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 Pacific—and 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 base—stretching far back into Central Asia—from 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 influence—by 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 War—which will link China and the United States in a future that may stretch over several generations—it 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.
We shoot the first nuke, and we wont have a snowballs chance in hell anywhere.
Same goes if they fire nukes first. That is what kept the Soviets from attacking us or invading western europe. Would china launch any nukes at us? depends on how sane their leaders are and how willing their military is do die for communism/neo-fascism. It worked against the Soviets. Time will tell if it works agaist the ChiComs.
It's all perfectly rational. They are calibrating the limits and contours of our responses in various situations. We were not going to start an all out war over the spy plane. The military buildup with respect to Taiwan goes hand-in-hand with their overtures to the Nationalist party (carrot and stick). The North Korea situation is a classic proxy antagonist. They will keep the leash on their NK bulldog, but allow it to snarl away, keeping us off balance and distracted. The anti-Japanese demonstrations were completely effective in moving forward Chinese interests.
I find it hard to believe the Chinese would act so suddenly and dramatically. I suspect they have a hundred-year plan to do it incrementally.
No China would launch first..but N Korea would. Then, do we launch against China as well as N Korea?..especially if China is going.."Oh how terrible, we tried so hard to stop them from doing that" "So solly."
If Japan or Taiwan detonates an a-bomb, everyone will know that they "miscalculated."
As far as the Pepsi's, Coca Cola's, Starbucks, et al are concerned they have operations and investments in China but I believe that for the most part there is not yet much if any return on them. Those companies' strategies in China are very long term and I'm not sure having their forays in that market cut short by a war would be at all crippling.
Nope, from what I've seen in China their economy is more dependent on us than ours is on theirs.
And just who is going to blockade us?
Or a better question might be, who is going to bring a the equipment to blockade us within 1000 miles of our shoreline and not get blown to bits?
At a particular DEFCON, we don't ask who you are or what you are doing near our shores, we just blow your ass up.
Additionally, there are certain times (usually at the fiscal year rollover) when a greater percentage of our capital ships are in port. A large freighter or tanker scuttled in the right places could bottle up a significant portion of the carrier fleet for weeks.
One could argue the point that the loading and transport or multiple brigades of light mechanized infantry would be hard to pull off but if anyone could, it would be the relatively insulated Chinese that could attempt it.
Thinking up wild scenarios is definitly a good excercise though. Most of history's spectacular upsets occur when an "underdog" pulls off a scheme that the larger more complacent foe completely overlooks. When we chatter and posit wild scenarios there's always the chance that someone may stumble across these threads later and think "I wonder how that would game out?" and thereby devise a counter for the arcane scenario...
Correct. Countries become great powers by taking risks to extend their influence and control. China is just in the beginning stages of this process. They could miscalculate.
Conventional only means non-nuclear. I would not take the bet that we do not have non-nuclear weaponry capable of breaching the dams.
"Nice try but you earlier said that nuclear superiority does not work."
It hasn't--for anyone. It doesn't turn into anything usable.
"Maybe not in regional conflicts but when facing an enemy like China we need them."
And we have nukes--not that they'll do us any good. We had nuclear supremacy in 1962--and we only got a draw.
Arguably, the Soviet Union had nuclear supremacy from the mid-1970s to 1991. Where's the USSR today?
"YOU can go back to the DU, and learn to spell, its not DF."
No, I meant DF--as in Mexico City. (English is obviously not your first language.)
So? How is that relevent to the discussion? ohh yeah thats right. You go storming off whining like a 3 year old because I said we need a strong nuclear deterrant and when you get flamed back at you make stupid nonsense comments like "english is not your first language."
Arguably, the Soviet Union had nuclear supremacy from the mid-1970s to 1991. Where's the USSR today?
Last I checked Russia still exists (although no longer with the Soviet system) and it still has those nukes and can still use them.
In a cross straight conflict, or even, in a Korean or SE Asian one, if the Russians make good on their 7/16/2001 treaty with the PRC, there may be horrible things, such as Russian ICBMs striking US Naval and Air Force bases in the Pacific. Diego Garcia would also be targetted.
To The Duke: Oh, go crawl back in your bunker. Are you trying to hate the Communist Bloc back into existence? Doncha know, Thomas L. Friedman and Francis Fukuyama have proclaimed that great war is a thing of the past, and that hip and in-there kinds of people are plugged into the "Fast World" where they worship at the alter of the global strip mall. Get with the program you neanderthal! /sarcasm ...
Please spare us the "China Card." The "China Card" discredited itself so many times since 1959 that anyone who still believes in it is a major can kicker and possible pathological appeaser.
RE: Their dependence upon foreign trade could prove to be their Achilles' heel.
What if they replaced exports to the US with exports to other countries in Asia (including Russia) and things sold internally? Also, do you thing that receivables for exports are the only things of value that they have derived from building goods consumed in the West? That last question needs to be considered carefully, and in light of the professed grand strategy of the PLA.
It's not a question of what one wants or does not want. Rather, it is a question of accepting, or remaining in denial, of what is inevitable. 5000 years of human history are our guide.
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