Sunny Days in Heaven
Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven


Tuesday, November 22, 2005  

A Paper Tiger?

So we can't defeat the Chinese in a conventional war?

The overwhelming assessment by Asian officials, diplomats and analysts is that the U.S. military simply cannot defeat China. It has been an assessment relayed to U.S. government officials over the past few months by countries such as Australia, Japan and South Korea.

Most Asian officials have expressed their views privately. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has gone public, warning that the United States would lose any war with China.

Mr. Ishihara said U.S. ground forces, with the exception of the Marines, are "extremely incompetent" and would be unable to stem a Chinese conventional attack. Indeed, he asserted that China would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Asian and American cities—even at the risk of a massive U.S. retaliation.

The governor said the U.S. military could not counter a wave of millions of Chinese soldiers prepared to die in any onslaught against U.S. forces. After 2,000 casualties, he said, the U.S. military would be forced to withdraw.

Officials acknowledge that Mr. Ishihara's views reflect the widespread skepticism of U.S. military capabilities in such countries as Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. They said the U.S.-led war in Iraq has pointed to the American weakness in low-tech warfare.

"When we can't even control parts of Anbar, they get the message loud and clear," an official said, referring to the flashpoint province in western Iraq.



Claiming our Army forces are incompetent is a bit much. Yet, the assertions that we can't bear even 2000 deaths is something to consider.

Clearly our enemies (and China certainly is) see our culture of domestic weakness in military conflicts as something they can exploit, or find typical of us now.

They underestimate us, of course, but that's to be expected. And can any one of us say that they might not be right? Would we fight as we did in WW2 when we would not surrender and threw everything we had at the enemy? I hope so, but we have bred so many cowards and crybabies that one wonders.

One is almost tempted to say, bring it on, but that is sheer folly. I believe that we could defeat China but it would not be easy and the cost would be extreme.

They talk about China's millions ready to die, but I am fairly certain we can kill them at least ten to one in a conventional war. We are that much better in every respect.

Would they throw 100 million at us? We can lose ten million men. Would they throw 300 million men at us? We can't lose 30 million men. (We could but we wouldn't let it get that far.) It would go nuclear long before that, I believe.

Would out missile defense shield hold up enough to destroy them? I don't know, and what if their spies get our technology to block our missiles? Not good.

Interesting to know what our allies think, though, and what they Chinese are also probably thinking.

posted by Mark Butterworth | 11:29 PM |

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