After we destroyed Japan's naval power in 1944, we became the dominant power in the western Pacific. Even Soviet naval power didn't end that dominance because Japan (and the joint forces of our two nations) stood as a block to Soviet deployments into the Pacific.
Victory in the Cold War gave us supremacy as the Soviet fleet became a non-factor and eventually rotted away and while the Chinese military build-up was just out of the starting blocks.
That supremacy is going away:
Three years after the Pentagon said it was de-emphasizing Europe in favor of the Asia-Pacific region, NavyAdm. Samuel J. Locklear III said this week that U.S. dominance has weakened in the shadow of a more aggressive China.
“Our historic dominance that most of us in this room have enjoyed is diminishing, no question,” Adm. Locklear, chief of U.S. Pacific Command, said Wednesday at a naval conference in Virginia.
As China's economy grows, they are building naval power capable of dominating the waters and air space around them. Since China has the option of massing forces and initiating conflict, they can hit our forces in the western Pacific and those of our allies in the region with maximum effort while we are not ready or deployed for major combat.
We cannot build and deploy a military that can defeat a major Chinese offensive in the western Pacific in the shadow of China during the opening weeks of a war.
All we can hope to due is deny China a win by enduring that Chinese attack, surviving that opening battle with as much of our forward-deployed forces as possible, inflicting as much damage on the Chinese as possible, and retaining bases and allies to receive reinforcements to regain the initiative and win the war.
Remember, during the 1970s, Soviet power meant that frontline NATO member Norway slipped beyond our defensive perimeter. Norway had to hang on until we could mass ships and planes to penetrate Soviet air and naval forces surging into the North Atlantic to hit our shipping lanes to Europe and blocking our access to Norway. Sometimes it is just stupid to sit and take the first punch when you know that punch will be devastating. You have to live to fight another day.
This has been obvious. I noted this developing situation recently here and here.
I used the Norway example to speculate on the possibility of using the land mass of Taiwan as a shield for our forces operating east of Taiwan.
I even noted some time ago that China doesn't even need to defeat us in a war in the western Pacific if China can simply push as back from the western Pacific long enough for China to achieve their objectives in the western Pacific. Japan did much the same in 1941. I hope we don't need 4 years and nuclear weapons to return.
This 2006 post summarizes the developing situation nicely, I think:
We are stronger than China. But the proper comparison isn't whether we could invade China or China could invade America. Neither country could accomplish the conquest of the other. So are we equal despite our power superiority? Certainly not.
We must compare our capabilities in individual scenarios. And most of those scenarios are close to China where China can mass their inferior power for local superiority for a short time period. The question then becomes can we or we and our allies rush enough of our superior power to the region to reverse a temporary Chinese advantage. And what can China do with their temporary advantage?
So a little nuance should be in order when assessing Chinese power.
While our supremacy in the western Pacific is going away, our overall naval superiority still exists. We just need to move ships and aircraft from around the globe and the continental United States to the western Pacific to erase China's initial advantage due to geography, deployment, and initiative (starting the war--presumably with forces prepared to strike first).
Don't panic. If China reaches parity with us and with our global Navy, I'll really worry. So look to that problem rather than the insoluble problem of dominating China's coastal areas from the opening hours of a war.
