The PLAs missile forces are central to Chinas efforts to deter and counter third-party intervention in a regional conflict, a US congressional report concluded this month. It has additional radars and air defence weapons on outposts in the South China Sea, which extend its IADS zone out even further, although these latter systems can be destroyed by the US. But apart from that, Australia has little military value to the US. The People's Liberation Army is capable of "substantially subduing" the US Navy in the waters around China, a Communist Party-owned newspaper boasts. "Were the US and China to go to war over the next five to 10 years, the best scenario one might envisage for the US is a stalemate. With China's rise and democracy's decline, what will the global order look like in 2050? Over the past two decades, China has built formidable political warfare and cyber warfare capabilities designed to penetrate, manipulate and disrupt the United States and allied governments, media organizations, businesses and civil society. If the US went to war with China, who would win? China or the US could do this by feeding misleading information to satellites from the ground known as spoofing to stop the space-based location pinpointing needed for weapons. "Australia has been there before. Don't Do It: An All-Out War With China Could End Humanity It is a bad idea to get into a shooting war with a fellow nuclear power. Should US tensions with China flare into a war there is no question that these days Washington would put enormous pressure on Albanese, or any future leader, to join them in that conflict. Yet if China wanted to conquer Taiwan, the outcome could be different. Beijings tactic of area denial already appears to have been effective. "They have publicly been very clear about not only . The feud over the reigns of global influence is playing out in Southeast Asia. "The joint facility at Pine Gap would be a very important, indeed crucial, element in US intelligence gathering and in Command and Control. But this will take time. Any such war, he says, would primarily be a maritime conflict and would be on a scale unprecedented since World War II. These are all Cold War allies of the US, but they have not had to think about war in the region since the 1970s. Allan Behm, who is now head of the international and security program at The Australia Institute, says were the US and China to go to war over the next five to 10 years, the best one might envisage for the US is a stalemate. "The fundamental assumption that we could win a war against China is wrong-headed and hawkish; it is also very risky. "The defence of Taiwan is predicated on a Chinese invasion but if China's main effort is not an invasion but a blockade, then what? "Australia is never reluctant to support and participate in American adventurism. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here. The US is suddenly no longer the world's only military superpower. "But the prospect of war with China raises very different possibilities including for example, the significant likelihood that aircraft, ships and submarines we committed would be destroyed, with the potential for very high casualties among the crews. Beijing has already put its assets in place. Blood, sweat and tears. Chinas 1264 warplanes, meanwhile, are based in China. 2. A major war in the Indo-Pacific is probably more likely now than at any other time since World War II. Certainly not in the six-to-eight minutes it could take a DF-11 A rocket to cross the 130 kilometre-wide Taiwan Strait to its target. What would war with China look like for Australia? However, without the strong protection of the Australian forces, the world will be in peril from an unrestrained Emu army. These flew out of Japan and down the east coast of Taiwan to operate near the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier battle group and the Chinese Liaoning. And a navy. (Handout photo from the U.S. navy) Admiral James Stavridis was 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and 12th Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. I told President Xi that we will maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific just as we do with NATO in Europe not to start conflict, but to prevent conflict, US President Joe Biden told a joint session of Congress in April. China has built the world's largest navy and has become increasingly assertive over contested areas such as the South China Sea. China is aware of this gap. All agree, for example, that the United States with or without Australias assistance cannot win a war against China. Hopefully Australian statesmen would have played a significant role in the lead up to a breakdown in cross straits relations.". He believes a blockade of Taiwan by China is more likely than a cross-strait invasion. An earlier government tinkered with the concept of a reduction in the ten years of warning but did almost nothing about demonstrating seriousness. Wherever they start, they finish only when one side decides to give up. Part 2. China would seek to pluck out the eyes and ears of the US and allies to make them blind on the battlefield, said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. All have been involved in sensitive military operations. The area around it would be highly contested and US war reserve stocks in the Pacific are earmarked for US forces that will assist Taiwan not for Taiwan itself. Despite this, U.S. military planners would prefer to fight a conventional war. "In their use of armed force, the American operational paradigm is largely unconcerned by its own casualty rates, so long as they are lower than those of their adversary. Australia had long maintained it didn't have to choose. Mr. Xi has championed Chinas political warfare capabilities as a magic weapon.. Hugh White, an emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, has warned about the serious consequences that could arise from not adequately addressing tensions. But is Taiwans fate any of our business, as Beijing insists it isnt? The US believes China has about 2000 mid-range missiles in place, which could ward off the US Navy in a conflict. The only way we can possibly win such a war is to build a coalition similar to NATO. And the West may not be able to do much about it. The bulk of these goods is transported aboard ships along sea lanes increasingly controlled by Chinese commercial interests that are ultimately answerable to Chinas party-state. Dr Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst with ASPI's Defence, Strategy and National Security Program, told Daily Mail Australia it is increasingly likely President Xi Jinping will order Chinese forces. Spain is a notable exception, however, with 48% believing Russia to have the advantage currently, compared to 32% who feel neither side has the upper hand and 6% who think Ukraine is winning. Russia's struggles in Ukraine are showing US special operators that they'll need to fight without their 'tethers' to win future wars. Do they think an all-volunteer defence force can do the job? "China's leaders could discreetly offer negotiations to Taiwan's leaders during a blockade before the risky step of ordering an amphibious invasion," Professor Fernandes says. "Would Australia have taken steps to make sure its own intelligence is based on Australian information and assessments? "In a war involving Taiwan, US forces would be deployed over long distances from CONUS [Continental United States]. It was Kevin Rudd who coined the phrase a "decade of living dangerously". In 1947 with setting up of the United Nations, after the catastrophes of both world wars and the more limited wars in the intervening years, we tried to build a system of managing international relationships without the recourse to war. While the US remains ahead in space for now, Davis says how long US dominance lasts is not clear. And that is where any fight to resolve Taiwan's fate will be resolved. In 2004 U.S. manufacturing output was more than twice Chinas; in 2021, Chinas output was double that of the United States. Mr. Xi has championed . It means mine laying by air and naval units, particularly submarines, blockading ports, inspecting maritime traffic including commercial shipping, intercepting aircraft, and attacking adversary military forces as necessary. There are still hundreds of diplomats and politicians around the world including in Canberra working openly and behind the scenes to ensuretensions between China and the US never escalate into war. The most probable spark is a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Chinas grey zone strategy is designed to use fishing fleets to swarm disputed waters in the East and South China Sea, now supported by armed Chinese Coast Guard cutters leveraging their status as non-combatants to get in close and be able to overwhelm US Navy warship sensors and defence perimeters, former navy intelligence director James Fanell told US media. Even by 2050 our 37 million people could not amount to much alongside countries having a population base of over 100 million people many of them in our region. Taiwan is within that zone: 180 nautical miles. The collapse of the League of Nations and the dreadful cost of war held hard lessons for how we had to manage international relationships better. No doubt Australian passions would run high. Imaginary targets could quickly be replaced by real ones. All times AEDT (GMT +11). And Beijings new navy has been in almost a constant string of live fire exercises for the past year. "I do not know whether Defence planners in Canberra would have made such estimates. "In the history of the 20th century, it took two world wars to deal with the difficult policy question of dealing with rising powers prepared to challenge the statusquo. "It is not clear how formidable Taiwan'sdefences would prove to be in the face of a Chinese invasion. Steaming at 25 knots, an aircraft carrier in Pearl Harbour would take about a week to reach Taiwan. [A war is] something that you and I may well have to confront in the next five to 10 years, he said. "The Kadena air base is 450 nautical miles away from Taiwan and threatened by Chinese surface-to-surface missiles. But the definition of ancestral territory appears to be changing rapidly. Then theres the sheer difficulty the United States would face waging war thousands of miles across the Pacific against an adversary that has the worlds largest navy and Asias biggest air force. "I hope they don't mean that, just as Britain has the Gurkhas, the Americans have us. "The irrational elements thus make direct large-scale confrontation between two nuclear powers very dangerous. The US military has been racking up decades of in-the-field experience, most recently with deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Middle East. A Chinese close-in weapons system (CIWS) designed to shoot down incoming missiles during recent war games. As Australia enjoys all the benefits of a free and open society in a stable and functioning democracy, our principles and values must extend to supporting the survival of Taiwan.. Supply chains of some critical goods and services need to be reconfigured to shift production to the United States or allied nations, and the United States must pursue a longer-term strategic drive to restore its dominance in global manufacturing. "China's IADS includes an extensive early warning radar network, fighter aircraft, and a variety of surface to air missile (SAM) systems. A blockade, he says, would mean that 80 per cent of ships and aircraft would be unable to pass. The aim would be to foster confusion, division and distrust and hinder decision making. The Bashi Channel connects the South China Sea with the Pacific Ocean. An embarrassed politician may suddenly feel compelled to enforce a vague red line. Failing to come to Taiwans aid would seriously weaken and perhaps destroy Americas position in Asia, and our alliance with America would be seriously weakened if not destroyed if we failed to support the US. "America would then have to decide whether to go to war to break the blockade.". "In the past, when I was working in government, we sometimes offered ministers some indication of the possible cost in lives if things went badly in the kind of lower-level commitments that we made in the 1990s. And Australia could be fighting for its survival. Beyond out-producing the US Navy in the number of warships at a rate of four to one, the PLA Strategic Rocket Force has put US aircraft carriers at risk with the fielding of the DF-21D and DF-26 anti-carrier ballistic missiles, Mr Fanell said. ", Any US-China war would be primarily a maritime conflict, and it would be, as we have seen, on a scale unprecedented since the Second World War. For China, the worst-case scenario is to have to conduct simultaneous high-intensity operations against Taiwan, the United States, Japan, and other US allies and partners. The geographic focus is decisive. Today, the analysis of Allan Behm, a former head of the International Policy and Strategy Divisions of the Defence Department and Professor Clinton Fernandes, a former intelligence officer in the Australian military, are investigated. The four have more than 100 years of high-level military and strategic experience between them. And each one would require a heavy investment of equipment and lives to neutralise if they could be reached in the first place. And that makes the kind of island-hopping campaign used by the US to take back the Pacific from Japan in World War II no longer feasible. A former US Army lieutenant colonel has warned of a possible "nuclear exchange" if the US breaks out into war with China. But unlike Ukraine, where Europe is largely united in condemning Russia, Asia will not be united in condemning China.". Such possibilities seem remote at present. Then, it was mainly Germany, and from the 1930s Japan. February 27, 2023 China's foreign minister Qin Gang will attend the G20 foreign ministers' meeting on March 2. The map below, compiled from data provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is the most accurate nuclear attack map and fallout demonstration available for 2023: (Image courtesy of FEMA and Halcyon Maps) The fallout would rapidly spread, turning targeted cities into whole affected regions. Especially without comprehensive and numerous missile defence systems. A month earlier, Xi Jinping had told the Peoples Liberation Army: We should persist in using combat to guide our work; step up preparations for war.. And in a defensive war, China has the enormous advantage of mass, as Stalin demonstrated after the end of 1942.". And a mountain range makes it hard to reinforce via its eastern shores. "It would suffer high attrition and its military modernisation and even its one-party Communist rule would be threatened. The head of Russian mercenary group Wagner says his forces have practically encircled the crucial city of Bakhmut. Our economy would be paralysed as all trade with China and other major East Asian partners would stop dead and may not resume for a long time. The decision to go to war would not require a public discussion. Russia, China, Britain, U.S. and France say no one can win nuclear war. Meia Nouwens from the International Institute for Strategic Studies said Beijing was intent on achieving primacy in the waters that surround China. Australians could wake up one morning to the news that we are at war with China. These waterways could be used to bottle up Chinese forces. A separatist democracy against a legitimate government? After multiple clashes between Australia's regional partners and China, tensions are rising. The only truly reliable way to counter the threat would be to attack the submarines in port when they refuel and rearm, he writes. Professor Clinton Fernandes is a former intelligence officer with the Australian Army Intelligence Corps and now Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales. "A blockade means that 80 per cent of ships and aircraft will be unable to pass. Some 64 percent of Australians viewed a potential military conflict between the U.S. and China as a "critical threat" to Australia's national interests, behind Russia's foreign policy (68 percent . To walk countries away from war we have concluded that statesmanship finds more purchase on risk aversion than on hawkishness. "I worry when politicians start to think it is acceptable to use the media to make threats about war. "Australia has always had a fascination about China, going well back in our history to pre-federation days. "Conventional submarines offer some additional intelligence gathering capability, and the other force elements provide a small additional capacity to the US. "If they think the blockade is failing they may declare victory by pointing to the damage already inflicted, or they might escalate to attacking US forces that are supporting Taiwan. The vision is not a new one: White knights charging forth, flags flying, to save friends from a bellowing dragon. A war with China over Taiwan, awful as that would be, involves no Australian national interests. Have employers used high inflation as cover to make excessive profits? "The question is really about a force-on-force comparison between China and the US. If not, what steps have been taken to change our posture? If the US went to war with China, who would win? It runs between the Japanese islands of Mikako and Okinawa. What would war with China look like for Australia? by Robert Farley L Key Point: Escalation spirals are hard to. U.S. citizens have grown accustomed to sending their military off to fight far from home. An F-16s normal operational radius is usually about 600km. The leaders of both Ukraine and Russia are expected to meet with China's president in the near future. But precision bombing requires the military to have access to space, where orbiting satellites help guide munitions. Humans have become a predatory species. Thinking of scale I am reminded that In 1944 the US alone out-produced the rest of the world combined in all war stores before the wars ended in 1945. The number of inhabitants is 1,444,390,177. Satellite image of Chinese vessels in the Whitsun Reef in a disputed zone, March 23, 2021. Credit:Maxar Technologies via AP. While most members voted in favor of the six U.N. General Assembly resolutions passed since last . Far fewer know their real story. Chinas focus on its region would give it a local advantage in any clash with the US. One option to attack the man-made islands would be to send in teams of US Marine Raider commandos to destroy weapons systems. These threats from nature pose potentially disastrous outcomes that look inevitable; we have yet to find the statesmen to deal effectively with them. How Japan is fortifying a string of tiny islands to fence in China, Taiwan takes lessons from Ukraine as it speeds development of drones for military use, Visiting US Marine Corps chief warns 'everything in the cupboard' needed to prevent war with China, Man discovers two highly venomous species battling in his shed, Inside the family succession drama threatening to change the K-pop industry forever. Put bluntly, the repercussions of Australia joining the US in any war with China over the status of Taiwan or any other issue may have catastrophic consequences. China is largely trying to take territorial control, which makes east Asia a likely location for trouble. It is for that reason that some commentators, including me, do not think that China is likely to initiate an offensive war in the near future, until it is sure that it has enough mass to win quickly. The US could also use submarines and stealth aircraft to attack Chinas shipping fleet in the Indian Ocean to cripple its economic lifelines in times of a crisis. I think the US now accepts it may lose a conflict at least at the conventional level with China.. "When the US closed down Bagram airbase in Afghanistan the Afghan Army collapsed. "Australia has a fundamental strategic pathology to support the interests of the US at the expense of our own. I am convinced that the challenges facing the United States are serious, and its citizens need to become better aware of them. The context for decision making would be vitally important weighing the potential costs to the country, domestically and internationally, against the value of that cost for maintaining the ANZUS relationship. This means any idea of sustained operations within the Pacific-spanning reach of Chinas ballistic and cruise missiles is likely optimistic. "There would thus bea high chance that involvement in a war with China would swiftly exceed the toll in casualties suffered in Vietnam and Korea.". The size of the military mobilisation required to achieve this wouldinvolve calling up the reserves and activating the society at large, not just the military,well in advance of an invasion. China also has more than 1,350 ballistic and cruise missiles poised to strike U.S. and allied forces in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and American-held territories in the Western Pacific. In the recent parliamentary inquiry into war powers reform, the Department of Defence said it didn't think parliament should have authority to decide our involvement because that 'could undermine the confidence of our international partners as a reliable and timely security partner'. No other country on the planet, save New Zealand, is better placed from a purely defensive perspective. of Strategic Forum in Canberra, Australia. The Miyako Strait connects the East China Sea with the Pacific Ocean. I don't think so! This is what a statesman should do as a risk averse response. One real threat mistaken for a bluff. On the military front, the United States should accelerate programs already underway to strengthen and disperse American forces in the Western Pacific to make them less vulnerable to attacks by China. A War With China Would Be Unlike Anything Americans Faced Before, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/27/opinion/a-war-with-china-would-reach-deep-into-american-society.html, more than 1,350 ballistic and cruise missiles, worlds largest navy and Asias biggest air force, the East is rising while the West is declining. The US has launched 615 satellites into space in the last three years, compared to 168 by China, according to Lowy. Beijings response was prompt and predictable. Inflation and unemployment would surge, especially in the period in which the economy is repurposed for the war effort, which might include some automobile manufacturers switching to building aircraft or food-processing companies converting to production of priority pharmaceuticals. "Along with military mobilisation China would need to prepare its citizens and economy for a protracted conflict. He believes Australia has a "fundamental strategic pathology to support the interests of the US at the expense of our own.". It depends how it starts. If the United States cannot control the air, it cannot win either at land or at sea. Australia's oldest running coal-fired power station is about to close. "For my part Australians may be able to defend our nation because of our geographic good luck. China is a country located in Eastern Asia with an area of 9,596,961 km2 (land boundries: 22,457 km and costline 14,500 km). Hugh White says a war between the US and China over Taiwan would "probably be the biggest and most disruptive war the world has seen since 1945". "Relatively, we are a small country today and becoming even smaller in comparison to the company we keep. Five-centuries-old saffron and ginger found preserved in shipwreck off Sweden, Chinese migrants walked a gruelling 500km to Victoria's goldfields in the 19th century. "Wars contain elements of the irrational: pride, fear, ego, confidence, humiliation, and other emotions that elude our attempts at calculation. To accept that argument as policy would mark the end of our strategic alliance with the US, leaving us more exposed to Chinese coercive pressure and political warfare, or even a direct military threat, Dr Davis says. The last time Chinese troops saw direct action was 1979 when China launched a costly month-long war against Vietnam to teach it a lesson in retaliation for Hanois actions in south-east Asia. Despite decades of warnings, our fuel refineries continue to close. Professor Hugh White, a former Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Department of Defence, Admiral Chris Barrie, Australias most senior military leader asChief of the Defence Force from 1998 to 2002, Allan Behm, a former head of the International Policy and Strategy Divisions of the Defence Department. And what would such a fight look like? "As Carl von Clausewitz noted [in his book On War], defence is the stronger form of war. "The military centre of gravity is China's integrated air defence system (IADS) in the south. Find out more about our policy and your choices, including how to opt-out. And all are watching with great interest as the drums of war beat in some quarters regarding a possible war with China. "Given the size of the Australia's forces and the logistic constraints on the US forces, a war against China would be a very hard war to fight. "Ultimately, I do not see how America could inflict enough damage on China to force Beijing to concede over Taiwan, without using nuclear weapons. Allan Behm, now head of the international and security program at The Australia Institute, says were the US and China to go to war over the next five to 10 years the best potential outcome for the US is a stalemate. "We have done work that shows that 'risk aversion'is the critical factor in avoiding war. If Australians are hearing the 'beating drums' of war, as Minister Mike Pezzullo put it, is it because Scott Morrison's Coalition government thinks banging on about China will be a winning . But China is a different kind of foe a military, economic and technological power capable of making a war felt in the American homeland. Australia, however, was a strategic asset. Now it is China. "For Australia the conflict would be devastating whether we joined the fighting or not. "There would also be a possibility of exceptionalism if most other countries in Asia did not get involved. If a conflict were to erupt in east Asia, then the Chinese military is closer to on par with the United States. I do not think there is any credible chance that America, with or without Australia's support, could win a war with China over Taiwan. US soldiers, some seen here at a military exercise in Morocco earlier in June, have been deployed to battles across the world for the past 50 years. "China's leaders could discreetly offer negotiations to Taiwan's leaders during a blockade before taking the risky step of ordering an amphibious invasion. "Washington would expect Australia to contribute the full range of our air and naval forces to the maximum extent of our capability, including surface warships, submarines, F-18 and F-35 fighters, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, airborne early warning aircraft and tanker aircraft.. Should a war break out around the South China Sea, the US would be under pressure to quickly neutralise the roughly 10 man-made islands China has created (seen as unsinkable aircraft carriers) to use as military bases. And, if a shooting war does break out, the US and its allies are not guaranteed a win. Have employers used high inflation as cover to make excessive profits? "The question requires urgent, high-profile debate in parliament and among the wider public.
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