I found a number of the insights in George Friedman’s latest offering interesting and I wish that more Americans were aware of them. For example, we have a chronic inability to evaluate the actual threat posed by potential adversaries, sometimes underestimating their capabilities:
Before World War II the U.S. massively underestimated the Japanese. In Vietnam, the U.S. underestimated both the resiliency and will of North Vietnam. In Iraq, the U.S. underestimated the response to the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
sometimes overestimating them:
World War II wrecked the Soviet Union and it would take a long time to recover. The Soviet Union had numerous weapons available, but its training, command structure morale and, above all, logistical system lacked the robustness needed to fight a high-intensity war. The Soviets knew this, which is why despite our conviction of their overwhelming strength, they never attacked. Instead, they conducted psychological operations to undermine our confidence by supporting terrorist groups in Europe in the 1970s and ’80s in an attempt to create pro-Soviet opposition groups around the world. The U.S. never clearly grasped that rather than representing Soviet strength, these operations were designed to hit American confidence. The Soviets were far weaker than imagined, and the Soviets helped us overestimate their strength.
It did not help that the CIA had a vested interest in a Soviet Union more powerful than it actually was and that the CIA systematically overestimated Soviet capabilities over a period of forty years.
His assessment of China should be better understood:
China is a significant power with problems and limits. Its core problem is a significantly weakened economy due to a decline in exports and a troubled financial system. This would be manageable in most countries, but enormous inequality and poverty has made normal adjustments to its new situation difficult. The fear of social unrest has generated a dictatorship that is carrying out an aggressive purge to ensure the party remains stable. People discuss the money China has invested in U.S. government bonds and see it as a strength. In fact, it is a weakness. It represents China’s inability to utilize this money because of an undeveloped economy, and repatriating the money would have massive effects on the yuan and inflation, further undermining China’s economy. No other banking system is large enough to absorb the money and stable enough to guarantee it. There is a significant overestimation of China’s power and a failure to see its weakness.
Militarily, China is far from ready to wage war. The People’s Liberation Army is designed for internal security. China’s geography makes aggressive warfare almost impossible. The Chinese navy does not have an operational carrier battle group. It has ships. But it has never waged intense warfare at sea, and its admirals and staff are untested in battle. Most importantly, the traditions for developing doctrines and coordinating air-sea operations don’t exist.
China could destroy Taiwan but would face grave challenges in invading Taiwan for reasons further explicated by Mr. Friedman.
This is vital:
China is substantially weaker than it looks; China knows this and is doing what it can to appear stronger and more menacing than it is to set the stage for a political solution to its problems.
I don’t honestly think that tells the entire story. China is the Rodney Dangerfield of major powers. It wants respect.
Additionally, there are yardsticks other than “existential threat”. Absent its nuclear arsenal Russia poses little military threat to us. That shouldn’t be construed as meaning that Russia is impotent. It has an imposing, highly capable military—one of the few in the world at what our military experts refer to as “C-1 readiness”. In rough terms that means the ability to maintain intensive operations over a protracted period. Turkey, for example, is not at C-1 readiness. None of our NATO allies, with the possible exceptions of the United Kingdom and France, are. I consider that a bug. U. S. policy has considered it a feature.
Russia has the ability to project substantial force outside its borders in its immediate neighborhood without resorting to nuclear weapons. That makes it a regional superpower. Does China have that ability? Do we know? Do the Chinese know? I assume they do but sometimes I wonder.
They did it in Korea. Could they do it again? I suspect they could, but not a real high tech war, just lots of soldiers. They would take tons of casualties against the US, but against anyone else would probably be OK.
Steve
Power can only be judged in the context of a confrontation. In WW2 the French had more than enough force to stop the Germans, unfortunately they had the wrong tactics, the wrong leaders and the wrong relationship with the people. Likewise, we had more than enough men and materiel to run the Nazis out of Italy, but they had Kesselring and a whole bunch of mountains.
So the Russians could certainly drive tanks down through Georgia and into Turkey. But enough power and enough logistics to drive a tank division to Istanbul? Much more doubtful. The problems multiply as the lines extend – as an older generation of Russians learned to their advantage. And in the modern era of asymmetric warfare the Turks could make occupation or even long-term penetration far too bloody for Putin to contemplate.
Turkey has a population just over half that of Russia – 2 to 1. The equivalent for us of invading a country of 150 million. Iraq had a population of about 35 million to our 300 million, roughly 10 to 1. And let’s not forget that the USSR had about a 10 to 1 advantage in Afghanistan, with which it shared a border.