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2021-08-03 Southeast Asia
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Congress Wants To Cut Guam Defenses
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[Real Clear Defense] As of last week, the U.S. House's Appropriations Committee intends to cut funding for Guam's missile defenses, even as it approves a funding increase for the Missile Defense Agency. This demonstrates a deep degree of strategic confusion and threatens to undermine deterrence in an increasingly unstable Western Pacific. U.S. military ports, airfields, and logistics facilities are essential to America's existence as the dominant Pacific power. Their effective defense requires a far more advanced command and control system than currently exists. It demands more—not less—funding—and U.S. policymakers should understand why.
The U.S.' competition with China is primarily political-strategic, not an economic, diplomatic, or ideological contest. The CCP has employed every element of national power at its disposal to gain an advantage, joining major international organizations like the WHO and co-opting them to bully China's rivals, stealing technology to increase Chinese productivity at America's expense, using coercive economic inducements to expand its influence in Central Asia, the Near East, Africa, and Southeastern Europe, and wielding the Party-State's media complex to propagate anti-Western ideological narratives. But each of these actions is meant to bolster Chinese military power and facilitate the CCP’s strategic objectives.
China cannot simply await economic primacy. As of the 18th National Congress in 2012, during which Xi Jinping ascended to paramount leadership, the CCP's leaders have recognized the dangers of hoping to accrue economic power and "outbuild" the United States. The liberalization that sparked Chinese economic growth from the 1980s to the 2010s did create the foundation for contemporary Chinese power.
But it also created separate influence spheres, those "corrupt" Party officials and their friends throughout the Chinese economy that Xi Jinping has purged throughout his near-decade in power. State-directed development — and we must be clear, the Chinese "socialist market economy" is an oligarchic hybrid system with major elements of central planning — contains inherent inefficiencies. And it remains an open question as to whether it will be able to deliver the rising living standards that the Chinese people accepted in exchange for the post-Mao CCP’s continued rule. Xi clearly doubts its ability to do so. Hence his accelerating internal consolidation and international aggression, first prosecuting a genocide against Muslims in Xinjiang, then staging a de facto coup in Hong Kong, and increasingly preparing for an invasion of Taiwan.
The United States is the greatest impediment to China’s strategic ambitions. Subduing Taiwan, while the first step in Chinese military strategy, is not enough. The PLA must then pressure the U.S.' Pacific allies, most likely the Philippines, Japan, and, if possible, Australia, and ideally forcing a confrontation under cover of the PLA's ground-launched anti-ship missiles. If the CCP can fracture the U.S.' regional alliance system, the U.S. will be forced to conduct an extended blockade 9,000 miles from its coastline with few to no regional bases. By contrast, if U.S. power remains relevant in the Pacific, and if its formal allies commit to confronting China alongside it, the PLA faces a much less favorable balance of forces, even if it can neutralize Taiwan with negligible air and naval losses. 
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Posted by M. Murcek 2021-08-03 00:00||
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Posted by NN2N1 2021-08-03 09:03||
2021-08-03 09:03||
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Posted by Mercutio 2021-08-03 09:35||
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Posted by Mullah Richard 2021-08-03 13:55||
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Posted by CrazyFool 2021-08-03 15:06||
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Posted by Besoeker 2021-08-03 16:08||
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Posted by magpie 2021-08-03 17:45||
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Posted by Frank G 2021-08-03 19:49||
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Posted by Rex Mundi 2021-08-03 20:15||
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09:43 Mullah Richard
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06:58 Besoeker
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