News Analysis |
Pentagon has released its “Annual Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” which is the U.S military’s development gauge for the Chinese military and it is backed by U.S Congress. The report tries to access and analyze, through space and ground resources, the enhanced operational capabilities, new military technology and hardware inducted or in the process of R&D over the past year and then finally juxtaposing with the long-term Chinese interests.
The United States in terms of its military capabilities and spending is not even within the sight as far as the global race is concerned, but China remains the runners-up nevertheless. It is primarily the reason why the United States has sought to keep a close eye on the augmenting abilities of the Chinese military. This year’s report has accessed the Chinese Military movement in the South China Sea as an existential and increasing threat for the United States and its allies in the region.
With a gigantic military spending, mounting up to $190 billion for 2017, China has undergone one of the most extensive military modernization of the contemporary world. It is seeking the economic and strategic interests beyond its border in the form of Belt and Road initiative
China has installed high-tech military technology in the South China Sea islands which it claims to be a sovereign Chinese land. Airstrips were built and Air Force bombers flew takeoff and landing sorties from these airstrips in June 2018. The United States had registered severe protest over the militarization of the South China Sea. The Pentagon’s annual report cited the particular development and coupled it with the Chinese ambition of ultimate global military hegemony, which is an overstatement by several standards.
This year’s report also claims that China is pursuing a nuclear capability on its long-range bombers, saying the Chinese air force “has been re-assigned a nuclear mission. “The deployment and integration of nuclear-capable bombers would, for the first time, provide China with a nuclear ‘triad’ of delivery systems dispersed across land, sea, and air,” the report said.
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China, on the other hand, has brushed the allegations as a result of mere “guesswork”. In a statement issued by the Ministry of Defense, China has reiterated that its expansion and modernization of military is aimed only for its defense. It urged the United States to move out of Cold War thinking pattern saying, “We demand the U.S. side abandons Cold War thinking, objectively and rationally views China’s defense and military construction, stops issuing the relevant reports and takes actual steps to promote and protect the stable development of military-to-military relations.”
With a gigantic military spending, mounting up to $190 billion for 2017, China has undergone one of the most extensive military modernization of the contemporary world. It is seeking the economic and strategic interests beyond its border in the form of Belt and Road initiative. The only true contender in terms of challenging the already fading Unipolarity the world order after the fall of the Soviet Union and end of cold war. But the assertion that China is making its pilots undergo mock exercises of targeting the U.S is an over exaggeration playing the mass hysteria which exists inside the United States.
Pentagon has released its “Annual Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” which is the U.S military’s development gauge for the Chinese military and it is backed by U.S Congress
Such as act would correspond to the first strike which apparently has no particular reason as despite all its spending and efforts, U.S military, both in operational and technological capabilities, stands way above China. Another claim made by the annual report is that China is extending the capacity of its bombers to equip them with a nuclear warhead capable enough of penetrating the United States. It is a fact that U.S interception capabilities are best in the business because of its state of the art interception systems and satellite surveillance.
To make a bomber reach a country located at a far stretch such as the United States itself without getting spotted, especially with modern technology, is impossible. It is nothing more than plain imprudence make such assumptions on part of United States, and on part of China as well if it is practically adopting this strategy.
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This is an age of nuclear domination where both China and the United States are by far the strongest military powers of the world. The vested economical interest is the biggest deterrents, after the nuclear capabilities of both, to a broad scale military confrontation. Pentagon’s report, with all its embroideries and hyperboles, is simply an attempt to reinforce the U.S efforts to maintain its supremacy in the global arena.