Steven Metz writes on China’s growing air-sea battle capability (or “high-intensity, regional military operations, including anti-access and area denial (A2AD) operations” in defense-analyst-speak):
Military capability is only part of the equation: China also has the motivation to use its growing military power. It has long-standing and unresolved territorial disputes with a number of Asia-Pacific nations. It remains dependent on imported energy and has shown a willingness to flex its muscle to protect access to its sources. And most of all, China seems determined to replace the United States as the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific region. To do this, it must negate U.S. military power and fill the ensuing vacuum with its own.
Read more at WPR Article | Strategic Horizons: U.S. Must Change Its Thinking on Conflict in Asia.
We in the United States never seem to learn from our mistakes. We helped build the Japanese war machine in the late thirties buy selling them the scrap steel taken from dismantled elevator train lines in New York City. Now we’re helping the Chinese build a war machine by buying all the crap they send us built with their slave labor. Wouldn’t you think China’s communist leaders would spend the money on improving the welfare of their citizens rather than dominating the region with their new military might. Oh! I forgot about the last Chinese Revolution when mad man Mao exterminated fifty million of his fellow brothers and sisters.
I suspect China does not want war with the US any more than the US wants a war with them. The danger is that they both get drawn into a regional conflict precipitated by a third party such as North Korea, Iran (China’s Achilles heel is its reliance on Middle East oil), or Pakistan (strategically less important but Pakistan and India are both nuclear powers).
It is in both Chinese and US interests to eliminate these potential catalysts’ ability to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region.