Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part LXXVIII

What is significant about 2033, 15 years from now?

Well:
- we will have just exited the "Terrible 20s" that we've warned about for the last decade.
- as Kristina Wong reported this summer, the Chinese Navy may be double its present size at about 550 ships+/-.

I wonder what comforting words the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, USA has for us;

...it’s likely the United States will be at war with China in 15 years.

Hodges said: "I think in 15 years — it's not inevitable, but it is a very strong likelihood — that we will be at war with China. The United States does not have the capacity to do everything it has to do in Europe and in the Pacific to deal with the Chinese threat."

That is an unalloyed fact - and one of the top reasons European NATO needs to up its game to 2%+ GDP on defense.

If coming out of the Terrible 20s we find ourselves engaged in WESTPAC, it will require every deployable air and sea asset we have. If we are smart, perhaps not as an exceptional percentage of our land forces ... but they will be shifted west anyway. That would leave Europe pretty much on their own against threats south and east.

Oh, I've wargamed this as have others. It is bad enough in 2025 (you need two separate teams due to different macro-assumptions), 2033 needs at least 3 or 4 team to do right, but I don't think it will be much better.

Unless you're paying my bill, I won't give you the full brief here but, besides praying for peace you better:
- pray for the effectiveness of the Vietnamese Army.
- pray for civil unrest in western China.
- pray for a re-militarized Japan.
- pray for a decade of political and financial stability in the USA to mitigate the Terrible 20s.

So, yeah, we've got that going for us. The four above are low probability assumptions. When you wargame without any of them  against Best/Most Likely/Most Dangerous Red COA - well ... interesting.