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America and China- War? PART 2

 

This Examiner would be hard pressed to cite a better quote about history, or a better man to cite, than the person who ended WWII with nuclear weapons.

 

In Part 1 of this series, we reviewed the modern position of Taiwan and The Peoples Repulic of China (PRC, relative to their switched positions on the UN Security Council, courtesy of the Nixon administration in 1971. Generally speaking, Taipei was marginalized as the PRC/ Beijing formally gained UN recognition. This occured during the Vietnam war, as a means by which the U.S sought to drive a wedge between Communist giants China and the USSR. Nonetheless, the US did not drop her security commitment to Taiwan and ever since, has continued to arm (what the PRC refers to as) her “renegade province”, -to the teeth.

 

Over the past fifteen years, military brinksmanship events have been ongoing between the US and PRC, though kept quiet in the media. In late October 1994, while the US was engaged in a show of force over North Korea's refusal to allow inspection of its nuclear facilities, the Chinese sent a 330-foot-long Han-class nuclear powered submarine into the Yellow Sea off of North Korea to tail a US aircraft carrier strike group, led by the USS Kittyhawk. For three days, the Chinese sub menaced the US ships, at one point coming within a mere twenty-one nautical miles of the Kitty Hawk, and scrambling a few F-6 fighters to conduct fly-bys of the Americans. This was kept secret until it was leaked to The Los Angeles Times. Afterwards, China threatened that "if such an incident occurred again, China's orders would be shoot-to-kill."

 

Two years later, in early 1996, the PRC unmasked her real intent toward Taiwan. A couple of weeks prior to free and democratic presidential elections, China mobilized forces opposite the island nation. Then, three mobile launched M-II intermediate-range missiles were fired into target zones close enough to Taiwan's two largest ports to disrupt shipping. The US, which at the time, happened to have another carrier strike group (the USS Independence) just 200 miles away, immediately sent it, as well as a second carrier group, headed by the USS Nimitz, into the region. The Chinese got the message.

 

However, later, a visiting US State Department official, Charles H. Freeman was informed by a Chinese diplomat that "if the United States intervened militarily on Taiwan, China was prepared to use nuclear missiles targeted on Los Angeles, California".

 

Prior to this point, the original ideological liason between Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin had cooled somewhat, as Stalin’s death in 1953 gave way to eras of Nikita Kruschef and Leonid Brezhnev. In fact, during the Spring and Summer of 1969, open military hostilities had erupted between the USSR and PRC, over the border in Manchuria. 

 

Nonetheless, both nations were centrally planned, repressive Communist dictatorships and here, a brief continuation of our modern history lesson must resume before we engage the situation as it stands today and give thought to what may be in store tomorrow.

 

In 1954, the United States and Taiwan initially signed a Mutual Defense Treaty. In accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act, since 1979, the US has continued to sell weapons to Taiwan. In 1999, the US set forth the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act

[ http://members.tripod.com/ken_davies/securityenhance.html ].

 

The situation in 1971, when Nixon and Kissinger cut something of a shocking ‘backroom deal’ with Mao, should be viewed in perspective: Nixon inherited the war in Vietnam and had built his entire political career as a McCarthyesque anti-Communist. The 1969 border war between the Communist giants presented itself in Henry Kissinger’s mind as a chess-like opportunity to exploit Sino-Soviet discord. The USSR had been supplying North Vietnam with arms in a war that wasn’t going well for the US Lastly, it should not go without mention that (nuclear -since1964), the PRC had powerfully displayed her conventional war potential as a game-changing combatant during the Korean War (1950-1953). There came to be grave concern that the PRC might take a more active role in supporting what were at least her ideological allies, the USSR and North Vietnam, against the US In effect, Korea all over again, -but worse- in terms of potential US casualties in an already unpopular war with an even higher high casualty rate.

 

It is not difficult to understand how Nixon was persuaded to pull off a diplomatic coup that would serve to alienate Moscow from Beijing at a ripe moment. In December 1949, Mao Zedong had traveled to Moscow to align with Stalin. He stayed for two months. Mao returned from Moscow with a Mutual Defense Treaty as well as all Manchurian Ports. His commitment to Stalin was made abundantly evident on November 26, 1950, when PRC troops stormed across the Yalu River into North Korea and Dunkirk-style, drove American forces back in complete disarray. The US rout was so catastrophic that for four days, the US President refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. It was almost WWIII. In early 1951, the Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of Defense and General MacArthur were all urging President Truman to use nuclear weapons against Chinese forces. In fact, 56% of Americans polled supported use of the weapons!

 

Fortunately, America’s most influential ally, Britain, was adamantly opposed to this, and Truman declined to repeat a Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Eighteen nations fought in that horrible war and it cost almost three million (mostly civilian) lives as it was. America ultimately lost 36,516 men there. Clearly, Nixon and Kissinger left for China heavy-hearted over the ongoing situation in Vietnam. With the PRC lesson of Korea in mind and how much more nuclear-weaponized the world had become since, this seemed a perfect opportunity for “rapprochement”.  

 

It was now 1971. At that point in history, China had been manufacturing her own nuclear weapons since 1964 and things had already come perilously close to nuclear weapon usage in both 1951 (Korea) and 1962 (Kennedy / Cuba / USSR).

 

Nixon happily exchanged toasts with Premier Zhou Enlai, shook hands with Mao and agreed to politically demote Taiwan, giving its seat in the U.N. to Beijing. China had thus taken step #1 toward achieving economic reconstruction without political reform.

 

Step #2 came in January 1978 when seventy-four-year-old PRC leader Deng Xiaoping arrived in Washington. Since, he had survived the purge-attempt and incarceration by Mao’s hated, surviving wife. He had come out top dog. Her “Gang of Four” proved short-lived. Mao’s “Great Leap (Backward)” into state industrialization had ranked right up there with Stalin’s horrific farm collectivization move of the 1930’s and had cost thirty million Chinese lives in the 1960’s, -with nothing to show for it in terms of modern advancement.

 

At the end of that momentous year, 1978, Deng Xiaoping presided over the Communist Party’s Third Plenum of the 11^th Congress and turned the Chinese tide toward a market-based economy. Deng left Washington with assurances that as she developed, her exports would have access to the vast US consumer market. Free-trading Special Economic Zones were set up along the Chinese coast and US firms responded with Direct Foreign Investment (DFI). The day of US “outsourcing” had dawned. In a period of just thirty years, this has seen imports from the PRC go from cheap clothes and shoes to a US trade deficit comprised of 40% electrical machinery and power generation equipment. The PRC displaced Japan as Americas #1 trade “partner”, becoming a global economic rival. China is now clearly the world’s next major superpower.

 

This brings us to modern times. Continuing arms sales to Taiwan [note fellow Examiner Michael Richardson’s documentation of this http://tinyurl.com/MRichardsonTaiwan1 as well as the Obama administration’s immediate status quo orientation toward this issue as set forth in Mr. Richardson’s article on the subject

 

 

On April 1, 2001 the Chinese capture of a US EP-3 (an incredibly sophisticated, espionage equipment laden aircraft, an intelligence gathering tool beyond Ian Fleming's wildest dreams) and the ten day detainment of its crew, put the world spotlight on the US defense establishment's publicly undeclared policy of "containment" toward China's ambitions throughout all of Asia.

 

A former Naval Aviator, this Examiner noted the lack of media explanation that clearly, the Chinese were attempting to force the US plane down with standard intercept procedural flying: Basically, the two fighter aircraft get into formation, sandwiching the target, then begin a series of precisely coordinated reductions in airspeed, altitude and heading change.

 

In order to avoid a collision, the target is forced to make the same maneuvers. One does not need to be a leather-helmeted mental giant trailing a white scarf from his cockpit to figure out what might happen if the Chinese interceptors had initiated these procedures and the US plane ignored them, maintaining constant altitude heading and roll, as is the case say, when a plane is on autopilot.

 

In these circumstances, who collided with who, how, where and when in the three dimensional world of flight becomes relative and immaterial. The point is, everyone's world got rocked when Wang Wei's F-8 fighter probably lost tail-end horizontal and vertical stabilizer control to the US aircraft's outer port propeller. The result was bickering between Beijing and Washington over "detainees" who could just as easily have become "hostages".

 

The US posture was one of "regret" over Chinese loss of life (and US compromise of a bonanza of US intelligence information re: "how-to" spy technology of the most advanced nature. Public PR about the welfare of the crew masked deep anguish by the Pentagon, CIA and NSA about what information members of that EP-3 crew could have provided under interrogation). However, the US position, refusal to extend "regret" to "an apology", was not simply a matter of "pride" or semantics:  The incident occurred over waters recognized as Chinese, only by the People's Republic of China (PRC). The rest of the world sees the waters as international—and they are.

 

At that time of this incident (2001), the PRC was still smarting from the Tiananmen Square student Democracy episode of 1989. Since then, they had bolted upright to take notice as, in 1990-1991, US light-years-ahead advanced technology and rapid deployment capability (swiftly countering Iraq's aggression against Kuwait) riveted world attention. China suddenly began to apply her economic reforms and growth of unprecedented magnitude, embarking upon a “long march" to advance her military strength, sophistication and power.

 

In the event China should ever decide to “flex muscles” vis a vis Taiwan, The Persian Gulf War set a precedent as to how well the US could respond.

 

Over the period of a mere thirty years, the US has unwittingly helped to transform a monster. The PRC with its repressive, threatening, weapons-of-mass-destruction-exporting record to Pakistan, Libya and Algeria, has never been overly concerned with the US non-proliferation focus du jour. From selling huge amounts of chemical and conventional weapons to these common and US adversaries, on arming both Iraq and Iran (main battle tanks, rocket launchers, fighter aircraft, anti-tank guided missiles, surface to surface missiles etc.) as well as stealing the intellectual property necessary to manufacture the neutron bomb, the PRC has more than demonstrated that they have replaced the now-defunct USS.R as US global enemy #1.

 

The United States is still the prevailing world power; China is the prevailing fastest-rising power. The goal of the US has been to thwart and contain China in this regard and China's goal, to obliterate any shackles or attempt at placing them.

 

Continuing to arm Taiwan with hundreds of US F-16's etc., etc. has been the most powerful shackle the US has upon China. They know it, Washington knows it and the world at large knows it. This guarantees a collision in history, somewhere, somehow. Not if, but when. The most absurd thing here is that, thanks to the complete whoring out ("virtuous-self-interest") of our capitalist system, the US trade deficit with the PRC has climbed past the unsustainable $255 billion range.  

 

In addition to the aforementioned on-going arms sales to US adversaries, the Chinese have laid claim to sovereignty over the entire South China Sea. This is the same sea that US ally Japan gets most of its energy and raw materials from. That's the same Japan under our "nuclear umbrella". Separately, North Korea, China's economic embarrassment of an ally, acquired long-range missile technology, and has played on-again, off-again Saddam Hussein-like games pertaining to international inspection of nuclear plants. In the process, they have provided Iran with technological nuclear weapon assistance.

 

Technically, the Korean war has never ended, and has stood at a DMZ face off at the 38th parallel since the days of Stalin and Mao. The US still maintains an able fighting force of 25,000 US troops in South Korea with about 50,000 in Japan (primarily in Okinawa), this is -important- to US strategic interests. Not to mention the fact that as WWII came to a close in 1945, about 50,000 US casualties resulted from Japan's fanatic defense of Okinawa. Consequently, the US Navy, the world’s most powerful and feared projector of national military force, has routine interest in maintaining the status quo, earned with the blood of over one hundred thousand US fighting men.