The news today suggests a very serious war of "who lied?" which might well lead to a global nuclear war if not handled right. If people indulge in the usual undisciplined black and white thinking colored by oversimplified assumptions. We really need other people to look into this and raise their voices!
And yes, my visits to top people in China and Korea this month have influenced how I see it.
When Senator Graham estimates a 30% probability that Trump will take preemptive military action against North Korea sooner than expected... he has very good reason. It is not just Trump's mood in play here.
Trump says China violated very important and serious promises by supplying oil to North Korea. Not only the US intelligence agencies (no close friends of Trump!) but also the South Koreans take his side in the debate. So is Xi simply lying? Are Xi's promises and stated intentions worthless, and will military action really be necessary simply in order to keep the US alive?
==========
Since I saw many, many things in China, I am very much aware of a third possibility here: that Xi is not really running such things in China, that Xi does have a political incentive to appear to run China more than he does, and that there are OTHER folks in China lying both to Xi and to Trump, on course to create to a world nuclear war. I wonder whether Russia could help both Trump and Xi by helping them both understand who in their countries has REALLY been conspiring against both of them towards war?
Long before this oil issue arose, when I was in China, I saw a number of pieces on China's space activities, like:
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-building-worlds-fastest-wind-tunnel-to-test-weapons-2017-11
Today, in google news, when I search on "China hypersonics," I see important updates.
A few years ago, with encouragement from the staff of Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md, House Armed Services Committee), I encouraged US national security people to consider something: "What if the US or China or someone else fully develops the new hypersonic launch capability which we know how to implement (in 5 to 10 years), which would let them orbit a hundred to a thousand much times as much mass PER DOLLAR of launch cost as any other nation? (I know about the possibilities because of work I funded at NSF,, subject to a lot more intensive technical review than make work programs like NASA's SLS; see www.werbos.coim/space.htm for some links and details.) Folks at the Marshall Institute really took notice, but soon after "the swamp" intervened to reorganize Marshall to take national security and space off their mandate. (Have to defend those make work programs above all else, including life itself.) But China noticed, it seems. The link above is one of many showing that the Chinese military promised Xi Jinping that China would not allow corruption to do what HTV-2 (and underfunding XS-1) did to US capabilities in hypersonic launch; they promised that China would indeed pull such a "sputnik" on the US, and develop capabilities important not only to military strength but to life or death needs of the world civilian economy as well.
From the stories, it's clear that that's what the military told Xi Jin Ping. They told him that they have a hero of reentry structures (the most crucial endangered technology needed to make low-cost RLV real) which would let THEM do what HTV-2 couldn't (which DARPA's cancelled version of ALASA could have done). They told him that repeated reentry demands a lot and should not be believed unless fully tested (true!), but and that China could test that by cloning the US civilian wind tunnel which is enough for the job (a bald faced lie, and they would know better). (The same Chinese military intelligence which knows about the HTV-2 failure and the structures problem which caused it would certainly know about the WPAFB test facility, the only one in the US capable of testing true multiple reentry capability.)
IN fact, even the old stories make it clear that those military folks lied to Xi, and got away with it, \in order to push for a more near-term capability, what they really wanted: the ability to reenter just enough to blow up Washington DC. That has been their goal, unmistakable.
Would certain people in the military have the will and the power to lie to Xi, in such fundamental (testable) matters, including not only hypersonics but also their support for North Korea?
Could they even be delighted with how their strong covert ties with North Korea can be used to give them plausible deniability in future activities using North Korea as a pawn to destroy the US, which they hate much more than they love the prosperity of the people of China? Who really runs China, anyway? Did Xi leave the job incomplete when he purged Bo and Zhong?
Many find such things hard to believe. Isn't China totally ruled by one man, like the Romulan Empire of the old Star Trek series, like what some folks thought Russia was like? But even Trump overestimated how much power a President of the US possesses, and even today he underestimates the scale and nature of forces he calls "the swamp." (Which I do not imagine; I have seen a whole lot first hand in this area.) Old fashioned Kremlinology actually applies to China today much more than it did to China at the time of Mao, as various groups jockey for power in different spheres.
If dramatic actions are not taken to get at the roots of this problem more directly, the main alternative I see in real logic to the preemptive action would be quick transfer of a full independently controlled deterrent to South Korea (removable only as part of a symmetric agreement denuclearizing the entire peninsula, civilian and military sides both). The US and China have both neglected the key hypersonics technology so much that a new cooperation between South Korea and Boeing could allow THEM to do the leapfrog in cost, aimed at civilian international anchor missions, even as a balance or hedge against signing up for Xi's "one road" program to sell steady solar electricity from China's deserts across long HVDC power lines.
But maybe that is all I should say today. Best of luck. We will all need it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment