China’s Hitler Decade, by Dan Gelernter.

Obama told the Navy to discontinue patrols in the “disputed” areas. He also invited China to participate in the Pacific Rim joint naval exercises designed to prepare for a possible war with . . . China.

Trump reversed Obama’s policy of “strategic patience.” He matched Chinese tariffs on American exports and uninvited them from the RIMPAC exercises. Analysts predicted war was imminent and that it would be Trump’s fault. But they were wrong. The tone of the Chinese newscasters softened from belligerence to whining about America’s unfairness. The Chinese stopped shining lasers at American planes.

But now we have a president who gets paid, via his son, to be friendly to China. So what effect has this had on international relations?

China has stopped whining about America’s tough economic policies and started mocking us at summit conferences. Biden says he is “proud” of his team that let Chinese diplomats lecture them. …

Where is China going to invade next?

Lest we focus exclusively on the regional threat to Taiwan, Gordon Chang warns us to be cognizant of targets the United States may be less inclined to defend against the Chinese. Writing for the Gatestone Institute last week, Chang says that China is preparing for a full-scale invasion of Indian territory. China recently has increased the troop presence on the Indian border at Ladakh from 15,000 to 50,000, and they are bringing in advanced weapons and building new bases. The Chinese also are encroaching on Indian territory at Sikkim and muscling into Bhutan and Nepal.

Chang further warns that China is building 700 square miles of new nuclear missile silos with warhead capacity of “about as much firepower as the existing U.S. nuclear arsenal.” (That is in addition to the nukes they already have.)

This is interesting because, also last week, the CCP uploaded a video on a Chinese military channel telling Japan that if they deploy “one soldier, one plane, or one ship” in defense of Taiwan when China does attack, China will use nuclear bombs against Japan “first” and “continuously.” …

Why the Muslim threat is fundamentally different from the Chinese:

China’s weakness at the moment is demographic. Years of China’s one-child policy mean that every soldier serving in the Chinese army is also the last of his family line. And, despite decades of Communism, Chinese still care deeply about family. Every soldier killed means a family extinguished.

Palestinians, for example, have large families — so losing one son is not as devastating to the family. The era of European wars with mass armies was during the great demographic expansion from 1750 to 1950 — the citizens at home did not get as upset if one of their eight children died in battle. The premise in the WWII movie Saving Private Ryan is a special mission to save Private Ryan because his three brothers had just died, and losing all four of their children would be devastating for his family and morale generally.

David Archibald reckons it might be Vietnam:

Things are proceeding as I have foreseen. I  wrote this article in 2015 on the Chicom preparations for an attack on Japan. And I wrote this article in 2020 saying that China’s war plan would be to nuke Japanese cities one after the other until they tapped the mat. And some more on the nuclear background.

And so the Chicoms have announced that the solution to the problem of losing a conventional war is to nuke Japan on a daily basis. They must be confident that the US is out of the picture.

The Japs can’t declare that they have a nuke force until the whole thing is put together. Otherwise that might bring forward the Chicom attack. Apparently the Chicoms are building some 130 new missile silos — to give a warfighting capacity rather than just a retaliatory attack. They have developed MIRVed warheads.

The Chicoms have yet to lay a single cubic metre of concrete for an attack on Taiwan. And helipads and airfields as close as possible would make that war easier.

It will start with an attack on Vietnam — for which the Chicoms have built a big base 10 km from the border. Vietnam doesn’t have any formal allies.