Shifting deck chairs to the Titanic’s Taiwan side

China now has 369 satellites, three times as many as in 2018, according to General Stephen Whiting, head of the US Space Command.

“China and Russia,” Whiting told the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 29, are “moving breathtakingly fast.” He warned in particular about “counterspace” weapons that can destroy American satellites

With perhaps 3,000 advanced anti-ship missiles in its inventory and the capacity to hit moving targets at great distances, China now has an overwhelming firepower advantage in its home theater.

Nothing in the American arsenal can defend US military assets against massed barrages of Chinese missiles. That makes the buzzword “prioritize Asia” – sending more weapons to Taiwan rather than Ukraine – a matter of shifting the deck chairs to the other side of the Titanic.

China has underfunded its large land army and concentrated military spending on coastal defense.

The US national security establishment is struggling to keep its credibility above water after the Ukrainian rout last month at Avdeevka, where Ukrainian units refused orders to deploy in the besieged towns and Ukrainian soldiers reportedly bolted, leaving their wounded as well as their weapons behind.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s government now warns that its defense could crumble by next summer; in fact, this could happen much sooner as the beleaguered Ukrainians run short of artillery ammunition, air defense missiles and frontline manpower.

It’s hard to find a Western defense think tank that has not called on Washington to “prioritize Asia” during the past year. But China has such an overwhelming advantage in firepower, including ballistic and cruise missiles, that whatever additional weapons America might shift to Asia would have