Financial Sense has an ominous article on the need for American vigilence against Russia and China:

History teaches that all nations, like all individuals, have a beginning and an end. No country is immortal. No nation is invincible. To make the point less delicately, America will one day cease to exist. And it may be useful, especially given the multiple crises now developing, to contemplate the mortality of the world’s most powerful country. What would the world be like without the United States? Would it be more violent or less violent? Would it be richer or poorer? Would there be more dictatorships in the world, or fewer, more freedom or more tyranny? The answers you give on these questions, if you are liable to have any answers, are ideologically defining.

There are those who claim that America’s destruction would be a good thing. The destroyers of America, by this reasoning, would be liberators and heroes. If we attempt to look at the case objectively, it is hard to think of America’s chief rivals for power as “liberators” in any sense of the word. China is a communist dictatorship and Russia is governed by thugs.

It is not nice to say that major powers like China or Russia seek the destruction of the United States. It is not nice to say that Russia and China are governed by thugs. But anyone who studies the foreign policies, chicanery, secret maneuvers and war preparations of Beijing and Moscow cannot honestly conclude otherwise. The fact that Russia and China are both assisting Iran’s development of nuclear weapons is more than suggestive. It is no accident that in America’s struggle against radical Islam, the Russian president has declared that Russia is Islam’s “best friend.” Before the fall of the Communist Party Soviet Union the central goal of Soviet foreign policy was to foster the downfall of the United States and the communization of the entire world. China, on the other hand, is a great country that suffered eclipse during the period of Western imperialism and colonialism. So China has reason to predicate its policy on the notion that “one good turn deserves another.” The reason for China’s opening to the West was not to enrich the Chinese bourgeoisie, or to adopt Western democratic values. The Chinese Communists sought an opening to the West so that they could get the investment capital and technology they needed for a modern military machine. Developing their economy is merely a necessary step in developing China’s new superpower status.

Some days ago China successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon. This remarkable capability didn’t develop overnight. As Washington Times correspondent Bill Gertz pointed out in his January 24 column, American defense officials concede that China’s Jan. 11 test is part of a “covert space-weapons program designed to cripple the U.S. military in a conflict.” The Chinese, to be sure, are publicly lying about the peacefulness of their intentions. “This test was not directed at any country and does not constitute a threat to any country,” said the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Oh yes, we all know that China couldn’t possibly want to shoot down American satellites. Beijing merely enjoys the challenge of shooting down its own satellites for meaningless target practice. In that case, it was a also a “practice” exercise when Chinese hackers attacked U.S. Naval War College computers in November. As one U.S. official told Bill Gertz: “The Naval War College is where the Navy’s Strategic Study Group is planning and practicing cyber-war techniques, and now they don’t even have e-mail access.”

In a 1999 book titled Red Dragon Rising, researchers Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett wrote: “We are deeply disturbed that senior PLA [People’s Liberation Army] officers have begun to talk among themselves about a preemptive strike using information warfare. In 1996, for example, a writer in the PLA’s main newspaper pointed out that ‘the enemy’ has ‘reconnaissance positioning satellites, AWACs, stealth bombers, aircraft carriers, long-range precision weapons’ but the PLA does not. A surprise attack, therefore, is not only justified but ‘is the only way to steer the course of the war in a direction favorable to China.’” Two years before 9/11, Temperlake and Triplett warned that a Chinese surprise attack on the United States “would be aimed at the American people – that is, the home front.”

Is this the policy of a peaceful and friendly nation?

Furthermore, China’s naval buildup directly threatens the economic lifelines of Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan. The Japanese have expressed alarm at the appearance of Chinese warships close to their shores. Is it possible that Chinese naval power might one day force East Asian nations into Beijing’s political orbit? According to Chinese president and commander-in-chief Hu Jintao, China needs a navy that is prepared for war “at any time.” At a meeting of Communist Party delegates in December, dressed in a green military uniform, Hu explained: “We should strive to build a strong navy that meets the needs of our military’s historical mission in this new century and at this new stage. We should make careful preparations for future military battles to ensure that our forces can effectively carry out their mission at any time.”

And what is this “historical mission” of the People’s Liberation Army? Believe it or not, Chinese Communism is sworn to destroy Western capitalism and build, in its place, a new socialist civilization. This has been a central doctrine of the Communist Party of China since its inception. The development of capitalism in China is merely a necessary expedient, accepted for the sake of capitalism’s ultimate demise. It is through trade that China is building its economic position, and thereby its military position. Western capitalists should look to their own survival. But this is something they take for granted. Many businessmen would say that U.S.-Chinese enmity is absurd. That is to say, they ignore China’s military buildup, China’s infiltration of Canada, China’s strategic alliance with Mexico, China’s “partnerships” with Russia and Iran. Here is a strategic “pattern” that deserves our close attention.

It is odd that Washington should worry more about Iran, when the butchers of Tiananmen Square are manufacturing thermonuclear weapons like sausages. So many nuclear weapons, and one big, fat, hollowed-out country to drop them on. Given the preparations of China, does anyone really suppose America is going to die a slow death at the hands of social reformers, lawyers and downsizing experts? Even if one supposes a gradual weakening of the Republic, wouldn’t some overseas power take advantage before the sick animal keels over? And since it really was the barbarians that finished off Rome, ask yourself who is most likely to finish off America?

What about the Russians? All the leading intelligence defectors and dissidents from Russia seem to agree that the Kremlin ordered the death of KGB/FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko. Nearly all of them think that the Soviet system is back in power. And the United States, with its ties to Europe weakened, with its global image in tatters, with its army stuck in Iraq, finds itself unable to oppose Russia’s policy in Europe and the Middle East. Under present circumstances, no American politician would suggest a return to the Cold War. And so, the Kremlin advances on every front, in broad daylight, unchallenged and unfettered – nationalizing industries, muzzling independent newspapers and silencing opposition voices with bullets and radioactive poison. What do we suppose the Russian leadership is up to?

When Nikita Khrushchev bragged of Moscow’s future victory almost fifty years ago, he said to his Western listeners, “Your grandchildren will live under Communism.” If we think the time of reckoning is a long way off, we ought to remember that we are the grandchildren Khrushchev was talking about. Soviet Russia’s long-range strategy didn’t expect quick results. It was predicated on patience, on decades of deception. America is now in a weakened economic and military position. The Great Crisis cannot be passed along to yet another generation, because things are coming to a head. The position of the United States is approaching a low point, and America’s enemies know it. On Tuesday Iranian President Ahmadinejad told Syria’s foreign minister: “the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives.” The end is near, he says. The time to strike is approaching. A BBC poll taken in 25 countries, involving 26,000 people, suggests that America is no longer as popular, as admired or favored as it once was. The tables have been turned and the dictators of the world are encouraged.

The number one security concern of the United States is the prospect of a massive terror assault against the American homeland using nuclear weapons. This is not a mythical threat. A successful assault against one city, killing five to fifty thousand people, would almost certainly trigger an unprecedented economic and political crisis in America. First, the dollar would lose its value. Second, cities would shut down and people would flee to the countryside. National paralysis and the collapse of entire industries could follow. A terrorist attack with nuclear weapons need only destroy a single city. The rest is accomplished by suggestion, by the psychological aftermath of history’s most profound failure. What government, what Constitution, could survive such a failure?

America is helpless, not knowing which way to turn as nuclear weapons are built and tested in one country after another. Some experts are afraid that America is going to launch a preemptive attack on Iran, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In the long run, all rogue regimes will acquire nuclear weapons. In the long run, terrorists will acquire nuclear weapons. Either they will be given the weapons, or Russian and Chinese special forces will place the weapons in America themselves, knowing that terrorists will be blamed. How could the United States retaliate if the attackers cannot be identified? And what becomes of Mutual Assured Destruction under such circumstances?