April 08, 2005
The Rising Threat of China
China cannot defeat the United States in a military confrontation. Keep that in mind; our military capacity far outstrips China’s and in a general war between the United States and China, the end result would be a crushing Chinese defeat. On the other hand, a war with China would be a long, bloody business; we’d win, but we’d pay a high blood price for victory. This is what China is counting on.
As this article in the International Herald Tribune points out, China has greatly improve it’s ability to invade Taiwan. It appears that China’s strategic thinking has boiled down to believing that if they can conquer Taiwan before the United States could intervene in strength, then the cost of liberating Taiwan and defeating China would be too high for the United States to pay. In this scenario, the United States would accept the Chinese fait-accompli and withdraw from east Asia; basing our sphere of influence from that period onwards from Japan to Guam to the Phillipines, leaving all of mainland Asia to China’s tender mercies.
The United States, however, cannot afford a Chinese victory over democratic Taiwan. The United States is the sentinel of human liberty and if we supinely allow free people to fall under tyranny, then we have abdicated our position in the world; a Chinese victory over Taiwan, unresponded to, would be a signal defeat for the United States. Cost what it will, if China attacks Taiwan, we must fight.
With this in mind, I believe it in our interest to rapidly increase the size of our submarine and carrier forces; this would allow us at the crisis to both sink Chinese transports attempting to cross the Taiwan straight while also providing the necessary air power to carry the war into the Chinese mainland, breaking up their invasion force before it could be brought to bear. And ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure; right now, if we show ourselves willing to spend mere money on deterrence it will help us to not spend blood later in redemption.
Posted by Mark Noonan at April 8, 2005 02:08 AM
http://www.blogsforbush.com/mt/archives/004162.html
