Preparing for the terrific war he anticipated, British General (later Field Marshal) Sir Henry Wilson spent as much time as he could touring Belgium. He did this in anticipation of a German attack through the Low Countries that the British Army would be tasked with helping to stop. But he was largely alone in the urgency with which he studied the issue. In 1910, Wilson commented upon the lack of interest British officers displayed in the topography of Belgium; he suggested presciently that “most of them may be buried there before they are much older.”
Wilson’s recognition that the British Army had to prepare for war with a determination and focus that were absent before the Great War is vitally important today for the United States military to recall. It too lacks the focus and interest in Belgium’s topography, if you will, in the fight against the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
July 2024 has echoes of July 1914 regarding a quickening pace and intensity of crises and, as General Wilson identified, an insouciance of the U.S. military to the threat, with some important exceptions like U.S. Air Force General Mike Minihan, the Commander of Air Mobility Command, who warned in a leaked January 2023 memo of likely conflict in 2025.
The most recent manifestation of these winds of war was this past Wednesday, July 24, 2024, when Russia and the PRC conducted an unprecedented joint strategic bomber patrol in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Two Russian TU-95MS Bear bombers exercised with two People’s Liberation Army Air Force Hong-6K bombers (derivatives of the Russian TU-16 airframe) and were escorted by Russian air force Su-30SM and Su-35S fighters. This flight was the eighth such joint air operation between these allied nations and marked the first time PRC bombers had ever entered the Alaskan ADIZ.
While the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) dispatched U.S. F-16s, F-35s and Canadian CF-18 fighter aircraft to intercept the Chinese and Russian strategic bomber force, incredibly, NORAD’s press release stated that “Russian and PRC activity in the Alaska ADIZ is not seen as a threat.” It is hard to comprehend such a statement given the PRC characterization of the flight as being a “strategic patrol”—a euphemism for nuclear warfare training.
This joint strategic air operation also follows on the heels of two other military operations that demonstrate the depth and threat of the Sino-Russian alliance. The first was the mid-July patrol by four PLA Navy warships into the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Gulf of Alaska, as well as last week’s joint PLA and Russian Navy exercise in the South China Sea. The level of military cooperation between the PRC and Russia, from the strategic to tactical levels, is not something to be dismissed as “not seen as a threat.”
These events are of great significance because of the clear and unambiguous signal Beijing and Moscow are sending to the U.S., first, that Washington has weak leadership from whom the PRC and Russia do not fear any strong response to their attempt at nuclear coercion. Second, that they are balancing against the U.S. The strategic bomber patrol conveys that the U.S. is targeted by both nuclear great powers who are explicitly telegraphing to the U.S. and all global audiences that they are the dominant force and are prepared to unseat the U.S. as the world’s superpower.
In addition to these combined military operations, this month also witnessed the NATO summit in Washington, D.C. and the PRC’s response. We have warned in these pages that those Europeans in NATO who are reluctant to address the PRC threat need to learn what happens out of area does not stay out of area. The PRC’s prodigious economic and military growth and political influence occurred out of area, but it is not staying out of area.
In a powerful signal, the PLA conducted an 11-day military exercise in Belarus, a satellite and firm ally of Russia. The PRC-Belarus exercise was termed “Eagle Assault 2024” and just happened to coincide with the NATO Summit—not a coincidence by any stretch. The exercise demonstrated that the PRC is able to project military power to NATO’s doorstep. In fact, it is centered on Brest, which is close to Belarus’ border with Ukraine and only some 5 kilometers from Belarus’ border with Poland. As with the strategic bomber patrol, this exercise reveals the PRC’s hegemonic ambitions and hyper-aggression that either must be confronted by the U.S. and its allies from Ottawa to Manila or will see the world subjugated to a new world order where all decisions and control are made in Beijing.
Whether a U.S. ally is in NATO or is not, the PRC threat is the dominant one today. The threat of the PRC and Russia in a military alignment, condominium, or alliance is a major threat to the U.S. as it presents the U.S. with a multiple front war problem that it has not faced since the Cold War. The threat of two major theater war operations should compel the U.S. government to plan and prepare for such a threat, which clearly stretches U.S. capabilities beyond what was planned when procurement decisions were made years ago in a much more benign strategic environment.
The strategic environment is not going to evaporate out of some misguided belief in the power of engagement or the hope that the PRC’s economy or the CCP will collapse. As the PRC’s fiercely nationalistic press organ, Global Times, taunted after the strategic bomber patrol, “If the US feels uncomfortable seeing a Chinese military presence on its doorstep, it should get used to it, or reflect on its own military presence on China’s doorstep, which poses much greater security concerns to China.” What is needed is a realistic view of the strategic trend line that is transforming the security situation in the Pacific. The increasing hyperaggression of PRC needs to be addressed. The number of exercises and the form of those exercises indicates the PRC’s military capabilities are evermore formidable. Americans do not want a contemporary coda to Wilson’s great insight ever to be realized. However, if we fail to respond to this clear and present danger, it may be said of American forces in the Indo-Pacific that they will be sleeping beneath the mighty, foaming ocean deeps.
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James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are authors of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.
The Biden/Obama Regime managed, in record time, to created a super villain that rivals something that Marvel Studios would even have had difficulty inventing using AI and digital rendering techniques. It is real and its flamboyance is only matched by its hubris and stupidity. It is based on the number of wealthy power players they bought off that enabled them to contribute to the 2020 steal and coverup.
The Sino-Russian concoction, like every other military power that has become legendary in their own minds, can be taken down quickly just the way America is being taken apart and destroyed… from the inside. It was American purchasing power that off loaded manufacturing to China, which enabled and empowered China militarily. China still needs American consumers to buy the bulk of what we allowed them to create. Russia, with real competition in the oil market, would be loosing the Ukrainian war as fast as Italy lost their colonial war with Ethiopia. Economic wars, using capitalism, and not fascism, is what Donald Trump was bred to do.
However, think what the last four years has done to America domestically? Not only could America lose a war with the Sino-Russian axis but in order to win it a nuclear deployment would have to proceed beyond threats and a Kamala/Obama regime, as hapless weaklings, in order to avoid that, would be happy to sign any treaty as long as it included a commitment to a green deal that left all of the heavy equipment and battery construction to China and Russia except for what America would be permitted to do using immigrant labor that, as a new Sino-Russian colony, would be subjugated to work for wages that would be less than workers in Beijing would be paid. And the main stream media would be celebratory. Every mind wrenching event, from the Ukrainian conflict to October 7, did not have to be. And from what we have experienced it is easy to predict that the worst may be yet to come.
What China and Russia are conveying goes deeper than what most analysts understand. They are whispering, very loudly, to those who have been bought on the inside, that if you like the power, the money and the associated prestige don’t allow Donald Trump to win. Do anything you need to do because if he wins he will turn off the spigot and that is what we will be forced to do to you even if we have to do it the hard way.
The authors’ concern about the PRC in collusion with Russia is not lost on the readers of AG. In fact, some readers and commenters–yours truly among them–are probably as alarmed, or more so, than Messers Fanell and Thayer.
The problem is that the Ruling Class, which counts the Pentagon among its many devoted courtiers, does not see this threat. But it is not because our masters, comfortably ensconced in DC, along the coasts and in tony enclaves secured from the icky minions they despotically rule, are situationally unaware of danger or threats.
Quite the contrary, our Ruling Class is quite perceptive to “threats”. It’s just that the PRC (Russia is a different issue entirely–and a different comment) is seen as more of a kindred ally than a genuine threat.
Shockingly, the “threat” that terrifies the Ruling Class are those defiant alt-right, MAGA, Christian Nationalists and nebulous “White Supremacists” littered across our great land. Thus, rather than worry about the actual threat of the Russian bear or the Chinese dragon, our Ruling Class prefers to tilt at the imaginary windmills of a domestic enemy that isn’t.
That’s because it works on the already indoctrinated voters. It is a necessary fabrication to inflate the illusion fostered by Affirmative Action that blossomed to become DEI. They should be terrified. Who else will stop them? They know who we are counting on.
Democrats have lived off of the loyalty they get from women and blacks for a very long time. You don’t get to do that without demonizing others as part of the process.
Trump picked Vance as his VP. Had the reaction to the Olympics’ “Last Supper Ad” turned out ok I would expect Harris to pick a trans VP. The Bush beer ad and Target Store ads never cut it but eventually they expect that to be a norm. They may lose this time around but the public school system will double down on their indoctrination techniques to allow employment of several additional trial runs prior to 2028 to see how they can pull something off next time around. People are normally trained to think by culture. The left is about changing the culture, not by Constitutional means but, via Hollywood, social media and MSM propaganda. But first and foremost is education. The unions control education from K1 to K12. The colleges and universities polish off what they have been provided with. The graduates enter the world convinced that they have to eliminate all beliefs that conflict with their own even if it entails making friends with demonic radical Islam. After all Churchill and Roosevelt did so with Stalin and in the process stood by while the liberty of half of Europe was sold off into economic slavery and destitution.