Ben Kepple notes that there are defense implications to China's advance into space. Which is, of course, correct.
Here's an interesting historical observation: it's pretty common for movies and books to mention that electrifying moment in the 1950s when the Soviets launched the first satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. What astounds me to this day, however, is how few people realize one simple thing about Sputnik:
As soon as the Soviets managed to shoot something into orbit, a whole lot of very smart people in the U.S. realized that the Soviets now had the capability of launching missiles across the atlantic. Missiles that could quite possibly contain nuclear weapons.
We tend to think of America's early space program as having been a sort of publicity game, out of our "need to compete" with the Soviets. But the Soviets had nukes, and with Sputnik they sent the signal that they could get stuff like that into orbit. Much of non-paranoid, non-simple-minded America realized that this was a huge threat, and that we'd better do something about it.
I just wonder if PLA is willing to go the next step and spend another $2 billion to win the $10 million in X-Prize? Hell, they've already spend that much on Bill Clinton re-election.
I'm glad to see at least some folks (Kepple) who are aware of how much the US depends on space technology for their armed forces.
In one sentance, we could not have accomplished so much, so quickly, in Iraq without GPS and an insane number of satellite-based networks amongst the troops.
This is America's "high ground," and now the Chinese are trying to horn in. Our space assets will quickly become vulnerable.
Not good.
Next thing you know we will fighting over the moon.
Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China, U.S. Department of Defense, July 2003
PDF available from FAS at the following URL:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/dod-2003.pdf
Mr Keppel expresses fears in connection with China's space program which has inserted a orbiter and pilot into near space and returned them safely to earth.
For those who would put too much stock in his arguments, he also expresses the policy that the present Taiwan government in Taipeh is the legitimate government of China's "twenty-two renegade provinces, five autonomous regions and four municipalities, in addition to the special zones of Hong Kong and Macao."
This is the same kind of mentality that publishes maps of the Middle Eastern states in which no state of Israel appears. (Commonly done by cartographers in Eqypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and much of the rest of the Arab world, and which helps explain why they always lose their wars and are considered "a little people, a silly people".)
As for the newest Chinese menace, if that is what one may wish to term it. Under contemporary and probably long-term conditions, I consider the islamic states and cultures as the most dangerous and virulent enemies of western civilization. For that reason, I view great China as perhaps the superpower that one day will come to grips with the worldwide problem of the islamists and take up the burden of breaking them. The Chinese leadership has the necessary combination of ruthlessness and independence from foreign opinion necessary to recognize the long-term threat that islam poses against their country, and to take appropriate steps against the islamic cultures. The United States, by comparison, is still playing patty-cake with these enemies, attempting to pretend that while we war against the moslem terrorists, we want friendship from all other moslems. (The evidence is becoming preponderant that ALL of them are likely enemies, neither to be trusted nor tolerated.)
So, great China, I for one will drink to your exploits.
But despite that. Should we mount a manned space mission to Mars before China does? You're damned right we should. Because one day, China surely will overtake this country, especially as their economic system turns to pure, massive free enterprise. In order to maintain status quo with them 100-200 years from now, we must maintain our own power base. A semi-socialist government and economy such as we have been nurturing in this country will never be able to compete with them when great China completes its centuries-long process of standing up again in the full strength of its 4000 year history.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Well, my qualifications on China include the idea that if you can't get taxes from it, it doesn't belong to you...so aside from rhetoric, Taiwan doesn't belong to China.
Regarding the space program, however, I find China's success unsettling for one main reason: serendipity.
Such simple things as digital watches and capped teeth were advances originally developed in and for the space program and then applied to commercial purposes. Economically, China is already growing rapidly...what new gadgets or developments might they get from an active space program? Sure, that's innocuous.
But how much of our military capabilities came from direct investment, and how many came from having an active technological research program like NASA?
I don't think we would have JDAMs and stealth technology and GPS if it weren't for the Apollo program. What discoveries will they be able to apply indirectly....?
And yes, there are the direct aspects, as well. They didn't need exceedlingly precise, ultra-long-range missiles before. To them, the deterrence of having a dozen missiles that could hit our west coast was enough. But as we attempt to work on our ABM defense, they now have greatly increased ability to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the US.
And with the ability to put manned missions into space, what vulnerabilities appear in our satellite web, so vital to our military and economic power?
None of this constitutes and immediate threat. I expect we won't see the developments making a difference for at least a decade. We should react now, perhaps reviving our space program, perhaps expending think-tank efforts to anticipate the ramifications. We don't want to wait until it is too late, simply because this is merely a PR move at the current time.
I always hate it when someone makes a gratuitous plug for their own website. However, I'm going to do it anyway:
I say the same thing in a different way in my original article.
Nathan,
I don't think China intends to bombard the United States with its newly improved missiles, including those that can reach this country. (And by the way, any country that possesses missile systems that can insert an a large payload into earth orbit can easily be upgraded into a fullscale intercontinental ballistic missile system.)
I do think their weaponry is intended as part of their main military, political, and diplomatic threat which one day will show itself as a 21st century rebirth of Japan's Greater Southeast Asia Co-prosperity Sphere of the pre-1945 years. They will in fact dominate southeast Asia to the same extent we have dominated the western hemisphere ever since the Monroe Doctrine was announced early in the 19th century. Countries that have power use it.
I think -- and sincerely hope -- that the Chinese will have reason to focus their attention on the islamic threats emanating from southern Asia all the way out to the Indonesian island chain. I seriously wish to see international islam smashed up, and this requires a large and powerful country with an army of all but limitless size, backed by a ruthless and centralized military political leadership answerable to nobody outside the country. Did we not use Stalin's powerful USSR for precisely the same purpose, when the main threat against western civilization was from Hitler's Nazi state?
I think the Chinese relationship with the US, now and in the future, will be as a largescale trading partner. They have the uncommon good sense to totally divorce their economic and political policies.
China in its recorded 4000 year history has never shown the slightest interest in conquering any part of the world far from their own borders. But in their centuries of unity and power, they always dominated southeast Asia, and no force on this planet can stop that from occurring again and again, indefinately. And with islam rampant in the world, that should be considered a good thing for us.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The proper historical parrallel for US/China relations is the relations between the UK and Germany in 1903 - established nation with massive power vs parvenue nation with rising power (and China is parvenue on the world stage, 4,000 years of civilization notwithstanding).
China, like Germany 100 years ago, is rife with the worst sort of tuppeny jingoism; they feel they are cut off from their place in the sun, blame us for this, and look forward to The Day when they'll strike at us and take their rightful place. By no means does every Chinese person feel like this, but those that matter, like those that mattered in 1903 Germany, do think like that.
China cannot in any conceivable set of circumstances outpace the United States. The hurrier they go, the behinder they'll get - our lead is too large to be surmounted. While massive changes have taken place in China and they are getting richer than they've ever been, they are still not a tenth as wealthy as us, and as they divide this tenth among nearly four times as many people as we do, the average Chinese is in grinding poverty compared to us. Meanwhile, China spends vast sums worthlessly - building up military might which is un-necessary (noone will ever attack China; China could get by with 1/4 of the military establishment they have now); propping up "rust belt" style industries; allowing a great deal of graft (don't believe stories of Chinese anti-corruption campaigns) as payoffs to favored members of the Chinese elite...with all this flapdoodle piled on to China (which is, by the way, also honeycombed with very, very bad debt...makes Japan's banking problem look small by comparison) they don't even have the fiscal wherewithal to maintain their current position vis a vis the United States.
This is not to say that China cannot gain vastly in wealth, but by the time the Chinese per capita GDP matches ours, we'll be ten times richer than we are today, ad infinitum.
Finally, there is the massive fact of the coming demographic catastrophe in China - their brutally enforced "one child" policy has "worked"; unfortunately, given the Chinese cultural imperitive of having a male child, it has led to a gigantic imbalance between marriagable men and women...there are millions of Chinese men who cannot marry because there are not enough women. China's birth rate has been dropping rapidly for a couple decades now - and its about to suffer a sudden and massive collapse...meanwhile, rather than invest their money in improving China's archaic agricultural industry (and to this day approximately 60% of the Chinese are engaged in food production; to contrast, less than 2% of Americans are so engaged, and we export vastly more food than China does even in a good year), especially with mechanization, what we'll have shortly in China is an inability to find the manpower to both man the farms and man the rest of China, especially the military.
Given that China (or that part of China which matters) feels that the US is in the way AND that China should be the leading power in the world, this will come as a hard thing for the Chinese leaders to accept. Then there is also the fact that China's government has managed to maintain a patina of legitimacy in the minds of the average Chinese by saying, in essence, "trust us to govern, and things will get better". When the Chinese government can no longer deliver this - when they have to say to Chinese, especially urban Chinese, that they'll have to accept a slow down in growth, perhaps even a reverse in growth, in order to fix the demographic and agricultural problems the Chinese government created, it will be a deal-breaker.
While the thought of the people of China might be "throw the bums out", we can rely upon the fact that the bums wont want to be thrown out - they'll strike.
War between the United States and China has an almost inevitible characteristic in my mind. I canno see a set of circumstances where the Chinese government voluntarily hands over power to people who can actual make the correct decisions and who would, naturally, eschew war as a means of cutting the Gordian Knot. Probably by 2020, but as early as 2010, we will be at war with China.
It will be a nasty war, but we'll win it fairly easily - a Chinese attack upon us is actually an attack of the flea upon the elephant. Don't be agog over Chinese numbers - a ten million man Chinese army is just more targets for us to shoot at. My only worry about the coming war with China is whether or not something horrific will preceed it, or come at the end of it; ie Chinese nukes used on us and/or Chinese nukes winding up in the hands of others in a Chinese gambit to distract us while they attack Taiwan or elsewhere (Siberia?) around the periphery of China.
I have addressed Mr Harris' comments on my own site. I would note that The Washington Times has today reported that China used the spaceflight for military purposes.
Also, I must apologize to Dean for the trackback foulup. My own blog went on the fritz.
Mr. Harris,
I did not intend to imply that China will launch, or has any current intent to launch missiles on the United States.
But any way you slice it, putting a human into space improves their military capabilities, if for no other reason, because the tolerances necessary to ensure the sustenance of human life are far tighter than the tolerances needed to get a comm satellite into a low earth orbit.
Mark,
I think you are wrong on most of your assumptions. China can catch up to us, simply because nothing lasts forever. We won't always be the most powerful economic nation on the earth. When we drop behind, how, and to who are all up to debate, yes, but our economy is far from invincible. And simple math will tell you that any amount, no matter how large, growing by only 3% a year, will eventually be overtaken another amount, no matter how small, that grows by 8% a year.
I'm not pretending their 8% yearly growth is inevitably sustainable in the long term. But weirder things have happened in history.
China has social problems, yes, but the "One Child Policy" was neither as draconion nor as universal as you have been led to believe. The desire for a son is strong, yes, but not as paramount as you have been led to believe.
China has been exchanged fire with Viet Nam, Russia, and India within the last 25 years. Border disputes with Viet Nam and Russia have been settled only within the last 5 years, and there is still a major dispute with India. All of which means they do need their military, because it is what is keeping some of their neighbors from attacking.
However, it is true that they are rapidly shifting their military away from regional defense toward being capable of keeping the US military at a distance long enough to make forceful reunification of Taiwan a fait accompli before we can intervene. Don't laugh, they are farther along that path than most people realize.
Remember, they don't have to win, they just have to create enough uncertainty about how much helping Taiwan might cost them to make us hesitate long enough for them to consolidate a hold on the island.
Which doesn't mean they have any current plans to invade, either. But Sun Tzu was Chinese, remember?
The Chinese people and the Chinese govt don't resent us as much as Germany resented England's pre-eminence. China has no desire to be the top power in the world. They do, however, intend to supplant us as the main Pacific power, and would be happy to leave the rest of the world to us.
Which isn't to say you don't have a right to your opinion, or that my opinion trumps yours. I just happen to disagree.
I do not see any experts on the television expressing the possibility that China might use its ability to launch rockets into space to attack American communications satellites in a time of war. I doubt this is lost on the Chinese government. China can cripple our military communications or our commercial communications badly.
Here's a good article on what Sputnik lead to...
http://www.debunker.com/texts/soviet.html
"...Russian missile warheads, placed in low orbit under false registration names and then diverted back toward the planet's surface... "
http://www.floridatoday.com/space/explore/stories/2000a/dsphistory.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~cliched/spacecraft/fobs.html
..."the CIA did not believe that the Soviets would deploy orbital bombing systems by the end of the 1960." We had no idea this radical threat was coming.
Ripper, WTF are you talking about? Really?
kevinb: that has been my main point all along, not some fantasy of attacking China, them attacking us, or WW3. We now face a new vulnerability for our space assets.
Oh, there is one other long-term issue: the "Viking Syndrome"... :0