The Korean War is a war that most of us want to forget if we ever knew much about it in the first place. (See book review of “The Forgotten War” for a little more information concerning our war with Russia, China and the Korean Communists from 1950-1953.)

It is worth analyzing the strategic thinking of Mao Zedong in order to grasp how China’s leadership may be approaching developments in the world today at www.globalsecurity.org.

The limited “police action” in Korea was brutal. The Communists had intelligence that enable them to anticipate many of our tropp movements. Seoul, the capital that the U.S. defended (we were a member of the United Nations Forces fighting North Korea, a proxy for the Soviet Union and Communist China), changed hands four times with many lives lost by civilians, and military personnel on both sides. The United States, five years after the end of WW II, was totally unprepared in leadership, training, manpower, equipment and intelligence. Mao Zedong cunningly enveloped whole divisions and battalions and slaughtered Americans after Mao’s troops crossed the border of China at the Yalu River and quietly infiltrated U.N. lines. The waves of Chinese and North Koreans were often coming from behind, in front of and from all sides of the U.N. lines.

Mao took great pride in his ability to carry on what we now refer to as “asymmetrical” warfare from mountain strongholds against opponents with much more well equipped armies. Mao’s strategic thinking is still influential within Chinese military circles. The following are some salient features of Mao’s thought:

Political factors are more important than technology and material factors in determining who ultimately wins the war;

A liberal democratic society has many conflicting priorities and interest groups that can be exploited in times of war;

Given patience and time, an adversary with an advantage in numbers and material resources can eventually be defeated.

The Vietnam War is the often cited example of how patience and time work in favor of a determined military force that is less well equipped with technology and weaponry. Mao was an example and still is an example to revolutionaries all over the world including Al Qaeda. His techniques illustrate how domestic political dissension and other cultural peculiarities of liberal democracies are turned into weapons that can be more effective than aircraft carriers and missiles.

Many of the Chinese leaders fought through years of civil war in China and were assisted, then and now, by Russia’s huge military-industrial complex. In recent times, China has developed anti-satellite weapons, including land-based laser weapons that can destroy the sensors of satellites. I even understand that China can now destroy military satellites with a high-altitude nuclear burst launched from its own satellites.

Aircraft carriers are America’s chief instrument for projecting U.S. military supremacy around the world. In this category of “hardware”, the US has no equal. We maintain a total of twelve aircraft carrier battle groups; China may have one. But in naval war games, our carriers were eliminated repeatedly. Many of our naval experts are reported to be very concerned. The annual report from the Pentagon on Chinese military power released very recently (2008) expresses deep concerns about the extent of the build up, according to Bill Gerts of the Washington Times:

• China’s military spending continues to increase by double-digit figures and that official Chinese claims of spending $45 billion are short of actual spending, which could be as much as $139 billion

• China has deployed between 990 and 1,070 CSS-6 and CSS-7 short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) to garrisons opposite Taiwan and is adding more than 100 missiles per year, including more advanced systems.

• Chinese computer hackers have launched sophisticated strikes on computer networks around the world in the past year, including U.S. government networks, that might be the work of the Chinese government.

• China’s strategy of defense includes conducting pre-emptive attacks “if the use of force protects or advances core interests, including territorial claims, for example, Taiwan and unresolved border or maritime claims.”

• China’s anti-satellite weapon test in January 2007 shows that the military’s space warfare capability is “more than theoretical.” Additional space weapons include jammers, laser blinders and microwave weapons to disable satellites and ground stations.

• China is engaged in “wide-ranging espionage” targeting officials, businessmen and scientists prompting more than 400 U.S. investigations..

• China’s military buildup is shifting the cross-Strait military balance in its favor, through a long-term expansion designed to fight “local wars” with high-tech weapons using speed, precision targeting, mobility, and the role of information technology as a force multiplier.

The report counters the findings of U.S. intelligence analysts who have sought to play down China’s buildup by saying it is limited to preparing to fight a war against Taiwan.

The report stated that while the near-term focus is on a Taiwan conflict. “long-term trends suggest China is building a force scoped for operations beyond Taiwan.”

However, the report said that China’s military currently lacks the ability to defend sea lanes that carry oil to China from the Middle East, but is discussing ways of doing so in the future.

No one in the Navy is going to stand up and declare that carriers may be all but obsolete. In view of the current technologies, the carrier groups may be as effective in a war between superpowers as the Maginot line in France which Hitler merely by-passed and then mopped up after the dust settled on his blitzkrieg. Medium- and short-range ballistic missiles which China seems to be on the verge of perfecting can hit slow-moving targets at sea up to 2,500 km away.

China possesses missiles, some with a range of 300 km that can be armed with electro-magnetic pulse warheads:

One little-noticed intelligence disclosure contained in the Pentagon’s annual report on Chinese military power says China now has ballistic missiles designed to hit U.S. aircraft carriers and ships at sea.

The missiles are described in the report as part of China’s “anti-access/area denial capabilities” that include “anti-ship ballistic missiles designed to strike ships at sea, including aircraft carriers.”

Using a ballistic missile to target ships requires a degree of sophistication not shown by Chinese missiles in the past, and indicates China’s military has mastered precision missile targeting, no doubt helped by the theft of U.S. warhead design and other secrets through espionage in the 1990s.

Other new weapons that are part of the precision-guided missile arsenal are advanced cruise missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles, the direct ascent anti-satellite missiles, like the one tested in January 2007.

China has purchased much of this new technology, which includes nuclear warheads, from Russia. There are also massive torpedoes in China’s arsenal against which aircraft carriers are virtually defenseless.

Furthermore Chinese and some U.S. military experts believe that our high-tech military is vulnerable to electro-magnetic pulse attack (EMP) which can blanket the US with an electro-magnetic pulse that will damage all electrical grids on the US mainland, shutting down everything that is operated electronically, including computers in vehicles and other military equipment. Such an attack is a corollary to cyber-warfare, which is basically a very sophisticated form of computer hacking. Experts tell us such electronic sniping and pinging goes on constantly in preparation for economic and social confusion that will create a “perfect storm” converging with the other tactics discussed herein.

So if all this is true, what is the motive and what can a patriotic citizen do? Hasn’t China invested a great deal of money in the U.S. economy and would they want to risk their investments?

Financial manipulation and maneuvering for control of oil are additional weapons in an asymmetrical arsenal but are also motives for the scenarios outlined above. It is interesting to see how much aid China has received from Japan, the U.S. and Europe over the years even as China increases military spending and aid to countries which have gradually entered the Chinese sphere of international influence.

China’s immediate objective, however, is Taiwan. China has announced the goal of “repatriating” Taiwan unequivocally. The U.S. position on Taiwan over the years has been equivocal in the extreme but also provocative from the Chinese standpoint. The ambiguity of our own foreign policy and the lack of any U.S. national interest at stake in Taiwan (or at least an interest that is clearly articulated and discernable to the American public; i.e., the electorate) is an invitation to China to make a gambit at almost any time. China has boldly enunciated its intention to use force to seize Taiwan by force. In the event that China deploys force across the Formosa Straight, how will Americans as a people deal with being asked to make sacrifices based on the United States’ past commitments to Taiwan? Additionally, we need to come to grips with evidence that China is preparing to project its power globally not just across the Straight of Formosa.

If we abandon Taiwan because of our commitments in other arenas or because of the political risk of supporting a cause that is not readily apparent to many people in the public or within the State Department, then what will be our attitude toward the Philippines or Japan? What if our economy is ailing and foreclosures are looming when a crisis develops in the Formosa Straight? A terrorist attack occurring closely in time with some other grave crisis (in the Middle East, perhaps?) could severely weaken our political will to deal with an aggressive Chinese military that goes on the move. And they have more than enough troops to operate in more theaters at one time than we can! The political will of the Chinese population is not a problem- it’s just an ideological issue for the Party to decide.

The thought of all those veteran Chinese and North Korean fighters coming across the hills and crossing behind our lines in Korea in 1950 and 1951 keeps bothering me.

U.N. troops were totally surrounded and had to fight their way across narrow mountain roadways that were controlled by heavily armed Chinese roadblocks. The Chinese did not use roads so it was hard to know when and where they were infiltrating our lines. We left a great deal of American blood on Korean soil because of faltering political leadership, faulty intelligence and positive assertions from politicians and military officers as to how the Chinese leaders would act.

While our leaders wrangle over the economy and Iraq, our enemies (like Iran and possibly China) may be crossing our borders, probing our vulnerabilities and/or outsourcing terrorism to nongovernmental third parties in such a way as to maintain plausible deniability when an attack against the U.S. materializes.

Americans, start looking at security issues for yourselves. At the grass roots where matters are local, it all tends to stay more focused and real when we stay informed and vigilant. How many of us have extra water and food to sustain us for even a few days in the event that the power grid is down for whatever reason? How many of us have even talked to our neighbors about methods for preventing criminal activity and dealing with disasters at the neighborhood level? The professionals in the state, local and federal government are important in safeguarding us from criminals, terrorists and other threats to our freedom and well-being but they can drop the ball (look at New Orleans).

Most of us never heard much about Osama bin Laden before September 11, 2001- even though the authorities were well aware that he was a threat. Before Pearl Harbor most of our leaders believed that Japan had neither the capability nor the motivation to attack so far from their bases in Asia. The dots were all set out for the intelligence agencies but no one at the higher levels of government connected the dots. Does this sound familiar to ayone?

It sounds like the WTC attacks. But the U.S./UN experience at the Yalu is the calamity that gives rise to my alarmist warnings. People connected the dots there but the political and military leaders denied the evidence even when Chicom prisoners were brought in!

Perpetrators of tyranny will cross ideological lines and align with each other to victimize innocent parties. History is replete with such examples; e.g., Hitler and Stalin with their Mutual Nonaggression Pact on the eve of WW II, an alliance of dictators in which the principals agreed to divide up Poland while the leaders of Europe were swooning over “peace in our time”).

While we wait for our leaders to unite around some real priorities (other than hope), we the people need to remind each other that this is the time to watch and be alert. A time may come that those of us in the shooting community are the last line of defense. There are too many potential enemies out there to lose our focus when the stakes are so high.