Replies

Point is, short of a nuclear exchange, and if you think destroying the West Coast won't cripple America for half a centuary, you're wrong, China can defeat the US in any close proximity areas to it's borders...and that's where it will be fighting: Taiwan, Vietnam, Thialand, Siberia (hopefully not until Russia is good and ready), Korea or Mongolia. And what could the US do...kill 30 million Chinese and loose a million itself...and who would suffer more then? Hell, kill 500 million Chinese and loose 50 million Americans (the 10:1 battle losses of Korea when the US had unfettered air dominance)...and what would that do to America? See the math...not to good looking.

The point is to avoid a war. Gulf I showed the Soviet military (mostly) that the classical war fighting machines, the ones they had prepared so well (better than the US or NATO) were OBSOLETE, the nature of war itself had changed, so why should the Russian people continue to suffer deprivations in a struggle which could not be won by military means?

It is difficult to imagine a war in Baghdad where a cruise missile is following a street map and destroys a military headquarters while regular civilians are going about their everyday business undisturbed...

This book from the Chinese makes the same point.

However, should it ever come to war, I maintain that China will split up from its own internal pressures if Beijing and/or the upper Communist bureaucracy were destroyed or were to disappear.

The US would NOT split up. Loosing the west coast would be a severe blow to the US economy and it would in fact take a long while to recover, but it would be DECADES before China would re-form as a modern nation if it lost Beijing/Shanghai/Dalien.

The day of the warlords would return...

China couldn't beat Vietnam in the immediate neighborhood (1979). These days they'd have trouble with India, and in air and sea terms even against Taiwan, short of using nukes. The idea they could beat the US as long as the fight is close to them is laughable. In Korea, Chinese losses ran over 20 times US ones, not 10 times (we lost less than 50K, they lost over 1 million. They did well early but Matt Ridgeway soon found their Achilles heel - logistics - and how to exploit it - a firepower based flexible defense). The US had less "unfettered air dominance" than it does today, not least because the Russians helped out with MiG-15s later on in the war.

Also, the "yellow peril" story is rather silly. China has only 4 times the US population - and 1/10th the per capita wealth - not 20 times. And the US has as regional allies little countries like Japan (#2 economy in the world), India (#2 population in the world), plus a rich assortment of middle-weights (Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Thailand - with Vietnam a wild card but hardly friends of China). China has - North Korea, where the people eat bark and flee *to* Chinese tyranny for a breath of fresh air.

The coalition against Chinese dominance of east Asia has half again China's population, 10 times her economy, and more like 15 times her military potential. The US navy and air force are 10 times as large and more than 10 times as effective, Japan's twice more, India equal, Taiwan and South Korea as much again between them, and the rest of the smaller ones probably as much again. The limited role of China in the region is not a result of Chinese forbearance but ordinary deterence by superior powers. The Chinese role in the region is rising, because Japan is stagnating and China's relative backwardness is decreasing - but it is a lesser power than Japan, let alone us.

They dream of more now, of "punching above their weight", as they have since early in the century. The Chinese have a long history of big mouths and high concepts in place of big defense budgets and high air cover. The US is a paper tiger, remember? Mao's guerilla warfare ideas would make conventional military power irrelevant, remember? That is why the US lost the Korean war, and then lost the cold war. The truth of the matter is fifth column "useful idiots" here at home were behind the only successes their side scored. Or in other words, -we- can defeat ourselves (and sometimes have), but they sure can't.

Hell, kill 500 million Chinese and loose 50 million Americans (the 10:1 battle losses of Korea when the US had unfettered air dominance)...and what would that do to America?

America would be winning. However, war is not about killing X number of people over here and Y number of people over there. It is about imposing one's will on one's foe. China can turn Taiwan into a radioactive crematorium; but that gains China nothing. China cannot OCCUPY Taiwan without a great deal of combat sealift that they don't have and that they are not procuring.