Pentagon shaken by Chinese military advance on multiple fronts

WASHINGTON – China’s growing military strength and drive to end American hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region shakes the US defense establishment. American officials see problems rapidly accumulating on several fronts – Beijing’s growing nuclear arsenal, advances in space, cyber and missile technologies, and threats to Taiwan.

“The pace at which China is moving is staggering,” said General John Hyten, the US military officer who previously commanded the US nuclear forces and oversaw the Air Force’s space operations.

At stake is a potential shift in the global balance of power that has favored the United States for decades. A more favorable realignment for China does not pose a direct threat to the US, but it could make US alliances in Asia more difficult. New signs of how the Pentagon is addressing China’s challenge could emerge in the coming weeks from its review of the Biden government’s nuclear weapons policy, global troop deployment and overall defense strategy.

For now, officials are wondering how Beijing is bringing together the resources, technology and political will to generate quick profits – so fast that the Biden administration is trying to realign all aspects of U.S. foreign and defense policy.

The most recent example of surprising speed was China’s test of a hypersonic weapon that can partially orbit the earth before reentering the atmosphere and gliding on a maneuverable path to its target. The weapon system is designed to bypass US missile defense, and although Beijing insisted on testing a reusable spacecraft rather than a missile, the test appeared to have terrified US officials.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the test was “very close” to a Sputnik moment, similar to the 1957 launch of the world’s first space satellite by the Soviet Union, which surprised the world and fueled fears The United States has fallen behind technologically. What followed was a nuclear arms race in space that eventually bankrupted the Soviet Union.

Milley and other US officials have declined to discuss details of the Chinese test, saying it is secret. He called it “very worrying” for the United States, but added that the problems of Chinese military modernization run much deeper.

“It’s just a weapon system,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “The Chinese military capabilities are much greater than that. They are expanding rapidly in space, on the Internet, and then in traditional land, sea and air.”

On the nuclear front, private satellite imagery in recent months has revealed large accesses to launch silos, suggesting the possibility that China is planning to expand its fleet of land-based ICBMs, or ICBMs, or ICBMs.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists, says China appears to have around 250 ICBM silos under construction, which he believes is more than ten times the number currently in operation. By comparison, the U.S. military has 400 active ICBM silos and 50 in reserve.

Pentagon officials and Defense Hawks on Capitol Hill point to China’s modernization as a major justification for rebuilding the U.S. nuclear arsenal, a project expected to cost more than $ 1 billion in 30 years, including maintenance costs.

Fiona Cunningham, assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist in Chinese military strategy, says a major reason for Beijing’s nuclear advance is concerns about US intentions.

“I don’t think China’s nuclear modernization will give it the ability to preemptively attack the US nuclear arsenal, and that was a really important generator of competition during the Cold War,” Cunningham said on an online forum sponsored by Georgetown University. “But what it is doing is diminishing the effectiveness of US attempts to preemptively hit the Chinese arsenal.”

Some analysts fear Washington will get involved in an arms race with Beijing as they are frustrated not to drag the Chinese into security talks. The Congress is also increasingly focusing on China and supporting increased spending on space and cyber operations and hypersonic technologies. For example, there is pressure to allocate money in the next defense budget to arm guided missile submarines with hypersonic weapons, a plan initiated by the Trump administration.

For decades, the United States pursued China’s increased defense investments and worried that Beijing wanted to become a world power. But for the past 20 years at least, Washington has been more focused on combating al-Qaeda and other terrorist threats in Iraq and Afghanistan. That began to change during the Trump administration, which formally lifted China, along with Russia, to the top of the list of defense priorities in 2018, replacing terrorism as the # 1 threat.

For now, Russia remains a major strategic threat to the United States because its nuclear arsenal far outstrips that of China. But Milley and others say Beijing is a bigger concern in the long run because its economic strength far exceeds that of Russia and it is rapidly investing resources in military modernization.

At the current pace of China’s military investments and achievements, Beijing will surpass “Russia and the United States” in overall military power in the coming years “if we do nothing to change it,” said Hyten, who will retire in November two Years as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It will happen.”

The Biden government says it is determined to compete effectively with China and rely on a network of allies in Asia, as well as being a potential source of strength that Beijing cannot compete with. This was a key rationale for Biden’s decision to share highly sensitive nuclear propulsion technologies with Australia so it could acquire a fleet of conventionally armed submarines to counter China. While this was a boost for Australia, it was a devastating blow to Washington’s oldest ally, France, which sank its $ 66 billion submarine sale to Australia.

Taiwan is another major concern. Senior U.S. military officers warned earlier this year that China is likely to speed up its timetable for taking control of Taiwan, island democracy widely viewed as the most likely catalyst for a potentially catastrophic war between the U.S. and China.

The United States has long pledged Taiwan to defend itself, but it has deliberately left it unclear how far it would go in response to a Chinese attack. President Joe Biden seemed to give up that ambiguity when he said on October 21 that America would come to Taiwan’s defense if attacked by China.

“We are committed to it,” said Biden. The White House later said it was not changing US policies that did not support Taiwan’s independence but committed to providing defense weapons.

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Associate press writer Nomaan Merchant in Washington contributed to this report.

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