U.S. Ends Cold War Missile Treaty, With Aim of Countering China

U.S. officials say that the treaty tied their hands on China and that Russia was not complying with it.
By David E. Sanger and Edward Wong

Military vehicles carrying ballistic missiles through Tiananmen Square during a military parade in Beijing in 2015. The first deployments of new American missiles would likely be intended to counter China.

WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday terminated a major treaty of the Cold War, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement, and it is already planning to start testing a new class of missiles later this summer.
But the new missiles are unlikely to be deployed to counter the treaty’s other nuclear power, Russia, which the United States has said for years was in violation of the accord. 

Instead, the first deployments are intended to counter China, which has amassed an imposing missile arsenal and is now seen as a much more formidable strategic rival than Russia.
The moves by Washington have elicited concern that the United States may be on the precipice of a new arms race, especially because the one major remaining arms control treaty with Russia, a far larger one called New START, appears on life support, unlikely to be renewed when it expires in less than two years.
At a moment when the potential for nuclear confrontations with North Korea and Iran is rising, the American decision to abandon the 32-year-old treaty has prompted new worries in China.

The resurgence of nuclear geopolitics was evident in the Democratic debate on Tuesday night, when presidential hopefuls grappled with whether the United States should renounce “first use” of nuclear weapons in any future conflict.

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On Feb 2nd, 2019 the U.S. gave Russia six months to return to compliance with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Russia refused, so the treaty ends today. The U.S. will not remain party to a treaty when others violate it. Russia bears sole responsibility.
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Barack Obama considered terminating the treaty when Moscow was first accused of violating its terms. 

On Thursday, just as his aides were confirming the American withdrawal and blaming Russia for the breakdown, President Trump told reporters that Russia “would like to do something on a nuclear treaty” and added later, “So would I.” 

But he appeared to be discussing a broader treaty that would involve China — which has said it has no intention of negotiating a limit on its arsenal.
In fact, the administration has argued that China is one reason Mr. Trump decided to exit the I.N.F. treaty. 

Most experts now assess that China has the most advanced conventional missile arsenal in the world, based throughout the mainland. 

When the treaty went into effect in 1987, China’s missile fleet was judged so rudimentary that it was not even a consideration.
Today hundreds of missiles in southeast China are within range of Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island supported by the United States. 

Missiles at other sites can hit Japan and India, and there are Chinese missiles that can strike the United States territory of Guam and other potential targets in what American strategists call the second-island chain.
“Unilateral constraint was a losing proposition: China developed the world’s foremost force of missiles precisely within the ranges that I.N.F. would prohibit,” said Andrew Erickson, a professor of strategy at the United States Naval War College. 

“So this increasingly antiquated treaty had no future.”
Until now, the Trump administration has held off on testing new missiles that would violate the treaty; under its terms, even testing is prohibited. 

But that stricture lifts on Friday, and the first test of new American intermediate-range missiles is likely to begin within weeks, according to American officials familiar with the Pentagon’s plans.
The first, perhaps as early as this month, is expected to be a test of a version of a common, sea-launched cruise missile, the Tomahawk. 

It would be modified to be fired from the ground. (The treaty prohibited intermediate-range ground-launched missiles, but not missiles launched from ships or airplanes.) 

If successful, officials say, the first ground-launched cruise missiles could be deployed within 18 months or so — if the United States can find a country willing to house them.
That would be followed by a test of a new mobile, ground-launched ballistic missile with a range of 1,800 to 2,500 miles, before the end of the year. 

But that would be an entirely new missile, and it is not likely to be deployed for another five years or so — meaning the very end of the Trump presidency, if he is re-elected.
But the question is where to deploy them. 

“I don’t think the Europeans want to host them,” Gary Samore, the director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University and the chief nuclear strategist at the National Security Council under Obama, said on Thursday. 

In Asia, he noted, the two countries where it would make most sense to deploy the missiles would be Japan and South Korea, though any move to put the missiles there could infuriate China.
“The real question is where and whether or not there would be pushback,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

“The most obvious place is someplace in Japan.”
Mr. Samore noted that the fate of New START, which governs the strategic weapons the United States and Russia have deployed, “is much more important than I.N.F.” 

Senior military officials agree, but have added that once the I.N.F. treaty dies, it is hard to imagine a negotiation to renew New START, which expires in February 2021, right after the next presidential inauguration.
Even if it is renewed, Mr. Samore noted that in coming years, the source of strategic instability may not come just from nuclear weapons but also “from space weapons, artificial intelligence and cyber — and there we have no restraints.”
But it is China’s rocket forces that have focused the attention of the Pentagon and the Trump administration. 

In 2017, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., then the head of United States Pacific Command, said in congressional testimony that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force controls the “largest and most diverse missile force in the world, with an inventory of more than 2,000 ballistic and cruise missiles.” 

He pointed out that the United States capability lagged because of its adherence to the treaty with Russia, and that if China were a signatory, 95 percent of its missiles would be in violation.
But deploying a counterforce to Taiwan would be too provocative, officials say, and Japan may have hesitations: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would have to consider the blow that would result to relations between Beijing and Tokyo, which have been improving.
China’s fury at deployment of American ground-based missiles in an Asian nation probably would be even greater than its reaction in 2016 and 2017 to plans to install an American antimissile system in South Korea.
For more than a year after the announcement of the deployment, Beijing denounced the move and called for a wide boycott of products from South Korea, whose companies then suffered. 

The Americans began deploying the system, commonly known as THAAD, in March 2017, and Beijing did not relent on its actions against South Korea until that October. 

Communist Party leaders feared the United States was laying the groundwork for an expansive antimissile system across Asia.
Chinese officials have also balked at any attempt to limit their missiles with a new treaty, arguing that the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia are much larger and deadlier.
“The Trump idea of a trilateral arms control agreement is not realistic,” Mr. Samore said. 

“The Chinese are not going to codify an inferior number of weapons compared to the United States and Russia. And Russia and the U.S. won’t give China equal status.”

Chinese Peril

China’s Sea Control Is a Done Deal, ‘Short of War With the U.S.’

By Hannah Beech

An American crew monitored China’s buildup in the South China Sea this month from a Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance plane.

NEAR MISCHIEF REEF, South China Sea — As the United States Navy reconnaissance plane banked low near Mischief Reef in the South China Sea early this month, a Chinese warning crackled on the radio.
“U.S. military aircraft,” came the challenge, delivered in English in a harsh staccato.
“You have violated our China sovereignty and infringed on our security and our rights. You need to leave immediately and keep far out.”
Aboard the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, flying in what is widely considered to be international airspace, Lt. Dyanna Coughlin scanned a live camera feed showing the dramatic evolution of Mischief Reef.
Five years ago, this was mostly an arc of underwater atoll populated by tropical fish and turtles.
Now Mischief Reef, which is off the Philippine coast but controlled by China, has been filled out and turned into a Chinese military base, complete with radar domes, shelters for surface-to-air missiles and a runway long enough for fighter jets.
Six other nearby shoals have been similarly transformed by Chinese dredging.
“I mean, this is insane,” Lieutenant Coughlin said.
“Look at all that crazy construction.”
A rare visit on board a United States Navy surveillance flight over the South China Sea pointed out how profoundly China has reshaped the security landscape across the region.
The country’s aggressive territorial claims and island militarization have put neighboring countries and the United States on the defensive, even as President Trump’s administration is stepping up efforts to highlight China’s controversial island-building campaign.
In congressional testimony before assuming his new post as head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command in May, Adm. Philip S. Davidson sounded a stark warning about Beijing’s power play in a sea through which roughly one-third of global maritime trade flows.
“In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,” Admiral Davidson said, an assessment that caused some consternation in the Pentagon.

A view of Subi Reef and the array of vessels there.

How Beijing relates to its neighbors in the South China Sea could be a harbinger of its interactions elsewhere in the world.
Xi Jinping has held up the island-building effort as a prime example of “China moving closer to center stage” and standing “tall and firm in the East.”
In a June meeting with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Xi vowed that China “cannot lose even one inch of the territory” in the South China Sea, even though an international tribunal has dismissed Beijing’s expansive claims to the waterway.
The reality is that governments with overlapping territorial claims — representing Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei — lack the firepower to challenge China.
The United States has long fashioned itself as a keeper of peace in the Western Pacific.
But it’s a risky proposition to provoke conflict over a scattering of rocks in the South China Sea, analysts say.
“As China’s military power grows relative to the United States, and it will, questions will also grow regarding America’s ability to deter Beijing’s use of force in settling its unresolved territorial issues,” said Rear Adm. Michael McDevitt, who is now a senior fellow in strategic studies at the Center for Naval Analyses.
An unexpected encounter in the South China Sea could also set off an international incident.
A 1.4-million-square-mile sea presents a kaleidoscope of shifting variables: hundreds of disputed shoals, thousands of fishing boats, coast guard vessels and warships and, increasingly, a collection of Chinese fortresses.
In late August, one of the Philippines’ largest warships, a cast-off cutter from the United States Coast Guard, ran aground on Half Moon Shoal, an unoccupied maritime feature not far from Mischief Reef.
The Chinese, who also claim the shoal, sent vessels from nearby artificial islands, but the Philippines refused any help.
After all, in 2012, the Chinese Coast Guard had muscled the Philippines off of Scarborough Shoal, a reef just 120 nautical miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon.
Another incident in 1995 brought a Chinese flag to Mischief Reef, also well within what international maritime law considers a zone where the Philippines has sovereign rights.
Could somewhere like Half Moon Shoal be the next flash point in the South China Sea?
“A crisis at Half Moon was averted, but it has always been the risk with the South China Sea that a small incident in remote waters escalates into a much larger crisis through miscommunication or mishandling,” said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “That’s why this is all so dangerous. It’s not just a pile of rocks that can be ignored.”
Monitoring feeds from a camera controlled by an observer, front left, on the naval reconnaissance mission early this month.

‘Leave immediately!’
On the scratchy radio channel, the Chinese challenges kept on coming.
Eight separate times during the mission this month, Chinese dispatchers queried the P-8A Poseidon. Twice, the Chinese accused the American military aircraft not just of veering close to what Beijing considered its airspace but also of violating its sovereignty.
“Leave immediately!” the Chinese warned over and over.
Cmdr. Chris Purcell, the American squadron commander, said such challenges have been routine during the four months he has flown missions over the South China Sea.
“What they want is for us to leave, and then they can say that we left because this is their sovereign territory,” he said.
“It’s kind of their way to try to legitimize their claims, but we are clear that we are operating in international airspace and are not doing anything different from what we’ve done for decades.”
In 2015, Xi Jinping stood in the Rose Garden at the White House and promised that “there is no intention to militarize” a collection of disputed reefs in the South China Sea known as the Spratlys.
But since then, Chinese dredgers have poured mountains of sand onto Mischief Reef and six other Chinese-controlled features in the Spratlys.
China has added at least 3,200 acres of new land in the area, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Descending as low as 5,000 feet, the surveillance flight this month gave a bird’s-eye view of the Chinese construction.
On Subi Reef, a construction crane swung into action next to a shelter designed for surface-to-air missiles.
There were barracks, bunkers and open hangars.
At least 70 vessels, some warships, surrounded the island.
On Fiery Cross Reef, a complex of buildings with Chinese eaves was arrayed at the center of the reclaimed island, including an exhibition-style hall with an undulating roof.
It looked like a typical newly built town in interior China — except for the radar domes that protruded like giant golf balls across the reef.
A military-grade runway ran the length of the island, and army vehicles trundled across the tarmac. Antenna farms bristled.
“It’s impressive to see the Chinese building, given that this is the middle of the South China Sea and far away from anywhere, but the idea that this isn’t militarized, that’s clearly not the case,” Commander Purcell said.
“It’s not hidden or anything. The intention, it’s there plain to see.”
In other spots, reclamation could also be seen on Vietnamese-controlled features, such as West London Reef, where workers dragged equipment past piles of sand.
But dredging by Southeast Asian nations is scant compared with the Chinese effort.
In April, China for the first time deployed antiship and antiaircraft missiles on Mischief, Subi and Fiery Cross, American military officials said.
The following month, a long-range bomber landed on Woody Island, another contested South China Sea islet.
A Pentagon report released in August said that with forward operating bases on artificial islands in the South China Sea, the People’s Liberation Army was honing its “capability to strike U.S. and allied forces and military bases in the western Pacific Ocean, including Guam.”
In response to the intensifying militarization of the South China Sea, the United States in May disinvited China from joining the biannual Rim of the Pacific naval exercise, the world’s largest maritime warfare training, involving more than 20 navies.
“We are prepared to support China’s choices, if they promote long-term peace and prosperity,” Mr. Mattis said, explaining the snub.
“Yet China’s policy in the South China Sea stands in stark contrast to the openness of our strategy.”

Radar towers, hangars and five-story buildings seen on Fiery Cross Reef.

Projecting Power
For its part, Beijing claims the United States is the one militarizing the South China Sea.
In addition to the routine surveillance flyovers, President Trump has sent American warships more frequently to waters near China’s man-made islands.
These freedom of navigation patrols, which occur worldwide, are meant to show the United States’ commitment to maritime free passage, Pentagon officials say.
The last such operation by the United States was in May, when two American warships sailed near the Paracels, another contested South China Sea archipelago.
Beijing was irate.
The United States says that it does not take any side in territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
On its maps, China uses a so-called nine-dash line to scoop out most of the waterway’s turf as its own.
But international legal precedent is not on China’s side when it comes to the dashed demarcation, a version of which was first used in the 1940s.
In 2016, an international tribunal dismissed Beijing’s nine-dash claim, judging that China has no historical rights to the South China Sea. 
The case was brought by the Philippines after Scarborough Shoal was commandeered by China in 2012, following a tense blockade.
The landmark ruling, however, has had no practical effect.
That’s in large part because Rodrigo Duterte, who became president of the Philippines less than a month before the tribunal reached its decision, chose not to press the matter with Beijing.
He declared China his new best friend and dismissed the United States as a has-been power.
But last month, Mr. Duterte took Beijing to task when a recording aired on the BBC from another P-8A Poseidon mission over the South China Sea demonstrated that Chinese dispatchers were taking a far more aggressive tone with Philippine aircraft than with American ones.
“I hope China would temper its behavior,” Mr. Duterte said.
“You cannot create an island and say the air above it is yours.”

The crew disembarking on Okinawa, Japan, after their mission over the South China Sea.

Missed Opportunities
Perceptions of power — and Chinese reactions to these projections — have led analysts to criticize Barack Obama as having been too timid in countering China over what Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the former head of the United States Pacific Command, memorably called a “great wall of sand” in the South China Sea.
Critics, for instance, have faulted the previous administration for not conducting more frequent freedom of navigation patrols.
“China’s militarization of the South China Sea has been a gradual process, with several phases where alternative actions by the U.S., as well as other countries, could have changed the course of history,” said Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.
Chief among these moments, Mr. Vuving said, was China’s takeover of Scarborough Shoal.
The United States declined to back up the Philippines, a defense treaty ally, by sending Coast Guard vessels or warships to an area that international law has designated as within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
“Seeing U.S. commitment to its ally, Beijing might not have been as confident as it was with its island-building program,” Mr. Vuving said.
“The U.S. failure to support its ally in the Scarborough standoff also demonstrated to people like Duterte that he had no other option than to kowtow to China.”
With most of the Spratly military bases nearing completion by the end of the year, according to Pentagon assessments, the next question is whether — or more likely when — China will begin building on Scarborough.
A Chinese base there would put the People’s Liberation Army in easy striking distance of the Philippine capital, Manila.
From the American reconnaissance plane, Scarborough looked like a perfect diving retreat, a lazy triangle of reef sheltering turquoise waters.
But Chinese Coast Guard vessels could be seen circling the shoal, and Philippine fishermen have complained about being prevented from accessing their traditional waters.
“Do you see any construction vessels around there?” Lieutenant Coughlin asked.
“Negative, ma’am,” replied Lt. Joshua Grant, as he used a control stick to position the plane’s camera over Scarborough Shoal.
“We’ll see if it changes next time.”

American Hero

Trump Taps Harry Harris, Known for Being Tough on China, as Australia Envoy
By JACQUELINE WILLIAMS

Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of the United States Pacific Command, is expected to become ambassador to Australia. 

SYDNEY, Australia — President Trump has said he plans to nominate Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of the United States Pacific Command and a vocal critic of China’s military expansion in the region, as ambassador to Australia.
Admiral Harris, 61, who has spent 39 years in the Navy, is expected to easily win confirmation in the Senate.
The United States has been without an ambassador to Australia, a major ally, since 2016. 

The alliance between the countries was strained in the early days of the Trump administration by an argument between President Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the resettlement of refugees.
As China flexes its might and North Korea speeds its nuclear program, a strong alliance between the United States and Australia is seen by many as crucial to maintaining the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region.
Here’s a look at the man who will most likely become central to that relationship.

Who is Admiral Harris?
Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and an American father, he was the first Asian-American appointed to lead a combat command.
After graduating from the United States Naval Academy in 1978, he went on to become a naval flight officer and then earned a master’s degree in Asian security at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, another master’s at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, and he attended Oxford.
As head of the Pacific Command, he oversees about 375,000 military and civilian personnel, conducting operations in a region that spans more than 100 million square miles, or more than half of the earth’s surface.
Last year, in two separate events, American warships under Admiral Harris’s command were damaged and several sailors were killed in collisions. 

He also accepted full responsibility in April for a bewildering chain of events that mistakenly left the impression that the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was rushing to confront an increasingly belligerent North Korea, when it was not.

Where does he stand on regional issues?
China
Appointed to lead the Pacific Command President Obama, Admiral Harris has taken a hard line against Chinese military action, calling Beijing’s policy to build bases in the South China Sea “provocative and expansionist.”
He has described China’s efforts to build artificial islands in contested waters “a Great Wall of sand.” Since his appointment, he has advocated actively patrolling the South China Sea in so-called freedom of navigation operations.

North Korea
As much as Admiral Harris has warned of Chinese aggression, he has made clear that he believes the biggest threat to the region is North Korea.
“Our most volatile and dangerous threat is North Korea, with its quest for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them intercontinentally,” he said during a 2014 Senate confirmation hearing.
“Our collective efforts amid the challenges,” he said, “underscore the importance of America remaining a strong and engaged in the region.” 

He continued, “American leadership does matter.”
Despite those warnings, Admiral Harris has made clear that the solution to the North Korean threat is not necessarily though the use of American force.
In a statement last year, he said it was crucial that the United States “bring Kim Jong-un to his senses, not his knees.”

What would his appointment mean for Australia?
It has been more than a year since the United States had an ambassador in Australia, and Admiral Harris’s nomination comes amid fears that President Trump was abandoning the countries’ traditional alliance.
Admiral Harris’ nomination “is a demonstration that that’s not actually happening,” said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Mr. Turnbull, the prime minister, welcomed news of the nomination on Twitter, saying on Twitter, “Look forward to seeing you in Canberra, Harry.”
Admiral Harris has frequently visited Australia and has said he believes the alliance between the two countries “anchors peace and stability in the region.”
“Australia,” he added, “plays a leading role in regional security, capacity-building efforts and addressing disaster response.”
But how Admiral Harris handles Australia’s relationship with China is an open question. 

Australia increasingly finds itself economically dependent on China, its largest trade partner, even as some politicians have warned that the rising Asian power is trying to influence Australian politics.
“What he needs to be aware of is the sensitivity around looking like Australia is doing America’s bidding,” said Euan Graham, director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute.
Already, China has signaled concern about Admiral Harris’s potential new position.
Though Chinese officials have not commented on news of the nomination, the state news media reported on Friday that a “U.S. hawk is made ambassador to Australia.”

As China Rises, Australia Asks Itself: Can It Rely on America?

The United States, under Donald Trump, cannot be relied on as a stable partner.
By JANE PERLEZ and DAMIEN CAVE

United States Marines marching in Darwin, Australia, this year on Anzac Day, a day of remembrance for veterans. The United States has long been Australia’s security guarantor. 

BEIJING — When the Australian government set out to write a new foreign policy paper, it faced hotly contested questions shaping the country’s future: Will China replace the United States as the dominant power in Asia? If so, how quickly?
The government’s answers came in a so-called white paper released last month by the administration of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. 

For sure, China is challenging the United States in Asia, though in the end, it argues, America will prevail and Australia can count on its security guarantor of the past 70 years.
But a prominent defense strategist, Hugh White, has disputed that view, arguing in a new essay that China has arrived, the United States is fading and Australia must find a way to survive on its own.
The contrasting assessments have set off a debate in Australia about the durability of the American alliance and China’s intentions toward Australia.
The government tried to reassure the public that there was no need to make a choice between China, Australia’s biggest trade partner, and the United States, its security patron. 

Despite the America First policies of Donald Trump, who is unpopular in Australia, the United States of old would endure. 

Australia would deal with the changing environment, it said, by working “harder to maximize our international influence.”
The arguments come against a backdrop of concerns over China’s growing influence in Australia. These include Chinese meddling in Australian universities and ethnically Chinese businessmen with connections to the government in Beijing giving generously to election campaigns.
Australia’s heavy reliance on iron ore and energy exports to China has long raised questions about the need to diversify its economy. 

However, dependence on China has only grown, as an influx of Chinese students and travelers now also helps to sustain the higher education and tourism industries.
Australia has tried to balance its growing economic dependence on China with its longstanding post-World War II security relationship with the United States.
But China’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea, and Trump’s decision to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade pact America once sought to lead, have rattled the underpinnings of Australia’s policies.

Australia’s leaders have gone beyond the white paper’s careful reassurances, openly declaring that Australia must confront the shifting power dynamics of the region.
Mr. Turnbull has called this the first time in Australia’s history that its dominant trading partner was not also its dominant security partner. 

He argued that the country should see this as an opportunity and not a risk, but his comments were also laced with uncertainty and concern.
“Now power is shifting, and the rules and institutions are under challenge,” he said. 

“The major players are testing their relationships with each other, while undergoing rapid change themselves.”
Foreign policy experts say the white paper’s assessment of American staying power does not reflect a growing consensus among many Australian policymakers that the United States, at least under its current leadership, cannot be relied on as a stable partner.
Michael Fullilove, executive director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, described what many Australians see as a fraying of the liberal international order because, he said, “Donald Trump is neither liberal in his inclinations nor orderly in his behavior.”
Many say it’s time for Australia to stop pretending about American intentions, and begin considering other options. 

This view has found one of its clearest and most strident voices in White, whose 27,000-word essay bluntly argues that Australia needs to wake up: The game is over and China has already won.
“We all underestimated China’s power and resolve and overestimated America’s,” wrote White, who worked on sensitive intelligence and military matters with the United States as a senior official at the Australian Defense Department. 

“Not only is America failing to remain the dominant power, it is failing to retain any substantial strategic role at all.”

Trump with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in New York this year. The Australian government says it can still count on American support. 

In reply to the government’s paper, Mr. White said Australia’s stance was unrealistic because it clung too much to the vestiges of a fading power that would not be able to stay ahead of China’s economic strength.
“The paper has an elegiac feel, the sense of a sunset,” he said in an interview.
The biggest splash came from Mr. White ’s recommendations for what Australia should do about an American retreat. 

Faced with Chinese efforts to impose its influence and different political values, he said Australia will have to do more to defend itself, including acquiring nuclear weapons.
China’s rise is likely to spark an arms race in the Asia-Pacific, with both Japan and South Korea likely to become nuclear powers within a couple of decades.
“And the logic that drives them has implications for others,” Mr. White said. 

Australia could remain a middle power by keeping only a small nuclear arsenal. 

“It might look something like Britain’s submarine-based nuclear force,” he wrote.
American officials have tried to counter such conclusions. 

During his visit to Sydney in April, Vice President Mike Pence told Australian business and government leaders that the United States remains Australia’s most vital economic partner, with American investment growing by 50 percent in the past three years.
Another sign that Washington may seek to reassure its Australian allies has been talk of the possible appointment of Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the United States commander in the Pacific, as the next ambassador to Australia. 

Some American officials have said they would welcome the move because it would send a message to China that the United States will not retreat.
Australian media have chimed in, calling Admiral Harris “China’s least favorite American.” 

Still, it’s far from clear whether that would be enough to offset the deep concerns here about Donald Trump.
Australia has also tried to hedge its bets by reaching out to other democracies in the region, particularly Japan and India. 

Citing concerns about China’s advance into the South China Sea, the government’s white paper backed the idea of joining India, Japan and the United States to promote a free and democratic Indo-Pacific region that could offset China.
In China, the Foreign Ministry took offense at the comments about the South China Sea, saying Australia had no business meddling. 

The state-run Global Times suggested China might retaliate with boycotts in tourism and higher education.
“Fortunately, the country is not that important and China can move its ties with Australia to a back seat and disregard its sensitivities,” the newspaper said.
In his essay, Mr. White warned that Beijing could use its growing naval power to ramp up pressure by contesting Australia’s claims to remote pieces of Australian territory, such as islands that it controls in the Antarctic, or by deploying forces to South Pacific neighbors, where China enjoys good relations.
Analysts sympathetic to the Turnbull government have pushed back, saying Mr. White’s essay paints an overly alarmist picture.
“While many of the trends in the region are concerning, White underestimates America’s stake in the region,” said Andrew Shearer, who was an adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. 

Mr. White is “is premature in reaching the conclusion that Trump will acquiesce to Chinese supremacy, and that the United States is already withdrawing.”
Still, the essay performed a useful service, Mr. Shearer said, by drawing attention to the rapidly shifting balance of power in Asia and the need for a more coherent response by Washington.
Chinese analysts said by 2030 China will have won the geopolitical race.

“Everyone will then live under the shadow of Chinese power,” they said.

America does not get entirely short shrift from Mr. White. 

“It won’t be the dominant power in Asia,” he wrote, “but it will have both the means and the motive to exert some influence over China’s conduct — including in East Asia — through the global system in which it will play a key role.”

Sina Delenda Est

China Has Placed Weapons on Disputed Spratly Islands in South China Sea
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

BEIJING — China signaled on Thursday that it had installed weapons on disputed South China Sea islands and would use them like a “slingshot” to repel threats, compounding tensions with the incoming Trump administration.
The Chinese message, in a Defense Ministry statement, suggested that China was further watering down a pledge made by Xi Jinping to not militarize the islands.
The comments left little doubt that such installations were part of China’s plan to deepen its territorial claim over the islands, which has raised tensions with its neighbors over their rival claims and with Washington over freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest commercial waterways.
They were also likely to further complicate China’s already testy relations with President Donald J. Trump. 

China’s rapid creation of artificial islands in the South China Sea, expanding former reefs and outcrops into guarded permanent outposts, has already become a major source of tension with Washington.

Repeatedly this year, the Chinese have accused the United States of making “provocative” moves by sending warships near some of these islands, known as the Spratlys.

The Chinese have been creating harbors, runways and reinforced hangars big enough for military aircraft on the islands. 

But new satellite images made public this week appeared to reveal weapons emplacements for the first time.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, which released the images through its Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, said they showed “large antiaircraft guns and probable close-in weapons systems,” which can theoretically thwart cruise missile attacks.
The Defense Ministry statement, posted on its website in response to the images, did not specify what kinds of weapons the images showed but said any military hardware on the islands was reasonable. 

It repeated China’s contention that its construction on the islands is mainly for civilian purposes.
“As for necessary military facilities, they are primarily for defense and self-protection, and this is proper and legitimate,” the Defense Ministry said. 

“For instance, if someone was at the door of your home, cocky and swaggering, how could it be that you wouldn’t prepare a slingshot?”

Fiery Cross Reef
Weapons systems are visible on Chinese outposts in the South China Sea.

Satellite images by CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative/DigitalGlobe

There was no immediate comment from Mr. Trump or his transition team.
Mr. Trump recently angered Chinese officials by holding a phone conversation with Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, an island that Beijing deems a breakaway province of China. 

It had been nearly four decades since a United States president had such direct contact with a Taiwanese leader.
In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Mr. Trump also criticized China over its trade imbalance with America, its military activities in the South China Sea and its ties to North Korea. 

China was “building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, which they shouldn’t be doing,” he said in the interview on Fox News.
During his campaign, Mr. Trump dwelled on accusations that China had systematically sapped American industrial might, and he has indicated that trade issues will be a priority in dealings with Beijing. 

But the latest disclosures suggest how seemingly remote islands in the South China Sea could become a source of serious tensions, even military strife.
The Spratlys are the subject of an especially volatile mix of competing claims. 

Parts of the archipelago are also claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan. And the possibility of undersea oil and gas deposits has exacerbated the rivalries.
President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has moved in recent months to ease tensions with China, and to distance his country from Washington. 

Even so, the Philippines keeps defense treaties with the United States.
But China, with the world’s second-biggest economy and a swelling military budget, has established an intimidating dominance across much of the South China Sea. 

And the latest satellite images appeared to confirm its deepening military grip on the Spratlys.
The steps “show that Beijing is serious about defense of its artificial islands in case of an armed contingency in the South China Sea,” the Asia Maritime Defense Initiative said in its report about the images.
“Among other things, they would be the last line of defense against cruise missiles launched by the United States or others” against air bases that may soon go into operation on the islands, it said.
The images showed that the facilities were in place before Mr. Trump’s comments.
The Obama administration sought to play down both the images and the Chinese Defense Ministry’s response. 

“We watch Chinese naval developments very carefully, and we urge all parties in the South China Sea to avoid actions that raise tensions,” said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.
The images elicited a far more contentious response from Republicans, who do not necessarily share Mr. Trump’s views on China trade policy but see Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea as an aggressive challenge to the United States.

Johnson Reef
Weapons systems are visible on Chinese outposts in the South China Sea.

Satellite images by CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative/DigitalGlobe
Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the images confirmed “what has long been evident: China is militarizing the South China Sea, its leaders continue to lie about that fact, and Beijing is paying little to no price for its behavior.”
Some American military officials suggested privately that the antiaircraft emplacements were purely defensive in nature, with a limited range, useful only if the outposts were under attack.
Of greater concern, they said, was the possibility that China could one day install more advanced antiaircraft missile systems on the islands, which can fire at targets hundreds of miles away.
Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., head of the United States Pacific Command, said on Wednesday that America would not abandon its military presence across the Asia-Pacific region. 

He indicated that American naval ships would continue passing through the South China Sea to show that the United States “will not allow the shared domains to be closed down unilaterally, no matter how many bases are built on artificial features in the South China Sea.”
The Chinese government has said it respects freedom of civilian passage in the South China Sea but also called American naval “freedom of navigation operations” dangerous meddling. 

The Chinese navy has not tried to block the operations.
The latest images raised new doubts about the intent of comments made by Xi Jinping after he met Obama in the White House in September last year. 

With Obama at his side, Xi told reporters that “China does not intend to pursue militarization” of the islands.
Previous satellite pictures of the islands, released by the Asia Maritime Defense Initiative in August, already indicated that China was building military facilities there. 

Those images appeared to show reinforced aircraft hangars at the Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief Reefs, all part of the disputed parts of the archipelago.
A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday that his government had been entitled to take such steps and said they did not count as “militarization.”
The spokesman, Geng Shuang, said he could not confirm the precise findings from the latest satellite images but disputed they indicated any change on China’s part.
“If China constructing normal facilities on its own islands and deploying necessary territorial defense facilities counts as ‘militarization,’” he said, “then what about sending fleets through the South China Sea?”