East Asia allies doubt U.S. could win war with China

This article surprised me:

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/slasheastasia_1.htm

We have knowledgable military people here. Is their any truth to the above statement?

 

The knowledgable military types will get it all wrong.

http://partners.nytimes.com/books/first/r/record-war.html

I disagree that the US troops are incompetent. They are certainly better than the conscript forces in Vietnam.

Some good points, though. An Asian mainland war would surely be a protracted war against forces of great numerical superiority. That the Chinese, should they opt for war, would accept mind boggling losses in a nuclear exchange is probably true. True of too many of their military commanders, that is.

Ishihara: "... I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives..."

Didn't they learn anything from WWII? There would be nothing civic or civil about such a war and the lives we would respect would be our lives.

 

China has purchased missiles and technology from Russia.
You can easily confirm this fact by searching Yahoo.

Anyone in a position of knowing about the capabilities of the U.S. Military would be doing a dis-service to the country by detailing where we fall short.

It is safe to assume that if any nuclear option is used by either country then both sides will loose.

 

As a sort of knowledgeable ex Navy officer...

When considering the issue, don't forget the wisdom in the film, "Prince's Bride".

That said, the real truth is that the U.S. is ill-advised EVER to get into ANY real land war, anywhere, with even a half credible foe. Why?

The same reason the British were unable to win a European war without European allies; the Island nature of Britian is a lot like the island-like nature of the U.S. Unless we are fighting Mexico or Canada (or ourselves) we must project our power OVERSEAS. The very oceans that protect us also make it hard to face a land power like, say, Communist China or the old Soviet Union.

Consider the AWFUL losses the Germans and the Russians suffered in WWII in their grim struggle to kill each other. Now compare those losses with our much smaller ones against Germany AND Japan. The fact is, it is almost impossible to land and support armies anything like the size that would be necessary in a land war against the criminal Chinese regime. Even the Japanese with vastly greater wealth and technology fighting a Chinese government divided against itself and suffused with the most incredible corruption, were unable to bring the "China Incident" to any sort of satisfactory conclusion. And the Japanese were much, much closer to China than we are.

FWIW, though, the Chinese would face the identical problem attacking US. And we are much better seamen than they are.

 

Re: As a sort of knowledgeable ex Navy officer...

Do you mean, "Don't drink from either cup?" Please nosborne, don't be obscure.

Aside from that, it will never happen. It will not be in the best interest of either party.

I would only like to add that this touches on a subject of my own interest. I frequently post on issues related to Africa or China. This is because I believe that these two geographical entities will play a decidedly larger role in the world of tomorrow than they do today. This has nothing to do with politics (per se), it is just about numbers.
Jack

 

I know I have a busy life, but I try to keep up with the news and reading the paper...but how the heck did all this come up with China?? Did I totally miss something?? Obviously I did, but what? WHy go to war with China? Isn't one war enough for us right now??

 

Or are they just saying this IF we someday in the future go to war with china??

 

Re: Re: As a sort of knowledgeable ex Navy officer...

I certainly hope it doesn't happen either. It was the "extremely incompetent" quote that surprised me.

 

Re: Re: Re: As a sort of knowledgeable ex Navy officer...

Apocryphal but I like it.

 

Personally, and here I am leaving what little actual expertise I possess, I consider war with Communist China more likely than war with the old Soviet Union ever was. Here's why:

War, meaning real war, is the result (usually) of competition for markets or resources. Sometimes it is clothed in religious or ideological garb, but it's usually a struggle in scarcity. Now, we had NOTHING vital that the Soviets needed and couldn't get and the reverse was also true. And we weren't really competing for the same markets. Not so with Red China. We compete for oil, we compete for markets, we compete all over the place.

But I don't really think war is very likely.

 

What a rag sheet. A much less capable US military fought the Chinese masses to a standstill on the Korean Peninsula. Against modern weapons masses of troops are just masses of potential casualties.

Lets make an assessment:

a. Chinese equipment is nowhere near modern. Their air force is equipped with planes that date from the 1950's, have little or no modern weaponry and their range is 1/2 to 2/3rds of US planes. Any attempt to make up for this via air refueling would be shortlived as the life span of an air tanker facing US air forces is minutes. Their tanks and missile forces have no modern targeting capabilities and would be little help against a modern army. They could harrass the fleet and cause major damage but their damage would have to take place in the first few days of the war before their weaponry is decimated. The Chinese army is poorly trained and spends most of its time farming or operating businesses to fund military operations.

b. US forces incompetent (except for the Marines?)? Sounds a little like sour grapes to me since it was that same US military that whipped the Japanese military in 1941-45. I think he is leaving out the Marines because he, like the rest of the world, thinks it was the Marines who defeated them in WW2 and he has to come up with some reason for that loss. Fact is 60% of the ground forces that fought the war in the Pacific were Army. It took veteren Japanese forces months to take Corrigedor against vastly outnumbered Army troops and the US Navy beat them in almost every battle, even the ones fought toe to toe with guns and ships. The Japanese were outfought and outmanuevered on every front by a military manned by people the vast majority of whom came into the military post Pearl Harbor. The vaunted Japanese military, veterans of several years of battle in China, was whipped by a bunch of people taking a brief time out from their regular lives.

c. This guy (the Tokyo prefect) is a known Japanese nationalists who has in the past refused to admit to Japanese atrocities in WW2 and has actually claimed it was the USA that started WW2 . Not exactly a reliable source for this type of an article. In short, he is a nut.

Having said all of this, fighting a land battle on China would require such effort from our country that it wouldn't be worth the effort. Maintaining a force large enough to destroy a military the size of China's would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) from across the Pacific Ocean. Japan couldn't do it from Japan (another reason he says we can't win) and it would take our entire economy to mobilize for the effort. China wouldn't want such an attack either as resisting such an attack would destroy China as well. However, the United States can now and in the future for quite some time, easily prevent China from projecting their military power outside of their own and immediate neighboring borders. Having a military force is one thing, however, projecting a fighting soldier out of ones borders for any great distance takes roughly another 6 soldiers and large amounts of infrastructure and bases that China simply does not have. Currently, having a huge military spread around China is more a drain on their economy than a threat to us.

 

Re: Re: East Asia allies doubt U.S. could win war with China

Uber-quibble: The logistics of a peninsula where the massed forces are the attackers is quite different from that of a great land mass where the mass forces are the pursued.

 

Re: Re: Re: East Asia allies doubt U.S. could win war with China

Ubber quibble. It was not that different, the United States was outnumbered 11 to 1 by a force that was fighting from their own borders into a country we had to support via the sea. We were also fighting simply to stop them, not enter their country as the UN mandate did not extend to entering China. We could have done far more to them than we did. I was actually giving them the benefit of doubt.

Our military weaponry of that period was often more flash than bang. We are lightyears ahead of that today. Today, one fighter bomber and a laser guided 2000 lb. bomb can easily do what squadrons of bombers could not do then.

 

Re: Re: East Asia allies doubt U.S. could win war with China

Agreed.

Variable #1
Ultimately, wars are won by the Lord. He raises up kings - and He brings them down - all to accomplish His will. Secondary to that....

Variable #2
The U.S. has had a wonderful technological advantage coupled with good training. The technological advantage is self-evident and needs no explanation, as most of us have seen it on TV. Regarding training: you will react the way you are trained; and our troops receive quite a bit of training. I cannot overemphasize the importance of training. During the stresses that are associated with combat, we can tend to lose focus (and some freeze up), but if you have trained over and over and over, then you will instinctively do what you've been trained to do, even in the most brutal situations. Training forces us to do that which is right, without having to think about the mechanics of each motion.

The Equation
If our technological advantage is removed (because the Chinese possess the same technology) and if the Chinese military receives the same kind of repetitive combat training and indoctrination as the American military, then we must refer back to variable #1.

 

Actually...in a way...the U.S. DID start the war with Japan but not by firing the first shot.

There was an internal struggle within the Roosevelt administration over economic sanctions against Japan; one side rightly said that the U.S. had no business selling petroleum products, scrap steel, and other materials useful in war to the Japanese Empire because the Japanese were using this material to wage aggressive war in China.

The other side said, rightly, that enforcing economic sanctions to a level that would cripple the Japanese war effort would back the Empire into a corner and force it to commence hostilities against the U.S. and our allies regardless of the odds against winning.

That, of course, is exactly what happened. "Struggle in scarcity" illustrated.

Note, please: who STARTS a war isn't the same question as which side is RESPONSIBLE for a war. Japan must bear full guilt for WWII in the Pacific.

As to "incompetent". I am not sure what the speaker meant by the word. Surely if he meant "incompetent" as "not knowing how to fight", that's just nonsense. But if he meant, "Not large enough or adequately equipped to wage a major land war in Asia", well, he's right, that's all. Even our vaunted Marines are insufficient to seize and occupy all of mainland China.

As I've said before, when it comes to discussions of war, amateurs talk about tactics and strategy but professionals talk about LOGISTICS.

 

One could make the opinion...

One could opine that Japan started the war by invading China. If an embargo was a just response to that aggrression than Japan only got what it deserved. Either way, Japan attacked Peal Harbor in response to a diplomatic move. In short, they started the war. Your reasoning would have more validity if our embargo was meant to destroy their country economically for no other reason than to gain advantage of them. That would have been an act of aggression that would have justified the use of force on their part.

He obviously meant competence as in skil or he would have not mentioned the Marines. He did it to stop the inevitable, "well they kicked Japan's butt" response. Vaunted in whose eyes?

 

Re: Re: Re: East Asia allies doubt U.S. could win war with China

He can have them.

Good training is what we went into Korea and Vietnam with little of. And in Korea we went in with little of the right materiel.

 

Re: One could make the opinion...

Panay incident, 1937

 

The Marines, being a Light Infantry organization, would actually be very ill-prepared to fight a conventional ground war against Red China. The "heavy" Army divisions (Armor, Armored Cavalry, Mechanized Infantry) would bear the brunt of the fighting.

The US Armed Forces (all branches) are the best trained, best equipped, and best supported in the world, bar none. Excluding the nuclear option, they would make short work of Red China's military, who have numerical superiority (so did Iraq in 1991), but that's about it.