1. China torpedoes a US aircraft carrier for no particularly good reason
2. China claims that the US aircraft carrier exploded all on its own, and nobody can prove otherwise
3. The US doesn't bother to retaliate
4. The US has thus "lost the Naval War of 2015".
Does this scenario strike anyone as especially plausible?
ELINT is very powerful, and the US intelligence agencies have been at this game since before WWII. Their sneakiness boggles the mind! They were using signals bounced off of the moon to spy on Soviet equipment, and disguised the whole thing as radio astronomy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ
If you are going to go up against the US defense establishment, you'd better be damned sure you know what you're doing.
If I were the US, facing such an asymmetric threat, I'd keep most of my carrier groups around for the short term as a boondoggle, then come up with my own novel threat against my opponent's shipping.
(Sub launched cruise missiles, or mines? The advanced 21st century version, of course.)
Nukes.
If I were the US, I'd simply make it an official matter of policy that any attack from a nuclear power would result in an immediate nuclear response, the logic being that once two nuclear powers are at war it's probably going to turn nuclear eventually, so you might as well make the first strike.
Some of us spent our entire youth afraid of nuclear annihilation 24/7. We've been out of that for some time now, but I don't think anyone wants to send the world back to that point.
Yes, certainly we need to maintain defensive and offensive military capabilities, but I think we should be doing much, much more to reduce the need for those capabilities.
There will never be a hot war between US and China for so long as nuclear weapons have no effective defense. Nuclear weapons are probably the single biggest enabler of peace on the planet.
I beg to differ. First, see India v. Pakistan as a direct counter to your "impossible" statement.
Second, as the example shows, the line you draw regarding using nukes does not extend all the way down to the rifleman. It's entirely possible to start a conventional and/or localized war with the understanding that you intend to win and therefore do not have the need to use your nukes.
You're making the major mistake though of assuming your enemy is a rational actor, a la the cold war. Russia is a rational actor. So is China. Even India.
In Pakistan however, only a minority are rational actors. Should a change in government occur that is pro-Taliban, you now have a nation of irrational actors with nuclear weapons.
MAD falls apart at this point. The fear of death means little to the Muslim extremist, and a man that isn't scared does highly irrational things, like nuke a civilian target.
All it takes is one, and then all bets are off.
No. The scenario is that China hits a US carrier with a (conventionally armed) ballistic missile, for no particularly good reason
The NIMITZ-class self-defense measures include: missiles, guns, and electronic warfare. The NATO Sea Sparrow Missile System is comprised of two launchers with eight missiles each. Sea Sparrow is a radar-guided, short-to-medium range missile capable of engaging aircraft and cruise missiles. NIMITZ-class also has Close-In Weapon System mounts for short range defense against aircraft or missiles. Each mount has its own search and track radar, and a six-barrel, 20-millimeter Gatling gun capable of firing 3,000 rounds per minute