They are talking about WAR as in against an established state and so in that case Iraq lasted 3 weeks and Afghanistan about 6 weeks, the subsequent occupation and and counter insurgency operations are operations short of War and either F-22 or pretty much the entire Navy and most of the air force are irrelevant.

Most of the strategy of the US Navy is built around planned operations against an equivelent peer competitor and at present the only one is China, every other Navy on the planet more than a glorified coast Guard is a fully signed up ally of the US, with pretty much the only exception being Russia which has a collection of increasingly old ships left over from pre 1990, the Defence Industry will put out threatening noises about Russia starting a build up, but they talk about a 30% or 300% increase in ship building but forget to mention the increase is from zero! Russia can put to sea a small Carrier and a batch of escorts for it once every 2 years and that is about it.

Do the American people realise that a very large part of their Defence budget has one purpose and one purpose only to defend Taiwan!

Much like Mearsheimer, I find this incredibly depressing. And much like Mearsheimer, I do not believe that any amount of goodwill will prevent that conflict. While I wish that we could end up cooperating within a series of overlapping architectures of power, the end result will be dictated by the anarchic reality of our international system.

Which is not to say that U.S. officials should be saying that we should use the F-22 on the Chinese (because if we do end up using a manned interceptor it will be the successor to the F-22). But it will not matter in the long run to the essential power dynamics of the situation with China. Such a disastrous outcome will come whether policymakers remark on it or not.

“Dear Senator,
I don’t understand why you think it’s a good idea to make belligerent remarks about China. They’re holding our debt. We need to be cooperating with them, not threatening them. You are, of course, entitled to say whatever you please, but personally, I’d rather you left the foreign relations threat making to the State Department. The apology to India was in order. I’d appreciate seeing one to China as well. Please advise.
Sincerely,”

In field strength and main tanks an’ stuff, we’d be pretty evenly matched, and the US would dominate in force projection capacity (strategic bombers, carriers and the like). Of course, most of their nuclear arsenal is in tactical battlefield weapons (as opposed to strategic overkill missiles like ours), so you wouldn’t want to meet them on a real battlefield.

All this is a moot point of course – categorically, there is simply NO scenario in which we would ever fight China in an open, conventional war. The odd naval confrontation at sea, perhaps, but not more than that. Not over Taiwan, India or anyone else. It ain’t gonna happen.

To be fair, China has buffoons like Cornyn too.. and occasionally they do shoot their mouth off, so they might blister about it for a sec or two but that’s probably about it. As many know here, I’m a student of the language and lived in Beijing for a number of years, so I do attempt to at least glance at the domestic press once a day.

Needless to say, Cornyn’s comments haven’t been picked up by the Chinese wires (yet), although I’m sure they’re having a good laugh about this in Delhi now. World affairs coverage in China seems to be focusing on the following stories this morning (their time), in order: the sino-Obama summit, which they seem very happy about, the North Korean mess, the climate-carbon targets debate, the Honduran mess (they’re very pro-ousted persident Zelaya and the media’s been following that story very closely – I think many in China think we/CIA overthrew him, basically), detente with Taiwan, hundreds dead in religious rioting in Nigeria (didn’t see that one in the US press), several interesting stories on Israel and the west bank, Sino-Iraqi relations, deadly violence in Pakistan, a diplomatic rift between Iran and Saudi Arabia, elections in Bulgaria, and some followup riff on international reactons to the Xinjiang riots earlier this month. In short, they seem to have more important things to worry about than some rethug shooting his mouth off.

I’m equally sure that none of Dodd’s corporate constituents – not really an electoral category, is it? – have any interest in the flow of taxpayer dollars a continued F-22 program would generate.