War Hawks hawk war with China

| June 24, 2021

Jeff LPH 3 sends in this article from Military Times. Within they discuss how some “think tankers” are pushing to permanently station a US Army brigade combat team on the island nation of Taiwan. Taiwan (officially the Republic of China) is considered by the communist rulers of mainland China (the People’s Republic of China) to be a breakaway state. Tensions with an increasingly emboldened China, who has been rapidly building up their military forces and modernizing their equipment, have been rising. Stationing a BCT there would surely be seen by the Communist Chinese as an escalation and perhaps even an act of war.

Front the article;

If the Army is serious about countering the Chinese military in the Pacific, it needs to permanently station an Armored Brigade Combat Team on Taiwan, according to some think tankers.

That type of basing decision would likely abandon the current policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan, which intentionally leaves it unclear as to whether Americans would defend the island in a cross-strait conflict. Uncertain about their superpower backers, Taiwanese leaders are less likely to unilaterally declare independence and China is less inclined to hurry to war.

Still, arguments for a kind of “tripwire force” have gained steam in recent months, including from a fall of 2020 essay published in a U.S. Army professional journal.

Such a force would make China know it would confront U.S. troops on the first day of any planned invasion of the island or push eastward into the Pacific, said Dr. Loren Thompson, CEO of the Lexington Institute. Thompson spoke about the service’s role in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at an Association of the U.S. Army panel on Wednesday.

“There is no substitute for being there on the first day of conflict,” Thompson said.

They also explore how this could rapidly spiral into a nuclear war. Which their expert lays out as some sort of justification for stationing ground troops on the contested island.

Bolstering his advocacy of stationing an ABCT along with support capabilities in Taiwan, Thompson said that “there are big problems with depending on long-range air power and naval forces” to deter or prevent an invasion of Taiwan.

The Air Force has only a handful of bases within the 2,000-mile range of Taiwan, he said. And more than half of the two dozen locations suggested for basing air assets for use in the Pacific have runways too short for a B-52 bomber to take off.

To top it off, the air service only has 158 long-range bombers in its entire fleet, many of which are not operational day-to-day, Thompson said.

Thompson added that if the Air Force were to use nuclear-capable bombers on conventional missions to China, it could trigger China’s use of its nuclear arsenal.

The Navy, he said, has a “relatively small fleet to deploy” in the crowded area around Taiwan. And its assets would be vulnerable to growing Chinese Navy capabilities.

Biden needs a war to distract from all of his gaffes and horrendous policy decisions.

Category: "Teh Stoopid", "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Army, China, Guest Link

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Martinjmpr

Sounds to me like Army leaders can hear the axes being sharpened for budget cuts now that we’re withdrawing from Asscrackistan and they are desperately trying to find a mission to justify their existence.

But taunting China? Why? Who the hell benefits from that?

If anything, I’m still trying to figure out why we still have half of the 2nd ID in Korea. The ROKs are more than capable of taking on the NorKs by themselves and have been for decades, they don’t need two brigades of US troops there.

As far as the PRC and ROC go, both claim to be the “legitimate” government of China (just as both Seoul and Pyongyang claim to be the legitimate government of Korea.)

But both nations are wealthy and successful, which means that neither nation has anything to gain by starting a war.

The PRC and ROC might each claim that they desire to “liberate” the other China, but I think those are the kinds of things they say to placate their rabid supporters. The ones who count the money know that there’s no real “up side” to a war between two nuclear powers.

rgr1480

…If anything, I’m still trying to figure out why we still have half of the 2nd ID in Korea….

It’s that tripwire you were talking about. Same reason we still have troops on the unsinkable aircraft carrier Okinawa and mainland Japan.

Anonymous

Same thing w/ the BCT in Taiwan, too.

Dustoff

The ROKs can indeed handle their business. BTW at Ms. Dustoff’s insistence I’ll just leave this here..

STSC(SW/SS)

It’s great when you can train for battle instead of going to sensitivity or CRT classes.

ChipNASA

Follow.
The.
Money.

Oh and Joe Bite Me is a Cognitive Jello Shit Ball.

At this point I’d take Zombie JFK or Reagan.

Someone get me a car battery and a shovel.

Anonymous

Get some!

Anonymous

P.S. Using the Cold War (and the Soviets) as a template again (same dynamics, ideology, not the Fulda Gap maybe) might need updates here/there, but today folk just seem gripped by amnesia and Teh Stupid when dealing with the Chicoms.

(Yo, commies, Red Menace, possible World domination. etc.– we’ve done seen this before! Hell, we even contained the Red Chinese and the Soviets in this theater before!)

Roh-Dog

I’m telling you, these idiots are going to stumble past the rational and into stupid town. Unfortunately, I’m ineligible to sit on the Board, chances you or someone you know ain’t. If the Dims and the rest of the Uniparty wants to drag us into conflict I HIGHLY recommend we send ‘their people’. And yeah, I get that’s a jagged idea but we’re clearly post-Law.
https://www.sss.gov/volunteers/

Anonymous

Piss-off China but not enough to deter them? Korea, Gulf War I… we’ve gotten into wars in similar ways before.

Ex-PH2

Biden needs a war to distract from all of his gaffes and horrendous policy decisions. quote

Please stop. You’re scaring me. What if we old codgers get a notice to return to active duty, as a means of not having to pay us our Social Security Retirement or keep Medicare A/B going?

(Do I have to put /sarc after that?)

Seriously, if my cat were elected President, we’d be in far less trouble and be facing far less idiocy.

STSC(SW/SS)

Yes,

Puss’n’Boots for President.

Anonymous

Too bad Grumpy Cat died– I’d have voted for him.

KoB

Trip wire my azz! Cannon fodder. When the Chinese Communists think they can get away with attacking Taiwan, they will swarm over it like bees to honey…and any American Installation will be a smoking hole in the ground within 30 minutes. Any of the former Berlin Brigade members here remember how long y’all woulda lasted if the Red Army came pouring thru Check Point Charley? And by the time the Chinese Communists do overwhelm the other defenders, there is not gonna be much left that is worth anything.

Our only hope in a shooting war with the Chinese Communists is that the other, historical enemies of the Chinese Communists will ally with us and give them a war on all sides. They are not scared of our nukes. Their leadership is well dug in and we could kill a billion of their people and they’d still out number us. And they won’t care about the billion they lost. Doesn’t matter how accurate their ICBMs are. Reminder, close DOES count with atomic weapons. I foresee them popping a few nuks for the EMP effects and just waltzing on in on us. That is, if haven’t already bought us from the domestic enemies of our country.

Dustoff

“Any of the former Berlin Brigade members here remember how long y’all woulda lasted if the Red Army came pouring thru Check Point Charley?”
I was told that West Berlin would be the world’s largest POW Camp if the balloon had went up.

Berliner

It would have been “Hands Up/Don’t Shoot”.

Just like we took units visiting from West Germany on tours of the Soviet Sector of Berlin, they road busses on tours of the west. The only difference is the US troops wore Class A’s, minus name tags and unit crests and were allowed to walk around and enter shops, even though a lot of shelves were bare. We were often followed by suspected Stasi (East German Intel) so it was fun to switch directions to catch them. We had to warn black troops that civilians would probably walk up to them and want to touch them, having never seen blacks.

The Soviet troops touring the west were kept on busses to better “keep track” of them. One summer day a Soviet bus of troops broke down on Clayalee street in the American sector with the Brigade HQ on one side and the Main PX/Commissary on the other. Their “minders” wouldn’t let them open windows and required them to face front with sweat dripping off. People were buying cases of coke and trying to get them to accept to no avail while waiting for another bus and a tow.

Anonymous

If anyone thinks the Chicoms haven’t been planning and thinking-through taking Taiwan for years, they haven’t been paying attention.

rgr769

Putting a brigade in Taiwan would do nothing but put another trip wire into Asia like the U.S. Forces in South Korea. I suspect most of us would rather not be part of that “trip wire” to be sacrificed for the benefit of the D.C. and global corporate elites. What say you Slow Joe? As this idea is totally academic for those of us too long in the tooth to serve.

Roh-Dog

No more Task Force Smiths.
Men died for lack of planing and conviction from our Perfumed Princes.
They do it again; balls, bandsaw. Some assembly required.

timactual

We are starting to get so many “trip wires” and small detachments scattered around the world that I doubt we could actually muster enough force to back them up.

Slow Joe

Whoa whoa, how come my name came up in that?

STSC(SW/SS)

Anyone remember when Dems called Republicans Chicken Hawks for getting us involved in the Middle East. The shoe is on the other foot now.

Slow Joe

Didn’t Taiwanese investors heavily funded the initial rise of China back when Chinese State Capitalism was only little experiment on a coastal province next to Hong Kong?

You reap what you sow.

Charles

I remember being in Korea 1974~1975, (Camp Hovey, 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry) amazed at the fact that we were not allowed even minor deviations from stateside rules for storage of rifles under triple locks (arms room, then the cage, then the racks) guaranteed to ensure that not a single US soldier could readily access his weapon (or in my case, the rifles and machine guns for my Scout Platoon of “Rat Patrol” gun jeeps). I once made the mistake of telling my Platoon Sergeant to preload each jeep’s footlocker* with the spare barrels (with asbestos gloves)for each machine gun, the night vision equipment, binoculars, bayonets, etc. … in other words, everything we needed to pull from the arms room to load up. Ammo was another cluster fuck, on the other side of the Camp, because –God forbid — soldiers would actually have ammunition next to their weapons. *We removed the back seats of our jeeps (M-151) and replaced it with a footlocker with a padded seat on top (thank you mama-san). When we deployed, it was easy to load onto the jeep and we were off out the gate. My Company Commander told me to undo it all: “The bayonets have to be in a separate locker in the arms room, the barrels in another locker, the NVG’s in yet another …” in other words, exactly as if we were storing weaponry at Fort Polk, LA for an AIT unit. And I said: “What if the North Koreans come tomorrow?” And he said “I don’t know if the North Koreans will come tomorrow, but I know for a fact that the IG, and the S2 will inspect within the month, and that shit better be where the [stateside] regulations say it should be.” Any further discussion about immediate defense needs was dismissed with a smug: “Of course, the North Koreans will cut through us like a hot knife through butter, but our death will arouse American indignation and anger like Pearl Harbor … and we all know how that one ended.” I guess the sailors and airmen at Pearl Harbor… Read more »