6-Feb-13 World View -- China locks radar on Japanese targets

[John]

6-Feb-13 World View -- In escalation, China locks its 'fire control radar' on Japanese targets


Bulgaria blames Hizbollah for bus attack killing Israelis

** 6-Feb-13 World View -- In escalation, China locks its 'fire control radar' on Japanese targets
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 06#e130206



Contents:
Bulgaria blames Hizbollah for bus attack killing Israelis
Lebanon promises to cooperate with Bulgaria's investigation
In escalation, China locks its 'fire control radar' on Japanese targets
China accuses Japan of escalating dispute of Senkaku/Diaoyu islands
Analysis: China/Japan standoff similar to leadup to World War I


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, Burgas, Bulgaria, Israel, Hizbollah,
Iran, Lebanon, Najib Mikati, China, Japan,
fire control radar, Senkaku, Diaoyu,
Germany, Otto von Bismarck, World War I,
Graham Allison

[solomani]

Though the WWI analogy is instructive there are still significant differences. Here are a few off the top of my head :

• Both sides have nukes. And US has superiority in this. Its unlikely for China to start a war with the USA or any ironclad ally like Japan. This doesn't help countries like Vietnam so much or, to a lesser degree, the Philippines. Though both countries have been moving further down the track of US influence since 2008. Hell, Philippines is considering reopening at least 1 US base.
• China is no Germany and the USA is no Britain. British culture was anemic by the late 1800s while German culture was flourishing and dynamic and was the most influential culture of the world. Today its the opposite - the US is dynamic, China is anemic and still wedded to "ancient wisdom" which is irrelevant.
• The USA still has overwhelming conventional military might vs China. Its a crude comparison but effective so lets use the carrier one. The USA has 11 CVs to China's 0 (not including that training vessel they have).
• The USA has a lot more effective allies than China. And if China continues to grow the USA will also gain the Russian Federation onside.

My prediction is a situation more akin to the Cold War if China doesn't wind back its military expansion or aggressiveness - which I do not expect it will. The war will be a geo-economic and geo-political one not a hot-war unless something out of right-field happens like China becomes a democracy.

[NoOneImportant]

This is insanity. This is how all wars start, each side believing, in it heart, that the other side will not fight.

The target at which the fire control radar is aimed has moments to react once the fire control radar comes up. Fire control radars are not like positional, and navigational radars. They are off all the time until the fire decision has been made. The reason for this tactic is that the target senses the fire control radar, and tactics dictate that they fire a Harm - anti-radiation - missile to follow the fire control radar back to it's source to disable - blind - the fire control system before a missile launch can be made.

The Japanese made a conscious decision to deviate from what would be "normal" combat tactics, and gambled that the Chinese would not fire. But had a missile been fired a response would have been immediate, and there would have been lots of dead on both sides, as these missiles are designed to sink, not just injure, ships. For example the U.S. Harpoon is designed to, just prior to impact, nose down so that it impacts it's target below the water line so as to act more like a torpedo than a missile.

It is down right unhealthy to be in slug it out naval combat. Unlike the days of yore when mountains of gun shells were used, modern naval combat is a one or two missile affair - he who shoots first wins.

[Reality Check]

.

There is a striking analogy between China today and Germany before World War I.

This would appear to be a much stronger analogy than World War II.

From what I understand, what really caused World War I was Germany's strong, untested, belief in their own military superiority and the strong desire of the Germans to have an armed confrontation to prove it.

The assassination of their ally's ( Austria's ) heir to the throne, just gave the German's the excuse they wanted to prove that superiority.

Germany did enjoy military superiority and a quick victory over Russia on the Eastern front between Russia and Germany.

The Germans were also expecting a quick war on the western front and little resistance from the Low Countries.

The Germans believed, perhaps correctly, that if they fought full scale war with France alone on the Western front, before any other major power joined the French, that they, the Germans, would defeat the French and win the war.

Instead, the low counties put up fierce resistance in World War I and Great Britain immediately came to the aid of their treaty allies, the Low countries.

What resulted was a war of attrition on the western front with Germany pitted against France, Great Britain and the United states all at the same time, which was inconclusive in it's outcome, at least on the western front and with respect to Germany, and ended in an armistice, rather than a surrender, and which planted the seeds of World War II.

[Reality Check]

This is how all wars start, each side believing, in it heart, that the other side will not fight.

Sometimes that belief is correct. For example, the Low Countries and the French in World War II.

or,

The Army of the Persian Empire against the Greeks under Alexander the Great.

[NoOneImportant]

In WWII Hitler believed that neither the French nor the British would act upon their treaty alliance with the Poles - as they had not for the Czechs. Hitler actually sought peace with the British, and the French after the fall of Poland. The Germans did not desire war esp. with Brittan. It was Hitler's arrogant belief that he could schmooze the British. Hitler continued to believe this during and after the 9 month "non war" in the west when a technical state of war existed between France/Brittan, and Germany yet there were no hostilities or offensive actions. Hitler continued to believe this even after the six week war in the west that culminated with the defeat of the Western Allies in France. Hitler still believed that he could negotiate a peace in the west - with Brittan - so that he might have a free hand against the Russians in the east.

In fact, even as the British were being pushed into the sea at the debacle that was Dunkirk, Hitler stopped his push and avoided the wholesale slaughter of the several hundred thousand British soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk for two full days, thus permitting the British to evacuate Dunkirk - the miracle of the small boats. Hitler's belief was that a slaughter of the British would stiffen British resolve, and impede the negotiation of a separate peace with Brittan, which he still thought that he could do esp. even after their defeat in France. Thus prior to the invasion of Poland both the British/French, and Germans believed that the other would not fight, until it was too late.

Regarding the Persians, and Alexander - if memory serves me - there were three major battles between Alexander, and the forces of Darius. Alexander on all three occasions was victorious.

What has been ignored in our time is the part that money played in all societies prior to the American Civil War, and especially for Alexander. We live in a monetarist society. The Fed monitors industrial production and on a periodic basis prints additional money to facilitate the the "new" value of assets created through manufacturing, and thus the functioning of society through the maintenance of a stable currency.

Up to the time of Nixon all currency was necessarily backed by tangible assets - hard assets, or metals: gold, or silver, all American bills used to be silver certificates, redeemable in silver. Prior to the American Civil War all money was primarily gold or silver coin, a fixed commodity that is not capable of being printed, or diluted. In the normal conduct of trade you might get a ship load of coffee, tea, salt, and/or sugar, but what you gave away for it was priceless and irreplaceable gold and silver. In the time of Alexander, while there were certainly issues of history, primarily the two Persian invasions of Greece ca. mid 400BC, but one of the primary driving factors that precipitated Alexanders invasion of Asia Minor - Persia, modern day Turkey - was his lack of cash - hard assets, i.e. gold, and silver - to pay his soldiers. In a fixed asset society - a society that uses a fixed and finite asset as a store of value - money - any source of an ongoing and continuing expenses, and expenditures were a harbinger of doom. No more gold or silver could be produced, other than the nominal amount should any given country be fortunate enough to have gold or silver mines. But with a standing army there is a never ending accrual of the expenses of paying the soldiers - Alexander was hemorrhaging red ink. He needed gold and silver to pay his soldiers if he was to stay in power, and Macedonia had long since pillaged Greece. The only other appreciable source of gold and silver was Persia - thus, outside of suicide, or disbanding his army, Alexander's only option was to invade Persia to obtain the know large quantities of gold and silver possessed by Darius.

But none of these address the underlying difficulty in the world today: a weak America. Neither the Chinese, nor the Japanese can be dissuaded from these adventures by an America that is perceived to be weak, impotent, and lacking resolve.

[Reality Check]

Regarding the Persians, and Alexander - if memory serves me - there were three major battles between Alexander, and the forces of Darius. Alexander on all three occasions was victorious.

Correction, there were three major battles for the much smaller Greek army, but only one major battle for the Army of the Persian Empire.

The first battle was between a joint Army of Persian frontier forces, the occupation forces of one Persian Governor, and one Greek Army on one side, and another Greek army under Alexander on the other side, near what is now the border of Greece and Turkey.

The Persians retired from that battle and allowed the Greeks to fight it out.

The second was near present day Lebanon and was between regional occupation forces of the Persian Empire and the Greeks. Both sides fought and the Greeks won.

The final major battle, the only major battle from the huge Persian army's point of view, was between the entire massed armies of the Persian Empire and the much smaller Greek Army on ground favorable to the Persians on the plains of Iraq.

No one, including the Greeks, expected the much smaller Greek army, far from supply lines, to win that battle. All the Persians had to do was stand and fight and the Greeks did not have a chance. Only the Greek light cavalry had any chance of escaping, and then only by abandoning the rest of the Greek army.

But the Greeks stood and fought to the death with their leader, while more than half of the Persian Army, including the Emperor and his royal guard, abandoned the battle field shortly after the battle started.

The question is not who won, but is the belief that the enemy will lose because they will not fight if you do fight, always wrong? You claim that belief is always present in the army(s) that started the war, if so, it is not always wrong.

[Reality Check]

Hitler actually sought peace with the British, and the French after the fall of Poland.

Regarding the French, I believe it is wrong that Hitler ever intended to do anything other than to attack and defeat France.

After France and Great Britain declared war, but refused to attack Germany, Germany did negotiate while moving troops from Poland to the western Germany, but ...

Germany had planned this all along, that is why they had negotiated, what was at the time of Germany's attack on the Low Countries and North Eastern France, the still secret peace treaty with Russia that divided Poland. To the rest of the world it appeared that Russia had stood up to Hitler by defending part of Poland and Hitler had backed down.

German World War II battle plans had been, all along, to correct the errors they made by not overwhelming the Low countries fast enough in World War I and to capture Paris by flanking the French Army and attacking from the north. This was the Blitzkrieg plan.

Hitler fought in the trenches against the French in World War I and had no respect for the French Army.

But the French Army was the Largest Army in the World before World War II and had the most tank killing artillery and the most infantry killing artillery of any army. On paper the French Army alone could not lose to a German Blitzkrieg if they just dug in and fought.

The difference between World War I and World War II is that large divisions of Low Country infantry, in fortified strong points, surrendered to handfuls of German airborne troops dropped among their positions ( without even putting up a serious fight ), allowing German armored divisions to cross bridges unopposed. French Troops simply did not dig in and fight allowing German armored divisions to threaten to cutoff British expeditionary forces in Northern France from the Sea.

Most military history accounts show the German commanders did not believe in their own war plans because the Low Countries had much better defensive positions prepared than they did in World War I and the German commanders did not expect small numbers of lightly armed airborne troops to be able to defeat entire divisions of dug in and heavily armed infantry when the infantry merely needed to hold their strong points with unlimited stocks of ammunition and food available to the defenders.

German commanders also did not believe that French troops bypassed by German Armored divisions would simply run away and not attack and cutoff the supply lines Germans needed to drive all the way to Paris. Those same supply lines would have been needed to attack British forces from the flanks or from the rear. Germany simply did not have the infantry needed to protect their supply lines from the worlds largest army, virtually all of which was undefeated and behind German front lines after the German armored and mechanized divisions by-passed them.

The French Army commanders refused to stand and fight and thus convinced the British Army in North Western France that the British eastern flank and the British southern rear were at risk of German surprise attack.

German commanders were reluctant to engage the large British expeditionary forces on the ground when the German tanks and mechanized vehicles were in danger of running out of fuel and the largest army in the World was undefeated to their rear. The British were in the process of retreating without their equipment. Force the British to stand and fight to the death with their equipment and that might have encouraged the French to get a second wind.

The commanders of Low Country divisions in fortified defensive positions that could have held out for months without relief against armored divisions, did indeed refuse to take the causalities the would have been required to defeat the small numbers of airborne German troops that had landed among their strong points, and instead these Low Country commanders surrendered entire divisions to small numbers of airborne German troops who lacked sufficient numbers to even guard their unexpected prisoners.

French commanders refused to attack tanks with artillery at close range and refused to launch infantry attacks against German infantry defending German supply lines.

British commanders chose not to commit their troops to fight to the death for France and instead abandoned British equipment in France and bombed and sank the French Navy in French ports.

If you are correct in your claim that wars are always started by people who believe the enemy will not fight, then in this case the German leaders were more correct, than incorrect, in the early years of World War II ( 1939 and 1940).

[NoOneImportant]

And whether all of the above may be true, or not, the saber rattling on the part of both the Chinese, and Japanese is the direct result of an ascending belief, world wide, in the impotence of America. And while there have been wars since the end of WWII, there has been no conflict of global scale, i.e. national jeopardy, since 1945 - a period rapidly approaching 70 years. This is one of the longest periods of sustained peace in Europe for the last 1500 years.

That era of an American dominated peace is being "fixed," by an American electorate no longer willing to, as Kennedy put it: "...bear any burden, pay any price..." in defense of freedom, neither at home nor abroad.

[Reality Check]

This thread was originally about Germany starting world War I, as an analogy to China starting World War III.

IMHO, a much better analogy than World War II.