Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
It is not what those countries have done for us lately, it is what they can do for us in the future. Take a look at the map, if we told those countries to go pound sand, they would be forced to make an accommodation with China, most certainly including basing rights for them and none for us. That would make it impossible, impossible to prevail in any kind of conflict with China. That being the case, Japan and South Korea would be forced to go over and the Aussies would mandate Mandarin studies from the second grade onward. And that would just be the beginning.
Two views from Austria, dang, I mean Australia:

THERE is an almost mathematical elegance to Ross Babbage's vitally important new paper, Australia's Strategic Edge in 2030, to be published on Monday.

The veteran defence analyst wants Australia to do to China what China is doing to the US. China recognises that it could never defeat the US in a full-on, force-on-force conflict. But it can make it incredibly costly and dangerous for the US to operate its military in the western Pacific.

China achieves this by adopting "asymmetric" warfare. Asymmetry simply means big versus small. Asymmetric warfare is a way for the weaker party in a conflict to inflict crippling costs on the strong party.

China is doing this to the US through cyber warfare, space warfare, submarines and missiles. The Chinese strategy is called anti-access area denial. It is aimed at destroying US computer-based capabilities through cyber warfare. It is aimed at destroying US satellites through space warfare.

[...]

Already, Australia is in direct range of many Chinese weapons, so the PLA's expansion directly affects the defence of continental Australia.

While Babbage's report is very sobering, it is hardly as if the Americans are asleep while all this Chinese military activity is going on.

The Americans are developing their own air-sea battle plan that would seek to wipe out many of China's capabilities at the start of a conflict.
Time to beat China at its own game - The Australian - Feb 5, 2011.

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It makes sense for Australia to develop constructive defence engagement with China, as I have long argued. Australian forces are less likely to find themselves confronting Chinese forces (whatever opinion polls might imply) than working alongside them, for instance in counter-piracy or disaster relief operations. So it makes sense for each side to forge a practical understanding of how the other operates.

It is also precisely because of the anxieties about how China will use its power that we ought to get to know the PLA up close. Channels of communication and so-called 'confidence building' measures (CBMs) between the Chinese military and their counterparts in the US, Japan and India are weak to non-existent.
Australia-China Defence ties: Beyond the hype - The Interpreter - April 29, 2011.