CIA chief Michael Hayden charged on Wednesday that China was beefing up its military with “remarkable speed and scope,” calling the buildup “troubling.”
The Chinese, he said, had fully absorbed the lessons of both Gulf wars, developing and integrating advanced weaponry into a modern military force.
Hayden said while Beijing’s new capabilities could pose a risk to US forces and interests in the region, the military modernization was as much about projecting strength as anything else.
PHOTO: AP
“After two centuries of perceived Western hegemony, China is determined to flex its muscle,” he said in a speech at Kansas State University. “It sees an advanced military force as an essential element of great power status.”
But it is the intelligence community’s view that any Chinese regime, even a democratic one, will have similar national goals, said Hayden, once the highest-ranking military intelligence officer in the armed forces.
“Don’t misunderstand. The military buildup is troubling because it reinforces long-held concerns about Chinese intentions towards Taiwan,” he said.
“But even without that issue, we assess the buildup would continue — albeit one that might look somewhat different,” he said.
Hayden said even though China was a competitor in the economic realm and increasingly on the geopolitical stage, it was “not an inevitable enemy.”
“There are good policy choices available to both Washington and Beijing that can keep us on the largely peaceful, constructive path we’ve been on for almost 40 years now,” he said.
A Pentagon report said this year that China had boosted total military spending last year to more than twice its declared budget.
The report raised concern over China’s expanding military power, including its development of cruise and ballistic missiles capable of striking aircraft carriers and other warships at sea, anti-satellite weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
China dismissed the Pentagon report as an exaggeration, made in order to justify US sales of military hardware to Taiwan.
The Pentagon estimated China’s total military spending last year at between US$97 billion and US$139 billion, more than double China’s declared budget of US$45 billion.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS