Since 2015 President Xi started a revolution in the Chinese army. From a large, but cumbersome and obsolete army he started the transformation into a fit fighting machine.
It started creating a next generation of war machines (aircraft carriers and stealth jet fighter), but mainly he reshaped the army in more nimble and efficient units.
In April 2016, President Xi presented himself with a military uniform and with the “commander in chief” title.
He started the weaponization of the South China islands and created an exclusive zone that “conflicts” with the Japanese own zones.
This year, as the US with Trump is becoming more isolationist, it is stepping up the pressure. He started to build a faraway base in Dijbouti (Somalia).
Also, the new One Belt Road (train railway from China to Europe) initiative is a sort of a “US Marshal Plan” for China (US Marshall plan was meant to reconstrue Europe after the 2 World War, but in reality it meant to stop the USSR influence in Europe). This is provoking quite a bit of backlash.
In India, this is provoking a low intensity conflict (between to nuclear countries!). Unknown to most, in a pattern similar to the US, China is building a ring of fire of military bases around India using Sri Lanka and Pakistan to surround it.
In Vietnam China asked to stop drilling threatening maritime attack. Mongolia and Laos have their own issues with China.
Even Australia noted several spy vessels in the Australian exclusive economic zone.
But it is not limited to Asia, China is expanding its ties with Iran, Turkey and Russia (Russia and China just held the first joint war exercise in the Baltic Sea).
This, unfortunately, is nothing new. In this context, even the Second World War was a war between an old and weakening British Empire and a new rising power Hitler’s Germany. The ensuing war was so devastating that, from the ashes, a third party rose, the USA.
Hopefully this will not happen again as the weapon systems we have are much more sophisticated than in 1939.
Steve Bannon, Principal Security Advisor to President Trump, said, in March 2016, “there is no doubt we will go to war with China in the next 10 years”.
There are even theories that the pressure on North Korea is none the else a way to put pressure on China.
If a real war would explode – hopefully it will be contained to the South Pacific. If not a scenario like the Second World War where the two-main contended got destroyed and a third rose would be likely.
Conventionally I would say Europe or Russia, but you cannot discount a scenario in which there is a real rise of the AI machines (some of the new weapon system are classified as “deep mission” – a new military jargon that means that they can continue the mission even if they lose contact with the human operator).
It is not so farfetched as you might think. In June 2016, an AI cybersecurity software of a multinational company repelled an attack of an AI malware attack. It was the first time that an attack between two AI was registered with no human intervention (Font: Darktrace cybersecurity company).
I am quite studious of Artificial Intelligence and military application and it is quite scary. Without going in deep dive in the military hardware, just look at your phone and think that the military applications are 5 to 10 year more advanced than what you have.
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