I would not be quick to say that we do not have enough prepositioned ships to make a good start. The locations of carrier task forces or our current shortage of them is pretty well known and crippling. I would not, however, discount the possibility of American attack subs in the area or underestimate their effectiveness against Chinese warships. The Marine base on Okinawa also has admirable anti-aircraft capabilities, especially short range using FLIR systems. Would it be enough to wage an all-out war with China? No, but it might be enough to hold the fort until the cavalry arrived, especially if combined with B2 strikes on Chinese command and control from Whiteman AFB.

I do think that such an encounter would eventually go nuke though. If China makes a play for Japan or Taiwan I do not think they will give up without pushing the button and hoping the fallout will take out the US by following the same path as the fallout from the damaged reactor in Japan. A limited nuclear strike on Japan by China would hit us with fallout, and if we in turn nuked China we would get even more fallout.

I think a much more likely scenario would be for China to launch camouflaged commercial rockets into orbit with nuclear warheads tuned to max EMP, allow them to drift in orbit toward us and take out the US power grid from space keeping our forces here busy and causing us to pull back our forces from the rest of the world. Once we have left the area to nurse our wounds Japan, Korea, and Taiwan would be ripe for the picking using the American “Shock and Awe” tactic coupled with invasion.

Just speculation on my part…