As former Representative Mike Gallagher writes October 7th in the Wall Street Journal, America must better understand our enemies. The U.S. cannot bribe them to be our friends. North Korea will starve and imprison its people while spending billions on nuclear arms. The Iranian mullahs will similarly murder and imprison their own people while maintaining a multibillion dollar terror network. Détente provided the Soviets billions in liberalized trade benefits even while Moscow “doubled down” on global revolution in El Salvador, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and Indochina.
Similarly, the U.S. and its allies gave market access to China thinking this would normalize the CCP.
But all we have done is use American consumption to deliver trillions in intellectual property, technology, and capital to the CCP with which to make “unrestricted warfare” on us.
Now Gallagher concludes that deterrence may yet keep China at bay but as the former head of the House committee examining the Chinese threat explains China is preparing for war, across the board. The U.S. needs to take this threat seriously.
Critical to this threat is the buildup of Chinese nuclear arms. For decades China watchers on the left reassured us that China’s economic growth was nothing more than a “peaceful rise” and its nuclear plans were benign. When three years ago the then commander of the United States Strategic Command laid out the “breath taking” Chinese nuclear expansion, the critics claimed the Admiral was exaggerating to justify building a more modern U.S. nuclear force.
Many on the right spend their day funding the Chinese expansion through raising trillions in investment capital from the United States and pocketing millions in fees.
But in return, the CCP facilitates the massive export of fentanyl and illicit drugs into the U.S. with its criminal Triads in American cities nationwide.
The CCP has what are termed “police stations” in the United States to muscle Chinese nationals, including tens of thousands of military age men who were admitted across our southern border with no vetting.
China has a near monopoly on both the mining and processing of multiple dozens of critical minerals the U.S. needs for its industry, grid, and military weapons, although just beneath our feet the United States has in great abundance--$12 trillion-- these same minerals which we have deliberately refused to develop or map or mine or process.
Now it is also true China is losing millions of people as its birth rate has plummeted. Many of its towns and small cities are empty of people and dilapidated. Internally it has tens of trillions of debt it cannot pay. It forcefully harvests organs from its Fulan Gong prisoners to provide for its gerontocracy of big shot party members. But without pause the nation is preparing for war as its modernized military parallels stockpiling of raw materials as its energy and food deficit remain its Achilles heel. These growing weaknesses may make China more not less reckless.
What then what purpose does China’s nuclear weapons serve? They cannot be used in warfare is the refrain from many. But China’s nuclear weapons will reach at least 1500 over the next few years, much faster than previously estimated. And such weaponry serves as a security umbrella under which China believes it can act with impunity. Similarly, it uses economic leverage on trade, rare earths, and other minerals to intimidate U.S. law makers and security leaders to stand down and restrain our policy options to deal with China. Its military might, especially nuclear weapons, serves to bully and coerce America into doing the bidding of the CCP, a point unanimously underscored by the conclusions of the Strategic Posture Commission report of October 2023.
A Ploughshares analysis some years ago ridiculed even the idea of China adding to its military might in order to wage war against the United States. After all it was argued China wants to sell America cell phones not drop bombs on its cities. That is true for now. But China is making war against America in other forms. The current $600 billion trade deficit and capital flows to China help build China’s military. In fact, the previous administration supported buying Chinese company stocks with U.S. Treasuries that in part funded the retirement of America’s military and civilian government workforce. SEC requirements that Wall Street reveal the particular Chinese companies held within mutual funds have been ignored. And while previous policy forced U.S. companies to make fossil energy scarce, expensive and hard to produce in search of global climate change nirvana, at the same time, China’s consumption of coal will according to former Secretary of State Kerry make it impossible to achieve any global carbon or greenhouse gas limits. And China owes the U.S. over a trillion dollars in sovereign debt, a debt on which they have illegally reneged.
Unless deterred, China will on a day of its choosing attack Taiwan and United States interests in the Western Pacific. They will also use EMP and cyber to attack our electric grid. They will simply cut off our mineral raw materials supply. They will seek to crash the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. From our own farmland, they will unleash a biological attack on our agriculture. They will quietly get out of our equity markets. And commit surreptitious terror attacks against our 35 critical infrastructure nodes—railroad crossings, pipelines, and key bridges-- previously identified by the Gilmore Commission without which we cannot run our economy.
The U.S. needs across the board deterrence to fight unrestricted warfare. The U.S. cannot have Wall Street send trillions to China to build their “military rise” and expect it to be “peaceful.” The United States must either take CCP threat seriously or suffer the consequences as we did in WWII and on 9-11.
Peter R. Huessy is President of Geo-Strategic Analysis and Senior Fellow, National Institute for Deterrent Studies.
