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One of my hobbies is reading news/op-ed articles from a year or so ago and seeing how they measure up to events today. It's how I gauge which magazines are worth reading, and which are full of it.
One of the magazines that consistently gets things right is The Diplomat, a foreign policy rag focused on the Asia-Pac region. They tend to have an offensive realist slant, but for the most part, base their analysis on hard power, which is a lot less circular than soft power-based analyses. This makes them right more often than liberal internationalist rags like Foreign Policy, for example.
Here's an article that I think deserves a deeper look, if only because it could potentially affect each and every one of us.
http://thediplomat.com/2011/08/17/america’s-dangerous-battle-plan/
America and China are frenemies. Not rivals, not friends, but "peer competitors". Neither country wants to completely destroy each other, since both share a lot of core/present interests (namely, both nations' economies depend on the other)--but both nations also have mutually incompatible peripheral/future interests.
To break it down a little further, here is what I mean by core/peripheral and present/future:
Common interests in italics
Conflicting interests in bold
Core/Present interests for US and China
- Finding a way out of the 2008 recession
- Political stability of the Chinese regime
(The US has a vested financial stake in the Chinese one-party state)
- Opening US assets to Chinese investment/limiting Chinese investment to just US treasuries
- Stable global energy prices
- Unrestricted global shipping
- Preserving the status quo on the Korean peninsula/keeping Japan non-nuclear and de-militarized
Peripheral/Present interests for US and China
- Human rights
- Keeping Russia out of Northeast Asia/keeping Russia focused on Europe
- South China Sea/Straits of Malacca--who controls it?
- India/Pakistan--US wants India freed of Pakistani threat so it can contain China; China wants India perpetually focused on Pakistan so its never threatens China
- Cyber-security--who wins in cyberspace?
Core/Future interests for US and China
- Taiwan
(The US and China both are working towards peaceful reunification, no matter what the people of Taiwan will say)
- Regional hegemony in the Western Pacific/SE Asia vs. continued Global hegemony
- Australia--who does it belong to?
- Central Asia--who does it belong to?
Peripheral/Future interests for US and China
- Middle East--who is the security guarantor?
- Africa--who gets the goods?
- Keeping the EU fragmented/weak
- Keeping Russia "internally focused"
- Keeping India "internally focused
- Finding a way to solve Global Warming without economic suicide
- Space exploration--who owns space?
As you can see, China and the US right now have a lot of things in common right now. But when we look at non-core interests, we see storm clouds, and as time marches on, those storm clouds will loom larger and larger. The main sticking point is the following problem:
- Regional hegemony in the Western Pacific/SE Asia vs. continued Global hegemony
This is probably the single "deepest fault line" for a great power conflict today. While Indo-Pak and Israel+Saudi/Iran are more likely to occur, US/China is by far the more destructive conflict that could occur. Why?
It needn't be this way. The conflict *could* be limited. But the way the US and China are building up their weapons systems guarantees that any conflict between the two will have a massive incentive for escalation.
This goes back to the Diplomat article posted above. But before we delve into the technical details of it, let's run down in brief what any conflict between the US and China would look like.
  
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pointless post when both countries have lots of a-bombs
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Naval combat in the modern age can be summed up as thus.
http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-031.htm (paraphrased)
Imagine two football teams in a stadium at night each on their defended goal line. Each team will provide the backfield players with rifles and the linemen all have a pistol. Each weapon is equipped with a flashlight fastened to the barrel. The quarterback is equipped with a flashing signal light.
Now turn out all the lights so it is absolutely dark.
Who wants to turn on their light first?
Now lets throw in civilian shipping. Put half the fans in the stands more or less evenly distributed on the field, wandering around randomly in the dark. We also put two blimps overhead, one for each team, equipped with flashing light and binoculars.
The light will replicate both communications and radar systems. Everybody's eyes replicate ESM, ELINT, COMINT, and radar receivers.
Obviously if you want to hide the best way is run silent and blend into the general traffic.
There are several conditions of hiding a task force. First is undetected. In this condition the presence of the force is not known. For this to really work it should be coupled with a deception plan so that the opposition not only does not know the force is present, but does not know they don't know and for some reason believes the force to be elsewhere. I will say no more about deception. The second condition is that you have been detected, but not located. This can include the presence of the force is known, but no system has detected the force, or the force has been detected but not identified. And finally, the force has been detected and located which implies identification of the targets.
One's tactics will change based on the above.
If the force has not been detected one can run in to a launch point and hit the target with the first wave while operating completely silent until initial weapon impact. Once the survivors pick themselves out of the rubble they will deduce the presence of the carrier force from the initial wave.
With a force underway the opposition for some reason believes it knows that the ships are elsewhere and has no information to the contrary. Such operations are most effective when coupled with a deception plan that keys the opposition to know for a certainty that you are somewhere else and is therefore not looking. This goes far beyond local efforts of the group.
Every man in the entire task force is kept informed of the tactical situation and what is going on. Full awareness, training, and discipline by all hands is essential.
The force transits to its objective area in complete electronic silence. Deceptive formations are used dispersed over a broad area to ensure any detection system does not see the classic "bullseye" formation made famous in countless Public Affairs shots and never used in operations. Broad surveillance systems are known so any detection method is countered either by denying sensor information, misleading, or providing expected results consistent with something else. For example, ESM systems rely on active emissions from radars or communication systems. So nothing is radiated. Overhead systems are in known orbits, are predictable, and their sensing capabilities known. So the track is varied, weather is sought out to hide in when vulnerable, blending into sea lanes (while staying out of visual detection range of ships) and such techniques. Deceptive lighting is used at night so that the obvious "blacked out warship" is instead thought to be a merchant or cruise liner. Surface search radar identical to commercial ones are used. Turn count masking is used by the ships. Aircraft maintenance on the CV and other helo equipped ships is limited to prevent transmissions.
Basically, hide amongst civilian traffic and make your giant armada look like... idk, a fleet of fishing boats (to a radar receiver, at least.)
This is where it quickly becomes apparent that naval warfare is really signals warfare. The whole objective of naval combat is to "find & blind" your opponent before he does the same to you. This is because the thickness of armor no longer really matters given that the average anti-ship missile is a 1,500 pound chunk of TNT flying at upwards of 6 times the speed of sound on its terminal descent.
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Does shit really matter when nuclear bombs are in play?
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Drafting up war plans between nuclear powers always seems a bit uninteresting, because if you don't make arbitrary rules like no-nukes (rules which don't exist in real life) you just get the same scenario.
Today:
Every country on the globe is turned to ashes, nuclear exchange murders everyone.
Once missile shield is functional:
China becomes a smoldering pile of ashes.
Any conventional war is impossible to be won against America and NATO. It wouldn't even be close.
On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
But again, the end result of any conflict between big nuclear powers is a nuclear holocaust.
The most realistic nuclear exchange is between India and Pakistan, which could be one of the rare regional nuclear wars, like North/South Korea and the middle-east.
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On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote:
Drafting up war plans between nuclear powers always seems a bit uninteresting, because if you don't make arbitrary rules like no-nukes (rules which don't exist in real life) you just get the same scenario.
Today:
Every country on the globe is turned to ashes, nuclear exchange murders everyone.
Once missile shield is functional:
China becomes a smoldering pile of ashes.
Any conventional war is impossible to be won against America and NATO. It wouldn't even be close.
On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
But again, the end result of any conflict between big nuclear powers is a nuclear holocaust.
The most realistic nuclear exchange is between India and Pakistan, which could be one of the rare regional nuclear wars, like North/South Korea and the middle-east.
Exactly. China can't create knock-offs off knock-offs and expect everything to be fine!
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So then, we go back to the Diplomat article. What was the US naval officer in the opening paragraph so sad about?
The officer, a senior leader in US Pacific Command, looked down, fumbled with his papers and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It was 2009, and he was answering a question about whether, in a Taiwan Straits crisis similar to that which occurred in the mid-1990s, the United States could confidently respond by again deploying aircraft carrier groups around Taiwan. ‘No,’ he conceded after a long pause, ‘and it’s the thing that really keeps me up at night.’ It was a telling response.
The Taiwan Straits are right next to China's Fuzhou province. Basically the US Navy is sad that it can't hide a naval strikeforce right off the Chinese shore anymore, because the Chinese have invested in a whole bunch of "eyes and flashlights" that can see the opposing team. Essentially China is building a bubble stretching into the Western Pacific, where anything entering the bubble can be identified, tracked, and destroyed via land-based "see-deep strike-deep" systems.
The US Navy has made its mission to prick that bubble using what it calls "AirSea Battle". Basically, it wants to retain the capability to steam up the 7th Fleet next to China's coast with impunity and perform gunboat diplomacy as it sees fit. But if it wants to do that, it has to invent ways to kill China's signals systems first, with things like the X-47/B long-range unmanned stealth fighter/bomber and better, more lethal sub-launched cruise missiles.
This is where it gets dangerous. You see, signals systems for a national defense grid typically don't just track ships. They also track aircraft and ballistic missiles. So if the US Navy, in a time of future crisis, decided to "find and blind" the Chinese defense grid, Chinese leaders would have no idea of knowing whether the United States has also decided to go nuclear first to make damn sure the Chinese don't launch their nukes in retaliation. So the Chinese leadership would be put in a "use-it-or-lose-it" situation with regards to their nuclear arsenal, which, if game theory is anything to be believed, is something you should never do if you want maintain peace.
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On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote:
On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree.
China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories.
While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's
1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition
2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have.
In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales.
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I'd say a no score draw personally....a war between 2 big countries make no sense for anybody....this isn't 1938
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On August 10 2012 19:22 Aelonius wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote:
On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree. China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories. While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's 1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition 2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have. In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales.
China may be the factory of the world, but what exactly is being produced? Foreign products for cheap labour.
Saying that China is the sweatshop of the world would be a more accurate statement.
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So how does this matter to you and me?
The reason it does is that ever since the end of the Cold War, there has never been conventional war plan drafted by the US or NATO that has a strong likelihood of ending in nuclear war. Part of the reason is because the US and NATO don't have active conflicts with nuclear weapons states. Another part of the reason is because policymakers got a sudden dose of sanity during the Clinton administration and revised the SIOP (Single Integrated Operating Plan) away from being on hair-trigger alert. The final part of the reason is that somehow, every other nuclear weapons state on Earth backed their conventional doctrines away from relying on strategies that would end up in nuclear bloodshed.
But sanity, as they say, is a commodity in short supply.
The AirSea battle put forth by the United States, and the Chinese "anti-access/area-denial" strategy, both make use of substantial amounts of military assets which could also be used to deliver and track nuclear weapons. This means that these conventional warfare operational plans have a substantial chance of resulting in nuclear war, and what's more, both China and the United States are going to focus the next decade or so of weapons investment into this area.
This is how the Cold War got started. As citizens of the world, shouldn't it be our responsibility to make sure a new Cold War doesn't happen on our watch? The world has gone through 2 decades with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation being a distant memory. Do we really want it back?
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On August 10 2012 19:22 Aelonius wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote:
On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree. China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories. While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's 1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition 2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have. In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales.
China's industry in this regard is often vastly overrated.
The US is not some pure service-based economy. It is still an extremely industrial nation with plenty of factories running just fine.
China's larger labour force is not an advantage, it is a disadvantage. The Western Chinese are not going to enjoy being drafted to the other end of the country, leaving their farms behind so they can work for people that have, so far, done little to "share the wealth."
Building factories in western China, given its infrastructure, is also begging for a disaster.
America on the other hand doesn't have such a gigantic blindspot.
America can very easily scale up its industrial output in case of war. Contrary to popular belief, they do still have a production industry.
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On August 10 2012 19:37 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:22 Aelonius wrote:On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote:
On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree. China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories. While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's 1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition 2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have. In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales. China's industry in this regard is often vastly overrated. The US is not some pure service-based economy. It is still an extremely industrial nation with plenty of factories running just fine. China's larger labour force is not an advantage, it is a disadvantage. The Western Chinese are not going to enjoy being drafted to the other end of the country, leaving their farms behind so they can work for people that have, so far, done little to "share the wealth." Building factories in western China, given its infrastructure, is also begging for a disaster. America on the other hand doesn't have such a gigantic blindspot. America can very easily scale up its industrial output in case of war. Contrary to popular belief, they do still have a production industry.
zalz, do you have a source on all this? Just wondering since this topic has piqued my interest 
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China's forces are too technologically undeveloped to stand a chance against USA. Can China's forces reach USA in a timely manner? If so, how many of them can? Also, don't forget about NATO.
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America has a military technology lead, china can put a lot more boots on the ground. Assuming that nukes stay out of it, it comes down to lower tech higher numbers, vs a (currently) technologically superior foe. That's in a land war. In naval tech may be telling, but defenders advantage has a large role. And if it goes nuclear, its m.a.d. all over again.
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Russian Federation748 Posts
America and China are frenemies. Not rivals, not friends, but "peer competitors".
Could we say "froes" instead ? It sounds better to me.
Poll: Which souns better, froes or frenemies ?Frenemies (17) 65% Froes (9) 35% 26 total votes Your vote: Which souns better, froes or frenemies ? (Vote): Frenemies
(Vote): Froes
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To recap: the argument here is that the new US naval warfare plan relies upon blinding the entire Chinese land-based command network even if the Chinese haven't launched a single nuclear weapon, meaning that the Chinese will have an incentive to launch their nukes in the event of conventional war with the US, as they will lose the capability to launch nukes at all, or detect a US launch, if the US blinding effort is successful.
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Zurich15365 Posts
On August 10 2012 21:01 Shady Sands wrote:
To recap: the argument here is that the new US naval warfare plan relies upon blinding the entire Chinese land-based command network even if the Chinese haven't launched a single nuclear weapon, meaning that the Chinese will have an incentive to launch their nukes in the event of conventional war with the US, as they will lose the capability to launch nukes at all, or detect a US launch, if the US blinding effort is successful.
I am not entirely sure what you want to discuss. As the linked article prominently features, the "blinding" part of the AirSea strategy is at this point entirely hypothetical (outside of the use of nuclear weapons), and would require, to quote the article, "disproportionately costly (and vulnerable)" investments, and further: "[..] the cost of AirSea Battle is likely to be prohibitive. [..] it remains a largely notional concept".
The idea of an conventional anti naval access denial system is ludicrous and as realistic as SDI was in the 80s.
I understand your argument of a risk of escalation into nuclear use. However the reasoning appears to be way too complicated. Rather than a hypothetical, ridiculously sophisticated conventional anti denial system, a comparatively much cheaper nuclear strike in space is more likely to escalate a possible conventional war.
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I think the most obvious issue here is that there would be no conflict if the US didn't insist on being a global hegemon. That being said, there are plenty of times where two nuclear powers can go to war and NOT use nukes on each other. It's not like people are insane here. There are degrees of conflict.
Also, missile shield defense is so bogus. Just another way to funnel off taxpayer money.
Tbh, I could care less about a war though. I'm more worried about the economy and QE3
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dude, rights are not real, rights are made up by a group of owners so that they can own the rest of the people in their country. Take USA for example, somehow slavery is left out? oh wait that's not a surprise since the founding fathers of the USA are slave owners, they just wanted to keep on owning after they fought for freedom against the British oppressor. If you think your country will uphold it's rights when it matters to most look no further than The japanese Americans during WW2
USA calling anyone else in the world lacking of human rights is the biggest hypocrisy of all time in a global magnitude.
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EPT
