When President Obama called on the U.S. military to shift its focus to Asia earlier this year, Andrew Marshall, a 91-year-old futurist, had a vision of what to do.
Marshall’s small office in the Pentagon has spent the past two decades planning for a war against an angry, aggressive and heavily armed China.
No one had any idea how the war would start. But the American response, laid out in a concept that one of Marshall’s longtime proteges dubbed “Air-Sea Battle,” was clear.
Stealthy American bombers and submarines would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems located deep inside the country. The initial “blinding campaign” would be followed by a larger air and naval assault.
The concept, the details of which are classified, has angered the Chinese military and has been pilloried by some Army and Marine Corps officers as excessively expensive. Some Asia analysts worry that conventional strikes aimed at China could spark a nuclear war.
U.S. model for a future war fans tensions with China and inside Pentagon – The Washington Post
If you are China looking in at the Pentagon, then you know you will have a real problem in a conventional conflict. And if China loses a conventional conflict with the US, then the regime is in big trouble. I mean real big trouble. The lives of the leaders are at stake. Failure is not an option.
It’s pretty clear that China is on a collision course with the US over the South China Sea and East China Sea. In a year or two something big is going to happen. If China is not able to intimidate the US into staying out of the area, then war (Conventional) will surely result. And it really is not entirely clear if China can win.
Given that China cannot be allowed to lose a conflict or war with the US, then what is China to do?
First, China cannot and will not allow a conventional conflict to escalate out of control. Second, China must consider a Pearl Harbor style nuclear attack on the US. This attack must come out of the blue just like the original Japanese attack. However, the attack will be based on some prior incident or catalyst. China needs some specific reason to blame the US.
If China is smart, and I think it is, then it must have a lot more nuclear weapons than we know. So called experts think it has around 100 to 300 nuclear weapons. So mighty China has a nuclear weapons arsenal on par with tiny Israel. That does not pass the big-picture test. I think the right answer is a lot closer to 2,000 to 3,000 based on its capacity to hide these weapons in tunnels.
Now we wait until something happens and hope that I am wrong about everything.
