Sure A Not

The portrayal of the United States and China as being at odds with one another has developed into something of a house industry, providing controversial material for think tanks, the global commentariat, and the media in general, while producing reams of stirring materials for books, articles, and narrative films.

Time magazine published an article last quarter titled” How the US Is Win the New Cold War.” Foreign Policy hedged somewhat with a” No, This Is Not a Cold War – Yet” headline. Under the New Cold War coming, the Asia Times has published a number of posts and op-eds.

China’s American- language condition media has also invoked the historical analogy. Xinhua, China’s standard media company, recently claimed that the” US attempts to have China with a Cold War type strategy”.

People’s Daily, the formal news of the Chinese Communist Party, said in 2023 that the “international society must take actions to reject the new Cold War”.

To be sure, experts, experts and shills are all struggling for a slick analogy for tomorrow’s Sino- US conflict. What is clear is that US-China relations are deteriorating as a result of growing business, technology, and intellectual conflicts. But is it really a new Cold War that is comparable to the previous Cold War?

China contends that the US is a superpower trying to stop its legitimate rise in the traditional colonial manner. The US, on the other hand, criticizes China’s persuasion, especially in the Indo- Pacific, and claims it is undermining the US- led “rules- based” purchase. But unfortunately, each wants to control the other’s control over international politics and economics.

Clearly, those hostilities are hottest around Taiwan, which the US has faintly committed to defending if China enters. If speech were to start a fight, it would probably turn into one unlike anything the world has seen since the end of World War II, and it would probably be even worse than any seen during the ancient Cold War.

Famous people, including Henry Kissinger, who is now adolescent, warned that the US-China conflict could lead to World War III by praising the urgency of the situation as late as last year. They have less than ten times”, Kissinger estimated. &nbsp,

Politicians, journalists, analysts, and scientists are all looking at history to understand how the present state of US-China relations is and, in turn, how to prevent the situation from turning into a World War III incident.

Usually, they arrive at the ancient Cold War. The time from 1947 to 1991 sheds a certain illumination on how shifting power relationships, nuclear threats, hands races, proxy wars and economic, social and cultural opposition for global influence all lead to issue between competing superpowers. Additionally, it demonstrates how competition can be balancing and preventing a direct, crippling war.

But despite the Cold War’s many practical lessons, today’s US- China rivalry is qualitatively and fundamentally different, it’s simply not the same challenge and so many of the lessons learned wo n’t and do n’t apply today.

The material conditions that predated the start of the Cold War, in which capitalist and communist blocs competed for power until the wall fell in Germany, are fundamentally different now.

The” Capitalist West” and” Communist East” divided in the old Cold War due to significant economic and political rifts. The economies of the US and the Soviet Union were purposefully disconnected and insulated from one another.

The two ideological blocs barely exchanged during the previous Cold War. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, US- Soviet Union trade averaged only 1 % of their total trade. Between 1950 and 1972, the US banned all trade with China. This was done in spite of the fact that one-third of the world’s population was residing in a communist state before 1989.

Therefore, the very different economic circumstances from the old Cold War must be taken into account when comparing the current US-China rivalry. Through the relatively free movement of capital, goods, and people, the US and China are now firmly integrated economically, just like almost every other country.

China has become the “world’s factory” and is critical to global supply chains and the world economy’s functioning. China is now the top trading partner of most states, including prominent trade- geared nations such as Germany, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Australia. The Soviet Union, for all its military might, never came close to such economic prowess.

The old Cold War was, first and foremost, a military confrontation, not an economic one. The US and the Soviet Union both had a symmetrical monopoly over how much force they could use with their nuclear arsenals. Combined, they had the capacity to destroy each other many times over.

Today, the situation is reversed. The US-China conflict is essentially an economic battle being decided by supremacy over computer chips, artificial intelligence, and industrial policy rather than nuclear weapons, at least for the time being. Although it’s obvious that as China increases its nuclear arsenal and economic tensions rise, that’s changing.

If US-China relations were to worsen to the depths of the Cold War, it would have profoundly negative effects on the global economy, causing chaos and suffering to businesses everywhere. Despite the drive to “decouple”, unemployment, inflation, bankruptcies and other risks would proliferate in a US- China armed conflict scenario.

In the old Cold War, the preponderance of the risk was that a nuclear conflict between the two rival countries would endhumanity. Outside of proxy wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba and Angola, to name but a few, the Cold War’s ultimate threat was essentially nuclear.

Today, the risks are, at least for now, less existential but potentially likewise devastating economically. As a result, it’s crucial that US-China tensions are viewed through the appropriate lens. And that’s arguably not the old Cold War, and it’s unfair to compare the current tensions to a new one.

With a BA in history and an MA in international politics from Newcastle University, Scott Houghton works independently as a foreign affairs researcher. At the University of Durham, he is currently pursuing a PhD in political science and government.

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The US intends to use the Taiwan Strait as a” Hellscape” of drone crowds to combat a potential Chinese invasion, allowing US and allies to intervene in a combat situation to help the island’s beleaguered self-governing area.

This quarter, The Washington Post reported that the US Indo- Pacific Command, led by Admiral Samuel Paparo, has announced a” Hellscape” strategy to use aircraft crowds to prevent any possible Chinese conquest of Taiwan. &nbsp,

According to the report, the Hellscape plan responds to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s directive that the People’s Liberation Army ( PLA ) be combat- ready to take Taiwan by force, if necessary, by 2027.

To flock the Taiwan Strait to thwart Chinese forces for a fortnight, the US and its supporters will use several autonomous drones, submarines, surface ships, and other classified assets to launch a full answer.

In accordance with the Julian view of the Hellscape strategy, Taiwan was most susceptible to fall in the first 90 days of a Chinese invasion and would most likely drop immediately without US and allies’ military support.

The US military budget constraints and the PLA’s rapid growth, however, pose considerable challenges to the implementation of the Hellscape method.

For example, Asia Times has noted that the US Navy’s aircraft resources would drop to US$ 101.8 million in 2025, down from$ 172 million this season. Additionally, the US Navy continues to be focused on developing significant combatants like destroyers and submarines rather than completely adopting device technology.

In comparison, China has 232 times the US shipbuilding capacity, making it essential for the latter to engage in autonomous tech as a force multiple to mitigate the latter’s numerical advantage. Through its Replicator Program, the US has thus significantly increased the development and implementation of aircraft crowds in the Pacific.

The US Department of Defense ( DOD ) launched the Replicator Program in September 2023, according to Asia Times, to accede to the deployment of autonomous, expendable platforms for air, land, and sea operations.

Replicator aims to develop a rapid, flexible modern development process while maintaining a priceless production of large-scale, self-propelled drones. Also, it might involve a program working with the US Navy to develop large, autonomous undersea vehicles.

Replicator may already be making success. Asia Times reported in May 2024 that the US has begun a program that includes its Switchblade tank-killing bomber aircraft and also looking into low-cost autonomous death ship styles.

Drone crowds may be able to repel a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, overthrowing China’s threats while enhancing the capabilities of guarded assets.

In May 2022, Asia Times reported that the US&nbsp, Air Force, in collaboration with the RAND Corporation think tank and the Air Force’s Warfighting Integration Capability ( WWIC ) office, conducted simulations that demonstrated the viability of autonomous drone swarms in Taiwan’s defense against a Chinese invasion.

In an online discourse that suggested aircraft swarms using a “mesh” light data-sharing system may be important in securing a US success, defense researcher David Ochmanek highlighted the simulations.

This network enables drones to share flight and targeting data instantaneously, making the swarm autonomous and potentially overwhelming China’s anti- access/area denial ( A2/AD ) capabilities, which include ballistic and cruise missiles, anti- satellite weapons and advanced air defense networks.

When combined with stealthy unmanned aircraft like the F-35 and F-22, drone swarms could act as decoys and expand the sensors of unmanned platforms, boosting situational awareness and target acquisition.

However, Ochmanek expressed concerns about the technology’s maturity, citing vulnerabilities to electronic warfare, cyberattacks and bandwidth limitations. In contrast to previous simulations in which the US performed poorly, he added, the 2020 simulation produced a Pyrrhic US victory.

The Ukraine war demonstrates that drones have made the battlefield deadlier, with a similar-forgettable conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies ( CSIS ) think tank conducted a simulation of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026, suggesting that the US and its allies could retaliate, but it would cause significant casualties for all parties, according to Asia Times ‘ report from January 2023.

The CSIS simulation estimated that the US and Japan would lose 449 combat aircraft, 43 ships ( including two aircraft carriers ) and 6, 960 personnel, with 3, 200 fatalities. Taiwan, on the other hand, was projected to lose half of its air force, 22 ships and 3, 500 ground troops, with a third of them killed in action.

China lost 138 ships, 155 combat aircraft and 52, 000 ground troops, with around 7, 000 battle casualties, 15, 000 fatalities at sea and 30, 000 prisoners of war.

The CSIS report outlined four critical assumptions for a US victory, emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s resistance, the lack of resupply options for Taiwan, the US’s ability to utilize bases in Japan, and the necessity to strike from outside China’s A2/AD bubble.

However, the report cautioned that a Pyrrhic US victory could undermine long- term deterrence. It suggested that China might take a risk of an invasion if it saw the US’s unwillingness to suffer significant losses.

Although Paparo and other military leaders are focused on a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, it’s unlikely that China will choose to formally annex Taiwan with the mainland due to the high casualties in a cross-strait invasion in the style of Normandy.

Asia Times reported in August 2022 that China might develop a” squeeze and relax” strategy to force Taiwan to surrender through an indefinite naval blockade. 146 days ‘ worth of oil and an 11-day supply of natural gas are reported to be present in Taiwan. Such a strategy assumes that China has time and can avoid overextending itself in a Taiwan-seizing operation.

The plan involves conducting a number of military exercises that effectively act as a blockade around Taiwan. To facilitate discussion, these exercises would be followed by periods of lessening the tension. The key point is that any major military drill, which Beijing is increasingly launching, could become a blockade.

The Institute for the Study of War ( ISW) released a report in May 2024 outlining the non-military strategies China could employ against Taiwan, with a particular emphasis on four gravity centers.

The ISW report highlights China’s potential use of economic pressure, propaganda, and military threats to persuade US and Taiwanese leaders of the benefits of increased cooperation. Additionally, it mentions tactics like reducing the legitimacy of the Taiwanese government, psychological strategies to lower public morale, and misinformation efforts to weaken US public and political support for Taiwan.

The Taiwanese people will experience an overwhelming sense of abandonment and the new Taiwanese government will have to consider a “new model” for cross-strait relations, according to the report.

ISW claims that the US and Taiwan are unprepared to deal with a multiyear coercion campaign that aims to obstruct Taiwan’s eventual capitulation and annexation by China.

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