July 21, 2004
THANKS TO THE IRAQ WAR IT'S A RATTLE DICTATORSHIPS ASSOCIATE WITH REGIME CHANGE:
Now Bush Saber-Rattling Is Unnerving China (Chalmers Johnson, 7/19/04, History News Network)
Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan.This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our twelve carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster.
At a minimum, a single carrier strike group includes the aircraft carrier itself (usually with nine or ten squadrons and a total of about eighty-five aircraft), a guided missile cruiser, two guided missile destroyers, an attack submarine and a combination ammunition, oiler and supply ship.
Normally, the United States uses only one or at the most two carrier strike groups to show the flag in a trouble spot. In a combat situation it might deploy three or four, as it did for both wars with Iraq. Seven in one place is unheard of.
Operation Summer Pulse '04 was almost surely dreamed up at the Pearl Harbor headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command and its commander, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, and endorsed by neocons in the Pentagon. It is doubtful that Congress was consulted. This only goes to show that our foreign policy is increasingly made by the Pentagon.
According to Chinese reports, Taiwanese ships will join the seven carriers being assembled in this modern rerun of 19th century gunboat diplomacy. The ostensible reason given by the Navy for this exercise is to demonstrate the ability to concentrate massive forces in an emergency, but the focus on China in a U.S. election year sounds like a last hurrah of the neocons.
Needless to say, the Chinese are not amused.
The younger among you will probably not believe this, but there was a time in our history when the Left was not opposed to defending democracies against totalitarians. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 21, 2004 2:31 PM
There's so much crazy in there that it's hard to know where to begin.
First, 7 (or 70) carrier attack groups do not look "like Normandy." Normandy was about landing troops on a defended shore.
The Chinese are aware that our Army is busy elsewhere.
The ability of the Chinese to defend against 1 or 2 carriers is irrelevant, so long as we have ICBMs.
I could go on, but if we assume Johnson has got his facts straight that 7 carriers are going there
(and I don't assume he does), the obvious task purpose is to defend against a Chinese move toward Taiwan (or possibly S. Korea). Seven carriers could do that.
The fear that East Asian governments will fear they are being "surrounded" is an old fantasy, shared by both East Asian governments and a certain class of American nervous Nellies.
Japan claimed (and her children are still taught) that she was surrounded by the US in the late '30s, although the only big warship between Alexandria and Pearl Harbor was the cruiser USS Houston.
Of our 12 carriers, only one is based in the Pacific -- USS Kitty Hawk.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 21, 2004 3:06 PMThe point being that we have everyone surrounded--tyrants should be afraid.
Posted by: oj at July 21, 2004 3:09 PMAs I think someone has noted here, this article is just wrong. The seven CSGs are deploying simulaneously in 5 theatres worldwide, not all near Taiwan to threaten China. You can read all about in on the official Summer Pulse'04 website (making our military masters the oddest of secretive imperialists).
Posted by: David Cohen at July 21, 2004 3:12 PMInnit great how the wholly unsupported assertion "almost surely" is presented as interchangable with "it is provably true that..."?
Posted by: M. Murcek at July 21, 2004 4:03 PM"Needless to say, the Chinese are not amused."
He writes that as if it is a bad thing.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at July 21, 2004 5:24 PMWill we defend Taiwan militarily? That's the only important question. I don't think Kerry will. Bush, well let's just say he keeps everyone confused.
Posted by: h-man at July 21, 2004 7:46 PMThe younger among you will probably not believe this, but there was a time in our history when the Left was not opposed to defending democracies against totalitarians.
The year 1910 was a very long time ago, OJ.
Posted by: Chris at July 21, 2004 10:42 PMWasn't it 100 years ago that TR sent out the Great White Fleet?
Posted by: jim hamlen at July 23, 2004 10:35 PM