by Ravi Rikhye
§ Calculating what the US requires to continue penning China is easily done. One possible construct is:
Service
Now
Add
USMC
1st, 2nd, 3rd Divisions active; 4th Division reserve
5th Division (Australia); activate 1 regiment for 3rd, one for 4th (Reserve)
4 tank battalions
5 tank battalions @ 6 companies each
19 active, 1 reserve fighter squadrons
13 active, 7 reserve fighter squadrons; HQ 5th Air Wing with all needed squadrons
US Navy
11 marine battalion assault lift
7 battalion assault lift
10 carrier groups
8 more, for total 18
Typically, six escorts @ carrier
Add 48 more escorts
54 N-submarines
32 N-submarines for total 86
Typically, 48 fighters @ carrier air wing
Add 24 more for each carrier, plus 8 new carrier air wings
USAF
100 B-21 bombers (planned)
200 additional B-21s (total 300)
8 additional fighter wings
Increase airlift by 200 C-17
US Army
10 active, 8 reserve divisions
Restore missing brigades
Fill out 7th Division, send back to Korea with 2nd Division and HQ I Corps. Raise 23rd and 24th Divisions (Guam and Hawaii). Raise 14th ACR.
Raise HQ IX Corps for strategic Pacific reserve, with 5th Mechanized, 6th & 9th Infantry Divisions, plus shift 1st Cavalry Division from III Corps, raise 3rd Armored Division to replace. Raise 11th ACR
Raise HQ V Corps, 2nd Armored and 8th Mechanized Divisions for return to Europe; convert 2nd ACR to heavy; reraise 172nd & 174th heavy brigades
Raise HQ X Corps in reserve (National Guard), plus 26th, 30th, 47th and 50th Divisions, infantry or heavy as needed
Make up all shortfalls in corps artillery, army aviation, engineer brigades, and independent combat brigades, make all artillery batteries 8 guns vs 6. Return armor full companies to all brigade cavalry squadrons etc.
This will likely push the US defense budget to $1-trillion and 5% of GDP. Realistically, though, what can the US be expected to add? At best 2-3 brigades to fill out existing understrength division, a handful of new warships, no additional divisions, carriers, or fighter wings. The US has no interest in building its force to keep China confined to Asia. It will continue making wonderful “Gee Whiz” technical advances, refuse to admit it needs increasing numbers as well as technical gadgetry to counter rising China, and tell itself America is still the Greatest. When the US will not have the physical means to confront China, for India to hope for US protection instead of relying on itself will be foolish and fatal.
16.3 India will be on its own because of China’s rise and US’s relative decline
India has no allies against combined China and Pakistan except the US. The US has assiduously wooed us – from 1947. Until the early 1980s US was not prepared to tell us we were a special ally. Today, however, short of Virginia class attack submarines and B-21 bombers, there is nothing the US won’t give us. I have discussed earlier how US has directly or indirectly protected us in every war since 1947, except 1971, without us even being allies. There’s no mystery here: US has known since August 15, 1947, India is far more important than Pakistan. The US went to Pakistan only because India refused an alliance. When India welcomed the US, Pakistan became of secondary importance. Here is the problem: on paper, an alliance between Number 1 and Number 3, the US and India, is perfect against Number 2, rising China. But like it or not, India is not a core US interest. If the cost of standing by India becomes excessive, we will be on our own. Even today, if a war started because we attacked Pakistan or through lack of caution forced a war with China, the US will not give direct help.
What are US core interests? When US was sole superpower, anything the US deemed to be a core interest was one. But with rising China the picture changes drastically. When the world becomes truly bipolar, we return to 1940 where the US required control of the Eastern Pacific, North and South Atlantic, and no single power allowed to dominate Western Europe, with a slight change. The US will not combat Chinese economic supremacy in South America and Africa. This is a broad-brush depiction, but a reasonable one. India does not figure because it falls under China’s “natural” sphere of influence in a bipolar world. It can be argued this is not an accurate analysis because when the world was bi-polar between the US and the Soviet Union, did not the US counter the Soviets at every point possible? During the Cold War, however, the world was not bipolar. The US and its allies had multiple times the GDP of the communist bloc, which in any case by 1961 was not allied. This permitted the US to act offensively in throwing a sea cordon around the communists, as well as a land cordon. Of course, the communists partially retaliated by supporting “revolutionary” movements wherever they could, but these represented pinpricks. For example, the US was able to physically surround the Soviet Union/China. In a true bipolar world, the US will dominate the western hemisphere, and the Chinese will dominate the Eastern hemisphere.
The US put considerable effort in cordoning China in the period 1950 onward. It backed, or allied with, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand. It controlled the entire world ocean except for Sea of Okhotsk and a part of the Arctic Ocean, which locked China into a continental freeze. The coming bipolar world may look like this:
India
US
China
Year
GDP $T
Grow at
GDP $T
Grow at
GDP $T
Grow at
2017
2.7
1.07
19
1.02
13
1.05
2040
13
30
40
US plus India GDP will be approximately the same as China GDP alone. China will have pulled past the US, the situation will not be as grim as it might seem, because Western/Central Europe will be allied with the US. Militarily, based on the period 1990-2018, their contributions will be thin, but not inconsequential. Chinese economic power may not translate into military alliances. Taiwan’s GDP can be added to China’s. Conversely, Japan, ROK, Australia, New Zealand can be added to the US. India will make some contribution to the US alliance. All these are approximations open to debate. Moreover, present factors do not automatically translate into future ones. Some degree of certainty pertains because the world’s affairs progress ke very large supertankers: course changes take time to affect. Obviously, however, the further out in time we go, the degree of certainty reduces. So, don’t look at the below as specific predictions, but more as a plausible future based on today.
Table US – China collision circa 2030-35
US sphere of influence
China Sphere of Influence
East Asia
X
South Asia
X
West Asia
Contested between US and China
North Asia
Contested between China and Russia
Australasia
X
West Pacific
X
East Pacific
X
North America
X
Central America
X
South America
X
North Atlantic
X
South Atlantic
Live and Let Live
Western Europe
X
Central Europe
X
Southern Europe
X
Russia
Russia control
Mediterranean
Contested between China and the US
North Africa
X
Central Africa
X
West Africa
X
East Africa
X
South Africa
X
Now consider how Great Britain behaved when it was the world’s sole superpower, controlling one-fourth of the world’s land mass. Essentially, it did what it wanted. This did not mean it had a free run, because in local situations the French and Spanish, great powers also, fought the British everywhere they could. But if you look at a world map from 1918, you can see that the British diktat ran supreme. When the US became the sole superpower in 1945, it controlled the World Ocean and thus was supreme in Mahan’s paradigm. But by Mackinder’s paradigm, Soviet/Chinese control of the Heartland would have balanced the US, i.e., the communists were supreme on land. Moreover, since both the US and Soviets had large nuclear arsenals, they could not fight directly, only through proxies. Until about 1960, the US could have finished off China and the Soviet Union anytime it wanted, because the first had no nuclear weapons, and the second could hit the US only via slow flying bombers, against which the US built very dense fighter and missile defenses.
US Limits in Aiding India
To show you are part of the strategic cognoscenti, it is imperative these days to talk of the Quadrilateral.
For those hoping the US will save us if we get into a naval bash-off with China, here’s the latest US plan to deal with the rapid rise of the Chinese Navy. For foggy generalities, see Pellerin.[399] In one sentence: the floggings continue until morale improves i.e. do more with less. By the way, if it were possible to do more with less, in theory, US could reduce its forces to zero and rule the world.
Increase Pacific deployment to 6 operational carriers and 60% of attack nuclear submarines
Increase forward based Pacific ships from 58 in 2015 to 67 by 2020
Increase attack submarines at Guam from three to four
Station 4 LCS at Singapore by 2017
Seven LCS to Japan by 2022
Tasking 3rd Fleet (Eastern Pacific) to deploy more ships with 7th Fleet (Western Pacific)
Is there one word in this about increasing the number of warships in the fleet? No. If the 2018 and 2019 budget increases are maintained, the Navy might get 1-2 more new ships a year. It does plan to rebuild all Burke DDGs to get 10-15 years extra life, and also maybe up to six SSN 688s. The Chinese, however, are hardly standing still. Let’s go through these oh-we’re-so clever plans so readers can see the truth of how much the US has declined.
(a) The third Fleet essentially serves as a training and deployment preparation base for 7th Fleet, which is the ready battle component of the Pacific Fleet. By sending 3rd Fleet warships to serve operationally with 7th Fleet, US is already stressing an over-stressed fleet and reducing already dangerously low training time. (b) LCS is a toy equipped with pop-guns. I am unsure who will be impressed, but it won’t be China. China has ~200 missile boats/corvettes to protect its littoral; it is laughable to think LCS can do anything off the Chinese coast and in the face of increasing Chinese airpower. (c) Increasing forward basing cuts time lost to transit to and from the combat zone. So, it gives more ship days at sea. Should we be impressed? No, because a single year of new Chinese warship construction (10-15 new) likely negates all the measures planned by the US Navy. Moreover, China may already have closed the South China Sea to hostile powers and is within reach of closing the East and North Seas.
What accounts for the decline the US Navy, for 75-years the most powerful in the world?
When the Soviet Union collapsed, former President Reagan’s 600-warship plan was abandoned. But then in 2001, the US started up with the Global War on Terror, followed by its color revolutions. Of a sudden, the reduced US Navy had to fight in more arenas than at any time since 1945. This was still acceptable. Then the US made a big mistake. By the early 2000s, it should have been clear that China was getting set to challenge the US on the global stage. Navies take a devilishly long time to build: 8 years for carriers, and 4-5 years for submarines and destroyers. In the US, diminished yard capacity limits the number of warships that can be laid down in one year. An abundance of caution dictated that by 2005 at the latest the US Navy start building up. Instead, thanks to the super-stupid LCS, it began shrinking. When you’re missing 30 frigates, three carriers, and two dozen attack submarines, not to speak of 3 amphibious ready groups, naval power takes a hit. As also the rapid early decommissioning of many cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. To be fair, if you go back and read the last 15-years of the Navy’s professional magazine, US Naval Institute Proceedings, you will see increasingly urgent demands for rebuilding the navy. Two things came into play. First, neither the US Government nor the people were willing to return to high levels of defense spending. I don’t want to spend much time on this, but the explosion of health-care costs alone [400] from 13% in 1993 to 20% in 2020[401] sucked up a big chunk of US resources. It’s not just that defense is underfunded, critical sectors like infrastructure are in shambles. Second, no one, including the US Navy, could see a real threat from China. Americans convinced ourselves we’d brought China into our system of global rule; they would henceforth within the framework of global dominance. Where the Americans were getting these fantasies from is a big mystery. It struck few that the Chinese did not want to be Little Americans. RFather, they wanted the Americans – and the world – to be Little Chinese. The technology level of the Chinese Navy was low. Few anticipated the Chinese would start to master advanced technology. (The notion that they have exceeded the US in some fields like hypersonics and submarine propulsion is nonsense.) It is likely the US will wake up only after losing a major confrontation with the Chinese. One possibility is a failure to protect a regional ally from major Chinese, intrusion or aggression. Nonetheless, it is hardly inevitable the US will begin a naval expansion.
An example is that US infrastructure is collapsing. The American Society for Civil Engineers rates the nation’s infrastructure at D+.[402] This needs a little attention. In the US, a D grade is not quite failing and covers 60-69%. Below 60% is a fail. But anything less than an A for an advanced nation is bad, D is an absolute disgrace. Without updated infrastructure, a nation’s economy starts failing. When Editor returned to the US in 1989, it was thought $1-trillion was required. Add 3% annual inflation, and the population increase, $3-trillion is more realistic, to be spent over 10-years. President Trump has given a plan for $1-trillion. But guess what? The government will give only $200-billion. The rest must come from private sources. It is doubtful this will work. Unless, of course, we invite the Chinese to take over the problem.
Yet another problem is that because of funding cuts, fleet readiness has hit new lows.[403] Typically, the Navy wants 50% of its warship to be fully combat capable at any one time. This has sunk to 33%. Incidentally, just because a ship is deployed doesn’t means the crew is getting in its required training. A deployed ship must focus on ooerations and not training. In 2016-17, the amphibious warfare force had to deny a startling 93% of training requests from I Marine Expeditionary Force based on the US West Coast, or 293 of 314 requests. [404] For II MEF based on the US East Coast, 19 of 40 requests, or 52.5% were denied. For III MEF, forward-deployed to Okinawa Japan, no figures were given but, for example, one exercise now held every two years is to become one every three years. Even every alternate year is insufficient, because in the event of a war in the Pacific, IIII MEF will be the first Marines in action. The doleful list does not end here: because of financial restrictions, III MEF’s fighting core, 3rd Marine Division, is short one regiment (brigade) of its three. Meanwhile, please to note China has increased its two marine brigades to five with a sixth soon to be ready. . So we will have a situation where the Chinese will field six brigades to the US’s eight. 4th Marine Division, a reserve, is not just missing one infantry regiment, its integral air wing has just one fighter squadron. Of 32 US amfibs, 14 are undergoing refit and modernization. The Navy needs an absolute m
inimum of 38, but will reach that figure only in 2033, fifteen years from now. And the minimum does not count the rise of China. For that 50 are likely needed. Less said about USMC fighter squadrons the better.
The US has become morally corrupt, fat, lazy, incapable of undertaking grand things. Visualize this: in 1990 the US had 1650 specialty coffee shops. In 2015 there are 31,490, and Americans spent $20-billion on Starbucks or the like.[405] So suppose tomorrow the President says: “Sorry folks, to help rebuild the US Navy I am taking away your Starbucks money, and anyway, we lived fine before Starbucks.” What do you think will happen? A revolt is one possibility. Suppose the President says: “Folks, you think you’re paying $50/barrel for oil, but actually we’re paying $100/barrel once you count all the defense spending, foreign aid, and so we need to protect the countries that sell us oil. So tomorrow I am ending this subsidy for cheap gasoline by increasing the gas tax, and instead of $2.50 a gallon, you’ll be paying $4.00”, what do you think will happen? Or the president tells the multinationals: “Folks, you’ve stashed $2-trillion overseas to avoid tax, I am levying a 90% tax because I need money to rebuild the navy, and if you don’t pay, you’re looking at 60-years in solitary for undermining the nation’s defense”, what do you think will happen? I’ll tell you what will happen. In the next election – and there are elections every 2, 4, and 6 years, any politician who supported the President will be out of a job and applying to become a Wal Mart greeter. This is not your grandfather’s USA, that much is certain, where sacrifice for the country was the norm.
