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Thomas Ricks
Those nasty Chinese anti-ship missiles - By Tom Ricks | The Best Defense
Naval War College Review does its job and parses out the bubbling issue of the long-range MIRV'd Chinese anti-ship missiles. Here's the Chinese Communist Party's take: "China will never abuse its anti-ship missile capacity and launch strikes against foreign carriers without a justified reason." Feel better now? More on the People's Liberation Army Navy here.
Bottom line: It is time to invest less in manned aircraft for aircraft carriers, and more in stealthy, long-range UCAVs. (For the non-illuminati, that's "unmanned combat aerial vehicles" -- in other words, the wave of the future.) And if you can figure out a way to short sell the current generation of aircraft carriers, you can get rich.
Meanwhile, the new issue of Parameters, which used to be an interesting magazine, wraps up the Google vs. China situation. Bottom line: The Chinese offensives are great for people looking for nice fat infowar contracts from the Pentagon.
And AEI, the think tank that never saw a war it didn't like, approves of the Obama administration's emerging China policy. Hmmm -- who thinks that is a good sign?
Finally, Paul Krugman discusses the clear and present problem China presents. Hint: It is financial, not military.
Please visit the original for the links to the various sources he mentions.
What is perhaps more interesting than the article, is member JPWREL's comments under it
JPWREL 2:48 PM ET September 13, 2010 Really, AEI thinks Obama has...
Really, AEI thinks Obama has an emerging China policy?? Perhaps AEI could let us in on what they think (or hope) it is. The only policy I have been able to detect from the fumbling Obama Administration is perpetual whining about the dollar Yuan exchange rate (meaning the Chinese should upwardly revalue their currency). On second thought perhaps inquiring minds at AEI think that this is an issue worth starting a shooting war over? Sadly for them the only way we could likely finance such a war would be to borrow a couple of hundred billon from the Chinese first which would of course drive the dollar down further and the Yuan higher. No wonder the neocon geniuses at AEI hate all the paradoxes of economics. Having to think about financing a war when your polices have driven us to bankruptcy spoils all the fun of a good rockem sockem war that they can cheer from the safety of the sidelines.
REPLY SCOOP 2:38 PM ET September 13, 2010 China's 'Finlandization' Strategy In The Pacific
By Andrew F. Krepinevich, Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2010
"China's goal is to stop the U.S. from protecting its longstanding interests in the region—and to draw Washington's democratic allies and partners (such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) into its orbit. China's military buildup centers on a set of capabilities, called 'Assassin's Mace' by the Chinese, which is designed to exploit surprise. China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) sees the U.S. military's battle networks—which rely heavily on satellites and the Internet to identify targets, coordinate attacks, guide 'smart bombs' and more—as its Achilles' heel. The message to the U.S. and its allies is clear: China has the means to threaten the forward bases from which most U.S. strike aircraft operate."
REPLY JPWREL 3:26 PM ET September 13, 2010 SCOOP, we know all this, its...
SCOOP, we know all this, its not news. The USNI ‘Proceedings’ discusses Krepinevich’s points in great detail about every other issue. The question is do we define China’s assertion of its growing strength as a zero sum game, if they win we must lose? And is it worth starting a war over, particularly a war we can’t afford and would make the two billon dollars a week we burn up in Afghanistan look like chicken feed?
China seems impossibly powerful but its system like ours contains many structural weaknesses and stresses. Their banking system is likely an accident waiting to happen. Regionalism and the unequal distribution of their economic miracle is another. The contradiction of the political/economic ideology of the state and the reality of Chinese society and economics is probably the largest.
I personally believe that we must judge China by her capabilities and not guesses of her intentions. We should maintain a military qualitative edge over China in order to maintain our negotiating credibility not because we desire to plunge into war. Thus we need a more forceful Navy and Air force equipped with the right tools and doctrine such as redundant long-range strike capability and a much more robust space based communications and reconnisnace systems and ability to defend those systems. We can’t do that and also wage wars in Afghanistan with an Army that has little comparative advantage and thus is much too large and consuming too many scarce defense dollars.
Since we are unlikely to change our ways it seems sensible that we learn to accept China’s growing strength and status in good graces and see how we can benefit from her economic growth. China is not merely a threat it is also an opportunity for the whole Pacific basin if only we can insert some mature thinking into policy formulation
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