RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-navy-china-taiwan-military-spending-great-power-competition-war-combat-beijing-11628784300?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

The Chinese military will likely attack Taiwan within six years, Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress in March, just before retiring from the Navy. More generally, he said, Beijing’s long-term objective—supplanting the U.S. and remaking the global order to benefit the Chinese Communist Party—will feature confrontation.

Adm. Davidson’s assessment is the clearest articulation of contemporary strategic realities by a major government or military official in the past decade. China is showing its ambitions, increasing its assertiveness in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and ratcheting up military pressure against Taiwan. The Chinese strategic tradition prizes both patience and decisive action when the balance of forces appears favorable.

The implication of Adm. Davidson’s assessment—and a similar one offered this spring by his successor, Adm. John Aquilino —is that any major reduction in U.S. combat strength, particularly naval power, will tempt the Chinese Communist Party to strike.

This assessment should inform the Navy’s recently announced “divest to invest” plan. The Navy will “divest” from older, larger platforms such as the Ticonderoga-class cruiser and reduce its large surface combatant force, including Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, by around one-third.

In turn, the Navy will “invest” in smaller, more numerous platforms, specifically a new Constellation-class frigate and a variety of unmanned surface combatants and undersea vehicles. The Navy will also speed up production of its Virginia-class submarines, the most modern in the fleet, and develop a yet-to-be-defined new submarine class. The Navy hopes “divest to invest” will make the fleet more distributed, more survivable and more lethal.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17619/china-illegal-actions-south-china-sea

“The Chinese government’s position on the arbitration is clear, ‘not accept, not participate, and not recognize’… The ‘arbitral award’ deemed by China as ‘a piece of scrap paper’ has long been thrown into the dustbin of history.” — Wu Shicun, President of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Global Times, July 12, 2021.

“China’s military recently deployed electronic warning and surveillance aircraft and helicopters on two disputed islands in the South China Sea in what analysts say is a sign that the People’s Liberation Army has begun routine air operations from the bases.” — The Washington Times, July 13, 2021.

In March, a huge Chinese fishing fleet descended on Whitsun Reef, which lies within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. The Philippine government called on China to cease “militarizing the area”.

China also claims sovereignty over — and has militarized some of — the Paracel Islands, which it has occupied since 1974, and are also claimed by both Vietnam and Taiwan.

It has been five years since the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in a legally binding decision known as the South China Sea Arbitration Case, ruled against Communist China’s claims to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea.

The Philippine government filed the case against China in 2013 after China seized a reef over which both countries claim sovereignty. In addition to ruling against China’s claim of historic rights to the South China Sea, the court found that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone by interfering with its fishing and petroleum exploration, as well as by constructing artificial islands in the Spratly Islands archipelago, which had caused “severe harm to the coral reef environment”.

China has constructed artificial islands around seven reefs in the Spratly Islands archipelago. The islands are central to Beijing’s apparent ambition to “have absolute control” over the South China Sea, which holds an estimated 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil in proven and probable reserves, in addition to maritime resources such as fish. Crucially, the South China Sea is also an essential sea route, which sees a third of the world’s global shipping pass through it every year. Already in 2018, US Navy Admiral Philip Davidson, then Commander of United States Indo-Pacific Command, said that China’s construction of the artificial islands meant that China is capable of “controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States”.

On the fifth anniversary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s decision, China continues vehemently to reject the ruling in its entirety. According to Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies:

“The Chinese government’s position on the arbitration is clear, ‘not accept, not participate, and not recognize.’ This has come to be widely recognized and accepted by the international community. The ‘arbitral award’ deemed by China as ‘a piece of scrap paper’ has long been thrown into the dustbin of history.”