China war

The year is 2027. China has invaded Taiwan and the wheels of all-out war have begun to turn. “We are not going to let them survive the initial onslaught of our military operations,” says one of the masterminds of Beijing’s military strategy. “We are not going to let the president of Taiwan survive the first day.” To achieve that swift decapitation of Taiwan’s government, China casts a wide net of destruction — even pre-emptively attacking American bases in Japan and Guam. The U.S. responds by bombing Chinese ports and Australia mobilize forces against Beijing as the worst fears of the U.S. and its allies unfold in the Asia-Pacific. It may sound like a purely academic exercise but, in fact, it’s deadly serious. These hypothetical military operations were planned by U.S. lawmakers, former Pentagon officials and China experts as part of a war game exercise that played out in NBC News’ Washington bureau in April. The teams spent some five hours on an exercise that for the Pentagon would typically take up to five days. Watch the war game on "Meet the Press Reports" on NBC News NOW live Thursday night at 10:30 p.m. Eastern and Peacock on demand . The war game was organized in partnership with the D.C.-based think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS). It took place amid rising concern among U.S. officials in multiple administrations and in capitals across the Asia-Pacific about the possibility of China attacking Taiwan. Just this week, the Director of National Intellige...

Read more If Beijing were to launch a military attempt on Taiwan, Vladimir Putin would be Xi’s most important political and economic ally. China has been an economic lifeline to Russia since the start of the invasion against Ukraine – trade between the two countries has For example, in February Xi criticised “unilateral sanctions” and the “strengthening or expanding” of “military blocs”; a coded reference to Nato. China does not have the same anxiety Russia does about a Nato presence near its borders, but in May a government official criticised In March the Chinese leader visited Putin in Moscow, underlining the warm relationship between the two men. One of the many successes of the trip for Xi was a joint statement in which Putin underlined his support for China’s position on Taiwan. “Russia reaffirms its adherence to the one-China principle, recognises Taiwan as an inalienable part of China’s territory, opposes any form of ‘Taiwan independence’, and firmly supports China’s measures to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the Other governments will prove harder to woo. For the past year, Beijing has been trying to convince European countries not to follow the US with its increasingly harsh line on China. Xi secured a victory on this front in April when French president Emmanuel Macron Europe is far from unified on the topic, but of the Honduras foreign minister Eduardo Enrique Reina Garcia and Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang raise a toast after the esta...

• Share to Facebook • Share to Twitter • Share to Linkedin The conventional wisdom in official Washington is that the United States needs to prepare for a potential war with China, either in order to “win” in the event of a conflict or to deter war by convincing Beijing that the U.S. could prevail in such a scenario. Such is the thrust of a recent Politico entitled “The Pentagon is Freaking Out About a Potential War With China (Because America Might Lose).” As the title suggests, the piece spends the bulk of its time amplifying the views of Pentagon officials, ex-military leaders and analysts at arms contractor funded think tanks to the effect that America has either been a asleep at the wheel and/or too distracted by the war on terror to adequately prepare for what the Pentagon now calls the “pacing threat” posed by China. The solution? More Pentagon spending, a supersized defense industrial base, and (perhaps) a shift in the type of weaponry the Department of Defense invests in going forward. The article is an accurate depiction of the views of the officials consulted for the piece, but it fails to question the underlying assumptions of what foreign policy analyst Van Jackson has Jackson takes the next logical step when he notes that “if you’re worried about war with China – and especially losing a war with China – the greater portion of your efforts should be going into war prevention, not war optimization.” Dan Grazier underscores the folly of current U.S. military str...

In recent months, the U.S. and the E.U. have sought to portray a mostly united front when it comes to China. Both Washington and Brussels have called out Beijing over its support for Russia amid its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and both have firmly opposed any attempts to alter the status quo around Taiwan, the self-governed democracy to which Beijing lays claim. But as much as American and European leaders may appear to be in lockstep on China, the same cannot be said for their respective populations. According to new findings published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) on Wednesday, a majority of Europeans see China as a “necessary partner” rather than as a rival or adversary, unlike most Americans. What’s more, in the event of a potential conflict between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, most Europeans would prefer to stay out of it. The findings, which stem from a poll of more than 16,000 people across 11 E.U. member states, offer a stark contrast to the conventional view that there is This discrepancy bears out in public opinion. Whereas more Americans are likely to regard China as a competitor (52%) or enemy (38%), according to It’s perhaps for this reason that, when asked how their country should respond to a potential conflict between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, a majority of Europeans (62%) said that they should remain neutral. Pawel Zerka, a Paris-based senior policy fellow at ECFR and a co-author of “The Taiwan or China question is still ver...