If It Comes To A Shooting War...

Well, a fanciful and overly optimistic view on the Third World War from China's perspective is what I'd call that.

Please, the US is FULLY aware of the advantages and threat of sea skimming supersonic anti-ship missiles. If you really think they would sail their carrier battle groups up into the China Sea thinking they were immune, your crazy.

The US, if it did decide to fight China over Taiwan, (to be honest, impo, they would back off and let China just have it. Taiwan is NOT worth starting World War III over).

They would begin it with a massive air campaign targetting China's shoreline missile batteries. They would sink the entire Chinese navy, both surface and subsurface, using their fleet of SeaWolf and LA class nuclear attack submarines. They would engage the Chinese in space and fight them, anti-satellite to anti-satellite. The net effect being, both sides may well end up blinded from space. They would hold their carriers well offshore until ALL threats had been neutralized. The US navy has some of the most sophisticated anti-mine gear in the world, and the mines, the missiles, all of it, would be neutralized, before a US carrier group got within 200 miles of the Chinese coast.

And rest assured, the US navy knows all about any public, published Chinese attack plans and has drawn up exaustive counter-measures against it.

During the Cold war, the biggest thorn in the side of the US was the Soviet Union. They hated them, fought them clandesdinely spy vs spy and sub vs sub all over the world, and rattled sabres at them till the cows came home. But no war was ever fought. Why?

The stakes were too high. Both sides knew that to instigate it could very well be the end of civilization.

And the same goes today for China and the US. There is no ticking clock to deal with China before it gains any advantage militarily. They have had that advantage since they got the bomb. You DO NOT want to mess with China, and doing so would be mutually assured destruction of a kind not seen in human history so far. And both sides know it.

So I see that when push comes to shove, Japan and the US will grudgingly hand over Taiwan to China. It's just not worth World War III.

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“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous, the essential act of warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour”