But the paper gets our strategic situation exactly right by noting that China can gain local superiority in the western Pacific despite our overall military superiority. It will take us time to gather our globally deployed naval vessels in order to gain a decisive edge over China--especially if we suffer some losses among our forward deployed ships at the outset of a naval war with China:
The fourteen-to-one advantage in naval power also assumed that the United States had time to collect and concentrate its far-flung ships against a single foe. The ephemeral 313-ship force structure was never achieved, but it called for eleven carriers, eighty-eight cruisers and destroyers, forty-eight submarines, fifty-five littoral combat ships and thirty-one amphibious warfare ships. But these forces were spread thinly throughout the world maintaining a bewildering and multi-tasked agenda. Given that a 1.0 force presence—maintaining one ship on station—typically requires three ships—one in work-ups and evaluation, getting ready to deploy, one on deployment, and one in the yard being refurbished after deployment—the 313 ships never really promised more than about 100 ships at sea at any given time, and these would be spread over the entire globe.
In 2015, China’s navy was somewhat smaller, numbering only a handful of aircraft carriers, sixty submarines and seventy major surface combatants. Beijing also operated hundreds of fast offshore patrol vessels, many that packed a punch with anti-ship cruise missiles. Whereas an adversary like China could marshal its entire national fleet for a crisis immediately off its shore, as well as land-based missiles and aircraft, to face down the United States, the U.S. Navy would have to fight with the forces that happened to be in the region. Additional U.S. naval forces would be siphoned from other theaters, exposing new vulnerabilities for a nation with global responsibilities. By the time reinforcements would arrive—it could be weeks later—worldwide clamor for a ceasefire and peace talks could mean the war was already over.
I've beat this topic to death over the years. In a long war, we can mass more power than China can. But in a short war that China initiates, they can surge forces out of their ports without worrying about rotating ships in order to get everything out at once to hit our thin blue line in the western Pacific.
More likely than China inflicting a stunning defeat on our forward deployed fleet (though it is certainly possible the Chinese may come up with a silver bullet that we cannot counter, at lest initially) is that Chinese capabilities will induce so much caution in our fleet's movements to engage the Chinese fleet that the Chinese buy time to achieve their objective (say, conquering Taiwan).
But even if the PLAN wipes out everything we have that floats out there, we could still recover from the new Pearl Harbor by gathering our forces and then going in after the Chinese--either directly or a distant blockade.
I will say that I think we rely too much on our carriers. They are platform-centric monsters that may be unsuitable for naval combat against a near-peer naval power. On the bright side, while our carriers are certainly prestige vessels whose loss would be demoralizing, they no longer represent the bulk of our offensive power at sea.
The real question is, would we fight after such a loss? Hard to say. In 1941, the Japanese banked that we would not and lost that bet even though the Japanese smashed what we and they believed were our most important fleet elements--our battleships.
China might bank we won't continue the war in 2015 after losing a single carrier which they believe is our main striking force. Like 1941, the Chinese would be wrong about what we need to fight. Unlike 1941, the Chinese won't even expel us from the western Pacific. We'll have bases in Okinawa and Guam as well as well-armed allies like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Australia holding the line and able to help out--with India looming over China's western flank. Both factors argue that we'd gather our forces and smash up the Chinese fleet.
The key to all this isn't whether we can mass the forces to win a long war. I think we can, without question. The key is whether China believes they can win a short war. The Chinese may be wrong about their ability to destroy a carrier and/or the effect of sinking that carrier. But if they believe they can sink the carrier and that the loss will cow us into submission, there will be a war between America and China.
UPDATE: This article addresses the defeat article. (Tip to New Wars) I'm not saying that we can't be Pearl Harbored. The fact that we have a term for it should be proof of that. We should work to counter Chinese attempts to drive us from the western Pacific. We might even want to consider forward basing in range of Chinese forces that can strike first ony the forces we can afford to lose in a worst case. Did we put the cream of our fleet in Manila in 1941?
Also, in discussing vulnerabilities to growing Chinese capabilities, it would help our diplomacy to discuss them in the context of how we minimize the impact of even a massive fail in order to go on to win, instead of speculating on our chain of utter defeat.
UPDATE: Strategypage addresses the hype of the Chinese navy. As I always do when Strategypage also minimizes the Soviet threat back in the day, I like to remind readers that the Soviets only had to advance 200 miles or so to really cripple the Western alliance. The fact that we had far greater overall power did not negate the fact that through much of the Cold War, the Soviets had the cream of their power poised in their Warsaw Pact empire to march west to the Rhine River.
