We are inching toward a possible World War III. A war on two fronts.
China’s Xi Jinping and Joe Biden met virtually for almost four hours on the night of Tuesday November 16th. They agreed to disagree. But the meeting lowered tensions. Temporarily.
Meanwhile, China claims that Taiwan has belonged to it since roughly 239 ad, when it was first explored by China. And it’s made it clear that it intends to take Taiwan back.
There’s more. Taiwan is a democracy. But China wants Taiwan to submit to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Which means submitting to the rule of China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
Yet Taiwan is one of our vital allies. Among other things, it has the biggest chip factory in the world. That’s computer chips, not potato chips. And underproduction of computer chips is holding up the manufacture of devices from cars to home appliances, thus driving prices up and generating inflation.
Meanwhile, China is inching toward possession of Taiwan. Here’s how. You’ve heard the old cold war concept of deterrence. You stockpile such a massive hoard of nuclear weapons that any potential enemy won’t dare challenge you. China is setting itself up to deter someone–us. Why?
So it can do whatever it wants with impunity. And retaking Taiwan is high on the list of what China wants.
So China is on track to increase its inventory of nuclear weapons from 290 to 1,000, a goal our military estimates it will reach by 2030.
And this summer, China launched a space-shuttle-like hypersonic weapon on a rocket. The rocket orbited the world once, then dropped its hypersonic shuttle, which glided back to China. The hypersonic vehicle missed its target. But, says Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten, it was “close enough.”
According to Armscontrol.org, an orbital trajectory of this kind “would allow the missile system to come from the south via Antarctica and evade the Arctic, where U.S. early-warning radar detection is concentrated.” In other words, the hypersonic vehicle could evade our defenses and fly so low that even our military radar close to home would have trouble spotting it.
We have no equivalent weapon Yet.
Publications like the New York Post and Yahoo News sum this up in headlines like: “China could use its hypersonic weapons in surprise nuclear attack on US.”
On top of that, China is setting itself up to pull a new Pearl Harbor. The Chinese publication Naval and Merchant Ships explained a few months ago that this “three-stage surprise attack could pave the way for an assault landing on Taiwan”.
But we face something more menacing than just the growth of China as a nuclear power. We face the risk of a war on two fronts.
To our west is China. To our east is Russia. Russia is planning to replace its old-style ballistic missiles with nuclear tipped hypersonic missiles like the one China just tested. And it’s upping the budget for its nuclear arsenal. A nuclear arsenal aimed at us.
What’s more, Russia has adopted one of China’s approaches to international relations—you claim that an independent state has belonged to you forever, then you declare your right to take that territory back. One of the territories Russia wants to “take back” is the Ukraine. Three others are Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
At this moment, Russia has 100,000 troops massed on the Ukrainian border. It looks like those troops have been deployed for an invasion. So we are now caught in a pincer movement between Russia and China, with a risk of war on two fronts. Defense News warns that “The US may not be able to fight two big wars at once.” And China’s and Russia’s nukes will make us think twice before entering combat.
Which means that we may be losing our status as the great decider, the world’s top superpower. And Taiwan may be in trouble.
References:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/lnternational-relations/US-China-tensions/Biden-Xi-summit-offers-brief-respite-for-Taiwan-tensions
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-11/news/china-tested-hypersonic-capability-us-says https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3139460/mainland-chinese-magazine-outlines-how-surprise-attack-taiwan
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2021/11/01/russian-nuclear-weapons-stand-out-in-defense-budget-request/