A well-known 20th century American general once said that Americans can fight and win any war if all of the following conditions applied:
- They were supplied with the best weapons, clothing, food, and equipment.
- They had the full support of the American public.
- They had an enemy that presented a clear threat to their homeland.
I cannot remember who said this. It might have been Douglas MacArthur, but these words were later ignored by many generals and politicians who should have known better. (MacArthur also once said that America should never get involved in an Asian land war. We all know how he ignored that in Korea.)
I would add two more lessons we learned the hard way because of Vietnam:
- Never go into a war with anything less than overwhelming strength.
(The Vietnam War never had the full support of the American public, even as a limited war. Americans would never have supported going into Vietnam with the overwhelming strength that was needed to completely subdue North Vietnam.)
- Never send US military forces to war to achieve a political goal. The US military is very good at killing people and blowing things up. But it’s not so good at negotiated outcomes.
(Despite Vietnam, we had to painfully re-learn that all over again in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
With those 5 points in mind, let’s look into Ukraine and Taiwan.
We can do #1. Our air and naval forces are easily the best in the world. But on the ground, in faraway places like Ukraine or Taiwan, it would require a major land army effort. And that could only happen if items #2 and #3 also happened. It would also require significant help from allies.
It’s unlikely that Russia or China would go so far as to directly threaten the USA. They both have shown their ability to provoke us without going far enough to provoke an all-out response.
It’s my guess that Russia is bluffing about Ukraine. Putin wants to take it without fighting a costly large scale war. Russia simply cannot afford that kind of war, win or lose. He wants to learn how far the US and NATO will allow him to go on the cheap.
China, on the other hand, is less easy for me to read. They do extensive business with us and the rest of the world. Why would they harm their own economic self-interest? But, it is also clear that they are expanding their military in a big way.
The entire Chinese effort at expanding into the South China Sea can be easily explained if you look at a map for the island of Hainan (see below). The Chinese have a major submarine base on the north side of that island. In the past, that was their only submarine base, where all their nuclear missile subs were based. But I’m not sure if there aren’t other bases now.
The South China Sea is notoriously shallow water. Submerged subs can easily be spotted by airplanes or satellites. Chinese subs have to travel east of Taiwan and the Philippines before they reach deep water. That’s why the Chinese are so aggressively claiming the South China Sea as their own – to enable deep water access for their submarines. I don’t know if the Chinese are bluffing about taking Taiwan or not, but it might be enough to force us to act. I sure hope we have good intelligence on the Chinese.
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