Can America fight along a line of contact in the first island chain to defeat China's offensive goals? Xi Jinping promise a Great Wall of Steel. Can an American-built Great Wall of the First Island Chain defeat it?
China promises to strengthen its military:
Chinese President Xi Jinping [in mid-March] pledged to build his military “into a great wall of steel” as rivalry with the U.S. heats up amid fears of a new cold war.
China already has an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capability to deny the American Navy access to the western Pacific near China's shores. America is building similar weapons.
If America adopts a A2/AD strategy to pen China in their coastal regions, too, that would make for an interesting high-tech stalemate along the line of engagement.
Washington needs to ensure an effective denial defense along the first island chain, one that includes Taiwan within its perimeter. Denial defense is a military strategy derived from the nation’s geopolitical goal, which is to provide sufficient defense for our allies that they believe it prudent to stand up to China together with us—and thus prevent Chinese domination of Asia.
And because in practice it is a blockade of China, it hurts China a lot.
My objection to a blockade of China as anything other than a Plan B if we can't defeat the Chinese military near China is the question of what about our allies stuck behind China's A2/AD wall?
The author states that Taiwan must be a key part of our own figurative wall, and so we must make sure Taiwan can defend itself. So the latest solution to our China problem is better than the distant blockade response to Chinese aggression. The author notes that weakness, too:
[A] strategy relying on blockade would essentially allow China to assault U.S. allies in the western Pacific at will, increasing the chances they would fold and that the coalition—the center of gravity for Washington’s overall strategy—would fail.
To sustain that kind of campaign as China's power increases, America needs more bases and the farther away from China's reach they have to be. Our movement from Okinawa to Guam has been taking so long that we basically have to look at a fallback base for Guam now:
It is shocking how long things like this take: "A new commander has taken charge of a new Marine Corps base on Guam, where 5,000 members of the III Marine Expeditionary Force are set to move over the next five years from Okinawa." I believe I was blogging about the planned move over 15 years ago. And in only five more years it will be done!We should not make it easy for China to break the web of nations opposing China along that wall with America's backing.
I should note that I lament the lack of thinking about how the Army's core competency can be used to defeat China. Or for holding Taiwan.
And a determination to hold along such a line reassures me on
sustaining scattered Marine detachments on small islands on that line.
But it offers a path to a better solution to the problem of defeating China than a desire to push through China's A2/AD wall to China's coastal waters to ... what? Sail around menacingly until China sues for peace? "Bombing Beijing" into submission? That has problems. And it is better than a distant blockade that makes the war long and hard for America and our allies, as well as China.
It is an excellent article on an American A2/AD response to China. Do read it.
NOTE: For the first time I used DALL-E to generate a picture for the illustrative meme.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 continues here.
