Reality and Myth
PLA Information Support Force, India delivers BrahMos to Philippines, Superman asked to save USA again, Embracing Communist China
PLA Information Support Force
By Global Times
PLA Information Support Force significant in promoting high-quality development of Chinese military and winning modern warfare
The establishment of the Information Support Force of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) is a major decision made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Central Military Commission and President Xi Jinping from the perspective of strengthening overall national defense, which is a strategic measure to construct a new type of structure of services and arms and improve the system of China's modern military force and holds profound significance for accelerating national defence and military modernization and effectively fulfilling the mission of the PLA in the new era, according to a commentary article published by the PLA Daily on Saturday.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, conferred the new force's flag to its commander Lieutenant General Bi Yi and political commissar of the unit General Li Wei at the force's establishment ceremony inside the CMC headquarters building in Beijing on Friday, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Xi stressed on Friday that the Information Support Force is a new, strategic branch of the military and a key pillar in coordinating the construction and application of the network information system. It will play a crucial role in advancing the Chinese military's high-quality development and competitiveness in modern warfare.
President Xi fully affirmed the important position and significant responsibilities of the Information Support Force and made clear requirements for its comprehensive strengthening, providing a fundamental direction and guidance for building a strong and modern Information Support Force, read the Saturday commentary.
In modern warfare, victory hinges on information. The struggle is between systems, and whoever commands information superiority holds the initiative in war, it explained.
With this round of reform, the PLA now features a new system of services including the army, the navy, the air force and the rocket force, and arms including the aerospace force, the cyberspace force, the information support force and the joint logistic support force. This layout enhances the perfection of China's distinctive military force system.
The report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China stressed the need for the coordinated construction and utilization of the network information system.
Network information technology has become the "biggest variable" in the development of the times and a crucial factor in enhancing the combat capability of the armed forces. As a newly established strategic branch, the Information Support Force is the key support for the coordinated construction and utilization of the network information system. It plays an important and significant role in promoting the high-quality development of Chinese military and winning modern warfare, the commentary said.
The establishment of the Information Support Force will undoubtedly enhance the joint combat capability and all-domain operational capability of Chinese military based on the network information system. It will help achieve the centennial goals of the founding of the PLA and accelerate the transformation of the PLA into a world-class military force.
The commentary said that the Information Support Force must resolutely follow the Party's command, ensuring absolute loyalty, purity, and reliability. It should provide strong support for combat operations, deeply integrate into the overall joint operational system of the military, and precisely and efficiently provide information support to serve and guarantee military operations in all directions and domains.
It should accelerate innovation and development, build a network information system that meets the requirements of modern warfare and features distinctive characteristics of the Chinese military, and promote the rapid improvement of the system's combat capability built on high quality. It should solidify the foundation of the force, ensuring high concentration, unity, security, and stability, and resolutely accomplish all tasks assigned by the Party and the people.
Read more here.
India delivers BrahMos to Philippines
By Dinakar Peri, The Hindu, New Delhi
This is the first export order for the supersonic cruise missile, a joint venture between India and Russia.
India delivered the first batch of BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles to Philippines on Friday. In January 2022, Philippines concluded a $375-million deal with India for three batteries of shore-based, anti-ship variant of the BrahMos becoming the first export customer for the joint venture missile between India and Russia.
The first batch was delivered onboard transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force which landed in Philippines on Friday afternoon. Specifics of the delivery made were not immediately available. Philippines is acquiring the systems under the Horizon 2 of the Revised Armed Forces of the Philippines Modernization Programme.
The delivery comes amid the showdown between Philippines and China in the South China Sea which has been ongoing for the last few months and will significantly augment the defensive posture of the Philippines armed forces once the systems are operationalised.
During his visit to Philippines in March, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in a meeting with the Secretary of National Defence of Philippines Gilberto C. Teodoro, Jr. reaffirmed India’s commitment to upholding a rules-based international order and promoting peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region. “During the high-level meeting, Secretary Teodoro welcomed India’s unwavering support for the Philippines’ position on the West Philippine Sea/South China Sea issue,” the Philippines Ministry of the armed forces said in a statement.
In January 2022, then Philippines Defence Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana, who signed the contract, had said, “As the world’s fastest supersonic cruise missiles, the BrahMos missiles will provide deterrence against any attempt to undermine our sovereignty and sovereign rights, especially in the West Philippine Sea.”
The contract includes the delivery of three missile batteries, training for operators and maintainers as well as the necessary Integrated Logistics Support package. The coastal defence regiment of the Philippine Marines will be the primary user of the missile systems.
From January 23 to February 11, 2023, 21 Philippine Navy personnel were trained in the operations and maintenance of the systems in Nagpur and were awarded interim missile badges by Indian Navy Chief Admiral R. Hari Kumar after they completed the operator training.
As reported earlier, several countries have expressed interest in acquiring BrahMos systems and discussions are in advanced stages with Indonesia and Thailand among others.
BrahMos is a joint venture between DRDO and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyeniya and the missile derives its name from Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers. The missile is capable of being launched from land, sea, sub-sea and air against surface and sea-based targets and has been long inducted by the Indian armed forces.
The range of the missile was originally capped at 290km as per obligations of the Missile Technology Control Regime. Following India’s entry into the club in June 2016, the range has been extended to 450km and work is on to extend it to 600km and beyond.
Read more here.
Superman asked to save US again
By James Curran, Australian Financial Review
Global perspective: Asian allies' hard realism about America's direction contrasts with others uncompromising unilateralism, which could lead to armed conflict.
Three perspectives on the present and future of America's Asia policy have been heard in Washington in the past weeks.
They came during a state visit to the US capital by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida; in remarks by the former head of Singapore's Foreign Affairs Ministry, Bilahari Kausikan; and from an article co-written by Matt Pottinger, former president Donald Trump's deputy national security adviser, and Mike Gallagher, retiring Republican congressman and formerly chairman of the House Select Committee on China.
America's close allies in Asia offered their view on how relations between Washington and Beijing might best be managed.
But Pottinger and Gallagher look to triumph in an end of history-cum-Churchillian-cum-Reaganesque moment over China in a new cold war. Their scenario for the future of US-China relations, if Trump buys it, should open the eyes of every foreign ministry in the Asia-Pacific.
Kishida and Kausikan, while both underlining America's residual strengths in its regional presence, are frank about their fears for America's direction.
Speaking before the US Congress, Kishida talked of America's "loneliness and exhaustion" in global leadership. He said he detected "an undercurrent of self-doubt" among Americans about their role in the world. Given that allies are being asked to do more, Japan has changed its "very mindset", he said. Tokyo, an ally once "reticent", was now "looking outwards to the world"
Kausikan, as well as emphasising the importance of the US as a bilateral economic partner for South-East Asian countries, lamented the American tendency to see the region "as a blank sheet on which you project your own hopes and fears".
Americans too often think, he said, that "if the region is not 'free', it is going red'; if South-East Asian Muslims are not 'moderate' (meaning pro-Western, they must be plotting terrorism); if democracy is not advancing, it must be in retreat'; and, most recently, if South-East Asia does not align itself with the US, it must be falling under Chinese domination".
That very binary framework, Kausikan noted, bedevilled the US in Vietnam. So, it is "not the best mental framework in which to try and understand the nature of US-China competition".
In their joint statement, Kishida and Biden stressed the need for ongoing dialogue with Beijing, "the importance of candid communication with the People's Republic of China, including at the leader level", and they looked forward to working with China "where possible on areas of common interest".
And it's that emphasis on common interests that Kausikan wants emphasised in American diplomacy in South-East Asia.
He specifically took aim at the American assumption of "common values, real or imagined", saying "it is a mistake to think your values are the only valid ones. It should not be any consolation to you that China makes parallel mistakes".
A key message was the need to prioritise interests over values, and dialogue over "demonising" China.
He also advised the US not to demonise itself, pointing to its creativity and resilience in major corporations, university and research laboratories, and Wall Street.
In contrast to this tone of hard realism, Pottinger and Gallagher, in their article in Foreign Affairs, largely disowned President Biden's China policy.
They laid down a policy path that can only lead to armed conflict. So radical is the recipe that Trump himself is unlikely to follow it.
Still, there are familiar refrains.
The US would extend its military footprint in Asia, and the US must "openly declare the contest a cold war" since "US policymakers' squeamishness about the term 'cold war' causes them to overlook the way it can mobilise society. A cold war offers a relatable framework that Americans can use to guide their own decisions".
They call for "a generational effort directed by the president to restore US primacy in Asia", as many have done before. They want an increase in defence spending to 4 per cent or 5 per cent of GDP and new energy devoted to military recruitment.
But they trash Biden's policy of "managed competition" with China.
Instead, they believe the US "should win" this existential struggle.
So, China has to give way and give up "trying to prevail in a hot or cold war with the US and its friends".
The Chinese people would then "explore new models of development and governance", a policy that sounds like pursuing regime change.
To get there, Washington must adopt policies that "feel uncomfortably confrontational".
China's access to Western technology is to be "severed", and the US must perforate the "great firewall" of China to "disseminate truthful information within China".
Along the way, Presidents Nixon and Ford, Henry Kissinger and detente are curtly dismissed as "that '70s show".
The end of the Cold War peace dividend is decried. The history is tendentious and the prescription dangerous.
There is a thinly disguised panic to their analysis. It is a US-China policy unhinged by wishful thinking, where America gets to stay number one, and where Clark Kent is entering a telephone box in Manhattan, and soon Superman will emerge to the rescue in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, saving America once more.
Read more here.
James Curran is the The Australian Financial Review's international editor and professor of modern history at Sydney University.
Embracing Communist China
By James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer (book)
The United States faces three choices regarding its policy towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC): continuation of the Biden administration’s Engagement policy, what we term neo-Engagement; Defeat (that is, the U.S. withdrawal from the Indo-Pacific); or Victory, the U.S. total defeat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In these pages, we have considered each, rejected the Engagement and Defeat positions, and have instead advocated for victory over the CCP. While victory is the most obvious and rational choice for the U.S., in this article we explore the significant challenges associated with the pursuit of a victory policy over the CCP.
There are two major difficulties. First, victory requires the defeat of the CCP. This is because the CCP’s ideology targets the U.S. and Western societies for destruction. It is important for Americans to recall that in 2019, the PRC declared “People’s War” against America. Translated from the Communist argot, this means that Communist dictator Xi Jinping is mobilising the Party and the military with urgency to focus their efforts to destroy the U.S.
Victory over the CCP will be a prodigious task that will require a unified whole of society and a whole of government response, in conjunction with U.S. allies, partners, and people of good will around the world, to include those who yearn for freedom within the PRC, not a small number. But this coalition must be mobilized, supported, and sustained, and there is a big obstacle—the second problem—that stands in the way.
The second problem is the American elite’s embrace of engagement with the CCP. Almost all of it, from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the Chamber of Commerce, government, media, universities, philanthropic foundations, and even the U.S. military, remains tied to unconstrained neo-Engagement policies.
For the neo-Engagement school, it is as if Moses had brought down an Eleventh Commandant from Mt. Sinai: “Thou Shalt Trade and Invest in the PRC in Perpetuity.” And no matter the damage to U.S. national security. For neo-Engagement, it does not matter that U.S. trade and investment have been responsible for the PRC’s rise from a nation almost destroyed by Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution to the existential threat it is today to the U.S.
It does not seem to matter to advocates of the Engagement School that their policies have profoundly weakened U.S. national security, destroyed American manufacturing, and introduced great vulnerabilities, some of which the COVID-19 pandemic revealed.
Thus, while U.S. victory logically requires defeating the CCP, it will also require defeating the problem of the Engagement School. This is because how the CCP is defeated is crucially important, and some pathways to the CCP’s defeat are far more preferable for American national security, its allies, and global stability.
The first possibility, which is the worst by far, would be that the CCP falls because of its defeat in war. While this would yield a U.S. victory, by definition, that outcome would be a human rights catastrophe and carry tremendous dangers for the U.S. and its allies. Such a war would result from a failure of deterrence, the intent of which is to keep war from occurring in the first place.
A second, far more desirable outcome is that the CCP collapses due to the results of the tyranny of its Communist ideology and its decades of misrule and gross abuse of the Chinese people and their economy and society. This would minimise the profound risks that are inherent in such a war and the unpredictable effects that would inevitably stem from it. To achieve such a conclusion, it will necessitate cutting off foreign direct investment in the PRC, which comes largely from U.S. trade and investment.
To achieve this means ending the Engagement School once and for all and thus freeing American foreign policy from the headlock it has had on U.S.-PRC relations for the past 50 years. Terminating the dominance of the Engagement School is thus necessary to yield the end of the CCP without war, as was accomplished by the Reagan Administration against the Soviet Union.
In essence, ending the Engagement School is a matter of national security and must be seen precisely as a matter of national security.
Given the urgency and salience, it nevertheless will be a titanic struggle due to the present dominance of the Engagement School. To defeat it necessitates calling attention to the strategic realities faced by the U.S.—namely that the enemy of the U.S. is in fact being funded by the U.S. This insanity must end. The Engagement School has also given our enemy great access to U.S. decision-makers and favourable policies through its access to both political parties, to K Street lobbyists, and to the major Washington, D.C., law firms. Again, this madness must end. The enemy, the CCP, has unrivalled access to U.S. media, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, universities, foundations, and popular culture such as TikTok, and thus to the American public and the American voter. This should have never occurred, and it must stop.
Instead, Victory must be embraced by the centres of U.S. domestic power that now advance Engagement policies. To accomplish this will be multifaceted, but a good start is to identify and publicise the great abuses of the CCP so that no U.S. business or tech start-up would ever want to trade with the PRC or invest in it due to the negative impact of being associated with this odious regime. The CCP should be as politically, legally, socially, and culturally as radioactive as the Apartheid government of South Africa was. Instead of feting Xi as U.S. elites did during the November 2023 meeting in San Francisco and the March 2024 meeting in Beijing, advocates for the policy of Victory over the CCP must turn the tables and raise the political costs for collaborating with the enemy.
Everything is at stake. If deterrence fails and a Sino-American war results, the stark, brutal, and true costs of the Engagement School will be realised. Of course, this will be no comfort to the dead American service members and civilians and the profound damage to the American homeland.
This is why the greatest act of statesmanship is to avoid this outcome while defeating the enemy. That demands breaking the grip of the Engagement School, regardless that the challenge resembles a David versus Goliath struggle.
Given the Biden regime’s neo-Engagement policies, the preferable peaceful victory over the CCP must wait for a U.S. presidential administration that will confront the PRC and defend the U.S. against the CCP’s People’s War. There is only one candidate at this point who has a demonstrated track record of confronting the PRC—Donald Trump.
Electing Trump is the necessary first step, but it is only the first step on a long and hard road to defending America. Trump’s leadership and willingness to forge a coalition in Congress and with the American people can break the headlock the Engagement School—Wall Street, K Street, the law firms, media, universities, Silicon Valley, and Congress, State, Defense, and the Intelligence Community—have had on American foreign policy towards the PRC for decades.
Once the Engagement School’s stranglehold is ended, the road to a peaceful victory over the CCP is open. “We win, they lose” is what President Reagan said, referring to his solution to the Cold War: a U.S. victory and a Soviet defeat. President Trump must say the same.
Read more here.