Contemplating Positions On Chinese Flanks

The Dance Of Siva

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA

My entries below, dated 31JAN19 and 29JAN19, are thinking, not proposing, much less advocating. Importantly, both entries assume that Three Brothers Alliance is operational. I want to get started anticipating locations and military dispositions beneficial to the Alliance in view of its large, long-term objective of annihilating China’s hegemonic ambition and smaller-short-range objective of silencing the Salafi-Shiite Jihad once and for all.

Update 31JAN19: It seems my thinking before today is (1) anticipate vectors of Chinese attack and (2) pre-position a BTN-TF, at least, on the flank of each vector. The main vectors I see are (1) east directly to Taiwan and (2) southeast through the Parcels and Spratleys to, say, Lligan Bay between Oroquieta City and Cagayan de Oro on Mindanao, Philippines. These vectors are pretty obvious because the ChiComs talk and build for them.

I suspect they also contemplate a vector heading northeast from their capitol area towards Khabarovsk, Russia, cutting off Vladivostok, and on to Sakhalin, Russia.

See Sino-Soviet war. A circle of one hundred miles in diameter centered on the point where Russia, Mongolia, and China meet has strategic importance comparable, apparently, to Nagorno-Karabakh thousands of miles east of Zabaykalsk.

If they have enough strength/logistics in depth, it would make sense to pursue these three vectors, not worrying about non-concentration of force, which worry likely would compel them to attenuate ambitions and focus on one or at most two vectors of break out.

After all, their fundamental strategic position is that of being surrounded by furry eyeballs, so their first task is to cut their way out from that encirclement. If they have enough strength to tempt them to charge out in three directions at once, and given their immoderate native impetuosity and tunnel vision, likely they would do that.

I also suspect ChiComs eye cutting through the southern line of their encirclement, probably through Jammu and Kashmir and/or Arunachal Pradesh, both theaters they have tried before.

Overall allied (Three Brothers/Five Eyes) strategy would be to compel ChiComs to have to worry about non-concentration by opening fronts in her southwest (through Jammu and Kashmir, India), south center (through Arunachal Pradesh, India), north center (through Zamiin-Uud, Mongolia), north (through Zabaykalsk, Chita, or even Ulan-Ude, Russia), and west (through Vladivostok, Russia).

One consequence of that observation is that Mongolia once again becomes estimable in the history of multi-national affairs, but difficult for US Armed Forces to base from, even with permission. Another is that Manchuria is as important geo-strategically and geo-economically as the Japanese and Russians before them thought that it was, especially Dalian (Port Arthur) and Harbin.

Ulan-Ude (named Udinsk until 1783 and Verkhneudinsk until 1934) would be an interesting station for an American BTN-TF. Help the Russians maintain pacific ethnic Chinese around Lake Baikal (a mile deep!) and position for arranging joint felicities with Mongolia. Perhaps in exchange, offer Russia basing for an air squadron task force in Alaska, a place that seems to pique their aeronautical interest now and again.

The original Trans-Siberian Railway routed from Chita southeast across Manchuria to Vladivostok. Current Trans-Siberian Railway, together with recent enhancements, can move containers from China’s coast to Hamburg, Germany in ⅓ to ½ the time it takes to go by ship. This means China’s Belt and Road Initiative is meant to supersede or at least dominate the Trans-Siberian Railway for Asia-Europe transshipment. Rail gauges change entering/leaving China from Russia or Mongolia; they effect the change by lifting the carriages (cars) from one set of bogies (trucks) to another.

ChiComs are applying one of Mahan’s major observations: that on its own, war against a nation’s commerce will not bring said nation to surrender sovereignty. Quite the reverse, it will cause the majority of the nation’s citizens, namely the kulaks, the middle class who actually produce good and services, to redouble efforts towards their own sovereignty.

One might observe, in continuance of that thought, that Globalists’ efforts to transform the middle class (Russian kulaks, whom Communists set about murdering next after intelligentsia) into ATMs and slaves (Russian serfs, whom Communists set about remanding to gulags and psychiatric wards next after murdering kulaks) for delectating bureaucrats, bankers, and businessmen elicit protestations to the effect that an human personality is a creature of — and owned by — God, not mammon, and that the force of the justice of said protestations cannot be obstructed much less retarded by any individual or group, to include government agents/bureaucrats. Gist of the Taxed Enough Already (TEA Party) movement.

War against a nation or non-nation actor can be consummated only by regular, national military formations applying regular military art and science through military wisdom, not political expedience, at points indicated by classical military knowledge and doctrine.

Cruising war — war conducted by privateers, aka independent civilian contractors — accomplishes nothing beyond lining pockets of cruisers. Cruising war appeals to politicians because it can be done on the cheap. But it is issue-less, it never stops, it brings no resolution.

(See US engagement in Afghanistan. Have you noticed that attrition of ISIL and Taliban leadership and cannon fodder has increased since Jim Mattis left DOD, at least going by media-borne AARs?)

Only regular military force can protect national sovereignty and freedom and then only when tasked explicitly to do that and given compass to make it happen, which means, bring an enemy to surrender unconditionally in public in writing, without mental reservation, and in fact.

There is no other way to win a war and no other reason to enter upon war in the first place.

Thus ChiComs rightly, for them, build out the PLA’s naval, air, cyber, and space arms on an expedited schedule.

They cannot subject USA to slavery, as they would like to do, through trade, diplomacy, and finance, all forms of cruising war, useful and often necessary but not ever decisive. In fact, they would lose any purely cruising war with the USA. If they did not realize it before, POTUS Trump has taught them that lesson. Thus their ramped up industrial espionage, a form of cruising war but useful for building regular military strength.

The strategic efficacy of cruising war is comparable to the fabulist efficacy of Americans behind every tree whipping a invasive regular army.

Previous USA administrations and legislatures were running pell-mell towards sole reliance on cruising war — civilian contractors — to keep the nation safe for at least a little longer. Looks cheap but invites the slave collar. Their concern was paying for domestic entitlements, which they wanted to keep increasing, and did, with a view to seducing votes.

Ergo, Pacific Pathways’ chief potential benefit to the nation’s sovereign freedom is to reassert, illustrate, and demonstrate the indispensable role in sovereign national life of regular military formations, handled with classical military intentions, aimed at achieving rational political-military goals.

I suspect the Russians are attempting to hold China at bay, feigning friendship, building commerce and banking, so they are free as possible to pursue their long-range strategic objective: reconstituting Constantinople, ~~European Turkey~~ Byzantium, and as much of Asian Turkey as they can, to Orthodox Christianity. From the east, Nagorno-Karabakh, south, Syria and Egypt, and north, Crimea, and southwest, Libya. They are real conservatives, these Russians.

Related: I commented today on this post, at Power Line, discoursing on Afghanistan and Syria:

Rubber duckies and plastic boaties in a bath tub. No real world in this.

Geography, geography, geography. It’s all about geography or it’s loose talk in a morality-free saloon for pensioners.

29JAN19:

Thinking about a sound, strategic Western base for The BTN-TF long-term and with air and sea mobility. Four places look desirable geographically, and in order of favorability most to least: southerly in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan (which runs by island string almost to Taiwan), southerly in Vietnam, south-easternly in Mongolia, and environs of Vladivostok, Russia.

Southerly in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, communicates with South and East China Seas.

Southerly in Vietnam communicates with South China Sea.

South-easternly in Mongolia, which is forested and the least weather-blasted area of the nation, communicates with Manchuria . . . and, if Korea reunites as US-friendly, which I think is likely, a Mongolian base can threaten Chinese migration towards Lake Baikal, which contains 22-23% of the earth’s fresh water! Chinese are flooding that area with a view to diverting that water south for themselves. This makes Russian fresh water a strategic commodity. A fact not to be ignored.

Vladivostok, Russia communicates with Manchuria and transit routes across the North Pacific Ocean (Great Circle Route).

I guess implicitly I am seeing long-term strategic positioning for maintenance of unimpeded fair trade in the USA’s west as focusing on South China Sea, East China Sea, Manchuria, and North Pacific Ocean (Great Circle Route), in that order of priority.

If long-term western basing for The BTN-TF were possible in either Philippines or Taiwan, or both, that would be delicious. If Philippines, ideal might be Mindoro, western side, or Palawan. But Philippines seem to be a diplomatic mountain to climb at this point . . . although maybe not given the Jolo cathedral bombing. (A certain somebody all over the world is asking to be massacred.)

I would ask first for southerly in Okinawa Prefecture. Okinawans already know us and Japan is among the Five Eyes as I have re-conceived that for maximum effect modernly.

On strategic importance of Manchuria (Japanese Manchukuo) see this.

It may be the better part of wisdom also to long-term base a second USARPAC BTN-TF — with air mobility — on the flank of the South Pacific and Southern Oceans, say, at New Zealand.

Just thinking out loud.

A strategic BTN-TF on Palau would not speed amiss. Perhaps a strategic BDE-TF, considering likelihood CCP will leap-frog Taiwan for the time being to move directly on Palau, pushing their line that much closer to Hawaii.

Update 1: When Turkey Destroyed Its Christians

Update 2: David Archibald: Advice for Our Vietnamese Friends on China

Update 3: Daniel Greenfield: The Future Does Not Belong to China

Update 4: Catherine Smith: Trump Proposes 21% Cut in U.S. Foreign Aid in 2021 Budget Proposal

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