According to a report by the U.S. publication NSJ on October 27, although the Pentagon is adjusting its naval strategy to cope with China's rapid expansion of regional denial systems, this adjustment may be too late.

The article points out that the U.S. Navy is advancing a distributed maritime operations strategy, aiming to offset China's growing sea and air control capabilities through measures such as dispersing forces, strengthening alliances, and enhancing long-range strike capabilities.

However, in the face of budget constraints and excessive reliance on allies, the U.S. response has been slow and its effectiveness remains uncertain.

The report concludes that the U.S. response is not entirely inactive, but from the actual progress, it seems that it has already failed to keep up with China's strategic pace, and it might truly be "too little, too late" (a drop in the bucket, too late).

U.S. Navy

In the past, the U.S. believed there was always a time window, whether facing Japanese militarism or the Soviet arms race, the U.S. had a relatively buffer strategic space.

This time, however, China's rise presents a compressed timeline and multi-front advancement, meaning that China's military power growth is not gradual, but a system-level leap.

At the same time, the U.S. is caught in multiple obstacles such as budget chaos, limited defense production capacity, strategic indecision, and internal friction in alliance relationships. Even if the Pentagon realizes the problem, the existing system and structure are unlikely to react quickly.

This competition is no longer about who has more advanced weapons, but who can complete a 50-year deployment within a decade.

Chinese Aircraft Carrier

The reason why the U.S. underestimated the speed of China's military growth partly stems from its own cognitive inertia and discourse hegemony.

For a long time, the U.S. intelligence system and defense agencies generally viewed China as a technological imitator, accusing it of "stealing" and "plagiarizing," even considering it merely a regional power incapable of waging long-range warfare.

This arrogance has permeated every layer of policy, media, academia, and think tanks.

Even when the Fujian Ship was launched, the 055 large destroyer was deployed, the J-20 became combat-ready, and the DF missiles were systematically deployed, they still tried to comfort themselves with excuses such as unreliable quality and insufficient system coordination.

It wasn't until recent years that the Pentagon's threat assessment suddenly shifted, beginning to acknowledge that China has the capability to repel U.S. forces within the first island chain.

But this change in perception is far behind reality.

Of course, it's not entirely the U.S.'s fault for the strategic miscalculation. In short, why only misjudged China and not others?

Therefore, a more important fact is that during its rise, China gave the U.S. no time to react.

While others were still discussing whether China could build an aircraft carrier, China had already mass-produced three in a row;

When the outside world was still mocking China's hypersonic technology as mere talk, the DF-17 had already been mass-deployed;

When the U.S. thought China couldn't break through chip restrictions, high-end chips from NVIDIA had already become irrelevant in the Chinese market.

Sino-U.S. Rivalry

This pace will continue, and with the deepening accumulation, it will unleash greater compounding effects. Moreover, China won't stop to wait for the U.S.

If ten years ago the two countries were in a race, now China has completed a turn and overtook, while the U.S. is still looking for a gas station. Faced with this structural backwardness, many Western voices like to describe the Sino-U.S. relationship using the Thucydides Trap, implying that war is difficult to avoid.

But as China surpasses and gradually widens the gap, the U.S. has already lost the ability to fight China.

Not due to fear at the nuclear level, but in conventional wars, it no longer believes it can beat China.

The U.S. military can no longer easily gain air and sea superiority as it did in Kosovo or Iraq. Even if a local conflict occurs, the cost the U.S. would have to pay would be unprecedented since the end of the Cold War.

Moreover, the real contest is no longer in hot wars, but in production capacity, supply chains, technical standards, and global order-making.

China doesn't need to win a war to surpass the U.S. If it continues to move forward, the U.S. will naturally fall behind.

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7566117478837781042/

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