Why bet on a loser? Australia’s dangerous gamble on the US
By Michael Williss
A fresh warning that the US will lose a war with China has just been made by a US data analytics and military software company with US Department of Defense contracts.
It seems no-one is prepared to back the US to win a war with China, so why is Australia going all-out to align itself with provocative moves and hostility from the US directed at China?
Govini released its latest study of US capacity to fight China in June. Its annual reports measure the performance of the US federal government, looking at 12 top critical national security technologies through the lens of acquisition, procurement, supply chain, foreign influence and adversarial capital and science and technology.
It concluded that it is nearly impossible for the US to win a war against the PLA if a conflict were to break out between the two global superpowers.
The report also found that China has more patents than the US in 13 of 15 critical technology areas, further demonstrating how the US is falling behind in AI development.
“This year’s report also highlighted another reason a US conflict with China could be unwinnable: the very real possibility of parts scarcity.”
It identified serious risks within seven major DoD programs, including the cornerstone of AUKUS, namely the Virginia-class submarines. Not that this will worry the cargo-culters in Canberra who keep throwing billions at the fraught arrangement.
Another factor was China’s lead in the global supply chains.
Govini CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty said:
”China still has a dangerously high presence in US government supply chains. The Departments of the Navy and Army showed a decreasing reliance on Chinese suppliers over the past year, however, the Department of the Air Force showed a 68.8 percent increase in the usage of Chinese suppliers.”
Govini’s report adds to a number of similar scenarios in recent years, starting with the headlined warning by The Times on May 16, 2020 “US ‘would lose any war’ fought in the Pacific with China.”
In the New Atlanticist, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Kerg, an active-duty US Marine Corps operational planner, critiqued biases in modern US war games, in which military planners command opposing armed forces in simulated warfare. He writes that instead of a short, sharp war over Taiwan with a win for the US, as predicted by war games, the greater likelihood is one of a years-long war with China with uncertain outcomes. One of those, too terrible to contemplate, must be the likelihood of Chinese retaliation against Australia for joining the US, for being fully interoperable with its military, and the consequent rubbleisation of Australian cities and attacks on US military bases here.
Retired US Army Colonel Dr John Mauk agrees that any conflict over Taiwan will almost certainly be a prolonged war, and he says that it would be one that favours China. He writes:
“U.S. military forces are too small, their supply lines are too vulnerable, and America’s defense industrial capacity is far too eroded to keep up with the materiel demands of a high-intensity conflict. Another critical factor undermining U.S. capacity to sustain a war is that Americans lack the resilience to fight a sustained, brutal conflict.”
By contrast, China is well-postured to sustain a protracted high intensity war of attrition.
He says that the current political divide in the US impedes its ability to respond to national security crises, and that:
“Americans in general are unprepared for, unwilling, or incapable to perform military service. Short of reinstituting a draft, U.S. military services cannot attract or retain enough manpower quickly enough to sustain a fight with China.”
Former US assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, A. Wess Mitchell, believes that “United States is a heartbeat away from a world war that it could lose.” He writes that:
“… today’s U.S. military is not designed to fight wars against two major rivals simultaneously. In the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the United States would be hard-pressed to rebuff the attack while keeping up the flow of support to Ukraine and Israel.”
Comparing US and Chinese naval growths, Mitchell says that the US is no longer able to “outproduce its opponents”. With US debt already in excess of 100% of GDP, he says that the debt loads incurred through war with China would risk catastrophic consequences for the U.S. economy and financial system.
He raises the possibility of a Chinese fire-sale of US debt:
“China is a major holder of U.S. debt, and a sustained sell-off by Beijing could drive up yields in U.S. bonds and place further strains on the economy.”
Hillary Clinton raised this quandary facing the US with then PM Kevin Rudd in 2010 when she asked him “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” It is a question that the US has yet to find an answer to.
And questions there are. Harlan Ullman, a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council, opens a January 2024 article with the observation that:
“Since World War II ended, America has lost every war it started. Yes, America has lost every war it started – Vietnam, Afghanistan and the second Iraq War.”
He sounds a warning:
“… given likely weapons expenditure rates should a war with China erupt, the U.S. has the capacity for about a month before, as in Ukraine, it runs out of inventory,” before asking his questions: “War with China would be a strategic catastrophe. The U.S. has not explained how such a war could be fought and won. The economic consequences would be disastrous. And how would such a war end? Can anyone answer these questions?”
China is quite adept at utilising sentiments such as these. Major Franz J. Gayl, a retired Marine Corps infantry officer has regularly written for Chinese online news outlet Global Times. Last year, a number of his contributed articles to GT were published as a book, “The United States Will Lose the Coming War with China” which is available on Amazon.
Australia’s Liberal-Labor pro-US coalition has placed a $368 billion bet on the ability of the US to prevent the expansion of Chinese influence in the South Pacific or its recovery of the island province of Taiwan.
It is an expensive way to be taught the African proverb that when the elephants dance, it is the grass that suffers.
Michael Williss is a member of the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition (AAAC) and the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN).
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6 comments
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Harry Lime
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New England Cocky
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JulianP
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Bert
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New England Cocky
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Clakka
Return to home pageHas that Uncle Sam ring kisser,Marles got the memo?
This Michael Williss article clearly outlines why the USUKA sub debacle is against the best interest of Australian voters, just as previous kow-towing in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan ”lost wars” was the American imperium parasitising Australian wealth as the US NE military industrial complex maximised profits by maximising pain & suffering.
The Scummo plot to embed US military personnel within the Defence Department influencing Australian foreign policy to the detriment of Australian best interests, is yet another good reason for indicting Scummo for treason. Retched Mediocrity is merely a rubber stamp of the same policy and arguably the least impressive LABOR Minister at every rank.
Perhaps the sensible course for the future isfor Australia to concentrate on trade with PRC China and walk away from the imperialist ambitions of too many exceptionalists in the defence and arms industry of the USA (United States of Apartheid).
The author quotes a retired US Army officer when stating that: “Short of reinstituting a draft, U.S. military services cannot attract or retain enough manpower quickly enough to sustain a fight with China.”
Seems that little problem is on the way to being overcome.
A former US Congressman reports that a recent amendment to the US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provides:
“Section 531. Selective Service System: Automatic Registration. SEC. 3. (a)(1) “Except as otherwise provided in this title, every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System.””
The same author concludes: “This amendment is in the NDAA legislation and there is no pending amendment to strip it from the bill. So, when the NDAA passes, as early as this week, Congress will have taken steps to make automatic conscription the law of the land.”
https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/14/dennis-kucinich-america-prepares-for-global-war-and-restarts-the-draft-for-18-26-year-olds/
Readers might also be interested in the view of a former Australian Defence Policy advisor who states simply that Australia is “Walking into war with China” courtesy of an American trap.
[ https://johnmenadue.com/walking-into-war-with-china-an-american-trap-hidden-in-plain-sight/ ]
The war China is already winning is not so much against the US but the developed world, it is the trade war.
Kissinger opened the door to US/China diplomacy and Nixon met with Moa and the development of Chinese industry was set in motion as major corporations lined up to ‘exploit’ the cheaper production capacity China offered. New factories were built, and the flood of cheap goods started flowing. And has grown year on year as Western manufacturing closed down and stores filled with ‘made in China’ merchandise.
I think the genie may well be out of the bottle, the latest onslaught is in vehicle manufacturing.
The ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ is the new, 21st Century version of the Silk Road, getting Chinese goods to hungry markets quicker and more economically.
Western and Eastern economies have become so intertwined that a war in the Pacific would be a wasted effort. A bit like shooting yourself in the foot really.
@ Julian P: Oh dear ….. another example of why the American education system is third rate ….. at best!!
This fresh younger generation of privileged desk jockey bureaucrats have deliberately overlooked the last time the USA (United States of Apartheid) had compulsory military conscription for the Vietnam imperialist war ….. where America was soundly defeated by the North Vietnamese Army (contrary to FRWNJ propaganda). Or have they??
The Vietnam experience was very good for job opportunities with the CIA, FBI, manufacturing jobs in the NE military industrial complex and of course an explosion of desk jockey jobs for poorly education private school alumni.
Sadly ….. the desk jockeys rarely spend any time in the battle field, instead fighting the war from the comfort of their private studies and glossy offices ….. with fatal consequences for too many good persons.
Australia must expect an increasing demand from young American citizens seeking to escape this Republican trumpery and exceptionalism common to European imperialists and Zion@zi colonial settlers in the Middle East.
Goodness me, all this has been going on forever. And the situation we find ourselves in has been underway for 40+ years obvious to all but the blinded and disinterested. The now has been increasingly inevitable, but how and whether to divert from the path, and at what point, seems to largely depend upon a weird process of discombobulation and anti-discombobulation on the blinded, disinterested and trembling chauvanists until they believe their franchise is the one that forged the better path.
As the world population continued to surge, economic wars became more desperate, and soon techno-wars developed exponentially to the point now where the biggest threats are from crypto crime, AI, and the light-speed dissemination of misinformation and disinformation, with minds being blown left, right and centre. No-one is immune, even the most powerful, who really had little idea what to do, especially given the tech inventions and exploiters largely rested in the hands of renegade individuals and corporations – to what end one might ponder.
Facing the environmental devastations wrought by past ballistic wars and unfettered extractive industrialization has meant that bringing to an end the cold comfort of faux nostalgia for ‘simpler’ times is a pressing urgency, and so too the end of crypto crime, AI piracy and the spread of misinformation and disinformation. So blowing it out from behind the bureaucratic curtains of hush, pressing hard on the ballistic renegades and techno renegades to awaken the prols, to obtain backing for global co-operation, whilst maintaining a theatre of competition, is likely seen as the least destructive, most expedient path.
There will always be push-back from interests vested in closed-market past ways, and from various punters, but that should not deter a reset, after all we our now is inextricably bound by global interdependence. The main driver of course is remediation of environmental devastation and restructure of industry to avert climate catastrophe. China bashing would appear to be a ruse, with AUKUS seemingly being about preservation of comms, a measure relating to enforcement of sub-sea mining, critical minerals and advance tech collaboration. It’s all underway full bore.
There’s all sorts of weird things going on at present, feints and sleights and shifts and portents and proxies, under the main auspices of repositioning for economic and political stability and fairness, whilst at the same time seeking to disguise the climate crisis elephant in the room. There’s the flip flop stuff with Israel and Palestine and jibes at the UN, ICC & ICJ, the US Congress standoff on Ukraine funding, then Biden’s massive Ukraine strategy switch, then the multipolar Switzerland ‘Peace’ Conference and Putin’s ‘peace’ ulimatum from the protective shadow of China and India, Modi’s now wobbly knees, and this little note about Biden and Trump
Look out! Peace could break out. Then what would the mainstream media have to babble about? And where could the despots and their flunkies go to hide?
Maybe.