China’s vast fleet is tipping the balance in the Pacific
reuters.com
reuters.com
In raw numbers the US Navy is technologically and numerically dominant.
But China will increasingly be able to surge "mass" in terms of both technology and numbers to dominate its near shore and achieve theatre level superiority.
China is building out it's military in a way that is akin to the US Reagan led 1980's.
But what concerns me the most is not PLAN versus US Navy, but China/BATH versus US/FAANG+.
We are not likely to see a single navy dominate the world's oceans ever again.
But what about a single country dominating the world's geodigital platforms?
These guys got pretty close:
https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/11/providing-common-d...
Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei
I think they collectively represent a far bigger long term threat to relative US superiority than some Chinese warships.
Something has to pay for that military capability.
I wonder what scared the Soviets more?
The US Navy or the Marshall Plan?
Marshall plan was $100B One Belt, One Road is multi trillion.
Use debt trap diplomacy, nudging, and a decent value proposition to get everyone on BATH
One Platform, One Network
Bye bye US Dollar.
Bye bye US Navy capability and capacity.
Over time, China will be looking to guarantee its SLOC(Se Linea of Communication(Control) for all of it’s global trade.
China is very vulnerable to economic harm from sea trade disruption.
China is being aggressive in the South China Sea because they're insecure about the US navy being so close. If things escalate then the US navy can start a blockade and stop virtually all trade between China and the outside world.
China wants to get control of the surrounding seas so its shipping routes aren't vulnerable to the US. That's also why they're investing so much in huge train networks through Asia and the Middle East – it means the US navy can't economically cripple them at will.
Or to use Occam's Razor: There's a greater density of assets to control, nearer at hand.
Edit : From a Chinese perspective, the Pax Americana has been a blip in history.
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/04/well-see...
Sinking a US aircraft carrier would be a direct attack on the sovereignty of the United States.
It would e like sinking Rhode Island(slightly bigger).
Retribution would be overwhelming.
Any scenario (unlikely as it may be) that involves china successfully destroying 2 US carriers would also involve their confidence in being able to destroy the rest in their coastal region.
The initial attack likely never takes place.
That's also a good way to piss off rank and file Americans who normally don't give a damn.
Want the US to go cold turkey off of Chinese imports? That's how you do it.
I mean the basic premise is that the bottom line for control is deadly force.
Maybe there really is no alternative but I think it's worth mentioning that as long is that is the operating mode, there is no real security for human life. You can certainly have extended periods without major wars but as long as the paradigm remains, it's always just a matter of time before the next mass killing starts.
I mean as far as Taiwan goes, it's right next to China, there is a long history. The paradigm is that you have a right to whatever you can take by force. If they get to the point where they can invade successfully and don't think that it is _actually_ going to start WW3, they may feel obligated to do it. Because yes it would probably result in a large loss of life, but the international operating mode is that serious conflicts are resolved with machines designed to destroy property and lives.
Applying space forces actively to war could well be applying a new part of the universe to war. (Airplanes and submarines were also this.)
Its true that Europeans used to fight each other much more. That's also true of most areas of the planet.
I think that for the main part you have Europeans working together now under NATO.
I believe that actually the most core reason for NATO is common genetic and ethnic heritage. In fact, to me the major global factions are essentially just ancient tribal disputes write large.
Now, this may make sense if you have a sort of 19th century Social Darwinistic pre-gentic-science eugenic worldview where human life has little value to you and each group is essentially an ant colony battling it out so that the greatest "subspecies" may procreate.
But we understand now that humans are humans. We have instantaneous global communications with increasingly effective translation systems. Our technology provides a relative abundance for much of the population.
Would it make sense for this paradigm of deadly force to apply to the people who live on your block? No, of course not. What about within your city? No. What about between the United States and Canada? It seems unlikely.
But if I bring up the example of the United States and Mexico? The idea that there might be mass killing to resolve conflicts would be much more palatable for many people unfortunately. And I think it comes down to ethnic and cultural differences. In other words, they have different family histories, look different, speak a different language.
Its very hard to actually see how much things are connected until things break down and the connections reveal themselves.
Applying deadly force in such a context is much more unpredictable than in the past. Even though we have enough examples of what happens (Read Niall Fergusons the Square and the Tower) the scale of interconnectedness and interdependencies as massive.
Think of the 2008 financial crisis, nobody cared about the banks, they even let two fail but the chain reaction it set off scared the shit out of everyone. Finance Ministers and Federal Banks in ever corner of the world across all kinds of difference were all of a sudden guaranteeing matching safegaurds and stimulus packages. From Russia to India to China. Same story will repeat with any kind military conflict between say US and Mexico, the actual interdepedencies will reveal themselves beyond the legacy reasons for grouping such as language, culture etc. It's a delusion that the connections can be severed. And sooner or later people learn that the hard way. It's good for health in the long run.
Yes. That's actually enshrined in international law. Sovereignty is pretty much defined as whomever has enough force in that place to get their way.
the international operating mode is that serious conflicts are resolved with machines designed to destroy property and lives
CGP Grey puts it this way: Sovereignty == Bigger Army Diplomacy.
Actually that's not quite right. Sovereignty == Better Armed Forces with Sustainable Logistics Diplomacy.
The line, "While you can call them all British it's not recommended as the four countries generally do not like each other." hooked me, I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Rest of my day is gone watching these videos, I'm down the rabbit hole.
Also look at the effects of sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. Both are collapsing.
Imagine the effects of sanction on an economy as big as China.
Sanctions against China would be fairly painful for the rest of the world, too.
Right... that's my point: the relative impact of cutting off ties to China would be pretty large, given that it's the worlds factory. They would be worse for China, but more painful for everyone else than existing sanctions.
Tariffs against China didn't have much impacts on European/US consumers.
You get the idea.
Russia isn't an export/manufacturing powerhouse, unlike China. The one thing that Russia does export that EU consumers are about - oil & gas - isn't subject to sanctions.
The Russian economy is growing, not withering: "Although economic sanctions tightened, [...] Russian economy expanded at a 1.6 percent pace in the year just ended," - [1] (or [2] if you think rt.com is fake news).
> massive population outflow for Russia
It is true that Russia population is decreasing, although Poland, Germany, Hungary, Japan etc are decreasing even more [3]. It's hyperbolic to describe this as "massive".
[1] - https://www.rt.com/business/448357-russian-economy-grows-san...
[2] - http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/01/08/da...
All the democracies of the world could ally.
The Chinese fleet is concentrated almost entirely in the Western Pacific, near its naval ports.
This might well change if China takes back Taiwan. If that happens, China could engineer a situation where it's better for the local powers to cozy up to China, than to take the side of the distant US. Even though the US, as a distant hegemon, is the better option, the US might not have the power to keep China at bay any more, so the lesser of the two evils for everyone could be seen to give in.
If I were in the Defense Department, I would be creating SOSUS-like arrays near Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, plus an R&D program to create a swarm of super quiet autonomous midget submarines to go along with it. Basically, take unprecedented steps to make it tremendously dangerous to invade Taiwan, even if China has air superiority. (I very much doubt we'd be able to prevent China from getting that in the long term, even temporarily.)
I actually think it would be better for the us to unburden ourselves of the need to provide security for Taiwan, japan and Korea, as long as we continue to have trade agreements.
I realize that their system of government isn’t great and violates human rights on a massive scale, but in terms of foreign policy and the actual usage of their military for the past several decades, they’ve been a lot more reasonable and done far less damage than the us has.
Basically, because the US geopolitical strategy has kept them in check. Give them access to the world's oceans and the global stage to play in, and one might well see a lot more of that not-so-great stuff from China.
If China used that strategy in South America, I'm not sure the US military would smile and quietly appreciate the parallels. They'd be angry.
“One of the central hurdles facing the offensive is surprise. The PLA simply will not have it. The invasion will happen in April or October. Because of the challenges posed by the strait’s weather, a transport fleet can only make it across the strait in one of these two four-week windows.“
“There are only 13 beaches on Taiwan’s western coast that the PLA could possibly land at. Each of these has already been prepared for a potential conflict.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-wi...
At this point the most likely result of Sino-American naval conflict would be a bloody stalemate. Missiles really change the equation for surface ships as the article correctly points out. I would not like to be on a US carrier anywhere near the Chinese coast in the event of a war. They are likely to end up like the Prince of Wales and Repulse. [1]
On the other hand it does not seem likely that the Chinese fleet could deal with US submarines, so it's not clear how they could protect their own shipping.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_Prince_of_Wales_and...
https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s11366-018-9581-4?aut...
[1] : https://global.oup.com/academic/product/india-and-china-at-s...
Myanmar http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Forty-per-cent-of-Myanmar%E2%... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Myanmar_relation... The civil war there is complicated as heck, Myanmar is doing everything it can to get away from China but China is the only one who seems to be willing to do some partnerships because it also helps them as well. India, Bangladesh, Thailand not so much, they're happy taking the people desperate to get away from Myanmar's conflicts for cheap labor and trafficking.
- A retired PLA officer
^This quote from the article basically summarizes the whole article. The rest of the content is speculation or facts that prove the Chinese navy isn't as powerful as the US navy, except for anti-ship missiles.
And resource wise, it is reliant on outside suppliers. Which also cost. Unlike America, China's fiances aren't infinite (America is due to oil).
I have no doubt China can easily afford invading Taiwan. I do have doubts about Japan though. Japan is mobilizing right now as well.
The newish breed (maybe not new but more recent) seems to be to destabilize countries which can be strip mined cleaned while everything is just barely out of control of the local government, or you just pay off the government which may just be a military junta and buddies because they understand that if they try to pull a Gadaffi they get bombed out of existence and replaced because they're not big enough.
It really just looks a lot like the king of China is preparing to start a war. It seems like in the best case he is preparing to take Taiwan and in the worst case he's planning to take all of Asia while perhaps his ally, the king of Russia, takes Europe.
The simple fact is that if these two dictators can figure out how take out the U.S. then there's nothing stopping them from taking over the entire world. The giant has been sleeping since it declared victory in the cold war decades ago.
No one can sleep well until the U.S. massively revamps its nuclear triad and either Japan or Europe create their own highly independent nuclear response capability. The future of humanity is currently relying on a single point of failure and it may already be too late.
Both the UK and France have a completely independent nuclear response.
"What is so worrying about China's massive military build up is that there's no benign explanation. China has long had enough conventional power to defend itself and more than enough nuclear weapons to hold up its side of MAD."
Then there is even less explanation for the USA spending many times more on their military.
"It really just looks a lot like the king of China is preparing to start a war. It seems like in the best case he is preparing to take Taiwan and in the worst case he's planning to take all of Asia while perhaps his ally, the king of Russia, takes Europe."
None of these countries have kings.
"he simple fact is that if these two dictators can figure out how take out the U.S. then there's nothing stopping them from taking over the entire world. The giant has been sleeping since it declared victory in the cold war decades ago."
There is plenty to stop these. Russia is a waning power, with demographics working against it, and a regionally unimportant economy (smaller than Italy, which is also not going to take over the world). China, whilst growing fast, does not have the capability to project power and has a number of internal problems. This is all without mentioning it's rivals in the area, Japan, which is re-arming to a degree, and India, which is also well on the way to being a major economic and military power, if a few years behind.
Small nuclear arsenals that are not highly redundant. They do not have MAD-level nuclear forces.
> None of these countries have kings.
This is just semantics, they do have kings in all but name.
> Russia is a waning power...
They have enough tactical nukes to take out every major military force in Europe and enough conventional forces to clean up what's left.
> China, whilst growing fast, does not have the capability to project power...
They don't have to project power at all. They just have to disarm the militaries of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, which are all on their doorstep.
China wants access to the world's oceans which isn't dictated by a foreign power. China wants ocean access parity with the United States, along with the opportunity to become the global dominant superpower in the 21st century.
It seems like in the best case he is preparing to take Taiwan and in the worst case he's planning to take all of Asia
Taiwan is the cork in the bottle. If China has that, then there is no keeping them bottled up.
The simple fact is that if these two dictators can figure out how take out the U.S. then there's nothing stopping them from taking over the entire world.
The US doesn't need to be taken out. All they have to do, is to out-compete the US in economic power, then use the money to build a more modern, more powerful Navy.
Look at the resources and air superiority it took to pull off the Normandy landing. When China becomes capable of all that, even temporarily, it will be able to take Taiwan, then eventually take its place as the new superpower.