November 28, 2023
Dear Friends and Family,
In the last 5 segments we have defined, analyzed and developed solutions for four wars we are currently engaged in as a nation – Capital, Geopolitical, Technology, and Internal. This segment focuses on a fifth war we are not currently engaged in but will face if we do not win these four wars. A Military War. A Military War with China.
China is the gravest threat facing America today and the threat that will define this century and every generation within it. As Jonathan Ward writes, “the Communist Party of China seeks to dominate the world’s seas, trade routes, and emerging continents, and to project its power from seabed to space. With its social credit system and vision of ‘social management,’ China’s people are educated, managed, and shepherded by Beijing within the constructs of ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,’ a version of China’s ascendancy and of China’s power over virtually every other nation on earth. In America, the true colossus of the modern world, we must remind ourselves that our good deeds and powerful ideals outweigh our shortcomings. What we are at best is a place that can prevent places such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or the People’s Republic of China from altering the course of history and of humanity.
The excerpts detail how this can be done, but it starts by getting new leadership that recognizes China is the central issue of our time – not climate change, the pandemic, or the Left’s version of Social Justice. Without leadership change, as our analyses in the last five segments revealed, our decline will continue, potentially to the point we can’t recover.
Pages 17 through 22 of the attached PDF provides different presidential candidates perspective on China, the Military and National Security which might help you determine the best presidential replacement candidate to get our ship sailing in the right direction.
Happy Learning,
Harley
P.S. A November 20, 2023, Headline: “Biden’s Pentagon Slated to Spend Nearly $270 million on Diversity Agenda.” Diversity Agendas discourage meritocracy, and I cannot imagine an effective military not having meritocracy
Dear Friends and Family,
In the last 5 segments we have defined, analyzed and developed solutions for four wars we are currently engaged in as a nation – Capital, Geopolitical, Technology, and Internal. This segment focuses on a fifth war we are not currently engaged in but will face if we do not win these four wars. A Military War. A Military War with China.
China is the gravest threat facing America today and the threat that will define this century and every generation within it. As Jonathan Ward writes, “the Communist Party of China seeks to dominate the world’s seas, trade routes, and emerging continents, and to project its power from seabed to space. With its social credit system and vision of ‘social management,’ China’s people are educated, managed, and shepherded by Beijing within the constructs of ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,’ a version of China’s ascendancy and of China’s power over virtually every other nation on earth. In America, the true colossus of the modern world, we must remind ourselves that our good deeds and powerful ideals outweigh our shortcomings. What we are at best is a place that can prevent places such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or the People’s Republic of China from altering the course of history and of humanity.
The excerpts detail how this can be done, but it starts by getting new leadership that recognizes China is the central issue of our time – not climate change, the pandemic, or the Left’s version of Social Justice. Without leadership change, as our analyses in the last five segments revealed, our decline will continue, potentially to the point we can’t recover.
Pages 17 through 22 of the attached PDF provides different presidential candidates perspective on China, the Military and National Security which might help you determine the best presidential replacement candidate to get our ship sailing in the right direction.
Happy Learning,
Harley
P.S. A November 20, 2023, Headline: “Biden’s Pentagon Slated to Spend Nearly $270 million on Diversity Agenda.” Diversity Agendas discourage meritocracy, and I cannot imagine an effective military not having meritocracy
SEEKING WISDOM FOR AMERICA – SEGMENT 21
THE MILITARY WAR
PROBLEM DEFINITION
CIVIL WAR POTENTIAL:
If we are to have a Civil War in the U.S., it will most likely be along political lines. Historically, such wars emanate by a military coup and the amount of conflict is dependent on the amount and power of a resistant force. Here is a perspective March Fisher of the Washington Post published on August 26, 2022:
THE MILITARY WAR
PROBLEM DEFINITION
CIVIL WAR POTENTIAL:
If we are to have a Civil War in the U.S., it will most likely be along political lines. Historically, such wars emanate by a military coup and the amount of conflict is dependent on the amount and power of a resistant force. Here is a perspective March Fisher of the Washington Post published on August 26, 2022:
This split over how seriously to take the threat of civil war is not just another example of America’s deep divisions: It has the great benefit of existing on a foundation of shared facts. Both set of analysts – those who say we’re heading toward civil strife and those who way that threat matrix is largely limited to lone rangers and small, disorganized groups whose dangerous but scattered acts don’t constitute a civil war – agree there is little chance of an organized violent attack on the government, or of local or state authorities taking up arms against their federal counterparts. But there remains a sharp divide over whether a mounting series of individual and small group attacks could add up to a warlike conflict that destabilizes the country.
U.S. – CHINA CONFLICT POTENTIAL: If there is to be a major external war it is more likely to be between China and its Allies – Russia, Iran, North Korea – and the U.S. and its allies – NATO, Japan, South Korea, Australia.
China has signaled such an intent with its National Security Strategy which states as goals” perpetuate CCP rule, maintain domestic security, sustain economic growth and development, defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity (which include Taiwan and the South China Seas), secure China’s status as a great power, and become the World’s only superpower by 2049.
These actions indicate that China is moving on the strategy – significant military buildup, the Road and Belt initiative, construction of military islands in the South China Seam creation of ports throughout the world that could be converted to military ports, and the creation of over 27 bases of different kinds in our hemisphere. They have developed new innovative military technologies like hypersonic missiles and funded the largest navy on the fact of the Earth.
A military comparison between the U.S. and China shows China with the edge on manpower, land power, naval power and financials. The U.S. has the edge on airpower, natural resources, logistics, and geography. China’s military power is trending upward where our trend is military decline. Annually the Heritage Foundation analyzes the strength of our armed forces on a scale of very weak, weak, marginal, strong, and very strong. Their most recent rating is: Marine Corps – strong, Army – marginal, Navy – weak, Air Force – very weak, and Space Force – weak.
Considering the present internal strife in our country, one has to conclude that as a society we are not prepared for an external war. Further, our military is struggling with recruitment, standards, and physical fitness in its ranks. Much of this is the result of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) mandates by our Commander in Chief. One has to wonder if there is any place in our country where you want meritocracy more than in our military.
Additionally, a substantial portion of military monetary allocations are being used to meet climate change initiatives versus military equipment. Simultaneously, we are sending substantial equipment to Ukraine thus depleting our military armament inventory. Net, we are not in a good position to defend ourselves.
Adding to that, our internal war has weakened the nation’s police forces particularly where defunding the police movements are in play. Further, the denigration and demeaning of the “men in blue” has accelerated retirements and significantly impacted the ability to attract new recruits. Net, our police forces are under-sourced and under trained.
WISDOM ON POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS -- EXCERPTS
REFOCUS THE MILITARY:
The long-respected U.S. military has been caught in the vicious cycle of excess bureaucracy and resistance to change, and it is whipsawed about by politicians looking to advance partisan agendas. These forces distract the military from its central mission – to deter our enemies and defend our freedom – and, as a result create a culture that depresses the innovative spirit of the men and women in uniform and makes their jobs harder.
The goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion have taken center stage – to the detriment of our military might. To make matters worse, politicians keep co-opting the military to advance their political agendas. Some, for example, want the military to focus on climate change, so the Army developed a strategy to reduce its carbon footprint and fight climate change before the Pentagon even had a National Defense Strategy.
Climate change and pandemics are not the military’s problem to solve, especially with China breathing fire down our backs and Russian and Iran stirring chaos. All this, along with an incredibly competitive labor market, has contributed to a recruitment crisis in the military. A tight labor market always makes it harder to recruit, but the politicization, wokeness, and cultural drift sweeping the armed forces undoubtedly are to blame as well. Our country needs to spend more on defense and use it to buy and field new weapons as quickly as possible. There’s no greater signal of military commitment to innovation than that.
Source: Superpower in Peril by David McCormick (2023)
ADDRESS DOMESTIC ENFORCEMENT:
We can begin by declaring a national emergency and surging resources, technology, and personnel to lock down the border. We need to finish the barrier wall on the border, while also hardening our ports of entry and ensuring that we have the most advanced drug-detection tools in the world. We must not stand by as illicit Chinese super-labs continue to ship massive quantities of fentanyl and its chemical precursors to Latin America for production and shipment into the U.S.
We also have to solve our crime problem at home by reinvesting in the three P’s of law enforcement: police, prosecutors, and prisons. We should begin by making a once-in-a-generation investment in police salaries, training, and equipment, with a goal of putting 100,000 new officers on the street.
Furthermore, we have to enforce the laws on the books, including so-called minor or lifestyle crimes. That means fighting vagrancy, vandalism, and violent crime alike. Disrespect for the law doesn’t start with murder—and it must be stopped before it costs lives. We need to ensure that criminals who are put in a squad car are then put behind bars.
Source: Senator Tom Cotton speech at the National Press Club June 25, 2021.
THE CHINA STRATEGY:
An economic strategy for confronting China should consist of five parts. First, we must extend the Trump administration’s model of fair trade. Second, we must reduce our dependence on China and secure our supply chains. Third, we must stop funding China’s military modernization, technological ambitions, and human rights abuses. And fourth, we must stand up to the CCP by protecting American innovation and holding China accountable for its abuses. Finally, we should also look abroad – to our friends and allies – to help advance our goals of technological supremacy. By working with our allies, we will be better able to accomplish our shared goal of preserving a free and fair world economy.
Protect Fair Trade: We must rebalance our trade relations around three concerns. First, trade should be conducted under fair conditions that help American businesses grow and create American jobs. Second, the desire for fair trade does not mean that every industry deserves subsidies of handouts. And third, as Robert Lighthizer put it, “A sensible trade policy strikes a balance among economic security and efficiency, and the needs of working people.” That is, the impact of trade on our communities matters and must be considered equally alongside any benefits of fair trade.
Reduce Dependency and Decouple Strategically: It would be impossible and unwise to disentangle our economies completely. China is America’s largest trading partner. Our country exports roughly $125 billion worth of goods to China every year, supporting over one million American jobs. However, we can no longer depend on China for goods critical to our economy and national security. We must decouple strategically. In practice that means moving critical supply chains out of China.
Stop Funding China: As is, U.S. dollars finance Communist China’s most egregious acts and ambitions. U.S. investors back Chinese semiconductor companies. They also support hundreds of AI developers that work closely with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and even support the party’s techno-totalitarian regime. This kind of active investment in China must stop.
Hold China Accountable: We must address the reality that Communist China remains the greatest source of industrial espionage in the world, and its abuses and aggression have only increased. The CCP’s economic warfare is the greatest external threat to American innovation. We should sanction the perpetrators of intellectual property theft, but also the beneficiaries of it, including companies and CCP officials that support and enable it. And we should ensure that no U.S. researchers are working on behalf of the CCP.
CONCLUSION:
All of this ultimately is a question of leadership. Only the most senior leadership in our government can set a clear direction for the nation’s China strategy and for its economic statecraft. Only they can make the execution of that vision a top priority, above the endless list of competing interests. It will likewise take serious leadership to rein in the administrative state and to reform government for our generational confrontation with China. Nothing short will suffice.
Source: Superpower in Peril by David H. McCormick (2023).
PREPARING THE COUNTRY FOR POTENTIAL WARFARE:
We are not going to be able to address the unprecedented threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party as long as this White House and American politicians continue to prioritize the whims, pet causes, and speech codes of progressive identity politics above America’s economic and national security. There are several actions we must take immediately to address them.
First, it starts with unity and clarity about the threat we face. The gravest threat facing America today that will define this century and every generation represented here, is not climate change, the pandemic, or the left’s version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China. And we will need a whole-of-society – not just government – effort to fight this threat. If these mega-corporations won’t get on board, we need to start asking ourselves why they deserve the protection and patronage of the U.S. government, if they continually promote and defend effort that undermine our national security and long-term viability.
Second, we need to empower our government to counter Beijing’s infiltration. We must begin decoupling key industries from China. We cannot rely on Beijing for rare earth minerals or pharmaceuticals. We cannot continue to collaborate with them on sensitive, groundbreaking research. We cannot allow American retirees to unknowingly fund China’s military. And we cannot allow Chinese technology to operate inside our country.
Third, we need to revitalize our industrial capacity if we’re going to be able to make this an American century, rather than surrender it to Communists. A nation dependent on hostile regimes is not going to last long. You can’t be a great power if you’re not an industrial power. You have to be able to make things. That’s why in this country we made a decision a long time ago to buy our weapons, particularly our airplanes, from American companies that make them in America.
Finally, we need to empower our allies and partners. This is not just a competition between China and America. Beijing seeks dominion over its neighbors. It views them as vassal states, tributary states. In the coming months and years, our alliances and partnerships with Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Korea, India, Brazil, and other will be more crucial than ever.
Producing a new strategy that unites and mobilizes not just Americans but the democracies of the world to confront the threat of China is THE central issue of our time. If we fail—if strategic paralysis leads America to isolationism and leaves democracies fractured – then tyrants in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran will become more powerful and aggressive.
Source: Decades of Decadence by Marco Rubio (2023).
SOME SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS
- Create the capacity to cope with biological, chemical, and nuclear threats as well as EMP and black-sky events.
- Require production of our medicines, medical supplies, and equipment be returned to the U.S. or to allied countries, which possess secure sources of supply and transport.
- Authorize enhanced threat briefings for businesses by U.S. intelligence agents and contractors; create online briefings that inform about the range of PRC intelligence operations directed at U.S. companies.
- Build the capacity to employ AI-supported analyses to support decision-making at the highest levels of government.
AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY for TRIUMPH OVER CHINA
The Military Arena:
Strategy: America wants a peacetime rather than a wartime strategy for global competition with China. The economic, diplomatic, and military dimensions to this strategy seek to create, in the words of Winston Churchill, “peace through preponderance,” or as Ronald Reagan phrased it, “peace through strength.” George Washington stated in his first inaugural address that “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”
Our overall strategy is to prevent the consolidation of Chinese economic expansion around the globe, to roll China back to its region, and impose costly military trade-offs that will force them to focus on Asia alone. Our military strategy must ensure the reconstruction of the US and Allied advantage with a return to dominance in the geographical, industrial, and technological domains that matter. This means four military domains especially: maritime, cyber, space, and nuclear.
In the maritime domain, the US Alliance System must outpace China’s shipbuilding program. This effort will involve sanctioning the Chinese shipbuilding industrial base, Allied coordination on creating comprehensive maritime power, leveraging our subsea advantage with both manned submarines and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), and rebuilding our maritime industrial base. In cyber, the US must harden critical infrastructure because conflict with China and Russia would likely involve cyberwarfare or coercion against civilian, commercial, and industrial infrastructure as well as potential use of cyberwarfare in military operations. Cyber also presents an opportunity for continuous engagement of America’s leading technology companies in national security missions. Regarding space and nuclear, we must recognize that building the space economy is one of the key missions of the century, a contest America must win.
If organized globally, the combined power of the world’s democracies can ensure the return of our military advantage, through our superior economic and technological power, as well as through our superior numbers. The purpose of such an approach is not to destroy China, but to destroy its ambition to use military power, by demonstrating that wars large or small initiated by Beijing will not succeed. A mere balance of power in Asia is not enough to ensure deterrence. Nor is it sufficient in Europe or potentially in other regions of the world. What is necessary is the decisive superiority of the combined military power of the world’s democracies.
Requirements: Given the Communist Party’s history, ambitions, and ideology, the Communist Party’s potential use of military power grows more likely should China grow economically and militarily stronger – which is why economic containment and the reconstruction of peace through strength is an essential path for the United States and our Allies. America must correct disastrous military imbalances that our leaders have left us with through the China engagement era. Rebuilding our strength may not happen overnight, but this effort must begin with urgency.
The US must make full use of its undersea advantage. In America’s submarine force we still hold enormous advantages over China. This means that undersea warfare is “a domain which we can own” even in the long term. Our submarine force is the most survivable leg of the US nuclear triad – far more so than the land-based and air-based legs – and therefore the bedrock of our nuclear deterrent. American advantages in undersea warfare can also give us the upper hand in naval conflict with China. The US Navy’s current objectives include expanding the development and production of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs).
UVs are one of several new capabilities – along with directed-energy weapons, hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, and quantum technologies – that the Navy and other US military services are pursuing to meet emerging military challenges, particularly from China. UVs can be equipped with sensors, weapons, or other payloads, and can be operated remotely, semi-autonomously, or (with technological advancements) autonomously. They can be individually less expensive to procure than manned ships and aircraft because their designs do not need to incorporate and support equipment for onboard human operators. UVs can be particularly suitable for long-duration missions that might tax the physical endurance of onboard human operators, or missions that pose a high risk of injury, death, or capture of onboard human operators – so-called “three D” missions, meaning missions that are dull, dirty, or dangerous.
Those looking a century into the future are keenly aware of the importance of space. We must ensure that the future of space – one of the primary emerging areas of geopolitical competition – remains in American and Allied hands. The contest for the Next Frontier gives the democracies a greater chance in the contest with China and also the hope of victory through peaceful competition.
Supply Chains: The US Department of Defense has been tasked with securing rare earths and critical mineral supply chains for the US. The essential need for many of these materials to sustain our way of life and our national defense industrial base creates an urgent national security requirement that goes beyond a typical business case. It is essential that we engage our private sector. Our national security means that these supply chains must be built and secured with a North American or Allied supply chains.
Summary:
America will have to achieve three fundamental things to win our contest with China and defend the world order against our authoritarian rivals: We must maintain military deterrence over both China and Russia. America must aim for these core outcomes in our contest:
- An Alliance-Based Trading System – an economic community in which integration and cooperation builds between Allies and like-minded nations and in which Beijing is gradually separated from this economic community.
- A Second Great Divergence in History -- this time not between the West and the world but between the democracies and autocracies.
- Secure Allied Supply Chains and a New Arsenal of Democracy – Beijing should no longer play a role in critical supply chains in either the US or Allied World. We must innovate and build secure supply chains that reduce or terminate our reliance on China, while further diverting economic power away from Beijing.
- Engagement of America’s CEOs and Business Leaders. Our Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 corporations have undergone transformation in the 30 years of global peace since the Cold War and now consider themselves “multinational corporations.” They must adapt to the realities of geopolitical competition between China and the US and engage in building economic power for the US and Allied World, not for our primary adversary. For the sake of their own interests and for the sake of their national loyalties, our companies must take the right side. Much of this contest will depend on the choices made by America’s private sector.
- Economic Containment of China – America must focus and advance when it comes to strategic industries and emerging technologies. However, it will do us little good if our adversary receives our gains through economic engagement and espionage. America must deploy its tools of economic containment and economic warfare to hold back this opponent and deny it the gains that we are able to make.
- A New Frontier of Economic Power – working backward from the world economy of 2100, 2050, and 2030, we must rapidly design and execute the advancements that will constitute economic power in the 21st century and deny this progress to our adversaries to widen the gap between their economic power and our own.
Potential Consequences:
With a billion people living under history’s most technologically advanced system of repression and coercion, the Communist Party of China seeks to dominate the world’s seas, trade routes, and emerging continents, and to project its power from seabed to space. With its social credit system and vision of “social management,” China’s people are educated, managed, and shepherded by Beijing within the constructs of “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” and “the Community of Common Destiny for Mankind,” a version of China’s ascendancy and of China’s power over virtually every other nation on Earth. If China’s leaders are able to sway the world’s great continents toward their orbit --- even a global public opinion toward China deteriorates, worldwide economic engagement continues to thrive – then, regime by regime, fellow traveler by fellow traveler, and government by government, the world would be transformed in Beijing’s image, much as America ushered in a period of great power peace and the relative proliferation of freedom that lasted from the Second World War until the 21st century.
In America, the true colossus of the modern world, we must remind ourselves that our good deeds and powerful ideals outweigh our shortcomings. What we are at best is a place that can prevent places such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or the People’s Republic of China from altering the course of history and of humanity.
Source: The Decisive Decade: American Grand Strategy for Triumph Over China by Jonathan D.T. Ward (2023).
POTENTIAL SOLUTION
China will define the 21st century, for Americans and for the world – not climate change, not the Left’s social justice system or their woke ideology. China is the world’s gravest threat.
The world needs to start preparing to respond to that threat and the United States needs to lead the preparation. The first step is to unite the world’s democratic nations into an alliance. An alliance that focuses on three things: economic containment of China, a united effort to separate the world’s democracies from dependency on China for critical supplies (e.g., medicines and rare earths), then nurture and develop the alliance into a formidable defense alliance against the potential invasion of a pact composed of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
The strategy of the defense alliance should be peace through strength with the U.S. serving as the backbone. The effort needs to begin with a massive educational campaign on the gravity of the threat and the potential consequences. Alliance activity should bolster the educational campaign. Rallies, alliance meetings, and committee reports should dominate the airwaves making it a movement for the free world. Peace through strength to deter a formidable foe who would make the world a very undesirable place to live in if they seized power should be a continuing message enhanced with messages of what actions the alliance was taking to prevent it. American needs to be at the forefront of the movement. The free world protecting itself from the aggression of Russia, Iran (and its proxies – Hamas and Hezbollah), China and other bad actors of the world should be the objective punctuated by it is something we have to do.
Alliance success in creating the movement has the potential to solve a myriad of other problems, including the internal bickering among political foes in America, the adoption of wokeness as an ideology, a realization of multi-national corporations that they need to join the alliance – their customers – versus kowtowing to the CCP, and a move to technology innovation as a necessity for alliance domination. Hopefully, it would cause America to leverage its energy resources to generate the growth necessary to fund an increase in military equipment and infrastructure while simultaneously assisting the free world to extricate themselves from energy sources currently supplied by the autocracies of the world.
It is a strategy to protect the free world, achieve peace, and enhance prosperity. It might even lead to America securing its southern border.
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| america_21l_the_military_war_--_segment_21.pdf |