In a manner of speaking, the world is only big enough for one true superpower. One country that will have the legitimacy to lead the rest of the globe in economic, cultural, and diplomatic matters.

At present, the United States is still that superpower.

Russia’s chance has come and gone, but another communist nation is ascendant on the world stage and massively powerful, and in the eyes of some analysts and speculators, will soon, inevitably, be locking horns with the US in a full-blown Hot War.

This war will have massive consequences for the rest of the world going forward. Below is our analysis of Chinese and US military strength, and what is likely to happen during the war.

The Main Belligerents

Determining what would happen in a major war between the US and China starts with an examination of military capability.

The US likely has a significant edge overall, but the Chinese military apparatus is no joke and not to be trifled with.

U.S.

The United States military has been the big stick that has kept much of the world in line over the decades since ascending to supremacy, and is still the benchmark by which all professional volunteer militaries are measured.

Totaling around 1.3 million active-duty personnel, with more than 800,000 in reserve, and spread across the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and the newly formed Space Force, there is no environment or situation that the US does not have experience in when it comes to projecting force.

With 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, 68 submarines, most of them being nuclear-powered and capable of launching ballistic missiles, 2,000 combat aircraft, and more than 6,000 state-of-the-art tanks, the US can certainly hit hard in any stand-up engagement.

More importantly, the United States has military bases all over the globe, with considerable buildup in Europe, Asia, and much of the Middle East.

Backing all of this capability on the strategic front is a globe-spanning network of satellites and excellent cyber warfare capabilities.

U.S. Nuclear Arsenal: 3,700 active. More in reserve totaling around 5,800.

China

The Chinese military, known as the People’s Liberation Army, is spread across five major branches:

1. the Army proper, which is the PLA Ground Force,
2. the People’s Liberation Army Navy or PLAN, which includes the Marine Corps,
3. the Air Force,
4. the Rocket Force,
5. and the Strategic Support Force, the latter of which covers cyber warfare, space capability, and strategic and theater-level electronic warfare.

The Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, rules the country and all information in and out with an iron fist, and an entire industry has sprung up elsewhere in the world trying to figure out what China actually has and sift truth from CCP lies.

At best guess, China has a grand total of about 2.5 million military personnel, with fully 2 million of them being active duty, and a much smaller reserve force of around 500,000.

The Chinese navy, while impressive, features only three aircraft carriers but dozens and dozens of submarines.

The Chinese Air Force numbers around 3,300 combat aircraft and includes current and next-generation fighters, though the viability and capabilities of these fighters are the subjects of intense speculation by defense analysts.

The Chinese certainly have a numerical edge when it comes to ground combat, with more than 7,000 tanks and other frontline combat vehicles.

Chinese Nuclear Arsenal: 350 to 500+, estimated. More in production.

To say this will be a titanic clash when it goes hot is the understatement of the century. So what, aside from vastly different cultures, global ambition, and economic aggression, will actually bring the US and China to blows?

The Spark: China Invades Taiwan

No surprise here. Despite diminishing global influence and a shaky situation on the homefront, if China invades Taiwan, which is a true inevitability at this point, the US will intervene to stop it and bring stability to the region, both as a matter of support for its allies and for its own strategic and economic interests.

It’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of security when China organizes military exercises and drills over and over again throughout the years with the intention of invading Taiwan, and then nothing ever happens.

Likewise, a nonstop stream of propaganda about the matter always turns into so much background noise in time.

But don’t get caught flat-footed on this: China will invade Taiwan, win, lose, or draw, and they are likely to do it soon.

Each of those exercises is larger than the one before, more intricate, and closer and closer to Taiwan. One day, “just another exercise” will be an actual invasion with all the trappings.

It’s too much to get into here, but China’s interest in reclaiming Taiwan is deeply rooted in their cultural and political interests, and for centuries.

They had to cede Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War. It was returned to China after World War II, but after the disastrous and monstrously deadly Chinese Civil War, the Chinese nationalists retreated to Taiwan in 1949, seceding from the Communist-controlled country.

The CCP has, and will always, regard Taiwan as an upstart, breakaway province that demands reunification by force under their One China policy.

Add to that the fact that Taiwan is a global linchpin in semiconductor and microchip manufacturing, and many other high-tech industries besides, and the matters of policy, national pride, legitimacy, and economics mean that China must invade sooner or later.

Primary U.S. Casus Belli: Declares War to Protect Microchip Supply

When China actively invades Taiwan, the US will enter the war even if they don’t actually declare war; Taiwan is simply too important to US economic interests and all technological industries to let this go unchecked and unchallenged.

And Taiwan, though a tiny nation with a pipsqueak military compared to the United States, has a phenomenally strong defensive footing against China’s amphibious and airborne invasion.

This is due to coastal defenses, anti-ship missiles, and extremely rugged, mountainous terrain that bisects the nation.

Even so, China’s only real chance for victory in conquering Taiwan is to do so before the US gets fully involved.

Secondary U.S. Casus Belli: Support of the Philippines and Japan to Counter Chinese Aggression

The Philippines and Japan, two United States allies who have a long though checkered history with their economic and defensive patron, have invested huge sums of wealth in stopping or at least hedging against Chinese aggression and expansionism in the region.

If China invades Taiwan, both of these nations will enter a war footing if they don’t enter the war directly even if just in a limited way.

The U.S. will be very quick to spring into action to back up and help protect its allies in the fight against China in the region, and will rely on them to help police and control the seaways which the US and the rest of the world will depend on during the conflict.

Initial Chinese Objectives: Strike U.S. Bases in Japan, Guam, and Elsewhere to Cripple U.S. Involvement in Region

So, China launches a massive amphibious and airborne invasion of Taiwan when the fateful day comes, one that may well dwarf the D-Day invasion of France during WWII in scope and intensity.

As mentioned above, China knows the clock is ticking when it comes to putting a pin on their Taiwanese ambitions: if China cannot secure and lock down Taiwan and the surrounding waters before the U.S. manages to bring its full might to bear on the matter, the war is likely lost.

But more than just military defeat, this will likely result in a total loss of legitimacy of the CCP on the homefront, something that the ruthless members of that hated regime would never allow.

Accordingly, this will well and truly be an all-or-nothing war, and beyond Taiwan, the war must be won against the United States before it starts. Therefore, the expectation is that China will seek to strike US bases in Japan, Guam, and elsewhere.

These bases are critical to projecting US force in the region, and destroying them will delay the arrival of aircraft and potentially ships.

Obviously, this will further enrage and commit the US, locking the two nations into a proper head-to-head conflict with no hope of extrication or surrender.

Initial U.S. Objectives: Destroy Chinese Navy Utterly, Severely Reduce Chinese Air Force, Protect Allies

From the jump, the US will seek to absolutely destroy the Chinese Navy in its entirety, stalling or stopping outright the amphibious invasion of Taiwan and cutting supply lines to what forces have already made it ashore.

Likewise, Chinese air power would also be targeted for wholesale reduction to gain greater control over the battle space and further isolate Chinese forces on Taiwanese soil.

If possible, the US will also move to protect allies in Japan and the Philippines from Chinese tactical or strategic strikes.

U.S. Bases in the Pacific Would Require Near Constant Conventional Bombardment to Neutralize

Here’s where things start to get really spicy in the conflict. Remember how I said that China would certainly strike US bases throughout the Pacific?

They have plenty of conventional ballistic missiles to do that with accuracy, and they are powerful enough to severely slow or even stop operations at these bases.

The trick is that US logistics and engineering are excellent, and the military can put even badly cratered runways back together and make them safe or even bombers in a matter of hours or days.

This, practically, means that the Chinese won’t buy much time even with an extraordinarily effective first strike.

This would necessitate a near-constant bombardment from missiles or aircraft to keep those runways and ports offline.

Considering the effectiveness of US countermeasures, aircraft, and the positioning of these bases, it’s unlikely that China would be content with half measures or those that would not guarantee them the time they need to subdue Taiwan.

China May Resort to WMDs to Destroy American Bases Totally, Buying Time to Complete Invasion Objectives

Remember what’s at stake with this war: the Chinese Communist Party has its very existence tied up in the Taiwanese invasion. Even if beaten back, they won’t be able to lick their wounds, soothe the populace, rebuild, rearm, and try again in 50 or 100 years.

They’ll be facing a total loss of legitimacy, and accordingly rebellion from a populace that is already chafing under their yoke.

Because of the stakes, and because so much hinges on keeping the US at bay long enough to seal the deal, China might resort to the use of weapons of mass destruction against US bases in Guam, Japan, and potentially elsewhere.

Whether it’s a conventional nuclear warhead, a highly radiological dirty bomb that makes the area uninhabitable, chemical weapons, or something else, the deployment of these weapons would likely knock out those bases for many, many months practically speaking, if not years.

Mmore importantly, they would do so certainly. This means the option will be on the table, if not the go-to option, from the very beginning.

With Chinese Deployment of WMDs, Stage is Set for Nuclear Exchange and World War III

Once China nukes or uses other WMDs against the US, the US is going to have their finger on the trigger too.

This is where uncertainty and consequential escalation make the future of the war difficult to ascertain: depending on the type of weapon used, how many were used, and how many bases were hit, the US may or may not retaliate in kind.

As the greater power, the targeting of retaliatory strikes would likewise be complicated by the presence of extremely dense civilian populations near major Chinese targets like naval bases.

If the US were to target less important but sparsely populated Chinese targets in a tit-for-tat scheme, the strategic return on investment would likely be in the negative for the US, and invite well-aimed retaliatory strikes from China.

However, it’s also possible that the United States would want to send a strong message to China, and every other would-be upstart power in the world.

Specifically, that the use of those weapons is never, ever acceptable against the greatest country in the world or its allies, and might overmatch the use of WMDs, and against highly important military targets.

But once the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, it is very, very difficult to get it back inside. At this point, a proper nuclear war is a possibility, if not guaranteed.

X-Factor: South Korean Involvement

There are a couple of major unknown factors in this scenario that I have detailed so far. The first is South Korean involvement.

The Korean peninsula is literally on China’s doorstep, and as another US ally and a country with a significant US military presence already, naturally the US would want to use South Korea as a staging or launching point.

That makes perfect sense on paper, of course, but it’s unlikely that South Korea would allow this, at least initially: that’s because North Korea is basically the rabid and barely controllable junkyard dog that China keeps on a leash to help keep South Korea in check.

My gut, and the preponderance of analyst opinion on the matter, says that South Korea will sit this out and not allow the US to launch strikes or retaliatory action from their soil for the duration of the conflict unless things turn into a proper world war. But then again, who knows what they might do?

X-Factor: Reliability of Chinese Rocket Forces

The other major unknown in this analysis is the reliability of the Chinese PLARF in totality.

Concerning conventional and nuclear missiles, the Chinese Rocket Forces have been rocked by scandal, graft, incompetency, and straight-up inoperability owing to poor design, engineering, and maintenance.

We know that nearly a dozen high-ranking PLA officers were vacated from their positions in the command structure because of corruption. Corruption, for instance, that resulted in missile silos and other launch vehicles being completely out of action, despite assurances to the contrary!

The scenario I have postulated so far hinges on the Chinese Rocket Forces being able to deliver against Taiwanese and American targets, and both conventional and nuclear payloads.

Again, it is difficult to cut through the CCP stranglehold on information, especially as a Western outsider. This is true even for highly placed and connected professional analysts.

It’s possible that more than enough of the Rocket Force weapons could work as designed, but it’s also possible that this is a literal paper tiger, with only a fraction of its total force being viable.

That said, my instincts tell me that China would not even attempt the invasion of Taiwan if leadership did not know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Rocket Forces could deliver.

U.S. and Chinese Nuclear Exchange Would Hit Civilian and Military Targets En Masse

And we come to it at last. When the first nuclear weapon detonates, or the use of some other kind of WMD warrants nuclear retaliation, things will snowball quickly out of control.

Targeting will switch from tactical against military installations to strategic, against civilian and military targets.

The United States possesses enough nuclear weapons, just on the ready line, to turn every centimeter of China into molten glass.

Even according to the most liberal estimates, China does not have enough nuclear weapons to completely scour the US from coast to coast, but that will hardly matter.

The result, for both countries and the world, will be nuclear Armageddon. This is also assuming, with woefully optimism, that other countries won’t get drawn into World War III and start their own nuclear exchanges with their foes or against the primary belligerents.

In the end, at the very worst, over a billion people will die, and billions more likely will in the resulting aftermath, global nuclear winter, and total disruption of global commerce and supply lines.

The post Total War Between the US and China? Here’s What Could Happen appeared first on Survival Sullivan.

By: Tom Marlowe
Title: Total War Between the US and China? Here’s What Could Happen
Sourced From: www.survivalsullivan.com/us-china-war/
Published Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2024 14:20:40 +0000

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