U.S. warns China not to even think about supplying Russia with ammo, daring it to wade into a global conflict Washington is already paying for.
(Originally published Feb. 20 in “What in the World“) How to gin up enmity against an enemy in the absence of demonstrably malicious behavior? Invent intent. So it seems with Washington’s determination to vilify a rival that already suffers from a tendency to issue sinister edicts it thinks are authoritative announcements—Beijing.
Not a week has elapsed since the Biden Administration had to sheepishly confess that it had attacked and destroyed three UFOs that were very probably not from China after all. And that after blowing up a Chinese spy balloon Washington allowed to float all the way across the continental United States after being blown there accidentally from its intended post peeking at U.S. deployments from Hawaii and more probably Guam. Whatever the ethics of spying on one’s potential enemies and military rivals, we all know every nation has been doing it for a very long time. It’s just that ordinarily it’s China protesting U.S. aircraft spying on China’s forces that makes headlines, not the other way around. Now we’re supposed to worry about a nefarious Chinese balloon spying program and an emerging “balloon gap” in the Cold War that is unfolding.
China’s response to the balloon kerfuffle has been typically ham-fisted, even for a government that works very hard to make its pronouncements sound like thunderbolts from on high. Beijing first tried to gaslight the world by denying the balloon was for spying and then protesting the destruction of an aerial object that it suggested was out of control. It then attempted a revealing deflection, accusing the U.S. of sending its own spy balloons over China, including Tibet. Beijing really needs better PR advice.
The proper response would have been to simply apologize for having violated U.S. airspace, repeat China’s defense of every nation’s territorial integrity, express its continued concern and alarm about growing U.S. efforts to deploy forces to the other side of the Pacific to ring-fence China and encourage independence-advocates on an island both Washington and Beijing recognize as part of China, Taiwan. Then China should have used the incident to pursue its new goal of re-establishing diplomatic ties and reopening its economy to Western investment and trade in the wake of the pandemic.
Instead, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi went to the Munich Security Conference to be warned again by his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, not to help Russia in Ukraine by sending it arms or ammunition. It was a media masterstroke by the Biden Administration. The media have already dismissed China’s announcement that it will present a peace plan for Ukraine as a form of typical Chinese duplicity, and downplayed Wang’s statements to the conference about Ukraine, specifically that “nuclear wars must not be fought,” and that nations “must jointly oppose the use of chemical and biological weapons under any circumstances,” both clearly directed at Moscow’s threats to use them. Wang also said the war in Ukraine “must not continue,” but straddled the fence about who might have provoked whom by saying “some forces might not want to see peace talks to materialize” and “might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself,” accusations that have been leveled equally at Moscow and Washington. Moscow fears Washington is using the war to permanently emasculate Russia; Washington fears Moscow has larger designs on Eastern Europe and rolling back NATO.
With Washington’s bogeyman looking dangerously close to playing against type as peace broker, Blinken snatched the narrative with a statement to reporters that Washington had “information that gives us concern that they [the Chinese] are considering providing lethal support to Russia in the war against Ukraine.”
Not evidence that Beijing is supplying, is planning to supply or even proof Beijing is actually considering supplying arms or ammunition. No, this is information that makes Washington concerned they are considering. In other words, this is information that leads Washington to believe China might be thinking about supplying lethal aid to Russia.
The best thing about an accusation of contemplation is that it cannot be disproved. A husband cannot disprove a wife’s accusation that he might be thinking about sleeping with another woman. A child cannot disprove a mother’s accusation that she was thinking about stealing cookies from the cookie jar. The accusation may well be true. But even if it isn’t, there’s no way to prove that it’s false. Criminal intent and interdiction have now been established.
It gets better. Warning China against supplying Russia with arms and ammo lets Washington occupy a rhetorical high ground that will drive Beijing white with impotent rage. If China never provides Moscow with so much as a bootlace, the Biden Administration will be able to take credit for Beijing’s restraint—it feared the consequences Blinken warned Wang about. And if China does flip-flop on what has been its policy for the past year by providing Russia with military assistance for violating a sovereign nation’s territorial integrity, it will be proving the Biden Administration right and give Washington a pretext for escalating military support of Taiwan.
Indeed, Blinken has dared Beijing to supply Moscow with weapons, goading it to do so the same way warning Russia not to invade Ukraine for months as Moscow moved its forces into position ensured that Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t fail to invade without appearing to have caved to Washington’s warnings. Then again, the U.S. has always seemed to favor open conflict to simmering rivalries, believing it has an unbeatable hand despite having been trounced consistently since the Korean War ended in a tie that provided the U.S. with one of its most intractable foes.
As if to punctuate that last sentence, North Korea launched an ICBM on Sunday and fired two missiles today into the Sea of Japan to protest military exercises between the U.S., Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang warned the missiles were capable of delivering nuclear weapons and that it was prepared to turn the Pacific into a “firing range.” Iran, meanwhile, has produced “near weapons-grade” enriched uranium, according to inspectors from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
Weapons supplies are high on Blinken’s agenda, because the U.S. and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are struggling to make good on promised military aid to Ukraine amid a new Russian offensive. In short, the West is running low on ammo. “We are in urgent war mode,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell told delegates in Munich. “This shortage of ammunition has to be solved quickly; it is a matter of weeks.”
Not only does the shortage make it more difficult for Kyiv to resist the Russians, but it also means the West is dangerously exposed to Russian attack. Fortunately, Russia is also running low on ammo, and has resorted to repurposing old cruise missiles and deploying cheap Iranian drones. Some reports say Russia has been massing fighter jets near the Ukrainian border to lob missiles across the border into Ukraine and disable Kyiv’s NATO-supplied anti-missile systems.
That news may give the Biden Administration the pretext it needs to supply Ukraine with the Lockheed Martin F-16s Kyiv has been begging for and that U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Sunday was now on the table after months of rejection by the White House. Members of the U.S. Congress are already seizing on Blinken’s clairvoyant accusation about China’s intentions in Ukraine to call for the approval of F-16s for Ukraine. “We need to start training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 now,” South Carolina’s Republican Senator Lindsay Graham said.
The worst thing for Ukraine and the West right now would be if China decided to take advantage of the situation by throwing in on Moscow’s side. It would end China’s recent attempts at rapprochement and cement its position alongside Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran in an evil Cold War Axis, complete with proxy wars like those in Angola, Congo, Korea, Vietnam, and now Ukraine. Unfortunately, it’s just the kind of global conflict Washington has been spoiling for, first to bleed Russia the way it did the Soviet Union and simultaneously stunt China’s emergence as an economic and military superpower on behalf of a grateful U.S. defense industry.
Speaking of which, on Friday, the U.S. Navy said it would pay Lockheed Martin $1.2 billion to develop hypersonic missile launchers for the Navy’s destroyers. The U.S. has already approved Latvia’s purchase of six Himars, the Lockheed Martin missile launchers that last summer helped Ukraine turn the tide against Russia, and last week approved the sale of 20 more to the Netherlands.