Is The U.S. Ready To Fight An Indo-Pacific War?

The USS Makin Island and the USS Anchorage sail alongside Indonesian vessels during Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training/Marine Exercise Indonesia 2022 in the Pacific Ocean, Dec. 18, 2022. The exercise promotes regional security cooperation, maintains and strengthens maritime partnerships and enhances maritime interoperability.

Politico: Why the U.S. isn’t ready for a fight in the Indo-Pacific  

Pentagon’s promise to shore up its forces in the Pacific in 2023 is meeting skepticism. 

The U.S. has pledged to deploy so much firepower to the Indo-Pacific in 2023 that China won’t even consider invading Taiwan. 

Lawmakers and allies say it’s already too late. The promise is a big one: “2023 is likely to stand as the most transformative year in U.S. force posture in the region in a generation,” Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said in early December. 

But GOP lawmakers say the Pentagon faces a stiff challenge in delivering on that pledge. That’s because Beijing now wields a navy large enough — backed by air power and “carrier killer” ballistic missiles — to challenge longtime U.S. naval dominance in the Indo-Pacific. And deliveries to Taiwan of billions of dollars in U.S. arms are backlogged, due to supply chain issues related to the pandemic and exacerbated by the Ukraine conflict.  

Read more ....  

WNU Editor: After Nancy Pelosi's trip in the summer to Taiwan, China quickly adopted a plan to begin a massive arms buildup for what they perceived was a major US policy shift on Taiwan. And even though President Biden has assured Chinese President Xi repeatedly that there is no change when it comes to US policy on Taiwan, it appears to be not enough to convince Beijing. 

As this blog and other China watchers have reported in the past few months, President Xi has made it known that he no longer trusts the White House. And even though US President Biden has made it very clear that the US will defend Taiwan if China invades (see video below), the question is .... will it be enough? Are there enough US assets in the region to dissuade China from making such a move. My gut says more has to be done. Much more. 

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