The New Cold War

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US President Joe Biden says America will defend Taiwan if China attacks



The US will defend Taiwan if China attacked, Joe Biden has said in an apparent shift in long-standing policy.

The president said America had "a commitment" to go to the aid of the island, which has complained of mounting military and political pressure by Beijing, which stakes a territorial claim.

However, the White House later said there had been no change in stance.

Washington has long followed a policy of "strategic ambiguity" on whether it would intervene militarily to protect Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

But asked at a town hall meeting if the US would get involved, Mr Biden said: "Yes, we have a commitment to do that."

Back in August, an administration official was forced to insist that American policy on Taiwan had not changed after the president appeared to suggest the US would defend the island in the face of aggression.

Following Mr Biden's latest comments, a spokesman said: "We will continue to support Taiwan's self-defence, and we will continue to oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo."

Responding to Mr Biden's statement, Taiwan's presidential office said its position was unchanged and remains the same and would neither give in to pressure nor "rashly advance" when it gets support.

"Taiwan will show a firm determination to defend itself," said presidential office spokesperson Xavier Chang, who also noted the Biden administration's continued "rock-solid" support.

Mr Biden said people should not worry about Washington's military strength because "China, Russia and the rest of the world knows we're the most powerful military in the history of the world".

He added: "What you do have to worry about is whether or not they're going to engage in activities that would put them in a position where they may make a serious mistake.

"I don't want a cold war with China. I just want China to understand that we're not going to step back, that we're not going to change any of our views."

Tensions between Taiwan and China are at their worst in more than 40 years, Taiwan's defence minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said this month, pointing out Beijing would be capable of mounting a "full-scale" invasion by 2025.

Taiwan says it is an independent country and will defend its freedoms and democracy.

China has criticised what it branded "collusion" between Washington and Taipei.

The country's ambassador to the United Nations Zhang Jun said Beijing was pursuing "peaceful reunification" with Taiwan.

He said: "We are not the troublemaker.

"On the contrary, some countries - the US in particular - is taking dangerous actions, leading the situation in Taiwan Strait into a dangerous direction.

"Dragging Taiwan into a war definitely is in nobody's interest."

NATO's dodgy geography: US-led bloc's insistence on moving on from Russia to confront China will put West on dangerous new ground

22 Oct, 2021 19:51

By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian at Koç University in Istanbul working on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory. He tweets at @tarikcyrilamar.


The general secretary of NATO has told the Financial Times that there's a new foe in town. After decades of sparring with the Soviet Union, and Russia, the bloc is firmly setting its sights on a different standoff – with China.

Putting aside the diplomatic niceties, his pitch is simple: NATO should turn its attention to Beijing. To put it more bluntly than Stoltenberg did, the US’ European partners should follow Washington into a new, openly-declared Cold War in East Asia.

The pitch belies the fact President Joe Biden is offering NATO members a deal they are not supposed to refuse. Either you help us in our new Cold War against China on which we have decided alone, or we will no longer help you feel safe from Russia. As Stoltenberg puts it, for America, NATO is “not something they do to be nice to Europe.” Instead, he reminds us, for Washington, allies must fit their national interests.

In other words, now that the endless 'wars on terror’ are winding down, the US has identified its new geopolitical enemy number one, Beijing. The Pentagon and the attached military-industrial complex – as president Eisenhower once called it – must be kept in business after all.

And America expects its NATO allies to go along. Otherwise, the general secretary’s implication is almost rudely clear, NATO might lose its usefulness for America. And since, it isn’t investing in the alliance to 'be nice’ but out of its own self-interest, Washington might then turn its back on it, either perhaps by demonstratively slamming the door, as former President Trump threatened to do, or quietly by simply shifting its attention, money, and military might away.

Yet there is a problem. NATO was built for a specific purpose: as its first British general secretary famously put it, to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Whatever you think about today’s Russians and Germans, one thing is certain. A pact named the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was never meant to take care of the Pacific or deal with China.

The purpose of Stoltenberg’s far-fetched, if increasingly popular, story is to convince us that that does not matter now. For him, NATO is a sort of limitless transformer: As with the ‘war on terror’, we are once again asked to forget what NATO was actually designed to do and pretend that it can do anything else as well. And how do we know what that anything else is on any given day? That’s, actually, really simple: we check with Washington.

Yet the reality of EU-Europe’s situation is ill-served by this arbitrary approach. What Europe needs is to stay out of America’s new Cold War against China. There are three main reasons for this.

The first and most obvious one has to do with Stoltenberg’s claim that China is “getting closer” to Europe, in, he clearly means, a threatening manner. But that is an almost Orwellian abuse of language. In reality, China has become more closely integrated into the global economy – witness the effect on supply chains when Chinese harbors have Covid problems – and that is exactly what we have all wanted, isn’t it? Except, of course, that China is doing so while preserving its own political system, instead of fulfilling Western fantasies about adopting our ways.

Beijing is expanding its trade, investments, and therefore, also its interests and influence. But that is how globalized capitalism is supposed to work. Stoltenberg may feel that China is playing hardball, when it comes to its currency, intellectual property, or attaching conditions to credit and investment, for instance. He may dislike the fact that Beijing looks at its regional neighborhood as a security challenge that requires modern military power and constant self-assertion. The notion that Beijing – just like Washington, Moscow, or Brussels – defines even more wide-ranging interests for itself, in essence ranging across the globe, may leave him shocked.

Yet, in all these respects, China is not different from other powerful states, looking out for itself, deterring potential enemies, and seeking its advantage even in cooperation. Ironically perhaps, that is the world that the West has built over, roughly the last half-millennium. Insofar as we actually live in a 'rule-based’ international order, those are its real rules, and we’ve only got ourselves to blame. The only thing that is historically new is that the West cannot dominate anymore and is challenged at its own game. This fact requires adjustment by negotiation and, if we are really smart, by finally rethinking the rules, together. But it has nothing to do with any special threat that China poses to Europe.

The second reason why Stoltenberg is wrong is that the actual relationship between Europe and China is irreconcilable with the Cold War-posture, which following the US would produce. China, not America, is now the EU’s single biggest trading partner. It is true that the EU and China do by no means always see eye to eye, in fact, recently the relationship has been rocky, with the EU officially considering Beijing a 'competitor’ and 'rival’.

Yet, in the case of China and the EU, powerful common interests, from the economy to the fight against global warming, clearly outweigh such clashes. There may be temporary conflicts, but it is in the interest of both sides that those be resolved – or suspended – without compromising the potential and urgent need for cooperation: There’s nothing wrong with not always being friends between Brussels and Beijing. But it would be idiotic to become enemies or anything less than partners.

This brings us to Stoltenberg’s third mistake. He entirely misses the key difference between Europe and the US with regard to China. Europe is in a position to profit from China’s rise, because it does not have to lose what America has to lose.

Because China’s ascent really does threaten something very big. Yet that something is not Europe, the international order, or even the USA as such. What China really calls into question is Washington’s top dog role in the world, which, again, is not the same as America itself.

There was a time, quite a while ago by now, when US hegemony was in (Western) Europe’s interest. But it no longer is. In fact, after Trump’s tantrums and Biden’s Great Rout of Kabul, even the most doctrinaire European Atlanticist must face the facts: America is not a reliable hegemon, neither with respect to its domestic order (it might well turn from being an oligarchy with democratic rest features into an oligarchy with growing authoritarian features) nor regarding its commitments and behavior abroad.

If that is so and once Stoltenberg wants to have a conversation about interests, then what is Europe’s interest in following the USA? Especially if following it now means to enter into a Cold War with China? Stoltenberg’s whole real point, barely hidden, is that NATO is so important to Europe that it must do simply anything to preserve it, even shoot itself in both feet at once by joining Washington in a fight for America’s hegemony that is not at all in Europe’s interest.

But while it may be beyond his imagination, Europe could guard and defend itself without the USA. Not now, because the Europeans are too miserly on their defense budgets and their elites too invested in loyalty to the US. But in principle, the EU has everything that it needs to take care of its own security, and what it does not have now, it could build up or acquire.

There is, put differently, no need for Europe to go to war with China – cold or hot – to protect American hegemony. Because, first, it is not Europe’s but America’s to lose, and second, it is a risky, unpredictable hegemony that is no longer in Europe’s interest. Instead, Europe needs to finally learn to stand on its own feet. Then, it will at least be able to avoid fights it has not picked, where there is nothing to gain and everything to lose.

Have we reached peak China?
Bejing’s growing influence on the global stage masks an overlooked insecurity.

BY MAXIMILIAN MAYER AND EMILIAN KAVALSKI
October 21, 2021

Chinese President Xi Jinping would like the world to think he has good reason to be confident about the state of international affairs. But look a little closer, and China, it seems, is far more fragile than it would like to project.

Much ink has been spilled about the shockwaves created by the controversial AUKUS defense pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and what it means for France and the transatlantic alliance. Much less has been written about what it means for China. And yet, Beijing’s response to the deal, which aims at hemming it in, and the reactions of other countries in the region speak volumes about China’s position internationally.

Indeed, it’s very possible that we will come to see this period not only as the moment U.S. President Joe Biden finally realized the “Asia pivot” in American foreign policy, but as the one in which China reached, at least momentarily, peak influence on the global stage.

One thing is clear, Beijing’s influence is currently in decline. To take one prominent example, China’s signature infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has been underperforming for some time. Infrastructure investments stretching from Ethiopia to Germany and Iceland to the South Pacific have created an optimistic diplomatic narrative, but momentum is slowing and the positive atmosphere surrounding its initial phase has abated.

With the BRI, China’s overseas investments got tied up in complex local negotiations and shifting geopolitical coalitions. A political reckoning has set in — especially in Central and Eastern Europe. The fanfare surrounding a thriving “17+1” bloc has died down. And Chinese leadership now finds itself involved in ugly bilateral quarrels with the Czech Republic and, most recently, Lithuania — now seen as the anti-China vanguard.

All across Europe, China is being left in a precarious position. The British government is about to exclude China General Nuclear from the construction of a £20 billion nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast. And the EU — which has strived to stay out of the Sino-American geopolitical struggle — recently launched the Global Gateway scheme to rival the BRI. Beijing’s Europe watchers also worry that the outcome of the recent German election could inevitably recalibrate Berlin’s strategic calculus on trade with China.

There’s also something deeper that is troubling Chinese diplomacy: Its foreign relations suffer from a lack of trust. Having abandoned the veneer of non-interference in other states’ international affairs, China now applies direct pressure on countries to change their policy positions when they do not agree with Beijing’s stance.  

Norway, South Korea, Lithuania and Australia have all been subjected to economic coercion, making it difficult to reconcile Beijing’s rhetoric of “common destiny” and “harmony” with its hard-nosed foreign policy and hyper-nationalism at home.

Another culprit here is China’s self-proclaimed “wolf warrior diplomats,” whose bellicose interventions have damaged the image of the Chinese state. Globally, perceptions of China are trending downward, a challenge for Beijing that has been aggravated by revelations that it actively pressured officials at the World Bank to fudge its economic ranking.

Beijing’s response to AUKUS was yet another demonstration that the country does not possess a very versatile diplomatic toolbox. Apparently, Chinese policymakers, media and scholars threatened “brainless” Australia that it would become a target for its nuclear weapons if Canberra went ahead with acquiring American nuclear submarines.

But what AUKUS really revealed was that Beijing has no followers in the region willing to support its threats and complaints. Russia reacted quite differently to the Anglophone defense pact. And with expressions of support for the alliance from India, Japan, Singapore and the Philippines, no country in China’s neighborhood, aside from Malaysia, appears to back its alarmist reaction.

This is a stark reminder that Chinese military ambitions are not backed by soft power and regional legitimacy. So aside from nuclear threats and economic coercion, it appears to have few viable options at hand to counter the creation of AUKUS and the flourishing Quad alliance between the U.S., India, Japan and Australia. The country’s chances of becoming a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) are also slim.

Most recently, the impact of the carbon energy crunch and skyrocketing prices also revealed how fragile Chinese energy security really is. Energy autarky is not even a remote dream, as the country has no choice but to rely on global energy markets to the keep lights on and the factories running. In recent weeks, Beijing even had to lift its ban on Australian coal imports and is preparing to import huge amounts of liquefied natural gas from the U.S.

There’s an important takeaway from all of this: The narrative that the world is facing a new Cold War between China and the West needs a reality check.

A Cold War needs two powerful protagonists able to act on the global stage. And while China may be growing into an economic, military and technological giant, the “hegemon in the making” is much more vulnerable and isolated than it likes to pretend.

Летећи Полип wrote:Pogledah malopre. Čovek bi se iznenadio, tolika zemlja a samo dve službe. Ameri imaju, koliko ono, osamnaest.

Could the U.S. Lose a War with China Over Taiwan?
The era of U.S. military primacy is over.

by Graham Allison

During a town hall last week, when asked whether America would defend Taiwan against a Chinese assault, President Joe Biden answered: “yes.” In response, China’s foreign ministry stated unambiguously that, to prevent the loss of Taiwan, Beijing is prepared to go to war. If China were to attack Taiwan, and the United States sent military forces to Taiwan’s defense, could the United States lose a war with China?

When current Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks and her fellow members of the National Defense Strategy Review Commission examined this question in 2018, they concluded: maybe. In their words, America “might struggle to win, or perhaps lose a war against China.” As they explained, if in response to a provocative move by Taiwan, China were to launch an attack to take control of that island that is as close to its mainland as Cuba is to the United States, it might succeed before the U.S. military could move enough assets into the region to matter. As former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James Winnefeld and former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell wrote last year, China has the capability to deliver a fait accompli to Taiwan before Washington would be able to decide how to respond.

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, who served under three Secretaries before retiring in 2017, has been even more explicit. As he has stated publicly, in the most realistic war games the Pentagon has been able to design simulating war over Taiwan, the score is eighteen to zero. And the eighteen is not Team USA.

This scorecard might shock Americans who remember the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-1996 when China conducted what it called “missile tests” bracketing Taiwan. In a show of superiority, America deployed two aircraft carriers to Taiwan’s adjacent waters, forcing China to back down. Today, that option is not even on the menu of responses that Chairman Mark Milley would present to the President.

How did so much change so quickly? A forthcoming report from Harvard’s China Working Group on the Great Military Rivalry documents what has happened in the military race between China and the United States in the past decades, and summarizes our best judgments about where the rivals now stand.

First, the era of U.S. military primacy is over. As Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis put it starkly in his 2018 National Defense Strategy, “For decades the U.S. has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, and operate how we wanted.” But that was then. “Today,” Mattis warned, “every domain is contested—air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace.”

Second, in 2000, A2/AD—anti-access/area denial systems by which China could prevent U.S. military forces from operating at will—was just a People's Liberation Army (PLA) acronym on a briefing chart. Today, China’s A2/AD operational reach encompasses the First Island Chain, including Taiwan and Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. As a result, as President Barack Obama’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy put it, in this area, “the United States can no longer expect to quickly achieve air, space, or maritime superiority.”

In the current climate where American political dynamics are fueling increasing hostility to China, insistence on recognizing the military realities may seem unhelpful. But as former Deputy Secretary Work has noted, the Chinese leadership is more aware of everything he has made public than are most members of the American political class and policy community who have been expressing views about these issues.

The reason for confronting ugly realities is not to counsel defeatism. On the contrary, it is meant as a call to act now to change these facts. There are many things Taiwan could do to make itself a much harder target, including deploying a protective barrier of smart mines. There are many asymmetric systems the U.S. military could deploy that would raise the costs and risks for China of a military assault on Taiwan. There is an even longer and likely more impactful agenda of initiatives the United States could undertake with the other instruments of American power in the DIME—diplomacy, informational, military, economic—arsenal that would make China’s leaders worry that the costs and risks of an attack on Taiwan would exceed the benefits.

Unfortunately, a clear-eyed observer would remind us that Taiwan and the United States had similar opportunities a decade ago. Nonetheless, previous failures need not be a predictor of future performance. The question now is: will they?

In the meantime, clear-eyed recognition that the current military balance over Taiwan has shifted dramatically in China’s favor does not mean that the United States would not come to Taiwan’s defense. Chinese strategists remember 1950 when the Truman Administration declared unambiguously that Korea was beyond the U.S. defense perimeter. Despite those declarations, when Communist China’s ally in North Korea launched an assault on South Korea, the U.S. did come to South Korea’s defense. China and the United States soon found themselves at war. While the United States had taken no position on Taiwan prior to the Korean War, during the war, the 7th Fleet positioned itself in the strait between China and Taiwan, effectively creating a de facto American security umbrella. For the Chinese, this was the beginning of the enduring narrative that they lost Taiwan for a generation.

Finally, the biggest takeaway from the recent history of Taiwan is that imaginative diplomacy offers a much better way for parties to both secure their interests and avoid war. When the United States and China established formal relations under Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, statesmen recognized that the issue of Taiwan was irresolvable—but not unmanageable. The diplomatic framework they created wrapped irreconcilable differences in strategic ambiguity that has given all parties five decades of peace in which individuals on both sides of the strait have seen greater increases in their well-being than in any equivalent period in their history. Much has changed over these decades in China, in Taiwan, and in the United States. In this grave new world, the most urgent and consequential international challenge for President Biden and his team is to craft a twenty-first-century analog that will extend this peace for another half-century.

Could the U.S. Lose a War with China Over Taiwan? | The National Interest

As Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis put it starkly in his 2018 National Defense Strategy, “For decades the U.S. has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, and operate how we wanted.”

China's Massive New Aircraft Carrier Is As Big As It Can Be - Naval News






Aircraft carriers are at the vanguard of China's incredible naval expansion A new, larger super-carrier is being built near Shanghai. Analysis of radar satellite imagery shows that it is as large as China's new bases allow.

H I Sutton  27 Oct 2021

The growth of the Chinese Navy has been incredible. The PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) is barely recognizable from itself twenty years ago. Among the most important developments have been aircraft carriers.

Defense analysts have been trawling open source intelligence (OSINT) to keep up with developments. But like much of China, the shipyard building the latest carrier is protected from traditional satellite observation by impenetrable cloud. A new commercial satellite has provided Naval News with a way to see through this cloud.


Seeing In The Dark Or Through Cloud

Using SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites owned by Capella Space we have checked progress on the carrier. This radar imagery can see through the clouds, and at night.

Starting from 10 years ago with imported Russian technology, the latest design is starting to match the U.S. Navy’s super carriers. The PLAN now has two of the Russian-based carriers in service. And the third, the Type-003, is under construction near Shanghai. It is roughly comparable to the U.S. Navy’s Ford Class.

The SAR imagery picks out the three deck catapults, a major change from the Russian based carriers. Those rely on a ski-jump bow to launch aircraft. That works for the J-15 Flanker fighters but does not permit the KJ-600 AWE&C (airborne early warning and control) aircraft to operate. This new twin-prop plane closely resembles the E-2 Hawkeye and is seen as generally comparable to the latest models.

The new carrier as EMALS (electro-magnetic aircraft launch system), like catapults. This is the same technology tat the U.S. Navy is introducing with the Ford Class. It means that the KJ-600 can be operated. And it should improve the endurance of carrier borne fighters. In particular, a new stealthier carrier fighter is expected.

The Type-003 aircraft carrier is visible in this recent radar satellite (SAR) image from Capella Space.

Progress appears steady at the Shanghai yard. Another ship which was recently in the same dry dock, but nearer the river, has been moved. This was blocking the entrance of the dry dock so is a necessary step before the carrier is launched.

We do not believe that launch of the carrier is imminent however. This is because sections of a container ship have been moved into the dock behind the carrier. Two massive holes providing access to the inner workings. This is normal for aircraft carrier construction and the same can be seen on U.S. ships.

Analysis of the imagery also reveals insights on other warship programs. A number of the large hovercraft intended for amphibious ships are still present in the basin, along with other naval vessels.
Of particular interest however, the unique ‘Sailless’ submarine does not appear to be present. Analysts will be watching this submarine closely for signs of it entering operational service, or being moved to a research unit.


Size Matters

1,900 km (1,200 miles) further south, at Sanya on Hainan, work is continuing on a gigantic dry dock for the carriers. The facility is strategically located for access to the South China Sea. One carrier, the Type-002 Shandong, is already based there, together with most of China’s nuclear submarine fleet.

A large cofferdam was built in 2016-17 to keep the sea out while construction took place. The docks are now clearly visible in the SAR imagery. Measurements confirm that the new Type-003 aircraft carrier will be able to fit it. However it’s tight beam suggests that China does not have plans for substantially larger carriers.

The Type-003 carrier (left) is wider and loner tan the first two carriers, such as the Type-002 (left). Catapults replace the ski-jump allowing more types of aircraft to be operated.

Importantly, the largest new dock is only about 80 meters (268 feet) wide, which is the same as the docket where the Type-003 is being built. The Type-003 itself is also approximately 80m wide (our earlier estimates were slightly narrow as it turned out). This suggests that a) the Type-003 will fit inside the new dock, b) any new carrier cannot be any wider if it too is to fit.

Therefore it seems likely that the Type-003 represents the ‘full size’ Chinese aircraft carrier for the foreseeable future. The next ones may be longer, or greater displacement, but not wider. If they are, yet more infrastructure may need to be built.

The new aircraft carriers represent a significant increase in capabilities for the Chinese Navy. And also part of their emergence as a true blue-water force.