A U.S. Navy commander said that the U.S. can bring Beijing to the negotiation table by mining the Yellow Sea and Pearl River Delta in the event of a conflict between the two superpowers. He said that mining these two key waterways would strike the Chinese economy.
Commander Victor Duenow made these observations in an article published by the U.S. This month, the Naval Institute is in progress. The naval expert says that possible future conflict scenarios between the United States and an increasingly aggressive and capable China will leave the former at a disadvantage.
Duenow said mines are cheap and effective weapons that can help the U.S. buy time and space for a counterattack in the event of Beijing launching a conflict through surprise and deception. The commander's essay won the first prize in the naval mine warfare essay contest sponsored by the Mine Warfare Association.
If the People's Liberation Army Navy PLAN had free use of its naval facilities during a conflict with the United States, China would be better able to attain and sustain sea control. Mining Chinese waters would exploit China's weakness in mine countermeasures, challenge and deter PLAN activity, and disrupt logistics support for PLAN offensive operations, according to Duenow, who is experienced in airborne mine countermeasures.
China has mine countermeasures platforms, but its equipment is outdated, limited and focused on mine countermeasures in the nearshore and port environments. He said that this would leave China vulnerable.
He said that mining the Pearl River Delta and the Yellow Sea would disrupt China's economy by disrupting the flow of Chinese trade goods and oil imports. It's important to bring China into diplomatic negotiations on favorable terms with the United States, and offensive mine warfare can help achieve that. Mines complicate China's military problem, placing PLAN forces at risk. He said that the United States can also dispute Chinese sea control while preparing for a counteroffensive.
Many think the tactic would infuriate China further. According to the Beijing-based naval analyst Li Jie, mining the waterway will trigger a response from the PLA than force China to the negotiating table.
The PLAN will conduct a minesweeper campaign by blocking waterways in the region. If Washington wants to push Beijing into a corner, it might push the PLA to take tit-for-tat action by laying naval mines in some waterways used by American vessels, Li told South China Morning Post.
Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, thinks the act will be escalatory. Assuming naval mining is done in the window of tension that precedes the possible outbreak of conflict, such a known act will of course be inflammatory and escalatory, but it may also help to cool heads and cause the other party to reconsider his options, he told the news outlet.