Instead, the day before Taiwan declares independence, the US just blasts the PRC military & command structure with a massive preemptive strike, Taiwan is free, evil destroyed, high fives for everybody.
I wouldn’t be surprised if one reason JAM-GC (the more Army-friendly successor to the notorious AirSea Battle concept for slugging it out with the PRC in the West Pacific)
is because it addresses “blind/suppress/defeat” as pre-emptive/offensive objectives, as opposed to just sitting back, getting pummeled, reacting, and then blowing up the world, which is where ASB scenarios apparently always ended up.
A lot of what the US is doing seems to involve improving its odds of success in a preemptive strike scenario.
Thaad in South Korea, which is based on a high-powered radar that can look deep within the PRC, looks like part of that effort.
There’s quite a bit more:
The proliferation of attack submarines in the West Pacific (there are already two dozen in the vicinity of the PRC, and another new boat will be added each year for the next ten years at a cost of $2.8 billion per, the
in DoD history; however, Admiral Harris complained that “only 62%!” of his sub requirement was being met, an indication that maybe he really wanted to get two per year);
Improvements in the range of shipborn missiles (the LRASM, actually a ship-mounted stealthy cruise missile with a range of 500 miles is, along with subs, the key priority for Admiral Harris);
The Pentagon’s effort to secure bases close to China, both in the Philippines (8 bases under the new Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) and by clinging to the unpopular Marine Air Station on Okinawa;
Moving a second carrier into the Pacific (the USS Stennis just did its middle finger sailthrough of the South China Sea, the sailthrough itself much less significant than the demonstration that the US is
toward two carrier groups in the West Pacific, albeit one of them the
“undergoing maintenance” at Yokosuka; wake UP, journos!);
Lots of satellite operations both to locate and target PRC military assets on the ground and
;
And of course encouraging Japan to bulk up its military/ISR capacity at home and also throughout China’s periphery.
Add to that Prompt Global Strike, a program designed to deliver a conventional weapon hypersonically within one hour to anywhere in the world.
And cyber cyber cyber.
With the threat of preemption, the PRC has to think about its own preemption program; in other words, it faces the same “use it or lose it” conundrum we’re currently setting before Kim Jong-un, compounded by the PRC’s formal adherence to an old-fashioned MAD-based “no first use” doctrine. The PRC is supposed to take the first nuclear hit but then get at least one or two ICBM’s onto a US city in retaliation.
However, the US is working to deploy enough conventional goodies, both in terms of bunker busting ordnance against hardened silos and anti-missile batteries, to plausibly degrade the PRC nuclear capability to acceptable levels without itself crossing the nuclear threshold. But, since platforms are dual use, also keep the PRC guessing that maybe a few nukes are on the way.
That means the PRC has to be prepared to Launch On Warning i.e. when it has a suspicion things aren’t going right, because if it waits for trouble to show up, it’s too late. Its targets, in addition to USN ships, will include US bases i.e. Japan, ROK, and the Philippines, which is diplomatically a bit sticky and feeds the scary China/scared neighbors dynamic that is oxygen for the pivot.
And since the US is crowding the West Pacific with military hardware, the PRC is facing a shrinking time window to react.
I believe a widely held opinion within the US military establishment, and for that matter throughout the officer corps of our Asian friends and allies, particularly in Japan and the ROK, is that the PLA sucks i.e. it is filled with untested weapons, systems, officers, and doctrines, burdened by a command-and-control apparatus clogged with risk-averse Commie apparatchiks, and ill-equipped to figure out what’s going on in the half-hour or so after US missiles pop over the horizon, let alone come up with a successful defense or mount a devastating retaliation.
Therefore, I posit that the Pentagon strategy is this: pile as much stuff into the Western Pacific as close to China as possible on any pretext; characterize the PRC as a looming threat no matter what it does or doesn’t do (which
thanks to the ongoing public relations activities of various defense departments and the dedicated steno-work of patriotic journos), and especially if the PRC is seen migrating to an aggressive LOW doctrine that targets local US allies; and let Beijing know the US military is ready to plaster the PRC with a crippling preemptive strike if deemed necessary.
As to what the president and civilian leadership think, bluntly, I don’t think it matters what they think. The China hawks won the policy fight with the removal of Secretary Hagel and Admiral Locklear from the Pentagon and PACOM, an aggressive China strategy has subsequently been baked into US policy in a thousand think tank, defense contractor, and uniformed service ovens, and the region will be eating “Asia Rebalance” cake for the next twenty years.
Best case: PRC deterred from regional adventurism, has to swallow a Taiwanese declaration of independence, and demonstrate to the Asian nations and the world and its own dismayed citizens the CCP’s totally humiliating paper-tigerness.
Second best case: PRC spends itself into the ground trying to keep up with the military buildup on its doorstep and stumbles into a USSR-style crisis.
Most likely case: a lot of expensive, dangerous muddling through by anxious and distracted Asian states that might prefer regional economic integration but have to settle for US-driven security polarization.
Really bad case: Japan and South Korea both go nuclear in response to the heightened threat environment, the US loses the vital leverage over its allies of holding the nuclear umbrella, and becomes a bystander to the Japan/PRC strategic rivalry.
Worst case: a massive war but, hey, mostly if not completely fought 8,000 miles from North America.
That is why, I believe, the PRC (and Russia) are dead-set against Thaad (and why the US is probably pulling out all the stops to get the system into South Korea with the help of its China-hawk allies in the ROK military/spook apparatus before South Korea completes its transformation into an economic appendage of the PRC).
Thaad isn’t just missile defense on China’s doorstep; it’s a big building block in an emerging US preemptive strike strategy.
Peter Lee runs the China Matters blog. He writes on the intersection of US policy with Asian and world affairs.
The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Asia Times.
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