Can the United States Win a War Against China?
Aby July 17th, 2007
This is one topic of worldwide interest, perhaps because of the growing strength of the People’s Liberation Army of China in terms of strategic capabilities and technology. There are a lot of American and Chinese nationalists plus anti-Americans globally who like vultures (wishing for deaths), would want a war to happen. In the context of present China-US economic ties and their not-so-bad political stance, such a war is highly unlikely. However history has been evident that sudden strong political or military incidents could escalate to a war if there is no diplomatic initiative in both the sides, like the case of the first Gulf War in 1991. It would be interesting to analyse what the outcomes of such a war could be, considering the technological superiority of US military forces in total and strategic superiority of Chinese PLA in their mainland.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (left) and his US counterpart George Bush (right):Let us hope they do not think of coming to military ‘blows’
The most likely reasons for a possible US vs China war would be a US invasion of North Korea or an escalation of the Taiwan dispute. In normal cases the latter would make both countries seek an amicable diplomatic solution instead of a war which would not be worth it. The question of the PLA invading continental United States does not arise considering their lack of resources and capability for such a move. However in case of a US invasion of China’s mainland, things might have a different outcome. There are innumerable analyses and debates in the web on this subject, a lot of them propagated by nationalists who take a simplistic one track approach to explain warfare. A multi-dimensional approach encompassing historical trends coupled with available military information gives a more realistic understanding of a war scenario, rather than a simplistic one track thinking.
A look back at history of US conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Vietnam shows that the US conventional forces are not as invincible as some of us would like to believe. The United States won the Iraq and Afghanistan wars mainly because of a strategy of carpet bombing ground based guerillas and a complete lack of opposing air defence to stop the advance of their bombers. In both these wars the US forces were aided by local troops and a large number of nations banded with US as Coalition Forces. At the other side of the coin, an extreme overconfidence by defence analysts led to the death of 57000+ US forces in the Vietnam War without an actual military victory and a massive global political defeat. In the Kosovo Conflict, the US led NATO forces faced setbacks due to their overconfidence in technological superiority of US forces. The KLA guerillas were undermanned and with no air defence, eventually gave up the war but it revealed the inherent flaws in the US military technologies like ’stealth’ and ‘GPS targeting’.
In case of US going into war against China, it would face an exponentially worse time than it did in Vietnam or Kosovo. A US bombing strike on Chinese mainland would not only be struck down by the Chinese air defences (SAMs, etc.) but also face a full fledged counter attack from China’s PLA Air Force. The limited size of airbases in Taiwan and US would also hinder the advancing US forces while China, due to its large continental size would not face such problems. The USN and USAF have unquestionable superiority over China’s PLAN and PLAAF in technology and numbers, but it would hardly decide the outcome of a war; as China would be unlike any adversary US faced in the past. Like Kosovo, there would be a lot of surprises in store for US forces but unlike Kosovo they wouldn’t be facing 10000 disorganised ground based guerillas in China. Instead it would be a 2.5 million strong army with full fledged air, ground, sea and missile forces; all backed by a relatively stable economy and effective dispersed human intelligence (HUMINT).
A war with China would also result in severe economic repercussions for the US due to a major chunk of its economic activities on China and if the war is prolonged, the only option left for US forces would be a nuclear warfare. In the case of a nuclear first strike by US, China’s response would easily obliterate most major US cities wiping off 40-100 millions in the American mainland. The US might eventually win in a nuclear confrontation with China because of its arsenal but the effects of a nuclear war will render the American mainland into a massive scale of human waste. A war between these two countries would easily become the largest holocaust in human history with over 1 billion people eliminated which would make the World War 2 look like a picnic. An economic collapse for both US and China would be inevitable due to their interdependencies. Fortunately, most American military analysts in the United States Department of Defence are aware of the facts unlike the armchair nationalist ‘military professionals’ in online communities.
Further Information and Resources -
- China’s Military Capabilities - Commonwealth Institute
- Sino Defence - Leading Online Source of Information on China’s Military Power
- Air and Missile Campaign in Kosovo
- Military analysis (Book) on Kosovo conflict by Anthony H. Cordesman
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