China's
New Weapons
By John Chuckman
26 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
This is an excerpt from
What's It All About? The Decline of the American Empire by John Chuckman
published by Constable & Robinson Ltd, London. Available from Indigo
Books, Canada.
In
military matters, China has taken America by surprise a number of times
recently, and surprises of this nature are not things with which Americans
deal well, some portion of America's political establishment becoming
irritable and uncomfortable. It is not clear how much of this is based
on genuine analysis and how much on the kind of paranoid reaction which
characterizes America's attitude towards Arabs since 9/11. There is
also the distinct possibility of traces of anti-Asian prejudice which
has a long history in America and in its policies. America's paranoid
reaction to a number of events in the past - the rise of Japan, Communism,
Islamic fundamentalism - reflect an arrogant imperial attitude of expected
easy superiority which does not welcome any clouds on the horizon.
China's explosion of a thermonuclear
warhead not many years ago that proved through chemical analysis of
atmospheric samples to resemble America's best at the time, the W-88
warhead, lead to a McCarthy-like campaign to track down a betrayer of
American secrets. Attention focused on a Chinese-American scientist
at Los Alamos Laboratories, and the New York Times, undoubtedly prompted
by the FBI, conducted a terrible campaign of innuendo. The FBI charged
the man with a ridiculous number of things, a favorite technique of
political police trying to get a plea on something, but the lack of
any evidence saw him released with his career ended and his reputation
muddied. It seems never to have occurred that China's new army of clever
scientists and engineers, always seen going about with the best laptop
computers in hand much the way British businessmen in London once all
wore derbies and carried umbrellas, might just have developed this technology
themselves, or largely so, of course benefiting from the bits and pieces
garnered from others that always support new work anywhere.
China has put a number of
satellites into orbit, including a manned one, and has a very ambitious
space program, including plans for landing people on the moon. The American
military sees near-earth space as its most important base for future
"projection of power" over the planet, its militarization
of space well underway, so China represents a potential challenge not
yet felt from India. The huge noise made by Republicans under Clinton's
administration over the remote possibility that China may have secretly
contributed to an American election gave us a heady whiff of the paranoid
fears that reside in some quarters of American society.
Most recently, China launched
a vehicle into space designed to destroy a satellite. An obsolete Chinese
weather satellite in an orbit about 500 miles above the earth, roughly
the same orbit as that occupied by many of America's fleet of spy or
global-positioning satellites, was the target for this apparently successful
test. The message was clear: China is now capable of destroying the
satellites which are now America's eyes for war. The news was especially
dramatic coming as it did not long after America's admitting that a
powerful Chinese laser, or other directed-energy beam on the ground,
had, a while back, swept an American spy satellite over China, temporarily
blinding it.
The satellite-killer led
to a lot of noisy accusations about China's aggressiveness and its militarizing
space, but these claims are quite inaccurate. The United States has
been militarizing space for many years, gradually and in many surreptitious
ways. The space shuttle program, for example, was always a military
one, the shuttles actually being very costly, inefficient vehicles for
science, sometimes even leading to delays in the launch of important
science projects.
America's fleet of military
and spy satellites, many of whose capabilities remain secret, is used
actively today as a weapon. Nations friendly to American policy are
given priceless data to support their efforts while opponents are left
at a serious disadvantage. This was done, as just two examples, in supporting
Iraq's invasion of Iran and in supporting Israel's assault on Lebanon
- both examples, by any sensible reckoning, of America's using these
sophisticated machines not for defense but to support aggression it
regarded as being in its own interest at the time.
Perhaps, the clearest militarization
of space is America's new anti-missile missile program, a program not
just of research but of deploying actual weapons. No matter how ineffective
the existing American system is - it has failed many tests, and independent
scientists advise us that the computer programming for such a system
is truly beyond our existing ability - America's spending new billions
on it has to make China and Russia uneasy. The same scientists and other
experts warned some years back that a new American "Star Wars"
program would start a new weapons race, and they were right. The Russians
have already announced the development of a new warhead that spirals
unpredictably when heading for its target. It also may put into service
a mobile version of its highly-accurate Topple-M intercontinental missile.
China's response includes
its ability to destroy spy satellites needed as eyes for such a system
plus an increase in the number and quality of its intercontinental missiles.
China's DF-31A missile is its first solid-fueled intercontinental missile,
meaning it can be fired more quickly than its existing liquid-fueled
ones, and it is the first Chinese intercontinental missile that can
reach all parts of the United States. It could be made mobile, and a
submarine-based version is under development. It should be noted that
China's nuclear deterrent until now has been extremely modest, consisting
of about two dozen known missiles plus some element of uncertainty as
to whether there are in fact a limited number more.
China used the anti-satellite
test to get America's attention for negotiations over the anti-missile
missile system. They did get American attention, there being a very
unpleasant reaction in Washington, but it is not clear that any kind
of negotiations will follow. China's immediate offer to negotiate a
treaty against the militarization of space was ignored. America's stubbornly-held
view of anti-missile defense is that it is part of its overall anti-terrorist
efforts, an argument which stretches credibility rather thin, especially
in view of plans for basing some of these anti-missile missiles in former
Soviet satellite states, plans that are highly confrontational towards
Russia. There has also been talk of American anti-missile missiles being
placed in Afghanistan, intended for Chinese I.C.B.M.s, again a highly
provocative idea, going towards creating uncertainty in China's sense
of its nuclear deterrent.
Another recent military surprise
from China was the unveiling of the new Jian-10, swept-wing fighter.
The project to develop this plane apparently was a closely kept secret,
hence the surprise at its appearance. It is the same general type of
fighter represented by America's F-16 or the Eurofighter Typhoon or
Russia's MIG-29, although its capabilities are not well understood.
Whether or not it meets the performance standards of these other front-line,
supersonic fighters, the plane represents a remarkable technical and
manufacturing achievement by the Chinese, portending also the day when
China learns to compete in civil aviation. China's current military
philosophy of husbanding its resources for only the kinds of projects
best fitting what are deemed its greatest future needs has apparently
permitted it to compete in this costly field of high-tech aviation which
includes only a small number of nations.
China's new investments in
its military are, like so many things about China, heavily criticized
by the American establishment. The truth is they represent a small fraction
of what the U.S. spends, no matter what accounting you use. Widely accepted,
published data put China's military spending at about 10% of America's,
although some say it may be about half again more than that through
hidden spending. They may be right, but they ignore the reality of a
great deal of hidden spending in America, particularly when it comes
to so-called black programs, and the unquestioned fact remains that
America accounts for fully half of the entire planet's military spending.
China's new spending is to
a considerable extent driven by what it sees as American imperial attitudes
and behavior. Recall the incident of the American spy plane flying right
up against Chinese air space early in Bush's administration and being
forced down by the Chinese. This was an extremely provocative act, somewhat
resembling the flight of an American U-2 over Russia just days before
a scheduled summit between Eisenhower and Khruschev. During the first
hours of this recent, smaller crisis, the new Bush administration took
a hard-line approach, making no apologies (a Chinese pilot had died
bringing the spy plane down) and demanding the plane and its crew be
returned immediately. After a while Bush relented, reportedly after
his having consulted his much more knowledgeable father, and took a
more accommodating approach. China then promptly allowed the crew to
be flown home and returned the spy plane, after a bit of time, disassembled
in a crate, mimicking a much earlier American exploit, one that undoubtedly
had provided many laughs over the years at the Pentagon, when a defecting
Soviet pilot landed one of the U.S.S.R.'s most advanced fighters in
Japan. No one knows how successful the Chinese were in studying the
spy plane's top-secret electronic gear, but generally such machines
are destroyed by explosive devices detonated by the crew when crashing
or being forced to land. Things can be learned even from demolished
mechanisms. Then again, those devices don't always work.
China has not challenged
American world leadership, nor has it set it as a goal to be able to
do so, but this incident of the spy plane was interesting for a number
of reasons, mainly in that it demonstrated China's willingness to confront
America behaving aggressively in China's own backyard. Had it come to
shooting, China could not have won, but much of the world's public opinion
was on China's side in what clearly was reckless American behavior.
Few Americans appreciate the extent to which such high-risk behavior
characterized American activity during the Cold War. Intrusive American
military over-flights of the Soviet Union in the 1950s were common,
indeed Krushchev was irritated and angry over the extent of these flights
which Eisenhower observed once would have started a war had the Russians
behaved the same way over the territory of the United States. There
were also many confrontations with nuclear submarines, including a number
of scrapes and collisions owing to close approaches on Soviet boats.
Indeed, it has been reported, and there is some evidence from photographs
for believing, that the advanced Russian submarine, Kursk, which sank
during tests in 2000, sending its crew to a slow death, was the result
of a torpedo fired in error by an American commander whose boat was
closely observing the Kursk's maneuvers. If so, it might help explain
what many regard as a rather kid-gloves approach Bush has taken towards
the Russians despite a belligerent history and many differences over
policy.
This is an excerpt from What's
It All About? The Decline of the American Empire by John Chuckman published
by Constable & Robinson Ltd, London. Available from Indigo Books,
Canada.
THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN
EMPIRE
AND THE RISE OF CHINA AS A GLOBAL POWER
by John Chuckman
Magpie Books, London
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.