The author is correct that the US is bound by treaty to protect Japan, but it isn't just the US. All of NATO have a mutual defense agreement. That's why NATO is (or was, I'm not sure anymore) involved in the Afghan war . If China wants to test the US, they have all the powerful members of the EU to deal with, too. China has strength in numbers, but I don't think its a smart idea to underestimate the US Navy. Foreign Policy did an interesting assessment of the situation last year. Its worth reading. They think that even without US involvement, China stands to lose.
China still can't mobilize its army effectively. Its not civilization where armies can just go wherever, they need tanks and transport and oil and food. The strength of the modern U.S. Military is the ability for us to put, at any point in the world, several hundred heavily armed and well trained soldiers within 24 hours of an event.
There's just too many chinese soldiers to move to do that, and if your opponent can constantly out maneuver you, they can choose where and when they fight. Once someone can choose where a battle happens, its almost a guaranteed win.
Despite the boom, China ain't no superpower. If it comes to war it'll be bloody, and its not going to be the United States that loses the most people, it'll be the Chinese.
The thing the Chinese have, and what we found out all the way back in Korea, is the ability to fight a war of attrition. The US these days is appalled by any death. I have no doubt that the US can inflict far more casualties on any several opponents they face in war, but that's not always what wins.
All that said, I don't think this conflict will escalate to war. I think the worst that would happen is a naval battle. In that regard the Chinese would back off almost immediately and let their state TV concoct a story about a merciful Chinese withdraw. By all accounts, they are trying to develop a superior navy, and getting in a battle that would almost assuredly lead to the destruction of their force is not what they want right now. It would set them back decades. One of China's strengths is in looking strong. A bout with a US supercarrier would put any other navy's confidence in check.
All in all I think the Chinese are too smart to pursue these islands if the US gets involved. Hopefully the president will do the right thing and tell them they're in the wrong, and we won't tolerate it. This conflict is about a lot more than fishing rights in the East China Sea. It's about respect for international borders. If China wants to act like some small rogue nation, then we should treat them as such. Big boys need to act like big boys.
I actually think the U.S. would be far less squeamish than people think.
Since the Vietnam War we've had really only one justified conflict (Kuwait). It was a short war to defend a country. From everything I've heard, opposition to the war was small, especially compared to our two most recent debacles.
What the U.S. loathes is a pointless war. There needs to be a goal and that goal needs to be achievable. World War 2 is a great example of a war with a point: stop Hitler, defeat Japan. The goal is accomplished in visible ways, and the war itself isn't one of U.S. Aggression.
If China invades Japan, then we're back in to a war of defense. Not defending vague concepts, but sovereign nations. It'll be precisely the sort of war the U.S. is best at; overseas, formal, and military on military rather than military on civilians. I honestly think the population would rally to the cause and we'd have full on World War 3.
Remember, the one thing that Americans can do better than anyone else on the planet is any single task they put their minds to. Get to the moon first? Done. Supply a war in Europe? Got it. Electronics? We'll make it work. Internet? Sure. If you can get the United States to focus itself on a single task that task will be done and be done well. The problem is getting that focus.
- Since the Vietnam War we've had really only one justified conflict (Kuwait).
Afghanistan wasn't justified?!?! Afghanistan has turned into a clusterfuck, but there is doubt that an invasion was inevitable. The problem is that no one knew what to do once the old regime was toppled, and we never defined what a victory should look like. At the time, support for Afghan intervention was through the roof, and IMO justifiably so. People are sick of it now, because they don't understand the end game, and the administration appears not to either.
The Gulf War was very popular, but Bush was smart enough to define an objective, and leave once the objective was attained. Total casualties in the war form enemy fire were negligible. Who knows what would have happened if even one thousand US troops would have died.
Unless China is looking for a more radical form of population control, this conflict will not turn into WWIII. I think its far more likely that WWIII will begin in the Mid-East when Israel finally gets fed up with the civil war in Syria.
So I don't really think this is as justified as it seems.
Al Qaeda was a non-state actor operating within Afghanistan. There was no real good framework for the US to deal with this. If Afghanistan had attacked us then of course we would invade them and be justified in that but that isn't what happened. We basically invaded Afghanistan because they wouldn't do enough to stop an internal organization from threatening us.
I think this sort of compares to the US, Mexico and the drug war right now. Clearly the drug war has greatly destabilized Mexico and the US, as the main buyer of Mexican drugs as well as supplier of guns to the Mexican cartels plays a major part in this. I think it is arguable that the US could do more to stop this but domestic issues stop this. So do you think that the Mexico would be justified in invading the US in order to put a stop to the supply chains?
Again the problem here is that it isn't really clear how much a state should do to prevent violence from leaving it to entering another state. Afghanistan was an extreme example of this, but like I argued above, there are lesser examples which are less clear.
The Afghan government was given the option to take meaningful steps to apprehend the Al Qaeda leadership before NATO invaded. They chose not to, and in fact made public statements to defy NATO. So I don't think your analogy with Mexico holds up. Furthermore, if there is an analogy, it would be comparable to the US invading Colombia to kill Escobar. The difference, of course, being that we worked with the Colombian gov't to locate and kill him, and then we left.
On a side note, I think the UN should have invaded Afghanistan well before 9/11. The U30 crowd may not remember them bombing ancient Buddhist shrines (UNESCO heritage sites), or imposing laws that imprisoned single women. The world was derelict in our duty to protect the meek and 9/11 was just one dramatic example of what can happen in such cases.
- The U30 crowd may not remember them bombing ancient Buddhist shrines (UNESCO heritage sites), or imposing laws that imprisoned single women.
If we start down that round we will be invading a large portion of the world.
Yes, the world has an obligation to intervene when crimes against humanity are being committed. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don't. No one had to stomach to go into Afghanistan in the 90s, because the Soviet debacle was fresh in the popular consciousness. "There's a lot of fucked up shit in the world" isn't a valid argument for ignoring regimes that are as egregious as the Taliban are. The fact the we think negotiating with them is a viable "peace" strategy now means that the whole war has been fought in vain. Shame, really.
Do we though?
Let's assume that the point of interventions in other countries is the common good, just to give things the benefit of the doubt for a brief moment (its clearly money and power, always has been and always will be.)
By invading Afghanistan, what has been accomplished? Well, the Taliban was temporarily removed from power. The United States became further involved in the Middle East, usually to the detriment of both regions. Civilians have died in the thousands. Democracy has proven to be ineffectual was imposed by an external force.
That's not taking in to consideration the massive economic damages of the war in Afghanistan and the almost inseparable war in Iraq. Trillions of dollars spent, and down the road several trillion dollars of benefits for veterans that people around my age are going to have to pay. The economy has suffered vastly, and the cost of the war on the United States has made mincemeat out of what was once a very balanced, logical budget.
Life is a series of horrors. Right now in Mexico there is a woman having her breasts flayed by drug cartels. Children starve by the millions, people die in the streets, religious centers are bombed, human potential goes to waste. In India, the undesirable castes shovel shit in sewers for no pay. North Korea is still actively running concentration camps. Right now, in an airport somwhere in the United States, there is a woman being molested by a TSA officer, and she will say absolutely nothing about it because she's afraid what will happen.
None of those issues, or the thousands if not millions of others out there are going to be solved by the United States. They can't be. Yes, it is depressing that the world is full of people ready and willing to kill over disagreements or ruin people's lives for the sake of ideology, but is that worth the death that war brings?
There's anywhere between 100,000 to 1,000,000 dead Iraqis from that war alone, depending on what study you go for. Afghanistan doesn't even have solid numbers as best I can find; its somewhere in the tens of thousands.
Yes, there are times when the regimes are horrible, and there are times when you look at a country and hear what people are saying and you want to help. But a good government knows that its rarely worth it, because the end result is just more death and a return to the status quo. The only difference with these deaths is that they're not "crimes." They're just collateral damage.
China sure is spoiling for a fight. I really hope that war doesn't break out as it's mostly the populace of China that will suffer rather than those in power. Still, if you go around claiming that all waters touching your country are yours, including the parts that touch other countries as well as the islands that exists between your soil and theirs, you're going to piss off a whole bunch of people. From first-hand experience I can say that there is a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment floating around SE Asia.