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SCMP used to be anti-Communist, now it is ChiCom Lite at least.
Marine Littoral Combat Regiment?
All this seems both forward-looking and also very amorphous. It suggests ‘we’re adjusting our force mix to better face off against China, but we’re not sure quite how yet.’ But China is just one part of the equation; the furious pace of technological change, budget pressures, and long simmering doctrinal debates all seem to be additional change drivers.
Discussion strings in which I participated:
David R. Graham
These tidbits of official talk suggest to me that everyone at DOD, if not also State and Treasury, knows the CCP have run up the battle flag and they are going to have to defeat the CCP, presumably by diplomacy and finance first and militarily if needs be.
formwiz to David R. Graham
The Reds have been talking up a war for the Pacific for at least 20 years.
Trump’s fighting that war now.
David R. Graham to formwiz
Indeed, and now they have pushed beyond talk into action. This virus attack can be and probably should be viewed as a classic artillery barrage meant to soften up an enemy. Only, instead of aimed at a line of battle, it is aimed everywhere. One conclusion from that: their own people CCP consider enemies as much as foreigners. So they have chosen off the entire world, including their own citizens. A pan-optic barrage to open the way for lines of march . . . to where?
If they thought rationally, south and south-east would be easiest for them given their logistical capacities. Maybe north. West would require sea lift they do not have unless they can take US island properties piecemeal without provoking US retaliation (Guam, Palau, Peleliu). If they thought irrationally, the sky’s the limit.
They and their minions in US church, school, and government/media already have worked a POTUS’ germaphobia. Maybe they can work a POTUS’ disinclination to overseas military engagements. I doubt it. We’ll see what happens. In any case, the CCP have raised the Red Banner and are off to war. Pompeo appears to be preparing the American electorate for full recognition of the fact and its implications.
Reginald Pettifogger
We should be prepared to fight China beyond the periphery of China utilyzing a “containment policy” to bottle them up on the mainland, where they can stew in their own virus juices without the benefit of international trade.
formwiz to Reginald Pettifogger
Containment?
Again?
David R. Graham to Reginald Pettifogger
Too late for that. Already they have run up the battle flag and are on the march. In any case, containment as Kennan meant it is battle to an enemy’s defeat. However, as Truman and his Commies meant it, and mean it ever since, containment is holding an enemy at bay. This, demonstrably, is a way to hold off the container while the contained gathers strength to cut their way out of envelopment by the container. See Korea then Vietnam.
See also Oppenheimer’s effort to halt US thermonuclear development so Soviet thermonuclear development could surpass it. Truman saw and his Globalist (Commie Lite) succors see containment of bad actors as a way to avoid decision and responsibility while sounding erudite and not poking the Intelligence Community/Foreign Policy Establishment wasps’ nest.
Containment as Kennan intended it is aggressive attack unto an enemy’s defeat. As our precious Commies in church, school, and government/media mean it, containment is slow surrender, which suits Commies just fine. Maximum misery for most along the way down.
Too late to bottom the boat, Wassily.
major dad to InklingBooks
Marine Corps has no intention on invading China but their mission will be containment, blockade if you will and disruption of ChiCom’s A2AD.
David R. Graham to major dad
Whether at this time Marines think about it or not — and I do not know their thinking either way — I pick up from these wisps of indication that Marines, as they should be, are thinking of flanking, not invasion or containment, the CCP enemy. Invasion would be an Army mission and would not be amphibious. Containment is another name for classical envelopment warfare and is effective only as active battle maneuver, not as static round-around. People who say containment, containment, we must have containment, don’t know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating.
major dad to David R. Graham
When I say containment, I mean active warfare that denies the opponent from maneuver in this case engaging any ChiCom units from moving outside their borders. Marines developing doctrine will use smaller units and with long range fires out flanking them. Ultimately significantly destroying their A2AD capabilities.
David R. Graham to major dad
Classically, as you know, flanking operations are meant to pinch off an enemy’s comms from their advancing vector or stationary fortress. I believe INDOPACOM faces nothing more than that classic problem. Water is merely wet land. Boats have to dock. Planes have to land. Rockets have to launch from land, be it solid (Army), liquid (Navy/Marines), or gas (Air Force). Electronics are controlled from land.
So, since CCP is rampant, on the attack — intelligently or not, from their perspective or ours — their lines of march, across whatever medium of earth’s multi-domain they occur, compel the very flanking operations you mention and mentality you infer to be primary considerations, primary planning opportunities and requirements, in rational planning vis-a-vis China.
At risk of self-promoting, I invite for attention this study of just those flanking opportunities and requirements.
David R. Graham to major dad
Active warfare is driving an enemy into defeat and, in a proper conclusion, unconditional surrender. Kennan meant that but was interpreted to mean holding an enemy at bay in a defined area, like containing a toxic chemical spill. Active warfare means driving an enemy to the point where they cannot engage at all, not lift a finger.
Active warfare is not holding an enemy inside a defined area. Active warfare is removing him from the defined area altogether, ideally by deramping his impulse to aggress, and otherwise, by extirpating him.
No movement by him, not restricted movement by him, is the only rational policy regarding an enemy.
For three quarters of a century, US policy has been to restrict an enemy’s movement rather than to eliminate an enemy’s ability to move altogether. Even Reagan did that. He got Beirut Marine Barracks.
The CCP are only the latest bad guys to demonstrate that the policy of containment as holding an enemy at bay is impossible of success and therefore stupid. We must thank them for this enlightenment, hard as it is to take. They have done us a service, unwittingly.
major dad to David R. Graham
This is the current thinking but I agree warfare should include surrender but our betters have shied away from that e.g. first Gulf War.
“small Marine forces would deploy around the islands of the first island chain and the South China Sea, each element having the ability to contest the surrounding air and naval space using anti-air and antiship missiles. Collectively, these forces would attrite Chinese forces, inhibit them from moving outward, and ultimately, as part of a joint campaign, squeeze them back to the Chinese homeland.”
In a war with China I don’t believe our current force structure, both the Army and Marine Corps, are not large enough to get an unconditional surrender from them unless nukes were used.
David R. Graham to major dad
They have shied away from it since before WWII ended in re The Soviet and totally since Korea started. Until now, when some rationality is creeping in, albeit it trepidatiously and not across-the-board.
Besides the assumption that nukes would be required to subdue (unconditional surrender) the CCP, there is the assumption, valid in MacArthur’s day, that it would be insane to commit to land war in China. Today, I think neither of those is a valid assumption. Or at least, both are strongly questionable.
My personal assessment is that ground war in China (i.e., to force unconditional surrender this side of nuclear exchange) is a rational problem set. The basis for that assessment is that China now is triangulated between USA, Russia, and India.
Land war in China is a huge problem. No argument. But an insoluble problem? No, not with that triangulation activated, and not with CCP domestically desperate. This pan-optic bioweapon barrage, even against their own, measures the desperation of a louche dependent.
Land war in China, to the CCP’s unconditional surrender, is a supply/logistics problem solvable by USA, India, and Russia but not by the CCP. Give Americans a mission to beat the H out of the CCP and they will go for it as an eagle to sky.
Richard Fernandez: Why China Wants USA Destabilized
Major General Wang Haiyun: I advocate putting Wutong Taiwan on the agenda as soon as possible
Seamus Bruner: From ‘Made in China’ to ‘Owned by China’: 20 deals show how China is gobbling up U.S. assets
Snehesh Alex Philip: Ministries of security, Strategic Support Force — China’s intel agencies & how they operate
Tsarizm Staff: Yes, Russia Could Work With US Against China
Deepak Nagpal: ‘Not a strategic threat’: In speech, Chinese envoy assures India as well as issues veiled threat
Classic Gaslighting. Its purpose in this case is to tie India to China rather than to USA.
Japan MOD assessment: CCP intentions, assets, orders of battle in Japan’s Pacific AO
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