Beating the bogus 'China threat' drum
Baku, October 31, AZERTAC
It seems the military-industrial complex and hawkish politicians in the United States are intentionally aiming to spoil any diplomatic positivity between Beijing and Washington.
The United States Defense Department’s recently published “2023 China Military Power Report” represents another barb for ties between the two countries. The timing of the release of the report just days ahead of the Beijing Xiangshan Forum on defense and security issues, which started on Oct 29, may serve to spread concern among other nations in the Asia-Pacific region.
Yet, the fact remains that the report vividly illustrates the manipulated US Cold War mentality comprising of hegemony and unbridled rise of unilateralism, justifying Washington’s military coercion on allies and partners in attempts to contain, or even demolish, China. It is indeed a collection of the annual “China threat” theories in a bid to seek more funds from Congress and deceive regional allies.
In its three major parts, the report cites China's current military capabilities without any scientific data, hypes China's past military activities and speculates about Beijing’s future military intentions, laying out deliberate conjectures and slurs about China's military, far removed from reality.
The US report is exaggerated. The air space of East China Sea and South China Sea is geographically situated along China's coast, experiencing constant intrusion into China's territorial waters by US aircraft. Yet no such incident has occurred along the US coast, and any propagated incident has nothing to do with breach of US airspace by any Chinese military aircraft.
Contrary to the false US propaganda and self-centric estimations, China has peaceful defense strategies which safeguard its national sovereignty, security and development interests, as well as regional and global peace. China’s strategies are not directed against any particular country.
The US Department of Defense (DOD) report estimates China will likely double its nuclear arsenal, supposedly of about 500 nuclear warheads currently, to more than 1,000 by 2030, but fails to include any specific data to prove the tall claims. It seems comical that the US with more than 5,000 nuclear warheads says another nation poses a threat.
Ironically, the US has the biggest military budget in the world. The US high moral stance about Chinese military expenditure is also trumped by its own request to approve an $842-billion defense budget from the Congress for 2024, which is 20 percent higher than the combined defense budgets of the next nine countries, including China, Russia, India and the UK.
The US is developing a modern generation of strategic nuclear weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), sea-based strategic missiles and airborne nuclear weapons, as well as a new generation of nuclear submarines and strategic bombers. However, the DOD report did not hesitate to criticize China’s likely development of missile silos and work on ICBMs, which are far less numbered, exposing Washington’s enthusiastic advocacy of the so-called Chinese military threat theory.
Not to mention the US storing nuclear weapons in other countries, moves which represent real strategic threats to other nations.
It seems that hyping a China threat is nothing but a ploy to manufacture an opponent to maintain absolute military superiority by justifying Washington’s own uncontrolled nuclear weapons and missile expansion and to quash China's peaceful and transparent military development.
The US, as the world's largest nuclear state, has not made any commitment to no first-use of nuclear weapons, as China has done, and neither has the US pledged not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries and regions. Instead, Washington has been aggressive, emphasizing the pre-emptive use of nuclear force in the past and confirming its aggressive military posturing.
In July, the US deliberately deployed a nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine to South Korea for the first time since 1980s, and tried to disturb regional peace and stability through extended QUAD (a grouping of US, Japan, India and Australia), AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the US) and NATO reach in the Asia-Pacific. As Australian analysts point out, it is the US that carries a global security threat to others because of its uncontrolled nuclear superiority and military power.
Worse, the US keeps breaking its promise to the international community by withdrawing from legal instruments in arms control such as the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Instead, it has kept upgrading its "nuclear triad", and intends to deploy land-based intermediate range missiles in the Europe and Asia-Pacific.
While the US demonstrates obsessive Cold War mentality and the aim to maintain its military hegemony, the world demands peace and development. It is high time Washington revamps its military thinking, and start viewing and analyzing China's strategic intentions and national defense development objectively and rationally to advance common security for humankind.
Dr Mehmood Ul Hassan Khan
Executive director of The Center for South Asia & International Studies, Islamabad
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