Will China Nuke Japan Over Taiwan? BA Hamzah

The use of thermonuclear weapons in any crisis are very scary thoughts, indeed! Yet, with so many of them around, no one can discount the possibility of rouge states using them.

According to Arms Control Association there are 13500 nuclear warheads in the world. Ninety per cent are held by Russia and the US with a total payload of 6600 megatons, enough to destroy the world many times over! The atomic bombs that America dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki seventy- six years ago had a yield between 14 kt-21 kt.

Some 3500 warheads are in military service: 300 warheads in China.

Is the world moving closer to Herman Kahn’s theory of “Thinking the Unthinkable” (1960) i.e., of states using thermonuclear weapons to win unwinnable wars? Will China nuke Japan for its interventionist policy? Is Washington thinking the unthinkable against an equally stubborn China that is unlikely to flinch in the face of mounting military threats from the US?

President Joe Biden, announced in March, he would do everything to prevent China from becoming the most powerful country in the world during his watch. Does this mean he would even resort to use thermonuclear weapons to prevail over China although Washington has promised not to use the nukes first?

While history does not repeat itself, it does rhyme, according to Mark Twain, could the US and China be moving to the brink of a nuclear war, if China were to nuke Japan first, to prevent its takeover of Taiwan? One report suggests Japan is also planning to move some missile units to Ishigaki island, 300 kilometres from Taiwan, to intimidate China.

The drums of war are getting louder by the day under President Joe Biden since withdrawing from a disastrous 20-year-old war in Afghanistan and six weeks into the G 7 Meeting in England, followed by the NATO summit, US-EU summit and after a four-eyed meeting with Vladimir Putin at Geneva in June. For someone who promised to make diplomacy the heart of his foreign policy, President Biden’s hard-line military policies towards China and Russia makes very little sense as he re-embraces multilateralism.

Biden re-joined the World Health Organisation, reinstated the US membership in the Paris Agreement on climate change and the United Nations Human Right Council.

Until recently, the consensus in Washington held that more trade and dialogue with Beijing would help defuse tensions and eventually bring China into the liberal world order shaped by America. When China became hesitant, the US President Biden reimposed tariff, first introduced by Donald Trump who had painted Biden as “soft” on China. Incidentally, as Presidential democrat nominee, he called President Xi Jinping a “thug”. He now wants “the thug” help mitigate the global climate change described as the red code for humanity!

Days after withdrawing military troops from the twenty -year war in Afghanistan, the US and its allies are on the lookout for new enemies. This time the enemies are not Taliban, ISIS, or Al Qaeda but two rival powers with nuclear weapons. Russia and China were accused of using cyber criminals to undermine US critical information infrastructure.

Russia was singled out for a series of ransomware cyber-attacks including the recent attacks on the Colonial Pipeline in May and the JBS meat packing division in the US, the following month. The irony is the ransomware incidents followed President Biden’s tough warning to President Putin at the Geneva meeting. Is Russia inviting more trouble from the US or is it business- as- usual for Moscow when it comes to making a quick buck from cyber-attacks?

The US blames Russia and China for various espionage activities in the West while it engages in extensive surveillance programmes worldwide. For example, in 2013 Edward Snowden leaked documents showing how the National Security Agency spied on American citizens and foreigners including the heads of states in Europe. In 2021, the NSA was accused of tapping the undersea internet cables off Denmark to listen in to calls and messages of high-ranking officials in Europe-from Germany, Sweden, Norway, and France- between 2012-2014. Many other instances of unreported NSA espionage activities yet to hit the international headlines.

Washington has been incensed with China for hacking of the Microsoft Exchange Server between January and March 2021. Apparently some 400,000 servers hooked on the Microsoft server were severely breached globally. However, President Biden has used this incident to rally support from his allies in Europe and members of the Five Eyes Intelligence network against China. Some states like Germany which maintains strong economic ties with China are reportedly more circumspect of challenging China at sea openly.

In the US crosshairs currently is China which Washington has long accused of unfair trading practices and intellectual property theft even before Donald Trump became President. Washington also accuses China of a military build-up and an expansionist policy in the South China Sea and in the East China Sea. Additionally, Washington took Beijing to task for the crackdown of democratic practices in Hong Kong, threatening military action against Taiwan as well as mistreatment of Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region.

Beijing has rebuked China for interfering in its domestic issues.

Instead of overreacting to China’s growing military, economic and cultural power, or worrying of Beijing taking advantage of a declining US influence to pursue a more adventurist foreign policy, why don’t both bury their hatchets and minimise their geo-political differences to foster peace and stability in the world. They ought to mobilise their resources to overcome the defining crisis of our time: Covid-19 and a looming climate change.

A nuclear war is the last thing the world needs.

Both powers should beat their nuclear armed-swords into ploughshares.

BA Hamzah. Head, Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, National Defence University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.