นักเตรียมพร้อมรับภัยพิบัติทุกท่าน มีใครเตรียม"อาวุธปืน"บ้างหรือไม่?

ขออภัยครับผมขอมองแตกต่างว่า สงครามทั้งหลายที่เกิดขึ้นหาใช่ "ความโง่" เป็นมูลเหตุใหญ่หรอกครับ หากแต่เป็น"ความฉลาด"ต่างหากที่ทำให้เกิดสงคราม ทั้งนี้ความฉลาดที่ผมหมายถึงในที่นี้เป็นความฉลาดทางโลก(ที่เรียกว่า cunning หรือความเจ้าเล่ห์แสนกล) ที่คอยคิดกลอุบายต่างๆที่จะหาทางตอบสนองต่อความอยากของตนและเอารัดเอาเปรียบผู้อื่น และเจ้าความฉลาดที่ถูกครอบงำด้วยกิเลสร้ายอย่างนี้นี่เองที่ทำให้เขาเหล่านั้นถูกบังตาขาดปัญญาที่จะเข้าใจสัจธรรมและการไม่เบียดเบียนกัน แล้วไปทำการรุกรานผู้อื่นโดยคิดว่าตนเองจะควบคุมสถานการณ์ได้และเป็นฝ่ายชนะ ซึ่งในที่สุดแล้วมันก็คือความโง่แต่เป็นความโง่ในทางธรรม

ถ้ากล่าวอย่างเป็นรูปธรรมหน่อยในกรณีระหว่างอเมริกาและจีน เราต้องศึกษาถึงระบบโลก นับตั้งแต่ในอดีตจนถึงปัจุบันโดยเฉพาะเรื่องดุลย์แห่งอำนาจ ระบบเศรฐกิจ สงครามเย็น ฯลฯ เราต้องรู้ถึงพฤติกรรม ธรรมชาติของชาติอภิมหาอำนาจอย่างอเมริกา เข้าใจเรื่องทุนนิยมโลก บรรษัทข้ามชาติ อิทธิพลของทุนที่อยู่เบื้องหลังการเมือง การใช้สงครามเพื่อแก้ปัญหาเศรฐกิจ ศึกษาเรื่อง ฉันทามติวอชิงตัน(Washington Consensus) และอื่นๆเพื่อที่เราจะได้เข้าใจธรรมชาติตัวตนของพวกเขา การศึกษาเรื่องเหล่านี้จะทำให้เราได้กรอบในการทำความเข้าใจและสามารถทำนายแนวโน้มของพฤติกรรมที่อาจเกิดขึ้นในอนาคต

นอกจากการมีกรอบการมองที่เกิดจากการศึกษาข้างต้นแล้วเรายังต้องมีข้อมูลในปัจจุบันเพื่อนำมาวิเคราะห์และสังเคราะห์ร่วมกับกรอบการมองดังกล่าว เช่น เรื่องวิกฤติการเงินในอเมริกา วิกฤติการเงินที่กำลังลุกลามและขยายใหญ่โตในยุโรปซึ่งเขย่าวงการทุนนิยมของโลกตะวันตกที่มีสหรัฐเป็นหัวหอก นอกจากนี้ยังต้องจับตาไปที่ซีเรียซึ่งเป็นจุดยุทธศาตร์สำคัญ(เป็นสนามของสงครามตัวแทน)ในตอนนี้ระหว่างอเมริกา(และทุนบริวาร)กับฝ่ายตรงข้ามที่ประกอบไปด้วย จีน รัสเซีย และโลกมุสลิมเป็นหลัก และที่เกี่ยวพันกันอย่างสำคัญยิ่งคือ อิหร่าน ซึ่งเป็นเป้าหมายสำคัญทางทหารของอเมริกา

อีกเรื่องที่ท่านควรรู้ก็คือยุทธศาสตร์ปิดล้อมจีน (โดยเพาะความจำเป็นยิ่งยวดในมุมมองของสหรัฐก็คือ การเติบโตอย่างร้อนแรงของเศรฐกิจและการพัฒนาทางการทหารอย่างมีนัยยะสำคัญของจีน การผลิกขั้วความเจริญทางเศรฐกิจจากโลกตะวันตกมายังตะวันออก ปัจจัยเหล่านี้ทำให้อเมริกาไม่อาจอยู่นิ่งเฉยและศูนย์เสียการเป็นผู้นำอันดับหนึ่งของโลกได้ซึ่งจะส่งผลเสียหายโดยตรงต่อเศรฐกิจความเป็นอยู่ของพวกเขา)) ที่มีผลกระทบต่อภูมิภาคเอเชียตะวันออกเฉียงใต้โดยเฉพาะไทยโดยตรง

เมื่อพิจารณาปัจจัยต่างๆที่มาเป็นเบื้องต้นก็ทำให้ผมต้องค้านกับข้อสรุปที่ว่า อเมริกาไม่โง่ที่จะทำสงครามหรอก ในความเห็นของผม ถ้าเลือกได้เขาก็ไม่ทำหรอกแต่เขาจะคิดว่า เลือกไม่ได้นี่หละสิ ผู้ที่คิดทำสงครามเขาต้องชั่งผลได้เสียในมุมของเขาแล้วและคิดว่า"เอาอยู่"สามารถพิชิตชัยได้ แต่กว่าจะรู้ว่าผิดมันก็สายเสียแล้ว คนคำนวณหรือจะสู้ฟ้าลิขิต เอาคร่าวๆแค่นี้ก่อนครับ

 

ขอบคุณมากครับ ผมก็ค้นอินเตอร์เนตพบวิยุสื่อสารรุ่นนี้อยู่เหมือนกันและอยู่ในทางเลือกต้นๆ เมื่อได้ผู้รู็มาชี้แนะก็ตัดสินใจตามนี้เลยครับ

 

อเมริกันเคยแนวความคิดจะดำเนินการเรื่อง ยุทธศาสตร์ช่องแคบมะละกา ด้วยอ้างเหตุผลเพื่อต่อต้านการก่อการร้าย แต่จริงๆอาจจะเพื่อปิดล้อมสกัดอิทธิพลของจีน มีสิงคโปร์เข้าร่วม แต่มาเลเซียและไทยไม่ได้เข้าร่วม แต่กำลังอาจจะถูกดึงไปร่วมแบบสงครามเวียตนาม ใช้เทควิธีแบบสงครามลาว กองกำลังมีแต่ทหาร US เป็นหัวหน้าชุดปฏิบัติหรือควบคุมบังคับบัญชา พลรบอาจจะเป็นชนพื้นเมือง/ทางลับ/รับจ้างรบ กองกำลังกะเหรี่ยงบางกลุ่ม

 

เล่นของแรงเลยหรือตอนนี้ไม่มีใครสั่งเข้ามาน่ะซิถ้ากลัวไม่ทันแนะนำรุ่นที่มีขายอยู่ก่อน ตอนนี้ต้องรีบก่อนหมด smith 629 PC .44 magnum ปืนดีแต่ตอนนี้ไม่มีนะ

 

ผมว่ามันก็ถือเป็นเกมวัดใจกันอยู่พอสมควร ว่าน้องไทยจะเอนเอียงไปพี่คนไหน
US ก็ขีดเส้นตายมา จีนก็ส่งทูตทหารมายัน แบบให้เลือกข้างกันไปเลยซะตรงนี้
เป็นผม ผมเลือกพี่เหลือง เพราะอำนาจเขาสามารถกดดันเพื่อนบ้านให้มารบเรา
ได้โดยที่เขาไม่ต้องเสียเลือดเนื้อเลย ส่วนพี่ขาวผมว่าเขาชอบโฉบมาแล้วก็ไป
ความจริงใจมันไม่แน่นแฟ้นเท่าคนสีเดียวกัน ประมาณว่าเลือดย่อมข้นกว่าน้ำนะ
ถ้าพี่เหลืองเข้าใจ และเราทำสัญญาให้พี่ขาวอยู่ได้ไม่เกินกว่าที่ระบุไว้ก็คงจะดี

ผมขออนุญาตคิดเตลิดเปิดเปิงไปว่า NASA เขาสนใจประเทศเราเป็นอย่างยิ่ง
ตรงที่เราเป็นประเทศที่มีประตูมิติชุกกว่าที่อื่นใดในโลก ต่อหน้าเราเขาก็จะช่วย
ด้านฝนหลวง กับ GIS ของเรา ทั้งๆที่เขาก็ไม่ชอบฝนหลวงของเรา เพราะมัน
ทำให้สภาวะอากาศทั่วทั้งโลกต้องแปรปวนขึ้นทุกวัน ลับหลังเขาก็จะบินสแกน
มาร์คจุดที่คาดว่าอาจเป็นประตูมิติ โดยเฉพาะเขากะลาที่ถูกล้อมรอบด้วยพ.ท.
3 จุดคือ พิษณุโลก กาญจนบุรี และอู่ตะเภา นี่ผมคงจิตหลุดไปแล้วนอนดีกว่า

:z1

 

สมัยโบราณ เขาให้ทหารไทยสวดคาถาตลอดเวลารบเพราะต้องการให้ยึดมั่นในพระพุทธ พระธรรม พระสงฆ์ เป็นที่พึ่ง จะทำพระเครื่องมีพุทธานุภาพมากและถ้าพลาดพลั้งเสียชีวิตขณะสุ้รบจะไปสู่สุคติสวรรค์ ผมสวดคาถาอิทธิของหลวงปู่ปานวัดบางนมโค ขณะออกทำงาน ลาดตระเวน รอดตายจากกับระเบิด ปืนใหญ่เวียตนามมาหลายครั้ง กู้ระเบิดเวลาได้ทันก่อนถึงเวลาระเบิดแค่ 5 นาที เกือบจะได้ไปเกิดใหม่แล้ว

 

ยังไงซะ อเมริกาก็เป็นลูกหนี้ของจีน ขืนอเมริกา ทำปืนลั่น แล้วจีนตอบกลับด้วยการ ไม่รับชำระหนี้ด้วยเงินดอลล่า คนอเมริกันคงเอาจอร์จไปทำทิชู่ ถ้าปืนจะลั่นแถวนี้ มันต้องลั่นแถวๆอิหร่านก่อน แล้วค่อยลามเข้ามา ตราบใดที่ ทหารอเมริกัน ยังไม่บุกอิหร่าน บ้านเราก้ยัง ชิวๆ

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqITGz-b11s"]Terminator 3 - Nuclear attack ending HD (1080p) - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ekW8OGu2TQ"]T3 0509 0746 - YouTube[/ame]

Uploaded by shyrs on May 30, 2009
Hello?
Hello? Can somebody hear me?
This is Montana Civil Defense.
Somebody please come in.
Is there anybody there?
Anyone reading me? Over.
Rumors about a launch sequence.
Command and control have broken down.
Is anyone receiving me?
Somebody?
Somebody please come in.
Anybody out there?

-SAC Nellis. We're under attack.
-CQ? CQ? Is anybody there?

This is John Connor at Crystal Peak.

Connor? What the hell is happening?
Who's in charge there?

I am.

Connor, can you help us?
This is Montana Civil Defense.
Where did you say you were again?

By the time Skynet became self-aware......
it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet.

Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms, everywhere.
It was software and cyberspace. There was no system core.

It could not be shut down.
The attack began at 6:18 p.m., just as he said it would.
Judgment Day.

The day the human race was nearly destroyed......by weapons they'd built
to protect themselves. I should have realized our destiny was never to stop
Judgment Day. It was merely to survive it.....together.

The Terminator knew. He tried to tell us.....but I didn't want to hear it.
Maybe the future has been written. I don't know.
All I know is what the Terminator taught me:
Never stop fighting. And I never will. The battle has just begun.

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtYl3_NwFXs&feature=fvsr]cleaning les baer 1911 field strip (very fast edition) - YouTube[/ame][ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtYl3_NwFXs&feature=fvsr]cleaning les baer 1911 field strip (very fast edition) - YouTube[/ame]


ดูสิครับเค้าจะรีบไปไหนครับ หรือว่าเตรียมพร้อมด่วนแล้วครับพี่ๆน้องน้องง

 

ถ้าปืนขัดลำเพราะเหตุใดแล้วแต่/กระสุนหมด อย่ายืน/อยู่ในที่โล่งแจ้งจะเป็นเป้าได้ ให้ทิ้งตัวลงนอน/พุ่งตัวเข้าหาที่กำบัง ค่อยแก้ไขปืน มีดดาบปลายปืนที่ทหารมีติดตัว ไม่ได้ใช้เฉพาะติดปลายปืนเพื่อเข้าประจันบาญเท่านั้น แต่ใช้เป็นอาวุธสำรองเพื่อต่อสู้ในระยะประชิดตัว สำหรับเราก็มีดโบวี่/อีเหน็บไทย (มีดเดินป่่าแบบไทยๆ) ทหารพรานเขาใช้กัน แต่การรบกันขั้นประจันบาญ/ตลุมบอน/รบแบบประชิดตัว มีดสปาต้าดีที่สุด (มีดสปาต้าไทยเล่มละ 400-500 บาท มีดอรัญญิก) ต้องหาด้ามที่ค่อนข้างยาว มือจับได้ถนัดไม่ลื่นหลุดง่าย ส่วนมากด้ามค่อนข้างจะสั้นไปหน่อย

 

อเมริกา...ยังไม่กล้าทำสงครามกับจีนแน่นอน

จีน...ออกจากการปิดประเทศ...และไปไ้ด้ดีกับเศรษฐกิจโลก...ปล่อยให้อเมริกาสู้กับชาติอาหรับ (ตัวเองนั่งดู)

แต่...อเมริกาก็กลัวอิธิพลของจีน...ไม่อย่างนั้นคงไม่พื้นฟูฐานทัพในชาติอาเซี่ยน

ดังนั้น...หากมีการล๊อคเป้าฐานทัพอเมริกันในอาเซี่ยน...ผมว่า....ไม่แปลก


.

 

China warns US to be ‘careful’ in military refocus on Asia

January 9, 2012

China warns US to be ‘careful’ in military refocus on Asia



BEIJING — China’s Ministry of defense warned the United States on Monday to be “careful in its words and actions” after announcing a defense rethink that stresses responding to China’s rise by shoring up U.S. alliances and bases across Asia.

The statement from the ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng was Beijing’s fullest reaction so far to the new U.S. strategy unveiled last week. It echoed the mix of wariness and outward restraint that has marked China’s response to the Obamaadministration’s “pivot” to Asia since late last year.

“We have noted that the United States issued this guide to its defense strategy, and we will closely observe the impact that U.S. military strategic adjustment has on the Asia-Pacific region and on global security developments,” Geng said in a statement issued on the ministry’s website.

“The accusations leveled at China by the U.S. side in this document are totally baseless,” said Geng.

“We hope that the United States will flow with the tide of the era, and deal with China and the Chinese military in an objective and rational way, will be careful in its words and actions, and do more that is beneficial to the development of relations between the two countries and their militaries.”

President Barack Obama’s vowed on Thursday to look beyond the wars he inherited to focus on Asian security risks — like China and North Korea — that took a back seat to Iraq and Afghanistan.

It marked a turning point not only for the U.S. military but also for Obama, entering the final year of his White House term.

Facing a re-election battle, the president declared success in Iraq and Afghanistan and took a forward-looking stance on the how to preserve American military pre-eminence.

“The tide of war is receding but the question that this strategy answers is what kind of military will we need long after the wars of the last decade are over,” Obama told a Pentagon news conference alongside Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday.

Under the new strategy, the United States will maintain large bases in Japan and South Korea and deploy U.S. Marines, navy ships and aircraft to Australia’s Northern Territory.

Meanwhile, troop- and time-intensive counter-insurgency operations, a staple of U.S. military strategy since the 2007 “surge” of extra troops to Iraq, would be far more limited.

The strategy calls for countering potential attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

China has sought to balance voicing its wariness about the U.S. moves with its desire for steady relations with Washington, especially as both sides grapple with domestic politics this year, when China’s ruling Communist Party undergoes a leadership handover and Obama faces a re-election fight.



So far, Beijing officials have avoided the usual high-pitched assertions that Washington is bent on encircling China, a view widely echoed by popular Chinese newspapers and websites.

Growing concern
The expanded U.S. military presence in Asia is based on a miscalculation of Beijing’s intent to modernize its military defenses, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

“The accusation targeting China in the document has no basis, and is fundamentally unrealistic,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said at a regular news conference, in response to a question from state media about whether China poses a threat to U.S. security.

“China adheres to the path of peaceful development, an independent and peaceful foreign policy and a defensive national defense policy,” Liu added.

Still, there is growing concern in the United States and Asia about China’s military developments in recent years.

China has been expanding its naval might, with submarines and a maiden aircraft carrier, and has also increased its missile and surveillance capabilities, extending its offensive reach in the region and unnerving its neighbors.

The disputed ownership of oil-rich reefs and islands in the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion dollars in trade sails annually, is one of the biggest security threats in Asia.

China is seen by many neighbors as increasingly assertive on the high seas, with several incidents in the past year in the South China Sea, waters claimed wholly or in part by China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.

But Chinese President Hu Jintao has made clear he wants to avoid repeating the rifts that soured ties with Washington in the first half of 2011. Hu retires from power late in 2012 and his almost-certain successor, Vice President Xi Jinping, is likely to visit the United States in coming months.




.

 

November 16, 2010

U.S. Pacific Bases Vulnerable to Chinese Conventional Missiles

Most of my posts on the military threat from China have concentrated on:

Methods the Chinese could subdue Taiwan
US Navy/Air Force v People's Liberation Army/People's Liberation Army-Navy
The ongoing Chinese attempt to achieve hegemony in the southwestern Pacific

All very real, but I've been missing a large piece; the ability of the Chinese to destroy many U.S. bases in the Pacific with their large inventory of medium-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles. I've been aware of their ability to use them to destroy Taiwan's ability and will to resist, but had underestimated the threat to U.S. bases from these weapons.

A story in yesterday's Washington Times tells the tale. The chart below is from a report released last summer by the Department of Defense titled "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China."





Chinese missiles can ravage U.S. bases

by Bill Gertz

Sunday, November 14, 2010 (appeared in Monday's paper)
China's military an destroy five out of six U.S. bases in Asia with waves of missile strikes as the result of its large-scale military buildup that threatens U.S. access and freedom of navigation in East Asia, according to a forthcoming congressional report.

"The main implication of China's improved air and conventional missile capabilities is a dramatic increase in the [People's Liberation Army's] ability to inhibit U.S. military operations in the region," a late draft of the report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission concludes.

The U.S. government has growing concerns over what the report says are "China's improving capabilities to challenge the U.S. military's freedom of access in East Asia." ...
The United States also could face a Chinese missile strike on its bases and ships in a future conflict with China over Taiwan, according to the China commission report.
...

The report says that in the event of a conflict, China missiles alone would be enough to attack and shut down five of the six major U.S. military bases in the region. Guam is the exception because it is 1,800 miles from China.

China's growing long-range bomber arsenal, however, means the "PLA Air Force's bomber fleet soon could allow it to target Guam, where the sixth U.S. Air Force base is located," the report says.

Guam is the site of a major U.S. military buildup in Asia, with the addition of new submarines and bombers and spy aircraft.

U.S. bases vulnerable to Chinese missile attack include two in South Korea, namely Osan and Kunsan air bases, the report says. Each could be destroyed with attacks by 480 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles and 350 ground-launched cruise missiles for each base. The bases are some 240 to 400 miles from China.

In Japan, U.S. bases at Kadena, Misawa and Yokota could be knocked out with 80 medium- and short-range ballistic missiles and 350 ground-launched cruise missiles, the report says. Those bases are between 525 miles and 680 miles from China.
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For the past 20 years, China's missile and naval forces have been transformed from an outdated military to "one with modern aircraft and air defenses and a large, growing arsenal of conventional ballistic and land-attack cruise missiles," the report says.
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China is thought to have 1,150 short-range missiles with ranges between 180 and 375 miles, and 115 medium-range missiles with ranges between 1,000 and 1,800 miles.

Those who automatically assume that "we're the United States, no one can defeat us" would be in for a rude surprise if push came to shove with China.

Our military is large, and capable, no doubt about it. But there's not anything we could do about a rain of conventionally-armed Chinese ballistic missiles raining down on our Pacific bases. Our anti-ballistic missile capability is very limited, and we have no similar weapons with which to hit China with, even if we were inclined to do so.

So while our carriers and subs might win a war against the Chinese Navy, they would have no regional bases to go back to.


The Redhunter: U.S. Pacific Bases Vulnerable to Chinese Conventional Missiles

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A new U.S. military strategy, old bases near the South China Sea

As part of the Obama administration's strategic "pivot" to Asia, the U.S. military is seeking to regain access to foreign bases that it was forced to leave decades ago.

Read related article.





A new U.S. military strategy, old bases near the South China Sea - The Washington Post



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China’s military rise

The dragon’s new teeth

A rare look inside the world’s biggest military expansion

Apr 7th 2012 | BEIJING | from the print edition

AT A meeting of South-East Asian nations in 2010, China’s foreign minister Yang Jiechi, facing a barrage of complaints about his country’s behaviour in the region, blurted out the sort of thing polite leaders usually prefer to leave unsaid. “China is a big country,” he pointed out, “and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact.” Indeed it is, and China is big not merely in terms of territory and population, but also military might. Its Communist Party is presiding over the world’s largest military build-up. And that is just a fact, too—one which the rest of the world is having to come to terms with.


Related topics

• War and conflict
• Military weapons
• Government spending
• Public finance
• Taiwanese politics

That China is rapidly modernising its armed forces is not in doubt, though there is disagreement about what the true spending figure is. China’s defence budget has almost certainly experienced double digit growth for two decades. According to SIPRI, a research institute, annual defence spending rose from over $30 billion in 2000 to almost $120 billion in 2010.SIPRI usually adds about 50% to the official figure that China gives for its defence spending, because even basic military items such as research and development are kept off budget. Including those items would imply total military spending in 2012, based on the latest announcement from Beijing, will be around $160 billion. America still spends four-and-a-half times as much on defence, but on present trends China’s defence spending could overtake America’s after 2035 (see chart).
All that money is changing what the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can do. Twenty years ago, China’s military might lay primarily in the enormous numbers of people under arms; their main task was to fight an enemy face-to-face or occupy territory. The PLA is still the largest army in the world, with an active force of 2.3m. But China’s real military strength increasingly lies elsewhere. The Pentagon’s planners think China is intent on acquiring what is called in the jargon A2/AD, or “anti-access/area denial” capabilities. The idea is to use pinpoint ground attack and anti-ship missiles, a growing fleet of modern submarines and cyber and anti-satellite weapons to destroy or disable another nation’s military assets from afar.
In the western Pacific, that would mean targeting or putting in jeopardy America’s aircraft-carrier groups and its air-force bases in Okinawa, South Korea and even Guam. The aim would be to render American power projection in Asia riskier and more costly, so that America’s allies would no longer be able to rely on it to deter aggression or to combat subtler forms of coercion. It would also enable China to carry out its repeated threat to take over Taiwan if the island were ever to declare formal independence.
China’s military build-up is ringing alarm bells in Asia and has already caused a pivot in America’s defence policy. The new “strategic guidance” issued in January by Barack Obama and his defence secretary, Leon Panetta, confirmed what everyone in Washington already knew: that a switch in priorities towards Asia was overdue and under way. The document says that “While the US military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance towards the Asia-Pacific region.” America is planning roughly $500 billion of cuts in planned defence spending over the next ten years. But, says the document, “to credibly deter potential adversaries and to prevent them from achieving their objectives, the United States must maintain its ability to project power in areas in which our access and freedom to operate are challenged.”
It is pretty obvious what that means. Distracted by campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, America has neglected the most economically dynamic region of the world. In particular, it has responded inadequately to China’s growing military power and political assertiveness. According to senior American diplomats, China has the ambition—and increasingly the power—to become a regional hegemon; it is engaged in a determined effort to lock America out of a region that has been declared a vital security interest by every administration since Teddy Roosevelt’s; and it is pulling countries in South-East Asia into its orbit of influence “by default”. America has to respond. As an early sign of that response, Mr Obama announced in November 2011 that 2,500 US Marines would soon be stationed in Australia. Talks about an increased American military presence in the Philippines began in February this year.
The uncertainty principle
China worries the rest of the world not only because of the scale of its military build-up, but also because of the lack of information about how it might use its new forces and even who is really in charge of them. The American strategic-guidance document spells out the concern. “The growth of China’s military power”, it says, “must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.”
Officially, China is committed to what it called, in the words of an old slogan, a “peaceful rise”. Its foreign-policy experts stress their commitment to a rules-based multipolar world. They shake their heads in disbelief at suggestions that China sees itself as a “near peer” military competitor with America.


In the South and East China Seas, though, things look different. In the past 18 months, there have been clashes between Chinese vessels and ships from Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and the Philippines over territorial rights in the resource-rich waters. A pugnacious editorial in the state-run Global Times last October gave warning: “If these countries don’t want to change their ways with China, they will need to prepare for the sounds of cannons. We need to be ready for that, as it may be the only way for the disputes in the sea to be resolved.” This was not a government pronouncement, but it seems the censors permit plenty of press freedom when it comes to blowing off nationalistic steam.
Smooth-talking foreign-ministry officials may cringe with embarrassment at Global Times—China’s equivalent of Fox News—but its views are not so far removed from the gung-ho leadership of the rapidly expanding navy. Moreover, in a statement of doctrine published in 2005, the PLA’s Science of Military Strategy did not mince its words. Although “active defence is the essential feature of China’s military strategy,” it said, if “an enemy offends our national interests it means that the enemy has already fired the first shot,” in which case the PLA’s mission is “to do all we can to dominate the enemy by striking first”.
Making things more alarming is a lack of transparency over who really controls the guns and ships. China is unique among great powers in that the PLA is not formally part of the state. It is responsible to the Communist Party, and is run by the party’s Central Military Commission, not the ministry of defence. Although party and government are obviously very close in China, the party is even more opaque, which complicates outsiders’ understanding of where the PLA’s loyalties and priorities lie. A better military-to-military relationship between America and China would cast some light into this dark corner. But the PLA often suspends “mil-mil” relations as a “punishment” whenever tension rises with America over Taiwan. The PLA is also paranoid about what America might gain if the relationship between the two countries’ armed forces went deeper.
The upshot of these various uncertainties is that even if outsiders believe that China’s intentions are largely benign—and it is clear that some of them do not—they can hardly make plans based on that assumption alone. As the influential American think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) points out, the intentions of an authoritarian regime can change very quickly. The nature and size of the capabilities that China has built up also count.
History boys
The build-up has gone in fits and starts. It began in the early 1950s when the Soviet Union was China’s most important ally and arms supplier, but abruptly ceased when Mao Zedong launched his decade-long Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s. The two countries came close to war over their disputed border and China carried out its first nuclear test. The second phase of modernisation began in the 1980s, under Deng Xiaoping. Deng was seeking to reform the whole country and the army was no exception. But he told the PLA that his priority was the economy; the generals must be patient and live within a budget of less than 1.5% of GDP.
A third phase began in the early 1990s. Shaken by the destructive impact of the West’s high-tech weaponry on the Iraqi army, the PLA realised that its huge ground forces were militarily obsolete. PLA scholars at the Academy of Military Science in Beijing began learning all they could from American think-tanks about the so-called “revolution in military affairs” (RMA), a change in strategy and weaponry made possible by exponentially greater computer-processing power. In a meeting with The Economist at the Academy, General Chen Zhou, the main author of the four most recent defence white papers, said: “We studied RMA exhaustively. Our great hero was Andy Marshall in the Pentagon [the powerful head of the Office of Net Assessment who was known as the Pentagon’s futurist-in-chief]. We translated every word he wrote.”

China’s soldiers come in from the cold
In 1993 the general-secretary of the Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, put RMA at the heart of China’s military strategy. Now, the PLA had to turn itself into a force capable of winning what the strategy called “local wars under high-tech conditions”. Campaigns would be short, decisive and limited in geographic scope and political goals. The big investments would henceforth go to the air force, the navy and the Second Artillery Force, which operates China’s nuclear and conventionally armed missiles.
Further shifts came in 2002 and 2004. High-tech weapons on their own were not enough; what mattered was the ability to knit everything together on the battlefield through what the Chinese called “informatisation” and what is known in the West as “unified C4ISR”. (The four Cs are command, control, communications, and computers; ISR stands for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; the Pentagon loves its abbreviations).

Just another corner of the network
General Chen describes the period up to 2010 as “laying the foundations of modernised forces”. The next decade should see the roll-out of what is called mechanisation (the deployment of advanced military platforms) and informatisation (bringing them together as a network). The two processes should be completed in terms of equipment, integration and training by 2020. But General Chen reckons China will not achieve full informatisation until well after that. “A major difficulty”, he says, “is that we are still only partially mechanised. We do not always know how to make our investments when technology is both overlapping and leapfrogging.” Whereas the West was able to accomplish its military transformation by taking the two processes in sequence, China is trying to do both together. Still, that has not slowed down big investments which are designed to defeat even technologically advanced foes by making “the best use of our strong points to attack the enemy’s weak points”. In 2010 the CSBA identified the essential military components that China, on current trends, will be able to deploy within ten years. Among them: satellites and reconnaissance drones; thousands of surface-to-surface and anti-ship missiles; more than 60 stealthy conventional submarines and at least six nuclear attack submarines; stealthy manned and unmanned combat aircraft; and space and cyber warfare capabilities. In addition, the navy has to decide whether to make the (extremely expensive) transition to a force dominated by aircraft-carriers, like America. Aircraft-carriers would be an unmistakable declaration of an ambition eventually to project power far from home. Deploying them would also match the expected actions of Japan and India in the near future. China may well have three small carriers within five to ten years, though military analysts think it would take much longer for the Chinese to learn how to use them well.
A new gunboat diplomacy
This promises to be a formidable array of assets. They are, for the most part, “asymmetric”, that is, designed not to match American military power in the western Pacific directly but rather to exploit its vulnerabilities. So, how might they be used?


Taiwan is the main spur for China’s military modernisation. In 1996 America reacted to Chinese ballistic-missile tests carried out near Taiwanese ports by sending two aircraft-carrier groups into the Taiwan Strait. Since 2002 China’s strategy has been largely built around the possibility of a cross-Strait armed conflict in which China’s forces would not only have to overcome opposition from Taiwan but also to deter, delay or defeat an American attempt to intervene. According to recent reports by CSBA and RAND, another American think-tank, China is well on its way to having the means, by 2020, to deter American aircraft-carriers and aircraft from operating within what is known as the “first island chain”—a perimeter running from the Aleutians in the north to Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo (see map).
In 2005 China passed the Taiwan Anti-Secession Law, which commits it to a military response should Taiwan ever declare independence or even if the government in Beijing thinks all possibility of peaceful unification has been lost. Jia Xiudong of the China Institute of International Studies (the foreign ministry’s main think-tank) says: “The first priority is Taiwan. The mainland is patient, but independence is not the future for Taiwan. China’s military forces should be ready to repel any force of intervention. The US likes to maintain what it calls ‘strategic ambiguity’ over what it would do in the event of a conflict arising from secession. We don’t have any ambiguity. We will use whatever means we have to prevent it happening.”
If Taiwan policy has been the immediate focus of China’s military planning, the sheer breadth of capabilities the country is acquiring gives it other options—and temptations. In 2004 Hu Jintao, China’s president, said the PLA should be able to undertake “new historic missions”. Some of these involve UN peacekeeping. In recent years China has been the biggest contributor of peacekeeping troops among the permanent five members of the Security Council. But the responsibility for most of these new missions has fallen on the navy. In addition to its primary job of denying China’s enemies access to sea lanes, it is increasingly being asked to project power in the neighbourhood and farther afield.
The navy appears to see itself as the guardian of China’s ever-expanding economic interests. These range from supporting the country’s sovereignty claims (for example, its insistence on seeing most of the South China Sea as an exclusive economic zone) to protecting the huge weight of Chinese shipping, preserving the country’s access to energy and raw materials supplies, and safeguarding the soaring numbers of Chinese citizens who work abroad (about 5m today, but expected to rise to 100m by 2020). The navy’s growing fleet of powerful destroyers, stealthy frigates and guided-missile-carrying catamarans enables it to carry out extended “green water” operations (ie, regional, not just coastal tasks). It is also developing longer-range “blue water” capabilities. In early 2009 the navy began anti-piracy patrols off the Gulf of Aden with three ships. Last year, one of those vessels was sent to the Mediterranean to assist in evacuating 35,000 Chinese workers from Libya—an impressive logistical exercise carried out with the Chinese air force.

Just practising
Power grows out of the barrel of a gun
It is hardly surprising that China’s neighbours and the West in general should worry about these developments. The range of forces marshalled against Taiwan plus China’s “A2/AD” potential to push the forces of other countries over the horizon have already eroded the confidence of America’s Asian allies that the guarantor of their security will always be there for them. Mr Obama’s rebalancing towards Asia may go some way towards easing those doubts. America’s allies are also going to have to do more for themselves, including developing their own A2/AD capabilities. But the longer-term trends in defence spending are in China’s favour. China can focus entirely on Asia, whereas America will continue to have global responsibilities. Asian concerns about the dragon will not disappear.


That said, the threat from China should not be exaggerated. There are three limiting factors. First, unlike the former Soviet Union, China has a vital national interest in the stability of the global economic system. Its military leaders constantly stress that the development of what is still only a middle-income country with a lot of very poor people takes precedence over military ambition. The increase in military spending reflects the growth of the economy, rather than an expanding share of national income. For many years China has spent the same proportion of GDP on defence (a bit over 2%, whereas America spends about 4.7%). The real test of China’s willingness to keep military spending constant will come when China’s headlong economic growth starts to slow further. But on past form, China’s leaders will continue to worry more about internal threats to their control than external ones. Last year spending on internal security outstripped military spending for the first time. With a rapidly ageing population, it is also a good bet that meeting the demand for better health care will become a higher priority than maintaining military spending. Like all the other great powers, China faces a choice of guns or walking sticks.
Second, as some pragmatic American policymakers concede, it is not a matter for surprise or shock that a country of China’s importance and history should have a sense of its place in the world and want armed forces which reflect that. Indeed, the West is occasionally contradictory about Chinese power, both fretting about it and asking China to accept greater responsibility for global order. As General Yao Yunzhu of the Academy of Military Science says: “We are criticised if we do more and criticised if we do less. The West should decide what it wants. The international military order is US-led—NATO and Asian bilateral alliances—there is nothing like the WTO for China to get into.”
Third, the PLA may not be quite as formidable as it seems on paper. China’s military technology has suffered from the Western arms embargo imposed after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. It struggles to produce high-performance jet engines, for example. Western defence firms believe that is why they are often on the receiving end of cyber-attacks that appear to come from China. China’s defence industry may be improving but it remains scattered, inefficient and over-dependent on high-tech imports from Russia, which is happy to sell the same stuff to China’s local rivals, India and Vietnam. The PLA also has little recent combat experience. The last time it fought a real enemy was in the war against Vietnam in 1979, when it got a bloody nose. In contrast, a decade of conflict has honed American forces to a new pitch of professionalism. There must be some doubt that the PLA could put into practice the complex joint operations it is being increasingly called upon to perform.
General Yao says the gap between American and Chinese forces is “at least 30, maybe 50, years”. “China”, she says, “has no need to be a military peer of the US. But perhaps by the time we do become a peer competitor the leadership of both countries will have the wisdom to deal with the problem.” The global security of the next few decades will depend on her hope being realised.

Correction: The following definitions have been changed in the main table of this article: "Main battle tanks" to "Modern main battle tanks”; "Armoured infantry vehicles" to “Armoured infantry fighting vehicles”; "Intercontinental ballistic missiles" to "Intercontinental ballistic missile launchers"; “Transport helicopters” to "Heavy/medium transport helicopters"; “Transport aircraft” to "Heavy/medium transport aircraft"; “Tanker and multi-role aircraft” to “Tanker aircraft”. Additionally, the data are from 2011 not 2010 as originally reported. These changes were made on 6th April 2012.


China’s military rise: The dragon’s new teeth | The Economist


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