MAKICHUK: The ultimate madness of Xi Jinping
PRC leader's threats to invade Taiwan in 2027 could loom large during the Trump presidency
“When we build, they build; when we cut, they build.”
— Secretary of Defense Harold Brown
Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that he wants China to be fully ready for war with America in 2027.
The People’s Republic of China is building navy ships and adding to its nuclear arsenal at a breakneck pace.
China has never been a party to any arms limitation treaty, while Russia withdrew from the New START Treaty, the only remaining arms control treaty limiting the force size of any of the nuclear powers.
Make no mistake, Xi Jinping means business. He has chillingly squandered all the goodwill earned over past decades, which resulted in strong business ties and benefited China and the world.
He now appears willing to throw it all away.
As such, the chances of a conflict with China grows by the day, as it continues to harass the democratic island of Taiwan on a daily basis — by air in the ADIZ, and by sea with non-stop invasion drills.
Threatening to invade and capture what it really wants — Taiwan’s impressive computer chip firms. The so-called Chinese Dream, the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," is a complete ruse.
Don’t kid yourself, Xi doesn’t give a damn about the people of Taiwan or reunification, that is just a PR exercise, Kool-Aid for the masses.
He wants Taiwan’s manufacturing power — and appears willing to go to war over it.
Coercion vs. alliances. A bully that gets stronger every day.
To quote US Navy Adm. John C. Aquilino, “We haven’t faced a threat like this since World War II.”
“Their actions are becoming much more belligerent, their rhetoric is more clear.”
Xi is also fully aware, that America is rapidly losing the ability to deter it actions in the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere due to a weak defense industrial base.
A shortage of engineers, electricians, pipefitters, shipfitters and metalworkers at U.S. factories and shipyards are hurting the country’s ability to win a protracted war.
These challenges are already delaying the construction of frigates, submarines, destroyers and other ships.
This month, members of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party held a simulation of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the simulation began with a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan in 2026. Both sides suffered heavy losses, but the U.S. defense industrial base was severely stressed.
Shockingly, the U.S. military spent its entire inventory of Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles by the end of the first week and ran out of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range missiles after a month.
Taiwan, meanwhile, used up its entire inventory of Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles after a week, the Journal reported.
The U.S. spends roughly 3% of its gross domestic product on defense, but experts say this won’t cut it in today’s landscape where both China and Russia are on a wartime footing and collaborating with Iran, North Korea and other countries.
During the Reagan administration, the U.S. defense budget hovered around 6% of GDP to deal with the Soviet threat.
How worried should we be?
China is stockpiling fuel and food and trying to reduce the vulnerability of its economy to sanctions — steps one might take as conflict nears, the Financial Post reported.
Xi has said China must prepare for “worst-case and extreme scenarios” and be ready to withstand “high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms.”
All of this comes as Beijing has become increasingly coercive (and occasionally violent) in dealings with its neighbors, including the Philippines, Japan, and India —and as it periodically advertises its ability to batter, blockade and invade Taiwan, FP reported.
CIA Director William Burns told Reuters that the United States knew "as a matter of intelligence" that Xi had ordered his military to be ready to conduct an invasion of self-governed Taiwan by 2027.
And as China’s economy struggles, some observers — including U.S. intelligence analysts — are looking for signs that a peaking China might turn aggressive in order to distract attention from internal problems.
Other analysts think the risk of Chinese aggression is overblown, saying the danger can be managed provided Washington doesn’t provoke Beijing.
Others point out that China has not started a war since its invasion of Vietnam in 1979. Still others dismiss the prospect that China might fight in response to a slowing economy and other domestic problems, FP reported.
The bad news?
Xi has turned China into a personalist dictatorship of the sort especially prone to disastrous miscalculations and costly wars.
The military balance in Asia is also shifting in ways that could make Beijing perilously optimistic about the outcome of war.
While world leaders such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau naively hang on to Pearson-esque foreign policy values of the past — compromise and peaceful resolution — in the real world, only strength matters or makes sense.
And that strength, is in limbo.
Largely because something called “minimum deterrence” has been the de facto policy of the Biden folks. The White House has systematically downplayed the scale of the Russian and Chinese nuclear threat, much like it hid Biden’s slow mental decline.
When the New START Treaty was signed, the U.S. kept a large number of warheads in storage as a “hedge” in case the treaty failed. Uploading these warheads would double the number of deployed warheads at the cost of about US$100 million, or 0.0001 percent of the annual defense budget.
But while America’s rivals are arming themselves to the teeth, those U.S. warheads are still in storage today.
We only have to look to Ukraine, to see Putin’s advantage, and growing confidence due to Biden’s oblique threat to respond to a Russian nuclear attack with, at most, “a massive” conventional retaliation.
Hardly a deterrent.
Reading between the lines, America can’t match Russia’s thousands of tactical nuclear weapons on the continent. And that is a fact.
No wonder Putin grows stronger and bolder. He is holding the high cards.
The clock is ticking, my friends.
Is Xi Jinping bluffing on Taiwan? All eyes are on 2027, halfway through the Trump administration.
Will America be ready? Will the world be ready?