Contemplating Land War In China

The Dance Of Siva

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA

The leverage available for war-making:

Air – Finance
Water – Transportation
Food – Industry

Without air, one dies in three minutes. Without water, one dies in three days. Without food, one dies in three weeks. This is the Rule of Threes. It is the same in war. Without finance, an armed force collapses almost immediately. Without transportation, an armed force collapses within days, a few days at most. Without resupply, an armed force collapses when rations and munitions are gone, and fear of that extremity can induce collapse ahead of its actuality.

The high-value geo-strategic targets in war, highest to lowest:

Waterways
Roadways
Seaways
Railways
Airways
Energy/Data Pathways

In other words, communications.

Given distances, comms pathways, and weather, a land force inside China would require use of her rail transport. This, in turn, would require use of her rolling stock and motive equipment and require control of energy and lubrication, at least, for the same. This is especially the case for a land force entering at, roughly, the Chinese center, whether from south (India) or north (Mongolia).

Track gauge matters here. Fortunately, Chinese main and high speed gauges are the same as US Standard Gauge (4′ 8.5″). Russian gauge, also used by Mongolia, is different at 4′ 11 27/32″.

It is well-known that a few busted dams, one in particular, in China’s east, would compromise Chinese industry, both agriculture and heavy. China’s center and west are ideal locations to force her to dissipate/dilute force, overextend logistics, and marinate in confusion.

Distances, comms pathways, and weather in China’s center also commend comandeered Chinese rail as the most rapid and economical method of transportation on what would be now, for an invading force, interior lines of communication.

A precursor of such thinking was US Marine and especially Army contemplation of exploiting Mexican railways during Woodrow Wilson’s typically sanctimonious, extra-constitutional, strategically mindless tiff with Mexico at Veracruz (Wikipedia article, biased, as usual, against Americans per se).

Get past the opening gestures to the anti-MacArthur gallery, who includes William Manchester, and this article has a sound, fair recital of then-CPT Douglas MacArthur’s search for Mexican motive equipment during the Veracruz operations of 1914. Also relevant to the subject is MacArthur’s own recital in Reminiscences.

Any land war in China requires commandeering her railways progressively as the line of battle closes in on her central comms.