That Choking Feeling

‘Everything indicates’ Chinese ship damaged Baltic pipeline on purpose, Finland says’, the December 1 headline at Politico announced, and the article then went on to discuss how Finnish authorities believe that the Chinese container ship, the Newnew Polar Bear, intentionally dragged its anchor line across the floor of the Baltic sea.

The results of this incident were the cutting of the Balticconnector 77 gas pipeline between NATO members Finland and Estonia, and the damaging of two telecom cables connecting Sweden with the two NATO members. While not a NATO member itself, Sweden has certainly become a fellow traveler since the start of the Russia-Ukraine War.

As for China, since it has been supporting Russia’s war effort by buying large quantities of oil and supplying Moscow with a substantial amount of non-lethal aid, it has become a secure rear area for its fellow autocracy.

So it wasn’t too surprising when Ander Adlercreutz, Finland’s Minister for European Affairs commented that “I'm not a sea captain. But I would think that you would notice that you're dragging an anchor behind you for hundreds of kilometers,” and then went on to say that “everything indicates it was intentional…”

Still, the revealing of China’s undersea sabotage, which is as close as you can get to an act of war without actually shooting, has reinforced my feelings that the USA and its allies are at the center of a slowly tightening noose, and one studded with bits of barbed wire at that.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a US Navy destroyer stationed in the Red Sea, the USS Carney, downing cruise missiles and drones launched from Yemen by Iran’s Houthi surrogates. Those missiles and drones were almost certainly heading toward Israel. One has to wonder if the next series of attacks will be against the Carney itself. Additionally, in what could prove to be a serious blow to the world economy three of the world’s largest shipping companies, MSC, Maersk, and Hapag-Lloyd have all announced plans to curtail their traffic through the Red Sea due to continued Houthi attacks on shipping.

The Houthis for their part, claim they’re only targeting vessels bound for Israel. Still, given the fact that the Houthis couldn’t launch anything more complicated than a bottle rocket without Iranian support, this may be the beginning of a power play by Tehran to show its potential ability to hobble the world economy. After all, Maersk by itself controls 14.8% of the world’s seaborne trade.

This sparring in the Red Sea has happened in tandem with continued attacks on US forces by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. Since the start of the Israeli-Hamas war on October 7, 66 Americans have been wounded so far in a total of 78 attacks.

On the other side of the planet, China is keeping up the pressure in the South China Sea. Throughout 2023, the CCP has done everything short of outright war to assert its control over the region’s vital sea routes, fossil fuel resources, and fisheries. Using methods ranging from ramming Philippine naval vessels to the extensive use of water cannons, to swarm tactics using navy ships, coast guard ships, and fishing boats in order to block Filipino access to the area. In one incident, Chinese forces in February flashed a laser at a Philippine coast guard vessel as it neared the Philippine-owned Second Thomas Shoal. The flashing temporarily blinded the Filipino crew, but prolonged exposure could have resulted in permanent blindness.

To make the situation in the Western Pacific even more dangerous, the Chinese military may have ironed out the defects in a potentially revolutionary weapon, the electromagnetic railgun. For those people who are unfamiliar with the concept, a rail gun is a weapon that doesn’t use conventional chemical propellants and shells to hit its target. Instead of a gun barrel, the weapon uses a magnetically charged rail to fire projectiles at hypersonic speeds. A fully operational railgun would have a range between 100-200 km and would totally outrange the USN’s standard five-inch gun by 120 miles to 16 miles, and the gun’s hypersonic projectiles wouldn’t even need explosives to destroy a target, the sheer kinetic energy of their impact would do the job.

The USN canceled its rail gun program in 2021, citing excessive wear to the gun barrel and the need to shift funding to more promising tech such as laser weaponry. However, with the Chinese claiming to have built a functioning weapon, the USA may team up with Japan to produce a workable railgun.

The choking feeling produced by all the unpleasant international news makes me wish we had a true warrior king in the White House. Somebody like Teddy Roosevelt or Andrew Jackson would fit the job description very nicely. But instead, the USA has a man in the Oval Office who's auditioning for the lead role in the next Weekend at Bernie's movie.