By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Over the past few days, two senior U.S. officials – Gen. Mike Minihan, the head of the U.S. Air Force Mobility Command, and Michael McCaul, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman – predicted that a war with China could erupt by 2025. I have been on record saying China’s economic and political vulnerabilities make such a conflict unlikely. Still, when a four-star general and one of the few politicians I respect go out of their way to say something like this, I’m compelled to recheck my thinking. That the two are saying the same thing suggests that someone in Washington has briefed them on the matter. Briefings are not the subject of random gossip.

I remain skeptical; the Pentagon has distanced itself from the general’s remarks, and though McCaul may be a respectable politician, he is still a politician. But some questions must still be answered in reevaluating the likelihood of war.

Who will start the war? It’s hard to believe the U.S. would initiate a conflict. Defeating the Chinese navy, though doable, wouldn’t resolve the matter. So long as the Chinese homeland is intact, Beijing can rebuild its armed forces. For China, attacking the U.S. Navy would be a major gamble, and it would have to calculate what a defeat at sea would cost it, particularly domestically.

Why would they wait to start the war? It could be that U.S. intelligence learned that an attack was planned and spread the news to signal Beijing that it was wise to its plans. But if those plans were indeed for 2025, the U.S. would have plenty of time to prepare for it. In warfare, time and danger are the same, and the idea that China is planning that far out is hard to buy. No one wants to give the other side an advantage.

What does the aggressor hope to accomplish, and is it worth the risk? China wants to secure its eastern ports and ensure access to trade routes in the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. might want to move from a notional threat to a real threat.

Will the war be on land, in the air, at sea, or some combination of the three? The U.S. cannot wage a land war in China, given its size and population. China can wage an air and naval war, but it would be doing so against a very capable enemy. Beijing’s advantage is that the homeland is secure. The U.S. has the same advantage, of course, but it has the added benefit of being able to draw deep into the Pacific and engage China far from home. In other words, the U.S. can, to some degree, determine where the war will be fought.

Are their respective economies healthy enough to support a war? Both economies are in precarious positions, but there’s evidence to suggest that America’s downturn is cyclical, whereas China’s is a structural event. Sustaining air and sea production would be more difficult for China than for the U.S.

Why would either side leak its intentions? The aggressor must have secrecy. The defender should advertise its preparations to deter the aggressor. So if China is the aggressor, leaking the news would be disastrous. But one of the reasons that the war can’t be planned very far out is that the longer the windup, the more likely there will be a leak. If a real war were planned, it would be on a very short timeline.

Meanwhile, as for Europe, data released Monday showed that Germany’s economy shrank unexpectedly in the fourth quarter. This renewed fears that Germany will enter a recession, though not as deep as some initially thought.

The federal statistics office said that the gross domestic product of Europe’s largest economy decreased by 0.2 percent quarter on quarter in adjusted terms. As a recession is two consecutive quarters of contraction, and many expect Germany’s economy to shrink in the first quarter of 2023, many now believe a recession is coming.

Sweden’s economy also contracted in the fourth quarter by 0.6 percent, while Belgium’s grew by 0.1 percent.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is expected to raise its key interest rate by half a percentage point this week—up to 2.5 percent—to rein in inflation. EU-harmonized inflation decreased for a second month in December but is expected to rise again this month. The Bank of England is also likely to raise its key interest rate by 0.5 percent, while the U.S. Federal Reserve may turn to a quarter-point increase.

 

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