The emperor has no clothes: US has absolutely no strategy to stop China

Should reports of Chinese reclamation of Scarborough Shoal prove true in the coming weeks, it would mark a major turning point in the balance of power in the South China Sea and possibly a watershed strategic milestone in the Western Pacific.

Granted, Beijing must now have every reason to expect a stepped-up US military presence in the South China Sea, including probably the regular or even permanent stationing of an entire US carrier battle group in the Philippines within the next two or three years, on top of what promises to be unprecedented joint defense posturing in the area between Washington and all its regional partners, especially Japan (which itself just sent a sub to the Philippines) and Australia (soon to host US bombers and send in its own ships and subs on patrol), but also probably South Korea and, for good measure, India (even short of a full-fledged defense partnership). Not to mention dramatically beefed up military spending and deployments by Vietnam and of course the Philippines itself.

But in the grand scheme of things, the US has absolutely no effective strategy to stop China. That's because this whole standoff isn't primarily military - it's economic.

As the saying goes, generals are always well prepared to fight the last war. Even despite China's recent military buildup, few doubt (and the Chinese themselves don't) that US military superiority in the region remains impeccable. But that's irrelevant. Unless Washington and its allies are willing to cut off their economic relationship with Beijing, it hardly matters how many "freedom of navigation" patrols or even more muscular exercises they conduct to flaunt the specious boundaries of China's artificial islands; when it comes down to it, they must be willing to enforce a blockade that would entail violence against Chinese maritime assets - that is, launch a trade war which will quickly escalate into the financial equivalent of nuclear Armageddon.

In short, if Beijing manages to reclaim Scarborough Shoal in 2016, it will be the end of the US-dominated global order as we know it. With both conventional and nuclear military might orders of magnitude smaller, it will have reduced Washington to an also-ran in the crucial Asia-Pacific region.

That's not to say America will have been supplanted by China, only that the true nature of 21st-century American power will have to be honestly reassessed. I for one firmly believe America will still lead China in the 21st century and not the other way around. But our illusions will have to disappear first. A little atoll 140 miles off the coast of Luzon could soon be the place where the world's only superpower is exposed as an emperor without clothes.