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More on Summer Pulse '04 (sounds like a rock concert sponsored by some trendy radio station)

http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/apmethods/apstory?urlfeed=D83KO8DO2.xml

 

Monday, July 12, 2004

Rice woos China over US naval buildup

BEIJING--China is getting edgy over a new US military strategy aimed at projecting force around the globe and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's visit last week was an attempt to calm Beijing down, analysts said.

Rice's trip on Thursday and Friday came as the US military was rolling out an unprecedented deployment of naval power in the Pacific Ocean in what is officially being termed a military exercise, they said.

"It is an unprecedented show of force and a return to gunboat diplomacy," Andrew Tam, a security expert at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore, told Agence France-Presse.

"The United States is sending the message that any threat to peace and stability in Northeast Asia will not be tolerated.

"It is a signal to North Korea, but particularly to the Chinese. The carrier groups are sent as an affirmation of US support of the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and the current status of Taiwan."

The US navy announced in June that three aircraft-carrier battle groups were already in the Pacific and four others were being deployed for the war games called "Summer Pulse 2004."

According to the US naval websites, the deployment is a part of the Fleet Response Plan, which is aimed at increasing force preparedness and establishing the ability to immediately provide significant combat power in a crisis anywhere in the world.

It comes with Beijing rattling sabers over Taiwan since pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian was inaugurated for his second term on May 20, and with China due to start this month massive amphibious military exercises on mainland-ruled islands in the Taiwan Straits.

In her visit, Rice reiterated Washington's respect for Beijing's "one-China policy" and its opposition to Taiwan independence, while urging China to push forward efforts at resolving the simmering issue over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

In 1996, the United States sent two aircraft carrier groups to the Taiwan Strait after China tested ballistic missiles by lobbing them off shore from Taiwan's major ports.

--AFP

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2004/jul/12/yehey/top_stories/20040712top10.html

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson15jul15,1,6131989.story?coll=la-news-com
ment-opinions

COMMENTARY

Sailing Toward a Storm in China

U.S. maneuvers could spark a war.

By Chalmers Johnson

Chalmers Johnson's latest book is "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic" (Metropolitan, 2004).

July 15, 2004

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 12 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 10 squadrons and a total of about 85 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. They say that their naval and air forces, plus their land-based rockets, are capable of taking on one or two carrier strike groups but that combat with seven would overwhelm them. So even before a carrier reaches the Taiwan Strait, Beijing has announced it will embark on a crash project that will enable it to meet and defeat seven U.S. carrier strike groups within a decade. There's every chance the Chinese will succeed if they are not overtaken by war first.

China is easily the fastest-growing big economy in the world, with a growth rate of 9.1% last year. On June 28, the BBC reported that China had passed the U.S. as the world's biggest recipient of foreign direct investment. China attracted $53 billion worth of new factories in 2003, whereas the U.S. took in only $40 billion; India, $4 billion; and Russia, a measly $1 billion.

If left alone by U.S. militarists, China will almost surely, over time, become a democracy on the same pattern as that of South Korea and Taiwan (both of which had U.S.-sponsored military dictatorships until the late 1980s). But a strong mainland makes the anti-China lobby in the United States very nervous. It won't give up its decades-old animosity toward Beijing and jumps at any opportunity to stir up trouble -- "defending Taiwan" is just a convenient cover story.

These ideologues appear to be trying to precipitate a confrontation with China while they still have the chance. Today, they happen to have rabidly anti-Chinese governments in Taipei and Tokyo as allies, but these governments don't have the popular support of their own citizens.

If American militarists are successful in sparking a war, the results are all too predictable: We will halt China's march away from communism and militarize its leadership, bankrupt ourselves, split Japan over whether to renew aggression against China and lose the war. We also will earn the lasting enmity of the most populous nation on Earth.

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

I have very serious doubts that this is anything more than a figment of someone's imagination. Everything that I've been able to google on this one seems to tie back to Chinese statements of (I think imagined) possibilities. That's pretty thin evidence for the pro side.

On the con side, contrary to the "not well covered in the press" meme, there's a huge whack of stuff out there describing the intent of the exercise as deployment on as broad a scale as possible (i.e. in five theatres, not joint ops between 7 battle groups in the Pacific theatre) to test fleet surge capabilities. The public notice of the exercises may have been on short notice, but this has been in the works for a while, and represents an attempt at validating a fleet concept that's been years in the making.

I agree JPD, most opinions like that I've seen have come from Asia with no proof. Other articles I've read have expressed concerns that with so many ships out we are living gaps in our security.