Thanks for the article Kristoffer!!!
via The Nation (Thailand).
Both the Pentagon and the People's Liberation Army are building up their military strategies. It appears that a global war is in the making.Read the whole thing here.
Saunders wrote that the Pentagon is proceeding with war preparations without oversight from the White House or Congress. This gives the impression that the Pentagon is operating as an independent state within the state. The Pentagon is relying on the AirSea Battle strategy, in which the US Army and Air Force will stand ready to support 320,000 military personnel in a simultaneous land and air attack against China in the event of a spillover war in the South China Sea or surrounding areas.
President Obama has spoken of a pivot to Asia, followed by the US Defence Department's plan to move most of the US naval capability to the Asia Pacific to counter the rise of China. We can feel that the US military, in spite of the turmoil in Syria, Egypt and the Middle East, is re-asserting its influence in the Asia-Pacific. The US and China are now engaging in a full-scale currency war. A physical war could be the inevitable course. A rise of China threatens the US dollar as the world's reserve currency and the US supremacy.
On China's side, we can assume that the Chinese leadership has ordered a full preparation for a war with the United States. China has secretly built up its military capability, with modern weapons and sophisticated technology. China said it is ready to develop an anti-AirSea Battle strategy. China's President Xi Jingping has urged the military to prepare for the war and to fight to win.
I've read Doug Saunders before. He's a left leaning liberal with definite anti-military tendencies.
What should raise eyebrows is the fact that a Thailand paper re-printed the article. His talk about the Pentagon acting without White House or Congressional oversight is pure fantasy, What isn't is the idea that the smaller Asian countries will get swept into this conflict. I predicted that China would work hard to isolate these countries and attempt to get them to sit the war out... I also expect China to do this by offering nicely packaged agreements that include aid, trade and development programs. Whether it works or not is anyone's guess. China appears to be in a demonstration period. They're demonstrating to their neighbors how strong they are and "informing" them of possible points of friction. Classic carrot and stick.
The real problem is that I can't see a competing approach from the US side. Partnerships? Painting a few schools and working with a nations armed forces? In context it seems like really weak sauce.
This is gonna happen within five to ten years. Consider this the interwar period, similar to what we saw between WW1 and WW2.
Side note: I think its time to start a build your military for the Pacific series. What should a budget constrained Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines focus on when it comes to this looming conflict?
or it could be like the late 1940s/early 1950s before the Cold War got going with everyone pushing for position and trying to get themselves organised before settle down into an uneasy sort of peace...
ReplyDeletethis might be of interest -
http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-future-of-the-five-power-defence-arrangements/
TX Hammes on CDR Salamander was discussing Offshore Control as an alternative to AirSea Battle. It's less costly and certainty doable without spending billions on a Korean-esque conflict.
ReplyDeleteEpisode 154: Offshore Control & Asia/Pacific with TX Hammes
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/midrats/2012/12/16/episode-154-offshore-control-asiapacific-with-tx-hammes
The rebuttal to Hammes concept of operations made a lot of sense in my eyes.
Deletehttp://warontherocks.com/2013/07/five-myths-about-airsea-battle/
Not much of a rebuttal if you ask me.
DeleteHe's left essentially saying that what Hammes writes makes sense (between complaining he doesn't have the same resources as Hammes to make his point), drawing equivalences between gradually strangling their economy, versus bombing their cities, then saying why not use AirSea Battle in addition to Offshore Control.
The main thrust of the article made sense to me, namely that 1) people running around spouting that Air Sea battle is a strategy are ill-informed, and 2) Hammes fails to articulate why bombing military targets in China would trigger nuclear war but starving their entire population through blockade won't.
DeleteThat Hammes discussion is scary.
DeleteOur vulnerability in Space and Cyber is our weakness.
Our inability to build ships and planes at an affordable scale is also a weakness.
I, too, think it is pure folly to entertain any idea of penetrating Chinese mainland airspace. It cannot be done and even if we had a Next Gen Bomber, we couldn't ever have enough numbers of them to make an impact.
We can't invade Mainland China, so a defense of the 1st Island Chain is more practical and has the morally superior benefit of the defense. NATO was a defensive organization during the Cold War. That is what can tie in our allies in the region: defensive.
so you want us to sit in the defense soaking up frontal assaults by enemy forces? that sounds like modern day trench warfare...ok, it'll be much higher tech and the fight will be between ships and planes but the concept is similar. the point is you can't fight a war on the defense, you've got to get inside the enemies loop and make them dance to your tune. that means a strategic bomber, strikes against bases at least and some way to hold leadership in fear. sounds like hypersonic missiles, lasers or electromagnetic guns lobbying 500 ton concrete slabs (or depleted uranium spheres) 2000 miles.
DeleteNATO wasn't designed to penetrate all the way to Kiev, it was designed to keep the Soviets from rolling through the North German plains and taking over Western Europe.
DeleteWe don't have any territory of our own in East Asia. All our bases are on foreign soil and if we want to use them, we're going to need to enlist their support in a strategy. Besides being in their OODA loop, we have to reconcile the moral dimension of war as well, something Boyd also dwelled upon a great deal. In this case, a defensive strategy is a morally superior stance that our allies can embrace rather than them serving as Air Strip One for an offensive strategy.
It forces China to extend beyond their defended littoral and expose their lines of communication. Rather than operating over the littoral of China's mainland as part of their anti-access/area denial strategy, they have to travel out to the limits of their range where we and our allies have the advantage of working closer to their bases. plus, it negates a huge part of their anti-access/area denial strategy which is focused on sinking our Navy/shooting down our Air Forces as it moves past the First Island chain.
The numbers I've seen for a Next Gen Bomber is 100. I don't care how good they are, there is no way we are going to do much with just 100 bombers. China has is over 9.7 million sq km and has dozens upon dozens of cities of over one million people. We just went over the economy of scale China enjoys in ship-building. Isn't it reasonable to think they enjoy the same advantage in redundant command bunkers, communication relays, launch sites for IRBMs, etc.?
The SAMs and aircraft China will put up mean a Next Gen Bomber is going to have a short life span. We will not have air superiority over the Chinese mainland.
With an Offshore control strategy, we play to our strengths and make the Chinese economy the schwerpunkt as opposed to trying to attrite innumerable C4I, strike assets, etc.
The big problem with fighting China isn't winning, its winning before Chinese land forces reach the Andaman Sea.
ReplyDeleteIts would be very easy to dig in for a long war and starve them in to submission, but a five year war presaged on an unconditional surrender is a hard sell politically, especially if its fought in the name of allies who have been conquered and who's puppet governments are themselves calling for peace.
well thats one thing we never talk about...who is China scared to fight.
Deleteout of all the countries in the Pacific i say only two. Vietnam and Korea. want to know why the two Koreas haven't reunited. China will not allow it. a fully militarized, unified and nationalistic Korea will be a sight to behold. Japan would be scared shitless and China would be worried.
for the Chinese to fight their way to the Burma sea means going through Vietnam. i just don't see that happening. the Vietnamese are brutal and it'll be a nasty war.
Not really. Burma is Chinas strategic backdoor to the sea. China paved tank runways from its border across burmesian soil, built airfields in Burma that has runways and facilities longer and larger than needed for anything the Burmesian Air Force owns and operates military outposts along Burmas shores. No need for the Chinese to come across Vietnam.
DeleteAs for Korea: NC is just the glacis to keep any US ground forces a few hundred miles away from Chinese border. The same thing the Russians did with Eastern Europa during the Cold war. With that kind of glacis and the South Korean capital in gun range of the communists it would be easy for China to convience SK to stay neutral in case of an armed conflict elsewhere.
p.s. You don't go to war with a nuclear power. Not even with little Syria with its chemical weapons, much less with 1+ billion Chinese armed with ICBMs.
uh yes you do. if its in the nations interest you do. besides. we can't attrit the Chinese military enough for them to sue for peace. the final key to this Air-Sea Battle is going to have to be put in place by a different president but what we need to bring back is Battle Field nukes to make it all work. thats the only thing thats missing.
DeleteOf corse. But is it a vital interest of the US to come to a nuclear exchange just for a remote rock somewhere out there? Tactical nukes? We know fromCold War that the outcome of using tacnukes against conventional forces backed by own nukes would have escalated into a global nuclear war. Are We the people ready to face the bodycount of a real shooting war against a nuclear armed major power? A power that did not hesitate to use human wave attacks and outnumbers the US people by how much? And is the current US economy able to crank out ships and airplanes in vast numbers to replace the inevitable losses? Even if a nuclear shootout could be avoided, how would the postwar US economy look like when China deploys the USD-deposits onto the table? Like the French after both of its victories over Germany?
DeleteI have just questions, no answers. But situation reminds me about the pre-WW2 days. Replace "Japan" for "China". An developing nation in need for ressources facing a coalition blocking the access. Also the ongoing presumption that the Chinese are just poor copycats unable to field modern battlegear or to master modern tactics...
It seems much wiser to enable the chinese neighborhood to keep the Chinese at bay, or to fight them with a lokal war instead of having a trans-pacific shoot-out. To enable them NOW. But thats just my personal opinion.
The current POTUS and his administration will surrender under favorable terms that give the Chinese half or more of the Pacific.
ReplyDeleteJapan, Philippines, the Korea's and Vietnam are on their own.
The pivot to the Pacific is like all POTUS does, sham, lies and bullshit.
The Chinese like the Muslim's won this war already back around 2009 POTUS most likely is a Maoist.
I just do not believe POTUS will fight any real war with anyone. His enemies are domestic.
I like Hammes Offshore Control and defense of the 1s Island Chain as the basis for a strategy.
ReplyDeleteIt does two things I really like: It negates the A2AD capability that China has developed. If we aren't sending carriers into the South China Sea, the Chinese have nothing to target.
It is defensive in nature and gets our allies to buy into it. They aren't attacking China, they are defending their homelands and finding common truck with each other. We can assist them defending their islands.
Every potential ally (except Philippines) in the region is buying submarines. Australia, S. Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia. We are building Virginia-class boats faster and cheaper than we expected. Since we can buy 8 Virginia boats for the cost of one carrier, it makes more sense to keep a successful program going and rewarding good work.
Use the carriers to stay behind the First Island chain as an operational reserve that can be deployed to reinforce an ally or confront attempts by PLAN to break out of the 1st Island chain.
Marines can be used to defend/re-take islands seized by China.
The US Army should be creating rapidly-deployable THAAD/Patriot batteries, ATACM batteries and start looking at land-based Harpoon batteries. Start working with the Marines to look at ways to rapidly reinforce allies with airborne and amphibious units. (Heavy BCTs are for the Middle East, not East Asia).
Interesting that they've got a Russian SS-24 ICBM train in that picture.
ReplyDeleteA little short for that isn't it? The three very long cars are likely TEL cars, but where are the C&C or security cars (they might be cut off at the edge of the picture, but maybe not)? The TEL car deign also seem a bit off for the SS-24. Has there been any definitive pictures of chinese rail mobile TEL's?
DeleteA blockade against the Chinese? Wow, just wow.
ReplyDeleteIt's safe to assume that in the event of a war, our bases in Japan, Korea, and Guam would be decimated within 48 hours. So where shall we base our blockading ships out of? Hawaii?
Does sustaining a blockade from half way across the vast pacific sound like a good idea to anyone?
I swear to God, American strategic thinking would do a lot better with 99% of think-tankers six feet under.