Posted on 04/27/2002 1:31:21 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
They can wait until we have our hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. They can time it so that when the North Koreans move against the South, simultaneously with American involvement in the Middle East...that's when they attack. Keep our forces out of the area?...What forces are those, if the timing is right?
Have you forgotten an act of war--threatening to nuke Los Angeles--which was made only a few years ago? Have you forgotten knocking down our E-3A aircraft and stripping it of all intelligence material, over which we did precisely nothing?...
(BTW, the mission commander on the E-3A should have been court-martialled for allowing this information to fall into the hands of the Chinese--or the designers should have been tried for failing to install a fail-safe destruct system, but that's another matter).
--Boris
Why is this so hard to grok? I am not saying they are nice, that they like us, or anything of the sort. The Nazis weren't nice either. They had a whole continental empire, an air force of 3000 planes, the nastiest intentions, and Britain was trying to hold everything from Gibraltar to Hong Kong. But they still didn't get across a channel of water so narrow you can see across it on clear days.
Why not? Because they didn't have a bigger navy, nor so much control of the air they could trump ships with planes. And neither do the Chi-coms.
What makes you think that they don't? They probably have a large consumer manufacturing base for sale to their own populace. They haven't allowed it to be destroyed by the pursuit of profit at all cost like we have.
I'm thinking of some of the newer technologies being deployed, and developed, particularly the sensors and battle management. To mix metaphors and muddy things up, the Taiwan military (with our help) could build a "neural network" of sensors covering the straits over time, that would basically provide a digital map of the straits in real time, from the smallest gnat to the most innocuous fishing boat. That could be sent real time via satellite to submarines and other hunter killers.
I expect that the Chinese would get the first wave of missiles off, but the second wave (under this thinking would be destroyed by cruise missiles prior to launch, and any attack boats or transports would be floating coffins.
That is, unless the Chinese open up with nukes, which would be incredibly stupid of them because of what our (and the world's) response would be.
I for one am not going to forget the Chinese who laugh at 9/11, any more than I forget the Palestinians.
Some seem unable to wrap their minds around this (I am not including you), because they regard denial of the proposition "they are about to kick our ass" as a denial of dangerousness, and then just magically flip that over to "not our enemy". Hello? Enemies include everyone whose ass we would kick. Most of the people who dislike us in the world, most of its bastards, refrain from attacking us every day not out of tender loving feelings, but out of a robust sense that they'd be clobbered, and would not enjoy the experiment. Which is all I have ever said about China. So I hardly need a reminder of what they celebrated.
As for the one wave of missles thing, I think the naval war is simpler even than that. When we shoot at their ships, their ships will go boom. The reason is simple - their ships have next to no modern air defenses, of the sort required to shoot down incoming missles. There navy is also small compared to ours.
They've got like 2 recent Russian DDs with as much air defense as a Perry class frigate, the least defended major surface combatants in our navy. Their others have either nothing (most of them), or a few SAMs mostly meant to drive away aircraft, and every other ship they've got would rapidly be overloaded.
I mean, the SAM capacity of their whole navy is about that of the largest Russian surface vessel. We could overload all of it, and destroy every vessel they have, even if every SAM they carried took out one incoming missle - all with a salvo from a tiny fraction of our fleet. Meanwhile, even if they got off every SSM they carry - which they never would, lacking range, survivability, etc - we would get 4 pops at each incoming, plus chaff, plus phalanx, etc.
And that is just surface stuff. They also have to deal with an enourmous number of subs far quieter and more capable than anything they've got. And a fleet arm arm tossing ASMs at them from over the horizon. They are not remotely in our weight class in naval or air power. Only the Russians are, as a distinct second on the naval front, but with modern vessels with large batteries of SAM and SSM capable missles, numerous highly capable attack subs, etc.
That is why they spend so much effort on the diplomatic side of blustering us off. They know their only prayer of seizing Taiwan militarily is if we stay out of it. They thought that quite possible under Clinton, which is why they probed so much. They do not think it remotely possible under Bush, which is why they aren't bothering to. Instead they are waiting and playing "stack the missles", moaning diplomatically and trying to head off additional weapons procurement by Taiwan.
Their plan is to browbeat Americans out of the notion of defending Taiwan, to give them a chance in some future appeasement-minded administration to take on Taiwan solo. Against an alliance, especially one including us, it is impossible. Japan's navy is stronger than China's. India's is comparable. Each of them has a better air force. And the list of their potential enemies is rather long. They don't even outnumber that potential enemy list in population terms, since it includes India. And their economy is a tenth the size, their air and sea power even worse than the economic power ratio.
Peace in the far east in recent decades has rested firmly on greater military power in the hands of countries in favor of peace, us first among them. It still does. Not intentions, not that they aren't bastards and enemies of ours. Capabilities - they are weak bastards. They *talk* way above their weight. But it is bombast.
On the sensor net idea, I will just say this. I recall a conversation with a security affairs analyst type several years ago, talking about the Taiwan strait problem. I asked him whether number of older bits of equipment might still matter - MiG-19s and gunboats, that sort of thing. His response was brief, clipped sentences. "Liquid environments. Sensor technology. No problem."
When I first got interested in Taiwan in the late eighties my liberal friends and mentors made jokes about how conservative the Kuomintang was and what a joke the anti-communism was there, like the "World Anti-Communist League" based in Taipei.
I rather thought differently. I thought my friends' (many of them were China "experts") fascination with Chairman Mao was kind of weird. I also found the people in Taiwan on a personal level to be refreshing. Have you noticed, by contrast, that when (many) mainland Chinese people get together, particularly students, they will treat each other like little dictators?
The following are excerpts from a March 23, 2002 Washington Times piece by Bill Sammon.
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"MONTERREY, Mexico: ----- ------- yesterday said Americans are duty-bound to 'share our wealth' with poor nations and promised a 50 percent increase in foreign aid, but 'We should give more of our aid in the form of grants, rather than loans that can never be repaid,' he said. 'We should invest in better health and build on our efforts to fight AIDS, which threatens to undermine whole societies.'
"In addition to the moral, economic and strategic imperatives of increasing foreign aid, ----- ------- said, it could also help in the war against terrorism.
"'We will challenge the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education and failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize and try to turn to their advantage"
Here's a small political quiz. Who is quoted above?
a) George McGovern
b) Bill Clinton
c) Kweisi Mfume
d) Al Sharpton
e) Jesse Jackson
f ) Alan Dershowitz
g) George W. Bush
Hint: He's very popular here at Free Republic.
Old time’s sake... China bump
China is asshoe.
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