WAR IN THE PACIFIC? Part 1

BACKGROUND AND DISPUTES

The incoming US Administration is highly focused on China and the threat it poses to trade. Indeed trade may well be at the centre of what drives the policies of both sides. The US is hooked on cheap Chinese manufactured products, and China is hooked on the money and economic benefits that brings. There’s a stark interdependence where each is reliant on the other for their living standards and lifestyles.

If it were just trade issues that caused problems it would be one thing. However there’s a growing military and geopolitical rivalry because China seems to have made up its mind that what belongs to others actually belongs to it. It doesn’t seem to matter what that is, money, intellectual property rights, land, sea, air space, resources. China wants what it wants no matter what agreements it might have signed to the contrary.

China is involved in land border disputes with India in two areas, Bhutan, Nepal, Vietnam, even Russia on the Amur River and in regard of access to the sea where Russia, China and N.Korea meet, as well as Japan in the Ryuku islands.

In the South China Sea the infamous ‘nine dash line’ which China virtually invented based on old and inaccurate maps going back centuries, and has been ruled illegal by the International Court, based on the laws of the sea that China is a party to. The Philippines took China to court in 2016 and won, but China refused to even state its case and has ignored the ruling ever since.

The South China Sea is even more important than you might imagine, another reason China is claiming dominance. Over 40% of world shipped trade goes through this stretch of sea on its way to China, Japan and South Korea. There are key choke points to the Indian Ocean at Singapore and the Taiwan-Phillipines gap, which carries oil to all three countries. Japan and S.Korea are dependent on these shipping lanes.

The Philippines has been intimidated remorselessly by the Chinese at the Scarborough and Sabrina shoals. An old and rusting Phillipino destroyer sits marooned on one of the shoals, manned by Phillipino marines. The supply ships getting there have been rammed and damaged, high pressure hosed, boxed in and recently attacked, by machete wielding Chinese Coast Guard troops who cut off the finger of one of the Philippine sailors. This is after an agreement to let the supplies pass unhindered.

The Philippines has had enough and this is where a key treaty comes in. The United States is effectively a near unconditional ally. Having been an American colony from 1898 to 1946 the Americans went out of favor around the end of the Vietnam War and largely abandoned their extensive bases at Clarke Field and Subic Bay under Philippine pressure. The current Philippine government sees that was all a mistake and American forces have returned (although not to those bases). Included in these forces, an item that has not returned to the United States after a military exercise, in April 2024. And it’s driving the Chinese crazy. They keep kicking up a fuss about it being there saying it’s ‘upsetting the status quo and destabilizing the region’. This is Chinese for, ‘we can’t do what we want because of it and it’s not fair’.

The Typhon missile system, also known as the Strategic Mid-range Fires System (SMRF), is a U.S. Army transporter erector launcher capable of deploying Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) and Tomahawk missiles. It was developed as part of the Army’s Long Range Precision Fires program to fill the capability gap between the Precision Strike Missile and the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon systems.
• Missile Types: The Typhon system can launch SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles, the SM-6 can be used for anti-missile, anti-surface and anti-air operations, Tomahawk for land attack and anti-shipping.
• Range: The system is capable of striking targets up to 2,000 kilometers away (Tomahawk), allowing it to reach significant distances including parts of China from its current deployment in the Philippines.

it’s no wonder the Philippine government haven’t been motivated to have it leave. Its had a remarkable cooling effect on Chinese behavior, underlining the fact that military force projection can and is effective against such an approach and China’s perceptions of what it can get away with.

Typhon is a vital system that’s capable of major deterring effects inside the First and Second Island Chains. This map shows deployment areas – Philippines and Okinawa , and Guam in the Second Island Chain. The Third Island Chain is an arc that runs Hawaii through the central Pacific Islands. Typhon basically covers all of the Chinese coast from just two sites. Guam is also slated to eventually get an AEGIS ashore system like that used in Poland and Rumania, for defence of the key US air base and naval facility there.

Deterring China is so important the Virginia Class SSN USS Minnesota (she has VLS missile tubes) has just been forward deployed to the island as a permanent reminder of the US presence, along with a rotating squadron of B-52, and B-1 bombers.

TAIWAN

China claims the island despite never having really had sovereignty over it since 1895. It actually ceded the island to Japan. It was Japanese (and called Formosa) until October 1945, following which it was retuned to the Republic of China – in 1949 Chiang Kai Chek led the Republican forces there out of the reach of the victorious communists. Now a vibrant democracy and the effective centre of critical microchip manufacturing – the super high end chips that China is unable to produce despite trying, the CPC wants it back. Badly. So much so that Xi Jin Ping has made reunification a requirement to be achieved by 2049 – the 100th anniversary of the end of the civil war and establishment of the Peoples Republic.

This is not something Taiwan wants. And the US is obligated under the 1979 Taiwan Act to come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a conflict. Taiwan sits close to China (I’ve sailed up the Taiwan straits, its wider than you think), and it has the means to defend itself, but does it have enough and can it hold off an invasion? The CPC holding Taiwan would be a strategic nightmare for the US and its north Asian allies, and weaken the Philippines position dramatically. It would give China unfettered access to the Second Island Chain.

Taiwan’s importance to the West is as symbolic as it is economic. China knows that. The microchip factories are so vital and so sensitive the equipment that makes the chips is known to be rigged to make them unusable, and the Taiwanese and the Americans would be unlikely to let them fall into Chinese hands. But the symbolism to the CPC is far more than that. It would signal the triumph of the CPC system over democracy and the West.

This is where Ukraine comes into the picture. If Russia is seen to win the war and gets to keep vast areas of Ukraine without consequence, and is allowed off the sanctions list then China knows it can take Taiwan and the Americans will eventually just give in. This is why the war cannot end with Russia having clearly won and getting away with it. That’s why former Taiwan President Tsai Ing Wen said last week, ‘that if you want to keep China out of Taiwan, arm Ukraine’. Could there be clearer message?

MILITARY POWER

We are now approaching what many see as the ‘Window of Vulnerability’ militarily – especially in terms of naval power. America is facing a deep trough in comparative naval power in the period 2027/28. Too many powerful warships – the Ticonderoga Class cruisers especially have been withdrawn due to age and maintenance issues – and they have no replacement. The speed of US warship construction is a joke, partly caused by lack of investment is building yards, too many being shuttered in the last 30 years. Lack of experienced workforce and supply chain issues caused by excessive military industrial contraction, COVID, and giant corporate buyouts of military industries and subsequent ‘rationalisations’. There’s an almost impossible to break logjam in the way the US buys and builds warships and submarines. It’s staggeringly incompetent verging on a joke.

Meanwhile the Chinese have the largest navy in the world, although what its made up of varies in quality and it has no real experience. Their first real aircraft carrier goes to sea next year operationally. It’s quite advanced, with the latest electromagnetic catapults (this increase sortie rates and are much appreciated force magnifier, as the USS Ford demonstrated off of Israel earlier this year). However its not got as many aircraft (about half the number) and is range limited by fuel supply.

Chinese submarines aren’t much to write about now, but each class is improving dramatically. The speed hey can build ships and submarines using commercial modern ship yard practices, is way above the US and anyone else for that matter.

China has a real advantage. When it comes to the First and even Second island chains, it’s the local bully. This is their backyard and they have a vast Air Force, strike bombers, missiles and ships with which to dominate the area. Piercing that shield is not going to be easy. Recent war-games demonstrate the US would lose at least two aircraft carriers, but it did save Taiwan, just.

IN PART TWO: The triggers for war, the upcoming trade battle, China’s huge internal problems and the growing nuclear threat.

The Analyst

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