Amidst the war of threats and bombast over Taiwan, it is taken for granted that, if China were to attempt to take Taiwan by force, America would intervene. Surely China would back off. Who of sound mind would take on the world's remaining military superpower?

China would.

And the Chinese have not been reluctant to talk about how they would deal with U.S. military power. Through the late 1990s, Chinese officers wrote books, gave speeches and released much information to the Chinese media on exactly how they would operate in the coming war with America.

What war with America? Well, if you read all this stuff published openly in China it was hard to miss the fact that many Chinese see a war with the United States as inevitable. The Chinese have thought long and hard about how to go about it. The American military is aware of this, but is not saying much. For good reason, as the Chinese have several options that we would have a hard time dealing with.

Let's start with naval mines. This is a weapon that the U.S. Navy has never been very comfortable with. Although America had great success with naval mines in World War II and Vietnam, we have also been caught short when on the receiving end.

During the Gulf War we had two ships (a cruiser and an amphibious ship) put out of action by Iraqi mines. During the Korean War, we had to rapidly marshal our scant mine clearing resources to keep North Korean naval mines under control. And for the last half-century we have skimped on mine warfare, especially on how to effectively deal with naval mines.

The Taiwanese have been more energetic in this area, but it may not be enough to defend Taiwan and U.S. warships offshore. There is a lot of new mine technology, especially from Russia, that the Chinese have had access to. We could see some nasty surprises in this area.

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