China’s Escalating Aggression

What constitutes a strike force and when is it dangerous?

On the evening of April 11, 2020, while the world sat transfixed over the climbing death tally from the Covid-19 virus, its latest unseen enemy, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning along with two guided-missile destroyers, two guided-missile frigates, and a combat support ship sailed through the Miyako Strait near Okinawa. The carrier strike group came within 205 miles of Taiwan. Just 48 hours earlier the PLAF flew a J-11 fighter, H-6 bomber, and a KJ-500 reconnaissance plane past the southwestern tip of the island.

That group then moved on to track a US R-135 electronic surveillance aircraft in international airspace in the western Pacific. At a time when the United States’ two aircraft carriers in the region, the USS Roosevelt and USS Reagan, are docked tending to Covid-19 cases on board, the question arises as to why China decided to push forward with a show of force.

The Liaoning hasn’t visited these waters since June 2019. In the months preceding the global onset of the Covid-19 virus the PLAF and PLAN ramped up China’s aggressive behavior offshore. Was this latest event by a strike force intent only on testing Taiwan’s preparedness and response? Or, does it portend a future fraught with more negative challenges for the rest of the world? Have the major nations lost their vigilance in tracking China’s long-term grand strategy to emerge as a global power and regional hegemon inside of the next two decades? These are questions western military planners and American politicians need to be asking now while viable options still exist. It also should be of concern to the American public as China is not above using whatever type power it can wield to bully and inflict damage on nation-states it views as competitors or enemies.

At the same time as Beijing is claiming ignorance over the origin of the pandemic, or blaming it on the United States, its leaders are implementing faux export restrictions to withhold US-bound medical supplies needed to combat the virus. These include large quantities of test kits already FDA approved, N-95 face masks, personal protective equipment, and other types of critical medical goods stuck in warehouses and at Chinese airports. China’s new regulations, established this month, come down from high-ranking officials in Beijing as Covid-19 cases pass the two million mark worldwide.

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The extra 10 days needed to meet these new rules means lives lost overseas. The world can be certain President Xi Jinping is aware of the impact. In March, on a phone call with President Trump, President Xi promised to help with the pandemic. It is yet another example of China’s devious version of using its growing power to strike out at the world. This is the real China western governments must face, and come to terms with, in 2020 and beyond. The veil has lifted. The values and goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its leadership do not align with those of western nations.

China’s strategic behavior often belies its true militaristic goals. Intentional or not, Beijing’s handling of the current crisis has opened to the world a brief window into the inner workings of CCP planners. President Xi, who also is Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, is an authoritarian leader determined to undermine Western liberal values. Whether it is the export of G-5 network technologies, which in effect restrict individual freedom by acting as an artificial intelligence-based surveillance system, or nationalized internet services with the ability to restrict political dissent and discourse across the developing world, China is determined to woo the world, defy conventional behavior and overtake the United States as the global hegemon. Whether recognized or not, be it through a traditional strike force group on the high seas, a cyber force in space, or outright physical bullying, the world is engaged in a total, protracted struggle with China. Two years ago, Rick Fisher, a China military expert, warned the US Congress that the United States has about ten years to take action to counter the Chinese threat. We have eight left. The Covid-19 virus might be the lynchpin that seals China’s fate. The lovefest with China will dissipate only if world leaders are vigilant and recognize the global domination plans of the government of the People’s Republic of China and act.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Friday, she presents key updates on China.

Photo:China’s first home-built aircraft carrier leaves Dalian in Northeast China’s Liaoning province for sea trials on May 13, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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