CODE RED China ‘convinced it needs to hit US with Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack’ to win war over Taiwan, expert warns

The Sun ^ | August 5, 2022 | Tariq Tahir

[Perseverando]

CHINA is convinced it now needs to hit America "hard and early " in a surprise Pearl Harbor-style attack to invade Taiwan, a leading expert has warned.

Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Stanford University and a former China analyst at the Pentagon, told The Sun Online how Beijing increasingly views an invasion of the island as inseparable from a war with the US.

It comes as massive Chinese military exercises are currently taking place off Taiwan following the visit by US politician Nancy Pelosi.

She is the third in line to the presidency and the most senior US figure to visit the self-governing island in decades.

Mastro told The Sun Online these types of blockade war games are set to become more commonplace as the threat of war increasingly looms.

She explained that Beijing now believes it also has to fight the US if it is to fulfil its long cherished goal of invading Taiwan and "reuniting" with the mainland.

Mastro believes the most likely way such a conflict would play out is with a Pearl Harbor-style attack on US forces in the region.

It would be designed to try and knock out US forces so they could not react to stop China gaining a foothold in Taiwan, which it regards as its territory.

The strategic gamble would be an attempt to stall a wider war - just as Japan hoped when they attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, drawing the US into World War Two.

It would be one of the chilling factors China would have to weigh up if decides the only way to "reunification" with Taiwan is an invasion.

[Perseverando]

Don’t think that they would have much luck hiding their carriers.

Nor us, ours.

[Jim Noble]

No, it doesn’t “stop there”.

But people here think the US, or any US President, would incinerate ten or twenty million civilians as revenge for losing one or several carriers (or would blow the dam and drown millions), and I do not believe that would happen.

[Jim Noble]

This clown administration just said last week that they support the one China policy

What is with you people?

One China has been US policy for almost 50 years.

Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, HW, Clinton, W, Obama, Trump, and "Biden" all support one China.

It's not a change by the clown car.

[Jim Noble]

The Chinese would believe we would be unwilling and unable to retake Taiwan

Both completely true.

[ought-six]

“But people here think the US, or any US President, would incinerate ten or twenty million civilians as revenge for losing one or several carriers (or would blow the dam and drown millions), and I do not believe that would happen.”

You conflate war with revenge.

If we are attacked in the Pacific (or anywhere for that matter), we are at war. The US armed forces have the duty to fight and win that war.

[MercyFlush]

Did I say China wasn’t capable of invading Taiwan? No, I did not.

I said that there’s an economic downside to their invading Taiwan. One that will upset their domestic harmony...which is a big deal to them.

There is little downside to China taking back Siberia from Russia. And right now is a good time to do that. Keep in mind they tried to do it sixty years ago.

[jamaksin]

How?

"... Later, as head of the communications section of the navy general staff, he would play an instrumental part in designing the "Red" and subsequently the "Purple" machines that were to be used for enciphering Japan's most secret diplomatic traffic."

Layton, et al., And I Was There, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, NY, 1985, page 50.

So far as known today, the distribution of "Purple" machines: the Brits got three, CAST got one, ... Pearl Harbor got none.

[Starboard]

I believe we can pull ourselves up again

**********

The problem is that “we” are not the same country anymore. Demographics, culture, morality, etc. have all profoundly changed the nation.

We have lost our mojo. Our institutions are all corrupt, secularism is dominant, people don’t care about freedom, the legal system is a dysfunction mess, our history is disparaged and our differences now seem to define us.

As much as I’d like to believe that we can pull ourselves up again the national character, ethos, love of freedom, etc that made America what it once was is no longer there.

[Starboard]

"After Pearl Harbor, deciphered Purple Machine intercepts yielded substantial intelligence information for the United States. Paired with deciphered Japanese Navy dispatches that used another broken code, Purple Machine intercepts helped the United States to victory at the battle of Midway. In the weeks before the battle, code breakers discovered a series of messages from Tokyo to Japanese diplomats and Navy officers that discussed battle strategy in the Pacific. Some of the communications yielded fleet positions. Decoded Purple messages also allowed Allied planes to track and shoot down a military flight carrying Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto."

https://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/purple-machine

[Svartalfiar]

They won’t make the same mistake as the Japs, they’ll take out our carriers first, then the rest of the fleet. They learned from Japan’s mistakes 80 years ago

With what? Do you really think they have any aircraft with sufficient stealth, range, or payload to actually fly all the way to a carrier and successfully attack (much less sink) it? How is that plane going to know where to go to do this?

You think their fancy "carrier-killer" missiles will do it? Those need a huge amount of support to locate, track, and hit a moving target, not to mention any US anti-missile defensive measures. I doubt they have enough of these missiles to take out more than a few ships, if they get lucky with those. And that doesn't include US retaliation as soon as the first strike is launched, I doubt they'd have much more opportunity to launch many more.

And this doesn't even get into other assets - I highly doubt China has anything to counter or even find US submarines anywhere past their continental shelf, not to mention AF craft with global range.
82nd Airborne is an entire division setup to put soldiers anywhere in the world in less than a day. Think their capability is at least 3000 combat soldiers (plus logistics/support) on the ground within three days. Might be more, I don't really remember. China can't come close to matching that, I doubt they could get much more than a spare general or two around the world (and that's borrowing civilian flights!).