What Today's Taiwan and 1939 Poland Have In Common

As Bill Gertz wrote in Sunday's Washington Times, they're both tripwires for global war.

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

Unlike in the past, they've now got the means to do it, too:

In the past, some defense specialists insisted a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be a "million-man swim" across the Taiwan Strait because of the country's lack of troop-carrying ships.

"We left the million-man swim behind in about 1998, 1999," the senior Pentagon official said. "And in fact, what people are saying now, whether or not that construct was ever useful, is that it's a moot point, because in just amphibious lift alone, the Chinese are doubling or even quadrupling their capability on an annual basis."

Asked about a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan, the official put it bluntly: "In the '07-'08 time frame, a capability will be there that a year ago we would have said was very, very unlikely. We now assess that as being very likely to be there."

While that sobering thought is sinking in, you might want to review my past posts on the burgeoning ChiComm military threat (click here, here, and here). Interestingly, this threat, which has been building for years, is being discussed in the "mainstream" with increasing frequency, for the straightforward reason that it is reaching the point of no return:

China is building capabilities such as aerial refueling and airborne warning and control aircraft that can be used for regional defense and long-range power projection, General Hester said.

It also is developing a maneuverable re-entry vehicle, or MARV, for its nuclear warheads. The weapon is designed to counter U.S. strategic-missile defenses, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The warhead would be used on China's new DF-31 long-range missiles and its new submarine missile, the JL-2.

Work being done on China's weapons and reconnaissance systems will give its military the capability to reach 1,000 miles into the sea, "which gives them the visibility on the movement of not only our airplanes in the air, but also our forces at sea," General Hester said.

Beijing also has built a new tank for its large armed forces. It is known as the Type 99 and appears similar in design to Germany's Leopard-2 main battle tank. The tank is outfitted with new artillery, anti-aircraft and machine guns, advanced fire-control systems and improved engines.

The country's air power is growing through the purchase of new fighters from Russia, such as Su-30 fighter-bombers, as well as the development of its own fighter jets, such as the J-10.

General Hester compared Chinese warplanes with those of the former Soviet Union, which were less capable than their U.S. counterparts, but still very deadly.

"They have great equipment. The fighters are very technologically advanced, and what we know about them gives us pause for concern against ours," he said.

Missiles also are a worry.

"It is their surface-to-air missiles, their [advanced] SAMs and their surface-to-surface missiles, and the precision, more importantly, of those surface-to-surface missiles that provide, obviously, the ability to pinpoint targets that we might have out in the region, or our friends and allies might have," General Hester said.

The advances give the Chinese military "the ability ... to reach out and touch parts of the United States - Guam, Hawaii and the mainland of the United States," he said. [emphasis added]

We're moving beyond sinus-clearing to bowel-evacuating. Such a buildup suggests that the ChiComms have ambitions beyond "reunification" with Taiwan. And, sure enough....

China's rulers have adopted what is known as the "two-island chain" strategy of xtending control over large areas of the Pacific, covering inner and outer chains of islands stretching from Japan to Indonesia.

"Clearly, they are still influenced by this first and second island chain," the intelligence official said.

The official said China's buildup goes beyond what would be needed to fight a war against Taiwan.

The conclusion of this official is that China wants a "blue-water" navy capable of projecting power far beyond the two island chains.

"If you look at the technical capabilities of the weapons platforms that they're fielding, the sea-keeping capabilities, the size, sensors and weapons fit, this capability transcends the baseline that is required to deal with a Taiwan situation militarily," the intelligence official said.

"So they are positioned then, if [Taiwan is] resolved one way or the other, to really become a regional military power as well."

What could Beijing be after with such an enormous, deadly military machine? Well, Mr. Gertz doesn't quote the Pentagon as equating Red China and Nazi Germany for nothing:

For China, Taiwan is not the only issue behind the buildup of military forces. Beijing also is facing a major energy shortage that, according to one Pentagon study, could lead it to use military force to seize territory with oil and gas resources.

The report produced for the Office of Net Assessment, which conducts assessments of future threats, was made public in January and warned that China's need for oil, gas and other energy resources is driving the country toward becoming an expansionist power.

China "is looking not only to build a blue-water navy to control the sea lanes [from the Middle East], but also to develop undersea mines and missile capabilities to deter the potential disruption of its energy supplies from potential threats, including the U.S. Navy, especially in the case of a conflict with Taiwan," the report said.

Where did the Red Chinese obtain the technical know-how to make this "great leap forward"? Simple - they stole it from us.

Chinese spies in the U.S. are busy stealing whatever information, military or otherwise, they can get their hands on, and are under orders to gather information "no matter how trivial," a top defector says.

Speaking by phone to the Washington Times' intelligence-savvy reporter Bill Gertz, Chen Yonglin, until recently a senior political officer at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney, Australia, said, "The United States occupies a unique place in China's diplomacy."

He said that all Chinese government officials are ordered to gather information about the United States.

In fact, Chen said that most Chinese government activity in the United States involves information-gathering carried out by military-related intelligence officers or civilians linked to the Ministry of State Security.

And he also revealed that Chinese owned companies work hand in hand with their military complex – perhaps more disturbing in light of China’s bid for American oil giant Unocal.

"I know that China once got a heavy load of confidential documents from the United States and sent it back to China through the Cosco ship," Chen said, referring to the state-owned China Ocean Shipping Co. The information was "very useful" to China's military and related to "aircraft technology," he added.

I don't wonder. Given the stubbornly Sinofilic foreign policy that administrations of both parties have maintained vis-a-vie the PRC, even after the Tianenman Square massacre and the end of the Cold War when it no longer made the remotest sense, plus Bill Clinton's practically pawning off U.S. military secrets to Beijing for re-election campaign cash in 1995 and 1996, the ChiComms have had greater access to our "military-industrial complex" than the poor, sadsack Soviet commies could have ever dreamed of. Red Chinese military advances that were expected to take twenty-five years or more are now off (our) drawing boards and coming into actual deployment against us.

Chen delivered a number of other revelations, including these two most interesting tidbits:

*Beijing is trying to influence Australia's government through high-level political visits and favorable trade and by offering contracts on energy-related products. Their goal, he explained, is to force Australia to become part of a China-dominated "grand neighboring region" in Asia and to "force a wedge between the U.S. and Australia."

*Beijing is following the strategy of former leader Deng Xiaoping, who urged China to "bide our time, build our capabilities" - military as well as economic and political. "What that means is that when the day is mature, the Chinese government will strike back." He added that the danger of a war over Taiwan is growing. "That is possible as Chinese society is getting more unstable," he said. "Once any serious civil disobedience occurs, the government may call for a war across the Taiwan Strait to gather [political] strength from people."

Dismayingly - and tellingly - Chen hasn't exactly been welcomed with open arms by either the Aussies or ourselves:

Despite his insider information, Chen has been treated as a pariah by Australian authorities. Upon learning of his defection, Australian authorities refused to meet with him and instead contacted the Chinese authorities to inform them. Press reports indicated that the Australian government feared embracing Chen lest it draw the ire of communist China and harm trade relations.

Chen also requested asylum from the U.S. embassy. He was similarly rebuffed. [emphases added]

Frustrated and/or frightened yet? You should be. I wrote back in March of...

...the complete unwillingness of the West, bordering on a mass Stockholm syndrome, to even recognize, much less publicly acknowledge, that there is a ChiComm problem of any kind, never mind a burgeoning threat that could plunge the world into Armageddon. Adolph Hitler's bid for world power, which was also clearly telegraphed, was similarly ignored by Western democracies that simply did not want to confront unpleasant possibilities, thus making those possibilities virtual certainties.

Our defense establishment is finally beginning to do its part to sound the alarm before it's too late:

Michael Pillsbury, a former Pentagon official and specialist on China's military, said the internal U.S. government debate on the issue and excessive Chinese secrecy about its military buildup "has cost us 10 years to figure out what to do."

"Everybody is starting to acknowledge the hard facts," Mr. Pillsbury said. "The China military buildup has been accelerating since 1999. As the buildup has gotten worse, China is trying hard to mask it."

Richard Fisher, vice president of the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said that in 10 years, the Chinese army has shifted from a defensive force to an advanced military soon capable of operations ranging from space warfare to global non-nuclear cruise-missile strikes.

"Let's all wake up. The post-Cold War peace is over," Mr. Fisher said. "We are now in an arms race with a new superpower whose goal is to contain and overtake the United States."

I fear Mr. Pillbury's "everybody" is not all that comprehensive. Ask yourselves this: if the domestic and international Left is apoplectic, and the isolationist Right squeamish, over a minor guerrilla war in Mesopotamia, what are the chances of their closing ranks in support of another land war in East Asia with a "new superpower" brandishing a brand-spanking new, nuclear-armed, U.S.-financed military with the capability of wiping out not just America, but by some estimates, a third of humanity?

As this issue continues to grow in public prominence, expect to hear the chant, "Let Taiwan go," or some such equivalent, as our governing class goes into appeasement overdrive to duck a confrontation that perhaps not even George W. Bush is willing to take on.

And then head for the hills, because, as the Poles did and the Taiwanese will find out to their chagrin, some confrontations are inevitable - and delaying them renders eventual resistance much bloodier, and perhaps...futile.