US more cautious than wary as China's reach grows

While China may be able to bloody the US Navy if it comes close to China's shores, the US Navy no longer employs this tactic in a Taiwan scenario, analysts say. One active Japanese army general who has war-gamed Taiwan many times says that China has only bad outcomes at present. If China tries to sink US ships with waves of aircraft, it will probably lose much of its Air Force, he states: "As a military planner you have to live to fight another day.... I have done the gaming many times from the Chinese side, and I've never won. My worst nightmare job is to be the Chinese operational planner for a Taiwan invasion. I have questioned whether China would sink a single US ship."

Beijing can now potentially sink an aircraft carrier that gets too close to the Taiwan strait. But so far its cruise missiles, which are similar to the US Harpoon or French Exocet, are still 1970s vintage. These missiles can hit a ship. But more than 40 navies in the world use this type of weapon, and US ships are practiced in countermeasures.

"People talk about Chinese cruise missiles as if one missile could stop the US Navy," says Bitzinger. "I really question that. For starters there are countermeasures. In a real scenario, the Navy isn't sitting on its hands."

Then there are those 600-800 Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan from Fujian province in China. US commanders, Taiwanese politicians, and journalists often describe these missiles as if they are a decisive military threat. In fact, they are more likely symbolic. As a munitions expert told the Monitor, 700 missiles is "nothing. For a military attack that is supposed to incapacitate and paralyze a country, it is not impressive."

Each missile carries about a half-ton of explosive. Some 1,000 of them represent 500 tons. That amount is smaller than US forces dropped on Tokyo in two days, March 9-10, 1945, in an early futile effort to get Japan to surrender.

In an eerily prescient PLA book that came out before Sept. 11, 2001, two PLA officers argue that many future conflicts would be organized around "asymmetric warfare," also called "assassin's mace." The tactic itself sounds unsettling, based on deception and trickery. Yet some US strategists point out that military tactics from the Trojan Horse to Pearl Harbor have relied on surprise and hitting the enemy in vulnerable places. One said, "I think maybe only the British in the 19th century deigned not to attack in a vulnerable or dishonorable place. Everyone else has and does, and plans for it. I don't think China has a corner on that market.

Unfortunately, many assessments about China's military can only be proven in war. Such an event would probably be catastrophic. Many sources for this report, including some that confess they simply "don't trust China," nonetheless abhor the assumption that conflict is inevitable in the Pacific.

Future relations envision everything from a US and allies "containing" China to a future where both the US and China find a way realistically to share the security of the Pacific. Admiral William Fallon, head of the Pacific Command, pointed out in Beijing in September that the stakes are too great for US and Chinese military relations to remain chilly, and cloudy.

"If I were to encounter an issue with most of the countries in the Asia Pacific right now," he told reporters. "I would merely have to pick up the telephone and call someone I already know, I've already met, had a dialogue with...." Fallon continued that he felt it, "important for more than just the US-Chinese relationship" to develop a new and serious rapport. It is important for the entire region of Asia, he stated.

• Second of two parts.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4