems for “long-range strike[s]”
along with “advanced missile defense systems capable of detecting, tracking,
and engaging advanced air, cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic threats from all azimuths.”
If you read through the
testimony of both commanders, you’ll soon grasp one thing: that the U.S.
military -- or at least the Navy and Air Force -- are focused on a future
war-scape in which American forces are no longer focused on terrorism or the
Middle East, but on employing their most sophisticated weaponry to overpower
the modernized forces of China (or Russia) in a relatively brief spasm of
violence, lasting just days or weeks. These would be wars in which the mastery
of technology, not counterinsurgency or nation building, would -- so, at least,
top military officials believe -- prove the decisive factor.
The Pentagon’s Preferred
Battleground
Such Pentagon scenarios
essentially assume that a conflict with China would initially erupt in the waters
of the South China Sea or in the East China Sea near Japan and Taiwan. U.S.
strategists have considered these two maritime areas America’s “first line of
defense” in the Pacific since Admiral George Dewey defeated the
Spanish fleet in 1898 and the U.S. seized the Philippines. Today, USINDOPACOM remains the most powerful force in the region
with major bases in Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea. China, however, has
visibly been working to erode American regional dominance somewhat by modernizing its navy and installing along its
coastlines short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, presumably aimed at
those U.S. bases.
By far its most obvious threat
to U.S. dominance in the region, however, has been its occupation and militarization
of tiny islands in the South China Sea, a busy maritime thoroughfare bounded by
China and Vietnam on one side, Indonesia and the Philippines on the other. In
recent years, the Chinese have used sand dredged from the ocean bottom to
expand some of those islets, then setting up military facilities on them,
including airstrips, radar systems, and communications gear. In 2015, China’s
President Xi Jinping promisedPresident Obama that his country wouldn’t take such
action, but satellite imagery clearly shows that
it has done so. While not yet heavily fortified, those islets provide Beijing
with a platform from which to potentially foil U.S. efforts to further project
its power in the region.
“These bases appear to be
forward military outposts, built for the military, garrisoned by military
forces, and designed to project Chinese military power and capability across
the breadth of China’s disputed South China Sea claims,” Admiral Harris testified in 2018. “China has built a massive
infrastructure specifically -- and solely -- to support advanced military
capabilities that can deploy to the bases on short notice.”
To be clear, U.S. officials
have never declared that the Chinese must vacate those islets or even remove
their military facilities from them. However, for some time now, they’ve been
making obvious their displeasure over the buildup in the South China Sea. In
May 2018, for instance, Secretary of Defense Mattis disinvited the Chinese navy from the biennial “Rim of
the Pacific” exercises, the world’s largest multinational naval
maneuvers, sayingthat “there are consequences” for that country’s
failure to abide by Xi’s 2015 promise to Obama. “That’s a relatively small
consequence,” he added. “I believe there are much larger consequences in the
future.”
What those consequences might
be, Mattis never said. But there is no doubt that the U.S. military has given
careful thought to a possible clash in those waters and has contingency plans
in place to attack and destroy all the Chinese facilities there. American
warships regularly sail provocatively within a few miles of those militarized
islands in what are termed “freedom of navigation operations,” or FRONOPS,
while U.S. air and naval forces periodically conduct large-scale military
exercises in the region. Such activities are, of course, closely monitored by
the Chinese. Sometimes, they even attempt to impede FRONOPS operations, leading more than once to
near-collisions. In May 2018, Admiral Davidson caused consternation at the
Pentagon by declaring, “China is now capable of controlling the South
China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States” -- a comment
presumably intended as a wake-up call, but also hinting at the kinds of
conflicts U.S. strategists foresee arising in the future.
The Navy’s War vs. Bolton’s
War
The U.S. Navy sends a
missile-armed destroyer close to one of those Chinese-occupied islands just
about every few weeks. It’s what the U.S. high command likes to call “showing
the flag” or demonstrating America’s resolve to remain a dominant power in that
distant region (though were the Chinese to do something similar off the U.S.
West Coast it would be considered the scandal of the century and a provocation
beyond compare). Just about every time it happens, the Chinese
authorities warn off those ships or send out their own vessels to
shadow and harass them.
On May 6th, for example, the
U.S. Navy sent two of its guided-missile destroyers, the
USS Preble and the USS Chung Hoon, on a FRONOPS mission near
some of those islands, provoking a fierce complaint from Chinese officials.
This deadly game of chicken could, of course, go on for years without shots
being fired or a major crisis erupting. The odds of avoiding such an incident
are bound to drop over time, especially as, in the age of Trump, U.S.-China
tensions over other matters -- including trade, technology, and human rights -- continue to grow. American military
leaders have clearly been strategizing about the possibility of a conflict
erupting in this area for some time and, if Admiral Davidson’s remark is any
indication, would respond to such a possibility with considerably more relish
than most of them do to a possible war with Iran.
Yes, they view Iran as a
menace in the Middle East and no doubt would like to see the demise of that
country’s clerical regime. Yes, some Army commanders like General Kenneth McKenzie, head of the U.S. Central Command,
still show a certain John Bolton-style relish for such a conflict. But Iran
today -- weakened by years of isolation and trade sanctions --
poses no unmanageable threat to America’s core strategic interests and, thanks
in part to the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration,
possesses no
nuclear weapons. Still, can there be any doubt that a war with Iran would
turn into a messy quagmire, as in Iraq after the invasion of 2003, with
guerrilla uprisings, increased terrorism, and widespread chaos spreading
through the region -- exactly the kind of “forever wars” much of the U.S.
military (unlike John Bolton) would prefer to leave behind?
How this will all play out
obviously can’t be foreseen, but if the U.S. does not go to war with Iran,
Pentagon reluctance may play a significant role in that decision. This does not
mean, however, that Americans would be free of the prospect of major bloodshed
in the future. The very next U.S. naval patrol in the South China Sea, or the
one after that, could provide the spark for a major blowup of a very different
kind against a far more powerful -- and nuclear-armed -- adversary. What could
possibly go wrong?
Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor
emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior
visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. His most recent book is The Race for What’s Left. His next book, All Hell
Breaking Loose: Why the Pentagon Sees Climate Change as a Threat to American
National Security, will be published later this year.
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