Posted on 05/10/2005 6:11:01 PM PDT by hedgetrimmer
The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was
For some time now no navy or air force has posed a threat to the United States. Our only competition has been armies, whether conventional forces or guerrilla insurgencies. This will soon change. The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacific—and when it does, it will very quickly encounter a U.S. Navy and Air Force unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the Asian mainland. It's not hard to imagine the result: a replay of the decades-long Cold War, with a center of gravity not in the heart of Europe but, rather, among Pacific atolls that were last in the news when the Marines stormed them in World War II. In the coming decades China will play an asymmetric back-and-forth game with us in the Pacific, taking advantage not only of its vast coastline but also of its rear base—stretching far back into Central Asia—from which it may eventually be able to lob missiles accurately at moving ships in the Pacific. In any naval encounter China will have distinct advantages over the United States, even if it lags in technological military prowess. It has the benefit, for one thing, of sheer proximity. Its military is an avid student of the competition, and a fast learner. It has growing increments of "soft" power that demonstrate a particular gift for adaptation. While stateless terrorists fill security vacuums, the Chinese fill economic ones. All over the globe, in such disparate places as the troubled Pacific Island states of Oceania, the Panama Canal zone, and out-of-the-way African nations, the Chinese are becoming masters of indirect influence—by establishing business communities and diplomatic outposts, by negotiating construction and trade agreements. Pulsing with consumer and martial energy, and boasting a peasantry that, unlike others in history, is overwhelmingly literate, China constitutes the principal conventional threat to America's liberal imperium.
How should the United States prepare to respond to challenges in the Pacific? To understand the dynamics of this second Cold War—which will link China and the United States in a future that may stretch over several generations—it is essential to understand certain things about the first Cold War, and about the current predicament of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the institution set up to fight that conflict. This is a story about military strategy and tactics, with some counterintuitive twists and turns.
FYI
If China decided to go to war with us we could just not buy the crap they make. They'd be broke in four hours.
Defend Taiwan and strengthen military ties with Japan.
1) Wreck the Yuan.
2) Impose 200% tariffs on all Chinese goods.
3) Support democratic reform with hard dollars.
4) Embargo all pro-chinese puppet states (south America)
5) Let the civil war take care of it's self.
Complete Nonsense.
Kaplan, meet Seawolf.
Before any Chinese vessel came within 500 miles of a US Carrier, it would end up scrap metal at the bottom of the sea. But long before any warships left China, they would be blocked by the smoking carcassus of Chinese Merchant Ships that tried to run our blockade.
For the flying things, meet AEGIS. You just cant escape, baby.
So what's left? Chinese subs? Oh please.
If they attack us, it's nuclear war.
Of course, judging from some of the boneheaded things the Chinese have done in the last 5 years, I don't discount that possibility.
My bottom line is Bush ought to be expanding our navy, as Reagan did.
CVX will have laser CIWS.
In the series, I am trying to make the point that the current scenario and "Permanent Favorite Nation Status" lead, IMHO, to very serious war, where to start we fare terribly...although in my series, we ultimately triumph after unbelievable carnage.
6) Nuke them till they glow.
The Carter administration should have never sold out Free China in favour of Red China. Once again profits were far more important then freedom.
By cutting off all aid and trade with COMMUNIST China.
Fight? Our entire economy would collapse. Think Walmart, IBM, GM, Pepsi, Coca Cola, even our own soldiers' uniforms...Everything is made in China.
A Chinese cruise missile attack has to penetrate layer after layer after layer of fleet air defense to get to a US carrier.
It would only be psychologically damaging to the MSM. It would enrage and motivate the sailors.
And as the other poster wrote. "meet Aegis" ...
The greatest threat is the diesel subs. They might get off one lucky snap shot before they died.
The more important part of the equation is the "Will to Win" at home.
The Military will step up to the plate.
The Media on the other hand probably already has Chinese type plate and will never miss a day of publication, (Ads sold and everything) can't be enough wrong with the USA to suit them.
True atrocities have yet to be reported by the MSM and that works very well for those that commit atrocities, we haven't the stomach for what mankind is capable of, has committed and will commit in the future. If you project current news bias without much imagination, it will be illegal to arrest a Terrorist until after they blow themselves up.
Hey it's my rant I can say what I want.
TT
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