The reality for Japan is that China is in fact the dominant power in East Asia. The United States must decide if it wishes to continue its political and military involvement in the area. Both are risky and expensive. Americans must consider just how those costly commitments will benefit the United States. Eventually the Asians will have to achieve a consensus for themselves as they had been doing it for thousands of years.
No more American blood for foreign wars. If the Chinese decide to bomb us, or an Asian country gets pissed and sinks a vessel, then okay I’m all for it. But let them handle it on their own if it goes south. Yes I am also all for breaking our “defense pacts” if this were to happen.
Unfortunately, we’re bound by our word and pact to Japan. We didn’t foresee a powerful China at the time
‘The reality for [Britain] is that the [USSR] is in fact the dominant power in Europe. The United States must decide if it wishes to continue its political and military involvement in the area. Both are risky and expensive. Americans must consider just how those costly commitments will benefit the United States. Eventually the [Europeans] will have to achieve a consensus for themselves as they had been doing it for thousands of years.’
Thank God your father’s generation didn’t think like this. Not that there weren’t shills back then—from paid agents to useful idiots—preaching the cost of defense and the benevolence of the Soviet order. But they got short shrift. Men still remembered the lessons of the Second World War: that projecting weakness invites aggression, and threats to democracy must be nipped in the bud before they spiral out of control. As a result, we managed to keep half of Europe out from under the boot of the tyrant, and grind the Soviets down until Reagan administered the coup de grace.
Even the feckless Obama seems to have realized, in his half-hearted and faltering way, that we might as well pack it up if we allow China—a China with no power progression of any consequence—to bully our Asian allies. And since that country is run by bean-counters, albeit patient ones, they’ll back down. For now.
I believe the Japanese should respond to any provocation by the Chinese. Shoot their planes down, or sink Chinese ships if necessary. To do otherwise would show weakness and encourage the Chinese to take Japan later. This would also let Japan see whether the U.S. would honor commitments to stand by Japan as an ally. Japan can then decide whether it needs to increase their offensive military capability.
Yes, China is the dominant power in Asia, but primarily in economic terms. They have a large army, but a weak air force and navy. Japan can wreak severe damage on China's air force and navy to the point where China's army is irrelevant.
the problem with china is that Chinese disputes are not just with all of China’s neighbors in the south china sea. China has problems with most of the world. But the deepest problem that china has is fracture between the cpc and the pla. The way they heal the fracture is to constantly expand militarily. The CPC has managed to keep the upper hand because the PLA has not won any wars. Nor brought home any spoil.
But the instant the PLA wins anything the balance of power between the PLA and the CPC will shift in the PLA’s favor.
This is what happened in Japan in the early decades of the 20th century. As the military won battles — the civilian government steadily ceded power to the military.
By the time Japan invaded China in the 1930’s-the military was fully in control.
If the Chinese military is allowed to win anything—this will only create in them an appetite for more war.
That’s just the way it works. Everything looks like a nail to a hammer.
The CPC has what in political science is known as a problem of legitimacy. Unlike western democracies and most of the countries along China’s peripery — including Japan and Korea and the Philippines and even Singapore —where power comes from the consent of the governed—in China, power comes from the gun. The military.
China has been blessed so far with good leadership from the CPC. But that won’t last forever. There is a dynastic problem that inheres to communist regimes, no less than imperial ones.