This year’s U.S. election is still undecided, and many people are now most concerned about this topic. However, beyond the US presidential election, there are still many important events that are worth analyzing. Among them, the Sino-US underwater military confrontation is a topic that is rarely understood, but is actually very important. Although the two nuclear powers, China and the United States, are distant from each other from a geopolitical point of view, they are now in a Cold War situation in which nuclear submarines are constantly in close proximity to each other. The South China Sea and the Taiwan Sea are important to the United States because the waters southwest of Taiwan are the only way for Communist Chinese nuclear submarines to threaten the United States from the east, thus making them a necessary battleground. The U.S.-China Cold War is no longer the old Cold War model of traditional ground forces confronting each other or fighting for control of the sea, but has become an underwater military confrontation.
A. Out of the Geopolitical Thinking Cliche
Until now, many observers from various countries have often misinterpreted the already existing U.S.-China naval standoff in the South China Sea and the waters of the Taiwan Strait as a purely geopolitical conflict, and this stereotype has completely misled readers. For example, Kishore Mahbubani, a veteran Singaporean diplomat and former UN Security Council president, has written a new book, Is China Winning? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy” was published in Taiwan in October, and the author wrote a preface entitled “The Three Iron Laws of Geopolitics as a Way of Survival for Small States” for Taiwanese readers. Ma argues that small countries should pay special attention to the iron laws of geopolitics in order to find a way to survive safely. However, Ma’s understanding of geopolitics is too old-fashioned and simplistic, and he fails to grasp the key issue of the current Sino-American military confrontation, namely, the predominance of underwater confrontation.
Geopolitics is the understanding of international political relations that emerged at the end of the 19th century and still influences strategic thinkers in many countries. The earliest of these was the sea power theory, in which American naval officer and historian Alfred Mahan used the development of the British navy and the history of maritime hegemony as a backdrop for his argument that sea power determines the status of a great power. The Imperial Japanese Navy of that time followed this strategic thinking. The other school of geopolitical thought is the land right school of thought, which states that whoever controls the heart or periphery of Eurasia controls the world. Both schools of thought use “living space” as a basis for understanding the strategic importance of sea or land control. In the invasion of Nazi Germany and the Japanese invasion of China and the conquest of the South Seas during World War II, “living space” was used as the basis for strategy making.
Ma’s argument is simple and old-fashioned because he overlooks the fact that during the Cold War, the deterrence strategies of the nuclear powers had already weakened the importance of ground confrontation (for land power) or sea control (for sea power). Throughout the Cold War era, the Soviet Union never intended to gain global sea power. In the early years of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union did confront each other on land fronts on the European continent, but with the advent of nuclear weapons, the United States, beginning with President Eisenhower, established a strategic balance in Europe between a small number of forces against a large number of Soviet forces, with nuclear weapons as the primary means of attack. As a result, the Soviet Union adopted a tit-for-tat strategy of nuclear deterrence and abandoned its massive fleet for sea domination.
The history of the Cold War shows that, as nuclear powers, each side’s primary strategic counterbalance was not land-based warfare, but effective nuclear strike forces; meanwhile, the Navy’s primary task was not sea control, but to maintain a “second strike” capability (to ensure that it could respond to an initial nuclear strike by the other side). (the “one-strike”). The Navy’s “second strike” capability relies not on a fleet of aircraft carriers, but on a force of nuclear submarines capable of launching large numbers of ICBMs with nuclear warheads. It is only by understanding today’s Sino-American military confrontation from this perspective that we can get a feel for its pulse.
Secondly, what kind of “living space” does the Chinese Communist Party want?
Although the traditional geopolitical perspective is often used to explain the motivation for political and military confrontation between major powers, in reality, in the era of economic globalization, the idea of using force to gain “living space” is outdated. In the era of economic globalization, economic competition among major powers is mainly competition in the marketplace, and waging war against the place where the marketplace is located will only destroy the market and interrupt trade, which in turn will kill the “living space” of the country that initiated the war. The United States is both the target of the Chinese Communist Party’s nuclear threat and the market it most wants to sell to. In fact, since the beginning of the U.S.-China economic and trade negotiations, many foreign companies have moved away from China, and with the beginning of the Cold War between the U.S. and China, more foreign companies are preparing to leave. Not only are they taking orders with them, but they are also taking with them a source of foreign exchange that the CCP desperately needs. According to the CCP’s logic, because the CCP has a long-term economic need for the United States, a geopolitical conflict is inevitable, which makes no sense at all; however, this is how absurd the CCP’s strategy toward the United States is. I have analyzed this in my article “The CPC’s Current Intentions for Preparing for War” published on this website on October 26.
So what exactly is the relationship between the U.S. and China under the Cold War? The United States never intended to go to direct war with the Chinese Communist Party, much less to control or occupy China. From the Korean War to the Vietnam War, neither side declared war, although the U.S. and Chinese armies fought each other, with the Korean War being primarily a ground battle and the Vietnam War a battle between U.S. naval aviators and Communist anti-aircraft artillery units on the ground in North Vietnam. After the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and before the Cold War between the United States and China began, the U.S. military presence in Japan and South Korea had historical ties to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as problems dealing with North Korea’s threat to South Korea, but there was no military confrontation between the United States and China; on the contrary, there were many normal exchanges between the two armies. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has maintained a geopolitical stereotype, believing that sea power is vital to its economic development and that it must expand its ocean-going fleet and try to gain control of international waters.
Many current affairs analysts have interpreted the recent naval confrontation between the U.S. and Chinese navies in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait as a geopolitical necessity, which is a product of outdated thinking. The South China Sea and Taiwan Strait are not a matter of geopolitical necessity, but rather a military necessity for an underwater nuclear submarine confrontation, which is a matter of U.S. security and safety.
- Why is the South China Sea a matter of U.S. safety and security?
The Chinese Communist Navy (CNN) is unable to establish a global sea power for 20 years, and thus the development of a nuclear submarine force has become an important task for the CNN over the past 20 years, following the Soviet Union’s Cold War strategy of using nuclear strikes as the primary means of control. The Chinese Communist Party’s massive construction of islands in the high seas of the South China Sea is not simply an attempt to gain control of the sea, it is also an attempt to build a “deep sea fortress” and “launch site” (in Beijing’s Dovish News website) for the Communist Party’s nuclear threat against the United States. It is the strategic nuclear submarine.
The Chinese Communist Party’s aggressive development of nuclear submarines and ICBMs with nuclear warheads has completely changed the definition of the frontline of the Cold War between the United States and China; or rather, the frontline of the Cold War between the United States and China was not on the ground, but was related to the underwater topography of the ocean floor. This is because the unalterable undersea terrain determines the waters in which the CCP’s strategic nuclear submarines can operate. In the past, CCP nuclear submarines were based in the Bohai Sea, but the waters of both the Bohai Sea and the Yellow River are too shallow to hide nuclear submarines, only a few dozen meters deep. Therefore, over the past several years, the CCP has built a second underwater cave-in submarine base directly facing the South China Sea at Yulin Harbor in Sanya, Hainan, in order to allow nuclear submarines to dive underwater directly from their base in the cave into the South China Sea.
However, the topography of the seabed, with the Taiwan Strait less than a hundred meters deep and similar depths from Sanya to the Paracel Islands west of the Paracels and into Vietnam’s territorial waters, is still not suitable for nuclear submarines to hide. However, the Bashi Channel, which runs from Sanya to the Paracel Islands to the east of the Paracel Islands and between Taiwan and Luzon in the Philippines, is a basin with water depths of several hundred meters, and the average depth of the waters where the Communist Party has made islands in the South China Sea is more than a thousand meters, making it safe for nuclear submarines to dive stealthily. As a result, the CCP nuclear submarines, after diving out of their cave bases in Sanya, would turn eastward and try to enter deeper waters. This is why the Chinese Communist Party calls the deep water area directly to the Philippine island of Luzon a “deep sea fortress” for its nuclear submarines against the U.S. threat.
The so-called deep-water area east of Hainan Island is also known as the southwest sea area of Taiwan. The Communist Party’s nuclear submarines were launched from their base in Sanya, dived eastward, and soon entered the southwestern part of Taiwan’s waters. Beijing’s Dove News Network published an article on October 29 this year titled “Undersea Hunt: China’s Land, Sea and Air Combined to Surround U.S. and Japanese Submarines”. The article mentions that from mid-September to the end of October, the airspace in the southwest Taiwan Sea became the latest hotspot, with the U.S. and Chinese navies deploying submarines, anti-submarine aircraft, and anti-submarine ships to conduct anti-submarine offensives and defenses in this area for nearly a month.
The reason why the two sides repeatedly contest in this area is not only the intention to collect sonar and communication data from each other’s submarines, but also a rehearsal of the U.S. military’s attempt to block the eastward threat of Chinese nuclear submarines. The reason is that once a CCP nuclear submarine crosses the Bashi Channel and enters the Philippine Sea between Japan and the Palau Islands at a depth of several kilometers, the threat to U.S. national security will become even greater; if it does so, it could move eastward to Midway (already visited in January of this year), Pearl Harbor, or even closer to the U.S. mainland, and the deep waters of the Central and Western Pacific Ocean would be more dangerous to detect than the deep waters southwest of Taiwan, where a CCP nuclear submarine can be found. Maritime zones are much more difficult.
Lessons from the U.S.-Soviet nuclear submarine standoff
The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was a three-dimensional war, in which nuclear submarines were only one part of the battle. The Soviet Union’s Northern Fleet and Pacific Fleet, each equipped with a second-strike nuclear warfare capability, established their own “fortress sea zones” against the United States. The Northern Fleet’s nuclear submarines were based in Zaogorsk (Заозёрск) and Gagievo (Гаджиево) near the Finnish border, with the Barents Sea facing the Arctic Ocean as the “fortress sea zone,” where submarines could fly over the Arctic to attack the North American continent. Viliuchik (Vилючинская Сопка), near Petropavlovsk on the peninsula, has a “fortress sea zone” facing the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk in Alaska, where the fleet’s submarine-launched nuclear missiles can attack the North American continent to the east.
Because of its importance to the Soviet Union, the “Bastion Sea Zone” was heavily guarded. In 1987, Korean Air flight 007 from North America to Seoul was diverted from its flight path and mistakenly flew from north to south over the Sea of Okhotsk, a high altitude in the “fortress sea zone”, waiting to enter the “fortress sea zone”. The Soviet nuclear submarine was shot down by Soviet Air Force fighter planes over the Soviet Union’s Sakhalin Island, killing all of its passengers and crew.
Since the Soviet Union adhered to the Cold War rule of not initiating a nuclear attack, the United States was not very concerned about the threat from Soviet nuclear submarines. Nevertheless, during the Cold War, the U.S. sent attack submarines to counter Soviet ballistic missile submarines, and they were often stationed near the mouths of Soviet nuclear submarine bases. The U.S. submarine would follow the Soviet nuclear submarine with the technical advantage of underwater surveillance and destroy it by torpedoing it if it detected any nuclear missile launch. In response to this tactic, the Soviet nuclear submarines invented a tactic called “Crazy Ivan,” in which they would suddenly and violently change course to detect any U.S. submarine tailing them, resulting in numerous collisions between the two countries.
Why was the Cold War between China and the United States underwater?
The Cold War between the U.S. and China was completely different from the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in that there was no geographic possibility of direct confrontation between their respective land forces on the ground, and little room for conventional warfare between proxies on the ground; in terms of a surface fleet confrontation, the CCP’s aircraft carriers had yet to build combat formations and were far from being a match for the U.S. Navy. Under these circumstances, the CCP’s only option to provoke a military confrontation with the United States is to use nuclear submarines and their offensive weapons, i.e., long-range strategic missiles with nuclear warheads. It is precisely in the underwater confrontation of nuclear submarines that the CCP has been able to close the gap with the U.S. nuclear submarines by spying on them, and the two sides are closer in strength. The CCP is a newcomer to the Cold War, and it is doubtful that it will adhere to the Cold War rules when toying with the nuclear threat. That is why, recently, the U.S. military gave the Communist Party a lesson in Cold War (see my article “U.S. Military Gives Communist Party a Cold War Lesson” published on this website on November 9).
The waters in which the CCP’s strategic nuclear submarines operate mean that the U.S. faces a significant CCP nuclear threat from somewhere in the ocean.Five years ago, the CCP’s strategic nuclear submarines were operating mainly in the Bohai and Yellow Seas, where the water is shallow, making it difficult for them to hide and easy to strike, so they posed little real threat to the U.S. As long as satellites or anti-submarine aircraft locked onto them, the CCP’s strategic nuclear submarines became a turtle in a jar because they were in the There is nowhere to run in the shallow waters. However, since the Communist Party of China (CPC) moved its strategic nuclear submarine base to Sanya, Hainan Island, to take advantage of the natural conditions of the deep waters of Sanya Bay near the South China Sea, the U.S. defense situation has completely changed. The Communist Party’s attempt to gain complete control of the deep waters of the South China Sea in order to allow its strategic nuclear submarines to do whatever they want, exposing the United States to the constant threat of a nuclear strike by long-range submarine-launched intercontinental missiles (SLBMs), has been a major factor in the U.S. defense situation. The U.S. political and geographic advantage in preventing war between China and the U.S., which is separated by oceans and land, no longer exists. The new Cold War implication of the nuclear submarine threat era is that a long-range nuclear missile with a range of tens of thousands of kilometers could launch a full-scale nuclear strike against the United States from any location in the South China Sea or the Pacific Ocean, and the United States must therefore focus its efforts on detecting and interdicting Chinese strategic nuclear submarine activity along the first island chain (i.e., from Japan’s Okinawa Islands to Taiwan to Luzon in the Philippines).
The two geopolitically most distant nuclear powers on the planet are now forced to enter a Cold War situation in which their navies are constantly in close underwater confrontation. This situation is unimaginable to centuries of geopolitical advocates and unexplainable from an antiquated geopolitical perspective. What makes the South China Sea and the Taiwan Sea so important to the United States is the relationship between the underwater topography of the ocean. While the underwater topography of the oceans had no impact on economic development and could not be contested, after the threat of nuclear submarines became a major tool of the Cold War, the underwater topography of the oceans became a key element to be exploited by both sides in the Cold War in the first place. Instead of the traditional Cold War model of ground forces confronting each other or fighting for control of the seas, the U.S.-China Cold War became an underwater military confrontation.
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