Great Power contentions

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...?ocid=msedgntp
White House: US-China war over Taiwan 'would broaden quickly'

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China and the United States face a growing likelihood of conflict over the status of Taiwan, a contest that current and former officials fear could lead to upheaval unseen since World War II.
“I am sure that we are going to be in a kinetic conflict with China in five years,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said Wednesday. “I hope I'm wrong, but I believe within the next five years there's going to be a kinetic conflict — missiles, submarines, aircraft; not so much land operations. … It’s just about inevitable.”

That prospect presents a high-stakes dilemma for U.S. officials, who could face a choice between rallying to the embattled island democracy or conceding the loss and allowing Chinese communist officials to achieve a major victory that might empower Beijing to break the broader U.S. alliance network and dominate the Indo-Pacific region. President Joe Biden’s team has declined to say explicitly whether he would send U.S. forces to defend Taiwan, but his administration is telling Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping not to risk a clash with the United States.

"I think it would broaden quickly, and it would fundamentally trash the global economy in ways that I don't think anyone can predict," Kurt Campbell, the White House National Security Council’s lead official for the Indo-Pacific, said Tuesday during a discussion hosted by the Financial Times while contemplating what would happen if the U.S. and China were to come to blows.

Campbell refused to declare explicitly that the U.S. would defend Taiwan in a crisis, in keeping with a long-standing U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” about how Washington would respond.

"I believe that there are some significant downsides to the kind of what is called strategic clarity that you lay out,” he said.

U.S. officials and lawmakers are nevertheless growing more emphatic in their message of support for Taiwan, as Campbell’s boss made clear last week.

“What we would like to see is stability in cross-strait relations and no effort to unilaterally change the ‘status quo,’” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told the Aspen Institute in remarks that attracted attention in Taiwanese media. “That is how we are going to continue to approach the Taiwan issue going forward, with steadiness, clarity, and resolve with respect to our view that there should be no unilateral changes to the 'status quo.'"

Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned China on Tuesday that “it would be a very serious mistake” to change the status quo — a multi-decade situation in which Beijing has refused to relinquish its claim to sovereignty over the island, but likewise refused to try to bring the island under the mainland regime’s control by force. Chinese communist officials have never renounced the possible use of force, but they have prioritized “peaceful reunification” nonetheless.

Blinken’s statement dovetailed with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s pledge in October that “whether it's Taiwan or the challenge presented to Japan, the United States will be a good partner for security in every dimension.”

Hodges, speaking to the United Kingdom-based Council on Geostrategy, suggested that the Western failure to make Chinese officials regret their crackdown on Hong Kong over the last year has emboldened Beijing to risk a military conflict.

“I just think the language coming out of Beijing about Taiwan, the fact that nobody did anything, truthfully, about what the Chinese have done in Hong Kong, to include the U.K. surprisingly, how little the response has been, and then the increasing aggression, aggressiveness, by the Chinese in the South China Sea — it seems to me it’s just about inevitable,” Hodges said. “I don’t want to say inevitable, but it’s very close to it.”

A not unsurprising but still worrying situation. Given the diplomatic blitz that Blinken has done in the region I can assume that the 'quad' plus UK and maybe some bits of the EU will stand by Taiwan if the island of formosa is attacked outright.

With the UK's new Carrier Strike Group on it's first operational world tour I wonder if it will choose to pass through the Taiwan straits at all for freedom of navigation purposes or go East around the island when headed to Japan.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...?ocid=msedgntp
Exclusive: China plans to revive strategic Pacific airstrip, Kiribati lawmaker says

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SYDNEY (Reuters) - China has drawn up plans to upgrade an airstrip and bridge on one of Kiribati's remote islands about 3,000km southwest of Hawaii, lawmakers told Reuters, in a bid to revive a site that hosted military aircraft during World War Two.

The plans, which have not been made public, involve construction on the tiny island of Kanton (also spelled Canton), a coral atoll strategically located midway between Asia and the Americas.

Kiribati opposition lawmaker Tessie Lambourne told Reuters she was concerned about the project, and wanted to know whether it was part of China's Belt and Road Initiative.

"The government hasn't shared the cost and other details other than it's a feasibility study for the rehabilitation of the runway and bridge," Lambourne told Reuters. "The opposition will be seeking more information from government in due course."

The office of Kiribati President Taneti Maamau did not respond to questions.

The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to questions.

Despite being small, Kiribati, a nation of 120,000 residents, controls one of the biggest exclusive economic zones in the world, covering more than 3.5 million square kilometres of the Pacific.
Any significant build-up on Kanton, located 3,000 kilometres (1,864 miles) southwest of Hawaii and U.S. military bases there, would offer a foothold to China deep into territory that had been firmly aligned to the U.S. and its allies since World War Two.

"The island would be a fixed aircraft carrier," said one adviser to Pacific governments, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the project.

The U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet and U.S. State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas) has in recent years been at the centre of a tussle between China and the U.S. and its Pacific allies.

In late 2019 it severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favour of China, in a decision overseen by Maamau, who went on to win a closely contested election on a pro-China platform.

The diplomatic shift, which mirrored events in the Solomon Islands, was a setback for self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as a province with no right to state-to-state ties. Taiwan counts the U.S. as an important international backer and supplier of arms.

Kanton has been used by the U.S. for space and missile tracking operations and its near 2-kilometre (6,562 ft) runway hosted long-range bombers during the war.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said in a paper last year that Chinese facilities on Kiribati would be positioned across major sea lanes between North America, and Australia and New Zealand.

Beijing has labelled the think tank as "anti-China".

Along with its strategic significance, the waters around Kanton are rich in fish, including tuna, although commercial fishing is prohibited as the island is in a marine protected zone.

There are around two dozen residents on Kanton who rely on subsistence fishing and supply ships.

(Reporting by Jonathan Barrett. Additional reporting by Beijing Bureau. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

China's navy has used the establishment of a base in Djbouti to learn how to conduct operations far from their shores and what it would take to really project naval power. wonder if this airfield would lead to a port as well. Either way it's China extending influence into an area that the 'west' has largely ignored since it's been decolonized. I'm sure the locals would appreciate some investment into their infrastructure, also it would make deep sea exploitation easier, mining rare earths from the ocean's bottom will be an industry relatively soon.