China conflict....(War?)

[Zarathustra]

MGibson:

And what would the purpose of Mr. Ryan’s war be? Even in the extremely dubious event that we could blockade their entire coast (pretty long, have you looked at a map?), how long would we keep that up? For what objective? When would we know when we were finished?

And do you really think a country with three million people under arms will do nothing in retaliation for our deliberately destroying their economy? You don’t think they’d level Taiwan for starters, and possibly leave it glowing? Their Navy doesn’t have to be a match for ours. Japan’s wasn’t 60 years ago, and yeah, we defeated them in the end, but they gave us an awful bloody nose in the process.

And you say that we have many more nuclear weapons than they do. No, we don’t.
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You heard me right, no, we don’t.

Why? Those twenty nukes that China has are twenty more than we would ever be willing to use in a first strike.

Ah, you say, but we could level their whole country in a retaliatory strike.

No, we couldn’t.

That’s right, no, we couldn’t. Why? Because the ability to retaliate has no value at all to us except as a deterrent, and the Chinese would know that we would never allow things to go that far. They know that the prospect of losing even one of our cities is so horrible to us and politically unacceptable that our people would press the government to immediately halt the 19th-century-style punitive expedition that Mr. Ryan proposes.

[SPOOFE]

Because the ability to retaliate has no value at all to us except as a deterrent…

And the ability to launch a first strike has no value at all to China except as a deterrent. What’s your point?

[Odesio]

*Originally posted by Zarathustra *
**MGibson:

And what would the purpose of Mr. Ryan’s war be? Even in the extremely dubious event that we could blockade their entire coast (pretty long, have you looked at a map?), how long would we keep that up? For what objective? When would we know when we were finished?

**

Well I suppose the objective would be to cripple China economically. Keep in mind that The Ryan brought up and example he said wouldn’t happen unless there was some extreme contigency, like executing the 24 crewmen or something like that. So it isn’t like he was advocating blockades at this point in time. And neither would I.

**
And do you really think a country with three million people under arms will do nothing in retaliation for our deliberately destroying their economy?

**

Sure it is possible and in a war with China I’m sure there would be plenty of dead and wounded. But you can’t bend over and take it in the ass just because the other guy can bloody your nose.

**
You don’t think they’d level Taiwan for starters, and possibly leave it glowing?

**

I seriously doubt they’d level Taiwan with nuclear weapons. They’d much rather have an intact province rather then a nuclear death zone.

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Their Navy doesn’t have to be a match for ours. Japan’s wasn’t 60 years ago, and yeah, we defeated them in the end, but they gave us an awful bloody nose in the process.

**

So why wouldn’t their Navy have to be a match for ours? I recognize that we’d get a bloody nose. That’s the way a war goes.

**
And you say that we have many more nuclear weapons than they do. No, we don’t.

You heard me right, no, we don’t.

Why? Those twenty nukes that China has are twenty more than we would ever be willing to use in a first strike.

**

I don’t know. They slag Taiwan we might be more then willing to blow up Bejing.

**
Ah, you say, but we could level their whole country in a retaliatory strike.

No, we couldn’t.

That’s right, no, we couldn’t. Why? Because the ability to retaliate has no value at all to us except as a deterrent, and the Chinese would know that we would never allow things to go that far.

**

Two way street. With the ability to slag their entire nation China why would they be more willing to use nukes for a first strike then we are? They have more to lose in a nuclear exchange. And you think we’d never allow things to go that far? Well I think we’d do our best to make sure things didn’t go that far. There’s no magic wand we can wave that says it’ll never happen.

**
They know that the prospect of losing even one of our cities is so horrible to us and politically unacceptable that our people would press the government to immediately halt the 19th-century-style punitive expedition that Mr. Ryan proposes.
**

19th Century style? We had a fairly successful blockade against Cuba in the 1960’s. I’m not really all that interested in making them look bad in front of all the other kids and pissing them off. But if they want to get into some sort of pissing contest then we can’t really afford to back down.

Marc

[Zarathustra]

Look, the OP asked how the current crisis might lead to a shooting war between China and the US. China is not going to kill the 24 crew members, and we really have ventured into Harry Turtledove-land here (What would have happened in World War I if the South had won? Who the hell can know?)

So I don’t think this fits the definition of a GD–maybe IMHO at best. Nonetheless,

*Originally posted by MGibson *
Well I suppose the objective would be to cripple China economically. Keep in mind that The Ryan brought up and example he said wouldn’t happen unless there was some extreme contigency, like executing the 24 crewmen or something like that.

And that still begs the question: what would be the bloody point? Crippling China economically would be a major disruption of the global financial system, probably bringing on a worldwide depression. If a couple of banks in Thailand going under in 1997 can give Alan Greenspan nightmares, what do you think this little scenario would do to us?

**
I seriously doubt they’d level Taiwan with nuclear weapons. They’d much rather have an intact province rather then a nuclear death zone.**

But you said we were out to cripple their economy anyway, so what do they have to lose? To be fair, I think a lot of people misunderstand China on this one. Sure, they’d like an economically rich province and all its little capitalists intact. But economics isn’t their primary rationale for wanting Taiwan back–it’s nationalism, which can lead people to do a lot of crazy things.

Two way street. With the ability to slag their entire nation China why would they be more willing to use nukes for a first strike then we are? They have more to lose in a nuclear exchange.

You are making a lot of cultural assumptions here. You take it for granted that the Chinese generals with control of the nukes have the same attitude toward warfare and sacrifice that we do. But remember, these guys were raised on Chairman Mao, who said in his little red book that “The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn’t.” If they’re not scared of you, you don’t have any deterrent–and telling yourself that they should be scared of you even when they aren’t is a dangerous exercise in self delusion.

In short, if we pushed China up against a wall like that, destroying their economy and fostering a revolution where the leaders would likely be strung up Mussolini-style, no they wouldn’t have as much to lose as GW Bush sitting comfortably in the Oval Office. They’d be like the Wrath of Khan, arming their nuclear missiles and muttering “from hell’s heart I strike at thee”.

And you think we’d never allow things to go that far? Well I think we’d do our best to make sure things didn’t go that far. There’s no magic wand we can wave that says it’ll never happen.

I think the Turner Network would be rerunning “The Day After” and students at Berkeley would be demanding cyanide capsules in case of nuclear war. No, the mass hysteria that would reign in this country would force our leaders to back down in this country pretty quickly.

**
19th Century style? We had a fairly successful blockade against Cuba in the 1960’s.**

Try looking up the second Opium War; that fits the historical circumstances a little more neatly.

[SuaSponte]

Putting aside the fact that no one is insane enough to go to war with one of the largest countries in the world over 24 people and one airplane (with no disrespect to those men and women intended), the U.S. can’t go to war with China and accomplish anything useful. Just because the U.S. has what the most effective military in the world doesn’t mean it’s omnipotent.

Let’s look at the scenarios being bandied around so far.

1. Destroy China’s navy and blockade their coast - Fine, we can do destroy their Navy, but we cannot blockade their coast (as Zarathustra said, look at a map). But even if we could blockade their coast, what does that accomplish?
   “Well, a blockade worked pretty well against Cuba.” Um, look at a freakin map. Cuba is an island. China, er, isn’t. There would be severe economic dislocations as China worked frantically to build transport infrastructure, but they would soon be able to import and export whatever they needed through Vietnam, India, Russia, etc.

2. Invade China - This ain’t WWII. The U.S. has, at most, the helicopters and landing ships to make a forced landing of maybe two divisions. Yeah, that’d be good - two divisions versus the entire PLA. Anyone who thinks that two Marine Corps divisions, good as they are, wouldn’t be slaughtered within days is smoking some really good stuff. Even that nut Tom Clancy recognized that the U.S. couldn’t invade.
   And there ain’t a country with a land border with China that would let us use their land as a staging area for an invasion of China.

3. Nuclear war - Not even worth discussing, it’s such a stupid idea that this incident would lead to that.

4. Military Rescue Mission - one does not attack a foreign country, even in a limited manner, if one does not have the ability to defeat that foreign country. Especially one with nukes.

This may all be fun to fantasize about (ya sickos ;)), but if any of you are serious, please disabuse yourself.

Sua

[ITR_champion]

Could somebody please explain to me how this supposed blockade of China would work. In order to blockade, we would need to move a huge naval force very close to the Chinese coast. All of the forces used in the blockade would be within range of the Chinese Air Force and would be vulnerable to missile attack. Furthermore, if we used airfields in Taiwan to launch attacks against Chinese shipping, China would suddenly have an airtight exucse to launch missiles against mainland Taiwan, which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. Plus, as others have mentioned, the blockade would be futile since China can still trade by overland routes.