So as not to hijack an FQ thread, but to ask the question.
You know the US Navy is far more powerful than China’s. Hell with just a few friends like the UK and Japan helping, the joint Navies are more powerful than all the rest of the world combined. The US Air Force with Japan and the Philippines among other places to launch from can destroy every worthwhile target in Eastern China pretty much at will. How does the older, basically army equipment we’ve sent Ukraine matter in this equation?
It is currently impossible for China to take the US, just as we couldn’t take China over with our Army. But when it comes to Air & Sea we completely dominate. China probably couldn’t take Taiwan when we have just 2 carriers nearby plus Air Force assets in Japan, PI & South Korea.
I think the US could easily defeat an all-out existential attack by China against any of the major island or overseas nations. I would be worried about South Korea though. The Chinese Army is very formidable and far too close.
While I don’t think China is remotely capable of projecting enough power to mount an existential attack against the US, I think you’re overestimating the ease of the US taking out targets within China. Chinese air defense is formidable.
The United States Navy is certainly the pre-eminent ‘blue water’ navy, although the readiness of crew and ships to be fighting fit is somewhat in question. However, while the Chinese Navy—despite its numerical superiority—is mostly composed of smaller vessel in the destroyer and light cruiser category, and a handful of nuclear powered fast attack submarines, limiting China’s ability to project power deep into the Pacific Ocean or Indian Ocean, it does have a sizable fleet of air-independent propulsion (AIP) attack subs that are just as quiet as anything operated by the USN or British Royal Navy, highly capable anti-ship supercruise missiles (the YJ-12 series), and a growing and presumably reliable ICBM and SLBM nuclear weapon capability to back any attempt to dominate by the threat of strategic nuclear exchange.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy could certainly make it so risky for the US and UK/AUS Royal Navies to operate in the South and East China Seas, and potentially far out into the Philippine Sea, that they would not be able to maintain air superiority or readily strike mainland China. The notion that “when it comes to Air & Sea we completely dominate” has become increasingly questionable in this region, notwithstanding the political question of what the United States would actually do about a genuine threat by the PRC to blockade or invade Taiwan.
From a rational standpoint, it makes no sense for the PRC to try to invade Taiwan; it has no real natural resources, an invasion would be incredibly costly and occupation nearly impossible to maintain, and the Taiwanese has made it clear they’ll fight tooth and nail to repel invasion even if it is ultimately hopeless and will destroy their microprocessor manufacturing capacity rather than hand it over to the government mainland China. All of this is true even in absence of external support or military engagement by the United States or anyone else. But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I’ve stopped relying on rationality or even the most obvious prognostication of future developments, especially when it comes to aging demagogues who see a successful annexation of a long-desired territory as their lasting legacy. And Xi Jinping has done nearly as good a job of purging the ranks of Chinese government of any dissent as Putin has in Russia. I this point, I discount nothing about how serious apparent ‘sabre-rattling’ might be of leading to actual conflict.
What are we assuming about use of nukes on either side? At the end of the day, I don’t think either of us can stop the other side from leaving us in a state that can only be described as losing. We might make them lose worse, but we couldn’t win a nuclear war.
One author (can’t recall who) pointed out that it would be in best Chinese interests to go nuclear from the very beginning of war, such as a Taiwan scenario - not nuke in the sense of actually killing anyone, but detonating a nuke in the open Pacific waters, say, 200 miles away from a US navy fleet. Given how conventional warfare does not favor China, the best bet is to lean as heavily on deterring U.S. intervention to begin with by mushroom clouds.
And I can’t imagine any American wargamers, if assigned to play the role of the red team in exercises, would play “fair” as the Chinese side - simply sending forth conventional forces to be massacred by the United States. They’d look for every nuclear/unconventional ploy imaginable.
I feel very much the same way. Until fairly recently, I’d have said the costs of invasion are so enormous that it would never happen, and that whatever you might think of the Chinese government they are at not fanatics and they are not stupid. And with the disasters during Mao’s reign they surely know the danger of demagogues. But I now have no confidence at all that there is any check on Xi’s power, and that he may indeed see “reunifying” China as his legacy.
The actual use of nuclear weapons—even as a demonstration of will—is so inherently destabilizing I don’t think anyone can even credibly speculate on what will transpire. I do not agree that the PRC is not competitive in a conventional sense in that theater of war but immediately hewing to the use of nuclear weapons would be risking not only failure but actual eradication, and China has not been known to be far in developing intercontinental-class anti-ballistic weapon systems, nor would they be of much value if they did because the ~400 land-based ‘Minuteman III’ ICBMs (most carrying a single MK21 RV) and 280 submarine-based D-5 ‘Trident II’ (carrying 4 MK 5 RVs each) would certainly overwhelm any ABM system, not to mention the possibility of targeted strikes delivered by the B-2 ‘Spirit’ stealth bomber. We would all lose in a global nuclear conflict but China would lose sooner.
Right, but the author was suggesting that China use nukes as harmless detonations over open-space water as a very convincing warning to keep the US out of a Taiwan war altogether. I don’t think he was suggesting any actual use of Chinese nukes to hit anything American. This was an article 20-25 years ago, something like that.
Maybe, but the US Navy doesn’t send its entire fleet to war, while China may very well send all of its fleet into a war. So it would be like the US sending 1/3 its naval strength against China’s 1/1 strength.