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The Pentagon's new China war plan

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Despite budget woes, the military is preparing for a conflict with our biggest rival -- and we should be worried

BY STEPHEN GLAIN

This summer, despite America’s continuing financial crisis, the Pentagon is effectively considering trading two military quagmires for the possibility of a third. Reducing its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan as it refocuses on Asia, Washington is not so much withdrawing forces from the Persian Gulf as it is redeploying them for a prospective war with its largest creditor, China.

According to the defense trade press, Pentagon officials are seeking ways to adapt a concept known as AirSea Battle specifically for China, debunking rote claims from Washington that it has no plans to thwart its emerging Asian rival. A recent article in Inside the Pentagon reported that a small group of U.S. Navy officers known as the China Integration Team "is hard at work applying the lessons of [AirSea Battle] to a potential conflict with China."

AirSea Battle, developed in the early 1990s and most recently codified in a 2009 Navy-Air Force classified memo, is a vehicle for conforming U.S. military power to address asymmetrical threats in the Western Pacific and the Persian Gulf -- code for China and Iran. (This alone raises a crucial point: If the U.S. has had nothing but trouble with asymmetrical warfare for the last 45 years, why should a war with China, or Iran for that matter, be any different?) It complements the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, a government white paper that precluded the rise of any "peer competitor" that might challenge U.S. dominance worldwide. The Planning Guidance is the Pentagon’s writ for control of what defense planners call "the global commons," a euphemism for the seaways, land bridges and air corridors that are the arteries of international commerce. For a foreign power to challenge this American dominion is to effectively declare war on the United States, and that is exactly what China appears to be doing in the South China Sea, a resource-rich and highly contested waterway in Southeast Asia.

It was in this spirit that Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Jim Amos, at a dinner hosted by the Center for a New American Security in late May, remarked that the wars in the Persian Gulf were denying Washington the resources it needed to cope with an increasingly assertive China. "We’d like to turn that around," he said. "I don't think we're there to [the extent] we need to be." In his candor, Amos became the latest U.S. military leader to speak about his service’s plans following the Afghanistan drawdown.

A U.S. mobilization in Asia is well underway, in faith with a spring 2001 Pentagon study called "Asia 2025," which identified China as a "persistent competitor of the United States," bent on "foreign military adventurism." Three years later, the U.S. government went public with a plan that called for a new chain of bases in Central Asia and the Middle East, in part to box in the People’s Republic. Similarly, the nuclear energy cooperation deal signed by the U.S. and India in 2008 was an obvious containment maneuver aimed at Beijing. In late March, press reports detailed a major buildup of American forces in Asia, including increased naval deployments and expansive cooperation with partner countries. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is forging ahead with a multi-year effort to transform Guam into its primary hub in the Pacific, an initiative so vast that John Pike of the Washington, D.C.-based GlobalSecurity.org has speculated that Washington wants to "run the planet from Guam and Diego Garcia by 2015."

Unlike America’s allies in Asia and Europe, however, China is not about to outsource its national security obligations to a foreign power, particularly when it comes to the South China Sea. There more than ever, and not without reason, Beijing identifies the U.S. not as a strategic partner but as an outright threat. In 2007, when China destroyed one of its weather satellites with a ballistic missile, it served as a warning to Washington after the ramming six years earlier of a U.S. spy plane by a Chinese fighter jet off the coast of Hainan Island. Though the crisis that followed was defused diplomatically, it was interpreted by some in Washington as vindication of the throaty Asia 2025. In fact, the clash followed a dramatic rise in the frequency of U.S. overflights in the area during the twilight of the Clinton years, which triggered a demarche from Beijing that slipped through the cracks of the transition to the Bush administration. The Hainan incident, as affair is known, was the inevitable outcome of a highly intrusive American surveillance regime.

In addition to China, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines all have competing claims on several clusters of South China Sea islands. Rather than intervening with quiet diplomacy to untangle this incendiary thicket, the U.S. has starkly sided against Beijing. In March 2010, when a Chinese official was quoted by Japanese media as identifying the region as a "core interest" of Chinese sovereignty, the White House retaliated by declaring that freedom of maritime navigation is a U.S. "national interest." As it turns out, according to the China scholars Nong Hong and Wenran Jiang, writing in the July 1 edition of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation’s China bulletin, the core interest to which the official referred was “the peaceful resolution” of the disputes in question. Despite this, the White House refuses to climb down. Two weeks ago, three U.S. Navy ships paid call on Vietnam, China’s ancient antagonist, for a weeklong joint exercise at a time of strained relations between Beijing and Hanoi, prompting a formal protest from the Chinese. In Manila last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointedly assured her hosts that the U.S. would honor its mutual defense pact with the Philippines and sell it new weaponry on discounted terms.

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government has encountered the practical limits of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. In its story about AirSea Battle and the China Integration Team, Inside the Pentagon revealed an oblique, if profound insight from Andrew Krepinevich, the highly regarded head of Washington’s Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. China, he said, is clearly jousting for control of the Western Pacific and "we have to decide whether we’re going to compete or not. If we’re not, then we have to be willing to accept the shift in the military balance." Otherwise, "the question is how to compete effectively."

Here is a noble appeal for Washington to match its commitments with the resources needed to sustain them, the absence of which has fueled the debt crisis that nearly reduced the United States to a mendicant state. Such are the crippling costs of a defense policy that makes global hegemony a mindless imperative.

The Pentagon's new China war plan - China - Salon.com
 
BS article from obscure source. Try some other source ! Oh wait, you may not find such crap !
 
BS article from obscure source. Try some other source ! Oh wait, you may not find such crap !

The author is addressing concerns of main stream America that US economy is going bankrupt and is no longer able to spend its resources on Military. The USA has already been doengraded from AAA to AA+ will no longer be able to borrow from countries like China to spend on its military. China happens to be the USA's Banker and it might put conditions on future loans.
 
The author is addressing concerns of main stream America that US economy is going bankrupt and is no longer able to spend its resources on Military. The USA has already been doengraded from AAA to AA+ will no longer be able to borrow from countries like China to spend on its military. China happens to be the USA's Banker and it might put conditions on future loans.

Exactly ! So why would US even think of going to war with China ?
 
Exactly ! So why would US even think of going to war with China ?
We have war plans against EVERYBODY.

Was that shocking...???

Actually, it would be a dereliction of duty of ANY country's military leadership if the leaders at least do not contemplate the possibilities of wars against high visibility potential adversaries. Was that even more shocking? If it is, then perhaps those who are shocked should serve some time in their respective countries' militaries and be enlightened. For US, we even have plans for alien invasions.

Deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, there are war plans that try to involve significant global actors. This information is not new and even detailed in an old book...

Amazon.com: War Games (9780425116470): Thomas B. Allen: Books
Chapter 15

Real Problems, Simulated Solutions

At one end of the war-game spectrum, right next the real war, are the major exercises that give U.S. forces a world stage to rehearse for war. Each year the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff runs as many as seventy of these operations, which involve tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and Marines in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East. Several of these major exercises have a secondary simulation built in: The soldiers and sailors are casts of thousands, actors in a show of force designed to dramatize U.S. presence in a region.
Plans are like theories, they are ideal and easily formulated. Simulations are like modelings where some of the real world limitations are introduced to begin to introduce chaos into the plans. Exercises are where those real world limitations are allowed their freedoms to fully realize and often reveal flaws, anticipated or hidden, inside those plans. Some plans are formulated and never got beyond that. Some are shelved after the simulations. Then some became exercises. How they became exercises depends on the current geopolitical conflicts, potential conflicts, alliances, and harmonious or hostile peace. It would be absurd to expect US, China, Soviet Union, Russia, Israel or even neutral Sweden to do nothing regarding plans.

Chapter 11

Red and Blue in the White House

One of America's best-kept secrets for a quarter of a century has been presidential wargaming. There have been occasional glimpses that blurred reality. Kennedy in the White House Situation Room, his eyes locked on a plotting board showing U.S. and Soviet ships nearing confrontation during the Cuban missile crisis. Lyndon Johnson in that same room, hunched over a sand table, a colossus looking down upon a Vietnam battlefield. Ronald Reagan making a conference call to command centers, thanking the players for their work in a game war that had killed a President and leveled both Washington and Moscow.
For US, the President is never an active participant in a war game. Someone else always play the role of a US President. The Vice President has his own war games and someone else play his office. No one expected Kennedy to blockade Cuba and no one expected the Soviets to blink in that crisis. National Command Authority (NCA) is always mysterious in its decision making process and intended to be that way so no one can guess what NCA will do in a true crisis.

Obsolete plans are revised or even discarded. Nothing wrong with that and at least we have an idea of how we were correct or in error in a past geopolitical situation in light of current global events. Without plans, even obsoleted ones, we would be floundering in the dark while our enemies or potential adversaries run circles around us.

So for those who make much ballyhoo about this article on how the US is a 'warmongering' country, I say to thee: Get a clue about how leaderships are supposed to be anticipatory of potential events, adverse or beneficial, based upon current dynamic events, to better protect the country.

Allen wrote that book back in 1987. You guys are telling me that it is too much to find something more recent to get that clue? :disagree:
 
The AirSea Battle concept is not new, it is being refined now and is being sought to be operationalised by the USAF and the USN. It effectively replaces the older generation AirLand Battle concept that we read about 15 to 20 years ago. The AirSea Battle concept is designed to neutralise the A2/AD (Anti Access/ Area Denial) efforts of the PRC in the Western Pacific region which is considered vital to US security interests. As opposed to the AirLand Battle concept which was basically land based and centered around Europe/ west Asia against the USSR, the AirSea Battle concept is essentially maritime in nature and caters to ensuring unfettered US power projection around the world. Since the only place on the planet where the US power projection is being seriously challenged is in the west Pacific by China, therefore, this concept has been branded as being Anti China. The same strategy could be as effectively used against say an Iranian attempt at denying the Strait of Hormuz.
 
We have war plans against EVERYBODY.

Was that shocking...???

Actually, it would be a dereliction of duty of ANY country's military leadership if the leaders at least do not contemplate the possibilities of wars against high visibility potential adversaries. Was that even more shocking? If it is, then perhaps those who are shocked should serve some time in their respective countries' militaries and be enlightened.

Not shocking at all, being the only super power and a paranoid one, it's totally understandable.


For US, we even have plans for alien invasions..

Kidding? right?
 
"For US, we even have plans for alien invasions.."

What?...Illegal aliens or extra terrestrial (ET)? Everybody in America is an immigrant or illegal aliens, with exception to the Native Americans.
 
Not shocking at all,..................,,

That is right, it may appear shocking to you but every sovereign nation has plans to counter every known or potential adversary. It is not peculiar to the US. The only difference is that the US is more open about their strategies, they research, debate and discuss about these strategies a lot and most of this stuff is available in the public domain. That is how their system works, nothing wrong about it.
 
Nope.[/QUOTE]

and what kind of plans can you make against an unknown enemy you are not even sure exists and in what form?
 
For US, we even have plans for alien invasions. Was that shocking...???
Alien invasions? Are you talking of Mexicans or real little green men from the Andromeda Galaxy? :rofl:

Now where did you get that gem from? Firstly, why would aliens attack only America? What about the rest of the world? So it's gonna be a war between the United Galactic Federation and the great US of A!! :rofl:

Secondly, if aliens have traveled thousands of light years to battle with the US of A, their technology would be so far ahead that they could obliterate America within seconds! So what so called 'war plans' do the Yanks have against these aliens? :azn:

But yes, the US of A does have war plans against countries like China, North Korea, Iran and Syria. Whether they would go it alone or get NATO to help them is not clear. But this must have been factored into the war games per se.
 
@ all those who are arguing that China is US's banker and won't allow it to spend on military :

1. A popular saying goes like, "If u owe 1000$ to a bank then u have problem. But if u owe 10000000$ to a bank then bank has the problem. "
( Heard from someone in this forum. Good punchline. :-) )

2. All those fanboys who persistently make posts like American economy going down the drain and China won't give them money can only be called n00bs only.
If US starts printing $$ rampantly, there is no country to stop them. $$ would get devalued which means overnight China's $2.2 tn parked in america will be reduced to peanuts. In the mean time, china won't have any clue to where to keep their burgeoning export profits but US treasury.

The only reason US is not printing $$ is because that would weaken their economy but rest assured either way destiny of China and US are intertwined.

3. US has first mover's advantage. Since it is US which owes money to the entire world and they have nothing to loose if their economy goes down since half the world's economy would go down with it. Even then US would be unchallenged power.
 
@ all those who are arguing that China is US's banker and won't allow it to spend on military :

1. A popular saying goes like, "If u owe 1000$ to a bank then u have problem. But if u owe 10000000$ to a bank then bank has the problem. "
( Heard from someone in this forum. Good punchline. :-) )

Also don't lend money to the local goon/strongman if you don't have the necessary muscle power to get it back form him.
 
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