Biden readies $100bn shopping list to fight America’s growing list of enemies
(Originally published Oct. 20 in “What in the World“) China’s President Xi Jinping issued a pointed challenge to U.S. hegemony, one almost guaranteed to drive hawks on Capitol Hill wild with defense-spending rage.
“Ideological confrontation, geopolitical rivalry and bloc politics are not a choice for us,” Xi said in a speech Wednesday opening Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which is celebrating the tenth anniversary of China’s program of developmental infrastructure credit. “What we stand against are unilateral sanctions, economic coercion and decoupling and supply chain disruption.”
Xi’s speech reinforced fears that the world has been divided again into rival blocs along the lines of those in the Cold War, when Maoist China and the Soviet Union oversaw an uneasy partnership leading a ragtag alliance of pro-Communist puppet states against the U.S., Europe and their own collection of defeated foes, former colonies, and aid recipients.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Beijing for the forum, along with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the only member of the European Union to attend. With them were the representatives of 150 developing nations, which is 77% of all the countries in existence. If this is another Cold War, the West may be outnumbered this time around.
One point of division is Israel: Russia and China have been conspicuous for their failure to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel but have instead criticized Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Gaza. Russia used the conference as a chance to propose regular three-way security pow-wows between Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang to counter the U.S. threat on the Korean peninsula. Russia recently began receiving resupplies of ammunition from North Korea to support its invasion of Ukraine.
Signs continue to mount that the war might expand beyond Gaza. A U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea shot down three cruise missiles fired from Yemen by Iran-backed Houthi rebels there and that could have been aimed for Israel.
After releasing a reel of videos showing Chinese fighter jets flying too close to its aircraft flying where China says is too close territory it claims, the Pentagon has released a report that China is building up its nuclear weapons faster than it thought. While the Pentagon projected in 2020 that China would double its 200-odd warheads by 2030, it now believes China already has 500 warheads and will have more than 1,000 by 2030.
The report, an annual report on the China threat Congress began obliging the Pentagon to submit in 2000, also said Beijing may be developing an intercontinental missile system capable of attacking U.S. cities with conventional explosives, instead of just nuclear ones.
Presumably, these weapons make it more likely that China might use them, since they don’t pose the risk of mutually assured destruction that nuclear weapons do. But the news will doubtless come as a shock to American urbanites worried they might risk only death and destruction instead of total annihilation in any conflict between the U.S. and China.
But the report lands as U.S. President Joe Biden prepares to ask Congress to approve $14 billion in emergency military aid to Israel and another $60 billion for Ukraine as part of a $100 billion package to fight democracy’s foes worldwide, including those menacing Taiwan and the southern U.S. border.