It is not a matter of if, but when China will invade Taiwan.
That is the publicly expressed opinion of Rear Admiral Mike Studeman, the top intelligence officer (the J2) for the U.S. Navy’s East Asia Command (NMCEAD). Moreover, Studeman said in an interview with The Daily Wire Friday that China represents a threat not only to Taiwan but on multiple fronts in the western Pacific.
Worst of all, he thinks we’re too late to stop an attack on Free China.
“We are too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy. Too late in realizing the mortal danger. Too late in preparedness. Too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance,” Studeman told the online publication.
Chinese leadership has made no secret of its desire that the country supplant the U.S. as the premier world power. It has achieved that level of competitiveness the old-fashioned way: By lying, cheating and stealing.
In the one major failure of the Trump administration, China suckered the U.S. into deferring the increase of tariffs in 2019 not once but three times. The president believed he had a trade deal, but after the final deferral on October 11 that year in an effort to save the agreement, China claimed just a week later it had never agreed to buy billions in U.S. agricultural products.
President Trump reluctantly walked away from what was actually no trade agreement at all. The deferral of tariffs was lifted on October 22.
It was just weeks later that the CCP virus came to the shores of the U.S. and Europe — hand-delivered, so to speak, by nearly five million travelers from Wuhan who at the time could not leave their central Chinese province for travel to any other location in China.
That hardly appears to be a coincidence.
Couple it with the lingering evidence that the CCP virus was not a “leap” from bats to humans but most likely engineered in the Institute of Virology in the city of Wuhan and — based on reasonable assumptions tied back to the failed trade deal and subsequent tariffs — released the virus as a bioweapon aimed primarily at the U.S.
Because of China’s refusal to cooperate with demands for international inspection of the lab and its records, we will probably never know that for a fact.
China’s intentions to control entire populations are also no secret. The violation of Hong Kong’s autonomous status and the crackdown on demonstrators and dissidents resisting the communist takeover of the city paints a picture of what China’s control of Taiwan and other southwestern Pacific targets may look like.
For far too long, the trope common to the U.S. Department of State’s China desk is that China doesn’t really know what it wants, that its leaders haven’t yet worked out how far the communist nation’s influence should reach. That is patently false and a dangerous assumption to continue to use in the formation of our foreign policy.
In their book The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China, Ethan Leib and Baogang He refer to Chinese President-for-Life and Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping as “China’s Machiavelli,” and that like the 15th and 16th-century Italian diplomat, philosopher and politician Niccolò Machiavelli, Xi wants to be The Prince, the ideal leader described in a political treatise Machiavelli wrote. It argued the only concern for a leader is acquisition and possession of power while maintaining the state.
Xi’s major exercise of that power was his violation of the British treaty making Hong Kong autonomous from Chinese rule for what was supposed to be a 50-year period, starting in 1999 and not to end until 2049. Very likely his thirst for power will attempt to engulf Taiwan sooner rather than later. Such an effort would undoubtedly engulf the West in the conflict, as Taiwan will not fold easily nor quickly and the battle will be bloody.
It likely will not stop there.
China has created territorial disputes with four of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations: Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Brunei. — even as western media and politicians ignore the bullying and intimidation being used in what are thus far strictly diplomatic clashes, seasoned with a dash of threats of violence.
China has even made overt warnings against Australia and New Zealand, threatening both with nuclear missile strikes and Japan, disputing ownership of the Senkaku Islands. As reported here last week, China is making inroads to dominate Afghanistan as well, hoping to create a modern overland trade route to Europe. Or more likely, a highway to transport an invasion force.
Xi Jinping and the CCP are now punctuating their threats and designs on world power through the development of new nuclear weapons systems that may outstrip U.S. technology.
The Asian superpower is looking at building “nuclear-powered underwater drones and nuclear-powered cruise missiles,” Richard Wood, the U.S. Envoy to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, said Monday in a phone interview with America’s Conservative Voice. Woods added he does not believe the U.S. has either weapons system in development or deployment.
“If they develop weapons of that type, it will change the balance of power,” he said. “Those kinds of weapons would alter strategic stability throughout the world, starting a new arms race.”
Following similar comments made by Woods last week, many experienced arms experts said that no U.S. official is making such claims. They further asserted Woods may be part of the effort to draw China into talks with the U.S. Nonetheless, they agreed, the potential for China to acquire such weapons is troublesome.
U.S.-China talks are not in the offing, the last such effort ending in disaster for Biden’s administration at an Alaska diplomatic conference March 18. Such talks are vital to an effort to avoid a worldwide arms race. That would be costly, dangerous, and of no benefit to anyone.
By: Mike Nichols
“Mike Nichols is a conservative, a patriot, U.S. Army veteran, behavioral therapist, political enthusiast, sports fan and writer living with his beautiful wife Liz in the Heartland. He has a regular blog at https://mikenichols.substack.com and a Facebook presence at https://www.facebook.com/AmericasConservativeVoice.Substack.”
