SeaQueen
Posts: 1451
Joined: 4/14/2007 From: Washington D.C. Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DWReese The US plan of diplomacy is a joke. I think that's excessively pessimistic. It's kept the peace for a very long time, which is all that we really care about. When it comes right down to it, the US interest is in avoiding the disruption to global trade that a war in the region would entail. We don't particularly care whose islands they are, and although the US government supports UNCLOS, no President can manage to get enough Senators to ratify it. So... it's kind of weird in that respect, but I think the current US position is awkward and complicated in the long run, because it depends on continued military improvement even as defense spending is constrained to a fixed percentage of GDP, and the value the Chinese government sees in maintaining a positive relationship with the US government. The US position of "you all work this out amongst yourselves, just don't murder each other," is perfectly fine for now. The thing is, the reason we've kept the peace is because we're the 800lb gorilla that nobody wants to have turned loose on them. The worrying thing, given Chinese military expansion is at that at some point the PRC government might decide they can challenge that 800lb gorilla and say, "We don't have to peacefully negotiate with the surrounding nations anymore." At that point, deterrence fails, and a major regional near-peer conflict could break out. Exactly where that point is, is hard to say. They might believe they can challenge the US government right now (wrongly, I hope). As the Chinese military becomes more powerful, one must be concerned that eventually they might come to believe that they can successfully repel a US intervention in the region. Essentially what they're doing with their expansion is raising the potential cost of that intervention. After Desert Storm, the politics in the US has favored intervention. The perception in the US was that conflicts would be fast, cheap and easy. The US, as a lone superpower, was invincible. In the realm of high tech conventional conflicts that's probably still true. Unfortunately, that narrative has problems. In the Balkans, for instance, the US never managed to achieve air superiority due to their well hidden network of mobile SAMs and decoys, for instance (I'm always surprised people don't do more Command scenarios based on The Balkans conflicts). These days, having seen the limits of US military power in Afghanistan and Iraq (not really victory, but less than a loss...) I think it's an opened question how the politics of intervention might shape up. I'm not a politician, though, I don't know how to answer that question. Would the US electorate believe that the cost of intervening in a conflict in the SCS is worth it? I don't know. I don't think anyone does. On the PRC side, though, I don't think the President of China wakes up every morning and thinks, "How can I get in a war with the US today?" I think that there's too many things which benefit us all to even consider that. That being said, I think it's clear that they aspire to be able to one day deter U.S. intervention in what they see as a basically regional conflict among neighboring countries. In that sense, they see themselves as a potential equal to the US and want to be able to manage their own affairs in the way that they see fit. If that means violently resolving a conflict in the SCS, and intimidating their neighbors into submission, they would prefer that the US would be unable to stop them, even if they stop somehow short of that. Chinese aggression in the SCS therefore would probably only occur if two things happened: 1) The PRC government believes that they can make the cost of a US intervention sufficiently high that the US electorate will be unwilling to support it for long. 2) The mutual benefits of Chinese integration into the global economy are no longer seen as sufficiently valuable to the Chinese people to justify avoiding a violent resolution of the dispute in the SCS. In order to ensure #1, the US government must continuously improve its military particularly its air and naval forces. That's challenging because the defense budget has been fixed at ~2% GDP for a long time now. Given, it's more than most countries spend on defense, but given the size of the US economy we could probably afford to do more (it's that huge), even if we don't. The politics of that depend on the interest rates of US Treasury Bonds remaining low and whether or not the US government is willing to raise taxes (Congress answered that question a few months ago with a resounding, "No.") In order to ensure #2, we need to ensure that the PRC becomes increasingly intertwined in the global economy and sees the US as a global economic partner that it would be unwilling to lose. I think as long as the US continues with that strategy war is unlikely in the SCS. The Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Malasians, the Philippinos... they'll harass each other now and then, but war won't happen (one hopes).
< Message edited by SeaQueen -- 1/28/2018 5:10:56 PM >
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