Via Spiiderweb comes this hair-raising account of the various scenarios that are possible as the Bush Administration acts on the PNAC agenda of attempting to produce a 21st century American Empire:
An important consideration in any US-China conflict is the geopolitical reality that the US and its allies will be operating on exterior lines, while China will operate on interior lines. This gives China a huge advantage in a major war in Asia against US and allied forces.
Consider the long sea lanes of communication (10,000 kilometers) that the US alliance would be forced to cross each time its forces had to resupply and you get an idea of the huge logistics problem that the US would face in a confrontation with China.
Such lengthy sea lanes of communication (SLOC) are highly vulnerable to a gauntlet of Chinese and Russian submarines lying in ambush along the route laden with underwater sea mines. This will make transporting personnel and equipment by the US over the Pacific or the Atlantic extremely dangerous and expensive.
Compare this US handicap with troop movement by Chinese troops using heavy-lift aircraft, railways and highways within the China mainland. China's interior lines of communication are shorter and protected, with little chance for enemy interdiction. Chinese troops can concentrate numerically superior forces rapidly at any given point to defeat invading US forces one by one with much shorter and less vulnerable lines of communication.
And in the event that the US forces and their allies are lucky enough to land on the Chinese mainland, they will be faced not only with a conventional People's Liberation Army of more than 2 million, but also with a people's militia conducting asymmetric warfare and a people's war in its teeming millions. US forces and their allies will be like a raging bull charging and goring a hive of killer bees. US forces may be able to set foot in China, but it is highly doubtful if they could come out alive.
Grimmer scenarios
There is a scenario grimmer than described above, however, and that is if strategic planners belonging to that elite group called the Project for the New American Century decide to launch a nuclear "first strike" against China and Russia and risk a mutually-assured destruction: 1)In defense of Taiwan ... or 2) In launching a "preventive war" to stop China from catching up economically and militarily. Or, if China decides to start an offensive against Taiwan with a one-megaton nuclear burst 40 kilometers above the center of the island. Or, if China and Russia decide to arm a number of their short and medium-range ballistic missiles and supersonic cruise missiles with tactical nuclear warheads in defending themselves against US and UK aircraft carrier battle groups.
Land-attack versions of these supersonic cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads carried by stealthy Chinese and Russian submarines can also put American coastal cities at great risk to nuclear devastation. Strategic planners must also consider these worst-case possibilities.
[snip]
American crossroad
As the sole superpower, the US stands at a critical crossroad. One road leads to world domination. Using its pre-eminent military war machine without equal, it can strike at any perceived threat, change foreign sovereign regimes at will, grab precious mineral resources anywhere in the world and control local economies with its host of transnational corporations. It can also sabotage the economy of up-coming rivals, or launch preventive wars to preempt prospective competitors and try to defeat them militarily while they are still weak compared to America.
Such a course of action is very tempting, especially to leaders with global ambitions of becoming "Lords of the Earth". But such a road is full of risks and what is planned on paper, as what was done in Iraq, may not turn out as hoped. And such a path will necessarily ignite the outrage of most right-thinking people. America will earn for itself the enmity and hatred of people all over the world.
The American people and Congress allowed George W. Bush to play the Big Swinging Dicks game in Iraq, because the former were still traumatized by the 9/11 attacks, and Congressional Democrats were too craven and too frightened to put up a rational fight. Now, Bush has decided that he is "the decider", and that he and only he gets to decide whether to use nuclear weapons in what is now nearly a foregone conclusion to attack Iran. Is Iran simply a proxy for China at this point? And will this war escalate?
The fact is that the most dangerous, despotic madman in the world isn't any of the leaders that are presented on the evening news as Very Scary People Heading Up Countries Where They Aren't Like Us. The most dangerous man in the world is sitting in the White House -- and he has absolutely no qualms about blowing the entire world to kingdom come, because as a believer in his own role as God's own anointed architect of the Rapture, he has his escape hatch all ready to go.
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