In 1941, the United States suddenly found itself in a war that would span a third of the Earth’s surface – the Pacific Ocean. They faced an implacable enemy with imperial ambitions, and the Pacific Fleet – or at least, what wasn’t on the muddy bottom of Pearl Harbor – was built in part on Great War relics.
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Four years later, the United States Pacific Fleet had more modern combat ships than all the other navies of the world combined. The United States, as Admiral Yamamoto warned, had fired up its enormous industrial base to a war footing faster than anyone thought possible, and we drowned the Empire of Japan in steel – and atomic flame.
Today there is another Asian power with Pacific Ocean ambitions, and we have some problems that didn’t exist in 1941.
Defense expert Mackenzie Eaglen, the author of “Keeping Up with the Pacing Threat: Unveiling the True Size of Beijing’s Military Spending,” explained how the U.S. defense budget is inadequate, leaving the U.S. vulnerable to communist China.
Eaglen made her comments on the podcast “School of War” with host Aaron MacLean, published on Tuesday.
Most discussions of the defense budget don’t make you fear for your life—but here on @schoolofwarpod @MEaglen and I posit, maybe they should…https://t.co/UFMcbvZ6uV
— Aaron MacLean (@AaronBMacLean) December 3, 2024
The primary problem, according to Eaglen, is that China may well win dominance in the Pacific without firing a shot. And, as is always the case, the problem has a lot to do with logistics.
“If they know if this ever got beyond competition to something with the use of violence, we don’t have that capacity to rapidly repair and resupply forward in Asia, and it’s a really long way home to sail and fly things. You see how Beijing’s starting to win without fighting,” she concluded.
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It’s not impossible. Our nation’s military is weakened; the Biden administration has turned it into a jobs program for everyone with any neurosis du jour, and our ability to project power is badly weakened as well. Fighting any kind of conflict on the far side of the Pacific would have us at a major logistical disadvantage. We hold Alaska and Hawaii, which enables us to resupply at the top of the Great Circle route and the central Pacific, but our at-sea replenishment capability may not be up to a major war.
But China has its problems as well. Their economy is a mess, and the nation is about to fall off a demographic cliff. In two or three more generations, the Middle Kingdom may not exist in any recognizable form.
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And that’s the likely problem. If China is going to make a move in the western Pacific, they will have to do it soon.
America does have some advantages in the Pacific. Our undersea fleet is the most advanced in the world, and as the Germans learned as early as the Great War, submarines are a great force multiplier. We also still have our big nuclear carrier task groups, but those may be vulnerable to the new generation of hypersonic weapons.
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China may be less than impressed with our capabilities at the moment. But that may be changing.
The incoming Trump administration likely has some in China feeling just a bit apprehensive. President-elect Trump (still not tired of that) has sworn to rebuild our military, to make it once more a force capable of closing with and destroying the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect. That may well add to the urgency the Chinese Communist Party feels to make a move on, say, Taiwan – or the Phillippines.
We do indeed live in interesting times.
