The sentence is final: when Pentagon simulations at the start of 2019, based on a major conflict opposing the West to the combined Chinese and Russian forces, the Western forces would be systematically swept away and only the use of strategic fire would be able to avoid the debacle; which, we know, is far from being an acceptable solution. These simulations also evaluated other scenarios, and showed for example that US forces would be unable to prevent the capture of Taiwan by Chinese forces, and that any engagement "near" Chinese waters (understand less than 1000 miles), would turn to Beijing's advantage.
The reasons for this sudden and major turnaround in the situation are to be found both in the West and in the Russian and Chinese leaders. On the Western side, the authorities were slow to become aware of the geostrategic upheavals underway, obsessed as they were with questions of domestic politics, and wanting to convince themselves that future conflicts would not exceed the intensity of interventions in Afghanistan or Iraq. . As a result, European and American armed forces lost both volume and capacity to face intense engagements. For example, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, which constituted the core of the European force in 1980 and 70% of NATO forces in Europe, are not capable today of aligning more than 1000 combat tanks in a park, and could only deploy 200 within 3 weeks, where Russia has shown that it can, during exercises , mobilize more than 1000 battle tanks.
In the Pacific, China has developed its Navy and its air force with the aim of denying the US Navy proximity to its coasts. For this, it constituted a constantly growing fleet of destroyers, frigates, aircraft carriers and nuclear attack submarines, as well as a very large number of corvettes, missile patrol boats, and submarines. conventional propulsion attack, capable of carrying out saturating attacks that the US Navy would be incapable of countering, while creating a mesh so dense that it becomes opaque to US forces, including for its nuclear attack submarines .
The personality of Chinese and Russian leaders, like their ambitions, also play a determining role in this new geostrategic landscape. Neither Vladimir Putin nor Xi Jinping was in fact willing to accept the economic and political tutelage of Washington, and both have never made a secret of the ambitions they had for their country on the international scene. Furthermore, they are determined to keep power in their country, and, for this, use international tensions to keep the population in a form of voluntary submission to state control, with a certain taste for the cult of personality. .
We can argue endlessly about the probabilities surrounding these hypotheses, and about the reliability of the simulations, but the current situation is no less worrying, whether in Asia or in Europe. In addition, it should not be overlooked that both Russian and Chinese forces are in the process of changing, and that they will only reach their full planned operational effectiveness in 2030-2035. However, apart from the United States, and to a lesser extent, Great Britain and the countries of the Pacific zone (Australia, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand), the majority of Western countries remain in legacy defense planning. of the previous period, which considered humanitarian and anti-insurgency action as the main missions of their armed forces. To be convinced of this, it is enough to observe the equipment of the new German F125 frigates, and even French FDI who, with only vertical 16 silos, are singularly lacking in firepower.
The fact remains that with the rise of China, US military power now seems incapable of simultaneously protecting the Pacific and Europe. The latter must, therefore, find within itself the resources to carry out this mission. All European countries, which today fall under the protective wing of the United States to guarantee their security, are therefore making a very bad calculation...