existential threats

why the CCP focus is different than we recall

Hardly a day goes by that China is not the focus of our headlines these days. We have been watching the skies for the past fortnight, only to discover more unidentified objects than in memory with the unstated implication they must be Chinese in origin (they may well be but I suspect Beijing may be acquiring some competitors simply because of all the attention).

I stand by my professed discomfort last week that we don’t know a lot about why the Chinese Communist Party (note: in future, I won’t repeat spelling it out each time since I figure you know I mean CCP. Let me know if this assumption is flawed) launched the intial balloon. There remain multiple plausible arguments even if we are prone to choose the worst case among them because that is where the relationship wallows for both sides. And those not in the national security community need remember we ask the armed forces to be ready to respond to a range of contingencies so going to the worst case is a pretty logical outcome.

I want to emphasise a major difference, however, between the desired endstates of these two countries. The CCP’s objective is to remain in power while that of the United States is to defend the homeland of the United States. When it is all said and