The People’s Republic of China are publicizing both their capability of nuclear attack against us and the fact that their goal in such an attack is not so much to win a war as it is simply to visit as much destruction on us and to kill as many of us as they can—to eliminate us not merely as a nation, but as a society.
The PRC’s Global Times, for instance, talked freely about the destruction a Chinese nuclear attack, primarily from its submarine nuclear missile force, could inflict on the us. Nominally, the paper was writing for its domestic readers, but it’s clear the government also was addressing our own leadership.
The GT article contained, among other things, a description of the destruction the PLA could inflict on Seattle, Los Angeles, and other western American cities, and of the radioactive fallout that would spread as far as Chicago. It also contained this image of the reach of the destruction from their attack:
The shaded areas represent fallout spread 3, 7, and 30 days after the Chinese nuclear attack against our west coast.
The GT then got quite specific about PRC intentions:
Because the Midwest states of the US are sparsely populated, in order to increase the lethality, [our] nuclear attacks should mainly target the key cities on the West Coast of the United States, such as Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego.
The 12 JL-2 nuclear warheads carried by one single Type 094 SSBN can kill and wound 5 million to 12 million Americans.
If we launch our DF 31A ICBMs over the North Pole, we can easily destroy a whole list of metropolises on the East Coast and the New England region of the US, including Annapolis, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Portland, Baltimore, and Norfolk, whose population accounts for about one-eighth of America’s total residents[.]
And
Our JL-2 SLBMs have become the fourth type of Chinese nuclear missiles that threaten the continental United States, after our DF-31A, DF-5A and DF-5B ICBMs[.]
China Central Television; the People’s Daily; the PLA Daily (the print outlet for the PRC’s military establishment, the People’s Liberation Army; the China Youth Daily, the Guangmin Daily all ran much the same stories in a coordinated delivery of the PRC’s message.
The timing of this is curious. The PRC is moving actively to seize all of the South and East China seas, to the direct detriment of our allies, friends, and trading partners, and so to our own detriment. It comes, also, after our “pivot” to Asia and the Pacific. And it comes against the backdrop President Barack Obama’s demonstrated hesitancy vis-à-vis our other enemies. Why so late after Obama’s reluctance to act on the world stage? Probably because the Chinese have had trouble believing an American President could be so timid.
The result of our lack of response to this will not be pretty.
h/t Ricochet (Maybe behind a paywall. This is a site well worth the subscription fee.)
