Countercurrents: China’s New Weapons

2007-06-26

Richard Moore

Original source URL:
http://www.countercurrents.org/chuckman260607.htm

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
-- 

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