为没有美国的世界做准备
2024-07-19 07:03阅读：
This Is Confusing: China Wants a Fleet of Aircraft
Carriers But Wants to 'Crush' Navy Carriers
China's strategy to counter U.S. aircraft carriers involves
deploying anti-ship and hypersonic missiles to deter their
presence, while simultaneously investing heavily in its own fleet
of carriers.
by Brandon J. Weichert
Summary and Key Points: China's strategy to counter U.S. aircraft
carriers involves deploying anti-ship and hypersonic missiles to
deter their presence, while simultaneously investing heavily in its
own fleet of carriers.
-This dual approach reflects Beijing's belief that American
dominance in the Indo-Pacific is waning. China plans to use its
carriers to project power and enforce regional dominanc
e, especially after neutralizing the American threat. Beijing's
vision includes using carriers to assert control over weaker
regional militaries once it has established a new defensive
perimeter.
-This strategy aims to position China as the primary power in the
region, potentially sidelining U.S. influence and compelling
neighboring nations to align with Beijing.
China's Vision for a Post-American Indo-Pacific: The Role of
Aircraft Carriers
By deploying anti-ship missiles and hypersonic weapons, China
believes it can threaten expensive U.S. aircraft carriers so much
that Washington will prefer to keep them away. This would negate
America’s greatest naval asset before it could even fight.
Even as China boldly moves to make U.S. aircraft carriers obsolete,
Beijing continues pouring resources into building up its own fleet
of aircraft carriers. If China’s defenses have negated the threat
that carriers pose in the modern age, then why would they sink so
much money and resources into the same, purportedly obsolete
asset?
China Thinks America’s Leadership Will End
China truly believes that the United States’ days are numbered as
the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific, and possibly the world.
Beijing is acting on this belief. Its leaders are not only planning
for the defeat of the Americans in combat – they are also planning
for the post-American world. They intend to use aircraft carriers
to enforce their will on recalcitrant neighbors, the way they
believe the Americans use their carriers now. But they plan to do
this only after they think they have quelled the American threat.
With a freer hand in the Indo-Pacific, China will deploy all its
assets to force conformity with the Chinese Communist Party. If the
Chinese do deploy their carriers to augment their inevitable
invasion of Taiwan, they will likely do so only once they believe
American forces have been sufficiently degraded.
For now, it is very likely that the carriers in question would not
even be ready for deployment.
The Chinese think they can overwhelm America’s expensive aircraft
carriers with far cheaper and easier to produce missiles. Because
aircraft carriers are the beating heart of America’s maritime
power-projection strategy, by either losing these systems or by not
deploying them out of the fear of losing them, the Americans will
be forced to accept whatever new paradigm Beijing wants to impose
on the Indo-Pacific. In other words, the Americans will either
outright lose a war, or they will seek an accommodation with China
that will allow for Beijing to take Taiwan.
Shaping a Postwar Regional Order with Aircraft Carriers
Once China gets Taiwan, they can move their defensive perimeter
more fully to the First Island Chain, which runs from Japan through
Taiwan all the way down to the Philippines. From there, Beijing can
press hard against the Second Island Chain, ultimately having
power-projection capabilities in the Third Chain and beyond. It is
thus the power projection offered by aircraft carriers that China
wants, as well as the prestige of these systems. They don’t need or
want carriers for a conflict over Taiwan with the United States.
The order of operations matters.
First, the Chinese sink or at least hold back U.S. carriers long
enough for them to capture Taiwan and sue for a favorable
negotiated settlement. Second, they consolidate their holdings —
while still keeping the U.S. carriers at bay with missiles and
hypersonic weapons. Third, within the new perimeter they’ve created
for themselves, they deploy their growing carrier fleet to bully
their neighbors into accepting them, not the distant Americans, as
the new powerhouse in the region.
China’s vision is thus to use their carriers against weaker
military foes like Vietnam or the Philippines, so long as the
Americans are held back. This leaves nations like Japan, Australia,
and India to pick up the slack for America, as the Yanks can do
little more than watch as China runs roughshod over the region.
And without U.S. leadership on this issue, there is no guarantee
that Japan, Australia, and India could, in fact, pick up the slack.
Most Asian States Will Bandwagon with China If America is
Gone
As David C. Kang argued way back in 2007, without a strong
counterweight to China’s imperial ambitions in the region,
historically most nations in the region will bandwagon with China.
This is precisely what Beijing is banking on. It will aim to prove
to the rest of the region that the Americans are out and are never
coming back, and as such, it is best to make a deal with China
before Beijing brings down the hammer and sickle.
That is why, despite their heavy investments in making carriers an
obsolete system in a great-power war, Beijing continues to invest
in them. Of course, both the Americans and their allies in the
region will be developing their own strategies to counter China.
But for those who inquire as to why China is behaving the way they
are, this is why.
The West is preparing for a future without
America
Ivor Roberts
The welcome news that Britain, Italy and Japan are jointly to build
the next generation of fighter jets, a programme to be based in the
UK, highlights the determination among non-American, Western (in
the broadest sense) countries to prepare against the contingency of
US withdrawal from Western defence engagement in favour of a
national US-centric or isolationist approach to security.
The European Union had already concluded in the wake of Putin’s
aggression in Ukraine that it needed to become a stronger and more
credible security provider, with defence partners like the US and
the UK but also without them when necessary. For that reason, EU
countries are aiming at a common strategic vision for EU security
and defence. Two weeks ago the President of the European Commission
Ursula von der Leyen went further by announcing that the European
Union should strive towards a fully-fledged “European Defence
Union”. Such a defence union was always at risk of being vetoed by
Britain while we were EU members. The UK had a deep-seated fear of
any institutional arrangement which might weaken or dilute Nato.
The UK no longer has such veto power of course and, witness its
joint project with Italy and Japan, is now prepared to look beyond
Euro-Atlantic defence cooperation to the Euro-Pacific.
What has prompted this reappraisal on both sides of the Channel?
It’s an assessment forced on Britain and European allies against as
bleak a background of conflict on the international stage as we’ve
seen in decades.
Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is going better for Putin than
seemed likely four or five months ago. Back in June, he had to
contend with the real prospect of a full-scale rebellion from
Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group and a much-heralded
counter-offensive from President Zelensky’s armed forces. Six
months on, the counter-offensive has petered out, Prigozhin is dead
after a suspicious air crash and Western support, financial,
political and in material terms seems stymied by events in
Washington and war fatigue in Europe. Putin in his press conference
this week made play of what he argued was declining support for
Ukraine. The [military] freebies from the West “are gradually
running out”, he claimed.
In the Middle East, the remorselessly rising death toll in Gaza,
despite pleading for restraint from President Biden, his Secretary
of State and now his National Security Adviser may well lead to a
reluctance in Washington to fund Israel’s war in Gaza and other
far-off wars.
And that is before the very possible return of a Make America Great
Again, isolationist Trump administration.
It is significant that Zelensky went to the inauguration of the new
Argentinian president Javier Milei last Sunday, an opportunity for
him to build up relations with other Western countries besides the
US- and incidentally to confront Hungary’s premier Viktor Orban
over his opposition to the EU opening accession negotiations with
Ukraine. Zelensky critically needs Washington’s support but
non-American relationships matter to him more than ever.
What matters to the Ukraine president also matters to Western
Europe. American presidents of every hue have criticised the
failure of their European partners in NATO to do more in terms of
their defence commitment (the UK was one of only nine Nato
countries in 2022 to meet the minimum 2 per cent target of GDP on
defence to which all members subscribe). This presents the European
members with a Morton’s fork dilemma. Increasing defence
expenditure shows Europe is playing the role of a responsible ally
and pulling its weight. In July the EU mobilised €500 million to
ramp-up manufacturing capacity for the production of European
ammunition production to the benefit of Ukraine and EU member
states. And this was followed in October by new rules to boost
common procurement in the EU defence industry. But the more Europe
develops its defence expenditure, the more that feeds into a
narrative that Europe doesn’t need the US.
Western countries are increasingly sensitive to and mobilising for
the stark reality of what an isolationist America would mean for
global security. Britain has been effective at building alliances
beyond the US, which this latest development with Italy and Japan
speaks to. It needs to maintain a careful balance: to avoid giving
any encouragement to Trumpian isolationists in the US while
cultivating more widely in the defence cooperation field against
the possibility that a future White House may decline to lead the
West.
