While the Pentagon has fallen dangerously close to the minimum threshold of its ammunition arsenals (it’s emptying them to help Ukraine); while few NATO member states are delivering on their pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defence; while in Germany the brawl between the Greens and the Liberal party is crippling the modernization of the armed forces (Paolo Valentino recalled). While all of this is happening in the West… it is in the East of the world where the arms race is unstoppable.
China unleashed it, and its neighbors, who feel threatened, are taking the consequences.
The numbers of this arms race are impressive, much more so than what is happening in old Europe. With most of the human population and economic wealth concentrated between Asia and the Pacific, what is happening in this strategic arena is even more important to the future of the planet than the war in Ukraine. The same Russian aggression against Ukraine continues to enjoy the full support of Xi Jinping for a reason that emerges from these data: in order to support the defense of the Ukrainian people against the aggressor, the Pentagon has equipped Kiev with such a quantity of Stinger missiles and Javelin supplies that it would take 13 years (at current production rates) to replenish America’s pre-war stocks.
If China invaded Taiwan today and the United States tried to defend the island, the Americans would run out of their long-range naval missiles (essential to repel a Chinese naval attack) in just a week. given the level to which their holdings have fallen.
This data makes the war in Ukraine a precious gift for Xi Jinping: Russia is sucking up resources the US needs in Asia.
All those Asian countries that feel threatened by China are taking the consequences. On the one hand, they are looking for guarantees and assurances about America’s ability to defend them. On the other hand, they do not trust American promises too much, protect themselves or form local coalitions with anti-Chinese functions. And military spending is increasing.
It starts with a reality that everyone in Asia is experiencing: the parallel growth of the Chinese military threat and Beijing’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy. Officially, the People’s Republic spends $300 billion on weapons, the second military budget after the US, which is $800 billion. However, official data only tells part of the story. The scale of Chinese war spending is larger than the official number because there is no clear boundary between civilian and military industries in China. For example, the largest telecommunications giant, Huawei, was founded and is still run by an officer in the People’s Liberation Army, the name of the Beijing Armed Forces. Many Chinese companies engaged in cutting-edge technologies are part of the military-industrial complex, so part of the “civilian” GDP actually helps strengthen the national war apparatus. In addition, US military spending is spread across the globe because Washington has formal commitments (treats like the Atlantic Pact that gave rise to NATO) that commit the Pentagon to defending allies and opening up bases in different parts of the world converse. China, on the other hand, is initially concentrating its resources primarily on establishing dominance in Asia.
However, Beijing already has a military fleet that exceeds the size of the entire US Navy: 360 Chinese military ships against 297 American, worldwide. An investigation by the New York Times summarizes further data on the strategic scenario in Asia. In 2021, China launched 135 ballistic missiles for its tests, more than all other countries in the world combined (outside war zones). Its stockpile of nuclear warheads is increasing from 400 to 1,000, and Beijing already has more land-based launch pads than the United States. The People’s Liberation Army has the world’s largest arsenal of hypersonic missiles. One of them, the Dong-Feng 41, flew across the globe in 2021. Capable of carrying nuclear warheads, these missiles are dubbed the “Guam killers” by the Chinese press because they could destroy the main American military base in the Pacific. the island of Guam.
The sharp increase in Chinese military capacity worries neighboring countries all the more as it is accompanied by the new foreign policy of the Wolf Warriors, as the diplomats raised under the leadership of Xi Jinping are known: spokesmen of an ever more explicit and aggressive nationalism. India and Vietnam, the Philippines and South Korea, Japan and of course Taiwan have paid the price for the escalation of Chinese diplomatic or military arrogance. Each of these countries has cost China’s claims to territorial expansion in recent years in the form of demonstration actions, encroachment on territorial waters or skies, or outright aggression. India has suffered numerous deaths in border clashes with Beijing’s troops. With the military encirclement last summer, Taiwan experienced the test of economic strangulation. The Philippine, Vietnamese and Malaysian fleets had to deal with enemy military maneuvers. Japan has suffered for the first time in history from Chinese missile launches in the waters of its Exclusive Economic Zone.
Beyond Asia, Australia in the Pacific has been the target of a growing Chinese spy network, and for criticizing Xi Jinping over Covid it has suffered commercial retaliation that has plunged several sectors of its economy into crisis (starting with the wine industry).
The results of this Chinese expansionism are ambivalent. On the one hand, Xi has achieved an effect similar to that of Vladimir Putin in Europe: he has united America and its allies. Just as NATO was strengthened in Europe by the war in Ukraine, many countries in Asia are consolidating their alliances with the USA. The Philippines has offered America new military bases to ensure US defenses in the event of aggression. Japan, Australia and India are intensifying military cooperation with the Pentagon. The best-known case is the Aukus Agreement, with which the British and Australian-Americans are building a joint force of nuclear submarines: These have a range that would allow the Australian Navy to intervene as far as the Taiwan area if necessary.
However, countries that feel threatened by China cannot assume that there will always be an America ready to defend them. Arriving at the White House, Donald Trump questioned alliance loyalty, including with Japan and South Korea: In the future, no one can rule out a return to isolationism, a policy that the United States has practiced throughout its history. Story. And even if the Americans wanted to continue defending their allies, they might not necessarily have the strength to do so.
Protecting Taiwan – according to many Pentagon experts themselves – may already be beyond their reach given the imbalance in power with China in this area. The Pentagon defines the Indo-Pacific as a “priority theater of war” in US strategy and maintains 300,000 troops in that part of the world, but they are small compared to the People’s Liberation Army, which has over two million troops deployed. For this reason, many Asian countries are making new alliances available to themselves or in different geometries, which must also operate in the event of an American absence. Japan has announced a 60% increase in its defense spending with a target of reaching 2% of GDP. Relatively speaking, that’s the same goal proclaimed by NATO nations like Germany and Italy (which actually don’t come anywhere close to that threshold), but since Japan has the world’s third-largest GDP, it means its defense spending will reach third place in the world. An example of new alliance geometries is the large number of bilateral defense agreements signed by Japan and India. The opening of a new Chinese military base in Cambodia and military deals between Beijing and the Solomon Islands are sparking a kind of race to countermeasures. All countries in this area are trying to protect themselves for a future where China will be ever closer, even militarily, and America… hopefully there will be, but we don’t know.
The preliminary outcome is not an ideal scenario for China’s long-term interests. By frightening his neighbors, Xi Jinping is accelerating and intensifying countermeasures aimed at curbing Chinese expansionism.