Communist China is baiting a catastrophic conflict in the Indo-Pacific by engaging in threatening and erratic military maneuvers designed to intimidate the United States and its allies.
The regime’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), frequently risks the lives of its pilots and those of the United States and its allies by conducting aggressive close maneuvers, according to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner.
“We have PLA aircraft coming within tens of feet of allied aircraft; we have them releasing flares and chaff, we have them doing dangerous maneuvers around aircraft and, to exactly this point, it is tempting a crisis that could have geopolitical and geoeconomic implications,” Ratner said during a talk with the American Enterprise Institute on Dec. 8….