China was identified this week as posing the most significant long-term military challenge to the United States by America’s senior-most military leader, as he set out new US military strategies and policies toward China and Asia more generally in a congressional hearing.
Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, also revealed in the hearing, before senate, that he had informed China last summer of US plans to use military force against North Korea.
Dunford was asked to rank various military threats and identified nuclear missile-armed North Korea as presenting an “immediate” threat, with Russia and China posing potential dangers based on their growing nuclear arsenals.
“We don’t actually have the luxury of identifying a single threat today, unfortunately, nor, necessarily, to look at it in a linear fashion,” Dunford said.
The four-star Marine Corps general then went on to say that, over the longer term, China represents the most significant danger, overshadowing the nuclear and cyber power of Moscow.
“If I look out to 2025, and I look at the demographics and the economic situation, I think China probably poses the greatest threat to our nation by about 2025, and that’s consistent with much of our analysis,” Dunford said.
The comments echoed those of CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who said in July that he believes China is the most significant regional security threat. “I think China has the capacity to present the greatest rivalry to America… over the medium and long term,” he said.
“[In 2000] we had a significant competitive advantage in our ability to project power when and where needed to advance our national interest. I can’t say that today”
The Chinese military buildup of missiles, warships, submarines and aircraft, along with cyber-warfare and other non-kinetic tools of warfare, is aimed at limiting the United States’ ability to project power and also to weaken American alliances in the Pacific.
China has closely studied US warfare weapons and tactics and has developed both arms and strategies that will enable its weaker forces to defeat US military forces in a future conflict, he said, adding that the gap has been closed between the two militaries over the last decade and a half.
In 2000, “we had a significant competitive advantage in our ability to project power when and where needed to advance our national interest,” Dunford said. “I can’t say that today. We are challenged in our ability to project power, both to Europe and in the Pacific, as a result of those threats.”
Dunford outlined how the military is backstopping President Donald Trump’s attempts to press the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un to give up its nuclear arms.
Government analysts put forth the pessimistic view that Kim will not give up his nuclear and missile arsenal because those weapons are inextricably linked to his survival. The analysts also assessed that China will not co-operate with the United States in seeking Korean Peninsula denuclearization.
Dunford said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is testing both assumptions, realizing that the alternatives – a second Korean war – are extremey dire.
“We’re at the phase now where implementation of the sanctions is going to determine whether or not we have a peaceful solution to denuclearization on the peninsula,” Dunford said.
Military options have been drawn up and placed before Trump for consideration if the campaign of economic and diplomatic pressure fails.
Dunford said he had traveled to China in August and delivered that stark message to the Chinese, which has a defense alliance with North Korea.
The chairman also disclosed that Pacific forces had adopted a new policy toward American warship passage near disputed Asian islands claimed by China.
In February, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis rejected the military’s piecemeal approach to freedom of navigation, which depended on approval through a bureaucratic process that limited passage.
The new Mattis policy was described by Dunford as a “full strategy that lays this thing out now for a long period of time and talks about the strategic effect we’re trying to achieve.”
The new policy will include regional allies in freedom of navigation operations and will become “routine and regular.”
Three American warship drills have been carried out so far this year, drawing the ire of China, which declared each to be a violation of Chinese sovereignty. Chinese warships shadowed the US destroyers during the activities.
“That’s what we’re implementing right now, a strategic approach to freedom of navigation operations that does in fact support our overall strategy in the Pacific, as well as the specific mission, which is, to ensure that we fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” Gen. Dunford said. “And we continue to validate those claims where we see international airspace for that matter, or the maritime domain.”
Dunford also expressed concern about China’s growing space warfare capabilities, including the development of satellite-killing missiles and multiple tests of high technology weapons.
“That’s what we’re implementing right now, a strategic approach to freedom of navigation operations […] to ensure that we fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows”
“When we fielded the current space capabilities, we didn’t field them with resilience to the current threat in mind,” he said.
The 500 US satellites that are strategic assets – used in both military and civilian communications and navigation, as well as intelligence and weapons-guiding – are vulnerable to attack from the Chinese, as well as by anti-satellite weapons being developed by Russia and North Korea.
To counter these threats, the US military is bolstering space defenses by building replacement satellites and improving launch capabilities. Commercial satellites also may be used to back up defense intelligence satellites.
On the US pivot to Asia launched by two previous American administrations, Dunford said the shift in focus toward Asia and the movement of forces is continuing.
Steps include positioning advanced warships, aircraft and drones to the region and bolstering nuclear deterrence in a bid to reassure regional allies.
In written policy statements to the Senate Armed Services Committee, to which Dunford testified on September 26, the chairman also noted China’s willingness to use economic leverage to advance the Communist Party of China’s political objectives in the region.
“As China’s military modernization continues, the United States and its allies and partners will continue to be challenged to balance China’s influence,” he stated.
The key to backing allies and limiting Chinese regional hegemony will be sustaining the US military presence and strengthening regional security partnerships “to help allies and partners stand up to Chinese coercive behavior,” he stated, adding that the military is unilaterally continuing to build capabilities aimed at countering Beijing’s improving military forces.
Nuke China now will save the world from WWIII
AS the current empire burns out due to arrogance, hubris and terrible leadership at the top for decades the Middle Kingdom keeps marching forward!
China still does not understand what her claim to the South China Sea mean. Let me tell her. First, her claim means she will support similar claims by other countries. Second, each litoral country does not have to obey the 12-nautical-mile limit; the limit can be broken at will.
This the definition of "imperial overstretch." The US is simply overextended and a lot of its miltiary options just can’t work. China’s rise in Asia is virtually inevitable and, quite frankly, the US efforts to block it will lead to more tension. The US should be readying itself to accept and act in a multipolar world – one where it is no longer the biggest economy and one where its military is of extremely limited efficacy (which is already the case). Instead, it is doubling down on a policy that is unsustainable, over the long-run.
The sooner our American friends understand that the unipolar world is over, the better for the rest of us. No use trying to hem in China and Russia. It ain’t gonna work.
Of course China is now the biggest military and economic threat to the US. So has every other country that has the ability to match or exceed the US in those terms. But China is only a threat in the eyes of a hegemonic, jealous, hypocritical and dominant US bully who has been able to get its way because it can. For non Americans who think that China is a threat is a failure in world history, more so Chinese history. Which country has militarily attacked another country more than the US has in recent history? China? For Asians who think so, their thinking, I would say, has been so corrupted by anti-China and anti communist propaganda that they are unable to think and analyse the situation logically. The US only see friends where friends are there to serve as their poodles and doormats. Anyone who see and think differently from how the US and most of the European countries see and think are certainly viewed as unfriendly and a threat. And of course the US insist that other countries abide by the rules and regulations that the US set, although the US itself feels unobligated to follow those same set of rules and regulation when they do not suit them or benefit them.
All these warmongering by the US is the real threat to world peace. It seems the US cannot let a day pass without imagining or inventing an enemy.
It’s odd that the General thinks China is the biggest threat to the U.S. How so? Has China threatened the U.S. with so called Freedom of Navigation operations or send its planes to monitor American from its shores?
“We don’t actually have the luxury of identifying a single threat today, unfortunately, nor, necessarily, to look at it in a linear fashion,” Dunford said.
It is easy to identify merely potential threat that comes from a fifth of humanity but it is very difficult to vitiate this potential threat because backsliding toward virulent racism will be necessary. It is difficult, otherwise, with the backdrop of social progress in the USA, to stipulate that each Chinese cannot have even 1/3 the per capita income of each American.
"The four-star Marine Corps general then went on to say that, over the longer term, China represents the most significant danger, overshadowing the nuclear and cyber power of Moscow."
Dunford has not even said that China is the greatest potential threat to US security, as the title spins and misrepresents; the threat is to Americam professed ideal of championing American values worldwide, including Taiwan.
Ideal is not security; often American ideals beget insecurity for the USA.
From the Scriptures I believed and world history of war & friendship USA stands as great examplary nation. America the Beautiful.
If the stupid government hadn’t sent all our jobs to their communist country all of them would still be wearing gray uniforms. They have the money and riches the People of the United States should have. China wouldn’t have a military to think of or any power. The american People got SCREWED their own government that’s suppose to protect them.
China’s overpopulation as well as environmental and social political problems will eventually destroy China from within.
People have been predicting the collapse of China for a very long time.
Focus on building the US economy. Put America first.Let China handle the Asia Pacific Region.
Shuan, you mistake the difference between defending the networks of industrial society around the world and "imperial" anything. Empire is hierarchy predominating over networks. Freedom is where the freedoms of action needed to maintain networks are protected from being squashed by hierarchy.
There will certainly be more tension, because inside China there is insufficient outlet for the type of revolt against academicized elites currently going on here in the US. The regime uses bits and pieces of coral to direct attention away from internal corruption, the agency costs of its own hierarchy. In order to grow, the US *will* have to free up its own economy from the limitations placed on it in the last 50 years by its regulators, and that is underway. Certainly the military is of limited efficacy when an administration has spent the previous years starving it of the technical, logistcal, and training resources needed to do its job.
As long as Barrack could keep trying to treat the US military the way Canada has traeted its military, there was no hope of opposing any major power.
Frank Blangeard said:
"People have been predicting the collapse of China for a very long time."
And they’ve been right, in 1911, 1644, 1355, 1279, etc. That’s what happens when the rigid hierarchies of agrarian cultures can no longer meet both the needs of their people and the agency costs of their heierarchy. The key problem we face today is not whether China can collapse, but whether it can adapt to the freedoms of action needed by the networks of industrial society around the world. Seeking collapse of a country with hundreds(at least) of nuclear warheads is insane. Seeking its change through adaptation is a completely rational goal.
Wood Wu
Racism is about external appearance of human beings. In both Canada and the USA, the most serious social problem centers on race, that is the way human beings appear.
Non-Anglo-Saxon whites such as the Slavic whites cannot be differentiated from Anglo-Saxon whites.
When racism was at its peak, light-skinned blacks often attempted to “pass for white” and when dark-skinned relatives were discovered there was harrowing embarrassment. This is racism.
Race is much harder to overcome than mere ethnicity with racial similarity.
For the most part, racism is not possible for China’s minorities. “Cultural genocide” happens because is possible; segregation happens because assimilation is impossible due to racism, from which racial minorities in North America cannot evade.
If ethnic culture were necessary for human happiness, “cultural genocide” would be far less common and world history will be rewritten. Assimilation is a fact of humanity.
Why doesn’t one speak of “cultural genocide” for the Slav whites? Because it is possible, since a blonde is a blonde yields happiness for all whites.
Complete assimilation being many historical ethnic minorities in China has taken place and there cannot be separation again in many places in China. The line between Guangdong and Northern Vietnam is blurry.
Tom Billings
First, yellow peril is very dead and the West will be extremely unwilling to backslide to the racism in 1911. China will not suffer from Western racism again. China benefits from social progress of the West. China resurges partly because the West in the past 30 years has been good to China due to Western social progress in the amelioration of racism, which has become an immutable fixture in Western society now.
Second, this is a time of technology and the nomadic peoples’ courage and martial way of life will never gain confer any advantage. 1355 and 1644 matter little. The nomadic people can no longer hide in desolate faraway places and then ambush the Hans. Han dominance within China will be utter and permanent.
Third, this is a time of information explosion and the advantage of being the first to invent or innovate is much reduced.
Fourth, the Chinese are very motivated because this is the revival of their civilization from the abject past of suffering from the West and Japan. The Chinese have tremendous entrepreneurial verve.
Fifth, the Chinese are innovative enough and innovation is overrated for economic progress. Commitment and motivation are no less important and will have enough compensating effect. More freedom with much less motivation and commitment will be the Western world’s disadvantage.
That would probably be the opening salvo of WWIII
The second Korean war will definitely not fought in the Korean Peninsula alone. It will also be fought in the United States of America as well as in space where all the satellites of the war mongering Americans needs to be taken down once and for all to ensure world peace is kept in order.