Pentagon report on China highlights danger of nuclear war
John Chan | 26.06.2006 23:56 | Anti-militarism | World
One sinister aspect of the US Defence Department’s 2006 report on the Chinese military released last month is its discussion of nuclear policy.
Overall, the document entitled “Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” marked a more aggressive US military stance toward China than in previous years. It identified the Chinese regime as a military rival and highlighted its growing defence spending, particularly its investment in advanced military technology (see: “Pentagon report targets China as a military threat”).
Overall, the document entitled “Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” marked a more aggressive US military stance toward China than in previous years. It identified the Chinese regime as a military rival and highlighted its growing defence spending, particularly its investment in advanced military technology (see: “Pentagon report targets China as a military threat”).
For the first time since its publication began in 2001, the annual report tried to suggest that China is a growing nuclear threat to the US. In the context of the Bush administration’s doctrine of “pre-emptive war”, the shift indicates that the Bush administration and Pentagon are themselves preparing for nuclear war.
According to the Pentagon, the “threat” is an alleged discussion underway in Chinese military circles over an abandonment of China’s longstanding policy of “no-first strike”—that is, no use of nuclear weapons except in response to nuclear attack.
Peter Rodman, US assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs, told the American Forces Press Service on May 23: “One thing we point to [in the report] this year is their strategic forces. We sense that they are at the beginning of some serious modernisation of their overall strategic forces... We take them at their word that they adhere to the no first use doctrine, but we see these occasional comments as an indication of a possible debate going on among Chinese strategists.”
The Pentagon report highlighted a statement by Chinese general Zhu Chenghu in July 2005 as one of the “key developments” in China’s strategic policy. Zhu declared that if the US threatened to attack China in a conflict over Taiwan, China would have to “respond with nuclear weapons”.
The Pentagon conceded that Beijing has dismissed Zhu’s comments as his “personal opinion” and reaffirmed its “no first use” policy during US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to China last October. It nevertheless concluded: “Zhu’s remark, however, show that the circle of military and civilian national security professionals discussing the value of China’s current ‘no first use’ nuclear policy is broader than previously assessed.”
The report cited several Chinese academics. Chu Shulong, a scholar from Qinghua University, reportedly told the state media in July 2005 that “if foreign countries launch a full-scale war against China and deploy all types of advanced weapons except nuclear weapons, China may renounce this commitment [of no first use] at a time when the country’s fate hangs in the balance”.
Another academic, Shen Dingli, wrote in a publication China Security last year: “If China’s conventional forces are devastated, and if Taiwan takes the opportunity to declare de jure independence, it is inconceivable that China would allow its nuclear weapons to be destroyed by a precision attack with conventional munitions, rather than use them as a true means of deterrence.”
None of these comments constitutes evidence that Beijing is about to abandon the “no first use” policy announced when China first constructed nuclear weapons in the 1960s. Moreover, far from being an indication of military strength, the remarks about the possible use of nuclear weapons to counter a US conventional attack underscore China’s weakness in comparison with the US.
Despite efforts to modernise weaponry and strategic doctrine, much of its hardware is old. Most of China’s sophisticated military technology is still heavily reliant on foreign sources, especially Russian. The Chinese army is numerically large but only semi-mechanised; its commanders are inexperienced and the largely peasant Chinese soldiers are poorly trained.
The fact that the Pentagon report has chosen to highlight a few isolated comments reveals a great deal more about the Bush administration’s own nuclear policy, than that of China. It should be noted that even in the midst of the Cold War, the US never renounced the first use of nuclear weapons. In fact, it stationed tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and South Korea, alleging precisely what is contained in the Chinese comments: the inability of US and allied forces to withstand a concerted conventional offensive by the Soviet or Chinese military.
Pointing to a possible Chinese threat is a convenient pretext for justifying the Pentagon’s extensive efforts to upgrade and modernise its own arsenal to establish an unchallenged nuclear hegemony. An essay in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs entitled “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy” provided a sobering assessment of the direction of US nuclear policy.
During the Cold War, the prevailing nuclear doctrine was characterised as MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). With thousands of nuclear weapons based on a variety of platforms, including submarines, warplanes and long-range missiles, neither side was in a position to annihilate the weaponry of the other in a first strike. The survival of even a portion of a nuclear arsenal following an attack meant a devastating retaliation on the aggressor.
The authors of the Foreign Affairs article pointed out that sections of the US establishment had never accepted the MAD doctrine and that the Pentagon now appeared to be striving for “nuclear primacy”—that is, the ability to obliterate the capacity of any nuclear-armed enemy to respond to a US first strike. The bulk of the article is devoted to a careful analysis, using publicly available sources, of Russia’s ability to withstand and retaliate against a US nuclear first strike. It concluded that, with the decay of the Russia defences, its nuclear-armed submarine fleet and long-range missiles following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US had probably achieved “nuclear primacy”.
The Foreign Affairs article also makes clear that China’s nuclear weapons are even more vulnerable to a US attack. “A US first strike could succeed whether it was launched as a surprise or in the midst of a crisis during a Chinese alert. China has a limited strategic nuclear arsenal. The People’s Liberation Army currently possesses no modern SSBNs [ballistic-missile-launching submarines] or long-range bombers. Its naval arm used to have two ballistic missile submarines, but one sank, and the other, which had such poor capabilities that it never left Chinese waters, is no longer operational.
“China’s medium-range bomber force is similarly unimpressive: the bombers are obsolete and vulnerable to attack. According to unclassified US government assessments, China’s entire intercontinental nuclear arsenal consists of 18 stationary single-warhead ICBMs. These are not ready launch on warning: their warheads are kept in storage and the missiles themselves are unfueled. (China’s ICBMs use liquid fuel, which corrodes the missiles after 24 hours. Fueling them is estimated to take two hours.) The lack of an advanced early warning system adds to the vulnerability of the ICBMs. It appears that China would have no warning at all of a US submarine-launched missile attack or a strike using hundreds of stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles.”
Foreign Affairs has close links to the US political establishment. The article indicates that there is widespread discussion and planning in the top echelons of the Bush administration and Pentagon about a possible first strike on US enemies—whether Russia, China or other nuclear armed countries. Exaggerated accounts of the Chinese “threat” are useful to justify the further development of the US nuclear arsenal.
The greatest danger of nuclear war does not come from China, but from the US. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington has been seeking to use its military superiority increasingly aggressively to offset its long-term economic decline, in particular to establish its dominance over the resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The Bush administration’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and threats against Iran have antagonised US rivals in Europe and Asia.
The US preoccupation with China reflects deep concerns about Beijing’s economic expansion and growing political influence in Asia and globally. The Pentagon’s focus on China says more about US preparations for eventual war, including a possible nuclear attack, against the Beijing regime, than it does about China’s relatively limited military capacity.
-World Socialist Web Site
According to the Pentagon, the “threat” is an alleged discussion underway in Chinese military circles over an abandonment of China’s longstanding policy of “no-first strike”—that is, no use of nuclear weapons except in response to nuclear attack.
Peter Rodman, US assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs, told the American Forces Press Service on May 23: “One thing we point to [in the report] this year is their strategic forces. We sense that they are at the beginning of some serious modernisation of their overall strategic forces... We take them at their word that they adhere to the no first use doctrine, but we see these occasional comments as an indication of a possible debate going on among Chinese strategists.”
The Pentagon report highlighted a statement by Chinese general Zhu Chenghu in July 2005 as one of the “key developments” in China’s strategic policy. Zhu declared that if the US threatened to attack China in a conflict over Taiwan, China would have to “respond with nuclear weapons”.
The Pentagon conceded that Beijing has dismissed Zhu’s comments as his “personal opinion” and reaffirmed its “no first use” policy during US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to China last October. It nevertheless concluded: “Zhu’s remark, however, show that the circle of military and civilian national security professionals discussing the value of China’s current ‘no first use’ nuclear policy is broader than previously assessed.”
The report cited several Chinese academics. Chu Shulong, a scholar from Qinghua University, reportedly told the state media in July 2005 that “if foreign countries launch a full-scale war against China and deploy all types of advanced weapons except nuclear weapons, China may renounce this commitment [of no first use] at a time when the country’s fate hangs in the balance”.
Another academic, Shen Dingli, wrote in a publication China Security last year: “If China’s conventional forces are devastated, and if Taiwan takes the opportunity to declare de jure independence, it is inconceivable that China would allow its nuclear weapons to be destroyed by a precision attack with conventional munitions, rather than use them as a true means of deterrence.”
None of these comments constitutes evidence that Beijing is about to abandon the “no first use” policy announced when China first constructed nuclear weapons in the 1960s. Moreover, far from being an indication of military strength, the remarks about the possible use of nuclear weapons to counter a US conventional attack underscore China’s weakness in comparison with the US.
Despite efforts to modernise weaponry and strategic doctrine, much of its hardware is old. Most of China’s sophisticated military technology is still heavily reliant on foreign sources, especially Russian. The Chinese army is numerically large but only semi-mechanised; its commanders are inexperienced and the largely peasant Chinese soldiers are poorly trained.
The fact that the Pentagon report has chosen to highlight a few isolated comments reveals a great deal more about the Bush administration’s own nuclear policy, than that of China. It should be noted that even in the midst of the Cold War, the US never renounced the first use of nuclear weapons. In fact, it stationed tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and South Korea, alleging precisely what is contained in the Chinese comments: the inability of US and allied forces to withstand a concerted conventional offensive by the Soviet or Chinese military.
Pointing to a possible Chinese threat is a convenient pretext for justifying the Pentagon’s extensive efforts to upgrade and modernise its own arsenal to establish an unchallenged nuclear hegemony. An essay in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs entitled “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy” provided a sobering assessment of the direction of US nuclear policy.
During the Cold War, the prevailing nuclear doctrine was characterised as MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). With thousands of nuclear weapons based on a variety of platforms, including submarines, warplanes and long-range missiles, neither side was in a position to annihilate the weaponry of the other in a first strike. The survival of even a portion of a nuclear arsenal following an attack meant a devastating retaliation on the aggressor.
The authors of the Foreign Affairs article pointed out that sections of the US establishment had never accepted the MAD doctrine and that the Pentagon now appeared to be striving for “nuclear primacy”—that is, the ability to obliterate the capacity of any nuclear-armed enemy to respond to a US first strike. The bulk of the article is devoted to a careful analysis, using publicly available sources, of Russia’s ability to withstand and retaliate against a US nuclear first strike. It concluded that, with the decay of the Russia defences, its nuclear-armed submarine fleet and long-range missiles following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US had probably achieved “nuclear primacy”.
The Foreign Affairs article also makes clear that China’s nuclear weapons are even more vulnerable to a US attack. “A US first strike could succeed whether it was launched as a surprise or in the midst of a crisis during a Chinese alert. China has a limited strategic nuclear arsenal. The People’s Liberation Army currently possesses no modern SSBNs [ballistic-missile-launching submarines] or long-range bombers. Its naval arm used to have two ballistic missile submarines, but one sank, and the other, which had such poor capabilities that it never left Chinese waters, is no longer operational.
“China’s medium-range bomber force is similarly unimpressive: the bombers are obsolete and vulnerable to attack. According to unclassified US government assessments, China’s entire intercontinental nuclear arsenal consists of 18 stationary single-warhead ICBMs. These are not ready launch on warning: their warheads are kept in storage and the missiles themselves are unfueled. (China’s ICBMs use liquid fuel, which corrodes the missiles after 24 hours. Fueling them is estimated to take two hours.) The lack of an advanced early warning system adds to the vulnerability of the ICBMs. It appears that China would have no warning at all of a US submarine-launched missile attack or a strike using hundreds of stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles.”
Foreign Affairs has close links to the US political establishment. The article indicates that there is widespread discussion and planning in the top echelons of the Bush administration and Pentagon about a possible first strike on US enemies—whether Russia, China or other nuclear armed countries. Exaggerated accounts of the Chinese “threat” are useful to justify the further development of the US nuclear arsenal.
The greatest danger of nuclear war does not come from China, but from the US. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington has been seeking to use its military superiority increasingly aggressively to offset its long-term economic decline, in particular to establish its dominance over the resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The Bush administration’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and threats against Iran have antagonised US rivals in Europe and Asia.
The US preoccupation with China reflects deep concerns about Beijing’s economic expansion and growing political influence in Asia and globally. The Pentagon’s focus on China says more about US preparations for eventual war, including a possible nuclear attack, against the Beijing regime, than it does about China’s relatively limited military capacity.
-World Socialist Web Site
John Chan
Homepage:
http://www.wsws.org
Comments
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War with China is Blair's ultimate aim.
27.06.2006 13:06
China is certainly not the force that the US represents today, but China, like pre-WW2 Russia, is developing at an exponential rate. Economic and technology power EQUAL military power in our world, unless special circumstances (see post WW2 Germany and Japan) dictate otherwise.
Blair's campaign of AGGRESSIVE WAR is designed to lead the US step by step toward the ultimate conflict, war against China. Now logic would suggest that if the US is aware that it is destined to fight China, it should have that war NOW, given that passing time helps the Chinese far more than the Americans. However, logic cannot ignore existing geo-political factors, and the US is unable to launch an unprovoked attack against China at this moment for all those crazy reasons that we call Human politics.
Every sector of the US military is actively preparing for this war, uncertain when they will fight, but certain that this war will happen sooner rather than later if the US is to maintain its position as the world's No.1 bully and crime boss. Blair doesn't have to prepare his US proxy to actively consider the genocide of China- those thoughts flow as a natural consequence of America's chosen position. No, Blair's job is finding a way to make the unthinkable happen, namely global nuclear war between what will be then the world's two greatest nuclear powers.
China, like Russia before it, sees its survival in terms of rapidly reaching superiority in as many fields as possible. The psychopathic nature of the US guarantees that China has no choice but to pursue a path that will factually allow the US to describe China as a growing threat to US world dominance. Great powers are all too often born this way.
With respect to nukes, nuclear research requires first class mathematical thinking, and China has a massive advantage over the US in this field, just as the USSR had a massive advantage in the same way decades earlier. The US has the money, but it doesn't have the brains. The US military complex is also massively corrupt, with military spending serving the pockets of the elite in the US. The US has to spend such massive amounts on its armed forces largely to compensate for such extraordinary levels of corruption.
The Chinese has the usual space program that appears when a nation requires the tech for ICMB's (just as domestic nuclear power programs provide the infrastructure needed to build nuclear warheads). However, observers will note that the Chinese have all but given up with this charade, since the specific tech required to get to the moon is not all that useful for designing continent-to-continent missile systems. Chinese attention will have turned, in partnership with Russia, to the 'drunken missile' programs designed to overcome current and future simple-minded US anti-missile shields. When China has perfected its design, its (then) world beating industrial base will allow these weapons to be cheaply mass produced on an extraordinary scale.
Now what kind of propaganda will buy China enough time to complete its access to M.A.D nuclear systems, rendering war between China and the US pointless (at least to anyone sane, rational, or with a desire to see the Human Race continue- i.e. NOT Blair)? Well, as I pointed out above, China is currently protected by existing politics, and has no need to rely on propaganda yet. Instead, there is a simple race against time, similar to that run by Russia in its attempt to delay or avoid war with Germany before WW2.
How many wars did Hitler fight before he was able to fight the ONLY war he cared about (and the one that destroyed his dreams)?
For those of us that think that M.A.D (mutually assured destruction), when considered, always prevents major nuclear powers from attacking each other directly, China would seemingly have enough time to reach that safe position. However, how much sanity is there in the midst of growing wars of aggression. Blair is allied with China in the same way as Hitler was allied with Russia, and in both cases technology of the highest quality flows from the would-be aggressors to the would-be victims, in defiance of everything normal people would expect.
World Wars are not produced by sanity, but by insanity. Logic is proudly stood on its head by the leaders of men, so that we may be slaughtered in our millions, tens of millions, or soon, hundreds of millions. However, even in the midst of the greatest insanity, we, the people, MUST be induced to give our support to those that command us to exterminate each other. We will bear the guilt, but that doesn't mean that we have willingly walked into the trap. However, it does mean that we have stood by while humans of absolute evil have constructed the trap, all the time making it perfectly clear to anyone that cares to think, the exact purpose of said trap.
We are thinking creatures, not animals. Therefore when we find ourselves caught in a trap designed and built across the years in full view of all of us, we bear the guilt for letting this situation come to pass.
Blair IS building the trap, and we ARE doing nothing at all to stop him. Racism is now a dominate force in all the major nations of the West- not the petty dumb BNP style crap, but applied racism at the very highest levels of state power. When Putin wanted to genocide Chechnya, he took advice from Blair, and bombed apartment blocks in Moscow (being useless enough to be caught red-handed on the last mission). The subsequent surge of state racism allowed Putin to carry out the most despicable WAR CRIMES in Chechnya with no penalty. The same model was followed by Blair for Afghanistan and Iraq, with Blair's US Neocon/Israel action now known as 911 (no Blair would thus have meant no Moscow bombings and no 911- while the greatest monsters rarely get their own hands directly dirty, those that mass murder on their direct command would not act this way without that specific leadership).
Doesn't take a genius to guess the strategy that Blair will use with China. The Chinese will be demonised, and every effort made to put their back against the wall, so that the Chinese feel forced to make a self-protective military move that can be later used to describe them as immoral, and a danger to others. The Far East status quo that has existed since WW2 will be crudely ended, so that China comes into direct conflict with its Asian neighbours once again. Blair will smash Asian against Asian just as he smashes muslim against muslim in his Middle East wars of aggression.
I can state our future not because I am any kind of prophet, but because I pay attention to those things we fail to do as thinking people. The ending of the so-called cold war should have heralded Mankind's greatest age. Instead, as a result of our extreme moral laziness, a vast evil correctly spotted a unique opportunity. With a great burden lifted, the people of this planet shamed themselves by allowing the doctrine of the US as the world's PSYCHOPATHIC RACIST CRIME BOSS to become reality. There was no overwhelming internal force within the US that made this inevitable- indeed the history of the US allows that nation to be more vunerable to external moral pressure than any other power that has ever existed.
Powerful thinkers in US history have long warned of the potential for the US to accidently become the greatest evil empire in Human History, as a result of poorly guided economic, political, and military growth. Such people have demanded that moral forces within and without the US work constantly to keep the US decent. Instead, the Cold War ended, and the Bush crime family (famous for previously being the financiers of Adolf Hitler and the nazis) took over.
The first Gulf War was an accident waiting to happen, and gave the US its first taste of the exquisite flavour of unlimited use of military power against totally helpless humans in the new age of US world dominance. The literal genocide of retreating Iraq forces (a crime against humanity that is matched ONLY by the British/US extermination of whole cities during WW2, when the rate at which mass murder is accomplished is taken into account), carried out by US/UK forces that had crystal clear video images of the people they were butchering, can be considered to be equivalent to the first act of torture and murder that marks the beginning of the rise to power of any leading gangster.
Our moral history was at a fork in the road at that moment, and US genocide of Iraq soldiers, and Kuwait migrant workers, under the most despicable, disgusting and cowardly circumstances damned us all. Even so, no one felt they had made an active choice at that time. The US had shown that it had the makings of a perfect psychopath crime boss, but had yet to choose to play that role for good.
When a truly powerful nation has shown its willingness to use its power in the most evil and immoral way, even if that nation then appears to retreat from further immediate abuses of power, the potential that this represents will dominate the thoughts of vast numbers of wicked people. Most of these people will merely attempt to pull some of this power in the direction of their particular evil cause (with Israel being at the top of this list). Some, however, will find themselves considering far greater possibilities.
Blair is a monster of his time. He didn't end the Cold War, or cause the US to use such repulsive evil during the Gulf War, nor did he bring the US Neocons to power. However, like all true monsters, it is his ability to identify the maximum evil potential that inherited circumstances allow that matters.
The full psychopathic potential of the US cannot be grown by feeding the US trivial racist victories. Instead, the US needs an ultimate vision of a worthy opponent and threat. Something to give the US the greatest of psychopathic criminal ambitions, and a contnuing excuse to actively prepare for ever greater levels of violence, even when all real current 'enemies' are weak to the point of insignificance.
The US at every level states that China is a growing threat, and in doing so creates that reality. What can China do, except respond to the psychopathic threat, and prepare for war? And what can stop this war, when Blair has such absolute success in exploiting every moral deficiency found within the nations of the Earth.
For Germany to War with Russia, the most civilised European state had to be turned into the most fascist. This time around, Blair is having great success in doing the same to the whole of Western civilisation, but then his World War is planned to be on a vastly greater scale than the last. No thinking person now doubts that once started, Blair would only grow more powerful as a consequence of the Iran war, just as his power has grown with the Iraq invasion. The Iran war will also mark the beginning of a new era, where the US is fully liberated to threaten and then attack any nation under the principle that true power is the power to murder safe in the knowledge that none dare judge or punish you. The world's psychopath crime boss nation will then have finally removed the mask so that all may know that one either serves the US, or dies.
If all these gangster metaphors simply make our future sound a lot like our past, think again. Until very recently, the most powerful of Human empires projected power across the globe only through extreme and very difficult effort. Technology has changed the rules forever. We fly, and our weapons fly. The total destruction of a city involves LESS effort than every other kind of military option. The most powerful nations can spy effectively on the whole globe. Our knowledge of biological (especially genetic) weapons is growing by the day. The limiting rules of the past don't apply any longer, if our First World warlords are willing to take full advantage of their options.
We can only protect our future if we stop saying "this can't happen because it is too terrible, and anyway it would already have happened if the threat was real" and start saying "this WILL happen unless we take positive steps now to stop it now". Proof of our success would be the removal and punishment of Bush/Blair, the role back of their police states, and the insertion into constitutions and rights laws of protection against future attempts to allow racist and fascist abuse by the state.
twilight