Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America (6 page)

Russia must sense that same window of opportunity when it comes to North Korea, with whom it has recently entered into a highly touted “year of friendship,” in 2015, during which the two countries will explore deepening their economic and political ties. What some have called a “pariah alliance” would unite two of the most destabilizing actors on the world scene. We have yet to see how substantial the ties become, but, at minimum, a closer embrace with Moscow will help
Pyongyang defy American attempts to isolate and punish the Kim regime.
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The Russian outreach may be doubly important to North Korea these days, since China, Pyongyang’s principal sponsor in the world—often its only sponsor—has shown increasing impatience with Kim’s refusal to make economic reforms and especially with his continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. Most recently, North Korea test-launched a submarine-based ballistic missile, showing capabilities greater than what most observers had projected and leading analysts to believe that the regime could have a submarine fleet equipped with such missiles within five years.

But what has long caused the most worry around the world is the regime’s nuclear-weapons production capabilities. In a remarkable meeting with U.S. nuclear specialists in April, Chinese nuclear experts warned that Pyongyang’s ability to produce nuclear weapons has advanced well beyond American estimates. The Chinese now believe that the North may have as many as 20 warheads and the capacity to double that count within the next year, via its stocks of weapons-grade uranium.
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Already, the United States is concerned about the North’s ability to mount a nuclear warhead on an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile that, while untested, would have a range of over 5,000 miles—far enough to reach the West Coast of the United States. The U.S. believes that the North has exported nuclear technology to Syria as well as missile components to Iran and Yemen. What’s striking about the recent developments is that the Chinese themselves seem worried; up until recently, they had generally dismissed North Korea’s capabilities. But according to Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford University nuclear scientist who attended the meeting with the Chinese experts, “They believe on the basis of what they’ve put together now that the North Koreans have enough enriched uranium capacity to be able to make eight to 10 bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium per year.”
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To be sure, we should be skeptical of Chinese concerns. Beijing has long maintained a complicated, good cop–bad cop relationship with its troublesome Communist ally. For example, despite its recent criticisms of the North Korean nuclear program, Beijing—through a secretive, Hong Kong–based business—is providing Pyongyang with massive amounts of foreign exchange, which is critical for the ongoing viability and stability of Kim’s secretive regime.
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The Chinese have an interest in propping up that regime, if only to prevent the chaos—including a likely refugee flood—that would follow any governmental collapse. The Chinese would prefer a more stable government, but North Korea continues to serve Chinese interests as an economic vassal and as a counterweight to South Korea and a threat to the United States. North Korea’s growing nuclear capabilities should motivate Washington to bolster security—including a robust missile defense. We should not count on getting any help from China.

CYBER WARFARE, MILITARY AND NUCLEAR BUILDUPS, ECONOMIC EXPANSION

The Russia-China axis, as we call it in this book, is not just worrisome because of individual military flashpoints, as in Eastern Europe or in the Pacific; and not only because of both countries’ consistent and expanding facilitation of rogue actors. It is also a cause of great concern because, in multiple other arenas, both countries are aggressively fortifying themselves for growth and assertion around the world.

For years, both countries have been eating America’s lunch in the game of espionage and cyber warfare. We devote two chapters of this book to their efforts in these areas. As we went to press, the Obama administration revealed one of the largest breaches of federal-employee data in history, concerning at least 4 million current or former government workers. The breached data was held by the Office of Personnel Management, and the target appeared to be
Social Security Numbers. No allegations were made, but intelligence officials believe that the attack originated from China—though they’re unsure whether it was state-sponsored.
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The massive breach of OPM data comes on the heels of a report that last year, Russian hackers penetrated the White House’s unclassified computer systems and swept up some of President Obama’s email correspondence; the hackers also accessed the systems at the State Department
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and the Pentagon.
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To get a sense of what the stakes are here, recall the controversy that erupted early in 2015 when congressional investigators discovered, shortly before Hillary Clinton announced her presidential candidacy, that she had used a private server to send emails when she served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. That arrangement was unusual enough, but what made it worse was that Clinton revealed that she had culled through the 60,000 or so emails she had received during this period and decided that only about half were public records; she deleted the remaining 30,000 or so. She made the decision unilaterally; an outcry ensued from those who maintain that Clinton herself should not be the sole arbiter of what correspondence belongs in the public record. That’s the political aspect of the issue, and it will play out during the presidential campaign.

But what about the chance that those emails—deleted and undeleted—could have been accessed by hackers from foreign countries or intelligence organizations? On Fox News, Megyn Kelly asked Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, about the likelihood that “the Chinese, the Russians hacked into that server and her email account.”

“Very high,” Flynn said. “Likely. . . . They’re very good at it. China, Russia, Iran, potentially the North Koreans.”
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Flynn isn’t alone in that assessment. Despite Hillary’s confident claims that her server suffered no security breaches, independent systems
analysts, bloggers, and hackers probed the server and uncovered serious security lapses.

In short: It may well be that the Russians and Chinese are the only ones who have the 30,000 emails that Hillary deleted. That is a bone-chilling possibility in and of itself. Yet more broadly, as we show in this book, it is clear that in a host of other areas—commercial, military, governmental—the Chinese and Russians have compromised American security in ways that we never thought possible.

Compromising American security seems to be a particular pleasure of Putin’s, as he showed when he let his planes buzz Alaska—part of a pattern of increasing aerial provocations over the last year, in which Russian strategic bombers have intruded into American airspace at twice the normal rate of recent years.
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Some interpret the gestures as warnings from Putin to the United States to stay out of Ukraine; the incursions also reflect Putin’s growing confidence in his military might, which he has been building up in recent years. Putin has embarked on a decade-long modernization of the Russian military called New Look, which has had remarkable success in updating and transitioning the country’s armed forces to a model more in line with today’s war-fighting demands: smaller, more tactical forces; updated, modern weaponry and equipment; and a move away from conscription to a contract-based, professionalized military. Putin has spared no expense in bringing these changes about: “We should carry out the same powerful, all-embracing leap forward in modernization of the defense industry as the one carried out in the 1930s,” he told the Russian Security Council in 2012.
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His military investments have been Russia’s largest since the end of the Cold War, and they show every sign of bearing fruit.

Of possibly even greater concern is Russia’s nuclear posture. Russia holds a 10–1 advantage over NATO countries in nonstrategic
nukes, and Moscow has been busy violating the 1987 INF Treaty, most recently with a test launch of a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM), a sophisticated weapon difficult to track. It is “absolutely a tool that will have to be dealt with,” in the words of a NATO commander. “Militarily, a new mobile GLCM with a range between 500 and 5,000 kilometers, which is what the Russians reportedly tested, enables Russia to threaten U.S. allies in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia,” says Senator James Inhofe. “It also puts important targets in China, India, Pakistan, and other countries within range of Moscow’s nuclear force.”
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And yet, the Obama administration negotiated the New START nuclear treaty with Putin while Russia was violating the earlier INF agreement.

China is also ramping up its nuclear capabilities. In spring 2015, Beijing announced that it was enabling its long-range ballistic missiles to carry Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) technology—nuclear-arms terminology for placing multiple warheads on a single missile. Beijing has possessed MIRV technology for years but not operationalized it until now, suggesting that its strategic calculus has changed. The upgrade might mean a doubling of the number of warheads that China could fire at an enemy. “China’s little force is slowly getting a little bigger, and its limited capabilities are slowly getting a little better,” said Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.
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It is important to recognize that China’s assertiveness here, as in other areas, is not episodic or circumstantial, but systematic. Case in point: China’s remarkably bold aggression in the South China Sea, which includes a willingness to thwart international law in constructing artificial islands and claiming sovereignty over international shipping lanes. Troubling as all that is, it’s part of a broader vision, which the Communist Party in Beijing even translated and released to the world
in spring 2015: a planning document that spelled out China’s vision of building a “blue-water” navy—meaning one that can move offensively, not just defend national coastal waters.

Historically, the Chinese land forces were dominant. The country only recently built its first aircraft carrier. But the planning document makes clear that Beijing has prioritized the creation and maintenance of a world-class naval force: “The traditional mentality that land outweighs sea must be abandoned, and great importance has to be attached to managing the seas and oceans and protecting maritime rights and interests,” the document said. “It is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force structure commensurate with its national security and development interests.”
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The focus was confirmed by Xu Guangyu, a retired Chinese major general. “As China continues to rise,” he said, “it has enormous interests around the globe that need protection, including investments, trade, energy, imports, and the surging presence of Chinese living abroad.” And for Washington’s benefit, Xu went on: “China will actively build up its military capability and deterrence, just to make sure no one dares fight with us. The United States cannot expect China to back off under pressure. It needs to know that the consequences would be unthinkable if it pushes China into a corner.”
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China is boosting its military budget by 10 percent this year alone, to $144 billion, though some observers believe that that figure is not all-inclusive. Much of the new funding is going to the naval modernization. The United States, meanwhile, oversees a navy at its smallest since the end of the Cold War.

The priorities expressed in the 2015 planning document are, in turn, a reflection of an even broader vision, what Xi has called the China Dream: a goal to become the world’s preeminent military power, surpassing the United States, by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist revolution. “We must achieve the great revival of
the Chinese nation,” Xi said in 2013. “We must ensure there is unity between a prosperous country and a strong military.”
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China is on the march in other areas, including massive economic and infrastructure investments in the Third World, especially Africa. Beijing forged the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, persuading more than 50 nations, including many U.S. allies, to join a venture that would rival the U.S.-dominated World Bank. And closer to home for the United States, South America now has China as it leading export destination outside Latin America, surpassing the U.S.—a sobering but little-noted fact.
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In 2012, meanwhile, Russia wrote off $20 billion in debt for several African countries, as part of its strategic push into the continent, which it sees as a lucrative export market and as a potential partner in raw-materials exports. Moscow is eager get into the race for investment in Africa, where it lost much ground after the end of the Cold War. This past spring, Russia offered to help Greece with its latest financial crisis—on the condition that the Greeks agree to route Russian oil into Europe. In economics as in everything else, Vladimir Putin plays to win.

Most troublingly, both Russia and China have taken aggressive steps to invest in and form political alliances in Latin America—traditionally America’s backyard. Not all of this is new: Russia had meddled aggressively in Latin America during the Cold War, and Putin forged a powerful alliance with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez and has stayed close to his successor, Nicolás Maduro. Russia and Venezuela announced joint military drills in the Southern Caribbean Sea for later this year, and rumors persist that Moscow plans to sell Caracas military aircraft.
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In March 2015, Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, visited Cuba, Colombia, Guatemala, and Nicaragua—countries that have famously fraught relations with the United States. Nicaragua wants to buy Russian-made fighter jets—to the concern of its neighbors,
Costa Rica and Honduras. One analyst said the move could spark “a small-scale arms race” in the region.
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Russia and Argentina might soon close a deal under which Moscow would lease 12 Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer aircraft to Buenos Aires in return for beef and wheat. Rumors of that deal prompted the British Defence Ministry to launch a review of air defenses on the Falkland Islands.