China Could Solve the South China Sea Challenge by Sinking U.S. Navy Aircraft Carriers

Michael Peck

Security,

That was the implied threat: “What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” said Lou. “We’ll see how frightened America is.”

Key Point: Sinking U.S. carriers would be an act of war. Not a warning shot across the bows. Not a spy plane downed for crossing into Chinese territory. Not an accidental collision between an American patrol plane and a Chinese fighter.

Admiral Lou Yuan is China’s Curtis LeMay.

LeMay, the U.S. Air Force general who torched Japanese cities and later headed Strategic Air Command, was notorious for his bellicosity. In the 1950s and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he tried to get the U.S. to launch a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union: during the Vietnam War, he urged bombing North Vietnam “back to the Stone Age.”

Now comes Lou Yuan, deputy chief of the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences and a prolifically hawkish military commentator who supports a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Last month, Yuan told an audience at a Chinese military-industrial conference that China could solve tensions over the South East China Sea by sinking two U.S. aircraft carriers.

This would kill 10,000 American sailors. “What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” said Lou. “We’ll see how frightened America is.”

Lou has previously urged an invasion of Taiwan if the U.S. Navy uses the island, regarded by China as a renegade territory, as a naval base. “If the US naval fleet dares to stop in Taiwan, it is time for the People’s Liberation Army to deploy troops to promote national unity on the island,” he said.

LeMay was no fan of Communism, but he would have understood Lou’s sentiment.

Unfortunately, neither man seemed to know the difference between aggressiveness and foolhardiness. LeMay’s first strike on the Soviet Union would have triggered World War III against a nuclear-armed superpower: even if the U.S. had managed to destroy most Soviet nuclear weapons, it would only have taken a few bombs landing New York or Los Angeles to kill millions, not to mention a Soviet Army that would have wreaked vengeance on Western Europe.