China is continuing to flex its military muscle throughout Asia in the wake of Nancy Pelosi‘s visit to Taiwan.
Beijing is sending a fleet of air force bombers and fighters jets to Thailand this weekend for a joint military exercise. The exercise will simulate attacks from the air on enemy troops on the ground, test air support plans and troop deployment strategies, a Chinese military statement announced.
The saber-rattling drills have been dubbed “Falcon Strike 2022” by the Chinese Defense Ministry.
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The exercise comes after it was revealed this week the U.S. military is working “furiously” to rewrite its nuclear deterrence theory to deal with threats from China and Russia better.
Strategic Command chief Navy Adm. Chas Richard said the U.S. threats are “unprecedented in this nation’s history” during Thursday’s Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, adding, “We have never faced two peer nuclear-capable opponents at the same time, who have to be deterred differently,” according to Defense One .
This spring, as Russia advanced in Ukraine , Richard said he provided an assessment on what it would take to avoid nuclear war , but China has further complicated that threat. Beijing, in recent weeks, has heightened tensions in the region following Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, which Beijing said was a violation of their agreements, though the Biden administration maintained that the trip did not represent a change in policy.
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Officials have also sought to move past the traditional deterrence theory of “mutually assured destruction,” which posits that should any country deploy a nuclear weapon, it would result in a retaliatory strike that would result in the destruction of both sides.
That calculation has been tested recently as Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that it could use a smaller nuclear weapon in Ukraine under the belief that other nuclear powers would not respond with a retaliatory nuclear strike.
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It was also announced this week that President Joe Biden is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping face-to-face in Southeast Asia this November.
The meeting is expected to take place at either the G-20 summit in Indonesia from Nov. 15-16 or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok, Thailand, in the following days, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The trip would be Xi’s second international trip since his visit to Myanmar in January 2020. The two leaders had agreed over a phone call in July to meet in person sometime in the near future, per the White House.
