How will the next president deal with communist China's slow war of attrition against the world?

The question is serious but too complicated for TV talking heads to ask presidential candidates, assuming the talking heads understand the threat is much more than a headline.

In the Sept. 10 debate, China's threat was treated as an economic challenge -- tariff war, microchips, etc.

A very narrow window. Dangerously narrow.

I've written four columns in the last 10 months addressing China's "war of disintegration" directed at the U.S. China seeks to disintegrate all of its adversaries, from immediate neighbors to potential economic competitors. The U.S., however, is target No. 1.

Here's the working definition of disintegrative warfare. In a disintegrative war, a "unitary belligerent becomes increasingly fragmented by secessions."

Less fancy definition: The U.S. becomes disunited. Instead of the greatest nation on Earth, the U.S. becomes a flummoxed state unable to wield diplomatic, information, military and economic power with any effectiveness.

In a July 2024 column, I discussed how China, in league with Mexican crime cartels, has exploited the Biden administration's open U.S. borders to seed the fentanyl drug crisis. But drugs are just one gambit. Add the economic and moral burden millions of illegal aliens placed on the social safety net, include political attacks on law enforcement (who funds these political attacks?), then add the presence of unvetted criminal illegal aliens, and presto, you've created conditions for increasing violent crime. Violent crime saps economic productivity -- and destroys neighborhoods. Destroy a neighborhood here, a neighborhood there, and pretty soon a city disintegrates.

The TV types understand terror. Terrorists are already a homeland threat (think 9/11). But in the last four months the FBI has warned the threat of foreign terror attacks has risen -- including terror connected to the Islamic State and assassination connected to Iran.

This is not fantasy. It's security-planning fact: America now faces the prospect of fighting small proxy armies on its own soil.

Bits and pieces, falling apart. Economic and moral disintegration degrades the political will to act in a crisis. Without the will to use them as the superior weapons they are, the U.S. Navy's nuclear carriers are just big boats rusting in a harbor.

A powerful navy backed by determined Americans could deter China ... maybe.

The following isn't theoretical. It's happening now.

Since April 2024 the Philippines and communist China have been waging a coast guard war over an obscure sea feature named Sabina Shoal.

In common parlance, a coast guard organization serves as a sea police and emergency rescue service.

However, for over two decades China has weaponized its coast guard, fishing fleets and offshore construction barges to conduct a slow, steady and unfortunately successful war of territorial aggression in the South China Sea.

The Chinese fishing fleet shows up, the Chinese Coast Guard shows up to "protect" the fishermen, then the barges show up and begin pouring concrete. Pour enough concrete on a coral reef, and China claims the concrete is as Chinese as Shanghai -- even though it's in the Philippines' maritime exclusive economic zone.

Pour concrete -- then China claims the land and takes a bite. Takes a little piece.

It's 2024. In July 2016, the Hague's international arbitral tribunal, relying on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty, supported the Philippines' claims that China had violated Filipino territory in the South China Sea by seizing islets and "sea features."

Beijing signed the treaty, ignored the verdict in a treaty-mandated court, then disdained the court's authority. Beijing broke a major treaty it had ratified and demonstrated it could not be trusted to abide by a meticulously negotiated treaty.

Reneging on treaties, spurning verdicts and seizing territory without suffering severe consequences tells China's leaders their opponents are weak. Undermining, coopting, dominating and ultimately disintegrating global diplomatic and economic institutions is another Chinese Community Party goal.

The Philippines can't stop China's "bite-by-bite" attack without U.S. support.

Pray Chinese disintegrative war will be discussed in the next presidential debate. But don't hold your breath.

To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2001 - 2024CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.