And while I worry about China's ability to use their growing sea-denial capability to temporarily eject us from local areas around Taiwan long enough to conquer the island democracy, talk like this of a pending Chinese dominance is plain wrong:
CHINA HAS BEEN expanding the size of its naval fleet for the same length of time--about 25 years--that the U.S. has been decreasing its Navy. A Congressional Quarterly article warned ominously that China will possess nearly twice as many submarines as the U.S. in 2010, and is likely to surpass the total size of the U.S. fleet five years later--if we do nothing.
In the two years since that article appeared China has continued its decades long annual double-digit defense budget increases: we have done nothing. Notwithstanding several efforts over the past decade to stabilize the diminishing size of the U.S. Navy, the current fleet of 274 combat ships is the same size as it was on the eve of World War I. Even if shipbuilding can be sustained at 7 vessels per year, we will eventually possess a fleet whose numbers equal those achieved just after the Russo-Japanese War. The presidential debates that began half a year ago have considered expensive haircuts and federal support for the renovation of Soldier Field in Chicago. But the fact that the U.S. Navy today is less than half the size it was during the Reagan administration continues to escape serious, sustained attention at the national level.
This is ridiculous. We are not talking about "unilateral naval disarmament" as the title of the article states. Numbers surely matter to some degree since one ship can't be in two places, but lets not cry wolf and taint all questions of naval power sufficiency by claiming a crisis. In 2015, we will crush the People's Liberation Army Navy if it comes to a fight.
Our tonnage puts us well ahead of any conceivable combination of enemy fleets. Each of our ships, just about, is a capital ship based on their tonnage. Where once we had a small core of large battleships and carriers supported by large numbers of cheap, small escorts, now we have ship-killing power on every one of our ships:
Our destroyers are really major capital ships and quite capable. It is a mistake to think that the terms are comparable from pre-WW II days. I thought that with all these capital ships masquerading as minor ships based on terminolgy, the Navy was prepared to build a lot of smaller ships and build up numbers fairly easily, relying on the cushion of our current heavy fleet.
Our skill and technology make simple counts of ships even more obsolete as a measure. If we really worry about numbers, we will be able to build small ships quickly if war looms or breaks out. And if we wan't a cushion until those builds are launched, maybe we should prepare our Navy reservists with auxiliary cruisers.
Our fleet is in no danger of being beaten by China in a naval war. Could the Chinese hold us off for a little while off their coast? You bet. But given time, we will sink anything they have that floats.
And it gets worse from China's point of view. We aren't the only potential foe they face. In East Asia alone, China must face the Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese fleets. Should the Chinese poke their noses out a little more, Australia and India will be there. Who knows, even Russia might wise up about the problems that China poses. Their Far East fleet might be reconstituted.
But I'm not done yet. In addition to the naval threats, China faces ground threats including a potential Russian army should Russia revive their conventional forces, A Vietnamese army that has roughed up the PLA, huge armies on the Korean peninsula, and the Indian military. Even our air power flanks China from the land side.
China is surrounded and their strategic position sucks.
We do indeed have enduring maritime interests. I am all in favor of keeping a Navy capable of defending those interests.
We have such a Navy. It will be a long time before the East China Sea isn't an American lake, and alarmist talk such as the Weekly Standard article employs distracts from real worries about some of our capabilities (such as ASW to handle those new Chinese subs) and even our ship-building industry.
