Sailing Toward a Storm in China U.S. maneuvers could spark a war.
They say that their naval and air forces, plus their land-based rockets, are capable of taking on one or two carrier strike groups but that combat with seven would overwhelm them. So even before a carrier reaches the Taiwan Strait, Beijing has announced it will embark on a crash project that will enable it to meet and defeat seven U.S. carrier strike groups within a decade. There's every chance the Chinese will succeed if they are not overtaken by war first.
China's objectives regarding Taiwan include "capabilities to deter, delay, or disrupt third-party intervention in a cross-Strait military crisis." What China is saying is that should a conflict arise we will see one or more of our aircraft carriers and accompanying ships disappear. #msg-3214699
China and Iran have bought brand-new, top-of-the-line, Kilo-class diesel subs from Russia, and other nations also have been buying submarines. #msg-3333316
The ‘Onyx’ missile means that Russia or China can sink American aircraft carriers at will without ever having to escalate to nuclear warfare, which gives both countries a massive strategic advantage. #msg-3429768
Sailing Toward a Storm in China U.S. maneuvers could spark a war.
COMMENTARY July 15, 2004 By Chalmers Johnson, Chalmers Johnson's latest book is "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic" (Metropolitan, 2004).
Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan.
This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our 12 carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster.
At a minimum, a single carrier strike group includes the aircraft carrier itself (usually with nine or 10 squadrons and a total of about 85 aircraft), a guided missile cruiser, two guided missile destroyers, an attack submarine and a combination ammunition, oiler and supply ship.
Normally, the United States uses only one or at the most two carrier strike groups to show the flag in a trouble spot. In a combat situation it might deploy three or four, as it did for both wars with Iraq. Seven in one place is unheard of.
Operation Summer Pulse '04 was almost surely dreamed up at the Pearl Harbor headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command and its commander, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, and endorsed by neocons in the Pentagon. It is doubtful that Congress was consulted. This only goes to show that our foreign policy is increasingly made by the Pentagon.
According to Chinese reports, Taiwanese ships will join the seven carriers being assembled in this modern rerun of 19th century gunboat diplomacy. The ostensible reason given by the Navy for this exercise is to demonstrate the ability to concentrate massive forces in an emergency, but the focus on China in a U.S. election year sounds like a last hurrah of the neocons.
Needless to say, the Chinese are not amused. They say that their naval and air forces, plus their land-based rockets, are capable of taking on one or two carrier strike groups but that combat with seven would overwhelm them. So even before a carrier reaches the Taiwan Strait, Beijing has announced it will embark on a crash project that will enable it to meet and defeat seven U.S. carrier strike groups within a decade. There's every chance the Chinese will succeed if they are not overtaken by war first.
China is easily the fastest-growing big economy in the world, with a growth rate of 9.1% last year. On June 28, the BBC reported that China had passed the U.S. as the world's biggest recipient of foreign direct investment. China attracted $53 billion worth of new factories in 2003, whereas the U.S. took in only $40 billion; India, $4 billion; and Russia, a measly $1 billion.
If left alone by U.S. militarists, China will almost surely, over time, become a democracy on the same pattern as that of South Korea and Taiwan (both of which had U.S.-sponsored military dictatorships until the late 1980s). But a strong mainland makes the anti-China lobby in the United States very nervous. It won't give up its decades-old animosity toward Beijing and jumps at any opportunity to stir up trouble — "defending Taiwan" is just a convenient cover story.
These ideologues appear to be trying to precipitate a confrontation with China while they still have the chance. Today, they happen to have rabidly anti-Chinese governments in Taipei and Tokyo as allies, but these governments don't have the popular support of their own citizens.
If American militarists are successful in sparking a war, the results are all too predictable: We will halt China's march away from communism and militarize its leadership, bankrupt ourselves, split Japan over whether to renew aggression against China and lose the war. We also will earn the lasting enmity of the most populous nation on Earth.
I would venture that the United States for all its rhetoric fears the Dragon and is trying to find out just how vulnerable we are.
background:
China's objectives regarding Taiwan include "capabilities to deter, delay, or disrupt third-party intervention in a cross-Strait military crisis." What China is saying is that should a conflict arise we will see one or more of our aircraft carriers and accompanying ships disappear. #msg-3214699
China and Iran have bought brand-new, top-of-the-line, Kilo-class diesel subs from Russia, and other nations also have been buying submarines. #msg-3333316
The ‘Onyx’ missile means that Russia or China can sink American aircraft carriers at will without ever having to escalate to nuclear warfare, which gives both countries a massive strategic advantage. #msg-3429768
The Chinese focus a great deal on aircraft carriers. It's a huge topic in China. There's even an Internet Website where people put up suggestions about good ways to attack American aircraft carriers. #msg-3471674
-Am
May 24, 2005: The U.S. carrier America was sunk, off North Carolina, on May 14th, after 25 days of tests to see what effect various anti-ship weapons had on the 84,000 ton ship. The details of the tests, and the results, were kept secret. This is because the information gained reveal which weapons (torpedoes, anti-ship missiles and bombs) have what kind of impact on the ship. According to the navy, none of the weapons used sank the ship, as the actual sinking was done as a “controlled sinking” in 6,000 feet of water. The $22 million series of weapons tests, and controlled sinking, was cheaper than scrapping the ship. Environmental rules make scrapping prohibitively expensive.
The America served from 1965-96, after which it was put in reserve. No one has made an attack on a modern carrier (the latest ones weigh 90-100,000 tons), and several generations of new anti-ship weapons have appeared since the last time (1945) an American carrier came under enemy fire. Protection for these ships, and damage control methods, are all derived from theoretical damage from different weapons. Computer simulations have been used as well. But the navy knows that simulations and calculations don’t catch everything, so the tests on the America were meant to obtain information needed to improve protection and damage control methods a bit more. This was the largest warship to ever be sunk, in war or peace. The previous record holder was also an aircraft carrier, the Japanese Shinano (a converted Yamato class battleship), that displaced 72,000 tons. Shinano was sunk by four torpedoes from an American sub, and went down largely because the interior of the ship was not complete, and all the compartments were not yet water tight.
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