BOOK REVIEW: FIRE ON THE WATER

CHINA, AMERICA, AND THE FUTURE OF THE PACIFIC by Robert Haddick

Link To: FIRE ON THE WATER      HARD AND SOFT COVER

 
FIRE ON THE WATER


According to Robert Haddick many U.S. policy experts are unaware of the threat that China's naval expansion and modernization poses to America's national interests in the Asia-Pacific region. He maintains that within a decade China will have the military power to place U.S. influence throughout East Asia at risk. We have been saying for nearly three years in our "HOW FAR WILL THE DRAGON SWIM" series of posts that China intends to push the U.S. Navy back to Pearl Harbor. They won't need a decade to do it if we continue shrinking our own fleet while Muslim and Russian generated unrests continues to create a need for our naval presence outside of the Pacific Basin. According to Haddick to avoid future trouble , the United States needs to fashion a new and more competitive strategy  that better matches the strengths of the United States and its allies against China's vulnerabilities. Our own senior maritime analysts the Great Namazu warned of the dangers of Chinese naval emergence and suggested a new strategy years ago in his post "DON'T GET SUN TZUED"

 U.S. naval presence in the China Seas is preferable to encouraging the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan to counter China on their own. Such an alliance would likely result in an unstable arms race. That could result in a conflict that would disrupt America's commercial routes through the Pacific. China's strategy of conquest relies on its rapidly expanding naval and coast guard forces as well as shore based ship killing missiles. The United States has been very slow at countering China's rising naval power. Haddick proposes far reaching changes to U,S, naval policy, diplomacy  and strategies to strengthen deterrence and  bolster U.S. credibility in the region. Haddick notes that historically the rapid arrival of a new great power has usually resulted in conflict. Haddick believes the U.S., China, and neighboring Asia can avoid that fate if America adopts a more competitive strategy to influence China's choices and thus maintain the region's stability and prosperity.

 We maintain that the Middle Kingdom is inherently imperial and in the end can be contained only by massively superior fire power.