Sino-Japanese Naval War 2012
OK, it’s probably not going to happen…..but if it did, who would win? This article by James R. Holmes for Foreign Policy examines how the current tensions could develop into.
The Sino-Japanese Naval War of 2012
By James R. Holmes, Foreign Policy
Lord Wellington depicted the allied triumph at Waterloo as “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life.” Wellington’s verdict would describe the likely outcome should Chinese and Japanese forces meet in battle over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, or elsewhere off the Northeast Asian seaboard. Such a fight appeared farfetched before 2010, when Japan’s Coast Guard apprehended Chinese fishermen who rammed one of its vessels off the disputed islands, but it appears more likely now. After Japan detained and deported Chinese activists who landed on the disputed islands in mid-August, a hawkish Chinese major general, Luo Yuan, called on China to dispatch 100 boats to defend the Diaoyus. In an op-ed published Aug. 20, the nationalistic Chinese broadsheet Global Times warned, “Japan will pay a price for its actions … and the result will be far worse than they anticipated.”
This is more than mere posturing. In July, China’s East Sea Fleet conducted an exercise simulating an amphibious assault on the islands. China’s leaders are clearly thinking about the unthinkable. And with protesters taking to the streets to smash Japanese cars and attack sushi restaurants, their people may be behind them. So who would win the unlikely prospect of a clash of titans in the Pacific: China or Japan?
Despite Japan’s latter-day image as a military pushover, a naval war would not be a rout for China. While the Japanese postwar “peace” constitution “forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes,” the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) has accumulated several pockets of material excellence, such as undersea warfare, since World War II. And Japanese mariners are renowned for their…..[access full article]
