Re: Japanese Defence Minister: Helicopter & DDG "locked on" by Chinese Frigates'
Wow, been away for a while and this thread really got going.
I have to side with Mysterre here, it would be extremely unwise for China to try and land people on the Diaoyu Islands now or in the foreseeable future.
As Mysterre and Jeff pointed out, any such moves will be seen as a massive escalation and force Japan to respond. Those who suggest that China should send civilian police instead of army to help safeguard any attempted civilian landings really are being a little naive in thinking the biased western media would care enough or even want to stress such a distinction. I will bet you all real money that if that happened, even if China sent mall security guards with batons and tasers the front pages of every western publication will scream bloody murder on their front with bold and stirring titles like 'PLA moves in to annex island' or some other BS nonsense.
What more, sending anyone to try and squat on the islands will force the Japanese to try and remove them by force, and if China tries to stop that, than a clash is inevitable and the only question would be just how serious it would get, and you have to be extremely naive or optermistic to think that it is likely or even possible for China to keep such a clash confined to civilian law enforcement even if it wanted to.
Lets quickly run through a few of the most likely scenarios and see how they are likely to send and the implications for China.
1) China sends only civilians with no law no Chinese law enforcement.
- Japanese law enforcement is waiting on the island to arrest and deport them. Advantage Japan,
2) China sends civilians with Chinese law enforcement escort.
- Japanese law enforcement is waiting in the island and tries to arrest them.
2A) Chinese police does not use force to resist.
--All get arrest and deported. Advantage Japan.
2B) Chinese police use force to resist.
--Pushing and shoving quickly escalates to use of batons, tasers and sprays etc, and either one side overpower the other, or it escalate further to lethal force being used. Whoever can put more men with more equipment on the island will win that, and looking at how past confrontations had gone, it looks safe to assume that the Japanese will have more police on the ground. But even assuming Chinese police win that, who honestly think the Japanese will just throw their hands up into the air and say, 'well you win and we give up'?
2B.i) Japanese police win the brawl.
---All Chinese personnel get evict. Advantage Japan.
2B.ii) Chinese police wins the brawl and have a large number of injury and/or dead Japanese policemen on their hands as well as casualties of their own. Japanese coast guard or military moves in with more and bigger guns.
2B.ii.1) Chinese coast guard and military stay out of it.
----All Chinese personnel are killed or arrested and probably out on trial in Japan. Advantage Japan.
2B.ii.2) Chinese coast guard and military step in to counter Japanese coast guard and military moves.
----All out shooting war breaks out. Everybody looses.
In no realistic scenario do I see the Japanese taking such a move by China lightly, nor do I see how China could expect to come up on top without resorting to a full scale war.
Territorial disputes is very much a zero sum game, and in such disputes, he who is willing and able to go furthest wins. It is as simple as that.
With the massive and unapologeticly blatant bias the vast majority of the western media displays towards China, there can be no question that short of the Japanese lining up all the Chinese civilians they arrested and shooting them all in the back of the head on the island with a TV camera to record it, they will all back whatever Japan may want to do in response to an attempted Chinese landing, civilian or otherwise, and heap all the blame on China. That gives the Japanese almost a blank cheque to escalate the situation to whatever level they want to maximise their advantage from the situation, and you would need to be exceptionally naive to think they won't milk that for all its worth. Thus there is none of the usual constraints of being seen as overreacting unless they take it to ludicrous extremes.
You also need to consider the situation from the Japanese prospective. Right now, a big part of the reason their responses have been weak and hesitant thus far is because they never developed contingency plans for the current situation and simply don't know how far the Chinese are willing to go, or how the Chinese will respond to certain things. They are basically making it up as they go along and it shows. The comment about firing tracers at Chinese aircraft and hiw quickly that gad been redacted from subsequent Japanses government states is a good example.
The doubt, uncertainty and confusion caused by China's very robust but decidedly unthreatening actions have the Japanese government scrambling and always on the defensive because they just don't know how best to respond, as they do not want to actually give China a useable excuse to take the islands by force. This uncertainty and hesitancy on the part of the Japanese government have worked very much to China's advantage thus far. And China would have to be stupid to surrender those advantages.
If you try to land people on the island, especially anyone armed. All the uncertainty and hesitancy disappears from the minds of Japanese leaders, because that is a situation they know how to respond to, and also because as far as they are concerned, that is the endgame. If they do not respond to that and respond to it strongly, they have as good as lost the islands. The Japanese also know full well how the game works, why does anyone think they have been so diligent in maintaining control of the islands all these decades? Thus there would be little to hold them back.
Unless China really wants to fight a war right now to take the Diaoyu Islands back, landing anyone on the island would get a stratgic overreach and massive blunder, as the Japanese will not back down, so the only way the situation does not end up with a shooting war is if China backs down, and that would undo all of the gains China have made in recent months with the now routine patrols into disputed waters.
As with Taiwan, time is on China's side. It is far better to bide their time and build up their economy, military and diplomatic powers as Japan's stagnates or even declines and play the long game rather than trying to rashly force a resolution today, when the condictions would be far more favourable towards China 10, 20 or more years down the line, and new developments in that time may offer options and possibilities hard to dream of today, just like what has happened with Taiwan. Those islands are not going anywhere, and so long as China is watchful of any Japanese attempts to change the status quo and continues to constantly challenge Japanese control off them, Japan's claim to them will only get weaker.
