By Michael Williss

A fresh warning that the US will lose a war with China has just been made by a US data analytics and military software company with US Department of Defense contracts.

It seems no-one is prepared to back the US to win a war with China, so why is Australia going all-out to align itself with provocative moves and hostility from the US directed at China?

Govini released its latest study of US capacity to fight China in June. Its annual reports measure the performance of the US federal government, looking at 12 top critical national security technologies through the lens of acquisition, procurement, supply chain, foreign influence and adversarial capital and science and technology.

It concluded that it is nearly impossible for the US to win a war against the PLA if a conflict were to break out between the two global superpowers.

The report also found that China has more patents than the US in 13 of 15 critical technology areas, further demonstrating how the US is falling behind in AI development.

“This year’s report also highlighted another reason a US conflict with China could be unwinnable: the very real possibility of parts scarcity.”

It identified serious risks within seven major DoD programs, including the cornerstone of AUKUS, namely the Virginia-class submarines. Not that this will worry the cargo-culters in Canberra who keep throwing billions at the fraught arrangement.

Another factor was China’s lead in the global supply chains.

Govini CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty said:

”China still has a dangerously high presence in US government supply chains. The Departments of the Navy and Army showed a decreasing reliance on Chinese suppliers over the past year, however, the Department of the Air Force showed a 68.8 percent increase in the usage of Chinese suppliers.”

Govini’s report adds to a number of similar scenarios in recent years, starting with the headlined warning by The Times on May 16, 2020 “US ‘would lose any war’ fought in the Pacific with China.”

In the New Atlanticist, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Kerg, an active-duty US Marine Corps operational planner, critiqued biases in modern US war games, in which military planners command opposing armed forces in simulated warfare. He writes that instead of a short, sharp war over Taiwan with a win for the US, as predicted by war games, the greater likelihood is one of a years-long war with China with uncertain outcomes. One of those, too terrible to contemplate, must be the likelihood of Chinese retaliation against Australia for joining the US, for being fully interoperable with its military, and the consequent rubbleisation of Australian cities and attacks on US military bases here.

Retired US Army Colonel Dr John Mauk agrees that any conflict over Taiwan will almost certainly be a prolonged war, and he says that it would be one that favours China. He writes:

“U.S. military forces are too small, their supply lines are too vulnerable, and America’s defense industrial capacity is far too eroded to keep up with the materiel demands of a high-intensity conflict. Another critical factor undermining U.S. capacity to sustain a war is that Americans lack the resilience to fight a sustained, brutal conflict.”

By contrast, China is well-postured to sustain a protracted high intensity war of attrition.

He says that the current political divide in the US impedes its ability to respond to national security crises, and that:

“Americans in general are unprepared for, unwilling, or incapable to perform military service. Short of reinstituting a draft, U.S. military services cannot attract or retain enough manpower quickly enough to sustain a fight with China.”

Former US assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, A. Wess Mitchell, believes that “United States is a heartbeat away from a world war that it could lose.” He writes that:

“… today’s U.S. military is not designed to fight wars against two major rivals simultaneously. In the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the United States would be hard-pressed to rebuff the attack while keeping up the flow of support to Ukraine and Israel.”

Comparing US and Chinese naval growths, Mitchell says that the US is no longer able to “outproduce its opponents”. With US debt already in excess of 100% of GDP, he says that the debt loads incurred through war with China would risk catastrophic consequences for the U.S. economy and financial system.

He raises the possibility of a Chinese fire-sale of US debt:

“China is a major holder of U.S. debt, and a sustained sell-off by Beijing could drive up yields in U.S. bonds and place further strains on the economy.”

Hillary Clinton raised this quandary facing the US with then PM Kevin Rudd in 2010 when she asked him “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” It is a question that the US has yet to find an answer to.

And questions there are. Harlan Ullman, a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council, opens a January 2024 article with the observation that:

“Since World War II ended, America has lost every war it started. Yes, America has lost every war it started – Vietnam, Afghanistan and the second Iraq War.”

He sounds a warning:

“… given likely weapons expenditure rates should a war with China erupt, the U.S. has the capacity for about a month before, as in Ukraine, it runs out of inventory,” before asking his questions: “War with China would be a strategic catastrophe. The U.S. has not explained how such a war could be fought and won. The economic consequences would be disastrous. And how would such a war end? Can anyone answer these questions?”

China is quite adept at utilising sentiments such as these. Major Franz J. Gayl, a retired Marine Corps infantry officer has regularly written for Chinese online news outlet Global Times. Last year, a number of his contributed articles to GT were published as a book, “The United States Will Lose the Coming War with China” which is available on Amazon.

Australia’s Liberal-Labor pro-US coalition has placed a $368 billion bet on the ability of the US to prevent the expansion of Chinese influence in the South Pacific or its recovery of the island province of Taiwan.

It is an expensive way to be taught the African proverb that when the elephants dance, it is the grass that suffers.

Michael Williss is a member of the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition (AAAC) and the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN).