I am reading this article again. It is the first blog I ever posted and most of it is up to date after 15 years. I read a lot about the Korean War, a war that most of us want to forget—if we ever knew much about it in the first place. That study caused me to have an epiphany regarding China’s strategy in 2006.
I started analyzing the strategic thinking of Mao Zedong in order to grasp how China’s leadership was approaching its promise to take control of Taiwan. Such a move will almost certainly involve the Philippines, Japan and American territories in the Pacific.
I was actually shaken when I realized how brutal the limited “police action” in Korea was. 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. Many lives were lost.
The United States, five years after the end of WW II, was totally unprepared in leadership, training, manpower, equipment and intelligence. The most surprising aspect of the Korean war was the realization that 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 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 economics may be out of fashion in China, but Chairman Mao’s strategic thinking is still influential within Chinese military circles.
The following is one salient feature of Mao’s thought:
“Political factors are more important than technology and material factors in determining who ultimately wins the war.”
The Vietnam War is the oft-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 taught revolutionaries all over the world how domestic political dissension and other cultural peculiarities of liberal democracies could be turned into weapons that were 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 now has one. But in naval war games, our carriers are eliminated repeatedly. Many of our naval experts are reported to be very concerned. Of course, 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 has now perfected can hit targets at sea beyond 2,500 km away.
China possesses missiles that can be armed with electro-magnetic pulse warheads. 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. This includes computers in vehicles and 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.
There is now the experience with Wuhan virus and the problems with determining the sources and objectives of genetic warfare that emanate from collaborative projects conducted in Chinese laboratories but involving partnerships with numerous intelligence communities, various government, military and private research corporations. 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?
Chinese financial manipulation and maneuvering for control make it all the more interesting to see how much aid China has received from Japan, the U.S. and Europe over the years—even as China constantly increased military spending and aid to countries which 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 discernible to the American public) is an invitation to China to move at almost any time. China has boldly enunciated its intention to seize Taiwan by force. In the event that China deploys force across the Formosa Straight, how will we as a people deal with being asked to make sacrifices based on the United States’ past commitments to Taiwan? Especially when we stand to lose many more lives than we have lost in Iraq or even Vietnam?
Geo-political terrain can be very different from the way it appears! We need our own American “cultural revolution” in which average Americans at the local level start looking at security issues for ourselves. At the grass root—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 terrorism and disasters at the neighborhood level? The professionals in the state, local and federal government are critical to safeguarding us from criminals, terrorists and other threats to our freedom and well-being but they can drop the ball (look at New Orleans).
The first item in any security agenda should be to figure out who the enemy is. If the Chinese government is the enemy, neither political party is likely to sound the alarm because both parties have invested too deeply and too long in “China-as-a-country-that-is-becoming-more-like-us”.
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. We kept hearing about how our security agencies never connected the dots.
Finally, history demonstrates that various perpetrators of tyranny will align with each other to victimize innocent parties even where such tyrants are supposedly on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum (like 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”).
We need to convey a message to our leaders that we are tired of Congressional investigations and constant chatter about scandals in Washington, DC. The brutal infighting in our nation’s capitol replicates some of the more endearing aspects of how Mao and Stalin typically dealt with their domestic foes. I respectfully suggest that we the people, including our political leaders, are our own worst enemies because we have been divided, isolated and lulled into thinking that the enemy is our fellow American on the opposite side of the political aisle.
During the Korean War, prior to Gen. MacArthur being dismissed, Gen. MacArthur and President Truman were busy maneuvering the political scene while the enemy’s human waves were pouring out of the hills and carving up our troops. Today we wait for our leaders to unite around some real priorities. We the American people need to remind each other that this is the time to watch and be alert. It is no coincidence that the Second Amendment is before the U.S. Supreme Court again. The pressure to ban guns will be intense when the chaos breaks out in the streets. Pray and stay vigilant.
The Law Office of Mark Knapp PLLC 