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Loose Canons

China Plays Reagan to Our Gorbachev

By on 6.13.11 @ 6:10AM

Beijing has us over a barrel — until and unless our budget is brought under control. Are GOP hopefuls listening?

Borrowing Chinese money leaves American politicians unsatisfied. Every time they’ve spent all the Chinese have lent us, thirty minutes later the Democrats wants to borrow more. For Republicans, Chinese lending is a double-edged sword: on one hand, it’s a huge weapon in Chinese hands that can be used to force changes to U.S. foreign and domestic policy. On the other, given Chinese leaders’ increasingly hostile statements about American fiscal irresponsibility, it’s a political tool Republicans can use.

On April 16, the House passed the Paul Ryan budget plan. The Senate Democrats (with the help of their usual RINO accomplices) voted it down. Our national debt limit of $14.3 trillion has been reached and the money will run out on about August 2 unless Congress raises the limit.

We are fast approaching the 800th day since the Senate Dems passed a budget. Negotiations, if the byplay between congressional Republicans and the White House can be called that, have made precisely no progress because Republican demands to make trillions in cuts to the budget as part of a debt limit hike are being stonewalled by the White House and Senate Dems who have proposed budgetary legerdemain rather than real cuts.

In what may be a historic level of irony, it’s apparent that President Obama and his congressional mafia family are less fiscally responsible than the Communist Chinese.

In March 2009, when Obama was counting on Chinese lending to finance his $800 billion stimulus package, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned against excessive US federal spending. He said, “Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I’m a little bit worried.” Jiabao added, “I would like to call on the United States to honor its words, stay a credible nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets.”

Substitute “American” for “Chinese” in the last sentence and Wen could have been mistaken for Art Laffer. But Laffer never threatened to stop lending to America if we made arms sales to Taiwan, as China did as recently as 2009.

Last week an adviser to the People’s Bank of China warned against a default on U.S. debt, and said that Republicans were “playing with fire” by contemplating even a brief default. And only a few days ago, a top Chinese debt-rating expert warned that U.S. default had already commenced. Meanwhile, Obama wants to borrow more, presumably from China, to help Greece prolong its financial disaster.

China isn’t just our lender. It’s not a free-market trading partner hoping that a rising economic tide will raise both economies out of the recession. China is an adversary, a 21st century mercantilist nation whose policy is to gain economic strength by manipulating markets. And its role as our reliable lender is aimed at manipulating U.S. economic strength as a means of diminishing our ability to interfere in Beijing’s ambitions.

The European mercantilist nations of the 15th-18th centuries sought to increase government holdings of gold and silver as a means of growing economic power. Their main tool was market manipulation — by tariffs and trade cartels, which were restrictive enough to cause a few wars. But military power was, to them, a secondary means of protecting or obtaining economic power by conquest and colonization.

China has adapted European mercantilism to its own ambitions for hegemony around the Pacific Rim. Under China’s strategic policy, economic power and military power are inseparable. For decades, the Chinese trade surplus has funded their hell-for-leather military buildup including their cyberwar campaigns against American and European defense and intelligence networks. When the dollar was strong, they did everything possible to maintain a trade export to bring U.S. dollars into their reserves. The weakening dollar caused them to reduce their trade surplus in May.  

By their modern mercantilism, China has achieved enormous economic power. Were they to significantly reduce or stop buying U.S. debt, the interest rates our government pays would rise in proportion to their cutbacks. Their vehement objections to the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” policy — buying up federal debt to pump money into the credit market, thereby flooding the market with less valuable dollars — brought China to the brink of that action.

China’s opposition to reckless U.S. spending is based only on preserving the value of our $1 trillion debt to them. They don’t want to be repaid with less valuable dollars than they lent us. And we’re not a national version of Goldman Sachs — “too big to fail” — in China’s eyes. We are an adversary whose policy can be leveraged with that debt.

China’s economy — as strong as it is — isn’t strong enough to make its leaders think they should cause a U.S. default. But it can do to us what we did to the Soviet Union in the 1980s: make it too costly for us to pursue our national interests.

Unless we reduce federal spending by trillions of dollars over the next few years, China’s financial leverage over us will reach a critical stage at the same time that our need to oppose China on several fronts becomes acute.

China is Iran’s closest ally and trading partner. It has built a major presence in oil-rich African nations and in Venezuela. North Korea is effectively a Chinese satellite state. China’s ambitions — turned to India, Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia — will bring it into confrontation with us economically and, possibly, militarily. What would happen if some future US president went head-to-head with the ayatollahs or Chavez or Kim Jong-il?

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About the Author

Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several bestselling books including Inside the Asylum and In the Words of Our Enemies. You can follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (89) |

nister| 6.13.11 @ 6:58AM

China spends 100 billlion annually on defense. America needn't outspend them fivefold; it could invest in new technologies and pay down the debt.

Alan Brooks| 6.13.11 @ 9:42AM

China is so successful because it is a fascist nation, fascist nations make the trains run on time.
And all the Westerners I know who taught English in China came back with horror stories.

W| 6.13.11 @ 10:41AM

China also has slave labor. there are no labor unions,no government regulations such as EPA, EEOC, NLRB, OSHA, Americans with Disabilities act, Workers Comensation, Unemployment Comp, Social Security Disability and SSI,. etc. I am getting tired just writing these.

Alan Brooks| 6.13.11 @ 11:47AM

My cousin taught English in China, when he tried to leave they stole his passport while he was out of his room, so he had to sneak out via Taiwan.
I knew an American scholar who lived in China for decades; he insulted a mini-tyrant there, lost all his savings & possessions, and was expelled after his untreated health problems reached a certain stage.
Now he is in a nursing home in America-
for life.

SpiralArchitect| 6.13.11 @ 1:02PM

100 billlion annually on defense in China would not be on par to the US spending the same.

Perhaps you are unaware of the size of the US's current Navy. Now add the Air Force, how aobut the army. Lets consider payroll & food - perhaps we should account for logistics and pensions for all retired Service Members.

Moreover the US is not facing only China.

Educate yourself a little bit before you speak in the future. The facts will remain the same wether you state them or even understand them. The difference being how what you say reflects upon yourself.

Alan Brooks| 6.13.11 @ 1:06PM

Yes, China is a third-world country with a first-world 'defense' (offense) establishment.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 2:35PM

No, China is a third world country that aspires to a second world military capability. As things presently stand, the People's Liberation Army is the largest in the world in manpower--but its conscripts are poorly paid, poorly trained and poorly motivated; their equipment consists mainly of copies or derivatives of 1970s-era Soviet tanks, APCs and artillery pieces. The People's Liberation Army (Air Force) is also very large, but only a fraction of its inventory consists of first-line Generation 4-4.5 fighters like the Su-27/-30/-33 Flanker; indigenous designs do not inspire much admiration; and the level of training exhibited by PLA(AF) pilots leaves much to be desired--certainly not on the same league as U.S. combat pilots, or even our allies in Japan, South Korea and Australia. As for the People's Liberation Army (Navy), it's basically a frigate-based regional force that might--might--be able to keep U.S. and allied navies out of Chinese coastal waters for a limited time, after which it gloriously goes to the bottom of the sea. A Chinese carrier is not going to change the correlation of forces in any significant way--except that our targeting list has a new Number One on it.

For China truly to modernize its military forces, it would have to professionalize them, which would necessarily mean a much smaller ground force; and it would have to spend an order of magnitude more on salaries, equipment, and training. For China to do that would mean shorting other pressing priorities--infrastructure development, industrial modernization, environmental remediation and quality of life issues.

China is a nuisance only as long as the U.S. allows China to be a nuisance. At some point, the mosquito will buzz too close and will be swatted.

This would have happened already except for the continuing myth of the Chinaman's coat tails, into which it seems almost every economist on the face of the earth has bought.

Alan Brooks| 6.13.11 @ 6:33PM

"China is a nuisance only as long as the U.S. allows China to be a nuisance. At some point, the mosquito will buzz too close and will be swatted."

But the Chinese have nukes, Stuart. Nukes are first-world.

Alan Brooks| 6.13.11 @ 6:35PM

BTW, do the Chinese have chem and bio weapons?

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 9:28PM

If they do, they are in violation of two international treaties to which they are signatories, but I would not put it past them. In any case, they could have them in short order if they wanted them. Who knows more about toxic substances and exotic diseases than the Chinese?

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 8:11PM

Yeah, China has about a dozen nuclear weapons capable of reaching the United States. The United States, last I looked, had more than 1500 warheads capable of reaching China. So, if the Chinese are willing to risk that for the Spratleys, we really aren't able to negotiate with them at all.

As to whether nuclear weapons make one first world or not--is North Korea "first world"? Is even Russia "first world"? Back when we were counting up worlds, the "First World" was the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Second World was the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies. Third World was everybody else, including China.

nister| 6.13.11 @ 3:26PM

Gee, Sparky..I had no idea my post would cause such a "to do"!

Do ya suppose maybe the "size of the US's current navy, air force. and army" is what I propose we address?

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 3:47PM

I think we could manage with a defense budget and armed forces top-line close to what we have today. I really don't see much need to spend more than 4.5% of GDP given the present range of threats.

However, I do think we need to reorganize and re-orient our armed forces so that the force structure more closely matches the threat. That means, in effect, a bifurcation of the military.

Consider: most of the wars we are likely to fight are going to look like Iraq and Afghanistan. For this, we need ground forces built around light infantry and special operations forces; relatively few heavy (i.e. armored and mechanized) formations will be needed in the active component, so most of what we have can be moved into the reserves. Since light forces generate more boots on the ground relative to personnel topline, we'll actually get more usable combat power--and we'll still have heavy forces in the reserves to backstop any threats from, say, Iran and North Korea.

However, the Air Force and Navy have only supporting roles in that kind of war, and it is foolish for those services to pretend otherwise. Air power is used mainly for inter-theater transport, tactical mobility, reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition. Since the air defense environment is benign, most of the RSTA and "kinetic" activities (close air support, precision strike) can be performed by simple and cheap unmanned aircraft. Similarly, the Navy's role in low intensity conflict is mainly limited to coastal patrol, maritime surveillance, and special operations, for which it does not need large, sophisticated and expensive warships; large numbers of patrol boats and light frigates will answer.

Now, for the other half:

China is the only potential peer competitor for the next half century or more. The strategic objective of the United States ought to be deterring China from military aggression in East Asia, until such time as China either reforms itself or collapses into irrelevancy.

As noted, China lives in a strategic cul de sac from which it can only emerge by air or by sea. Large ground forces will not figure much in a U.S.-Chinese conflict. Therefore, the Air Force and Navy ought to focus on deterring Chinese aggression by maintaining overwhelming conventional superiority over the Chinese military.

What would that entail? First, recapitalization of our tactical airpower, by opening up the F-22 Raptor production line (and possibly closing the F-35 JSF line), developing both strike and carrier-based variants of the F-22, and incorporating any viable technologies from the F-35. To backstop the Raptor force, the Air Force should complete its "Golden Eagle" program to modernize a portion of the F-15 force through lateral insertion of F-22 and F-35 derived technology. Accelerated development of the next generation bomber, together with a new generation of tactical standoff missiles will allow the U.S. to penetrate Chinese air defense systems at will and strike critical targets deep within China.

The U.S. should resist all calls to cut further our strategic nuclear arsenal, since our insurmountable lead in that area is all that inhibits China from competing with us directly in ICBMs and SLBMs. We should further dissuade them from nuclear competition by building a more robust strategic defense system, and devalue Chinese tactical ballistic missile systems by deploying theater ballistic missile defense systems in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as on critical U.S. forward bases such as Diego Garcia.

As the Chinese have shown an interest in anti-satellite weapons, the U.S. must develop its own equivalent capability, as well as developing a new generation of satellites capable of both passive and active defenses against Chinese ASAT systems.

The USMC should retain and modernize its amphibious assault capability, since the only ground combat likely between the U.S. and China will be attacks by the U.S. on Chinese-occupied islands, or raids conducted by U.S. forces upon the Chinese mainland.

This is just a thumbnail of what needs to be done, but it is not excessive and it is affordable within the current budget envelope. The Chinese are inveterate gamblers, but the Chinese leadership prefer to bet on sure things. This defense program is intended to keep the odds long enough that the Chinese will not want to act on their aggressive impulses.

Thom| 6.13.11 @ 5:12PM

Nister,
The per capita income in China is about 1/7th what our income level is. A great deal of what used to be produced in Japan, then Taiwan is now produced in China for a fraction of the cost it was in both of those places which used to be produced in this country. That computer you are using to enter comments on TAS was likely produced in China and you paid about a third what you did 5-6 years ago for the same produce.

If China is actually spending 100 billion given they don’t have a blue water navy at this point, are solely focused on the Pacific Rim and aren’t consuming a couple hundred billion a year in a shooting war anywhere (yet) all else equal they are actually out spending us.

What they lack in quality on a per unit basis they can make up in volume in certain situations particularly within their sphere of influence. Given where our forces are focuses around the world vs. where China’s concerns are focused that gives them a similar advantage Japan had on Dec 7th, 1941. Their middle class is the size of the entire US population too. When they effectively raise the quality of their goods in the military arena to just comparable to ours they will have an effective edge over us where it counts. 100 billion goes a long ways in China. That barely pays the Dept of Education’s annual budget here and what do we get for that expense? Nothing.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 5:44PM

This assumes that the ability to produce military equipment is an accurate assessment of military capability. If that were true, the French and British would have beaten the Germans in 1940.

Thom| 6.13.11 @ 7:45PM

Stuart,
Is it your opinion that the Chinese can’t master the art of modern war? Your assumption is that the Chinese can’t learn from the past mistakes of others and that their existing forces levels must necessary fall if they modernize their forces. That thinking is a fallacy in my opinion since that model seems to only apply to western democracies not dictatorships.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 8:30PM

It is my belief that the Chinese cannot master the art of modern war in the air or at sea, because the values required to succeed in those arenas are antithetical to the Chinese system, and therefore not encouraged by it. For instance, modern warfare in all forms requires absolute honesty by subordinates in reporting to their superiors. This is hard to inculcate even in Western military forces, but it has never been a hallmark of any communist system, which is built from the bottom-up on a foundation of lies.

(Yes, the Germans managed to excel in this area, but only by walling off the army from the rest of society, something that ended in 1943, when Hitler took direct control of the Wehrmacht).

It's one thing to "learn from past mistakes", quite another to be able to implement meaningful reforms. One might know, intellectually, what needs to be done. Doing it is something altogether different. If you read Chinese and Russian military journals, it's quite plain that they understand what they need to change to bring their military forces into the 21st century. But their efforts at doing so have all fallen short. Look specifically at Russia, which is about a decade ahead of where the Chinese are in this regard. All attempts at professionalization, creating a robust NCO corps, instilling initiative into officers and enlisted men alike--all have crashed and burned, because you cannot build a military radically at odds from the society from which you draw your officers and men.

As to why force structure must shrink in order to effect modernization: the most prominent factor is professionalization. To replace your dollar-a-day conscript with willing volunteers, you actually have to pay them a competitive wage and provide decent quarters and amenities. You have to provide medical care for them and their dependents; you have to provide them with pensions. Both Russia and China have a hard enough time providing pensions for all their superfluous officers--how are they going to provide salaries and pensions for 2.285 million enlisted men? Military personnel costs alone would exceed the entire Chinese defense budget at current force levels.

So, if you want quality, you have to reduce quantity. You probably could not find enough qualified recruits to meet the higher standards needed for a professional army, in any case. So, the size of the PLA will decline (the Chinese have said as much) once conscription is either reduced or eliminated.

Even with a smaller force structure, personnel costs will still be much higher than is presently the case, and unless China increases its defense spending, it will be hard pressed to fund development of next generation systems--particularly combat ships and tactical aircraft.

You have to understand that in modern warfare, mass does nothing but provide more cannon fodder. The existence of remote sensing systems and precision guided munitions means that masses of tanks, trucks, artillery and troops can all be detected, their positions plotted, and weapons directed against them. The only way to avoid this is to disperse. But dispersion means you need less force to cover a given area. It also means smaller units performing missions that used to be performed by larger formations, so that, e.g., a company is covering the frontage of a battalion, a battalion the frontage of a brigade and a brigade the frontage of a division. Whereas battles used to be controlled by generals and colonels, now they are controlled by captains and lieutenants. Totalitarian regimes have problems with letting junior officers think for themselves. Under both the Soviet/Russian and Chinese military systems as now constituted, missions are generally performed at one echelon higher than is the case in the U.S. and western military forces; i.e., a battalion performs the missions of a company, a regiment performs the missions of a battalion, a division performs the missions of a brigade, a corps or army the missions of a division. That puts decision making clearly in the hands of senior officers vetted for political reliability, and requires nothing more of junior officers (NCOs are non-entitities) than blind obedience to orders.

Thom| 6.13.11 @ 10:35PM

Stuart,
If one of our companies can do the mission of a battalion of say brand X inferior bad guys then can you tell me why we are still in Iraq 8 years after going there and 11 years after Afghanistan? By the standards of present day Russian or Chinese forces the people we fight there have no chance at all by your calculus. I know too many people who have served in both places who would disagree with your assessment and that is particularly salient since you think we need to tailor our forces for more of this kind of low intensity brush wars that cost us hundreds of billions a year while the enemy spends millions, tens of millions at most in proxy wars with us. Outside of being a very realistic live fire training exercise these kinds of conflicts send the wrong message to the wrong people about what our military is really capable of and tasked to do in a global scheme of things. One of the justifications for killing the F-22 was because we don’t need it in these kinds of conflicts and a famously dumbass soon to be former Secretary of Defense put forth the proposition that we don’t need 10 carrier battle groups (soon to be 9) because no one else has any carriers (or has had since 1944) and is our enemy today. This kind of mindset lead the Germans to believe they were invincible and ultimately those inferior forces with all those professionalism problems you mentioned prevailed using overwhelming numbers of men and inferior war material. Given we haven’t fought a first rate power since WWII and have lost every less than war conflict since where we’ve tried to replace manpower with firepower I don’t have a lot of faith in the your theory here. We walked over the Iraqi forces in 1990 with overwhelming power and manpower. We barely had enough in 2003 to take the Republican Guards down and the rest of the military did not fight. After that the one company = a battalion fell flat on its face. We chased 45,000 Taliban out of Afghanistan with 15,000 Northern Alliance and some of our SF and air power but now can’t keep the Taliban out of Afghanistan with three times as many US and NATO forces and the Afghanistan army. The theory seems to only work in video games and when the enemy plays along with your narrow set of rules and assumptions. As I remember we kept our military forces at their 2.2 million active status while doing a massive upgrade to their capability. As I also remember we threw half our forces away because we convinced ourselves no one dare stand up to us. That doesn’t seem to be working out too well with fourth rate yahoos armed with light weapons and IEDs who don’t seem to be too concerned with social economic, demographic, moral or professionalism matters. In fact, based on your analysis I can’t figure out why the North Korean’s attack in 1950 and the Chinese followed up with 300-400,000 troops given how many problems the Communists Armies have. I’m even more perplexed at why our companies didn’t stop their battalions given how inferior their equipment, training and leadership was in 1950s. In fact I’ll bet the survivors of both Korea and Vietnam to this day can’t figure out how our 72 combat battalions sent to Vietnam couldn’t wipe up the ground with Charlie and the NVA in about a week rather than a decade. Let’s see 72 combat US battalions of that time would have had about 50,000 rifle totters or about the same force as Charlie. Charlie’s total force structure was about 60,000 ours 567,000. Add in the 700,000 ARVN and Charlie and NVA can’t possibly win……

I don’t know Stuart, I’m kind of old fashion in the George S. Patton kind of way. I believe the purpose of a military force to destroy the forces of the enemy not play patty cake with them over a decade. If you aren’t getting that done with fourth rate yahoos that probably means you don’t have enough force to cover the ground and there goes your theory out the window…..

Stuart Koehl| 6.14.11 @ 10:47AM

"If one of our companies can do the mission of a battalion of say brand X inferior bad guys then can you tell me why we are still in Iraq 8 years after going there and 11 years after Afghanistan?"

Because that's how long it takes to win a counter-insurgency war. Losing one is much faster. The truth is, the Russians and the Chinese are simply incapable of winning such a war at all--at best, they can create a desolation and call it peace, but Chechnya is still a war zone, and the Chinese still have problems with their Uighurs.

Get used to wars that resemble paint drying, because that's what war will look like for the next century or so.

"One of the justifications for killing the F-22 was because we don’t need it in these kinds of conflicts and a famously dumbass soon to be former Secretary of Defense put forth the proposition that we don’t need 10 carrier battle groups (soon to be 9) because no one else has any carriers (or has had since 1944) and is our enemy today. "

The U.S. faces bifurcated threats. On the one hand, the predominant form of conflict will low intensity--terrorism, insurgency, guerrilla and the like. That's our fault--we are just too good at conventional, high-intensity combined arms combat, and only a moron like Saddam Hussein chooses to fight us like that. Since nobody wants to be the next Saddam, our adversaries fight asymmetrically.

At the same time, China is emerging as a potential peer competitor, capable of fighting the United States in a high intensity conflict, and the U.S. needs to deter China from acts of aggression by maintaining an overwhelming qualitative edge over the PLA.

We can only deter all of our adversaries by developing the ability to fight and win on each and every point across the spectrum of armed conflict. That means a military that can walk and chew gum at the same time, and a military strategy that understands the need to fight both low and high intensity conflicts simultaneously.

"We barely had enough in 2003 to take the Republican Guards down and the rest of the military did not fight. After that the one company = a battalion fell flat on its face. We chased 45,000 Taliban out of Afghanistan with 15,000 Northern Alliance and some of our SF and air power but now can’t keep the Taliban out of Afghanistan with three times as many US and NATO forces and the Afghanistan army."

Different missions, different wars. If you have no stomach for this kind of war on a shoestring, then be prepared to fight war here at home, because there is no way to keep the enemy at arms length if you can't fight on his turf.

"That doesn’t seem to be working out too well with fourth rate yahoos armed with light weapons and IEDs who don’t seem to be too concerned with social economic, demographic, moral or professionalism matters."

Neither the Iraqi insurgents nor al Qaeda nor the Taliban are much interested in beating us militarily--their fighting for YOUR heart and mind, and from everything I see here, they're winning, because you are letting THEM break YOUR will to fight.

" I’m even more perplexed at why our companies didn’t stop their battalions given how inferior their equipment, training and leadership was in 1950s. In fact I’ll bet the survivors of both Korea and Vietnam to this day can’t figure out how our 72 combat battalions sent to Vietnam couldn’t wipe up the ground with Charlie and the NVA in about a week rather than a decade. "

How to put this kindly? We did. We whupped the Viet Cong and NVA from one end of South Vietnam to the other. We inflicted more than a million casualties on them (by their own admission), and, by 1973, had destroyed their ability to continue fighting. This, despite allowing them to have sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia, and leaving North Vietnam alone between 1968 and 1972.

But, as General Giap said, "it is also irrelevant". The North Vietnamese were not fighting to beat the U.S. military, they were fighting to defeat the U.S. media--and they succeeded. The Tet Offensive, for instance, was an horrendous defeat for the Communists. The Viet Cong was almost totally destroyed (which made it much easier for the North Vietnamese to impose their will on the South after the fall of the Saigon regime), and the NVA was rendered incapable of resuming the offensive for four years. But on network news and in the newspapers, Tet was reported as a U.S. defeat.

Bottom line--we won the war (once we decided to fight it in ernest), we lost the peace because Congress refused to abide by the terms of the Paris Peace Treaty.

By the way, your numbers for the opposition in the Vietnam War are off by an order of magnitude, because we weren't simply fighting the Viet Cong (indeed, we weren't fighting the Viet Cong at all after 1968). Including the NVA, in 1968 there were 461,000 communist troops fighting in South Vietnam. Given that the NVA logistic tail was much smaller than our own, they had about four times as many infantry available as we did.

"I don’t know Stuart, I’m kind of old fashion in the George S. Patton kind of way. I believe the purpose of a military force to destroy the forces of the enemy not play patty cake with them over a decade. If you aren’t getting that done with fourth rate yahoos that probably means you don’t have enough force to cover the ground and there goes your theory out the window….."

All well and good, except that we tried to fight the Vietnam War that way--didn't work out too well. When we switched to precisely the kind of "patty cake" tactics you despise, we rapidly pacified the country even while drawing down U.S. forces.

There are only two ways to win a counterinsurgency war:

One is the Hama Rules (after the Syrian town destroyed by Hafez al-Assad in 1982): move in overwhelming force, kill everything that moves, sow the ground with salt, and leave. I doubt you will find much support for that approach in the U.S., and I would not want to live in a country that did support it.

The other is the classic model developed by the British in Malaysia and Northern Ireland: protect the population, not the force. Interpose your troops between the insurgents and the people they want to control. Deny the enemy the moral high ground by using lethal force in a strictly surgical manner. Place your main emphasis on providing good governance, security, public works and building social institutions. It takes time, but it ALWAYS works. It only fails when the defender loses his nerve or his patience or both, and tries either to force the issue or to cut his losses and run.

If you don't have the stomach for this kind of warfare--which is cheap in both money and lives--then the barbarians always will win, because they will just wait you out. They'll hustle you from one place to the other, and you will always rationalize by saying it has nothing to do with our national interests, until finally, your definition of the national interest ends at the three mile limit, and you are forced to fight the barbarians in the streets and fields of your own country.

Thom| 6.14.11 @ 6:53PM

“Because that's how long it takes to win a counter-insurgency war.”

We won our insurgency against the British; They left; we won. This will become a pattern in regard to who wins.

We lost against the Cong and NVA after ten years of watching the paint dry; we are in the process of doing the same in Afghanistan after 10 years; We’ve already committed to being there in some form till 2014. North Korea still lives after 61 years of failing any day now. They are capable of doing far more damage than they did in 1950 and your solution here is get used to losing such conflicts for the next century or so? You are making my point.

“That means a military that can walk and chew gum at the same time, and a military strategy that understands the need to fight both low and high intensity conflicts simultaneously.”

We don’t have the forces for that. There is no such thing as a low intensity Armored or Mechanized Infantry formation in regard to what it cost to own and operate such things. Our light wheeled APC stuff is more cost effective for occupation and fighting insurgencies but they don’t react too well to anything stronger than an RPG. Between high cost specialized forces like 82nd, 101st, 10th Mountain and the Marines coupled with a mix of Stryker, MI and AR divisions we’ve been hard pressed to maintain 4 divisions or 12 to 15 Brigade equivalents in places like Iraq and now Afghanistan without recruitment problems. We’ve kept our force close to level with very large financial incentives. That only goes so far.

All this combined gives us the same peace time rotation plan used in Korea, Vietnam and now these two latest adventures. That self-imposed one forward two back rotation limits us to nothing but low intensity conflicts. We have nothing like the ground forces we had in 1990. We didn’t send more Navy or Air Force to put down the insurgency after three years of trying with 15 BE. Our enemies know our self-imposed limitations and with a net of less than two hundred thousand ground forces deployed between Iraq and Afghanistan on more or less a full time basis just where are we going to get the forces for anything close to the first Gulf war against anyone that has some depth? I know you don’t think anyone out there has any depth. Have you ever seen what happens when the world’s most powerful Ants encounter a more numerous number of small ones? The large ones lose. That’s the problem with our small high quality force structure. We are subject to being overwhelmed by asymmetric attack on multiple fronts. We can neither be everywhere nor concentrate without opening up an opportunity for someone. I know the game…..

“Different missions, different wars. If you have no stomach for this kind of war on a shoestring, then be prepared to fight war here at home, because there is no way to keep the enemy at arms length if you can't fight on his turf.”

Stuart, at what point does the force structure become the excuse for the strategy of not being able to put enough forces in the field to finish the job? We sent 5 BE to reinforce 15 after years of out of control insurgency in Iraq. Gommer Pyle could have figured that out in 2003 just looking at a map of Iraq. I have a very good understanding of economy of force and I know the difference between that and what it takes to occupy and control events on the ground.

“Neither the Iraqi insurgents nor al Qaeda nor the Taliban are much interested in beating us militarily--their fighting for YOUR heart and mind, and from everything I see here, they're winning, because you are letting THEM break YOUR will to fight.”

Neither did the Cong/NVA but they own the ground today that 58,000 Americans died for. We left another 38,000 in Korea. A full third of our WWII dead for what gain? We left; they won. I full filled my military obligations a long time ago. It isn’t my will that is getting tired of multi-deployments to the same place, fighting with their hands tied behind their back and having someone in the comfort of their villa in the sky tell them this is the best it gets….. There is a history here that you can continue to ignore but the generation that is making the sacrifice here is not going to continue to be a sacrificial goat.

“How to put this kindly? We did. We whupped the Viet Cong and NVA from one end of South Vietnam to the other. We inflicted more than a million casualties on them (by their own admission), and, by 1973, had destroyed their ability to continue fighting. This, despite allowing them to have sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia, and leaving North Vietnam alone between 1968 and 1972.”

They won; we lost. Did we go to Vietnam for ten years to just prove to them that we as an industrialize nation of 200,000,000 could beat them 20 to one over ten years and the moment they recovered enough strength in their sanctuaries topple South Vietnam in the blink of an eye? Is that why my generation bled there? An ego thing?

“Bottom line--we won the war (once we decided to fight it in ernest), we lost the peace because Congress refused to abide by the terms of the Paris Peace Treaty.”

No, they won; we lost. You don’t have to win the Peace if you actually win the war.

“By the way, your numbers for the opposition in the Vietnam War are off by an order of magnitude, because we weren't simply fighting the Viet Cong (indeed, we weren't fighting the Viet Cong at all after 1968). Including the NVA, in 1968 there were 461,000 communist troops fighting in South Vietnam. Given that the NVA logistic tail was much smaller than our own, they had about four times as many infantry available as we did.”

The NVA/VC strength in the Tet Offensive was in the order of 80,000. They lost about 45,000 which by any measure is significant and yes the Cong were combat ineffective after this. The Cong/NVA may have beat the media but the President is not the media and his self-imposed restrictions and buying into “theory” is what reduced our strength to 50,000 in the middle of 1972 rather than switch over to the offensive in the North and finish the job after Tet. If you set your goals at ankle height no one will be surprised you accomplish your goals but where military force is concerned what constitutes a meaningful victory is rather a high standard among those that make the sacrifice. The most committed usually wins and the NVA won. They hold all the ground now. We lost. The only thing we proved was the obvious and that we had no clue how to bring the NVA not their proxies in the south to heal. 58,000 dead for what Stuart?

When the South fell, the south had something less than 700,000 total army and irregular forces in the field and the North had less than 400,000 of which over 100,000 were administrative in nature. When combined with the South Vietnam Navy and Air Force the NVA were outnumbered two to one yet they quickly drove the South to collapse. Those inferior Communist forces with all that inferior Soviet designed equipment you keep telling me about seem to keep getting their way in this neck of the woods by some miracle. Since the Communist then and now don’t believe in the super natural that’s probably an oxymoron. The South Vietnamese were clearly better armed and trained compared to what was both inferior numbers, trained and equipment. A population of 22,000,000 or less than Iraq and Afghanistan today absorbed a 20 to 1 loss ratio over a decade and then took down the US trained, equipped proxy in the South with half the forces you think they had operating in the South in 1968. How is that possible? I do happen to have more faith in South Korea’s abilities but you know they did lose a modern Frigate to what I hear was an ancient Soviet diesel sub firing what has to be an inferior torpedo without the Frigate even knowing it was being fired upon. At least that is the story going around any way….. Probably more complex than that I’ll bet.

“If you don't have the stomach for this kind of warfare--which is cheap in both money and lives--then the barbarians always will win, because they will just wait you out……. fight the barbarians in the streets and fields of your own country.”

It is not my stomach Stuart and the barbarians are waiting us out. The barbarians are already here in great number, we call them Democrats. They are our enemies’ best friend. They believe your analysis with all their heart and soul and they will use that to continue to shrink our force levels until we can’t handle multiple contingencies in the same relative time span. We will end up having to make a conscience choice to sacrifice someone very much the way we did with our forces in the Philippines. With or without the attack on Pearl we had no capability to save or support our forces there against the Japanese navy and air force. Pearl had no material impact on the outcome of the war. Even the Japanese high command knew they could not beat us in a protracted war. They were right of course which begs a question tens of millions would like to know the answer to but no one seems to talk to the dead any more.

The salient point Stuart is that rational analysis can’t explain most the conflicts of the last century and institutional blindness cost us in many ways in what became folly all too often. Our defense polices in total mock the sacrifices made in both blood and treasure and we have been on a trend line to not maintain even what we have now by the end of this decade. There is nothing in the pipeline to replace 30-40 year old equipment in this time period. The F-35 is not going to be the miracle multi-mission platform those dumping on the F-22 think. Nor is it going to be affordable and combat effective in the near term in meaningful numbers. Meanwhile the little but numerous Ants wait……

The Irony of the Pearl Harbor attack was that it did no strategic damage, the Japanese high command knew this would be the case when they got word there were no carriers in Pearl before launching the attack; Every graduate of the Japanese Naval academy planned an attack on Pearl as part of their graduation yet the plan actually used was similar to the one the US Navy conducted in 1936 coming from the same direction and relative position; we put radar up to detect large formations of aircraft and did but disregarded it; parked all our army aircraft in neat rows making destroying them relative easy and last but not least had every reason to except an attack such as this since we knew a shallow water attack could be carried out at Pearl with torpedoes. Despite all that we knew up front we still let our own since of invincibility blind us to the obvious.

I’m willing to think outside the box and give our 4x populous adversary some credit for doing the same where their interests are concerned while you have convinced yourself the only options here for the Chinese are rational self-interests as we see them. Something about how the events went down in Korea, Vietnam and our war with Japan don’t quite fit your square peg in that round hole I see. In the end it won’t matter what either of us thinks. It will matter to 10’s of millions of young Chinese men who have no hope of family or fortune inside China. It is a matter of historical fact that when large numbers of young men are uprooted from the fabric of society that they turn their attention to external rewards and excuses for taking what they feel they are owed. Japan did that. I’d rather error on the side of history rather than convince myself history in this part of the world can’t repeat. If it does, it won’t be a rational we understand. Part of that is because we have our eyes shut tight.

Stuart Koehl| 6.14.11 @ 8:35PM

"We won our insurgency against the British; They left; we won. This will become a pattern in regard to who wins."

It's a myth that the U.S. waged an insurgency against the British. The American Revolution was a very conventional 18th century war determined by a series of stand-up battles and sieges. We won because we did not lose. The British lost because they did not win. The would have won, had the United States not had the support of not one, but three major European powers (France, Spain and the Netherlands) that converted a colonial revolt into a world war. Even then, it still took us eight years to gain our independence.

"Stuart, at what point does the force structure become the excuse for the strategy of not being able to put enough forces in the field to finish the job? We sent 5 BE to reinforce 15 after years of out of control insurgency in Iraq. "

The problem was not in the number but the type of units. Until well into 2007, the majority of forces in Iraq were heavy brigade combat teams. Such formations are notoriously short of rifle strength. An insurgency is not fought with armor/mechanized or even motorized units, but with light infantry and special operations troops.

A typical heavy brigade team of, say, two mechanized and one armored battalion, plus supports, would have about 4,000 men. Of those, only about 500-550 would be dismounts. A medium Stryker brigade does a bit better, with about 3500 men and 864 dismounts. But a straight-leg unit is better still: for about 2500-3000 men, you get about 1100 dismounts. And therein lies the story: of the roughly 150-175,000 men we deployed to Iraq at any given time, probably no more than 25,000 were deployable dismounted infantry. That's not a lot of tooth for all that tail. And COIN is manpower intensive. Say we had deployed 20 light brigades to Iraq. That would have amounted to approximately 50,000 men and about 40,000 dismounts. Put in a support slice of 100%, and you get 100,000 troops on the ground generating twice the relevant combat power for just two thirds of the troops. Force structure must be tailored to the mission at hand, which is why the Big Army has to go.

"When the South fell, the south had something less than 700,000 total army and irregular forces in the field and the North had less than 400,000 of which over 100,000 were administrative in nature."

The salient fact about ARVN was that we trained them to fight the way we fought, without providing them the wherewithal to wage that mode of warfare. In 1972, during the Spring offensive, ARVN successfully destroyed a major NVA assault without ground support from the U.S. We provided them with the CAS and BAI that was integral to the way of war we taught them. They fought, and fought well. ARVN losses during the war were double those of the U.S., so disparage all you want, they did most of the bleeding on our side.

Why did ARVN not succeed in 1975? Two reasons: first, we refused to provide them with any air support, let alone the kind we provided in 1972; second, we (or rather, our post-Watergate Congress) refused to sell or give South Vietnam anything by way of ammunition or spare parts. Kind of hard to fight, let alone win a war when you run out of bombs, bullets and shells, and when your equipment starts breaking down and you have no replacement parts.

I'll reiterate my point: from a military standpoint, we won the Vietnam war. We--our political leadership, many of whom still sit in Congress--tossed that victory away. I don't regret that we fought the Vietnam War. I regret that we lost because the American elites preferred to lose rather than to admit the truth about a war they opposed.

"I do happen to have more faith in South Korea’s abilities but you know they did lose a modern Frigate to what I hear was an ancient Soviet diesel sub firing what has to be an inferior torpedo without the Frigate even knowing it was being fired upon. "

And, if you think back a decade or so, you might remember that a state-of-the-art Aegis destroyer was nearly sunk by two rag heads in an explosive-laden motorboat. Don't be stupid.

"The salient point Stuart is that rational analysis can’t explain most the conflicts of the last century and institutional blindness cost us in many ways in what became folly all too often."

Rational analysis can explain them very well: in every case, somebody thought they could get away with something; they miscalculated, and mayhem ensues. That's why it's important to win every war that we fight. If you do, people leave you alone. If you don't some punk will think you're a pushover.

But winning a war does not necessarily mean unleashing hell on earth. "Total war" is a theoretical construct, and in truth every country makes a measured decision about what it will and won't do in a particular conflict. Until the 20th century--and even during the latter half of the 20th century--limited war for limited objectives was the rule, wars of annihilation the exception. We could, in a month or less, have turned Iraq and Afghanistan into uninhabitable wastelands. What then? "Butcher and Bolt" might be a good name for a law firm, but it's a lousy strategy.

I'm really amazed that you refuse to see just how well both Iraq and Afghanistan have gone for us, especially as compared to any other war in U.S. history, including World War II. Without actually knowing what we were doing when we started, we quickly came upon the formula for success, implemented, won one war and are winning the other. You're making the same mistake Cronkite made back in 1968. You can't see victory dangling right before your eyes.

"The Irony of the Pearl Harbor attack was that it did no strategic damage, the Japanese high command knew this would be the case when they got word there were no carriers in Pearl before launching the attack"

One of those myths about Pearl Harbor that happens not to be true. Yammamoto did not have the carriers as his top targeting priority, and in fact set the measure of success in terms of battleships sunk--he wanted a minimum of four--because the Japanese "decisive battle" strategy calculated that the United States would not begin its cross-Pacific counter-offensive without a battle line superiority of at least six ships. Carriers figured not at all into the equation. Pearl Harbor was not a strategic victor for Japan not because they did not sink our carriers, but because the entire concept was flawed. Anything that brought us into the war would mean the destruction of Japan, given the huge disparity in economic capability, technology and manpower. It could be argued that, by postponing the U.S. counteroffensive until late 1943, Pearl Harbor worked against the Japanese, since, when it came, it was led not by World War I relics and treaty-constrained interwar construction, but by fully modern battleships, carriers, destroyers and submarines that outclassed everything in the Japanese arsenal. The only winning strategy for Japan was to keep the U.S. out of the war altogether--which it might have done had it bypassed the Philippines and attacked Hong Kong, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies and French Indo-China.

"I’m willing to think outside the box and give our 4x populous adversary some credit for doing the same where their interests are concerned while you have convinced yourself the only options here for the Chinese are rational self-interests as we see them. "

I never mirror image, but neither do I build sandcastles in the air. The Chinese are not giants, nor are they midgets. They are real people, who are up against real constraints on their freedom of action.

During the Battle of the Wilderness, members of General Meade's staff kept issuing dire warnings to commanding general Ulysses S. Grant--Lee would attack where least expected, he would turn a flank, he would turn both flanks. Grant sat on a tree stump, whittling. Finally, he got up and said, peevishly, "Lee this and Lee that. To listen to you, Lee is about to do a double summersault and land smack in our rear. I don't want to hear anymore about what Lee is going to do to us. I want to hear more about what we are going to do to Lee."

"It is a matter of historical fact that when large numbers of young men are uprooted from the fabric of society that they turn their attention to external rewards and excuses for taking what they feel they are owed. Japan did that. "

This is another one of those historical facts for which I can't find much evidence. As for the case of Japan, well, it's just not so. We'll leave it at that.

Thom| 6.15.11 @ 6:30PM

“It's a myth that the U.S. waged an insurgency against the British.”

Most of the fighting in the South for most of the war was between the Tories and irregular militia. A substantial portion of the British forces were home grown colonists thus it was mostly an insurgency for most of the war. Things firmed up after the French arrived in number and it took on a conventional look after that. Cornwallis’s main purpose for operating in the South was to bring the Tory insurgency out of the closet and under direct British control. There was one native British solider at the battle of Cowpens. Much of the Revolution was one American dressed in Red fighting one dressed in Blue. Insurgency or civil war it all the same to the undertaker.

“The problem was not in the number but the type of units.”

You are making my point. The tool box has a very limited number of each specialized types. The entire force in Iraq in 2004-2006 weren’t composed of heavy mechanized units. The 82, 101st and the Marines were there in division strength at times and they don’t lack infantry. We didn’t send the Mech units home and replace them with leg infantry with the Surge. We don’t have enough unless you want to violate the standing rule of one out, two back rotations. The military does not seem to feel it can do that with an all-volunteer force hence we double down on not having a large enough pool of forces to support enough of each. Probably half the force was non mechanized forces and light MP type units along with 30,000 civilian security personnel who fulfilled a role the military didn’t have the forces for else they would have been doing those light infantry roles. Again Stuart when does the force pool become the strategy?
“ARVN losses during the war were double those of the U.S., so disparage all you want, they did most of the bleeding on our side.”

I disparage no one that fights. The fact remains South Vietnam fell in about 7 weeks with twice the forces the North employed. Yes, we trained and equipped them. Yes we cut off aid to them despite them being in nearly continuous warfare from 1973 on with nearly 150,000 NVA operating in the South near the DMZ. If we had done what thousands of years of military practice and science suggest the North would not have been able to mount any kind of offensive in the 1972-1975 time period thus we failed and we lost else the hold point of the conflict was about good intentions and not results.

“And, if you think back a decade or so, you might remember that a state-of-the-art Aegis destroyer was nearly sunk by two rag heads in an explosive-laden motorboat. Don't be stupid.”

Was the South Korean Frigate operating in disputed waters where violence had occurred before under an armistice attacked by two rag heads in an explosive-laden motorboat? I asked a member of a Burke crew how those rag heads could have gotten that close and carried that off and his answer sounded something like “it an’t my job”. Being a former member to two naval combat ships and being assigned the task of being “death dealer” every now and then I found that attitude odd but pervasive the more I checked into just who on the ship was responsible for the safety of the billion dollar tin can. The best I could every come up with was no one. A state of the art billion dollar ship and everyone on the ship thought it was someone else’s job to protect it or it didn’t need to be protected since it was the badest thing on the ocean. Even the CNO came out after the Cole was attacked and said nothing could have been done to prevent this. I was truly impressed. If it had been my decision that CNO would have been looking for a different line of work the next day. Fortunately there are some people on our billion dollar ships now that consider these kinds of problems.

“Rational analysis can explain them very well: in every case, somebody thought they could get away with something; they miscalculated, and mayhem ensues. That's why it's important to win every war that we fight. If you do, people leave you alone. If you don't some punk will think you're a pushover.”

Stated like a true politician but facts get in the way here. We lost 125,000 in WWI and did not win else we would not have had to go back 20 odd years later and add another 150,000 fighting the same people. We lost 38,000 in Korea and the North did not attack us and we did not make them surrender so here we are 61 years later with a more powerful North in relative terms to 1950 with the ability to do a whole lot more harm regardless of the outcome. If we had “won” that one we would be looking at a united Korea instead of one continuously on the brink and now arming with nuclear weapons that two rag heads in a motorboat might find effective use for. We lost 58,000 in Vietnam and they did not attack us until we interjected ourselves into that mess. It was a conflict we chose to involve ourselves in like Korea and in both cases winning was defined down to not losing on the battlefield but in the case of the South Vietnamese people they did lose big time and we walked away having not defeated the North. Communist Vietnam is still communist and from what I'm seeing trying to get us in between a dispute with their Communist Chiness neighors to the North. Such Irony that is.

“But winning a war does not necessarily mean unleashing hell on earth.”

That conflicts your comment about winning and people leaving us alone…… For the people on the tip of the spear it is always hell on earth Stuart. The different between winning in military terms and losing is the degree to which you are willing to make war hell for the enemy quick enough so they can’t absorb the losses over a given time. Defensive wars by their nature don’t do that and leave the initiative and ability to control their losses in the hands of those with the least options in this regard. Defensive wars are inherently manpower intensive for the defender and with that goes with a proportionate cost which is why the military is looking at cutting force levels and anything else they haven’t already canceled in order to pay for the consumable cost of our current conflicts. Common sense says you don’t rob Peter to pay Paul but that is what we are starting to do.

“You can't see victory dangling right before your eyes.”

You’re an unwavering optimist Stuart. I look at the facts and results first. Iraq is a work in progress being held together by our presence and money. They have no military capability against external threats. If we leave this year we will know within a couple years if Iraq can stand on its own and not devolve into another civil war with or without Iran’s help. Any odds on Iran not meddling in Iraq affairs after we leave? I wouldn’t bet your money on this turning out roses if we leave in August.

Same for Afghanistan. I have a pretty good inside perspective on AF. No country with a per capita income of less than Haiti can field an army of 220,000 and sustain it yet that is the stated goal by our COIN experts as to what it will take to keep the Taliban on the Paki side of the border. This won’t happen without our continued presence and lots of money to prop the country up. We’ve already committed to at least 2014 in AF, I would suspect the end of the decade will be required given there is really nothing there upon which to develop a modern economy in and of itself.

Victory was assured and accelerated after the battle of Midway but it took three more years of all-out war and killing the Japanese to the last man everywhere we encountered them to turn that dangling thing into substance and fact. I still remember Rumsfeld comment to the effect that he thought there were only 4-5000 insurgents in Iraq when things were spinning out of control. In the height of the insurgency we were killing a nominal 15,000 a year for several years so you will have to excuse my lack of optimism here given our past results and significant errors in judgment with regard to being able to predict the future. Tommy Franks speaks to this problem but Optimist are hard of hearing.

“One of those myths about Pearl Harbor that happens not to be true. Yammamoto did not have the carriers as his top targeting priority,”

This doesn’t really synch with historical fact Stuart given Yammanoto’s own statements and those of his deputy commanders who were quiet disappointed in none of the carriers being there. One of Nagumo’s rationales for not launching the third strike was the threat posed by those carriers not at Pearl. There is no military rationale for steaming a concentrated group of carriers and light screens across the Pacific to attack a major military base and then high tale it out of the area after sinking all the “major” threat if that was the reasoning for the attack in the first place. Doesn’t match historical results Stuart. Both sides were concentrating more on carrier construction before and after Pearl. The Japanese sunk two more major surface units of the British right after Pearl with land based aircraft. I’m well aware of the battleship/carrier politics on both sides of the Pacific prior to Pearl and the economic model.

“I never mirror image, but neither do I build sandcastles in the air. The Chinese are not giants, nor are they midgets. They are real people, who are up against real constraints on their freedom of action.”

Who isn’t under real constraints? Were either the Germans or Japanese under no constraints? Rational analysis as you define it would have told both of them they didn’t have a chance. If rational thought had much to do with wars there would be almost none in history to read about. All else equal, the winner is usually the one who makes the least serious mistakes. When there is a significant disparity of numbers the side with the least numbers has the least margin of error to work with. I think you would agree with that statement.

Speak to the Germans about how that worked out despite them killing the Soviets military 7 to one. Unless China collapses economically in the near term they are going to out build us in several areas. They aren’t the ones with a national debt approaching and will surpass our annual GDP within two years. They are smart enough to dump our debt rather than get less than inflation returns or risk a default from us.

“During the Battle of the Wilderness, members of General Meade's staff kept issuing dire warnings to commanding general Ulysses S. Grant--Lee would attack where least expected, he would turn a flank, he would turn both flanks. Grant sat on a tree stump, whittling. Finally, he got up and said, peevishly, "Lee this and Lee that. To listen to you, Lee is about to do a double summersault and land smack in our rear. I don't want to hear anymore about what Lee is going to do to us. I want to hear more about what we are going to do to Lee."

Grant had 101,000 thousand men at the Wilderness and Lee had 61,000. Grant lost 18,400 and Lee lost 11,000. At Cold Harbor Grant had 108,000 and Lee had 62,000. Grant lost 13,000 and Lee lost 2,500. Grant’s 1864 spring offensive took about 40,000 more casualties than the Confederates and he typically had twice the available forces. Perhaps his deputy commanders were on to something there and just didn’t know how to phrase it correctly. I don’t think it was Lee they were really worried about btw.

"It is a matter of historical fact that when large numbers of young men are uprooted from the fabric of society that they turn their attention to external rewards and excuses for taking what they feel they are owed. Japan did that.
This is another one of those historical facts for which I can't find much evidence. As for the case of Japan, well, it's just not so. We'll leave it at that.”

Well, you aren’t trying very hard then. Just visit your local inner city hoods “where large numbers of young men are uprooted from the fabric of society that then turn their attention to external rewards and excuses for taking what they feel they are owed”

History is full of societies and states that practiced this method of waging continuous wars. We call it violent crime when one of our own commits the acts; we call it something else when a nation state does it.

nister| 6.13.11 @ 6:27PM

You should factor in the calculation that the US has been spending a half trillion annually for many a year. China is only recently ramping up spending.

If I were China, or Venezuela, Iran, India..what have you, I'd invest in missiles designed to deliver ball bearings into low, medium and high orbit. I'd declare my intention to deny commercial space to
all if attacked by any.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 8:33PM

China doesn't have the surplus to ramp up.

As for the cheap, Jerry Pournelle-style "keg-o-nails" ASAT system, yes, it would work--once. But when you play that game, every action breeds a disproportionate response. Most of the countries you named have no interest in such an action, not merely because of the unacceptable consequences, but because they want to get rich. There is no up side to an India or Brazil in such an attempt at blackmail. They would probably be among the first to demand that the United States do something to stop whoever is threatening it.

nister| 6.13.11 @ 6:27PM

You should factor in the calculation that the US has been spending a half trillion annually for many a year. China is only recently ramping up spending.

If I were China, or Venezuela, Iran, India..what have you, I'd invest in missiles designed to deliver ball bearings into low, medium and high orbit. I'd declare my intention to deny commercial space to
all if attacked by any.

nister| 6.13.11 @ 6:27PM

You should factor in the calculation that the US has been spending a half trillion annually for many a year. China is only recently ramping up spending.

If I were China, or Venezuela, Iran, India..what have you, I'd invest in missiles designed to deliver ball bearings into low, medium and high orbit. I'd declare my intention to deny commercial space to
all if attacked by any.

Thom| 6.13.11 @ 7:54PM

Nister, we are spending less of our GDP than China is on military matters while being engaged in a war and yet our current GDP expenditures minus the activities in Iraq and Afghanistan are less than 1988 adjusted for inflation. We spent 242 billion in 2001 and yet could not find four airliners in our own airspace after two hours and could not find available aircraft and weapons to perform the intercepts with. Just whose side are you working for here? If you actually think China is spending less currency adjusted “dollars” on defense I have a suggestion for you, live and work there and then see how much of your money goes to defense Comrade.

nister| 6.13.11 @ 8:24PM

Why don't you pay attention to what I'm saying; who or what I am is of no importance. Any middle power has sufficient deterrence at hand on the cheap. Venezuela could ruin the world's future prospects as easily as China, or the US, could. Given that, what objectives should American forces aspire to? What hardware is "worth the candle"?

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 8:35PM

A deterrent that can be held at risk, or which cannot impose unacceptable damage on the proposed target is not really a deterrent at all, but rather an incitement to preemptive attack.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 8:35PM

Amateurs! Sheesh!

nister| 6.14.11 @ 6:38AM

Should any government with even modest rocket capabilities decide to fill low and high orbit space with porjectiles, it could That's a powerful deterrent, methinks.

Stuart Koehl| 6.14.11 @ 10:50AM

So, your idea of a deterrent is to point a gun at your crotch and yell "Stop or I'll shoot!"?

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 8:34PM

As I said, I could make it work at 4.5% of GDP.

John C.| 6.13.11 @ 6:58AM

Well I m glad at least one conservative commentator is talking about China -- communist China that is. Mr. Babbin however left out why we trade with this ruthless regime at all, especially giving them our vital industry via sweetheart trade deals thus enabling them to build modern and devastating ICBMs aimed precisely at American cities.

Meanwhile, none of the presidential contenders even whisper about our continual suicidal outsourcing to Red China, even as more industry and good-paying jobs mysteriously disappear to this lawless and repressive nation. Donald Trump was the only one to expose this Judas policy yet he was branded a liberal by Rush because he wanted to slap a 25% import tax on Chinese goods -- so I guess according to El-Rushbo our Founders were liberals.

Rush and company join the likes of fellow globalists Clinton, Gore, John Kerry and Obama as free traders. Free trade is a race to the bottom and is (libertarian) international socialism, which is destroying our manufacturing base and economy. The sooner the naïve Republican base realizes this the better.

Alan Brooks| 6.13.11 @ 9:44AM

"Well I'm glad at least one conservative commentator is talking about China -- communist China that is."

Communo-fascist, that is. The labor/trade unions are pretty much powerless in China.

Alan Brooks| 6.13.11 @ 11:42AM

if they exist in any form at all.

SpiralArchitect| 6.13.11 @ 1:05PM

Many of the old leaders of this nation were not straight 'party line' politicians. Look up what they practiced; start with Jefferson as he was spred virtually accross the board.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 3:56PM

That's silly. Thomas Jefferson WAS the Democratic-Republican (formerly the "Anti-Federalist") Party. He was its leader, its chief ideologist, its principal strategist and tactician. James Madison was simply Jefferson's "Mini-Me" (in a very literal sense), and Monroe was a clone of Jefferson. The entire party followed Jefferson's lead right down to the end of Monroe's presidency. It's hard to say how much more consistent a party could be ideologically than the Democratic Republicans from 1800 to 1828, or how much more it could owe to the vision of just one man.

Nunya| 6.13.11 @ 1:23PM

I was once a believer in free trade, believing that it would lessen the cost of goods (which it has), and make life better for all of us (which it has not). I didn't realize at the time that it would cost us our manufacturing base (like Ross Perot kept saying it would--in reference to NAFTA and "that giant sucking sound"), and I didn't realize we would end up as virtual indentured servants to China. I was naive.

"Free trade is a race to the bottom..." Indeed.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 3:57PM

"and make life better for all of us (which it has not)."

Prove this assertion of fact.

Nunya| 6.13.11 @ 4:25PM

Talk to anyone in the manufacturing industry that has lost their job due to "outsourcing" to another country.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 4:36PM

Manufacturing comprises almost exactly the same proportion of our GDP as it did in 1976. However, since the GDP (in constant dollars) is now ten times what it was in 1976, the absolute value of U.S. manufacturing is more than ten times what it was then.

While the number of manufacturing jobs has declined, this cannot be blamed on globalization, because manufacturing jobs have declined worldwide. Put simply, manufacturing jobs are boring, repetitious and dangerous, and machines are much better at making other machines than human beings are. So, while the number of people working on production lines has declined, manufacturing output has soared. This trend will continue, as well it should.

As for outsourcing, it tends to be low value added manufacturing--basic metal bending. Complex manufacturing operations are done more efficiently in the United States, where worker productivity dwarfs that of China.

So your complaint is groundless and based on a fallacious premise. One might just as well say that agriculture is in decline because only 3% of the population are farmers, as opposed to 33% at the beginning of the 20th century.

Nunya| 6.13.11 @ 6:20PM

Stuart, I've actually spoken to people who lost their job, directly attributed to the company moving their manufacturing plant out of the country. It's not statistics, it's fact. You can quote your stats and I believe you, but they're irrelevant to the discussion. Real people are now worse off than they were before (not everyone, of course).

As to your premise about automation, I agree. I also agree that as manufacturing is modernized we will continue to increase production, etc., as new methods are invented/developed. My point was that many of those $18-$25+ per hour jobs have gone to other countries, as a direct result of the reduced cost of labor. Jobs that pay well like that for unskilled workers are hard to find.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 8:49PM

"Real people are now worse off than they were before (not everyone, of course)."

So, the vast majority of people who are better off are not "real people"?

"My point was that many of those $18-$25+ per hour jobs have gone to other countries, as a direct result of the reduced cost of labor. Jobs that pay well like that for unskilled workers are hard to find."

Overly simplistic. It's not the absolute cost of labor that matters, it's the relative labor cost of production, which also includes things like unit productivity. So, different types of manufacturing settle at different levels. Basic manufacturing, with low value added, is mainly a matter of how much you pay your assembly line worker. These are the jobs that have more or less vanished from our manufacturing sector, and thank goodness for that! But as you move up the value added chain, the productivity of workers and of manufacturing processes becomes more critical, and thus the direct cost of labor becomes less relevant. Most U.S. companies (and European companies, too, for that matter) do not outsource this kind of work because quality counts, and because the margins justify the high unit cost of labor.

Put another way, why the hell should I pay somebody $25/hour to bend a piece of angle iron ten times a minute for eight hours a day, when I could either get a robot to do it faster and better, or (if I didn't want to invest in a robot) send it to some factory in Shanghai or Mumbai (or Seoul, or Bangkok, or whereever)?

For every outsourced job, a new job has been created or insourced, and most of these have been much better paying than the ones we lost.

Are workers being dislocated? Yes, they are. Is it hard for them? Yes, it is. Should we do something about it? Absolutely not.

Consider that we have heard this song of woe in the past, only then it wasn't overseas outsourcing, it was regional relocation. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut--all had thousands of teaming textile mills; New York had hundreds if not thousands of clothing factories. Beginning about the 1870s, labor costs in New England and New York got too high to be competitive with European centers like Manchester or Birmingham, England. But the South, still recovering from the Civil War, had lots of surplus labor and relatively low labor costs, and so the mills moved to the Carolinas. Come the 1970s, of course, the cost of labor in the South rose beyond what the market could bear, and those jobs went elsewhere. The mills are gone, but those jobs have been replaced by much better ones (if you ever worked in a mill, you would not consider doing it if you had any alternative).

Then there is the matter of technology: should we have, in the 1870s, given subsidies and tax breaks to the Nantucket and New Bedford whaling industry because that nasty petroleum stuff was flooding the market? Should we have placed taxes on automobiles to preserve the jobs of livery stable owners?

That's pretty much what you are proposing. And it never works, so the best thing for government to do is nothing, but allow the creative destruction to work its way through the economy. In the long run it is better for everyone.

Timothy L. Pennell| 6.13.11 @ 7:05AM

It's time to hit the PHONES, people. It's time to call these Republicans and read'em the RIOT. Remind them that they are NOT Indispensable. That, as De Gaulle once remarked: "The Cemeteries are full of Indispensable Men".
While the World BURNS, while this country's Cities are threatened with a long hot summer of LOTS of Unemployed Urban Youth, John Boehner is on the Links with a Snake. A Snake who will stroke his Ego, and feign Compromise. A LIAR, who has built his career on the fact that he's an accomplished LIAR. "I have a gift." His entire LIFE, has been a LIE. And that is why he keeps it LOCKED away, far from the People's right to know. A man who's whole philosophy is taken from a single Book. A Book called: Rules For Radicals. A Book with a dedication to LUCIFER. The 1st Community Organizer. The Prince of LIES.
If the Republican Leadership fails to KEEP THEIR WORD, to exact an equal amount of SPENDING CUTS, for whatever new borrowing is done, they must be ANIHILATED at the Polls. And they must be REMINDED that WE are the power. Not them. And, that they work for US. Not the other way around.
The simpler thing to do, is to just vote NO. Obama did it. Reid did it. Hoyer did it. Rockefeller did it.
After all, if you're gonna CUT, for every dollar you ADD? Why add in the 1st place?

Mimi| 6.13.11 @ 7:20AM

Well, I know one thing...we will find out who in the line-up, reads TAS on Monday morning..... and power to those that DO !!!
Good article Jed and thanks for making us aware of the aspect of fiscal irresponsibility ....effecting our NATIONAL SECURITY and foriegn policy.
The Democrats plan of letting the Republicans " Go FIRST" and use our debt and deficit as a political tool by maliciously demagoguing any idea put forward is going to backfire on them....The people are AWARE , AWAKE, and not DUMB. One possible and "MAYBE" candidate to get into the RACE, Paul Ryan has recently given the speech concerning this foriegnpolicy/ fiscal connection , to the Alexander Hamilton Society....He definitely gets it!
This election is important in EVERY aspect ....Let us choose carefully....The games are over ....TIME for some serious stuff!!!

SpiralArchitect| 6.13.11 @ 1:16PM

The Some people are AWARE , AWAKE, and not DUMB.

Paul Kotik| 6.13.11 @ 7:48AM

Our debts held by the Chinese gives them leverage over us only if we wish to add to that debt.

If we have no wish to borrow more, then it is we who have leverage over the Chinese, who, after all, would like the value of those bonds and notes preserved.

Once we cut spending and stop adding to our debt, the Chicoms belong to us. We'll be the ones who got shiploads of pretty good stuff in exchange for IOU's whose real value we have near-complete control over. Who's the sucker then?

Dan Hirsch| 6.13.11 @ 9:41AM

You betcha! Your bank can't call your loans if your failure takes them down, too. (Ever hear of "Too big to fail!" That's the 'fits in a nutshell' version.) That is a good place to be, just so long as you don't need even more credit! It's also why OPEC can never maintain reduced oil output commitments.

First corollary to this is that ANY increase in the debt ceiling borders on treasonous. Even if Tim Geithner threatens to quit over it. (Dear God in Heaven, please, please, please; please, please!)

Pecos Pete| 6.13.11 @ 8:11AM

The preservation of the American economy is important to the Chinese. Why? We are their largest trading partner; i.e., their largest customer. If we stop buying, they stop selling. The Chinese need us. Makes an interesting conundrum.

Louis Jenkins| 6.13.11 @ 8:24AM

"...and said that Republicans were "playing with fire" by contemplating even a brief default."

And we're playing with fire if we do not. Limit spending Mr. Obama, for if you do not, the fire will be even greater. The Chinese already have a mega Chinese city on the drawing board in Idaho, and there will be others. China needs the resources that America holds, and we're on the brink of giving them away.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 8:33AM

China's economic, social and political problems dwarf those facing the United States. So, China holds a lot of U.S. bonds. Big deal. What will it do with the money if it decides to cash them in? How would the Chinese economy survive if China deliberately destroys its single largest market?

According to an old saying, if you owe someone a thousand dollars, you have a creditor, but if you owe someone a million dollars, you have an investor. So it is with China, which simply cannot afford to shoot the goose that lays the golden egg.

Leaving that aside, consider that China's banks are carrying far more worthless paper than U.S. banks; that crony capitalism keeps thousands of unprofitable currently and formerly state-owned enterprises in business long after they should have been sold or closed; that China's economic success to date has been based on leveraging its low unit labor costs, which are now rising rapidly, and on its artificially depreciated currency, which is now gaining value against both the dollar and the Euro. Combine these with the rising expectations of the urban middle class, the rampant poverty of more than 300 million (the entire population of the U.S.) rural poor, and an incipient demographic collapse, and you have a recipe for systemic collapse.

As for Chinese military power, China lives in a strategic cul de sac. It cannot project power by land into any region of interest to it or to us. So it must go by sea or by air. And China has been modernizing its air force and air defenses, as well as building up its navy. But consider--in about four or five years, China will have one (1) large deck aircraft carrier, capable of carrying perhaps forty high performance aircraft. The U.S. will have at least ten operational carriers, each carrying about sixty high performance aircraft.

Moreover, carrier operations are not something that one can master overnight. In addition to the very challenging basic task of taking off and landing from a pitching deck, day and night, in all weather, there is also the matter of air operations both offensive and defensive, escort operations underway replenishment, and battle group integration. It took the U.S. half a century to manage that, a task so complex and expensive that no other country on earth can do it regularly. We do it every day.

If China gets an aircraft carrier, and decides to use it against us, the only real question is who will get credit for sinking it--carrier air, land-based air, submarines, or surface combatants.

Dan Hirsch| 6.13.11 @ 9:49AM

Carrier operations are almost as tricky as mastering multi-stage missile firing sequences which the Chinese kept failing at. Oh yeah until Bill Clinton and Lorimar (?) illegally transferred the technology to them. In the 1930's we sold a lot of scrap iron to Japan, too.

If the Chinese can learn to build competitive wing structures for large jets (one of the secrets that Boeing refused to transfer to them in the 1990's) don't count them out militarily.

Their big, not-to-be-overlooked advantage? They have shown no compunction about starving or massacring their citizenry in the past. Why would a little economic dislocation bother their leadership as long as they maintain domestic military dominance?

They may have problems, but underestimate them we do at our own peril, a real, tangible, time-limited peril.

Didn't Billy Mitchell foretell the Sunday morning aerial attack on Pearl Harbor a dozen years before it happened?

Anyone sleeping easy, shouldn't.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 11:24AM

What China could do under Mao was one thing; what the Communist Party can do today is something else. Having played the game of rising expectations, they are now trapped by its rules: they must continue to make good on their promises of a rising standard of living, and (except in isolated cases such as Tiennamen Square or against fringe groups such as Falung Gong) they cannot resort to brute force in order to keep the populace in line. They need that entrepreneurial and managerial class to keep the money flowing in, without which, of course, there will be no military transformation.

One must also distinguish between the ability to construct a piece of military hardware and to master the intricacies of its use. The Soviet Union produced World War II's greatest tank, the T-34, in 1941, but it was 1944 before they mastered combined arms operations and tactics (and even then, never rose to the level of the Wehrmacht--but it helps to have a 12-to-1 numerical advantage). In the Korean War, the MiG-15 was equal or superior to the F-86 Sabre in most respects, yet it was the United States that racked up the 6-10-1 kill ratio. Likewise, in the Middle East, the Israeli air force consistently mastered its Arab opponents, even though, until the United States provided Israel with the F-15, the Arabs' Soviet-made aircraft were generally superior (particularly back in the MiG-17 and -21 vs. Super Mystere and Mirage III days).

It is the quality of the manpower, and not the equipment, that is critical. Anyone can build an aircraft carrier (hell, the French and the Soviets managed the trick), but waging carrier warfare is another matter. All of the tricks of the trade that the U.S. mastered in the post-World War II era would have to be mastered by the PLA(N). I invite people to look at videos of our carrier ops in the 1950s and 60s to see what a hairy time that was. It will probably take the Chinese a decade or more to learn how to fight with a carrier battle group, after which they will have what? One, perhaps two carriers? Plus a host of Soviet derivative escort vessels and a lot of obsolescent diesel boats and noisy nukes. At best, it will be a classic "sea denial" navy, intended to keep us out of the South China Sea for a limited period of time, with a secondary "show the flag" prestige role. Of course, the latter will work only up to the day that one of our improved Nimitz class carriers pulls into the same port as the Chinese carrier, at which point, people will begin seeing the difference between a Ford Fiesta and a Mercedes Benz S-class.

PolishKnight| 6.13.11 @ 9:49AM

Yikes, Stuart, I agree with you! The Earth is moving under our feet! :-)

I agree, lending someone a LOT of money is probably NOT the best way to keep them under control. On the contrary, you're giving them a good excuse to go to war with you to justify defaulting on the debt. When the USA entered WWI, the first thing they did was to take over the German pharmaceutical firms based in the USA.

China's primary goal is probably to invade Taiwan. If they go through with it, it will be a very expensive piece of real estate indeed.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 11:26AM

China's conundrum is this: it can destroy Taiwan, but it cannot invade and occupy Taiwan. If it must go to war to get Taiwan, it will lose the very thing it wishes to acquire. The only way that Taiwan can become part of China is for the Taiwanese to agree to become part of China. And that will not happen as long as the PRC remains the PRC.

Nunya| 6.13.11 @ 1:37PM

Mr. Koehl, I hope you are correct in your analysis. However, I am still concerned. You state above that "What China could do under Mao was one thing; what the Communist Party can do today is something else." ufortunately, I don't buy into that statement. I may not be as knowledgeable as you on the subject of China, but communists are communists--they have no compunction of killing their own people. 150+ million killied in the last century should be enough to convince anyone of that fact.

Also, all this talk about carrier groups, maneuverability, etc., neglects to take into account that a single nuke will take out that very same carrier group (or most of it). Think the Chicoms won't do it? I wouldn't hold my breath. They figure they've got a billion people, how many would we kill with our nukes? They have plenty to spare.

I pray that I am wrong and you are right. However, I would rather err on the side of caution when it comes to China.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 2:42PM

"I may not be as knowledgeable as you on the subject of China, but communists are communists--they have no compunction of killing their own people."

It all really depends, in the end, on whether the army will obey the orders of the Party. The USSR disintegrated because, when the Party ordered the army to shoot the protestors, the army said no. This was also true in Poland, East Germany, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.

When does the army choose not to obey the Party? When it becomes entirely clear that the Party exists only for the benefit of its own senior members, and not for the people, from whose ranks the soldiers of the army are drawn, and when it is clear to the senior leaders of the army that Party no longer sees its interests and the military's interests as congruent. So, when Gorbachev discovered that, despite spending more than 50% of the Soviet GDP on military expenditures the USSR was hopelessly behind the West, and then began drastic cuts in military budgets to finance economic and industrial transformation, the bonds of loyalty that tied Party and army together disintegrated. When the Party called on the army, the army stayed in its barracks.

Such is likely to happen in China in the near future.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 2:46PM

Also, all this talk about carrier groups, maneuverability, etc., neglects to take into account that a single nuke will take out that very same carrier group (or most of it).

Actually, if you deploy a carrier battle group in a nuclear-scared formation, one nuke will probably just take out one ship. U.S. ships were designed with nuclear warfare in mind, and we still train for that contingency.

"Think the Chicoms won't do it? I wouldn't hold my breath. They figure they've got a billion people, how many would we kill with our nukes? They have plenty to spare."

That is not a serious analysis of Chinese intentions or capabilities. Put very simply, the nuclear correlation of forces still remains (despite the best efforts of Barack Obama) so heavily weighted towards the United States that any Chinese first use of nuclear weapons would be suicidal. The Chinese leadership above all wants to perpetuate its rule, and wants to exercise hegemony in its region. A China devastated by U.S. strategic nuclear weapons is not their idea of a desirable outcome. We'll still be here, they won't.

Darrell Judd| 6.13.11 @ 8:53AM

Mr. Babbin tends to ignore that it was the Corporate Party that gave China MFN status and WTO status. Then they reversed the traditional Republican party platform of not supporting trade that shifts production out of the US to import goods back in (1972) to be exactly the opposite.

So, the diagnosis is correct, but, W, as it turns out presided over the strategic surrender to China while chasing Osama. As Dr. Phil says, "How's that workin' fer ya?"

Hal G. P. Colebatch| 6.13.11 @ 9:36AM

Brilliant article! Should be compulsory reading for US legislators.The one positive thing I can duggest for the US is to resume research into fusion power - quick!

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 11:28AM

You know, I heard all this Yellow Peril crap back in the 1980s, when it was Japan that was supposed to eat our lunch, and we were doomed unless we adopted Japanese industrial policies, created a cabinet level MITI-clone and did calisthenics with our employees before beginning work.

Those who don't remember those days can rent the complete series of Max Headroom on DVD.

In any case, where the heck are the Japanese today? China is merely Japan write large. Mark Steyn is correct: they will get old before they get rich.

Darrell Judd| 6.13.11 @ 11:34AM

Mark Steyn is no China expert. Read Eammon Fingleton. He is both a China and Japan expert.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 11:45AM

And how does Fingleton see China and Japan escaping from their demographic catastrophe? Japan is presently the oldest country on earth, and is loosing people at a rate of several hundred thousand per year. China is about to tip over the same cliff, the fruits of two generations of enforced one-child policies. As China's population begins to age rapidly and then to shrink, where will it get the workers it needs to support its growing legions of pensioners? If you think the U.S. has a problem with Social Security and Medicare, look at China for a sense of relief.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 11:48AM

By the way, how does Fingleton explain his glaring boner in "Blindside: Why Japan Is Still on Track to Overtake the U.S. by the Year 2000"? Wouldn't "Blindside: Why I Did Not Foresee the Accelerating Decline of Japan" have been a more appropriate title?

Darrell Judd| 6.13.11 @ 2:12PM

He explains that the Japanese trade surplus has gone up 300% during the same period when America has become the world's greatest debtor nation. And that the average Japanese standard of living has been going up during the "lost decades".

The problems you anticipate China having in the future do nothing to address Capitalists selling off America to China in the present.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 2:48PM

I'm still not that impressed by Fingleton's analyses. As far as China's future is concerned, it's much closer than most people think. When China collapses, it will happen very quickly and take most analysts by surprise--just like the collapse of the USSR.

JP| 6.13.11 @ 3:57PM

Darrel,
Japan is fast becoming a nation of geriatrics. In 2009 it lost 123,000 souls; in 2010 it lost over 200,000 people. Japan's birthrate is so low that it will very soon be halving its population every generation. And deflation, not inflation will be Japan's problem. The only thing that masks these problems is Japan's export driven economy. But labor shortages, as well as delfationary price pressures (where businesses cannot price a profit) will make Japan an after thought in years to come.

JP| 6.13.11 @ 4:00PM

You don't need to be a China expert to see that China by 2040 will have half its population over 50 years old. Thier demographic problems are exasperated by the simple fact that they abort over half thier females since 1979. Instead of the normal 1.3 females/male, China has a ratio of 0.8 males per female. And in demographics it is the females that count. A Total Fertility rate of 1.5 children per female is bad enough. But when you factor in a 0.8/1 ratio of females to males, the TFR is actually closer to 1.1 .

WickedDickie--Virginia| 6.13.11 @ 10:32AM

Great article. China is relentless and can be expected to take every advantage vicious incompetent regimes like Obama-ayers provide them. While we're spending our way into another great depression the Chinese are slowly but surely gnawing at our soft underbelly by securing choke points throughout the world like the PanamaCanal and the Straits of Malacca. Meantime, they woo enemies like Chavez, Castro, Ortega and Amadenejehad assiduously. Fusion power may be the answer Mr. Colebatch but for now, I'd settle for drilling and frakking in the U.S.A. while building new pipelines and refineries. (read jobs) Probably the best near term answer to our economic problems is to kill the EPA and all its' works.

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 6:15PM

"While we're spending our way into another great depression the Chinese are slowly but surely gnawing at our soft underbelly by securing choke points throughout the world like the PanamaCanal and the Straits of Malacca."

Really? And just how have they secured these choke points? By winning port operating contracts? And if the Chinese decide to leverage these contracts to deny access to the United States and its allies, just how long do you think these Chinese-owned (but indigenously-run) companies would last against a Marine Expeditionary Unit?

insanity | 6.13.11 @ 10:44AM

nice news

Dave Williams| 6.13.11 @ 1:02PM

I lived in the PRC for a year and a half, and I can promise you, from firsthand observation, that the Chinese will eat our lunch, dinner, and breakfast, if they aren't already doing so. They are a culture that genuinely values learning (unlike Americans), and they are willing to work as hard as it takes to achieve their goals, and make whatever sacrifices are necessary. I wouldn't count the US out entirely just yet, but the handwriting is on the wall...and it ain't in English...

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 2:49PM

Not the China with which I am familiar. When were you there?

JP| 6.13.11 @ 3:52PM

Ah China, the land of 12% inflation. The nation that builds not 1 but 200 bridges to no-where; a nation that currently borrows heavily against its huge mountain of US Treasuries in order to keep its growth engine moving. China. China is a nation where a bushel of wheat costs $12, corn $10, and must import huge amounts of natural rescource to feed, clothe, and warm its people.

China is also souring on a number of corporations. Catepillar, IBM, and NCR are now slowly and quietly returning thier operations to North America. China needs the US more than we need China, if the truth be known. And Congress can always re-prioritize its spending in order to meet its debt obligations. So, not raising the debt ceiling is a strawman of Obama and his ilk.

China is a nation of 300 million aging workers whose future lies in massive sweatshops. It is a nation that now is stuck with a demographic (which it will be unable to change anytime in our lifetimes) that will produce fewer and fewer women. In 30 years nearly 350 million of its subjects will be over 60 years old. China will get old before it gets rich

Stuart Koehl| 6.13.11 @ 3:59PM

OK. That's the China I know.

afdsg | 6.14.11 @ 1:18AM

China is great.

Bee Yond| 6.14.11 @ 1:21AM

The Globalist-RED China TREASON operation,
coming round the FINAL bend, gets its latest Tavistock Institute 'managed', 'American' Spectator spin.

--------------------BEWARE-------------------

replica gucci hysteria handbag | 6.14.11 @ 2:03AM

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weddingdresses | 6.14.11 @ 4:26AM

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milanov| 6.14.11 @ 3:49PM

How many of these aging Chinese workers were, forty+years ago Red Guards, who secretly still would like to resolutely smash the running dogs, and avenge the humiliations done to the Middle Kingdom in the 19th century? The shame of the Age of Western Imperialism seems to be a regular Never Again excuse for whatever the CCP govt does.

Mike Rogers| 6.15.11 @ 9:06AM

Since you pose the question, there is a candidate who recognizes the problem and specifically proposes how we should outgrow the Chinese: Herman Cain. Take a good listen to him (not in the stupid soundbite format of CNN's debate), and/or read his "Commonsense Solutions", or his books.
You will find a serious thinker and a turnaround artist.

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