In an inspection tour of Guangdong, Xi Jinping called on the Southern Military Command to speed up preparations for a military confrontation with the US Navy in the South China Sea in an unprecedentedly harsh manner, expressing directly: "You need to concentrate on preparing for war." The Hong Kong South China Morning Post, taking advantage of the ambiguity of the Chinese language, completely translated it as a direct order: "Prepare for war."
First of all, this is a natural reaction of the national leader to the growth of tension and uncertainty in the context of global and almost all-out US aggression.
The growing inclination of the United States to military activity seems to be an instinctive reaction of their establishment to the weakening of its usual global domination and to the “over-tension of the empire”, which, after more than a decade of discussion, gave Trump a decisive turn towards strategic isolationism.
The reasoning in the style of the American military doctrine of the late 90s that fighting should begin with gaining superiority in the information field and only conclude with direct blows against an already defeated and demoralized enemy is outdated: the global information field is collapsing on Facebook, and even giving out news to Russian Google), and the way of thinking not only of enemies, but also of many allies loses importance before our eyes.
Arguments about the “wars of the new generation” that make the direct destruction of the enemy unnecessary are deprived of their meaning in a new reality, in which nothing can be explained to anyone because of the embodiment of the “Moynihan nightmare”. This late senator once said: "Everyone has the right to their own opinion, but no one to their own facts." However, systemic falsifications of global media and Western politicians have created a world in which each of the opposing sides have exactly their own facts, and even if they are completely fictional, proving it against the last 10 years against Russia is impossible to prove it.
The growth of conflict potential generated by this in the eyes abolishes not only the principle “a corpse - the same marriage in the work of a politician as in the work of an accountant”, but also all the rules of behavior developed during and even more so after the end of the Cold War.
The rapid loss of world leadership by the United States (including a conscious rejection of it) rejects the world in the interwar period with its simple rules "forget about principles" and "beat first!"
However, the words of Xi Jinping are not just a reaction to global trends, but also a sober and specific orientation of the Chinese military and, more broadly, of Chinese society. After all, the US is not losing dominance in a vacuum: it is China that takes the lead from them.
Economically, educationally and even technologically, China is confidently catching up, and partially overtaking the United States (which still continue to dream and be intimidated in TV shows like the Black Mirror, while China is slowly testing various human transformation systems that are conventionally combined by innocent the term "social credit system").
The United States is beginning to lose even in the sphere of “soft power” (incorrectly translated in Russia as “soft power”): European experts are increasingly talking about the greater attractiveness of Shanghai compared to New York. Finally, Greater China is incomparably more diverse than Greater America and is able to integrate (including through Hong Kong, Macau and politically independent Singapore) carriers of a wide variety of views and trends.
The only area where the US still retains its global dominance is military. This is logical: they will go bankrupt on the same day, when they lose the system of their military bases, holding the entire planet by the throat or under the gun.
It is also logical that China, in the process of its development, striving to protect its communications from an increasingly aggressive strategic competitor, involuntarily throws it a military challenge.
In 2017, he launched the first aircraft carrier of its own production (an enlarged copy of the Soviet aircraft carrying cruiser Varyag, bought from Ukraine allegedly for an amusement park and completed 14 years), in 2020 it is expected to be commissioned and included in the fleet.
And already in 2021, the launch of a new generation aircraft carrier is expected, approximately corresponding in efficiency to the American one. It is reported on the plans of China to create six aircraft carrier groups, whose activities will provide 10 foreign bases. But even the presence of China at least one high-grade ocean-class aircraft carrier will allow it to guarantee the protection of its sea communications, which will limit the arbitrariness of the United States and destroy their hegemony in the military sphere. It is clear that the modern US elite, united (even in the context of the cold civil war against Trump) by China’s rejection and a thirst to “free themselves from economic dependence” from it, is not organically able to come to terms with such a prospect that could provoke it "To eliminate the danger before its maturation.
The most probable problem capable of giving a pretext for such a blow is the transformation of the South China Sea into the inland China of China. The most likely time is 2020–2021. Trump's second election could create for the American elite (and for his supporters and his opponents) the insurmountable temptations of organizing a “local military clash” with unpredictable strategic consequences — in the style of undermining the “Maine” cruiser on the roads of Havana for the war with Spain) or the fictional incident in the Gulf of Tonkin (which became the pretext for the bombing of North Vietnam).
Such prospects should make not only China alone be alerted, but at least Russia as well.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.