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Originally posted by Godric:
I can see how this applies to would-be extra-continental attackers (even playing Risk, in my experience, this holds true), but how does it apply to inter-continental or civil wars?

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Korea and then Vietnam were given away by Democrats in Washington. Democrats are the best friends world communism ever had.

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Thank you. I needed a good laugh.

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
... Democrats are the best friends world communism ever had.

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We didn't use all the weapons we had available.

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
... Communists have never been glad to see Republicans come to power in Washington.

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Common sense may tell you that China prefers a Democrat. If so, common sense is wrong. By and large China's "socialist" rulers prefer Republicans. And George W Bush is no different.

No, they do not like his war in Iraq. They positively hate it. Nor do they like Mr Bush's far too cosy relationship with Taiwan. He just sold the island $18bn worth of high-tech weapons.

But on the other big issues - trade and human rights, Republicans are much preferable to meddling Democrats.

In the last four years China has seen its trade surplus with America balloon to over $120bn a year. From the White House there has been barely a squeak of protest.

Human rights used to be a huge thorn in the side of US-China relations. But post 9/11 China has become a valued ally in the war on terror. Questions of human rights abuses have quietly disappeared from the agenda.

They may not say so in public, but today in Beijing they will be quietly raising a few glasses to "four more years"!

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The Chinese also generally prefer Republicans to Democrats, largely because the presidents they have worked with most closely – George W. Bush, his father before him, and especially Richard Nixon – have been Republicans. They also fear that, compared with Republicans, Democrats are more likely to criticize China’s human rights record, and represent protectionist sentiments within American society.

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In spite of those concerns, although the Chinese never expressed a clear preference, based on their traditional criteria, Barack Obama would probably have been their last choice: a Democratic candidate who had never visited China, with whom Chinese had few personal ties, and who promised the greatest degree of change in both American domestic and foreign policy.

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Originally posted by sinflower:

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We didn't use all the weapons we had available.

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Which is good. We don't want to set the precedent that nuclear weapons are something to be used casually.

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
America fought the Communist Chinese in Korea with one arm tied behind its back, just like it fought the Japanese for the first four or five years of American involvement in WWII.

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Sorry to be picky but four or five years of involvement would be 1946. The war was over by then

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
1946-1941 = 5.

V-J Day was August 14, 1945.
The Pearl Harbor attack was December 7, 1941.
1945-1941 = 4.

OK, maybe I shouldn't have said "the first four or five years." I was born in 1946. My father served in the European theatre, so he came home before the war vs. Japan was over.

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:


There was never any honor in communist aggression.

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
The Rabbit, have you ever heard of "inclusive reckoning" when it comes to time-spans? For example, Jesus died just before sunset (the end of the day by Jewish reckoning)

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
The Rabbit, have you ever heard of "inclusive reckoning" when it comes to time-spans? For example, Jesus died just before sunset (the end of the day by Jewish reckoning) on Friday (as most scholars see it), and rose from the tomb on Sunday Morning, yet was said to spend "three days" in "the heart of the earth." (See Matthew 12:40.)

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America fought the Communist Chinese in Korea with one arm tied behind its back, just like it fought the Japanese for the first four or five years of American involvement in WWII.

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Originally posted by Glenn Arnold:
[QB]

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America fought the Communist Chinese in Korea with one arm tied behind its back, just like it fought the Japanese for the first four or five years of American involvement in WWII.

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Math aside, the only conclusion I can draw from this statement is that America's war effort in the Pacific theater was somehow restrained until... I dunno, maybe it became unrestrained when they used the Bomb that they had just invented. Before that it was restrained by the fact that they didn't use a bomb that hadn't been invented yet.
{/QB]

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Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
"I am not left handed!"

(apologies if that joke was already made)

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It wasn't.

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Originally posted by The Rabbit:

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Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
"I am not left handed!"

(apologies if that joke was already made)

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It wasn't.

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Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
[QB] "I am not left handed!"

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Originally posted by Ace of Spades:

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Originally posted by The Rabbit:

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Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
"I am not left handed!"

(apologies if that joke was already made)

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It wasn't.

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Wasn't already made or wasn't a joke?

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
The Rabbit, have you ever heard of "inclusive reckoning" when it comes to time-spans? For example, Jesus died just before sunset (the end of the day by Jewish reckoning) on Friday (as most scholars see it), and rose from the tomb on Sunday Morning, yet was said to spend "three days" in "the heart of the earth." (See Matthew 12:40.)

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Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
BlackBlade, I believe that China, most of Asia, and the whole world, would have been better off if Chiang kai-Shek had won and prevented the communists from gaining power in mainland China.

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Originally posted by BlackBlade:
Ron: I know this is late, but the Chinese helped out North Korea because they felt the Americans were going to do more than just push the Koreans back behind the 38th parallel. If MacArthur had been listened to, the Chinese fears would have been confirmed.

Chiang Kai-Shek had already offered to land his forces in Fu Jian thus creating a second front that could possibly succeed as most communist troops would be diverted to the North. The Chinese went as far as they could go, and did a surprisingly good job, the MacArthur took a gamble and succeeded in stunning fashion. An expanded conflict that included China, and probably Russia by that point, was definitely not in the nation's best interests. Did you not notice that Japan had a horrendous time dealing with the Chinese and that was with acts like the rape of Nan Jing?

Instead, today the US has a pretty good relationship with China, the USSR broke down, North Korea has nuclear weapons (an admittedly unfortunate development) and we wasted all that money and blood in Vietnam.

In your mind do you have some sort of lost past where China becomes a democratic republic, we destroy the USSR financially in the 50's or early 60's through a hot war, Vietnam's communist party fails because they aren't getting supplies from the USSR and China via Cambodia, and Afghanistan never gets invaded by Russia, preventing the formation of Al-Qaeda?

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BlackBlade, I believe that China, most of Asia, and the whole world, would have been better off if Chiang kai-Shek had won and prevented the communists from gaining power in mainland China.

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just like it fought the Japanese for the first four or five years of American involvement in WWII.

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Why Japan Really Lost The War

By the time World War II began to rear it's ugly head (formally in 1939 in Poland, informally in China in 1937), America had been in the grips of the Great Depression for a decade, give or take. The net effect of the Depression was to introduce a lot of 'slack' into the U.S. economy. Many U.S. workers were either unemployed (10 million in 1939) or underemployed, and our industrial base as a whole had far more capacity than was needed at the time. In economic terms, our 'Capacity Utilization' (CapU), was pretty darn low. To an outside culture, particularly a militaristic one such as Japan's, America certainly might have appeared to be 'soft' and unprepared for a major war. Further, Japan's successes in fighting far larger opponents (Russia in the early 1900's, and China in the 1930's) and the fact that Japan's own economy was practically 'superheating' (mostly as the result of unhealthy levels of military spending -- 28% of national income in 1937) probably filled the Japanese with a misplaced sense of economic and military superiority over their large overseas foe. However, a dispassionate observer would also note a few important facts. America, even in the midst of seemingly interminable economic doldrums, still had:

Nearly twice the population of Japan.
Seventeen time's Japan's national income.
Five times more steel production.
Seven times more coal production.
Eighty (80) times the automobile production.

Furthermore, America had some hidden advantages that didn't show up directly in production figures. For one, U.S. factories were, on average, more modern and automated than those in Europe or in Japan. Additionally, American managerial practice at that time was the best in the world. Taken in combination, the per capita productivity of the American worker was the highest in the world. Furthermore, the United States was more than willing to utilize American women in the war effort: a tremendous advantage for us, and a concept which the Axis Powers seem not to have grasped until very late in the conflict. The net effect of all these factors meant that even in the depths of the Depression, American war-making potential was still around seven times larger than Japan's, and had the 'slack' been taken out in 1939, it was closer to nine or ten times as great! In fact, accroding to Kennedy, a breakdown of total global warmaking potential in 1937 looks something like this:

Country % of Total Warmaking Potential
United States 41.7%
Germany 14.4%
USSR 14.0%
UK 10.2%
France 4.2%
Japan 3.5%
Italy 2.5%
Seven Powers (total) (90.5%)
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the sleeping giant was awakened and came looking for trouble. And even though the majority of America's war-making potential was slated for use against Germany (which was by far the most dangerous of the Axis foes, again for reasons of economics), there was still plenty left over for use against Japan. By mid-1942, even before U.S. force of arms was being dramatically felt globally, American factories were nevertheless beginning to make a material effect in the war's progress. The U.S. churned out seemingly endless quantities of equipment and provision which were then funnelled to not only our own forces, but to those of Great Britain and the USSR as well. By 1944, most of the other powers in the war, though still producing furiously, were beginning to max out their economies (i.e. production was stabilizing or plateauing). This resulted from destruction of industrial bases and constriction of resource pools (in the case of Germany and Japan), or through sheer exhaustion of manpower (in the case of Great Britain and, to an extent, the USSR). By contrast, the United States suffered from none of these difficulties, and as a consequence its economy grew at an annual rate of 15% throughout the war years. As scary as it sounds, by the end of the war, the United States was really just beginning to get 'warmed up.' It is perhaps not surprising that in 1945, the U.S. accounted for over 50% of total global GNP.

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United States CV/CVL/CVE BB CA/CL DD Escorts Subs Japan CV/CVL/CVE BB CA/CL DD Escorts Subs
1941 - 2 1 2 - 2 1941 6 1 - - ? -
1942 18 4 8 82 - 34 1942 4 1 4 10 ? 61
1943 65 2 11 128 298 55 1943 2 - 3 12 ? 37
1944 45 2 14 74 194 81 1944 5 - 2 24 ? 39
1945 13 - 14 63 6 31 1945 - - - 17 ? 30
Total 141 10 48 349 498 203 Total 17 2 9 63 ? 167

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A couple of points need to made here. First, the majority of the carriers listed in the U.S. totals were 'Jeep' carriers, CVEs carrying a couple dozen aircraft and suitable mostly for escort duties rather than front-line combat (which didn't subtract a whit from their effectiveness as antisubmarine or ground-support platforms). But it should also be noted that the American CVs on average operated substantially larger air wings than their Japanese counterparts (80-90 vs. 60-70 aircraft). The net result; by 1944, when Task Force 38 or 58 (depending on whether Halsey or Spruance was in charge of the main American carrier force at the moment) came to play, they could be counted upon to bring nearly a thousand combat aircraft with them. That kind of power projection capability was crucial to winning the war -- we could literally bring more aircraft to the party than any island air base could put up in its own defense, as the neutralization of both Truk and the Marshall Islands attests.

The other important figure here is the DD/Escort totals. Japan, an island empire totally dependent on maintaining open sea lanes to ensure her raw material imports, managed to build just sixty-three DDs (some twenty or so of which would have been classified by the Allies as DEs) and an unspecified (and by my unofficial count, relatively small) number of 'escort' vessels. In the same time span, the US put some eight hundred forty-seven antisubmarine capable craft in the water! And that total doesn't even cover the little stuff like the armed yachts and subchasers we used off our Eastern seaboard against the German U-Boats. All in all, by the end of the war, American naval power was unprecedented. In fact, by 1945 the U.S. Navy was larger than every other navy in the world, combined!

The Pacific War was also very much a war of merchant shipping, in that practically everything needed to defend and/or assault the various island outposts of the Japanese Empire had to be transported across vast stretches of ocean. Japan also had to maintain her vital supply lanes to places like Borneo and Java in order to keep her industrial base supplied. A look at the relative shipbuilding output of the two antagonists is enlightening.

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Year United States Japan
1939 5,856 4,467
1940 12,804 4,768
1941 26,277 5,088
1942 47,836 8,861
1943 85,898 16,693
1944 96,318 28,180
1945 49,761 8,263
Total 324,750 76,320

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Again, a pretty staggering difference. Not only that, but as Paul Kennedy points out, the Allies were not only cranking out more planes, but many of them were of newer design as well, such as the new F4U Corsair and F6F Hellcat fighter aircraft. Japan, on the other hand, pretty much relied on variants of the Zero fighter throughout the war. The Zero was a brilliant design in many respects, but by 1943 had clearly been surpassed by the newer American models. This pattern was repeated across every category of airplane in the two opposing arsenals. In addition, a large part of the American production total (some 97,810 units) was composed of multiengined (either two or four engines) bombers, whereas only 15,117 of the Japanese planes were bombers (which were universally two engine varieties). Thus, if one were to look at aircraft production in terms of total number of engines, total weight of aircraft produced, or total weight of combat payload, the differences in production would become even more pronounced.

Strategic Implications

So America had an advantage; so what? Well, as an example, let's take a moment to consider the importance of the Battle of Midway. Midway is often cited as the 'Turning Point in the Pacific', the 'Battle that Doomed Japan,' and a string of other stirring epithets. And there's no question that it broke the offensive capability of the Japanese Navy. The question I ask is: what difference would America's economic strength have made if the Americans had lost badly at the Battle of Midway? Let's take the worst case scenario (which, incidentally, was very unlikely, given our advantage of strategic surprise) in which a complete reversal of fortune occurs and the U.S. loses Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet, and Japan loses none of the four carriers which were present. After such a hypothetical battle, the balance of carrier forces available for Pacific duty would have looked like this:

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Midway: Before and After	American CVs / CVLs
(# of aircraft)	Total Ships / Total Aircraft	Japanese CVs / CVLs
(# of aircraft)	Total Ships / Total Aircraft
Pre-Midway
(Historic)	Saratoga (88), Wasp (in Atlantic) (76), Enterprise (85), Yorktown (85), Hornet (85)	5 CV

419 	Kaga (90), Akagi (91), Soryu (71), Hiryu (73), Zuikaku (84), Shokaku (84), Ryujo (38), Zuiho (30)	6 CV
2 CVL

561 
Post-Midway
(Historic)	Saratoga (88), Wasp (in Atlantic) (76), Enterprise (85), Hornet (85)	4 CV

334 	Zuikaku (84), Shokaku (84), Ryujo (38), Zuiho (30)	2 CV
2 CVL

246 
Post-Midway
(Theoretical)	Saratoga (88), Wasp (76)	2 CV

164 	Kaga (90), Akagi (91), Soryu (71), Hiryu (73), Zuikaku (84), Shokaku (84), Ryujo (38), Zuiho (30)	6 CV
2 CVL

561 

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The question is, would losing Midway really have mattered? How long would it have taken America's shipyards to make good the difference and dig us out of the hole? Let's find out. We'll take the table just presented above and extend it out until the end of the war (in 6-month increments). Here are the assumptions I'll use while doing so:

I am only including carriers which were capable of conducting fleet operations. In practice, this means the vessel must be capable of speeds of 28 knots or more and be able to both launch and recover conventional aircraft. That leaves Junyo, Hiyo, Ryuho and the converted Mogami, Ise, and Hyuga out of the picture. [Yes, I know the Japanese tried to use Junyo, Hiyo, and Ryuho with Combined Fleet, and they had some limited success. But they also were either too slow and mechanically unreliable, or too structurally unsound (in the case of Ryuho) to be really useful to the Combined Fleet. Furthermore, we used our little CVEs all the time in combat areas, and some of them participated heavily in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Not only that, we also had the older but still somewhat capable Ranger available for refit as well. So, if you want Hiyo, Junyo, and Ryuho in the picture, you really have to count Ranger and all those American CVEs, too, and that adds about a zillion (i.e. 2,000+) planes to the American totals. I just didn't feel like messing with all that, so I didn't. The point is clear enough without including the marginal players.]
A carrier could be placed in combat within three months of its completion date.
The war will probably last longer, so I am extending the build totals into the first half of 1946
As part of the longer war scenario, I further assume that the Japanese and Americans complete some vessels which were discontinued late in the actual conflict. I have taken my best guess as to their likely completion dates under wartime conditions.

Here's how the numbers work out:

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In other words, even if it had lost catastrophically at the Battle of Midway, the United States Navy still would have broken even with Japan in carriers and naval air power by about September 1943. Nine months later, by the middle of 1944, the U.S. Navy would have enjoyed a nearly two-to-one superiority in carrier aircraft capacity! Not only that, but with her newer, better aircraft designs, the U.S. Navy would have enjoyed not only a substantial numeric, but also a critical qualitative advantage as well, starting in late 1943. All this is not to say that losing the Battle of Midway would not have been a serious blow to American fortunes! For instance, the war would almost certainly have been protracted if the U.S. had been unable to mount some sort of a credible counter-stroke in the Solomons during the latter half of 1942. Without carrier-based air power of some sort there would not have been much hope of doing so, meaning that we would most likely have lost the Solomons. However, the long-term implications are clear: the United States could afford to make good losses that the Japanese simply could not. Furthermore, this comparison does not reflect the fact that the United States actually slowed down it's carrier building program in late 1944, as it became increasingly evident that there was less need for them. Had the U.S. lost at Midway, it seems likely that those additional carriers (3 Midway-class and 6 more Essex-Class CVs, plus the Saipan-class CVLs) would have been brought on line more quickly. In a macro-economic sense, then, the Battle of Midway was really a non-event. There was no need for the U.S. to seek a single, decisive battle which would 'Doom Japan' -- Japan was doomed by it's very decision to make war.

The final evidence of this economic mismatch lies in the development of the Atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project required an enormous commitment on the part of the United States. And as Paul Kennedy states, "...it was the United States alone which at this time had the productive and technological resources not only to wage two large-scale conventional wars but also to invest the scientists, raw materials, and money (about $2 billion) in the development of a new weapon which might or might not work." In other words, our economy was so dominant that we knew we could afford to fund one of the greatest scientific endeavors in history largely from the 'leftovers' of our war effort! Whatever one may think morally or strategically about the usage of nuclear weapons against Japan, it is clear that their very development was a demonstration of unprecedented economic strength.

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Blayne: Do you really think many of those in the PLA were never once part of the PVA? The whole strategy behind Chiang's return was that by winning they could marshal support from the general populace as they moved from major city to major city.

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a landing by Chiang Kai Shek being generous with say 200,000 troops with say American aircover might gain a foothold but it wouldn't advance as the PLA in the Zhanjiang military district was numerically suporior, knew the terrain, better led, better fed, better trained, etc.

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Originally posted by BlackBlade:
Blayne: I don't have time to get to all the other aspects of your post, but Chiang was not arrested by his own officers. He was arrested by a warlord who was supposed to be subservient, but who hoped by turning Chiang over to the communists, would be given a senior position in the politburo. Mao wanted Chiang killed, Stalin still believed Chiang was the only one the Chinese would rally behind, so he nixed Mao's plan. The warlord never got that offer, and later fled to Chiang on bended knee asking for forgiveness. He is history's longest serving political prisoner.

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He was a warlord who was pledged to the ROC and served in the military of nationalist China after being driven from Manchuria by the Japanese he was on of Chiang's officers in everything but name.

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As for the Stalin-Mao-Chiang negotiations it was a extremely complex negotiation and of course those words you state were never spoken by Stalin, Stalin's opinion was that executing Chiang would not be benefitial to either China's resistance to the Japanese or to Soviet Interests in the Far East, this is consistent with Soviet policy to Balkanize China into smaller more manipulatable states expecting Mao and Chiang to end up winning the war at the head of two respective nations but didn't count on Mao's overwhelming success.

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