I have always believed in the debilitating inferiority of the CCP-China’s war fighting machines and now I also believe the same as true even in this Asian hegemon’s strategic deterrence. National security and even war hawks in the U.S. would of course not easily say this in public, for various reasons, in ways the Communist Party of China’s (CCP) leaders would rally the Chinese people under their authoritarian and oppressive-repressive regime. However, I also believe that CCP-China is not a paper-tiger superpower, as some military and political analysts suggest.
The wars in the Middle East (versus ISIS, Israel-Iran, Israel-Hamas, in Ukraine, and Pakistan and India) again demonstrated that greater potency of war fighting machines and systems to a great extent dictate battle and strategic outcomes. That superiority in intelligence and espionage can be decisive if coupled with effectively networked hard power, extraordinary willpower of the leaders, of the population and soldiers (whose resolve is of course reinforced by their belief in their leaders and love of their country). In all of these, deep and broad historical experiences in all domains of war further multiply the ability to achieve objectives and victory because tactics and strategies can’t be based on mostly theories, doctrines and studies of wars over the millennia alone.
I also argue, and this is essential, that a more socially, politically, economically and culturally stable society makes a military more effective and potent than what basic numbers and a simple matrix for measures of hard power would suggest. (I am reiterating it here, even as I have discussed this in another article in this website, because I am practically lobbying for the interests of the Philippines, in terms of prioritization in the new configurations of aids and assistances of the United States government under President Trump.)
On this — imagine the non-Han Chinese minorities, subjects of a communist racist oppressive dictatorship. And even among the Han supermajority Chinese population, who have been exposed to and who know the much better realities in the affluent Western societies — would anyone think native Tibetans, Uyghur Muslims, Mongolians even Taiwanese, believe that they have a morally legitimate government in their oppressive communist system led by a dictator?
I’m not sure some of my readers here are aware of the brain drain that happened in Russia in the first few months and years since the attempted invasion of Ukraine. That also happened, not in the same scale, among the elite class of scientists and engineers in the fall of Soviet Union more than 3 decades ago. In contrast, an existentially threatened Britain and later on, America, saw its most brilliant scientists, mathematicians, engineers, inventors, creative technicians and industrialists in all of the academia, private and public sectors get their acts together to help their soldiers defeat an impossible Germany of Hitler, and in the case of the U.S., Imperial Japan in Asia.
Moral authority, I have always argued, is superior to any other basis for credibility and legitimacy of a government. This is simply not practically achievable in a communist government and system. To common people, without deep academic and philosophical kinds of thinking, but quite informed, communism is simply equated to murder or deaths of tens of millions (of their very own people) by Stalin and Mao Zedong of communist China. Same tragic history in communist Cambodia. And need I say North Korea, China’s closest ally, of today?
Basic (theoretical, for lay people like me) and practical research base of a nation
Today’s military power is, as ever, anchored and intertwined to economic power or capability. An infrastructure for basic and applied science research in both the public and private sectors, including in the academia, underpins the sustainability of rapid building of hard power projection capabilities, more than ever, especially in the advent of AI (still early phase of the revolution which overall direction even the world’s top industry experts and research scientists themselves could only speculate about).
If what I want to think as more consequential and resilient is, and not quantity or statistics for patents and published research papers, I say the United States will remain the most consequential on this. On top of that, think Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Scandinavian countries and rest of Europe, Australia being in the American research and academic ecosystems too. To readers who are just like me, lay person on this, I say that the extent of a country’s realizable technological advances and economic windfall in large part rests on the basic and applied science research base.
There are peculiar cases, like that of Russia being strong on basic science research base, but relatively weak in reaping its economic benefits. China and India do have hundreds of thousands of students in all the U.S., Japan, Europe and the rest of the West. But PhD students from China is for years now limited to only a few thousands at least in the U.S.
Geography, vicinity
The United States is securely in between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But the advent of hypersonic missiles changed the calculus on this. However, what is true for adversaries like CCP-China, the ability to strike the American homeland in just a fraction of time versus the non-hypersonic intercontinental missiles, is even more true for the United States as it can strike CCP-China targets in same fraction of time, and less if these weapons are stationed in China’s near-vicinity in Asia. China also has to contend with India, Japan and South Korea, and even white Russia (we live in a racist, tribalistic world, still, I also think of this) with its fears of China later in the future attempting to seize chunks of Siberia or whatever other reasons and triggers, in a major global war.
Energy security
A prolonged, years-long conventual war, in a regional conflict or global war, means CCP-China runs out of fuel. Blockades of sea lanes, destruction of strategic stockpiles and pipelines, these debilitate China regardless of its formidable renewable green energy capacity now. (It’s 1015pm, I’m hungry now, let me have dinner first, to continue.)
Space domain
China is a latecomer on this. But it is fast catching up. However, as in other domains, systems integrations, as with President Trump’s Golden Dome initiative (multi-layered missile defense shield) is key. In the U.S., the collective of private sector technological capabilities in private initiatives alone outclass that of China’s entire government program, not necessarily in kinds and scale of goals (commercial versus national). The pipelines for the required advancements in technologies for planned future projects are broadly well established since a long time ago. Japan, and each and collective of Europe’s leading technological and scientific powerhouses of Germany, France, UK, and rest of the continent are also formidable, having groundbreaking achievements in space explorations and research in the past decades. China should get some assistances from Russia, but so does India (and from more Western powers at that) so substantial unique competitive advantages in this case. I’m not deft on this subject, just a bit informed.
Hypersonics
Russia and China have been ahead in broad-scale developments of these weapon systems. But the basis for achieving greater potency among weapons and delivery systems, the technologies and scientific know-how in required relevant fields, the United States and major European military powers have much greater established board capabilities on these. In terms of anti-hypersonic missile system development, also a component of the Golden Dome, it is expected that the U.S. will have the most effective, overall superior capability on this, including in networked warfare and targeting systems that this new type of missile-defense shield falls under.
I’ve heard a top national security official skip on answering questions about other required capabilities that go with a hypersonic-missile-defense shield to make it highly effective, so for the same reasons I am not going to publicly speculate. Some of the intractable technical problems from technology to strategies have been solved by simple brains and solutions, but I am not suggesting I have anything at all, no matter our impossible achievements (given our personal resources) in other fields and in life. The exceptional ingenuity of the Americans can’t ever be overestimated, this is decisive too.
Naval power, the sea
The Columbia class of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines is far superior even versus the next generation of CCP-China’s equivalent under secret development now. The same case with the successor to the Virginia-class attack submarines, under research and development in the U.S. now. China can hardly catch up with even the overall effectiveness of the Virginia-class of today, this is true in the next 20 years. The communist Chinese can make leaps, and shortcuts to its desired capabilities in all of its weapon systems, and there goes the unsolvable problems and limitations too, given the required scale in weapon systems research, development and funding for achieving the extent of communist rulers’ hegemonic ambitions, in economic and military dominance of the world.
China can build more ships, and faster at that, in a given time period, but even in terms of concentrated naval force in Asia, the collective of existing fleets, and programmed expansion of naval fleets of major U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, the combined capabilities, are so enormous for China alone to match in any major war in the region especially in the next 20 years with the pipeline for deployment of new weapon systems paints a picture of compounding lethality and in survivability of the war machines and platforms. But the U.S. is now in accelerated pace in deploying large fleets of autonoumous, unmanned drone drones with large-scale production capability in the private sector now in existence, these with far less components from communist China that systems already already many years in deployment.
In research and development of very advanced cutting-edge next-generation big-ticket weapon systems, I am confident in applying the rule of unintended consequences and Murphy’s Law. This is extreme, but remember the launch of North Korea’s rapidly-built (in relative terms) new frigate, a version not of a great leap in the time frame to build a new warship but in painfully great national embarrassment for Kim Jong-un and North Korea. Add to that the level and scale of corruption among key officials and entire institutions and agencies in CCP-China, where anti-corruption drives are mostly means of purging likely political rivals, selective punishment for personal reasons of ego, perceived insubordination, appeasement of the general public, a warning to others, convenient projection of decent leadership and a way to deflect corruption from among favored relatives and closest allies. Because unlike a decade ago, or even just 5 years ago, there is a relative dearth of open resources online for this, and thus my simple Facebook and blog posts on these topics in this article, now there’s proliferation of resources across platforms in the internet so I longer feel like elaborating on this and other topics here.
Cyber security and warfare – any rules?
This is a highly complex domain, and getting ever more dilemmatic for both strategic and this domain’s strategists and war planners. Obviously, this is still fast evolving, and very dynamic. Israel proved highly agile (adaptive and flexible in real-time) and capable on this. The United States, superior on this even as a democratic society with a lot of internal safeguards and oversight in America’s exercise of power in this domain, is to remain far superior in the foreseable future.
The United States, being the most technologically advanced country in the world, and with the greatest number of information security systems deployed, and now with its unmatched superiority in AI, can be expected to remain the most formidable in this realm of war. In terms of social chaos, confusion, that could be triggered via information warfare, and effective attacks against private and public infrastructures that undermine the overall war fighting capability of a nation, this is what I have been (stealthily, but really not) arguing in this website: That a society that can better withstand cyber warfare attacks makes for a more resilient component in the chain of geographic strategic deterrence. Yes, the Philippines needs a hand in nation-building, in large part because of the lingering, resilient corruption afflicting the entire society. The country is much vulnerable to influence operations of the CCP-China, and on this we labored so hard with our personal resources to plant the seeds of mindsets and education to counter this nefarious campaigns of CCP-China and the local communists, for more than a decade now.
The U.S. dilemma here is that there’s now proliferation of cyber warfare capabilities, even among countries and non-state actors with barely any hard power and poor economies that nevertheless can inflict harm to defense infrastructure and also tear on the very fabric of society creating internal social and political disruptions. What’s more insidious is the on-going, relentless information warfare CCP-China and its tactical and also strategic partners to socially and politically undermine entire mainstream populations among American allies and security partners like the Philippines. I’m being persistent here, this is to support my argument that this country needs a hand on maintaining social and political stability with some resilience against broad multi-front propaganda and influence campaigns from CCP-China, and I am the only so far openly and publicly making an argument on this, and because I have readers some of them those who give inputs to the most powerful policy and decision-makers among in the governments and institutions of Western powers.
But CCP-China’s dilemma is of much greater enormity because the communists have an entire collective of Western powers with both superior hard power weapon systems and cyber warfare capabilities. Britain, Israel, France, Germany, Japan, India and so many other technoligically advanced democracies plus other partner-countries of the U.S. are also leading cyber powers CCP-Chinese cyber warfare personnel do have one thing going for them, the millions of radical hard core communists and nationalists who are motivated not with material gains but with sense of great pride and loyalty to their country, and multi-ethnic and racially diverse Western countries have their very own populations fighting and hating each other more than they disagrre, disapprove and hate communist dicators and operatives whose intent is certainly the demise of America and the West.
The private-sector initiatives and related industries in the U.S. also remains far superior to this, but the more consequential reality is that industry players continue to defy gravity on this, making leaps and ground-breaking developments at very fast pace. Because of the required level of secrecy of the relevant capabilities, and the very nature of cyber warfare, I don’t want to sound like a fool and pretend I can actually make sensible speculations on this. Superior AI enabling infrastructure and innovations are helping the cause of the Americans, the British, the French, the Japanese and many others, on this.
In this arena, I can say that this is most true here: That we don’t know what we don’t know. But the Western crypto powers, with superior brain and machine powers, and much broader research base in the academia that is the envy of CCP-China, should be keeping tabs of the developing capabilities and innovations in China too. Because of the need for cutting-edge groundbreaking advanced electronic warfare systems in the superpower America, for decades now, with its myriad of these systems long in deployment, the U.S. remains far superior on this and will remain so regardless of what pronouncements by so-called experts say in public. The survivability of entire weapon systems, the most expensive big-ticket ones of course in the U.S., France, UK, Israel in major part hinged on this. So projection of hard power required hardened and superior cyber systems and necessity must have compelled for the most effective systems in all of the world. This is like the domain of human espionage too, wherein no one would know in cases of critical discovery, acquisition, capture of information and mission accomplishment.
This is a domain where rules are made to be broken, literally. Both state and non-state actors violate the rules. But just like in the cases of cloning, AI and citizen-surveillance, very sensitive rights topics in the U.S. and rest of the West, CCP-China knows no rules at all in this ream, so putting the Americans at a disadvantage what with state by state regulatory entanglements and constraints and risks. In cases where state cyber warfare is targeted against America’s key infrastructures and human lives via any means, there’s a threshold for military hard power response, including a nuclear retaliation in qualified instances.
Another thing I speculate, that I haven’t heard or read about from anyone or anywhere, is that greater overall governmental and societal dependence on networked systems also means much greater risks in cases of devasting attacks in underlying infrastructures. Estonia and Georgia’s experiences taught, or awakened the Western powers on this. Yes, CCP-China’s control of its population is to a great extent dependent on its technological social control networked infrastructure that chaos could be far more easily induced than in the U.S. and Western societies. There is also a possible case of behavior-based targeting by Western powers obtained from the very social-control systems of China that itself did not make good use of beyond its needs for totalitarian control of the population and for the communist dictator-leadership to remain in power.
Cyber warfare is not an isolated standalone domain, it’s invisibly in deep integration with the entire weapon systems across maritime, air, land and space domains. It’s an enabling platform for more effective and better targeted physical military operations. Need not say, it’s also in itself a practical means to negate costly and politically sensitive hard power projection while achieving war objectives and need for proportionate retaliation.
With highly matured and also thoroughly tested weapon and cyber systems on deployment in the armed forces of the Western powers, working in coherence, with the most advanced and survivable command and control systems — although a rogue political decision to reinforce strangle hold on power by communist dictators and sense of national pride, not an impossibility — with the coherent strategic deterrence the U.S. and allies have CCP-China would never so easily, deliberately catalyze any major regional war certain to lead to the demise of the Communist Party of China, plausible CCP-China’s disintegration, as the dictator-government of a country with much greater overall dependence on trade with both the Western powers and rest of the world than the United States.
Drones, warplanes, weapons-delivery systems, bombers, spy crafts
The strategy of millions of decoy drones and flying objects available for deployment in a conflict or war situation, with CCP-China’s immense production capability, is now in conflict with the advances in AI and rapidly advancing electronic warfare systems in the U.S. and some partner allies (notably, Israel and many other Western affluent economies). The U.S. is leading on this too, for reasons I discussed in prior paragraphs in this section. There is a massive re-configurations of new designs and capabilities in this arena, if deriving lessons from the war in Ukraine, in Russia’s real-time (war time) innovations too, and Israel’s experiences in the last few years. A helicopter development program in the U.S. got cancelled for this too. Entire AI military applications and electronic warfare systems are being updated for this, and deployment of new cost-effective laser systems help too. In this highly complex case, it is to be expected too that multi-dimensional approaches applies, and the U.S. and allies with their coherent war-proven systems are far superior and experienced on this.
Unlike more than a decade ago and up to the recent years, there’s now proliferation of reading and viewing materials on these. So I don’t intend to go deep and broad on this topic. But let me cite a few of the new big-ticket war craft systems of the U.S. either in an on-going deployment of programmed medium-term future deployment.
The F47, to replace the F22, the F35 now deployed, the B21 strategic bomber, these are successors to the most widely employed, deloyed fighters and bombers in the West and among Western powers and few others. These are not upgraded versions, certainly not reverse-engineered copied fighting and weapon-delivery systems as many of CCP-China’s are, but entirely new platforms and ecosystems. The most notable reality is, that China’s equivalents, labeled 6th generation ones, can be expected as inferior even in the current fleets of these war crafts (4th to 5th generation) currently in active use in the U.S. and among Western powers. Moreover, Europe in all have 2 new 6th generation stealth fighter-bomber under research and development too, and Europe has a far superior aerospace industry than China’s true even in the next 20 years.
These new war fighting systems under development, testing or manufacture in the U.S. and Europe (with Japan) are practically flying AI systems or mobile mini-supercomputers. Unlike the conventional war in Ukraine, where we see innovations and performance of weapons and fighter jets, we can’t even speculate what the most advanced of the current fighters and bombers in the U.S. are ultimately capable of unless a major war erupts that involves full American mobilizations of these especially versus China’s. Moreover, the array of sensors, missiles of all kinds, individually of these advanced American war planes have been battle-tested and improved over decades and recent years. Ultimately, the highly complex interconnected and intelligently managed systems between all of the weapon and delivery systems across domains make for a highly survivable, effective, lethal force.
At the heart and brains of it all
Discipline, effective trainings, skills and love of their families and fellow contrymen in their democratic societies led by the very people they elected to power, makes for an effective, patriotic, loyal and courageous soldier, at the heart of the superiority of the armed forces of the United States and of Western powers, and partner allies including the Philippines. Belief in their shared values, principles, and love of God, among soldiers, belief in the great humanitarian causes that they’re fighting for, in their democratic ideals, means a moral military among the Western powers, all democratic societies, and this reality is contrary to a population long held hostage to the greed for power and paranoia of their communist dictators.
