{"id":21978,"date":"2013-09-04T13:18:23","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T18:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21978"},"modified":"2013-09-04T13:18:23","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T18:18:23","slug":"air-sea-battle-as-a-response-to-chinese-military-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/09\/04\/air-sea-battle-as-a-response-to-chinese-military-expansion\/","title":{"rendered":"Air-Sea Battle as a response to Chinese military expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Diplomat<\/em>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2013\/09\/03\/air-sea-battle-a-dangerous-way-to-deal-with-china\/\" target=\"_blank\">Amitai Etzioni<\/a> looks at the US Air-Sea Battle plan:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On the face of it, the Pentagon\u2019s Air-Sea Battle plan makes eminently good sense; it is a clear response to a clear challenge. China has been developing a whole slew of weapons (especially anti-ship missiles) over the past two decades that are of great concern to the U.S. military. These weapons, known in Pentagon-speak as anti-access\/area-denial (A2\/AD) capabilities, could undermine the international right to free passage in China\u2019s surrounding waters or, in the case of a conflict over Taiwan or contested islands in the South and East China Seas, prevent the U.S. from making good on defense commitments to its friends in the region.<\/p>\n<p>In response, the Pentagon developed Air-Sea Battle (ASB), the employment of which entails, according to position papers developed to promote it, a blistering assault on China\u2019s mainland. A report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) gives a detailed account of how an ASB-style war with China would unfold. In the opening \u201cblinding campaign,\u201d the U.S. attacks China\u2019s reconnaissance and command-and-control networks to degrade the PLA\u2019s ability to target U.S. and allied forces. Next, the military takes the fight to the Chinese mainland, striking long-range anti-ship missile launchers. Given that this is where the anti-ship missiles are located, it is only logical that the U.S. would target land-based platforms. And to go after them, one of course needs to take out China&#8217;s air defense systems, command control centers, and other anti-access weapons. In short, ASB requires a total war with China.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The main flaw Air-Sea Battle it is not merely that it is a particularly aggressive military response to the anti-access\/area-denial challenge. The problem is that ASB is developing in a foreign policy vacuum. If the U.S. were to conduct a thorough review of China\u2019s military capabilities and its regional and global ambitions \u2014 and found that the Chinese were planning to forcefully expand their territory or unseat the U.S. as the global power, perhaps Air-Sea Battle might be deemed appropriate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Diplomat&#8216;s Amitai Etzioni looks at the US Air-Sea Battle plan: On the face of it, the Pentagon\u2019s Air-Sea Battle plan makes eminently good sense; it is a clear response to a clear challenge. China has been developing a whole slew of weapons (especially anti-ship missiles) over the past two decades that are of great [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,5,683,13],"tags":[145,881,30,144],"class_list":["post-21978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-military","category-pacific","category-usa","tag-airforce","tag-eastchinasea","tag-navy","tag-taiwan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5Iu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21979,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21978\/revisions\/21979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}