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.
This holds up for the next 20 years. Then where are they going? By then the Japanese will be up to speed, the Taiwanese and South Koreans are tough as nails, the Indians (who have a surprisingly decent navy), and the Eastern Europeans will have caught up and have forward NATO deployment bases. The Chicomms will collapse by then.
If they were smart, they would strike now while we are preoccupied in the midle east and before the Japanese ramp up.
Including our food.
Garlic, apples, honey, and shrimp are a few of the products where the Chinese now dominate our food market. Their adversarial trade policies and our "free trade-lower all tariffs" no matter what the cost global trade mantra is putting us in a very insecure position.
So they beat us at sea, so what? Just wait until they step on our soil.
Of course, what do I know? I'm just a has been, Reagan era military analyst. (But I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night!)
I agree. Japan and Taiwan need nuclear weapons too.
we'd be looking for a "peaceful solution" right away. Imagine every CEO with hundreds of billion$ invested in China calling the WH and the Congressmen.
I agree. Instead of decommissioning SSBNs we should be building MORE. And with more nuclear warheads for them too.
They don't need to, they have the neutron bomb, we don't because Carter thought is was too dangerous.
EMP them over the eastern seaboard, and let the quite self-sufficient country folk do the civil war work for us. Don't forget SDI is working its way into Japan quickly.
China will try to destroy our agriculture, and hence our economy, and make us dependant on them. They will use every dirty trick imaginable in biological and economic warfare--and some unimaginable.
And they're off to a good start.
boasting a peasantry that, unlike others in history, is overwhelmingly literate
A major potential weak point...
IMO, If we'd maintain and tighten our hold on near Earth orbit and the moon itself, we'd have far less to worry about.
They have more to lose than we do. China is NOT even our biggest trading partner. It is Canada that our nation trades most with.
Even the opium wars and boxer rebellion only involved about 12% of "china proper". The other 88% couldn't have cared less.
Only wholesale individual freedom will take china down from within.
G Khan is reputed to have said that to take on "china" as it was even then, was to be absorbed and consumed, and to be as one was that not even born.
Also, there are quite a few chinese on our soil already. And we know they smuggle guns in on the California coast. They are making friends with Venezuela and other leftist countries in South America, and they want to lock up Canada's oil export, which is one of our primary sources of oil. So many of our "free trader" corporations have such significant investment in China now, from all aspects it looks like they are winning.
That sounds like a plan
that maybe true, technically, but we will blink first. They aren't afraid of taking it to the edge. Think of DOW losing 1000 points the day after.
"They have more to lose than we do. China is NOT even our biggest trading partner. It is Canada that our nation trades most with."
**The Chinese have a paradox that they've yet to resolve. Communism and Capitalism are diametrically opposed to each other. As a result, they have far more internal problems than we do.**
A monocultural, monoracial society is internally much more stronger than a multicultural, multiracial society as ours. As a result we have much more internal problems than the Chinese, irrespective of their "paradox." China understands America's internal problems, America either doesn't or the enemy within is hard at work to turn our country into another banana, multi-ethinic country. The latter is the truth.
As long as America's demographics change, and change for the worse, it will continue to isolate itself from the rest of the world.
Legal immigration, even more so than illegal immigration, is destroying the country our European forefathers build into the most powerful country in the world.
"I agree. Instead of decommissioning SSBNs we should be building MORE. And with more nuclear warheads for them too."
Why?
We had complete nuclear supremacy over Korea. Didn't prevent that war; didn't win it.
We had complete nuclear supremacy over Vietnam. Didn't prevent that war; didn't win it.
We had complete nuclear supremacy over Iran in 1979. Didn't keep them from taking our people hostage, nor did that supremacy free those hostages.
We could obliterate the Islamist world in an afternoon, no problem...but we don't.
Nuclear weapons are expensive to buy, really expensive to guard, and haven't done a damn thing for this country since 1945.
On the other side...
The USSR had complete nuclear supremacy over Afghanistan. Fat lot of good it did them, right?
The ChiComs have complete nuclear supremacy over Taiwan. Whole bunch of good it's doing them now, huh?
The chinese hold enough of o ur debt to stifle our economy and if it continues to buy our debt to shut us down without firing a shot.
RW
"A monocultural, monoracial society is internally much more stronger than a multicultural, multiracial society as ours."
It is?
That explains why Japan won World War II, I guess.
"As long as America's demographics change, and change for the worse, it will continue to isolate itself from the rest of the world."
Define "worse."
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