The year is 2013.
Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, has just seen the plans to transform
some scattered reefs in the South China Sea into a fortified concrete island complete
with its own hospital, an airstrip, and a military base.
Seemingly out of nothing, China will build a base from where strategic bombers can be
based and fly thousands of miles from.
This could be a stroke of a brush that paints the picture of the end of human civilization.
If you think that sounds crazy, you may change your mind when you get to the end of this
show.
China has been very busy building more artificial islands like this.
While much of the world has been looking the other way, China’s “Great Wall of Sand”
has been taking shape.
This has caused many sleepless nights for folks in Washington.
Before we get into the many reasons for the sleepless nights, let’s look at this Great
Wall of Sand, first named that by a US Admiral.
The island we just mentioned in the intro is called “Fiery Cross Reef.”
That’s what it used to be, just a scattering of reefs.
There was nothing there, but than that all changed.
In 2013, China decided it was time to transform this place along with other land dotted around
the South China Sea.
In 2014, between the months of August and November, Chinese dredgers got busy moving
a lot of sand around Fiery Cross Reef.
Then came the concrete trucks to cover the sand.
The end product was an island about 3,000 meters (1.8 miles) long and 300 meters (328
yards) wide.
It wasn’t long until Chinese people were in their living rooms watching China Central
Television and being told about this state-of-the-art military island from where H-6K strategic
bombers could take off.
Brimming with pride, they were told there was a hospital there, but more importantly,
military installations home to early warning radar systems and various weapons systems.
China had created a monster in the South China Sea.
And many more monsters would follow.
If you went to Fiery Cross Reef today, you would find garrisons that house something
close to 200 troops.
Some of them work with surveillance technology.
Some of them are weapons experts.
In 2016, China landed passenger planes there, one from China Southern Airlines and the other
from Hainan Airlines.
This is not an island anyone will be visiting on their vacation.
The tests were merely to see what kind of large aircraft could safely land there.
There are presently enough hangers to store 24 combat aircraft and four much bigger planes.
As we told you, the runway is now long enough to accomodate one of China’s Xian H-6N bombers.
One of these beasts could take off from the island and perform combat operations as far
as 3,500 miles (5,600 km) away.
The planes are capable of being refueled in the air, and can fire air-launched cruise
missiles.
The CIA has been watching the development of these planes for decades because of their
nuclear weapon-carrying potential.
In 2019, the CIA heard that the newest rendition of the H-6N could carry the “Mother of all
Bombs.”
This is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the world.
That might be worrying for the US, but it’s just as worrying for countries that are close
to the island.
This Great Wall of Sand that China has been building includes islands and areas that are
disputed.
In the Spratly islands, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei all lay
claim to some of the land.
Just about every single bit of land has two or more countries saying it belongs to them.
It’s a rather contested part of the world, so when China started building artificial
islands on top of reefs and sticking military installations there, other countries didn’t
exactly look the other way.
China has been making hay while its economy shines, creating these islands out of virtually
nothing and then bringing in anti-aircraft weapons and anti-missile systems, plus all
kinds of surveillance tech.
China is militarizing the sea, which you will soon understand is not a-ok with the USA.
The Philippines wasn’t happy when China started to reclaim a place called Mischief
Reef.
Again, China sent in dredgers to suck up sand to build a base, and then it concreted the
base.
What had been a series of reefs was suddenly home to a harbor and a runway.
If you look closely, you can see anti-aircraft weapons and missile-defense systems.
The island also hosts soldiers in barracks, and has a 8,900 feet (2,700 meters) long runway.
Then there’s China's disagreement with Taiwan over the Itu Aba island, which is also part
of the Spratly islands.
Satellite photographs show that right now, there are armed soldiers there.
A runway has also been built, along with radars and missile sites.
But guess what?
They aren’t Chinese soldiers.
They’re Taiwanese soldiers.
Those are Taiwanese weapons.
As you know, China thinks Taiwan is part of it, but the Taiwanese would beg to differ.
The Taiwanese people will tell you with a proud heart that they definitely aint part
of China.
China calls Itu Aba, Taiping, but get this, the Philippines and Vietnam also claim this
island to be part of their country.
One of the reasons is that the island lies not far from their fisheries and shipping
lanes.
There is oil and natural gas nearby, so there’s an economic consideration, too, when arguing
over these islands.
It’s not just about projecting military power.
But perhaps more importantly, the islands are close to trading routes for the US, said
to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars to the American people.
China has decided to reclaim many of the islands, so it’s not surprising that Taiwan - a US
ally - has stuck soldiers and weapons on Itu Aba.
The fight over these places has gone on for decades, sometimes involving bloodshed, but
it was really only in 2013 that China started transforming them into strategically useful
military installations.
The New York Times wrote not long ago, “Despite claims of ancient historical links, Chinese
officials in the first half of the 20th century were barely aware of the shoals and cays that
make up the Spratlys until France annexed six of them, including Itu Aba.”
China is well aware of them now.
These days the islands are of the utmost importance, and this has started to set off alarm bells
in the Pentagon, not just around Asia.
Take, for example, a place called Woody Island, the largest of the Paracel Islands, also in
the South China Sea.
Like the other islands, this place was not very significant in the past.
It was just a bit of a wild area that China, Vietnam, and Taiwan all thought was their
own.
Since 1956, China has claimed that they own the island.
Nonetheless, the mega-construction didn’t start there until fairly recently.
The island now has a large airstrip, military barracks, and weapons systems.
It even has a bank.
About 1,500 Chinese folks live there at any given time.
The place has two or three artificial harbors where very large ships can dock.
These ships could carry massive amounts of cargo, meaning that resupplying the island
with weapons and supplies is easy.
The runway can be used by bombers and every 4th-generation fighter plane China has.
As you probably know, China has many highly-advanced fighter planes these days.
The stockpile keeps getting bigger, and China keeps building runaways for them.
The US has been watching from a distance as the number of weapons increases.
The New York Times wrote in 2016 that China had put an HQ-9 Surface to Air Missile system
on the island.
Soon after, it was reported that Shenyang J-11BH fighter aircraft were seen there.
It goes without saying that what China does on such islands is not always open for global
public consumption, which is why the US has for years been surveilling the area as much
as has been possible.
Woody Island serves as an HQ for China in this area and gives the country considerable
strategic power in the region.
Vietnam is a country only too aware of this as it is close by.
China has started sending passenger planes to the island, and folks have been vacationing
there or even getting married there, but experts say this is only about China trying to make
the place look less like the militaristic joint that it is.
Also, by turning it into an economic zone, it becomes harder for anyone to kick China
out of there.
Anyone would think China was preparing for war, but let’s remember, China is like any
country in the world, its main goal is to survive.
It wants to maintain its power and sovereignty, and to do this it needs those trade routes.
Having power in this area means also having access to oil and gas, which China needs to
have for its economy to remain stable.
The US, meanwhile, arguably wouldn’t be too upset if China’s economy failed, even
if the two nations do so much trade together.
We’ll come back to power politics soon.
We very much doubt China would launch any attacks from these islands without a very
big reason, but it sure wants to remain a force to be reckoned with in the area, as
do some other Asian countries, who have rightly accused China of breaking international law
when it comes to creating those islands.
The Philippines actually took China to court for breaking the rules, and it won.
This was about fishing and food security in the Philippines, not really military stuff,
although the Philippines, it must be said, is allied with the US.
It’s also allied with China, which is why some pundits say it “plays both sides.”
The Philippines asked the Obama administration for help over China’s occupation of the
Scarborough Shoal, but no help came, even though US officials condemned China’s actions.
Critics have said the US verbally admonishing China was not enough.
Action needed to be taken against China.
Not long after, the leaders of the Philippines turned away from the warm embrace of the US
and went for drinks and cigars in China’s backyard.
Agreements were made between the two nations.
China came out smiling, and the Philippines was told Chinese investments were coming its
way.
China has yet to build military infrastructure on the Scarborough Shoal, though.
As the shoal is located only about 217 miles (350 km) from the capital Manila, China knows
better than to put weapons there.
It’s just good to have access to the area.
Shipping lanes are like roads paved with gold.
But more importantly, if China were to have a conflict with, say, the superpower of the
world, having control of these shipping lanes would be absolutely crucial.
Most Asian countries don’t want to upset the economic behemoth of China.
Or at least, a good number of Asian countries don’t.
That’s because they are also survival machines.
They are doing what they think is best for them.
It should also be said that when it comes to disputes, China has a lot of sway within
what’s called the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN.
China often throws its weight around, but that's hardly surprising.
The US also wants to protect its shipping lanes in the region.
So, this is a turf war that, in the very worst-case scenario, could trigger a real war.
Every country involved is just looking after its own interests, but China is being blamed,
rightly blamed, for wanting a bit too much.
Still, it is threatened in this area.
After all, the US has lots of allies in the vicinity.
Let’s just add here that it’s thought the trade that goes through the South China
Sea is worth about $4.4 trillion.
That’s about a third of all global maritime trade.
If US ships could control these shipping lanes with its giant navy, it could almost certainly
bring China’s economy to its knees if it so chose.
It would cause mass suffering in China.
But it would also cause global economic turmoil, so it’s not as if the US would ever take
such an action without there being some pretty hardcore circumstances.
We’ll talk more about that soon.
In so-called Balance of Power politics, countries don’t often hurt other countries when they
themselves will be hurt.
It’s not a stable strategy.
One should always be careful not to cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
This has actually happened a lot in world history, but we can’t get into that today.
Just keep in mind how important these shipping lanes are.
The US is also just doing the natural thing and wanting to survive.
It’s threatened by China’s growing power.
In the world of power politics, both countries have a right to feel this way.
They both should feel threatened.
That’s why the US and other western nations have put warships in the region, and it’s
why China has done the same.
Not long ago, the US sailed two aircraft carriers through the region, which China didn’t much
like.
China said, “This is escalation!”
It was.
But the US said, so what.
Under the present law, the US can operate legally in the area under what’s called
“Freedom of Navigation Operations.”
“Innocent Passage” law means a country can sail through another country’s territorial
waters as long as they’re not spying, shooting guns, or doing other naughty things.
The US says its operations are legal and has argued it doesn’t need to inform China or
any other nation about them.
This has been called a challenge leveled at China, although the US makes sure China knows
the operations are not supposed to challenge any of the country’s claims of sovereignty
regarding the land.
Nonetheless, it bugs the hell out of China.
The law states that ships should keep moving all the time.
The journey should be a “continuous and expeditious passage.”
No loitering is allowed, but the US enjoys looking around those areas and wants to take
its time.
The US started sailing in a zigzag pattern, although it seems this might have violated
the continuous and expeditious passage rule.
The situation has evolved at times into what looks like a slow cat-and-mouse chase, with
Chinese ships following in the wake of a US ship.
These activities in the South China Sea haven’t exactly fostered warmth and trust between
the nations.
Neither has the fact that China says the US has been sailing way too close to its new
artificial islands.
So, the truth is, of course China is prepared for war, and of course, the US is also prepared
to go toe-to-toe with China.
This might, ironically, actually be a good thing.
As the saying goes, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
When countries are really powerful, it can cause a peaceful stalemate.
If that sounds confusing, let’s now spend some time talking about political science
to better understand why this turmoil is happening and why both countries have the right to feel
they are under threat.
It’s something you need to understand since profound changes are happening in the world
right now.
On the day this video was created, the US still was the world’s only superpower.
When one country is the sole superpower, the world has what some political scientists call
a “unipolar” system.
Unipolarity means one state has so much power that the other states can’t compete with
it.
That’s why it might try and change the world to mirror its own image, as the US has been
doing.
Things have been unipolar since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The US is the hegemon of the planet, but as you know, things were different in the bloody
past when all kinds of countries had empires, and later when Russia had its union of soviet
republics.
US hegemony has been a thing for decades now.
We are sure many of you viewers think that is a good thing.
It might be, but the US has its critics who believe the US’ attempt to spread democracy
around the globe has failed.
They say it has caused many deaths and left a mess behind in places such as the Middle
East.
They don’t all see in black and white - that the US contains all the good guys, and it
only fights the bad guys.
If you do think the US is the home of all the good guys and countries such as China
have nothing to fear from them, you haven’t read your history books.
When the US was busy fighting Communism, it led wars, secret wars, and illegal bombing
campaigns around the planet, killing huge numbers of people, often civilians.
For instance, the US’ illegal bombing of Cambodia alone might have killed as many as
500,000 civilians.
The carpet bombing helped Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge come to power, and the US showed
some support for him.
This was a man whose brutal genocide is said to have led to 1.5 to 2 million people dying.
Around the globe, the US engineered the overthrow of democratically elected leaders and helped
put tyrants in power who enjoyed massacring and torturing their own people.
The US has done a lot of bad things.
Try looking at this from a Chinese point of view.
If you were China, would you be building artificial military islands?
No country over the last 70 years has been even close to the US in terms of global aggressiveness.
Millions have died because of the US hegemonic experiment.
The numbers are real.
China is well aware of this history.
Remember, China is a survival machine that wants power in the world.
If the US is against you, you have a very good reason to feel threatened.
For China, the threat from the US is existential.
It could spell the end of China as China knows it.
There’s hardly a place on the planet where the US hasn’t fought or meddled, and the
outcome at times has been horrendous for the civilians of those countries.
China is rightly concerned about US hegemony.
But what would have been the alternative?
The US says it did what it did for the greater good of mankind, but that doesn’t mean China
agrees with that.
In view of history, it feels in constant danger, and it knows the US isn’t keen on China’s
sort of governance.
It might say a leopard doesn’t change its spots.
American politicians might still adhere to what has informally been called the “Washington
Playbook.”
The playbook involves a lot of global military aggression.
It means spreading liberal democracy, sometimes by doing quite illiberal and illegal acts.
When Barack Obama came to power, he said he would go up against the playbook.
The foreign-policy establishment didn’t like that at all, and Obama failed.
Still, he had some balls on him when he criticized this establishment after the Iraq invasion
in 2003.
This was another of the US’ war crimes, and it led to many thousands of civilian deaths
and ultimately to bloody chaos in Iraq.
China was of course watching.
Obama said: “The American people weren’t just failed
by a president [Geroge Bush].
They were failed by much of Washington.
By a media that too often reported spin instead of facts and by a foreign-policy elite that
largely boarded the bandwagon for war.”
He ended up using a lot of military force himself.
He experienced how hard it is to change what has been the US’ foreign policy for decades.
The playbook is still being used, and the US is still heavily involved in all kinds
of global conflicts.
Some politicians (not too many) and some political scientists have been calling for the US to
restrain itself, to give up trying to dictate how other countries are run.
Some of them say that unipolarity is about to end because China will become an equal
superpower.
Then, if the US still attempts to police the planet, there will be terrible violence, maybe
even nuclear war.
So-called “multipolarity” might even involve Russia.
Both China and Russia see the US as a threat, and the threat is very much real.
This is partly why China is building those islands.
It’s why the US is worrying.
That’s a long-winded way of saying the US doesn’t want China to get more powerful
and certainly isn’t happy about China building military installations in places of great
economic and strategic importance.
China is doing it anyway, and it remains to be seen if the US can help to stop China’s
economy from getting any bigger.
It probably will get bigger, so what will happen when the US is no longer the sole hegemon?
In this scenario, according to some political scientists, the Washington playbook could
spell mass death on a scale we have never seen before.
China won’t be pushed around.
It’s showing that by brazenly building those islands.
It obviously doesn’t trust the US to run the world well.
It wants to be just as powerful and, if possible, more powerful.
The US has to remain powerful to counteract the threat of China, but as Obama wanted,
some folks think the US has to start showing some restraint in the world regarding violence
and political intervention.
It has to maximize its power without causing damage far away from home.
If China does the same, that's a win for mankind.
Quite a lot of academics say the US should turn inwards and focus all its great powers
on being a strong and innovative nation.
They say spending all those hundreds of billions on war would be better spent on society.
It will get even more powerful that way.
Many of the US public think that right now, but the establishment in Washington rarely
mirrors the thoughts of the public.
After all, power can be seductive, and some politicians might have selfish reasons to
play by the playbook.
Let’s also remember that spreading democracy is another word for protecting economic interests.
The realists in the political science world say countries will always be a threat to each
other.
It’s rather like the selfish gene theory.
Countries want to survive, and they want to dictate how they are run.
The problems start happening when they start trying to dictate how other countries are
run.
That’s why they all build militaries.
It’s hardly ideal for people who just want peace on Earth, but the experiment to forcibly
make the earth democratic has been deadly.
It’s a kind of paradox.
The US, of course, rightly fears that another country will try to spread its own way of
governance around the world, and perhaps that country won’t embrace human rights and freedom
as much as the US does, which is a reason for the US to remain so powerful.
Still, some theorists say that when superpowers have tried to socially engineer the societies
of smaller countries, they have almost always failed.
They should know that and so not try, according to those experts.
It’s more complicated than that though, and we don’t have time to give you a history
of international relations since World War II and the wide-ranging effects of US foreign
policy.
All you need to know is that the US is watching when China starts messing with islands.
When China builds outstanding tech products the world uses, the US is closely watching.
When China claims natural resources for itself around the world, the US is also watching.
Of course, China might have some misgivings about US foreign policy, so it, too, like
its selfish genes dictate, will keep building militarized islands.
China will keep replicating itself like a gene, but it likely won’t be foolish enough
to spread its wings even further, such as putting new military installations close to
the US, or trying to socially engineer the societies of other powers.
That would not be what is called an evolutionarily stable strategy.
We just hope we never get to experience what happens if the strategy between powerful nations
becomes really unstable.
Some say we are veering very close to it right now, not only with China and the US but with
Russia.
It’s depressing to think international relations is all about power struggles, but some say
it’s the nature of the beast.
Thomas Hobbes wrote that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Life is one big fight to survive, and when countries such as the Soviet Union tried to
force its idealism on the world, well, it cost tens of millions of lives and caused
untold suffering.
Russia failed, big time.
It would have been better focusing on innovation and other kinds of progress.
So then, we have to ask what the outcome will be.
If China keeps growing, which we think it will, bipolarity (China and the US) or multipolarity
(China, the US and Russia) could happen - although it’s highly unlikely Russia will be able
to climb to the title of global superpower anytime soon.
The world will almost definitely have two hegemons soon.
That much seems almost certain.
As we said, if the US and China both try to dictate what happens in the world, it won’t
end well.
China and the US have to become friends or remain enemies that agree not to try to rule
the world as that will lead to mutual destruction.
Both countries have to back off.
Sure, right now, you might be thinking, but we are the good guys; those other guys are
mad and irrational.
That’s what the Chinese might say about the US.
It’s what the Russians might think.
And they have ample evidence to prove that the US-made global order won’t be good for
their nations.
Despite China’s, at times, horrifying authoritarianism, it has been fairly peaceful on the world stage
post-WW2, at least compared to the US.
China might also be looking at the US’ many social problems: the crime, the social division,
the addiction, the depression, the insane preventable widespread health issues, the
terrible literacy statistics, to name just a few things.
China might wonder if the US is a good model for the world to adopt, even if it has many
issues itself.
The crown certainly is heavy for the hegemon.
This is only one way of looking at things, but we think it answers the question in the
show's title.
The US is not just scared of China having some weapons in the sea.
It’s scared China will rise up, and the US will no longer be the world’s sole hegemon.
But that will likely happen at some point anyway, and as we’ve explained, if the two
powers can’t agree on things, we might be looking at the destruction of much of the
human world.
Maybe you have other, brighter theories about how this will all end, but things are looking
a bit frightening in the world right now to many people.
That doesn’t mean things won’t get better though!
Now you need to watch “Could Taiwan Hold off A Chinese Invasion.”
Or, have a look at “How US Will Respond if China Invades Taiwan?”