A “Sputnik Moment”? China’s Hypersonic Missile Tests and the Threat of American Decline

Nov 6

Nov 6 A “Sputnik Moment”? China’s Hypersonic Missile Tests and the Threat of American Decline

The American foreign policy and military apparatus was shocked by reports of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army having carried out tests of nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles this past August, according to a story by the Financial Times earlier this month. The tests, if Western reporting is to be believed—Chinese sources contrarily claim they were of spacefaring rather than weapons technology)—took the United States by complete surprise. American officials did not believe that the Chinese possessed the military-technological capacity for such weapons development. The scope of this shock on American Military and Government bodies is large enough that it has been referred to by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) General Mark Milley as “very close” to a so-called “Sputnik Moment”.

The implications revealed by such a statement, as well as by the wider Western and American media coverage of the apparent tests, are in many ways more interesting than the tests themselves. From a perspective concerning global order and the international balance of power, the existence of a Chinese capacity to evade and surpass American missile defenses might entail a serious challenge towards future attempts by the United States to curtail China’s continuing rise on nearly all measurable fronts. Concerning the island of Taiwan, a longstanding point of contention between the two countries and a potential source of future conflict in the Asia-Pacific region, the prospect of Chinese parity or superiority with the United States on military grounds would represent a major blow to America’s stated goal of defending Taiwan’s government from a potential Chinese invasion or military action.

However, even beyond Taiwan, reports of these tests enabling the possibility of strikes on the American mainland via hypersonic travel over the South Pole and Antarctica makes America’s position as the world’s pre-eminent military power much more precarious. Regardless of whether these tests are correct as reported by Western media, their potential veracity reflects a very real fear on the part of the American government; the American position within the world order might soon face its most difficult challenge since the end of the Cold War.

With all of this said, any deeper analysis of the apparent Chinese missile tests and the American response to them must move beyond speculation. There are a near-infinite number of hypothetical futures to be posited, and while we certainly can draw meaningful insights from them, we are better served by examining what we know to be true now and that which has already happened. Therefore, let us now shift our focus back to JCS Chair Mark Milley, and his comments concerning the comparability of these missile tests to a “Sputnik Moment”.

The launch and publicization of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957 as the first artificial earth satellite famously sent the American public, as well as some politicians, into mortal panic. Given the existential threat to the world posed by the possibility of nuclear war, fear of the Soviets gaining spacefaring and space weapon technology before the United States were on a level unimaginable to those in the modern day, living in the age of American hegemony post-Cold War. Sputnik I signaled the possibility of Soviet technological superiority over the United States and the West, and therefore, a “Sputnik Moment” might therefore be described as a shock comparable to the contemporary threat of China’s possible technological superiority.

Whether or not the hypersonic tests represent a true Sputnik moment is up for debate. On the one hand, the US already possesses hypersonic weapons technology akin to that tested by the Chinese, a fact which might downplay fears of Chinese parity or even superiority in military technology. Similarly, the US is still one of the world’s most predominant great powers, and therefore it would be precocious to draw as far-reaching conclusions as this moment representing the end of global American military dominance.

However, the US’s reactionary attempt to test similar missile technology, which failed in one publicized instance, signals a deeper worry than is even conveyed by US references to the tests as “very concerning”. This point of worry is what is of key importance, as in one sense the labeling of a “Sputnik Moment” is referring more to the reaction to the satellite than its existence overall. The American panic regarding these tests might signal more regarding the country’s worries than the debatable facts of the tests themselves, which again can only be speculated on to a certain extent.

Regarding comparisons to Sputnik again is where we might finally draw some particularly poignant points on the wider implications of China’s hypersonic missile tests and subsequent reactions to their publicization. The 1957 Sputnik crisis spurred the American construction of Operation Vanguard and A.R.P.A (a precursor to D.A.R.P.A), projects which helped propel America into space tech superiority during the Cold War. The intriguing—albeit speculative—question we are left with when analyzing the current near-Sputnik Moment between China and the US is: if the current situation is indeed analogous to the 1957 crisis, will the American apparatus of the 2020s be similarly able to reassert superiority over its rival power? On this point, a more pessimistic note might reveal itself.

The past year has presented the United States with a series of striking setbacks, crises, and embarrassing defeats and humiliations, many of which were militarial in nature. The bungled nature of the US withdrawal and defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban, as well as smaller-scale embarrassments including the previously mentioned missile failure and a very recent defeat in training exercises with British forces, suggest that America might not be the undisputed military archon it claims to be. Outside of the international sphere, America is similarly experiencing domestic troubles, from continuing inflation to public discontent with the current administration’s rule, which when combined with examples of international setbacks might paint a picture of an America in decline compared to an increasingly ascendant China.

Ultimately, whether the United States can or might reverse this apparent downward trend internationally and domestically is still up for debate. After all, superpowers do not decline easily, and one as powerful as the US certainly has the hypothetical capacity to rebuff the Chinese military-technological advances demonstrated in the recent hypersonic missile tests. Therefore, we will have to wait and see to what extent the case of China’s missile tests really is analogous to a “Sputnik Moment”, or if it instead marks a more unique example of potential American decline.