Tension between the U.S. and China around Taiwan and the South China Sea has been ratcheting up for months. Alarming provocations that could lead to military confrontations occur regularly. (See Revolution articles here and here for fuller analysis and exposure of this.) In the weeks since we wrote those previous articles, the U.S. has agreed to send $619 million worth of M-16 missiles to Taiwan, and, along with England and Australia, to develop eight nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, to help deter China’s growing “naval power and assertiveness.”

A year ago, a Biden administration national security document said China¹ is “the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.” (Translation—a global system of exploitation and oppression in which U.S. supremacy is unchallenged.) This February, Christine “Warmouth” Wormuth, the Secretary of the Army, laid out the U.S.’s “strategy for war with China.” Wormuth said that while the U.S. does not want to fight a “land war” in Asia, she thinks the way to do that “is by showing China and countries in that region we can actually win that war.” (Translation—the U.S. needs to intimidate China and other East Asian countries with our overwhelming military might.) The heart of the U.S. plan: putting more troops armed with upgraded equipment, and “pre-positioning” them within striking distance of Taiwan and China, prepared and capable of moving quickly.

Wormuth said key components of U.S. strategy include “coalition building.” Check that off. The Biden administration’s document “Indo-Pacific Strategy” is aimed at meeting what it calls the “mounting challenge” from China. To achieve that, the U.S. is modernizing its “long-standing alliances, strengthen(ing) emerging partnerships, and invest(ing) in regional organizations.” One expression of this is the recently announced plan by the U.S, Australia, and the UK for Australia to develop eight nuclear-powered submarines, to help deter China’s growing “naval power and assertiveness.”

Wormuth said the U.S. needs to develop “theater distribution centers” through the region to stockpile fuel, armaments, and other supplies. She said this could be done in Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and Singapore. Check that off—the U.S. is turning Taiwan into a “giant weapons depot” and is preparing multiple bases and storage areas in the Philippines, Guam, Japan, and other locations. Another key task of military preparation for land combat in Southeast Asia, updating the U.S. arsenal, is already underway, she said. “We’ve … got our first battery of long-range hypersonic weapons,”² which are part of a “… multi-domain task force.” Hypersonic weapons placed in the locations she mentioned could reach China quickly, with no warning, and with devastating effect.

Imagine This …

Wormuth’s bellicose interview got little or no mention in most U.S. media. Fierce opposition to China is taken for granted by U.S. imperialism’s political leadership, of both parties, and by just about everyone working for the major media. But imagine for a moment that a highly placed official in China’s Ministry of Defense had given made similar points about Chinese war preparations in an article or interview. It could have sounded something like this:

“We need to show the Americans that we’re serious, that we can win this war we’re both preparing for. We’ve been putting a lot of effort into upgrading all aspects of our military, and to providing our fighting forces with the specific training they need. But the enemy’s main bases are so far away—China and the U.S. are about 7,000 miles apart, you know—we realize that supplying our troops and planes and our navy with all the weapons and ammo they’ll need will be a big challenge to us. So, we’re working on our relations with friendly countries in the Caribbean and South America, where we can have supply and storage areas set up. Plus, we’re developing weapons that can hit them before they see it coming. They seem to think they’re the only ones who can master ultra-modern ways of fighting. But really, they’re stuck in the past, and we’re a lot lighter on our feet. They’ll never know what hit them. One of our hypersonic missiles can take down one of their big, lumbering aircraft carriers, and everything on it. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, as they say over there. What I’m saying is, we really don’t want a war with them. But if one happens, we’re ready to win it. Oh yeah, we also have nuclear weapons that can hit every major city in their country, and we’ve added 350 ICBM launchers³ in just the past three years. As one of your own intellectuals said, we Chinese are ‘prepared to wage a … type of warfare that would reach deep into American society.’ But of course, we’re preparing for war so we can prevent war.”

How do you think remarks like that would be received in the U.S.?

Back to Reality—U.S. Prepares to “Defend the Homeland”

Wormuth concluded that “The last thing we do … is to provide counter-attack forces if they’re needed. There’s a lot of discussion on how that would work in which different scenarios.” Where she foresees U.S. ground forces being used, and whether that could be in China itself, Wormuth didn’t say. But she ended her remarks by stressing the importance of “defending the homeland”: “If we got into a major war with China, the United States homeland would be at risk as well, with both kinetic attacks and non-kinetic attacks.”⁴

Wormuth was not specific about what she means by “kinetic attacks” in this case—whether she and other U.S. military strategists are anticipating missile and bombing attacks on U.S. bases such as those in Hawai’i and California, for example, or possibly an actual land invasion of the continental U.S. by the Chinese army, or any other particular scenario. She did say that in the event of a U.S. war with China, she expected “cyber-attacks” on “power grids, or on pipelines.” She expects the Chinese military to “go after the will of the United States public, they’re going to try to erode support for a conflict. I think the Army will play a role here at home.” She added that she believes people in the U.S. are willing to fight for their “homeland and ideals,” “like we did in World War 2.” She said she has no doubt the U.S. military, including the army “will be called to provide defense support to civil authorities (within the U.S.).”

Pause, and think about those statements a bit. A leading architect of U.S. military strategy is saying she’s preparing for a conflict comparable to World War 2—only, this time it would mainly be between two powers with massive nuclear arsenals. And this time, the military is preparing for it to possibly be fought on U.S. soil, not just “over there.”

And think about this: calling the U.S. military an instrument for “defense,” as Wormuth did, is so common that its almost never questioned by political officials, the media, or most people. Actually, the U.S. military is the most prolific killing machine in humanity’s history. Through its history, the U.S. has directly invaded, bombed, or intervened at least 170 times all over the globe⁵—while there have been only three direct attacks ever on the U.S. “homeland.”⁶ And now people like Wormuth are making and implementing massive, provocative war preparations for an all-out battle for global supremacy with China that could well involve the immeasurable horrors of nuclear war. This has nothing whatsoever to do with “defense.” They are making cold-blooded calculations for a collision of imperialist powers that literally threatens all humanity and life on this planet.

We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and to determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible.” 

—From the Bob Avakian Interviews on The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show