China's Growing Military: Much Ado About Something (Part 2)

For what purposes is China going to use its growing military? No, they are not going to invade Florida. (Just drill for oil some 50 miles from Spring Break). Nevertheless, they are asserting hegemonic power and it is primarily related to energy. They seek to use their military as a coercive tool to steer investment and trade in its favor and away from its competitors.

First, whether the Sprattly’s or other island chains from Japan to Malaysia, they are seeking a new version of the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere – but this has to do with energy first, second and third, most notably oil and gas resources, and a grand investment, trade and economic empire strategy. This entails deals with such regimes as in power in Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, and Burma, and establishing military bases and influence to ensure that such energy resources go one place and one place only–mainland China. Military power serves as a top cover for Chinese extended reach into these areas including economic, investment and military activities. This also extends to Cuba and central Asia.

Second, China apparently has a rather blasé attitude toward nuclear proliferation. In both his books on nuclear dangers, “At the Abyss” and “The Nuclear Express”, former White house official Thomas Reed explains that China has played a critical role in the nuclear weapons programs of North Korea, Iran and Pakistan, all of which sponsor, train, fund and arms terrorist groups, which could in turn be the witting source of a terrorist nuclear weapon according to the International Assessment and Strategy Center (IASC). In short, the PRC is operating a franchise of “Nukes ‘R Us.”

Some detail is in order. Early in the Bush administration, a freighter the BBC China was seized carrying a cargo of nuclear centrifuges from Malaysia to Libya, under contact between Tripoli and the Khan network. (This seizure led to the development and establishment of the Proliferation Security Initiative, which now includes over 100 countries). China was the key source of nuclear warheads and nuclear know how for the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. Specifically detailed drawings for the Chinese atomic weapon CHIC-4 was provided to the Pakistani government by Deng Xiaoping who “apparently decided to actively support the proliferation of nuclear weapons within the Third World”. According to Tom Reed:

The revelations from the BBC China…confirmed the opaque role of North Korea and the world’s new triangle trade, shuttling gas cylinders made in Pakistan, filled with uranium hexafluoride in North Korea and then delivered to Libya. The denouement in Libya also opened wide a window into nuclear Iran. the IAEA and the Western pres came to understand the massive scope of the underground centrifuge farm planned for Natantz (fifty thousand stages), the close links Iran enjoyed with uranium sources in Namibia…and the potential role of those high-tech South African mercenary refugees…Amidst all these exposures, the Chinese authorities were totally unhelpful, to the point of stonewalling any investigation into Libya’s nuclear supplier network.

These twin factors in Chinese military policy do have consequences for the US. As we seek, foolishly I believe, to tax ourselves to death with schemes such as “cap and trade”, China is locking up massive oil and gas resources that will not be available on the open market. If China and India, for example, use energy at a level now seen in the Czech Republic or the Republic of Korea, world energy demand goes up 6-fold. Even should the US reduce its gross energy consumption by fully 50% per capita, for example, our population is growing by over 3 million a year, and our economy has to grow close to 4% annually on average to generate the jobs needed to put America back to work and put our fiscal house in order. T. Boone Pickens is right–we have natural gas, we can produce nuclear power and we have oil. Why are we not developing these American resources given the emerging international scramble for energy now emerging?

And we have every interest in stopping terror sponsoring states–such as Iran, the Sudan and Pakistan, among others, from securing the nuclear weapons (in the case of Iran), or providing nuclear weapons (in the case of Iran and Pakistan) to an allied terrorist group for use against the US or its allies. In my view, this is the single most serious terrorist threat, along with the use of designer type bio-weapons here in America. Here China has been complicit as an accomplice to the terror sponsoring states, such as Iran, that are the chief threat to the United States. It is for this support of terrorism that we took down both the Afghanistan government of the Taliban, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. China’s military, however you count the beans, is a threat, both in its pursuit of energy hegemony and its association with the most serious terror threats we face. (Part 1)