Specifics lacking on your claim here, Todd. "Someone"? So you are unaware of the names cited and quoted. T'sk. Chi-Comm apologists often make the same vague claims.
Effectively, you are contradicting your earlier postures of concern. So will you admit that you ignore the national security threats to the U.S.?
Let me remind you of some the specific sources that are the "someones":
I.e., the Chinese PLA's very elite: such as Defense Minister Chi Haotian, Major General Zhu Chenghu, or General Ding Henggao, and General Xiong Guangkai...all of them threatening nuclear war and worse.
One of the more recent threats from just two years ago:
“We . . . will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”
General Xiong Guangkai
I remember how the apologists...some few right here at FR... were so sure that these "saber-ratling" "hawks" would get cashiered. In fact, they either kept their jobs or get promoted. Two years after firing missiles at Taiwan, Gen. Xiong Guangkai , then second in command of the People's Liberation Army, threatened to vaporize Los Angeles.
Keep in mind the gravity of this. A gravity which the Clinton State Dept. downplayed at all costs.
Consider the historical contrast. Not once during the entire 40-year Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. did any Soviet general threaten to vaporize an American city. It is certain that the Kremlin would have fired any officer who made such a statement, because of the threat to their "Peace Offensive" anyways.
So what finally happened to Xiong? PLA Gen. Xiong Guangkai remained second in command of the People's Liberation Army, the deputy chief of staff of the PLA right up through his retirement in 2005.
And if you think this was merely the last gasp of the bellicose "Old Guard", you should learn about the "Young Turks" coming up right behind them who are even more confident...explicitly in written analyses.
One such writing to consider was the 1999 communist army Office of the Central Military Command report on future nuclear combat with the United States:
"China is not only a big country, but also possesses a nuclear arsenal that has long since been incorporated into the state warfare system and played a real role in our national defense," states the Chinese military commission report...."In comparison with the U.S. nuclear arsenal, our disadvantage is mainly numeric, while in real wars the qualitative gap will be reflected only as different requirements of strategic theory. In terms of deterrence, there is not any difference in practical value. So far we have built up the capability for the second and the third nuclear strikes and are fairly confident in fighting a nuclear war. The PCC has decided to pass through formal channels this message to the top leaders of the U.S....
I should point out that the reports last assertion of a communique of the threat was indeed corroborated by the U.S. official who admitted receiving it, to wit: Chas W. Freeman, a former US assistant secretary of defence, testifying in Senate Hearings.
BTW: If you wonder how they can claim such an surprising ability:
It should be pointed out that they have now developed MIRV technology, and have a rapidly increasing number of advanced SLBMs, and now have well over 900 mobile intermediate range ballistic missiles freshly deployed...which we believe are stationed opposite Taiwan...
This stationing would be a convenient way to hide their true menace "in plain sight".
By way of comparison, this is far more than the total number of Pershing IIs we once deployed against the Soviet Union in Europe (Now dismantled without replacement capability).
So what is the hazard? Mobility. Their missiles could easily be secreted in containers undetected by us, and launched at the U.S. from ships at sea surrounding our periphery. And such a force couldbe be built up and easily stationed covertly from their numerous bases in Panama, and in the Caribbean. An attack we have left ourselves wide open to.
And this is still the Chinese Government's policies. According to Cheng Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat who defected in Australia less than two years ago, China is building up its nuclear forces as part of a "secret strategy targeting the United States", according to a former Chinese diplomat.
China's strategy calls for "proactive defense," and senior Chinese Communist Party leaders think that building nuclear arms is the key to countering U.S. power in Asia and other parts of the world...and this is not "deterrence" since the secrecy is employed so as to catch the U.S. completely off guard.
I suggest you would do well to discard your economic misperceptions of the two adversaries, Todd. Consider the excerpted analysis of :
Does China Pose A Threat?
March 19, 2007John J. Tkacik, Jr. , a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center.
On March 4, China’s National People’s Congress announced a 17.8 percent increase in the country’s 2007 military budget—$45 billion, the biggest ever annual increase in China’s military spending.
In “purchasing power parity” (ppp) terms, however, China’s effective military spending is far greater than $45 billion (or the $105 billion that the Pentagon suggests). It is closer to $450 billion, or 4.5% of China’s “ppp” GDP of $10 trillion, if the CIA’s estimates are to be credited. Having worked on these numbers 13 years ago, I am inclined to believe them. The “ppp” figure simply reflects the reality that a billion bucks buys a lot more “bang” in China than in the United States. Beijing’s 2006 Defense White Paper reports that for 2005 and earlier, the size of China’s “defense-related science, technology and industry increased by 24.3 percent, 20.7 percent, and 21.6 percent, respectively, over the previous year.” These are sectors not included in China’s published military budget. Within a few years, China will be America’s only global peer competitor for military and strategic influence. But don’t just take my word for it.
Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell said last month that the Chinese are “building their military, in my view, to reach some state of parity with the United States,” adding “they're a threat today, they would become an increasing threat over time.” McConnell’s predecessor, John Negroponte, noted last year that “China is a rapidly rising power with steadily expanding global reach that may become a peer competitor to the United States at some point.” In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described China as a budding “military superpower.”
Last October 26, one did not need Basil Fawlty’s “doctorate in the bleedin’ obvious” to understand China’s message when a high-tech PLA submarine surfaced within torpedo range of the USS Kitty Hawk. The capability to kill a U.S. carrier was clear. A month later, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] press said the sub was skippered by Admiral Ding Yiping, China’s top submariner, not by a lowly PLA Navy commander. Ding’s engraved calling card said “this operation was planned at the highest levels.”
China’s direct ascent “kinetic kill vehicle” test on January 12 could have only one possible target: U.S. space assets. If we Americans don’t allow ourselves to infer China’s “intentions” from that “capability” then we’re simply making excuses to think only happy thoughts about China.
Do you want evidence of Beijing’s “intentions”? Read what the regime publishes. In 1971, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai told the New York Times’s James Reston that China’s four strategic aims in Asia were Taiwan liberation, removal of the U.S. as a military power in Asia, removal of the massive Soviet troop presence on China’s borders and prevention of Japan’s rise as a military power. Last December, China’s “Defense White Paper” listed the same set of concerns with the understandable exception of the Soviet one. In short, an anschluss with Taiwan, predominance over Japan and the removal of the U.S. presence in the western Pacific is at the heart of Beijing’s “intentions.” The question is: What are we going to do about it?
Although this may be only one objective of the Chi-Comms (and the least of their full ambitions), it is one that needs to be prepared for in opposition. I agree with Tkacik. What are we going to do about it? So how much do you laugh off Mr. "Patriot"?
I guess you would have also disregarded this guy as well just because you deemed him an obvious flake and inconsequential...
