[News] World War III With China - How It Might Actually Be Fought
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Sep 26 10:43:06 EDT 2017
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176331/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_the_global_war_of_2030/*
World War III With China*
*How It Might Actually Be Fought*
By Alfred W. McCoy <http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/alfredmccoy>
[/This piece has been adapted and expanded from Alfred W. McCoy’s
new book, /In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and
Decline of U.S. Global Power
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467732/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>.]
For the past 50 years, American leaders have been supremely
confident that they could suffer military setbacks in places like
Cuba or Vietnam without having their system of global hegemony,
backed by the world’s wealthiest economy and finest military,
affected. The country was, after all, the planet’s “indispensible
nation,” as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright proclaimed
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright> in 1998 (and
other presidents and politicians have insisted ever since). The U.S.
enjoyed a greater “disparity of power” over its would-be rivals than
any empire ever, Yale historian Paul Kennedy announced
<https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/EagleLand.html>
in 2002. Certainly, it would remain “the sole superpower for decades
to come,” /Foreign Affairs/ magazine assured
<https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-and-future-superpower>
us just last year. During the 2016 campaign, candidate Donald Trump
promised
<http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/08/18/trump-albany-rally-winning-sot.cnn>
his supporters that “we’re gonna win with military... we are gonna
win so much you may even get tired of winning.” In August, while
announcing his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, Trump
reassured
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/world/asia/trump-speech-afghanistan.html?mcubz=0>
the nation: “In every generation, we have faced down evil, and we
have always prevailed.” In this fast-changing world, only one thing
was certain: when it really counted, the United States could never lose.
No longer.
The Trump White House may still be basking in the glow of America’s
global supremacy but, just across the Potomac, the Pentagon has formed a
more realistic view of its fading military superiority. In June, the
Defense Department issued a major report
<https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pdffiles/PUB1358.pdf> titled on /Risk
Assessment in a Post-Primacy World/, finding that the U.S. military “no
longer enjoys an unassailable position versus state competitors,” and
“it no longer can... automatically generate consistent and sustained
local military superiority at range.” This sober assessment led the
Pentagon’s top strategists to “the jarring realization that ‘we can
lose.’” Increasingly, Pentagon planners find, the “self-image of a
matchless global leader” provides a “flawed foundation for
forward-looking defense strategy... under post-primacy conditions.” This
Pentagon report also warned that, like Russia, China is “engaged in a
deliberate program to demonstrate the limits of U.S. authority”; hence,
Beijing’s bid for “Pacific primacy” and its “campaign to expand its
control over the South China Sea.”
*China’s Challenge*
Indeed, military tensions between the two countries have been rising in
the western Pacific since the summer of 2010. Just as Washington once
used its wartime alliance with Great Britain to appropriate much of that
fading empire’s global power after World War II, so Beijing began using
profits from its export trade with the U.S. to fund a military challenge
to its dominion over the waterways of Asia and the Pacific.
Some telltale numbers suggest the nature of the future great power
competition between Washington and Beijing that could determine the
course of the twenty-first century. In April 2015, for instance, the
Department of Agriculture reported
<http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2015/04/28/us-projections-for-the-2030-world-economy-ranking/>
that the U.S. economy would grow by nearly 50% over the next 15 years,
while China’s would expand by 300%, equaling or surpassing America’s
around 2030.
Similarly, in the critical race for worldwide patents, American
leadership in technological innovation is clearly on the wane. In 2008,
the United States still held the number two spot behind Japan in patent
applications with 232,000. China was, however, closing
<http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/intproperty/941/wipo_pub_941_2010.pdf>
in fast at 195,000, thanks to a blistering 400% increase since 2000. By
2014, China actually took the lead
<http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_941_2015.pdf> in this
critical category with 801,000 patents, nearly half the world’s total,
compared to just 285,000 for the Americans.
With supercomputing now critical for everything from code breaking to
consumer products, China’s Defense Ministry outpaced
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/technology/28compute.html> the
Pentagon for the first time in 2010, launching the world’s fastest
supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A. For the next six years, Beijing produced
the fastest machine and last year finally won
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/technology/china-tops-list-of-fastest-computers-again.html?_r=0>
in a way that couldn’t be more crucial: with a supercomputer that had
microprocessor chips made in China. By then, it also had the most
supercomputers with 167 compared to 165 for the United States and only
29 for Japan.
Over the longer term, the American education system, that critical
source of future scientists and innovators, has been falling behind its
competitors. In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development tested half a million 15-year-olds worldwide. Those in
Shanghai came in first
<http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf> in math
and science, while those in Massachusetts, “a strong-performing U.S.
state,” placed 20th in science and 27th in math. By 2015, America’s
standing had declined
<http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-math-science-reading-skills-2016-12>
to 25th in science and 39th in math.
But why, you might ask, should anybody care about a bunch of
15-year-olds with backpacks, braces, and attitude? Because by 2030, they
will be the mid-career scientists and engineers determining whose
computers survive a cyber attack, whose satellites evade a missile
strike, and whose economy has the next best thing.
*Rival Superpower Strategies*
With its growing resources, Beijing has been laying claim to an arc of
islands and waters from Korea to Indonesia long dominated by the U.S.
Navy. In August 2010, after Washington expressed a “national interest”
in the South China Sea and conducted naval exercises there to reinforce
the claim, Beijing’s /Global Times/ responded
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/0817/China-and-the-US-battle-to-assert-presence-in-South-China-Sea>
angrily that “the U.S.-China wrestling match over the South China Sea
issue has raised the stakes in deciding who the real future ruler of the
planet will be.”
Four years later, Beijing escalated its territorial claims to these
waters, building <http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/04/chinassbnfleet/>
a nuclear submarine facility on Hainan Island and accelerating
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8701/index.html> its
dredging of seven artificial atolls for military bases in the Spratly
Islands. When the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled
<http://www.pcacases.com/pcadocs/PH-CN%20-%2020160712%20-%20Award.pdf>,
in 2016, that these atolls gave China no territorial claim to the
surrounding seas, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry dismissed
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/world/asia/south-china-sea-hague-ruling-philippines.html?mcubz=0>
the decision out of hand.
To meet China’s challenge on the high seas, the Pentagon began sending
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/world/asia/south-china-sea-us-navy.html?mcubz=0>
a succession of carrier groups on “freedom of navigation” cruises into
the South China Sea. It also started shifting spare air and sea assets
to a string of bases from Japan to Australia in a bid to strengthen its
strategic position along the Asian littoral. Since the end of World War
II, Washington has attempted to control the strategic Eurasian landmass
from a network of NATO military bases in Europe and a chain of island
bastions in the Pacific. Between the “axial ends
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176007/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy,_washington%27s_great_game_and_why_it%27s_failing_/>”
of this vast continent, Washington has, over the past 70 years, built
successive layers of military power -- air and naval bases during the
Cold War and more recently a string of 60 drone bases stretching from
Sicily to Guam.
Simultaneously, however, China has conducted what the Pentagon in 2010
called
<https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2010_CMPR_Final.pdf>
“a comprehensive transformation of its military” meant to prepare the
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “for extended-range power projection.”
With the world’s “most active land-based ballistic and cruise missile
program,” Beijing can target “its nuclear forces throughout... most of
the world, including the continental United States.” Meanwhile, accurate
missiles now provide the PLA with the ability “to attack ships,
including aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific Ocean.” In emerging
military domains, China has begun to contest U.S. dominion over
cyberspace and space, with plans to dominate “the information spectrum
in all dimensions of the modern battlespace.”
China’s army has by now developed a sophisticated cyberwarfare capacity
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html?mcubz=0>
through its Unit 61398 and allied contractors that “increasingly
focus... on companies involved in the critical infrastructure of the
United States -- its electrical power grid, gas lines, and waterworks.”
After identifying that unit as responsible for a series of intellectual
property thefts, Washington took the unprecedented step, in 2013, of
filing criminal charges against five active-duty Chinese cyber officers.
China has already made major technological advances that could prove
decisive in any future war with Washington. Instead of competing across
the board, Beijing, like many late adopters of technology, has
strategically chosen key areas to pursue, particularly orbital
satellites, which are a fulcrum for the effective weaponization of
space. As early as 2012, China had already launched 14 satellites into
“three kinds of orbits” with “more satellites in high orbits and...
better anti-shielding capabilities than other systems.” Four years
later, Beijing announced
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-06/16/content_25732439.htm>
that it was on track to “cover the whole globe with a constellation of
35 satellites by 2020,” becoming second only to the United States when
it comes to operational satellite systems.
Playing catch-up, China has recently achieved a bold breakthrough in
secure communications. In August 2016, three years after the Pentagon
abandoned its own attempt at full-scale satellite security, Beijing
launched
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/world/asia/china-quantum-satellite-mozi.html>
the world’s first quantum satellite that transmits photons, believed to
be “invulnerable to hacking,” rather than relying on more easily
compromised radio waves. According to one scientific report
<http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-satellite-is-one-giant-step-for-the-quantum-internet-1.20329>,
this new technology will “create a super-secure communications network,
potentially linking people anywhere.” China was reportedly planning to
launch 20 of the satellites should the technology prove fully successful.
To check China, Washington has been building a new digital defense
network of advanced cyberwarfare capabilities and air-space robotics.
Between 2010 and 2012, the Pentagon extended drone operations into the
exosphere, creating an arena for future warfare unlike anything that has
gone before. As early as 2020, if all goes according to plan, the
Pentagon will loft a triple-tier shield
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176324> of unmanned drones reaching
from the stratosphere to the exosphere, armed with agile missiles,
linked by an expanded satellite system, and operated through robotic
controls.
Weighing this balance of forces, the RAND Corporation recently released
a study, /War with China, /predicting
<https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1140/RAND_RR1140.synopsis.pdf>
that by 2025 “China will likely have more, better, and longer-range
ballistic missiles and cruise missiles; advanced air defenses; latest
generation aircraft; quieter submarines; more and better sensors; and
the digital communications, processing power, and C2 [cyber security]
necessary to operate an integrated kill chain.”
In the event of all-out war, RAND suggested, the United States might
suffer heavy losses to its carriers, submarines, missiles, and aircraft
from Chinese strategic forces, while its computer systems and satellites
would be degraded thanks to “improved Chinese cyberwar and ASAT
[anti-satellite] capabilities.” Even though American forces would
counterattack, their “growing vulnerability” means Washington’s victory
would not be assured. In such a conflict, the think tank concluded,
there might well be no “clear winner.”
Make no mistake about the weight of those words. For the first time, a
top strategic think-tank, closely aligned with the U.S. military and
long famous for its influential strategic analyses, was seriously
contemplating a major war with China that the United States would not win.
*World War III: Scenario 2030*
The technology of space and cyberwarfare is so new, so untested, that
even the most outlandish scenarios currently concocted by strategic
planners may soon be superseded by a reality still hard to conceive. In
a 2015 nuclear war exercise
<http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/air-force/2015/12/18/air-force-nuclear-war-game-tests-future-bomber-fleet/77515594/>,
the Air Force Wargaming Institute used sophisticated computer modeling
to imagine
<http://tinyletter.com/lseligman/letters/lara-s-weekly-roundup-air-force-nuclear-war-game-tests-future-bomber-fleet>
“a 2030 scenario where the Air Force’s fleet of B-52s... upgraded
with... improved standoff weapons” patrol the skies ready to strike.
Simultaneously, “shiny new intercontinental ballistic missiles” stand by
for launch. Then, in a bold tactical gambit, B-1 bombers with “full
Integrated Battle Station (IBS) upgrade” slip through enemy defenses for
a devastating nuclear strike.
That scenario was no doubt useful for Air Force planners, but said
little about the actual future of U.S. global power. Similarly, the RAND
/War with China/ study only compared military capacities, without
assessing the particular strategies either side might use to its advantage.
I might not have access to the Wargaming Institute’s computer modeling
or RAND’s renowned analytical resources, but I can at least carry their
work one step further by imagining a future conflict with an unfavorable
outcome for the United States. As the globe’s still-dominant power,
Washington must spread its defenses across all military domains, making
its strength, paradoxically, a source of potential weakness. As the
challenger, China has the asymmetric advantage of identifying and
exploiting a few strategic flaws in Washington’s otherwise overwhelming
military superiority.
For years, prominent Chinese defense intellectuals like Shen Dingli
<http://www.cas.fudan.edu.cn/viewprofile.en.php?id=66> of Fudan
University have rejected the idea of countering the U.S. with a big
naval build-up and argued
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/31/AR2010123101858.html>
instead for “cyberattacks, space weapons, lasers, pulses, and other
directed-energy beams.” Instead of rushing to launch aircraft carriers
that “will be burned” by lasers fired from space, China should, Shen
argued, develop advanced weapons "to make other command systems fail to
work." Although decades away from matching the full might of
Washington’s global military, China could, through a combination of
cyberwar, space warfare, and supercomputing, find ways to cripple U.S.
military communications and thus blind its strategic forces. With that
in mind, here’s one possible scenario for World War III:
It’s 11:59 p.m. on Thanksgiving Thursday in 2030. For months, tensions
have been mounting between Chinese and U.S. Navy patrols in the South
China Sea. Washington’s attempts to use diplomacy to restrain China have
proven an embarrassing failure among long-time allies -- with NATO
crippled by years of diffident American support, Britain now a
third-tier power, Japan functionally neutral, and other international
leaders cool to Washington’s concerns after suffering its
cyber-surveillance for so long. With the American economy diminished,
Washington plays the last card in an increasingly weak hand, deploying
six of its remaining eight carrier groups to the Western Pacific.
Instead of intimidating China’s leaders, the move makes them more
bellicose. Flying from air bases in the Spratly Islands, their jet
fighters soon begin buzzing U.S. Navy ships in the South China Sea,
while Chinese frigates play chicken with two of the aircraft carriers on
patrol, crossing ever closer to their bows.
Then tragedy strikes. At 4:00 a.m. on a foggy October night, the massive
carrier USS /Gerald Ford/ slices through aging Frigate-536 /Xuchang/,
sinking the Chinese ship with its entire crew of 165. Beijing demands
an apology and reparations. When Washington refuses, China’s fury comes
fast.
At the stroke of midnight on Black Friday, as cyber-shoppers storm the
portals of Best Buy for deep discounts on the latest consumer
electronics from Bangladesh, Navy personnel staffing the Space
Surveillance Telescope <http://newatlas.com/sst-delivery/30063/> at
Exmouth, Western Australia, choke on their coffees as their panoramic
screens of the southern sky suddenly blip to black. Thousands of miles
away at the U.S. CyberCommand’s operations center in Texas, Air Force
technicians detect malicious binaries that, though hacked anonymously
into American weapons systems worldwide, show the distinctive digital
fingerprints
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/science/06cyber.html?mcubz=0> of
China’s People’s Liberation Army.
In what historians will later call the “Battle of Binaries,” CyberCom’s
supercomputers launch their killer counter-codes. While a few of China’s
provincial servers do lose routine administrative data, Beijing’s
quantum satellite system, equipped with super-secure photon
transmission, proves impervious to hacking. Meanwhile, an armada of
bigger, faster supercomputers slaved to Shanghai’s cyberwarfare Unit
61398 blasts back with impenetrable logarithms of unprecedented subtlety
and sophistication, slipping into the U.S. satellite system through its
antiquated microwave signals.
The first overt strike is one nobody at the Pentagon predicted. Flying
at 60,000 feet above the South China Sea, several U.S. carrier-based
MQ-25 Stingray drones
<https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/us-navy-descoping-stealth-requirement-for-stingray-t-423039/>,
infected by Chinese “malware,” suddenly fire all the pods beneath their
enormous delta wingspans, sending dozens of lethal missiles plunging
harmlessly into the ocean, effectively disarming those formidable weapons.
Determined to fight fire with fire, the White House authorizes a
retaliatory strike. Confident their satellite system is impenetrable,
Air Force commanders in California transmit robotic codes to a flotilla
of X-37B space drones
<http://www.space.com/32839-x37b-military-space-plane-one-year-mission-otv4.html>,
orbiting 250 miles above the Earth, to launch their Triple Terminator
missiles at several of China’s communication satellites. There is zero
response.
In near panic, the Navy orders its Zumwalt-class destroyers to fire
their RIM-174**killer missiles
<http://www.space.com/5006-navy-hits-satellite-heat-seeking-missile.html>
at seven Chinese satellites in nearby geostationary orbits. The launch
codes suddenly prove inoperative.
As Beijing’s viruses spread uncontrollably through the U.S. satellite
architecture, the country’s second-rate supercomputers fail to crack the
Chinese malware’s devilishly complex code. With stunning speed, GPS
signals crucial to the navigation of American ships and aircraft
worldwide are compromised.
Across the Pacific, Navy deck officers scramble for their sextants,
struggling to recall long-ago navigation classes at Annapolis. Steering
by sun and stars, carrier squadrons abandon their stations off the China
coast and steam for the safety of Hawaii.
An angry American president orders a retaliatory strike on a secondary
Chinese target, Longpo Naval Base on Hainan Island. Within minutes, the
commander of Andersen Air Base on Guam launches a battery of
super-secret X-51 “Waverider” hypersonic missiles
<http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/05/19/air-force-getting-closer-to-testing-hypersonic-weapon.html>
that soar to 70,000 feet and then streak across the Pacific at 4,000
miles per hour -- far faster than any Chinese fighter or air-to-air
missile. Inside the White House situation room the silence is stifling
as everyone counts down the 30 short minutes before the tactical nuclear
warheads are to slam into Longpo’s hardened submarine pens, shutting
down Chinese naval operations in the South China Sea. Midflight, the
missiles suddenly nose-dive into the Pacific.
In a bunker buried deep beneath Tiananmen Square, President Xi Jinping’s
handpicked successor, Li Keqiang, even more nationalistic than his
mentor, is outraged that Washington would attempt a tactical nuclear
strike on Chinese soil. When China’s State Council wavers at the thought
of open war, the president quotes the ancient strategist Sun Tzu:
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated
warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” Amid applause and
laughter, the vote is unanimous. War it is!
Almost immediately, Beijing escalates from secret cyberattacks to overt
acts. Dozens of China’s next-generation SC-19 missiles lift off for
strikes on key American communications satellites, scoring a high ratio
of kinetic kills on these hulking units. Suddenly, Washington loses
secure communications with hundreds of military bases. U.S. fighter
squadrons worldwide are grounded. Dozens of F-35 pilots already airborne
are blinded as their helmet-mounted avionic displays go black, forcing
them down to 10,000 feet for a clear view of the countryside. Without
any electronic navigation, they must follow highways and landmarks back
to base like bus drivers in the sky.
Midflight on regular patrols around the Eurasian landmass, two-dozen
RQ-180 surveillance drones suddenly become unresponsive to
satellite-transmitted commands. They fly aimlessly toward the horizon,
crashing when their fuel is exhausted. With surprising speed, the United
States loses control of what its Air Force has long called
<http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p023961.pdf> the “ultimate high
ground.”
With intelligence flooding the Kremlin about crippled American capacity,
Moscow, still a close Chinese ally, sends a dozen Severodvinsk-class
nuclear submarines beyond the Arctic Circle bound for permanent,
provocative patrols between New York and Newport News. Simultaneously, a
half-dozen Grigorovich-class missile frigates from Russia’s Black Sea
fleet, escorted by an undisclosed number of attack submarines, steam for
the western Mediterranean to shadow the U.S. Sixth fleet.
Within a matter of hours, Washington’s strategic grip on the axial ends
of Eurasia -- the keystone to its global dominion for the past 85 years
-- is broken. In quick succession, the building blocks in the fragile
architecture of U.S. global power start to fall.
Every weapon begets its own nemesis. Just as musketeers upended mounted
knights, tanks smashed trench works, and dive bombers sank battleships,
so China’s superior cybercapability had blinded America’s communication
satellites that were the sinews of its once-formidable military
apparatus, giving Beijing a stunning victory in this war of robotic
militaries. Without a single combat casualty on either side, the
superpower that had dominated the planet for nearly a century is
defeated in World War III.
/Alfred W. McCoy, a /TomDispatch/regular/
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176324/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_how_the_pentagon_snatched_innovation_from_the_jaws_of_defeat/>/,
is the Harrington professor of history at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the now-classic book /The
Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade/, which
probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over
50 years, and the just-published /In the Shadows of the American
Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467732/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/(Dispatch
Books) from which this piece is adapted./
/Follow /TomDispatch/on Twitter <https://twitter.com/TomDispatch> and
join us on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch>. Check out the
newest Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoy's /In the Shadows of the American
Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467732/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/,
as well as John Dower's /The Violent American Century: War and Terror
Since World War II
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467236/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/,
John Feffer's dystopian novel /Splinterlands
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467244/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/,
Nick Turse’s /Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608466485/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/,
and Tom Engelhardt's /Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and
a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463656/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/./
Copyright 2017 Alfred W. McCoy
--
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