What we support and defend

[Dayuhan]

Not at all. In fact that is what drives my opinion. Two of the things that make for a believable deterrent are having the tools and having the other guy believe that you will indeed use them if needed. Of course you can't counter any possible move, but to suggest that you should if fallacious. It is sort of a straw man and the fallacy of the false alternative rolled into one, counter everything or counter nothing. At least that is the way I am seeing you present it.

Your last sentence sort of implicitly contradicts that though because you say the antagonist must lose more than gained if there is a tussle. In order to do that you must make some decisions about what is most likely to happen and counter that. But some decisions must be made because you can't counter everything. If you try, you counter nothing and the antagonist sees that, hence, no deterrent.

The point is that you're focusing entirely on countering what they might, in a very improbable situation, do to us. Deterrence is more about what you can do to the other guy. If you're threatening my hand with a knife and I have a shotgun in your crotch, the core of the issue isn't your knife, and I don't need to be shopping for a kevlar glove. The shotgun is what makes the difference.

That is your opinion. Mine differs. But at least you are talking about the future too.

I think what you miss is that like the Cold War, and hypothetical conflict between the US and China is almost certainly going to be fought by proxy, through influence, and at a low, drawn-out level. Mutual Assured Destruction is a strong deterrent to large scale open conflict, on both sides.

Strategic ambiguity is a useful thing to a point. We left things ambiguous in Korea and Kuwait and things didn't work out so well. It is best to leave them pretty sure if they cross a line something will probably happen and there should be a clear line. Ambiguous maybe in how many of brick will fall on their heads but no doubt that they will fall.

We're not in a position to draw meaningful long-term lines, because everybody knows the lines change every 4 years. Ambiguity is what we've got, even to ourselves. It's built into our system. Might as well make the most of it.

The article referenced also seemed pretty darn sure that the Red Chinese will never do the other stuff. Being cocksure that the other guy can't, is unwise.

I read it as a suggestion that the enormous amount of money that would be spent on entirely new aircraft designs would be better spent on maintaining and extending the advantage we have on "the other stuff". That makes sense to me, especially given the reality of limited resources. I also doubt that the F35 is as bad as its detractors say, or as good as it's proponents say. Nothing ever is.

Look harder. Bold declarations and belligerent declarations are part of the escalation of force continuam (sic). You don't go straight from passive inaction to wild violence. You work up to that. What you call belligerent talk I call warnings, especially when backed up by preparation.

I just can't see what, on a specific level, such talk would achieve. What is certain is that we'd hand a significant propaganda and political advantage to the most militarist factions in China, give their military a step up in the domestic power struggles, and probably cause an increase in military spending on their side. How does that help us? They would also have to make a belligerent and assertive response. No choice there, they can't let themselves look weak, so they'd have to rattle their saber right back. Then we have to choose between rattling ours louder or backing down. How does it help us to go down that road?

Not even mentioning that the idea of lordly Americans drawing lines in the sand and telling others what they may and may not do doesn't resonate well with much of the world, even those who are in no way enchanted with China. Our little venture in Iraq didn't improve our position in that regard.

You act as if they have no agency. Almost as if they are insects that just react to stimuli. I don't think that is true. They get scared just like everybody else.

Scared people do dumb things. Often they do dumb aggressive things. How is that helpful?

I apologize for my crack about moving Guam 1000 miles east. I should have been more gentlemanly. My point was that even if we choose to fight as best we can where we have the greatest advantage, their are preexisting positions and things we have to defend. If we don't defend those positions, however difficult that is, we may end up losing anyway.

Even if you could move Guan 1000 miles east, what good would it do you? Who says you have to fight over Guam?

In the very unlikely event of outright war with China, the key would be to target their vulnerability. That's not on our west coast: sure, they do a lot of business with the US and Canada and cutting that business off would hurt them very badly, but we don't need military force to do that. Their key vulnerability lies in their access to the merchandise exports and commodity imports that sustain their economic growth, which in turn allows them to maintain domestic order. Dominating the Indian Ocean and the Middle East is more important to our position re China than dominating the western Pacific.