WORLD AT WAR: 11.6.21 - Pentagon Rattled by Chinese Military

Pentagon Rattled by Chinese Military Push on Multiple Fronts...... WASHINGTON — China's growing military muscle and its drive to end America predominance in the Asia-Pacific is rattling theU.S. defense establishment. American officials see trouble quickly accumulating on multiple fronts — Beijing's expanding nuclear arsenal, its advances in space, cyber and missile technologies, and threats to Taiwan. “The pace at which China is moving is stunning,” says Gen. John Hyten, the No. 2-ranking U.S. military officer, who previouslycommanded U.S. nuclear forces and oversaw Air Force space operations. At stake is a potential shift in the global balance of power that has favored the United States for decades. A realignmentmore favorable to China does not pose a direct threat to the United States but could complicate U.S. alliances in Asia. New signs of how the Pentagon intends to deal with the China challenge may emerge in coming weeks from Biden administration policy reviewson nuclear weapons, global troop basing and overall defense strategy. For now, officials marvel at how Beijing is marshaling the resources, technology and political will to make rapid gains — sorapid that the Biden administration is attempting to reorient all aspects of U.S. foreign and defense policy. The latest example of surprising speed was China's test of a hypersonic weapon capable of partially orbiting Earth before reenteringthe atmosphere and gliding on a maneuverable path to its target. The weapon system's design is meant to evade U.S. missile defenses, and although Beijing insisted it was testing a reusable space vehicle, not a missile, the test appeared to have startled U.S.officials. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the test was “very close” to being a Sputnik moment, akin to the 1957 launching by the SovietUnion of the world's first space satellite, which caught the world by surprise and fed fears the United States had fallen behind technologically. What followed was a nuclear arms and space race that ultimately bankrupted the Soviet Union. Milley and other U.S. officials have declined to discuss details of the Chinese test, saying they are secret. He called it “very concerning” for the United States but added that problems posed by China's military modernization run far deeper. “That’s just one weapon system,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "The Chinese military capabilities are much greaterthan that. They’re expanding rapidly in space, in cyber and then in the traditional domains of land, sea and air.” On the nuclear front, private satellite imagery in recent months has revealed large additions of launch silos that suggest the possibility that China plans to increase its fleet of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists, says China appears to have about 250 ICBMsilos under construction, which he says is more than 10 times the number in operation today. The U.S. military, by comparison, has 400 active ICBM silos and 50 in reserve. Pentagon officials and defense hawks on Capitol Hill point to China's modernization as a key justification for rebuilding theU.S. nuclear arsenal, a project expected to cost more than $1 billion over 30 years, including sustainment costs. Fiona Cunningham, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist in Chinesemilitary strategy, says a key driver of Beijing’s nuclear push is its concerns about U.S. intentions. “I don’t think China’s nuclear modernization is giving it a capability to pre-emptively strike the U.S. nuclear arsenal, andthat was a really important generator of competition during the Cold War,” Cunningham said in an online forum sponsored by Georgetown University. “But what it does do is to limit the effectiveness of U.S. attempts to pre-emptively strike the Chinese arsenal.” Some analysts fear Washington will worry its way into an arms race with Beijing, frustrated at being unable to draw the Chineseinto security talks. Congress also is increasingly focused on China and supports a spending boost for space and cyber operations and hypersonic technologies. There is a push, for example, to put money in the next defense budget to arm guided-missile submarineswith hypersonic weapons, a plan initiated by the Trump administration. For decades, the United States tracked China's increased defense investment and worried that Beijing was aiming to become aglobal power. But for at least the last 20 years, Washington was focused more on countering al-Qaida and other terrorist threats in Iraq and Afghanistan. That began to change during the Trump administration, which in 2018 formally elevated China to the top of the list of defense priorities, along with Russia, replacingterrorism as the No. 1 threat. For now, Russia remains a bigger strategic threat to the United States because its nuclear arsenal far outnumbers China's.But Milley and others say Beijing is a bigger long-term worry because its economic strength far exceeds that of Russia, and it is rapidly pouring resources into military modernization. At the current pace of China's military investment and achievement, Beijing “will surpass Russia and the United States” inoverall military power in coming years “if we don't do something to change it,” said Hyten, who is retiring in November after two years as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It will happen.” The Biden administration says it is determined to compete effectively with China, banking on a network of allies in Asia andbeyond that are a potential source of strength that Beijing cannot match. That was central to the reasoning behind a Biden decision to share highly sensitive nuclear propulsion technologies with Australia, enabling it to acquire a fleet of conventionally armedsubmarines to counter China. Although this was a boost for Australia, it was a devastating blow to Washington's oldest ally, France, which saw its $66 billion submarine sale to Australia scuttled in the process. Taiwan is another big worry. Senior U.S. military officers have been warning this year that China is probably acceleratingits timetable for capturing control of Taiwan, the island democracy widely seen as the most likely trigger for a potentially catastrophic U.S.-China war. The United States has long pledged to help Taiwan defend itself, but it has deliberately left unclear how far it would go inresponse to a Chinese attack. President Joe Biden appeared to abandon that ambiguity when he said Oct. 21 that America would come to Taiwan's defense if it were attacked by China. “We have a commitment to do that," Biden said. The White House later said he was not changing U.S. policy, which does not supportTaiwanese independence but is committed to providing defensive arms. --------------------------------------------------------- Is This the Beginning of a New Cold War Between Biden and Israel? Jonathan Tobin - https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5043 As far as Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid are concerned, this week has brought a perfect storm of circumstances that threaten to complicatetheir hopes for a better relationship with the United States. Both men, each for their own reasons, see establishing a good rapport with President Joe Biden and his administration as one of the main goals of their coalition governmentthat took office in June. But blistering criticism was issued by the U.S. State Department on two issues: its renewed commitment to reopening a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem and settlement building in the West Bank. On top of that is the news that Iran is returning to nuclear talks in Vienna. They were body blows to hopes that their ousting of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,who is viewed by Biden's team as the devil incarnate, would ensure the president's goodwill and protect them against the kind of hostility that was the hallmark of U.S. attitudes towards Jerusalem the last time Democrats were in power. Perhaps they knew that the announcement that a few thousand new homes would be built in existing West Bank settlements, as well as the designation of six Palestinian non-governmentalorganizations as terror groups, would provoke Washington's ire. The two are also painfully aware that their attempts have failed to persuade the Americans to back off their determination to renew efforts to appease Iran and bring it back into a nuclear dealthat Israelis believe is a disaster. All the sappy rhetoric Bennett and Lapid could muster in public about their affection for Biden and their belief in his friendship for Israel flopped, as did their strongarguments and warnings about the folly of engagement with Iran that they delivered in private. On top of that the president's clear determination to reopen a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem to serve as an embassy to the Palestinians, even if he is willing to wait untilafter the Israeli coalition passes a budget in November, puts their government in peril of collapsing if they fail to stop something that undermines Israel's sovereignty over its capital. However, more important than the longevity of their rickety alliance of right, left, centrist and Arab political parties is something else. The question Bennett and Lapidneed to be asking themselves is whether, even without having Netanyahu as their antagonist, this administration is really prepared to return to the situation between the two countries that existed in December 2016. If so, the Jewish state is in for a rough ride in the coming years. And no amount of eyewash about a belief in a bipartisan consensus in America supporting the U.S.-Israelalliance will be enough to cushion the damage that an openly antagonistic administration could do. The arguments for a worst-case scenario for a rapid and steep decline in amity between the two nations are strong. The first concerns the personnel in place in the State Department and the White House. Much was and continues to be made of the warm feelings of Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan for Israel. And as much asthe trio has had many disagreements with Israeli leaders over the years, especially during the Obama administration, in which they all served, the claim isn't false. Unlike Obama, all three have a certain degree of affection for the Jewish state, and in Biden's case, the professions of friendship date back to the beginnings of his half-centuryof public office-holding. But his friendship has always been conditional. As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates admirably summed up his career, Biden has been wrong about every important foreign-policyissue for 40 years. He always tells listeners how much he loves Israel but also thinks he knows better than its leaders and its people about what is in their best interests. He believes in applying "tough love" to naughty Israelis who need American guidance. Biden also doesn't take kindly to criticism. His self-esteem is such that he regardschallenges to his diktats as insults. Netanyahu learned this when the announcement of home-building in Jerusalem in 2010 during a Biden visit led to a major incident between the two countries because of the then-vice president's allegedly hurt feelings. If anything, Biden has grown even more thin-skinned since then as his consistently short-tempered responses to non-sycophantic questions from citizens and journalists alikehave shown in the last two years. Biden and his chief advisers are not complete fantasists, so unlike former President Barack Obama, they don't actually expect to miraculously bring about a two-state solutionthat the Palestinians don't want. But should Bennett summon up the spine to resist Biden's will on the consulate or find the temerity to publicly challenge him on Iran, the blowback may have serious consequences. While the three men at the top are conditional friends of Israel who think they should save the Jewish state from itself, Biden's appointments at the next level of authorityaren't quite so affectionate. Some, like Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Robert Malley, the special envoy for Iran, are veterans of both the Clinton and Obama administrations and have a far less favorable view of the relationship. Sherman was the architect of disastrous nuclear agreements with both North Korea and Iran, and has learned nothing from her mistakes. Malley was, among other things, anapologist for Palestinian leader/terrorist Yasser Arafat and a leading advocate for a rapprochement with Iran. Just as troubling is the fact that throughout the federal bureaucracy, there are people, like, for example, Hady Amr, Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli and PalestinianAffairs, who reflect the views of the Democratic base on the Middle East. Younger and more in tune with the intersectional ideology and critical race theory ideas that dominate the academy and left-wing activist discourse, they view Israel with a degree ofhostility absent among older peace processors and diplomats. No less important a factor is Biden's need to be in sync with congressional progressives whose side he has taken on domestic issues. Rather than stand up to the leftist"Squad" and its anti-Semitic and pro-BDS members, Biden prefers to court them. This is not so much a matter of ideological affinity as it is of political necessity. He knows the left not only represents the future of his party, but has far more energyand influence with the Democrats' cheering sections in the media and pop culture than the aging pro-Israel moderates, even if the latter outnumber them. That means that any defiance of the administration from Israel will serve to provide an opportunity for the left to become even more assertive in their attacks on Israelunder the guise of defending the president. It makes for a daunting prospect for those in Israel or the United States who hold onto a belief that the coming years won't be a rerun of the nonstop battles between Washingtonand Jerusalem that characterized the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu from 2009 to 2016. Yet Bennett and Lapid are not without hope that they can keep the situation from getting out of hand. First, they can seek to hold Biden to his promise about keeping disputes with Israel private, rather than letting them play out in public as Obama did. If so, even the mostbitter of disagreements won't seem quite so bad. Second, they can hope that Israel's enemies will, as they have so often in recent history, overplay their hand and force Biden's team back into Israel's corner. Palestinianrejectionism and support for terror, and Iran's will to achieve its nuclear ambitions--as well as its assessment that Biden is too weak to stop them from achieving any of their goals--could ultimately prove decisive. Lastly, they may also count on the dysfunction of the Biden administration. In the past nine months, the Democrats have made a muddle of a host of challenges, includingthe disaster in Afghanistan, the crisis at the southern border, the collapse of the supply chain for products and economic malaise that, along with the coronavirus pandemic, won't go away. These issues have sent Biden's polling numbers deep underwater, despite beginning his presidency with a vast store of goodwill and support from those who hoped he representeda calming influence and competence. Unlike Obama, who had political capital to burn on futile Middle East policies and a pointless feud with Netanyahu, Biden has none to spare. Israelis can only hope that he is wise enough not to waste any on equally foolish spats with whoever is running Israel in the coming years--whether Bennett, Lapid or Netanyahu--thatwill do nothing to ensure American security priorities or the political prospects of the Democrats. Whether such hopes are vindicated is up to Biden and not his Israeli interlocutors. --------------------------------- 'Unprecedented' IDF Simulation Preps for Full-Scale War Scenario � Sharon Wrobel - https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5042 The Israeli army's Home Front Command together with the Defense Ministry's National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) on Sunday began a five-day training exercise alongthe country's northern border, to simulate responses to war scenarios and improve the readiness of emergency bodies. The exercise, dubbed "national home front," will include simulations of the effects of thousands of rockets fired during a potential conflict with Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorgroup. The war-like drill will implement the lessons learned from Operation Guardian of the Walls, the hostilities that took place between Israel and the Hamas terror group in May, as well as previous conflicts along the northern border. "This is an unprecedented exercise," said NEMA's Director Yoram Laredo, "This is the first time we have conducted an exercise of this magnitude, in full cooperation betweenus and the military." The full-scale drill will bring together emergency bodies from the Israeli police to Magen David Adom and the fire brigade, to prepare responses to multi-arena war scenarios-- including missile precision weapons, barrages of rocket fire, targeted shooting at nearby communities along the northern fence and an overload on hospitals in the north and the center of the country. Local government authorities and security forces willalso take part in the exercise. For the first time, a special logistics battalion created for the drill will be activated to support civilian spaces and the civilian population. A new alert system forresidents of northern Israel and those communities along the border fence will also be tried, with some alerts testing the effectiveness of changes to the warning time frame. Unlike in May, when Israel fought Hamas, the drill will simulate a conflict in Lebanon and Syria with the far more powerful Hezbollah, a terrorist army with well over 100,000rockets and missiles of different ranges, as well as a smaller but still significant quantity of precision-guided missiles, which have emerged as a potentially major issue for Israel. Some military officials have assessed it to be the second most serious threatfacing the country, after only an Iranian nuclear weapon. One of the simulations this week will imagine a missile strike on an industrial plant leading to an outbreak of toxic or hazardous substances in the region. As part of theexercise, the Home Front Command will work with all the emergency bodies to block the leak and evacuate the casualties. The IDF Front Command is also planning to simulate responses to chemical weapons attacks. Another exercise will simulate the effects of a massive barrage of rocket fire and and the need to evacuate communities along the northern border. For the first time, hospitalsin northern Israel will practice a state of emergency, during which they will have to deal with a large number of injuries. --------------------------------------------- China's New 'Satellite Crusher' - Is A Space Pearl Harbor Coming? � Gordan Chang - https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5049 On October 24, China launched its Shijian-21 into orbit. The satellite, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., is "tasked with demonstrating technologiesto alleviate and neutralize space debris." As Beijing sees it, American satellites constitute "debris." Shijian-21 has a robotic arm that can be used to move space junk--there are more than 100 million pieces of it floating around the earth--or capture, disable, destroy, orotherwise render unusable other nations' satellites. That arm makes Shijian-21 a "satellite crusher." Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, tells Gatestone that the Chinese satellite was launched into geosynchronous orbit, where manyof America's most sensitive satellite systems--those critical to Nuclear Command, Communications, and Control (NC3), surveillance, and military communications--are located. "Because the U.S. satellites in geosynchronous orbit are so far away from earth, they are both expensive and hard-to-replace," he notes. "Losing any of these systems, withno replacements on hand, would give China's military an unprecedented advantage in the event of an outbreak of hostilities." China has designed its new space station, Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center tells me, "to incorporate additional large military modulesthat can be equipped with lasers, microwave, or missile-based anti-satellite systems." In September 2008, China's Shenzhou-7 manned mission came within 45 kilometers of the International Space Station as the Chinese crew was launching a microsatellite, "anobvious simulated ISS-intercept mission," says Fisher. One of the veterans of that mission, Fisher tells Gatestone, is now the commander on board the Chinese space station. "They're going counterspace in a big way," said Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General John Hyten on October 28 at an event sponsored by the Defense Writers Group. Hyten,previously commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command and U.S. Strategic Command, said Chinese military officers "are doing all those things because they saw how the United States has used space for dominant advantage." "For many years, Washington has taken its space superiority for granted," Weichert observes. Complacency is not the only American disease, however. American blindness alsohad a role. At one time, America was dominant in space, and American political leaders decided to go slow on developing anti-satellite weapons for fear of triggering a competition. With the U.S. having the most assets in orbit, the reasoning went, the U.S.would have the most to lose with a race. That view was the product of a fundamental misunderstanding of Chinese and Russian attitudes. The misunderstanding also directly led to America falling behind in anothercrucial space technology. The U.S. was the early leader in hypersonic flight with the X-15 reaching Mach 6.7--6.7 times the speed of sound--in 1967. Now, however, America is about a half-decade behind China. The U.S. is also trailing Russia. "We had held back from pursuing military applications for this technology," Ambassador Robert Wood, U.S. representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, toldYahoo! Wood, as described by that site, "implied that U.S. officials had tried to avoid spurring a scramble for hypersonic missiles." All that American restraint did was to allow the Chinese and Russian militaries to grab commanding leads in the race to deploy these impossible-to-defend-against deliverysystems for nuclear weapons. In late July, Beijing shocked the Pentagon with an orbital test of a hypersonic glide vehicle. Similarly, America is now behind China in the ability to take down satellites. "The Shijian-21 satellite is a game-changer," says Weichert, who also produces The WeichertReport. "It is a real-world offensive capability that can hunt and destroy American systems and render the U.S. military on earth deaf, dumb, and blind." Space, of course, is the ultimate strategic high ground, conferring control of the earth. Therefore, American leaders should have known that China would try, as Weichertexplains, to build the capabilities "to first knock the Americans out of orbit and then to place their own systems there." The U.S. has the ability to catch up, of course, but big course corrections are necessary. For one thing, American satellites are easy pickings for the Chinese military.As General Hyten put it, "we actually put the president in a tough spot because we have a handful of fat juicy targets, while the adversary has built hundreds of targets that are difficult to get after." The result, the general said, is that America does not have "a resilient space architecture." A resilient architecture, Hyten correctly believes, would be composed of lower-cost surveillance satellites that, in the words of SpaceNews, "can be mass produced and deployedfast." Unfortunately, "the Department of Defense is still unbelievably bureaucratic and slow," Hyten observed. The Pentagon's bureaucracy "is just brutal." So don't count on theU.S. military, which has taken a decade to design a yet-to-be-launched survivable space network. Fortunately, there is also Elon Musk, a bureaucracy of one. His SpaceX is building the Starlink constellation of telecommunications satellites in low-earth orbit. When complete,there will be some 42,000 satellites that can be used by the satellite-dependent U.S. military when China has crushed, lasered, shot down, or bumped out of orbit America's military assets in space. Of course, China will also try to take down the Starlink constellation too. Beijing, Weichert tells Gatestone, is planning a "Space Pearl Harbor." ------------------------------- VISIT: PROPHECY WATCHER WEEKLY NEWS: HTTP://PROPHECY-WATCHER-WEEKLY-NEWS.BLOGSPOT.COM