Naman wrote “You’re making the Chinese military a bigger threat than it really is…The Chinese military is a paper tiger. They have a mass of poorly trained, conscripted soldiers and their weapons and equipment are second rate. Their navy is a joke. Their only real advantages are their numbers and the threat of their nukes.”
Naman, it is always a mistake to under-estimate a would-be opponent, and the Chinese were an advanced civilization when Europeans were living in mud huts.
Is the U.S. military capable? Without a doubt, but it is far less dominant than the chestbeaters here would have you believe. That is especially true with an opponent such as China. That nation could swallow our entire military without a burp. Moreover, the Communist way of war – Soviet/Russian as well as Chinese -favors quantity over quality, and quantity has – you may have heard – a quality all its own. The U.S. idea that our superiority in weapons systems will overcome the PRC numerical advantage is a fantasy, especially now that the PLAN is approaching first-tier standards. A U.S. carrier battle group might shoot down many incoming wave-skimming supersonic antiship missiles, but a concerted attack with dozens of them would sink the carrier and perhaps most of its support fleet, at a very acceptable return in losses for the ChiComs. Thier diesel submarine fleet is working hard to become undetectable to our best detection methods, and again, they can afford to lose many subs for every vessel they sink. The PLAN can trade small subs for carriers or frigates all day long. And these are just naval examples, I won’t belabor the point with air or ground warfare. The Chinese have proved their mettle in these also.
Moreover, the Chinese are systematically weakening us without resorting to war, at the same time they are building themselves up. Read your Sun Tzu – the best commander achieves victory before taking the field of battle, or manages to do so without fighting. Looking at our sovereign debt problem, and the place-of-maufacture of many goods on U.S. shelves, I’d say the PRC is beating us down quit nicely without resorting to conventional weapons of war.
IMO, the USA should exploit tensions between the Russians and the Chinese, as the latter have long coveted the riches of sparsely-populated Siberia, and both nations have shot at one another over the region in fairly recent past in border incidents. Japan is also rearming quite heavily, if somewhat on the quiet, to avoid inflaming regional tensions. We could also exploit tensions over the oil-rich Spratley Islands in the South China Sea, which are contested by multiple regional players – Vietnam, the PRC, Japan, etc.
styrgwillidar wrote, “The US and Chinese economies are too intertwined for China to ever get into a wide-scale conflict with the US…” It is a widely-held fallacy of history that economic partners do not go to war with one another. True, economic interdependence can lessen the urge to war, but just as often it can fail to do so, i.e., as in the case of WWI, when the Great Powers of Europe, trading partners all, slaughtered each other for four years. The U.S. entered the war after trading with both sides.
Anonymous wrote, “You obviously don’t pay much attention to the military we field, they are exceptional, the chinese nor the ruskies can match them in battle…” That remains to be seen, Anon. Neither opponent is one we should ignore or minimize. Both have proven exceptionally tough to conquer in the past, and tough opponents in the Cold War era, as well as staunch allies in WWII. America is a much-weaker nation, relative to either of them, than it was in WWII or the Cold War. Seeing the trouble our military is having closing the deal against guerillas in Iraq and Afgahnistan, we should get on our knees and pray we do not have to fight a peer opponent anytime soon. That is, unless you want to see a national emergency declared, and our young people drafted. I do agree with you about the “hgeavily armed red-necks” part of your post, though; but I don’t worry about the PRC or Russia invading us. Do you? It’s more Mexico I am concerned about, thanks.
