"How to Win a War with China" Topic

"The mounting challenge presented by China's military modernization has led the United States to review existing military strategies and to conceptualize new ones, as illustrated by the ongoing debate over AirSea Battle (ASB), a new concept of operations put forward by the Department of Defense. But in the universe of possible strategies, the idea of a naval blockade deserves greater scrutiny. By prosecuting a naval blockade, the United States would leverage China's intense dependence on foreign trade—particularly oil—to debilitate the Chinese state. A carefully organized blockade could thus serve as a powerful instrument of American military power that contributes to overcoming the pressing challenge of China's formidable anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) system. A blockade could also be easily paired with alternate military strategies, including those based on ASB.

In the context of a Sino-American war, the United States could try to take China's greatest national strength—its export-oriented, booming economic-growth model—and transform it into a major military weakness. To do so, the United States would implement a naval blockade of China that attempted to choke off most of China's maritime trade. Under the right conditions, the United States might be able to secure victory by debilitating China's economy severely enough to bring it to the negotiating table.

Yet until recently, a blockade strategy was largely overlooked, perhaps because economic warfare strategies seem inherently misguided given the close commercial ties between China and the United States. But if a serious conflict between the two nations erupted, then their immediate security interests would quickly override their trade interdependence and wreak enormous economic damage on both sides, regardless of whether a blockade were employed…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

My good friend Kyote!.
What are you doing here?
Remember that you said you would avoid this forum… (smile)
Glad to read you again.

Amicalement
Armand

And what happens when China dumps a billionsquillion dollars of US debt in retaliation?

So, you think we would pay the debt to a country we were at war with?

Yes, you would. Because the alternative would be the collapse of the US and then the world's economy. Sorry, but there you go. The economies of the world's major nations are so intertwined as to make such an event a no-win situation for everyone. The best way to "win" a war with China is to make sure it doesn't happen in the first place.

No – the debt would not be paid. Collapse of market is a very distinct possibility but the debt would not be paid. Of course if the US blockades China then there goes all our spare parts with it.

The best way to win a war with China is to not fight one

Plus you dont even really have to blockade China directly. There are several choke points that can be blocked by just a few ships being stationed there. Can always blame Malaysian pirates after all.

Yes, you would. Because the alternative would be the collapse of the US and then the world's economy.

I'm not so sure Dave. The last time I checked U.S. debt to China is about 50% of their GDP while it is only about 15% of ours. Not paying them might result in a recession for us, but it would wreck the Chinese economy.

Then again who can say what the knock affect of a Chinese economic collapse would do to the world economy. I think I'll go watch "Children of Men."

As mentioned above the accumulated debt of the US would collapse the US economy (and perhaps the world economy) if the US refused to pay back the Chinese. Every other creditor which the US owes money to would call in their debts immediately and create a liquidity crisis the likes of which we have never seen in history.
Blockading China would not only effect the Chinese economy but the world's economy. Would the US be willing to go to war with many other nation states if ships flying their own national flags were seized or sunk as part of a US blockade? How would the US react if the Chinese organized international convoys of merchant marine and protected them with Chinese naval ships and submarines? How would the US react if the Chinese threatened to launch retaliatory attacks or actually did attack blockading US naval assets on the high seas with nuclear weapons? How would the US respond to Chinese invasions of Taiwan, Korea and perhaps even Japan if China wanted to retaliate against a US blockade by attacking US allies. Unless the US is willing to commit boots on the ground to their military strategies such strategies are not likely to succeed. In a conflict with China the US has a great deal more to lose than the Chinese do, so perhaps a rethink of strategy is needed.
Military strategies are not the only options for containing or restraining China. China has real weaknesses internally and there is where US planners should be looking for the next strategy in the event of a Sino-American conflict. War may be a poor choice.
Cheers?
Rod Robertson.

I think I'll go watch "Children of Men."

Me too, have the Netflix disk right here….

Could be interesting trying to blockade the Sino-Russian border… Frankly, I don't think that a blockade would work against China, it has too many land borders and too many raw materials that western countries want:

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It could well be that the US would be the one that suffers most.

Current strategies may have undermined the ability to use this future strategy (if it was ever viable?).

The trade sanctions against Russia over Ukraine have had the effect of strengthening Russian-Chinese trade and cooperation. So as someone else mentioned already, good luck blockading the Sino-Russian border!

Every other creditor which the US owes money to would call in their debts immediately

That is a pretty big assumption. What is it based on? Just the opposite would probably happen. Freezing enemy financial assets is a standard practice when a war starts. Our other creditors would see no threat of a US default following a Chinese attack. It is in their own interest to see us win. They also know that the US Navy would bring their own trade with China to a screeching halt immediately.

Cutting the influx of foreign funds would probably collapse the Chinese economy in a couple of days. Their economy is already a giant speculation bubble and they know it. In fact, China's economic instability is probably the biggest guarantee a war with the US won't break out. And that is before we mention how many of our creditor countries are owed hundred of millions of dollars by China that the Chinese government has refused to pay for decades. If China starts a war, the US freezes their assets and announces those assets will go toward those older obligations.

China could try to organize international convoys, but who would join? What nation would risk their ships against the US Navy? Even if a country was willing, are their insurance underwriters? Granted, our capabilities have been significantly reduced over the last few years, but we still outgun everyone else in the neighborhood combined. Most of the other nations in the Pacific view China as a threat, They would support the US reigning them in. Why do you think Japan is rearming and the Philippines are modernizing their navy? Even Vietnam is seeking closer ties with the US. Could the Chinese economy survive long enough to form convoys?

We don't have to "blockade" the Sino-Russian border. There are only a few rail lines that connect the 2 countries, all within easy reach of our bombers. Even without attacking them, those railroads can't begin to replace the capacity of China's sea-borne trade. Once China's goods get into Russia, where are they going from there?

We would not have to put troops on the ground in a naval war. Militarily, China could expand a war into Korea and try for Taiwan, but at what price? Attacking South Korea will bring Japan into the war. And even if they took both countries, then what? China's limited force projection capabilities would be expended trying to take Taiwan. The Korean peninsula would have nothing left but millions of starving, well armed people. Do you think the US would end the war with both allies occupied? A US default like that would cause an earthquake in the world economy and undermine the stability of all of Europe and Asia.

Resort to nuclear weapons? The Chinese are a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them.

Cold Steel:
You make the assumption that China starts such a conflict. Given the terms laid out in the article where a blockade is used to constrain China's growing economic and military strength as evidenced by its anti-access and area-denial systems, the far likelier scenario is that the United States is the aggressor in such a conflict. In such a case financial markets would be far less sympathetic to the US and creditors would be more likely to get their money back while they still can.
Blockading China would be seen by China to be an existential threat so China's response to that action would be far more extreme and vigorous then many might think. Putting together any coalition of Asian States willing to risk the long-term wrath of China would be very difficult. India and Russia would likely never agree to such action. Korea, Taiwan and Japan would not be enough to keep such a blockade intact and functional.
A close blockade of China would be very costly in war material and American lives due to powerful land-based defences on the Chinese coastlines. Thus a distant blockade would have to be implemented by the US. The enforcement of such a blockade would be almost impossible given modern commercial practices. The linked article made the following statement:

On the other hand, the logic behind conventional distant blockades has similarly been undermined by the exigencies of modern commerce. Today's cargoes of raw materials and merchandise can be sold and re-sold many times in the course of a voyage, so the ultimate ownership and destination of a ship's cargo is often unknowable until the moment it docks. Although the United States might be able to set up a conventional distant blockade that quarantined all Chinese-owned or -flagged vessels, China could still simply buy neutral vessels' cargoes after they had passed through the blockade, defeating its entire purpose.

You asked who would underwrite these neutral ships? I think China might do just that in order to defeat such a blockade.
Given that such a blockade would collapse the Chinese economy at some point, I do not think it would be inconceivable that China would announce that any military forces involved in enforcing the blockade would be subject to military attack by China and that China reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in such attacks. Suppose China used a nuclear weapon to destroy a ship or group of ships on the high seas which were enforcing such a blockade. What could the US do about it realistically?. Would the US risk an escalation to thermonuclear war over such a blockade? Would the Congress and the American people support such a move or would they stop it? Would the world allow the US and China to begin a thermonuclear exchnge or would they use all their resources to stop it?
I do not think that directly confronting China militarily in their own back-yard is wise at all.
Rod Robertson

Do you seriously think the US would start a shooting war with China? The idea is absurd. We won't even shoot back at people who attack us half the time. Besides, we don't have to. Faced with a serious provocation, just freezing their assets will probably bring down their economy. Closing US ports to their trade would certainly do it. It doesn't matter who owns the cargo or how many times it has changed hands if the ship from a Chinese port is prohibited from unloading.

Militarily, China is a paper tiger. Yes, they are big and have lots of missiles. But they cannot project more than a token force over the horizon. All those tanks and guns and troops are useless if we don't land on their shores. Economically, they are big but unstable. Right now, they are putting up a strong face, but they have some serious problems. Their entire economy is over leveraged. Several of their largest banks failed just last week. They have no large cash reserves to sustain them through a protracted disruption of exports. Any kind of serious threat to their influx of foreign cash could bring their whole house of cards down pretty quickly.

I have delt with the Chinese militarily and politically. They don't think like we do. A direct confrontation is a violation of their Confusionist culture and they would work hard to avoid it. China needs the US market and they know it.

You keep saying world markets would demand immediate repayment of our government debt. So what? Those bonds are sold with repayment terms. We would have no legal obligation to repay them sooner. Yes, bond holders can sell them at a discount to someone else, but that is their loss. Markets can demand a higher return on or, far more unlikely, refuse to buy new bonds. That would force some long overdue fiscal changes by Congress and probably a recession. That scenario is very unlikely. Such a recession would certainly carry over into Europe, but that would give our European bond holders more reason to hold their bonds and probably want more as a safe place to park cash reserves. US Treasury bills are the safest investment on the market.

"And what happens when China dumps a billionsquillion dollars of US debt in retaliation?"

Nothing but a huge debt write-off by USG owing to some fancy accounting tricks and covered by the whole, 'well, we were at war with them, all bets are off." Might actually be the best thing that could happen to the US economy (TMP disclaimer, before some disingenuously takes a shot at me: this does not mean I support some sort of military action between the US and China).

As noted above by by Cold Steel, no one else in the world would have a problem with it; there might be some public outrage on the international stage, but backroom there'd be a whole lot of "they shoulda never gone to war with you guys. We've never had a problem with you. I mean, we're cool right? You're still gonna give us that money, or sell us that stuff, right? I'm with you man, t'hell with those Chinese!" Obviously there are certain countries around the world that would be outraged (Russia comes to mind), but non of the ones that matter from an economic standpoint. Is Russia going to go to war over the US writing off debt to China? No more than the US is going to war with Russia over the Ukraine.

Okay, here's the background: "Suppose China used a nuclear weapon to destroy a ship or group of ships on the high seas which were enforcing such a blockade. What could the US do about it realistically?.

Question 1: "Would the US risk an escalation to thermonuclear war over such a blockade?"
I have no idea. Response in kind is US policy.

Question 2: "Would the Congress and the American people support such a move or would they stop it? Would the world allow the US and China to begin a thermonuclear exchnge or would they use all their resources to stop it?"
The answer is, what Congress, the American people, and 'the world,' think at that point is irrelevant, that's not how thermonuclear war works. The use of nukes doesn't go up for vote in Congress or the UN. But I'm with Cold Steel on this, the Chinese are smarter than to pop a nuke.

As a matter of fact, this whole debate is moot as the Chinese are too smart to mess with the US (for various reasons), and the US, while not always smart, has no dog in a fight with China ("pivot to the Pacific?" Right…).

V/R,
Jack

China is no serous threat to anyone but Russia and China. China is on a self-inflicted course to implode economically, politically and demographically. The only country directly in the blast radius is Russia.

The Chinese economy needs raw materials. Lots of them. China has a massive army, but no sea or air lift capability worth talking about. Why? What can they do with such an army? They can't swim to the East. To the South is jungle and few strategic resources. To the West are the Gobi and Himalayas. There are some roads over them, but they lead to the Indian sub-continent. The biggest strategic resource there is population, the one thing China doesn't need. To the North is Siberia, mostly untapped, but already known to be a bonanza of natural resources. And with a long, virtually undefended border. Right now, China has peaceful access, but suppose they have another falling out with Moscow? What is to stop them from taking a huge chunk of Russian territory? Yes, Moscow has nukes. But let's turn around Rod's question: would the Russian leadership risk escalation over using tactical nukes if China threatened to retaliate by nuking a city or 2? Even if the Chinese didn't escalate, they can afford to lose a million troops. One day Putin or his successor is going to wake up to find they have sharpened the teeth on a hungry tiger and they are the biggest snack in sight.

China is a demographic time bomb. Their one child policy coupled with their cultural focus on sons and free abortion on demand has resulted in a significant imbalance of males vs females in their population. The very core of Chinese culture is marriage and a male offspring, but their millennial generation is short 50-70 million women. That same generation is also conditioned to look to the government for the solution to all problems. What happens when 20-30 million male millennials start demanding wives? Some areas of India are already experiencing civil unrest and widespread kidnappings and human trafficking for the same reason. There are some indications the unrest is already spreading to some rural areas of China. There is 1 region with a lot of woman that their large army can reach: Russia. So far, China has kept things under control with wild, heavily leveraged economic development. That development spurt is ending and they are sitting on a huge bubble. When that bubble bursts, the regime is going to look to their troops from the same millennial population to put down unrest, if they can figure out how to pay and feed them.

kyoteblue, on 19 Oct 2014 7:42 a.m. PST:

<I know Guys, I had a map some where…How do I get out of here ???>

Follow the yellow-brick road.

Come with me if you want to live.

<Phrasing!>

Kyote, you're from Oklahoma. You're supposed to be lost!

Let's see how long this post remains untouched …

How to win a war with China?"

Same as with fire ants and other swarming enemies … Before they suspect it and …

Quickly and decisively, and from orbit, while they are still clustered around their nest and their queens. Their close proximity to one another will help maximize the casualty rate. Not a single queen can be allowed to survive.

What sort of loyalty, mercy or fairness could we expect from a government that industrializes prisons to become holding pens for living organ donors. Those "arrested" are immediately tested for tissue type and work at government factories until they either die overworked or the bureaucrats have enough clients lined up to make living harvesting profitable. And that's also the government that looks the other way when a "third child" is aborted and then sold to restaurants or factories for processing. That's how they deal with their own people!!!

And we (the US) are already so in fear of them, and so indebted to them, that we are unwilling to expose what they do. We have to hear these truths from our foreign allies who have not yet become infected with our addiction-induced paralysis. We should have gone into rehab late December 1991, when the USSR broke apart and we no longer had a military reason to keep China so close.

But we like our "opium" dealer too much. We see them as a buddy who has our interest at heart. So we look the other way or issue weak condemnations for Tianamen (1988) and now the Hong Kong protests, and everything in between.

Dan
Our epitaph will be
"One of our mottos used to be 'Keep your friends close but your enemies closer'. But we kept China so close that in time it was WE who forgot they were the enemy. The communists used capitalism to destroy us, and we loved them for it the entire time until it was too late."
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Kyoteblue:
Use your GPS man, and get a hold of yourself.
Rod Robertson.

"Dudes !!! I walked south but one leg is shorter than the other so I walked in a big circle…"

As long as you came back to visit us again, your crazy bros.

Dan
PS GPSs are overrated. I was once issued a Tom Tom to find a hotel where we were to meet with the rest of our team – we were all purposely headed into a hurricane. It took us to a flooded freeway underpass and then said "you have reached your destination".

Cold Steel:
The article above laid out the notion of conflict between the US and the PRC. I do not believe that this is inevitable or even likely, but nor am I willing to dismiss such a notion out-of-hand.

Do you seriously think the US would start a shooting war with China? The idea is absurd. We won't even shoot back at people who attack us half the time. Besides, we don't have to. Faced with a serious provocation, just freezing their assets will probably bring down their economy. Closing US ports to their trade would certainly do it. It doesn't matter who owns the cargo or how many times it has changed hands if the ship from a Chinese port is prohibited from unloading.

I honestly do not know any more. Had you asked me such a question 15 years ago I would have said a definitive "no". But a combination of the history of US gunboat-diplomacy in China in the first half of the 20th century combined with the Japanese Oil Blockade of the late thirties and more recent military adventurism in the past decade or so leaves me wondering.
For example, Lithium is a mineral with growing strategic importance for both the US and China. Large and commercially viable deposits of readily available lithium salts are rare and two of the major sources are in Bolivia and Afghanistan. Supposing the Bolivians made it difficult for both China and the US to extract lithium salts from their country. That would put China which borders on Afghanistan and the US in potential competition and possible conflict to secure Afghan supplies of the precious mineral. African production of Coltan minerals is another area where Chinese interests and US interests could collide and lead to military conflict.
Now I am pretty sure that China as it is today would find a way to get what it wanted without direct confrontation but I am not so sure about the US especially if a more hawkish leadership is elected in the US at sometime down the road. I would never have guessed that the Bush administration was going to attack Iraq until it became clear that that was exactly what they intended to do. Likewise if the implosion of the Chinese economy happens as you and Just Jack have predicted, then all my confidence to predict what China would do goes out the window too. So I really do not know what may lay down the road in the future.
One thing that always sticks in the back of my brain is the words of Marine Major-General Smedley Butler after he became fed up with the Marines role in supporting American foreign policy and interventionism in the early part of the 20th Century. The straw that broke the camel's back for Butler was the intervention he was put in command of in 1927 in China where he and the men of the 3rd Marine Brigade were tasked with protecting the interests of Standard Oil from the Kuomintang who were trying to unify China from warlords and Communists. He concluded that he and the Marine Corps were being used as bully-boys and enforcers for a capitalistic combination/cartel of Corporations and the US Government. He declared that war was a racket and the US state was the chief racketeer. If such non-state based national interests hold sway today, then what Major-General Butler experienced eigthy years ago may happen again and that could very well lead to conflict with China or any number of other powerful nations.
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Finally, China could access the American Market through Canadian, Mexican and Central or South American ports.
Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

China could access the American Market through Canadian, Mexican and Central or South American ports.

Logistics are one of those boring, mundane areas that too many people shy away from, but tend to screw up the best laid plans of anyone who doesn't study the field. Vancouver, BC, Canada's largest Pacific port, handles about 2.8 million TEUs (1 TEU equals a 20 foot container), while Long Beach, CA, alone handled 6.7 million TEUs. Just the cost of redirecting traffic to those ports would be prohibitive. Sorry, but Canada, Mexico and Central/South America combined can't replace the US West Coast ports, even if the rail and road network existed to move freight from those ports to the US. No, China is too dependent on the US to try a direct challenge and their economy remain intact.

China could access the American Market through Canadian, Mexican and Central or South American ports.

Logistics are one of those boring, mundane areas that too many people shy away from, but tend to screw up the best laid plans of anyone who doesn't study the field. Canada's entire Pacific port capacity is about 3.4 million TEUs (1 TEU equals a 20 foot container), while Long Beach, CA, alone handled 6.7 million TEUs. Just the cost of redirecting traffic to those ports would be prohibitive. Sorry, but Canada, Mexico and Central/South America combined can't replace the US West Coast ports, even if the rail and road network existed to move freight from those ports to the US. No, China is too dependent on the US to try a direct challenge and their economy remain intact.

When did 'to leverage' become a verb?

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Kyoteblue:
Sight landmarks ahead of you and walk towards them to maintain a straight path. If you hit jungle, turn left and walk to the coast. If you hit taiga or tundra, turn right and walk to the coast. If you hit desert and mountains, do a 180 degree turn and walk to the coast. When you arrive at the coast, find a boat or ship to take you to America. When you arrive in America follow the coast south wards until you hear more Spanish spoken then English. At that point turn left, sight a landmark and walk towards it. Repeat this process over mountains and across deserts. Bring lots of water. When you hit Oklahoma, stop. If you meet the Mississippi River, you have gone too far. Ask for directions. Good luck.
Rod Robertson.

Cold Steel:
More than you think!
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Cheers.
Rod Robertson.(Canadian lap-dog to Chinese Mercantilistic Dominance over the Pacific Ocean)

China is no serious threat to anyone but Russia and China.

Or India and Afghanistan … As I have said before, the PRC has very little Force Projection capabilities. Unless they can walk, take a truck, bus, train, etc., from a military standpoint, if you are not bordered by China … not much to worry about generally.

Rod, most West Coast ports, in fact almost all ports around the world are increasing their TEU capacity. We are talking here about a scenario that will last for days or weeks, not 5-6 years. Vancouver handles roughly 3,500 TEUs a day. What would happen if they had 7-10,000 more per day suddenly diverted there? Sorry, but logistics will get you every time.

Kyote, are you sure you want to visit China?

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Cold Steel:
Ah, but you overlooked our secret base for Chinese imports located at Prince Rupert. That brings our total to 4.4 million TEU's so half of the Chinese exports could get to N. America if all we do is import Chinese products. And they want our oil and other resources too. Soon the Sino-Canadian axis will overwhelm you and will fill the Walmarts once more!
Moohaha!
Red Robertson.

Personally I would like to see more realism in US foreign policy. Treat China with some respect – respect that their ancient culture readily deserves. At the same time consider a workable Asia strategy using concepts built on Warden's "Five Rings" paper – China is an importer of energy and raw materials, most of which must go thru waters around the Sundra Straights – best opportunity for interdiction. Their power projection around their territorial waters is quite impressive – consider systems like the DF-21.

Sight landmarks ahead of you

Kyote is from Oklahoma. There aren't any landmarks. My driveway climbs higher than some of their "mountains."

"Personally I would like to see more realism in US foreign policy."

That's probably the only single simple statement I've seen on TMP lately that I can agree with, wholeheartedly and enthusiastically.

Legion4: "Unless they can walk, take a truck, bus, train, etc., from a military standpoint, if you are not bordered by China … not much to worry about generally."

You guys don't get it, do you??? They'll be in the darn shipping containers, disguised as merchandise for Walmart!!!

Dan
PS. Don't worry about visiting China. China will come to you. So start practicing your Mandarin!!!
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