SOUTH CHINA SEA (Oct. 9, 2019) – Multiple aircraft from Carrier Air Wing 5 fly in formation over the Navy’s forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Ronald Reagan, the flagship of Carrier Strike Group 5, provides a combat-ready force that protects and defends the collective maritime interests of its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kaila V. Peters) 191009-N-PJ626-0130
What is it in East Asia that is worth protecting with American lives? That’s one question asked by Pat Buchanan, writing on his blog, Buchanan.org. Just the loss of one U.S. aircraft carrier would leave the U.S. with casualties akin to those of Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Is there anything in Taiwan worth all those American lives? Buchanan writes (abridged):
If there is any benefit to be realized from the collision between China and the U.S. over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposed trip to Taiwan, it is this: America needs to reflect long and hard upon what it is we will fight China to defend in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.
China, after all, is a nuclear-weapons nation with a manufacturing base larger than our own, an economy equal to our own, a population four times ours and fleets of warships larger in number than the U.S. Navy.
An air-naval-and-missile war in the Western Pacific and East Asia would be no cakewalk.
A massive barrage of anti-ship and hypersonic missiles launched by China could cripple and conceivably sink the U.S. carrier Ronald Reagan now in the South China Sea. The Reagan carries a crew of thousands of sailors almost as numerous as the U.S. casualty lists from both Pearl Harbor and 9/11, the worst attacks in and on the U.S. outside of such Civil War battles as Gettysburg and Antietam.
What in East Asia or the Western Pacific would justify such losses?
What would justify such risks?
Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.
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