Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: US Military Page 2 of 5

The Simple Math Of the Iran War

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On March 1, 2026

40 Comments

Thaad interceptor missiles have a production of about eight a month. Stockpiles are in the low hundreds. Ground based interceptors.

Patriot missiles had a production of 620 in 2025. Stockpile numbers are unclear, but low thousands is likely. They miss a lot, and usually two to four are shot per interception attempt.

Thirty-nine SM-3 missiles were produced in 2025. Stockpiles are at about 500. These are used by AEGIS naval defenses.

Note that none of these can be manufactured without supplies from China.

Estimates of Iranian missiles are around two to three thousand. Iranian drones? Tens of thousands. They used many up during the last war, but China has helped them rapidly manufacture more.

The math is simple. If Iran keeps firing, and the US/Israel does not take out the launchers and missile stockpiles in large numbers, Iran will run the US and Israel (it has its own variants, but the same supply issues) out of interceptors. At that point Iran hits everything it shoots at.

If Iran just keeps going long enough, it WILL win the war. The main danger is Iran’s leaders accepting a cease-fire too soon. If they are smart and have learned their lesson, they will keep going, and when they have supremacy, they will flatten Israel and all US bases, including taking out Israeli power and their desalanization plants.

If they don’t, the US and Israel will be back in a year to try again.

Iran is in this situation because they repeatedly stood down and did not establish deterrence. They had the theoretical capacity, but refused to use it, making America and Israel think they could just keep attacking Iran and there would be no significant retaliation.

And yes, the US or Israel could use nukes, but if they do, all bets are off, the repercussions would be seismic. (And Iran can make a dirty nuke any time they want, they already have that ability. One dirty nuke hits Israel, a postage stamp sized country, and it is uninhabitable.)

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Trump’s Attack On Defense Contractors & The Fed

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On January 12, 2026

15 Comments

This is another case of Trump doing the right thing in theory. From Matt Stoller:

Trump also issued an executive order to ban buybacks, dividends, and cap executive compensation for defense contractors. The rumor is that DOD deputy secretary Steve Feinberg complained about the unwillingness of the contractors to do competent work. Feinberg is a private equity guy, and he proposed this crackdown.

“Many large contractors,” goes the order” “while underperforming on existing contracts — pursue newer, more lucrative contracts, stock buy-backs, and excessive dividends to shareholders at the cost of production capacity, innovation, and on-time delivery.”

Now this is all good policy. In fact I’ve called for similar policies (I would allow reasonable dividends) on all corporations, without exception. Corporations are run, right now, to make the most money possible for those who control them, which usually means the executives, with some exceptions. Since stock options are how much of the excessive pay is delivered, and since stock-buybacks drive up stock prices, instead of spending money on organic corporate growth executives juice stock prices and thus their compensation.

American defense contractor performance during the Ukraine war has been embarrassing. Russia increased its production of weapons and munition massively, while the US has barely increased production at all. This has led to Russia having massive artillery, drone and missile advantage.

This is an attempt by Trump to force defense contractors to use their profits to increase production and re-invest in things like quality and research.

Trump often does the right thing conceptually, he just almost always screws up the details, as he did with tariffs. I rather doubt this will work much better. Still it’s a step in the right direction, though I don’t think increased production of American weapons is good for anyone.

Combined with Trump’s proposed 50% hike in the military budget this makes the Trump administration’s play obvious, if it wasn’t already. The only thing the US has left right now is its military. It’s behind in 89% of techs, the dollar is well on its way to losing reserve and primary trade currency status, and China has far more industry.

But the US still has the world’s best expeditionary and force projection military. This has been demonstrated in Venezuela, not so much by Maduro’s kidnapping, as by the attempt to blackmail Venezuela with a naval blockade to give control of its oil to D.C. (I don’t think this is going to work out very well for the US, for a variety of reasons, but it may work for a few years.)

If all you’ve got is a big stick, well, that’s what you will use. But if defense contractors don’t get their act together you could spend three times as much money and get almost nothing for it, since they can’t build any large amount of weapons or ammunition or ships in any amount of time that isn’t measured in years. Longer than Trump’s remaining term.

(Note that China has a veto over all this. They can shut down almost all weapon production any time they choose just by restricting military use tech and resources like rare earths. They can do what FDR did to the Japanese with ban on oil sales any time they choose, and they’re not stupid, they know it. The more they disentangle themselves from the US, the more they may consider doing so, as America keeps attacking their trade partners.)

Now on to the Fed. The DOJ has charged the head of the Federal Reserve with perjury.

Here’s a transcript of Powell’s video statement.

Good evening. On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June.

That testimony concerned, in part, a multi-year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings. I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one-certainly not the Chair of the Federal Reserve-is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the Administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.

This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress’s oversight role. The Fed, through testimony and other public disclosures, made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts.

The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether, instead, monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.

I have served at the Federal Reserve under four Administrations-Republicans and Democrats alike. In every case, I have carried out my duties without political fear or favor, focused solely on our mandate of price stability and maximum employment. Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats. I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do-with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people. Thank you.

The problem here is that we have two bad actors colliding. Trump wants to set interest rates based on his political needs, but the Federal Reserve’s policies for over 45 years now have blown multiple asset bubbles, bailed out rich people repeatedly, and deliberately kept unemployment higher than it would otherwise have been. Powell has been no better than his predecessors, his policies have favored the rich and Private Equity.

As a philosophical matter I don’t believe in central bank independence. It should be controlled by elected officials. But these charges are, as Powell notes, obviously political bullshit, just another weaponizing of law enforcement against Trump’s enemies. The irony is that Trump could get what he wants using his actual powers: he can’t replace the Federal Reserve Chair, but he can fire every other board member for cause. Even if the Supremes decide not to back him, which is unlikely, he’d have his own people in place for quite a while before they could act and they could outvote Powell.

And, since Trump is an incompetent boob, control of the Federal Reserve wouldn’t make things better.

As Stoller notes none of this is likely to amount to much because Trump’s team is deeply infiltrated by the usual suspects, people who don’t really want to control prices, reduce inflation or reduce the amount of money rich people get. Even if Trump wants to, his team won’t execute and he’s not the type of executive who’s capable of riding herd on uncooperative subordinates.

Still, there’s a clear policy direction here: an attempt to make the levers of government work for the administration. Lower prices domestically (won’t work) and make the military more effective so that the US can use it as a club, since all other sources of American power are in decline or outright failing.

Trump could screw up boiling water, but there’s a lot of legacy strength still left in the US. Expect things to get worse for weaker powers and American citizens for some time to come.

 

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How To Defeat The US Militarily As A Weaker Power

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On January 6, 2026

14 Comments

Willingness to fight and to absorb damage is the most important thing. The Yemenis lost leaders, civilians and port facilities. They just kept going until the US withdrew. Everyone except the Chinese walks careful around the US because they know it can do a lot of damage to them: more than they can do to it.

But as the Vietnamese, Taliban, and Ansar Allah proved, if you’re willing to accept lopsided exchange numbers you can win just by being a lot tougher than Americans are. They’ll eventually give up and go away.

This was, by the way, Bin Laden’s explicit policy. He wrote as much. Get the Americans to invade Afghanistan and do to them what the Afghans did to Russia. It didn’t work that great (slow bleed, since they didn’t have Superpower support like they did against Russia) but then Bush decided to attack Iraq and whether you consider the occupation a win or a loss, it was a clusterfuck.

Venezuela is trying to avoid armed conflict, in part, I suspect, because they aren’t a unified society. That means the cost for the US is almost zero.

Hezbollah had the same problem with Israel and the US and it cost them a great deal. It may cost them everything. Their problem is and was exacerbated by the sectarian nature of Lebanon. If they had gone all out against the Israelis they could have inflicted massive damage, but Israeli retaliation might well have led to a civil war as other factions blamed them. Additionally, much of the issue, as with Iran, appears to have simply been a constitutionally extremely cautious leadership. (Khameini’s refusal to get nuclear weapons, in particular, is political malpractice of the highest order.)

America can absolutely be beaten. In fact, the US war record since WWII is abysmal. Great at winning battles, but if the opponent is willing to take the hits, the US cannot stay the course.

There are damn good reasons for trying to placate the US. The amount of damage they can do is insane.

But Trump is, even more than any other American President of my lifetime, a classic bully. If you back down to him, he takes that as a sign of weakness and that he can get more. He will keep pushing and taking till he has everything, or until you fight back and hurt him, even if it’s only just a little.

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Has China Put America Into the pre-WWII “Japan Trap?”

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On October 20, 2025

33 Comments

Most modern weapon systems require rare earths to manufacture, including expendables like missiles and drones. Rare earths are less mined than they are refined, and China controls over 90% of the refining capability. Rare earths are generally found in small amounts in other ores. For example, Gallium in Aluminum. To get Gallium, you have to refine mountains of aluminum. Gallium comes from Bauxite as part of the refining process.

Fifty grams of Gallium per metric ton of refined aluminum.

China produces 98% of it.

Now Canada used to produce a lot of Gallium, as a side benefit of processing a lot of aluminum. But Canadian aluminum wasn’t as cheap as Chinese Aluminum. And this is the problem, if you want to scale you need long term contracts not just for Gallium but the Aluminum. (Do you trust any contract underwritten by the US government? If so, many bridges are available for sale to you.)

Every rare earth has similar issues.

Now cast your mind back to pre-war Asia. Japan is kicking ass, especially against the Chinese. They’ve conquered Taiwan, Korea and South Manchuria. All of this requires lots of oil, and they buy that oil from America, primarily, which was the Saudi Arabia of the day. FDR (who hated the Japanese and was a Sinophile) cut off oil exports to Japan.

Japan had only so much in the way of oil reserves. It decided to use them to go to war, grabbing as much territory as possible, while they still existed. Some of their conquests: Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and Borneo, had oil.

The situation today isn’t identical. There’s no non-China rare earth production to seize. Everyone else is pretty much happy to sell to America, they just don’t have enough to matter.

 

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But what does matter is that if China’s rare earth ban continues, America loses the ability to make large volumes of advanced weapons. Every time I look into estimates of how long it will take to get rare earths production up and running the West, the optimistic numbers are at about ten years, with a median around twenty. China itself took about twenty years, in the 80s and 90s.

China is getting stronger over time. Everyone with sense admits that. Even before the rare-earth ban it was clear that the West is growing weaker. In ten years, let alone twenty, no one will be able to pretend America can win a war against China.

So the rare earths ban means that if the US wants war against China, it has to be soon. Within a year, I’d say.

Note that this isn’t just about China. The West supplies Ukraine and Israel, for example, with weapons which have tons (literally) of rare earths in them. The ability to keep doing this is being taken away.

Heck, forget arming proxies, the West won’t be able to produce enough missiles and drones and radar and so on for its own military needs, meaning its ability to project power and keep other nations cowed and in line will go way down.

(At this point many of you are thinking “and this is bad, how?”)

So this is fairly existential for America. Its ability to bully everyone is about to be reduced significantly for ten to twenty years, by which time all its enemies will be well supplied by the Chinese and Russians with weapons more advanced than American ones.

Use it or lose it. I suspect this may be part of the reasoning (by the few parts of American government capable of reasoning) around attacking Venezuela, for example.

But the reason that America officials are freaking out about the rare earth ban is it really does matter. That America and the West let themselves get into the position is insane, people (including me) were pointing out this vulnerability twenty years ago. But if there’s one thing the West can’t do any more it’s definitely think beyond three months or “but China’s rare earths are cheaper, so we can’t do anything!!!!!”

Assuming a war can be avoided, the best outcome here (but bad for most citizens of the West because there are a lot of civilian rare earth applications) is for China to just leave the restrictions on permanently.

Oh, and as a ray of sunshine. If the US can’t supply Israel with weapons and if Russia and China won’t, well… More on that later.

China’s finally flexing its muscles. It spent the last eight years, ever since Trump’s absolutely crazed and stupid Huawei sanctions, making sure it has all the trump cards and no significant vulnerabilities.

And it had done so. Goodbye (not) Pax Americana.

 

Hegseth’s Speech and Fitness Standards For Soldiers

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On October 2, 2025

34 Comments

I took the time to read a transcript of Secretary of War Hegseth’s speech to the gathered generals and admirals. To my surprise, I agreed with a lot of it, though not all. The crazy bits, especially combined with Trump’s statements, are the talk of domestic enemies and using the military against them.

But most of the speech is about standards. No beards, no slobs, and most of all, fitness standards:

Because war does not care if you’re a man or a woman. Neither does the enemy, nor does the weight of your rucksack, the size of an artillery round or the body weight of a casualty on the battlefield who must be carried. This — and I want to be very clear about this. This is not about preventing women from serving. We very much value the impact of female troops. Our female officers and NCOs are the absolute best in the world.

But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result. So be it. It will also mean that weak men won’t qualify because we’re not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death.

And the thing is, I more or less agree with this.

But. (You knew there’d be a but.)

What fitness standards are really required?


The only major army, at war, to use a lot of women was the USSR. They weren’t allowed in all roles, but they were in some. Particularly famous were the snipers:

Roza was one of more than 2,000 female snipers trained and employed by the Soviets to put fear in the hearts of the invaders by striking thousands from the Germans’ “rations list.” Other women were even more deadly and more famous. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, for example, had 309 confirmed kills and was selected to go on a wartime goodwill tour of Allied countries that included a visit to Franklin Roosevelt’s White House.

The initial female snipers were individuals like Nina Petrova, who served as a nurse on the front, although she had been a physical education instructor who had trained marksmen before the war. At first, the Soviets had been reluctant to employ her as a sniper because of her sex and the fact that she was 48 years old.

But the nurse was persistent, got her hands on a sniper rifle, and eventually was given permission to “go hunting” in her free time. As her official kill tally mounted, she gained the go-ahead for further outings, and she began to teach frontline sniper courses.

Other units also set up similar frontline programs, and in March 1942, a Central School for Sniper Instructors was established in Veshnyaki near Moscow. Petrova, Pavlichenko, and other women on the front lines had already demonstrated their abilities and coolness under fire, so it was a fairly logical follow-through when the Soviet high command established a separate three-month-long women’s training program there in December 1942.

The Soviets thought that women made excellent snipers because they could handle cold better than men, and they were more patient and willing to wait for the right opportunities. The confirmed kill numbers on many of them were very high, in the hundreds, and there’s little question that unconfirmed kills were much higher.

That and other “decamping” events to the front lines led to further sanctions and an angry fit when a political commander refused to let her go on additional excursions. She was an adrenaline junkie who begged to go back on the front lines. “Some force draws me to the front lines,” she wrote. “I’m bored in the back. Some people say I just want to get back to the boys, but I don’t have anyone I know there. I want to see real war.”

In one frontline attack alone, Roza reportedly killed 54 Germans and captured three others. Those figures were not included in her official sniper tally but resulted in a front-page feature in a Moscow magazine. Her action prompted Soviet writer-propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg to “thank her 57 times over. She has saved the lives of thousands of Soviet people.”

I don’t have a strong view on this. I just suspect that there’s a sort of generalized misogyny at the heart of the MAGA movement, a resentment of women who “took our jobs” that will lead to the standards not actually reflecting the requirements of the field. Hell, I’m not even a fan of women in war (some latent chivalry from my upbringing, I suspect.)

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The snipers carried two grenades. One was to be used against the enemy, the second to avoid capture by killing themselves and hopefully taking some Germans with them. If captured they could expect rape and torture. (Many looted a German pistol and saved the last bullet for themselves instead.)

That said, fairness requires that those who can do the job and want to, be allowed to. The only thing that matters in war is if you can do what needs to be done. How many air force technicians are going to be separated because they’re a bit too fat, say? Does it really matter if they are? With widespread recruitment issues, can you replace them? The US military letting in more women and so on wasn’t just about “woke” it was about fairly consistent problems meeting recruitment goals with people who weren’t criminals or morons or who have serious health issues. Is it better to have American women serving, or to offer non-citizens a route to citizenship in exchange for service? (Hire mercenaries, in effect?)

Not, of course, that the US military being high functioning is in almost anyone’s interest, including most Americans. After all, Trump has deployed troops against Americans and wants to deploy more, against his domestic enemies. Nor has America been “the good guys” in many wars. America losing its wars, historically would have been good nine times out of ten. (Fortunately Americans have become better and better at losing wars.) Hell, America’s currently helping the Israelis commit genocide and a carrier task force is currently steaming thru the Med, perhaps to attack Iran again.

So perhaps Hegseth’s reforms will just make America’s military even crappier. Let’s hope so.

Care To Tell Me What Is Wrong With This Headline?

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On September 16, 2025

22 Comments

Screenshot

Link to article here. 

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Euro Proposal For A No Fly Zone in the Ukraine: the Consequences

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On September 16, 2025

8 Comments

In the aftermath of several errant Russia drones crashing into Poland, said nation’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, invoked Article 4 of NATO, and whilst giving an interview to a German paper, called for  “a limited, NATO/EU-run no-fly buffer for drones nearing alliance airspace.”

Dmitri Medvedev, the former president of the Russiann Federation while speaking at a Russian Security Council meeting on Moday said that “Russia would consider NATO forces protecting Ukrainian airspace as a declaration of war. . . .”

Russia, it should be added, asserted that “that “no targets on the territory of Poland were planned for destruction,” and that the drones it used in Ukraine have a flight range of no more than 700 kilometers (435 miles).” I would add the Russian first deputy Permanent Representative  to the UN made a very good point in an interview this morning. He asked simply, “cui bono?”

Cui bono notwithstanding, a lot remains open for interpreation, especially without the evidence being reported on seriously and assiduously. (Which won’t happen in the West.) That said, the number of drones that landed or were shot down in Poland is troubling. Look at this map for a better idea of what worries me. I’ve heard several explanations, from Ukrainian spoofing and EW warfare, to a false flag operation. Spoofing, EW warfare, cui bono or false flag–any others?–really doesn’t matter. It is simply bad ju-ju for all parties concerned.

Regardless of what really happened, are we absolutely insane?

Have our diplomats and leaders lost all touch with reality? If we declare and attempt to enforce a No-Fly Zone over the Ukraine we are declaring war on the Russian Federation. Declaring war on a nuclear power that could absorb a full force first strike by the USA much better than we could absorb their very robust response is as stupid as someone with brains for dynamite who cannot blow the wax out of their ears if their brains exploded.

Thank heavens for the brothers Lieven, one, Dominic, is an historian of empire, the other, whom I will quote below, is foreign policy analyst that writes frequently for the site Responsible Statecraft. Anatol is an adult in a childish firmament of foreign policy know-nothings, like Kaja Kallas. As one Russian observer said about her: she is critically undereducated. But back to Anatol, as he writes on the drones falling in Poland: “We should remember that during the Cold War, there were a number of far more serious violations of air space by both sides, some of them leading to NATO planes being shot down and American and British airmen killed. These incidents led not to threats of war, but careful attempts to de-escalate tensions and develop ways to avoid such clashes.” What a mature idea. I wish we had more adults in the room, so to speak.

The whole Ukraine debacle has only unravelled our power faster than if adults were running our foreign policy. And a No Fly Zone over the Ukraine is the height of childish, bat-shit crazy ideas. But then, we have not had an adult running our foreign policy since George Schultz left foggy bottom on January 20, 1989. I take that back, the last adult to manage our foreign policy was James A. Baker, who left foggy bottom on August 23, 1992. It has been unipolar willy nilly serially destroying nation after nation ever since.

It has got to stop. I just fear how it ultimately will stop.

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The Solution to The USA’s Taiwan Dilemma

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On September 11, 2025

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“The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”

三国演义 ~by Luo Guangzhong

Earlier I promised to post my plan to prevent a war between the United States and China over Taiwan. I’ve traveled and met with Taiwanese diplomats. They are some of the most sophisticated operators I’ve ever encountered. Taiwan is a highly advanced technological country. Very wealthy, with a sophisticated full coverage heath care system and a vibrant democracy. Furthermore, based on the Shanghai Communique issued on February 27, 1972 by Nixon and Mao, both mainland China and the USA formally acknowledged that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China”.

The Communique goes on to state the US side does not accept a violent solution to the unification of the two parties and the Chinese side retains the option to violence if Taiwan ever declares independence, paraphrasing here, folks. It’s been a long time since reading my Kissinger.

Conversely, I have traveled seven times to China. Here is an idea most Americans will probably never understand. China’s potential to utilize enormous amounts of soft power is profound. This is based on China’s circular view of history and that China has been invaded and ruled by foreign powers many times in its history. In each and every case China has overcome said invaders very differently than the way the Russians have. Or anyone else for that matter. Where the Russians trade space for time to husband their resources for a great counter attack and push the invader out of the country, China seduces the invader, with its ancient, deep, amazing and incredibly seductive culture. I cannot emphasize enough the depth, breadth, and tantalizing sophistication of its culture, be it material, artistic, political or spiritual. I do, after all, practice Chinese Chan Buddhism in my own life. Every time China has been invaded and completely taken over by a foreign power this strategy works. Even today we’re watching Chinese movies on Netflix. That is the use and export of soft power. And unlike America, that has only 250 years of history to draw upon its soft power, China has almost 4000 years of history to draw upon. The efficacy of Chinese soft power is not to be underestimated. It is indeed seductive.

Now the question moves to goals and intentions. And here an understanding of Chinese history can aid us in a better understanding of the present Chinese leader, Xi Jing Ping.

What are Xi Jing Ping’s true goals? Simple, he seeks membership among the greatest of Chinese emperors. The greatest of Chinese emperors are judged by a single metric: did they unify all of China? As the opening sentence of the great Chinese novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I quoted at the beginning of this essay, unification is the way the Chinese see themselves when in a golden age.

This compulsion to unify all of China is the defining source of Xi’s ambitions. And that means Taiwan. Taiwan is the last remaining province of a fully unified China. China equal to that ruled by the Qin Shih Huang Di, the very first emperor to unify all of China, or the great conqueror Han Wu Di, or Li Shimin of the mighty T’ang or Zhu Yuanzhang of the wall building Ming. It is to this rank of Chinese men that Xi aspires.

What should America do? I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to avoid a war with China that most people are certain is inevitable. They call it the “Thucydides Trap.” But, if the study of history has taught me anything it is that nothing is inevitable, contingencies matter, and human agency means the most. We may live in a complex adaptive system, but nothing, nothing is inevitable. Therefore, America must find a way tone down its arrogance and find a way to peacefully unite Taiwan with China.

Here is how I would do it if I were president.

First, I would engage in a series of CBM’s (Confidence Building Measures in diplospeak) with Xi Jing Ping regarding our naval stance in the Straits of Taiwan. I would make it policy that no American naval ships traverse the Straits of Taiwan any longer. Then I would halt the sale of advanced weapons to Taiwan.

Second, I would begin preparing the Taiwanese to consider peaceful unification with the mainland along the lines of the British handover of Hong Kong to China in the 90s. I would make it clear that we would not consider unification unless Taiwan was allowed to keep its democracy, and democratic traditions for a minimum of 80 years. I would do this to assuage the Taiwanese about a possible authoritarian takeover of the island in the case of unification. China did one nation, two systems successfully once before. They can do it again.

Third, I would secretly engage Xi Jing Ping with the following proposal: the United States of America would fully encourage and accept the unification of Taiwan with the mainland under the following conditions. Number one, Taiwan would have three representatives on the politburo, one of which would be a power ministry, either interior, defense, or foreign affairs. My fallback position, which is my true goal of course, would be the acceptance of two politburo members from Taiwan, but I would not relent on one serving as a power minister in one of the three ministries aforementioned.

I am relatively certain that Xi and the current politburo would agree to this proposal. It would serve to put Xi in the exhalted ranks of Chinese leaders in which he craves to be included. Mos timportantly, it would not harm a single vital national interest of the United States. The Chinese might have a salient in the first island chain, that being the island of Taiwan, but the United States would still have Korea, Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines. Not to mention the defenses in depth that the second island chain provides us in the Pacific ocean. Much less the great fortress of the third island chain of Midway, Wake and Hawaii. Defenses in depth matter much more than a salient in the first island chain.

Now, I recognize this goes against every national security intellectuals thinking. It is completely contrarian. But the more I’ve thought about it over the last few years the more I believe that is the best way to avoid general warfare between two nuclear great powers from the Straits of Malacca to the South China Sea and into the deep blue waters of the Pacific.

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