Rome Said to Carthage
“You don’t need those weapons,” in prelude to the Third Punic War, which ended in the complete destruction of Carthage.
The People’s Republic of China objects to the US’ Golden Dome plans, a defense system in orbit, among other places, that would defend our nation against missile attack from any direction and from any source or launch site. PRC Foreign Minister Mao Ning gaslights that Golden Dome has a
strong offensive nature and violates the principle of peaceful use in the Outer Space Treaty[.]
He neglects to mention, though, the PRC’s overt military threats against the Republic of China and each of the nations rimming the South China Sea. Those threats, too, come against the backdrop of the PRC’s massive and rapid buildup of the PLA[1], a buildup that consists exclusively of offensive weapons. That buildup has achieved, so far,
- four million men under arms
- world’s largest navy
- world’s largest coast guard
- world’s largest naval militia
- huge fishing fleet whose ships are designed for rapid arming
- world’s largest submarine fleet
- third largest, second most advanced (and steadily growing and improving) air force
- arsenal of ballistic anti-ship missiles
- nuclear capable theater ballistic missiles
- large, growing ICBM fleet
- global reach hypersonic missiles that when fully deployed will give it first strike capability
- stated willingness to use its “ordinary” nuclear ICBMs in a first strike without concern for the destruction it would absorb from return strikes
- Mao Zedong: “What if they killed 300 million of us? We would still have many people left.” That promise remains unretracted
Now, Beijing is saying to us, “You don’t need those weapons.”
[1] Cotton, Tom, Seven Things You Can’t Say About China