China, North Korea and the US prepare for a war for which they seem more than ready.

(Originally published March 30 in “What in the World“) The U.S. Army has hired contractors to develop a missile for it that can hit targets more than 1,000km away.

That’s roughly double the range of the Atacms, or Army Tactical Missile System, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been begging Washington to give to drive out Russia’s invading forces. Washington hasn’t yielded for fear the Ukrainians might accidentally-on-purpose use the Atacms to stage attacks against targets at the source—inside Russia. The Pentagon even went so far as to rig the Himars launchers it sent Ukraine so they couldn’t be used to fire Atacms if Ukraine managed to source them from another country.

Clearly, ICBMs travel further—up to 13,000km, but do so with rocket engines that aren’t practical for ground forces in a combat zone to use. Cruise missiles also have ranges well over 1,000km, but are launched from aircraft or naval vessels. The Army’s new missiles would be fired from mobile launch vehicles like the wheeled M142 Himars or a tracked, M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System, or Mlrs.

Keeping America out of war with China and Russia is going to take a lot more such investment, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley warned the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. “There is nothing more expensive than fighting a war,” he told the committee to explain the Pentagon’s request for an $842 billion budget in 2024. “And preparing for war is also very expensive, but fighting a war is the most expensive. Preparing for war will deter that war.” 

Then we have nothing to fear, because China’s President Xi Jinping is also preparing for war, according to a piece in Foreign Affairs co-authored by former Trump adviser Matt Pottinger and veteran China journalist John Pomfret. While the U.S. prepares to spend $842 billion on its military next year, Pomfret and Pottinger are worried about China’s estimated $293 billion military budget, an amount larger than the military budgets of Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand combined!

After a catalogue of rhetoric in speeches and articles on how China is bracing for military conflict, the authors point to the clearest rationale for why Xi is girding for battle, when in early March he said: “Western countries headed by the United States have implemented containment from all directions, encirclement and suppression against us, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development.” Containment threatens to undermine Xi’s longer-term goal of making China great again, which includes reunification with Taiwan. They warn that Xi is “clearly willing to use force” to take Taiwan.

To defend his own nation against such an intimidating U.S. arsenal, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has called for an exponential increase in production of plutonium for his growing supply of nuclear weapons. Kim made the call during a tour of new tactical nuclear warheads called the Hwasan-31. The warheads can be fitted into a variety of the missiles North Korea has been testing lately, including short- and long-range, train-launched or submarine-launched.