Posted on 05/10/2005 6:11:01 PM PDT by hedgetrimmer
The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was
For some time now no navy or air force has posed a threat to the United States. Our only competition has been armies, whether conventional forces or guerrilla insurgencies. This will soon change. The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacificâand when it does, it will very quickly encounter a U.S. Navy and Air Force unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the Asian mainland. It's not hard to imagine the result: a replay of the decades-long Cold War, with a center of gravity not in the heart of Europe but, rather, among Pacific atolls that were last in the news when the Marines stormed them in World War II. In the coming decades China will play an asymmetric back-and-forth game with us in the Pacific, taking advantage not only of its vast coastline but also of its rear baseâstretching far back into Central Asiaâfrom which it may eventually be able to lob missiles accurately at moving ships in the Pacific. In any naval encounter China will have distinct advantages over the United States, even if it lags in technological military prowess. It has the benefit, for one thing, of sheer proximity. Its military is an avid student of the competition, and a fast learner. It has growing increments of "soft" power that demonstrate a particular gift for adaptation. While stateless terrorists fill security vacuums, the Chinese fill economic ones. All over the globe, in such disparate places as the troubled Pacific Island states of Oceania, the Panama Canal zone, and out-of-the-way African nations, the Chinese are becoming masters of indirect influenceâby establishing business communities and diplomatic outposts, by negotiating construction and trade agreements. Pulsing with consumer and martial energy, and boasting a peasantry that, unlike others in history, is overwhelmingly literate, China constitutes the principal conventional threat to America's liberal imperium.
How should the United States prepare to respond to challenges in the Pacific? To understand the dynamics of this second Cold Warâwhich will link China and the United States in a future that may stretch over several generationsâit is essential to understand certain things about the first Cold War, and about the current predicament of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the institution set up to fight that conflict. This is a story about military strategy and tactics, with some counterintuitive twists and turns.
China is simply not a threat to North America. The only way the US fleet gets hit is if it within rock throwing distance of the chinese mainland. There will never be a chinese attack against the US navy unless there is a Pueblo incident where we are poking around chinese waters.
I do not think that the state of conflict between two countries would last generations. It will come to an abrupt end. Economy going south, hot military conflict, and Chinese regime going down, forcing China to take care of internal problems for many years. It may not come out as one piece, when the dust settles.
I guess the caucasian lawyers, the hollywood pimps (producers/directors), mtv, rap music, black inner city culture, ted kennedy, hillary clinton, enviromentalists (mostly white), college professors (mostly white), mainstream media (mostly white), big labor unions (mostly white), baby boomer retirees (mostly white) , pornograpers (mostly white), HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH DESTROYING THE COUNTRY.
NO China! NO Debt!!!!!!!!!!
Nice try but you earlier said that nuclear superiority does not work. Maybe not in regional conflicts but when facing an enemy like China we need them. YOU can go back to the DU, and learn to spell, its not DF.
Yep. We recommended that to Taiwan.
TWO WORDS.
MAKE ME
You're not inspiring a lot of confidence in me with that reasoning. You do realize, don't you, that the Chinese probably get 10 times the bang for the buck when employing technicians?
And also, your prerequisite of America having leadership that is "willing to kick butt" is not too inspiring given the fact that this *is* the country that put Bill Clinton (not to mention Jimmy Carter) into office.
A few months ago I got a little nostalgic for some of those more advanced defense-oriented technologies I used to work with, so I did a little Googling. What I found that was more than a bit unnerving is that the great majority of the whitepapers written today on these subjects are from Chinese universities!
And, finally, you mention that China would have a hard time coming over here to beat us. I can assure you that our defeat at sea would be all that is required. America is propped up by foreign investment that would quickly begin to disappear under such circumstances. And, given our dependence on importing not only equipment - but also food - a simple naval blockade would have us at one-another's throats in days - no foreign soldiers on the ground needed.
I guess it all depends on how you define "defeat".
I read that book too ;-) about the container ship transports and hordes of Chineses missile carrying ships.
You have to have freedom of the seas to move troops by ship. They'll never gain freedom or command of the seas. They're a threat militarily, but the greater threat is our lack of political will.
That isn't the way it would work. They'd attack us with conventional weapons. We'd attack them with conventional. Pretty soon, someone would us nukes. It would be inevitable.
so all we have to do it hit the right areas and the government would collapse
all they have to do is close wall mart for a day ...
Bring back SEATO
include Autralia, NZ, Japan, South Korea, the Philiplines, Taiwan and the UK. rework it to be an exact replica of NATO and arm everyone to the teeth.
That is a tall order, indeed. Not one to be glossed over so easily.
America is propped up by foreign investment that would quickly begin to disappear under such circumstances.
All major economic powers today are interdependent. Anybody who would 'shut off' any economic activities here would be devastated by any retaliatory actions we would take (i.e. nationalizing/siezing manufacturing plants, financial assets, etc).
We need to be fighting here at home against our enemies within who defend and advance their socialist agenda. China should be cultivated as an ally (with a different govt, of course)
That might seem logical, but downing a US spy plane over international waters was a pretty risky thing to do, and the military buildup near Taiwan seems counterproductive to a peace strategy, as does the North Korea standoff and the anti-Japan demonstrations. You'd think that if they were rational, they'd curb a lot of that stuff.
Dec 5th 1941."Oh everything is lovely and its such a great Dec so far" Dec 6th 1941.."Oh its such a great day we really dont have anything to worry about".. Dec 7th 1941. The friggan Japanese ATTACKED US? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
The Chicoms do NOT have to fire a friggan nuke EVER. Do you understand? If they infiltrate this country and raise hell here, as they raise cain around the world, who do you stupid nuke nicks think will fire the first shot? And if we do, nearly the whole world will turn against us. We wont even have the support of the UK.
Oh yes I see how we cut the head off Saddam now didnt we? Iran the same, N Korea the same. And every stinkin one of those regimes are/were supposed to be "MINORITY" governments. Guess what? Who cares who is in the minority. Its those with the power that count.
So go kiss up to your Chinese money friends who use the trade surplus they have with us to build up their military. The only ones I see who are against prepairing for a conflict with China are those who stand to lose money from doing business with them.
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