Imagine the militaries of China and Russia uniting their armed forces to oppose the United States… two giant nuclear-armed communist states facing off against one western democratic nation.
Cold War era nuclear deterrence theory no longer applies to the geopolitical dynamics at work today. America needs to prepare to respond to the simultaneous threat of two united communist giants, according to the chief of the US Strategic Command, Admiral Chas Richards. He is warning publicly that China has changed the nature of the national security threat to the US this year. The publication Defense One reports that on Thursday, before a group of experts at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, Richards said that “We have to account for three-party [threats]” and “That is unprecedented in this nation’s history. We have never faced two peer nuclear-capable opponents at the same time, who have to be deterred differently.”
In recent years China has dramatically increased its defense budget, the lethality of the PLA, and prepared for war in space. Beijing has bought, built, and stolen advanced military technologies and weapons systems from the West. The distance its blue water navy can travel now threatens not only its Asian neighboring states but most of the world, including all of the United States. The Pentagon in late July warned that China’s belligerent behavior increases the chances for an accidental encounter that could spiral out of control.
During the same period US institutional knowledge about avoiding nuclear war has atrophied, according to Richards. The Chinese threat is pushing the US Strategic Command to quickly shift how it will react to the evolving threat from Beijing, according to Tara Copp of Defense One. A significant outstanding issue for US military planners is that Washington has not yet fully taken into account China’s new hypersonic weapons program. The new system appears capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads. China tested it last October by launching hypersonic test missiles that flew around the world and landed within an acceptable target range back in China.
What is perhaps most alarming is that for the first time China flew a missile over the south pole in a simulation of an attack on the United States across the southern border. Most of America’s missile defense system is directed at deterring a hostile Cold War threat crossing our northern border from Russia. Should China decide to employ nuclear-armed hypersonic missiles following a southern approach, it would be difficult for the US military to defend the country. An attack coordinated with Russian missiles from the north would be devastating to the United States.
President Xi Jinping has grown increasingly aggressive in recent weeks. During the early August visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, he ordered PLAN ships and PLAAF fighter planes to conduct military exercises around the island. Beijing simultaneously warned the US Navy and commercial airliner and ships to stay clear of the region. Then last Friday Beijing imposed sanctions on Pelosi and her immediate family in response to what the Chinese government described as an “egregious provocation” due to her visit to Taiwan and meeting with officials there.
Some analysts in Washington are pointing to lessons learned from Russia’s war in Ukraine, saying it is teaching China how to conduct warfare with the West, while noting that as early as 2030 China expects to have a fully modernized military. Earlier this year the PLAN conducted coordinated navy exercises for the first time with the Russian navy in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean. As tensions in US-China relations increase and Beijing continues to modernize its military, the United States must prepare to confront a capable and belligerent China that could align with Russia to strike the United States. Before WWII few believed Hawaii would be attacked. Given the destructive capabilities of weapons today the United States cannot afford to ignore the reality of a nuclear-armed China with malevolent intentions toward the US and other democratic states. Washington needs to heed Admiral Richards warning while there is time to address the threat.
Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.
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