Posted on 05/06/2010 2:13:56 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
The Chinese navy has been throwing its weight around in East Asia. A US Navy commander asks how much longer the US can do anything about it.On the night of March 26 the Cheonan, a South Korean Navy corvette patrolling in the Yellow Sea, mysteriously erupted in a cataclysmic explosion and sank to the bottom. The ship was just off Baengnyeong Island, near the Northern Limit Line, which is the armistice separation line between North and South Korea. Of the 104 crew on board, only 58 survived. Salvage operations confirm the ship was struck by a North Korean heavy torpedo armed with a 200 kg warhead.
Exchange the cast of characters from North and South Korea to China and the United States, and the sneak attack on the Cheonan is exactly the sort of nightmare scenario envisioned in an analysis I wrote for the Foreign Policy Research Institutes OrbisHow the US Lost the Naval War of 2015.
The article foretells a devastating Chinese surprise attack using a newly-developed anti-ship ballistic missile against the Yokosuka-based nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington. The parallels between the 2015 thought experiment in Orbis and the Cheonan disaster are eerie. In the hypothetical scenario, China shoots an advanced DF-21 ASBM into the American aircraft carrier, and then denies it, leaving the United States in the same quandary that Seoul now finds itself. Any defensive response risks a major war while bolstering North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.
The prospects for a Chinese surprise attack are, of course, debatable. The greater issue, however, is how China has invested decades in a patient and aggressive campaign to slowly push other countries out of the East China Sea and South China Sea. The US Navy is the main target, as its the largest obstacle to Beijings strategy.
(Excerpt) Read more at the-diplomat.com ...
We need to be building up our sub force and investing in more of a Navy instead of sending welfare checks to layabouts. Gates is a wimp and sell out.
the response from obammie to the sinking?
cue the crickets.
dont think the chinese didnt notice. the boy king wants nothing to do with hard decisions.
This is about navel hegemony is it not ?
LOL
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Gates is an elite, polished and articulate policy architect and administrator, consummately skilled at the highest levels of governance -- in short, an American mandarin.
Oh, wait -- you already said that.
Our password for the day is, “Exciting, colorful, and short.”
China is not going to use military as its primary weapon to drive the US out of Asia because our over spending, borrowing and etc will drive us out of Asia. Recently the most anti Chinese Asian nation of Indonesia is urging their students to study Chinese in order to take advantage of trade opportunities with China. This turn around was seeded by Chinese grants to Indonesia during the Asian currency crisis of the late 1990’s despite the anti Chinese riots that erupted during the Indonesian financial crisis (note a crisis started by Soros). As China grows economically and consumes raw materials as well as food and consumer items, the surrounding Asian nations including Australia and New Zealand will gravitate to China. Unlike us, who want our strategies to bear fruit within 24 hours and no cost, China is culturally attuned to strategies that take time and are willing to invest in it in a consistant fashion. IMHO the PLAN is only an extra luxury for the rulers in Bejing to use to expand Chinese influence. Our debt and overstretched commitments in the Middle East and Southwest Asia will force the US to choose just like the later Imperial Romans had to choose when costs go up and income taxes go down, deend the frontier north of Italy or hold the British Islands????
:-))
Two things...Obama might, or might not still be in office in 2015...
Second, any naval conflict between us and the ChiComs will be short and sweet...Yes, they might get a couple of cheap shots in, but in the long run, there will be a lot more communist scrap metal available than our stuff...
China would have to be led by idiots to start a war with us now. We(US) are a declining power with a bankrupt government, uncompetitive businesses, and a poorly educated population. The only card that we have is our military. And a peer competitor like China is not going to play to OUR strengths.
I bet that they’ll try to wait until we can no longer afford to maintain a significant military presence in the western pacific, and then proceed to take over control of those slocs without firing a shot.
See thats the thing...No one can ever cover that much water, never had, never will...
We did it because whereever we were we owned that area of the ocean from the bottom depths to 250 nm up...
China doesn’t have the foresight to build the kind of intelligence, hardware or training of personnel to do that...
We will always have that ability, even if we cut back the US Navy in half...
But lets try to encourage the government to not do that...
“We will always have that ability, even if we cut back the US Navy in half...”
Agreed, but can we be at all places at all times? The USN is a global navy positioned against several major regional threats. The PLAN only needs to secure the Western Pacific.
Right now, we have 1 CVN in the Western Pacific at any given time. As our national strength erodes, the ability of the USN to sustain power projection will erode accordingly due only only to lack of funds for maintenance and training, but also due to the increasing number of threats that would crop up all over the world.
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