Posted on 08/07/2012 7:37:14 AM PDT by Zhang Fei
I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet. Wait ‘till China decides it is the right-full owner of all land traditionally a part of it at some high-water point in it’s history.
We can then expect to see more nearby nations absorbed.
China is expansionist. The planet is in for a rough ride thank to the Free Traitors.
Chruschev was right. He just had the wrong nation. And we didn’t sell the rope, we bought it before they used it on us.
Well, i know who those islands and their oil DON’T belong to, that us. We have no claim to them, so we should stay out of it unless they ever try to impede sea lanes.
Freedom of navigation is the only thing for us to go to war over there.
Are we really interested in war on behalf of the Phillipines? They kicked us out. On behalf of Vietnam? Please. On behalf of Taiwan who wants to stake claims 1500 miles from Taiwan?
Im much more interested in China drilling right off the Florida Keys. If we wont enforce our clear territorial and oil interests in the Gulf of Mexico, why in hell should we fight over the Spratley islands? Insane.
Massive corporate taxation, limitless legal vulnerability, crushing environmental regulation and pro-Union arbitrary Government: these are why industry chooses to locate away from the USA.
Protectionism would be the final nail in the coffin. The last vestiges of American industry would be turned into feather-bedded welfare cases, and freeborn Americans would be forced to buy their stuff from the Government store.
Protectionism will also increase Government power. The Dems will collect all of that lovely tariff money and spend it on union pension bailouts or some damn thing.
America has tied its own hands behind its back with a ludicrous knot of EPA regulations, crushing taxation and arbitrary Government (just ask Gibsons guitars).
America needs to untie those knots - not wrap itself up in more of them in a fit of misplaced faux-patriotic anger.
Trade-wise, I think we need to treat China the way we treated the Soviet Union. However, the problem with trying to enact a trade embargo on China is that nobody else will go along. Chinese exports to the US, at $400b, are only 7% of its $5.7t economy. And that $400b number exaggerates the value added, given that perhaps 10% of the $250 wholesale price of an iPad is composed of value added by Chinese labor, the rest being materials cost (of commodities imported from the rest of the world).
There are also factors beyond our control. The big change in China's economy occurred not in 1973, with Nixon's opening to China, but in 1979, when Deng Xiaoping, China's leader at the time, started dismantling China's centrally-planned economy. Every year after 1979 has featured high single-digit or low double-digit economic growth. The Chinese will eventually present a much more serious security problem than the Soviets because their economy is now capitalist in all but name, and they have 1.2b productive people, compared to the Soviet Union's 200m people at its peak.
As a long-time amateur China-watcher (and former Soviet-watcher), my contention is that the problem with China isn’t Communism - it’s the Chinese (much as the problem with the Soviet Union wasn’t Communism - it was Russians who viewed themselves as world conquerors). When Imperial Japan went on its world tour, its model was Imperial China during its moments of martial vigor. The Chinese put on a mask of amity during their period of weakness, but now that China has grown strong, that mask is slipping. I suspect that future historians will look back upon the Maoist era, when China closed itself off from the world, as a period of respite for China’s neighbors - a time for them to prepare for a revived China red in in tooth and claw. However, historians may also record China’s feckless neighbors (aka future provinces, in the Chinese mind) as having wasted the breathing space afforded them - all you have to do is look at their minuscule defense budgets. With the exception of Vietnam and India, China’s neighbors appear to have settled upon a common policy based on (1) Uncle Sam providing for their defense and (2) fighting China to the last dead American.
“China’s neighbors are looking to the United States to deal with the local bully, and so far the Americans have been reluctant to get that involved”
So Vietnam, the PI, and Taiwan want us to go to war with China, over the oil rich Spratleys? I have a better idea. Get together, build a navy and an army, and send a bunch of asian boys to defend your own asian interests. If you won;t die for it, why should some kid from Nebraska?
It’s angering, the way every corner on earth looks at the USA as running to fight everyone elses fight.
Besides, we are very busy trying to get involved in other wars we have nothing to do with in Uganda and Syria.
“Lend-lease.”
Ohhh,, like we did with England in 39-40? SOunds like a good way to get dragged in. And interest free loans to peolle arming to fight China? Seriously? Pssst,, guess who WE already owe over a trillion to already? Yeah, THAT China,,the one that holds 26% of our foreign debt.
And let them use our nuclear umbrella? Are you insane? In return for risking nuclear attack on American cities, what do we get in return? Free oil for 5 decades?
Yeah, i thought so.
“You think Mitt will?”
I think Mittens is less likely to betray our allies than Obama has proven to be.
Desert. With respect: you guys weren’t dragged into anything by Lend-Lease. The Japanese attacked you, and then Hitler declared war.
These countries have money and need weapons. No need to do anything like vendor-financing or arms-swaps for territory - and no need to send ‘trainers’.
Just sell them weapons and so reduce the unit price of your own stuff. No need to let the Russians supply both sides.
Cordially.
Yes,, we do have unmatched capacity for war. I know this will sound quaint, but really there is supposed to be an American interest at stake. Interest means something material to our economy or security, not simply, “Say, well isn’t that interesting”.
Unless the Chinese intend to block free navigation, we have no fight there. Wars are expensive, and really suck from up close. We should not be asked fight them over which Asian nation gets to claim the Spratleys. As long as we can sail by on our way somewhere else, I’m cool.
Some won’t be satisfied until we have Marines storming a modern Tarawa somewhere. But on behalf of Vietnamese, Taiwanese, and PI oil dreams? Please.
Yes,, we do have unmatched capacity for war. I know this will sound quaint, but really there is supposed to be an American interest at stake. Interest means something material to our economy or security, not simply, “Say, well isn’t that interesting”.
Unless the Chinese intend to block free navigation, we have no fight there. Wars are expensive, and really suck from up close. We should not be asked fight them over which Asian nation gets to claim the Spratleys. As long as we can sail by on our way somewhere else, I’m cool.
Some won’t be satisfied until we have Marines storming a modern Tarawa somewhere. But on behalf of Vietnamese, Taiwanese, and PI oil dreams? Please.
Well said.
China isn't just claiming those islands or the waters around them - it's laying claim to the entire South China Sea. In the Chinese view, those waters are inland Chinese waters. That implies a Chinese right to impede commercial and/or military traffic. Ultimately, I suspect we will fight to deny Chinese claims to those islands, simply to prevent China from building platforms from which they can harass or sink shipping passing through the region or invade the surrounding countries. Imagine Guam-sized islands from land reclamation efforts garrisoned by hundreds of thousands of Chinese ground, naval and air force personnel.
Taiwan is just over 200 miles from the Philippines and was the staging ground for Japan's invasion of the PI just after Pearl Harbor. China is about to build bases within 20 miles of mainland Philippines. Given our defense treaty with the Pinoys, I suspect it may be less trouble to keep the Chinese away from the islands that have to recover all of the Philippines from a Chinese army in occupation.
“The way lend-lease worked was that many of the loans were forgiven, especially for equipment lost in battle. I’d say if the weapons are used in combat against the Chinese and lost, we write off the loan.”
I’m just a poor simple guy. So i might be misunderstanding this. We borrow money from China, to arm their enemies, and then whatever is lost in combat, we just “write off”? Like on our taxes? LOL
Or does that really mean, WE pay China back the money we borrowed to help someone attack them to advance THEIR interests?
Heres a clue, NOBODY cared about the Spratleys until oil was discovered there. Now they are all moving to establish bases. Let them elbow each other all they want, but this is not our fight. Not worth even ONE American life or borrowed Dollar.
Stopping Chinese imperialism before they lay claim to Guam, Hawaii, or San Francisco is an American interest. The Chinese have already laid claim to the Arctic and they’ve claimed that they want ‘special trade zones’ in cities along the Pacific coast incuding Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Long Beach.
...and they’re already in Long Beach where H.L. Richardson long ago pointed out that the ‘security guards’ working at the COSCO terminal there are all PLA soldiers. Why they’re allowed to have a defacto military base on our soil utterly eludes me.
In any case, it is vital to our interests to stop China where they are or else we’ll have to fight them when they come for what’s ours.
Or someone like Bush I or Bush II who isn’t a Democrat but isn’t going to interrupt the Chinese at anything.
Strategy Page article FYI
Mahan is more relevant than Sun-Tze: sea-power is going to be the critical factor in that area.
Perhaps some enterprising FReeper could publish a naval order of battle for Vietnam, Taiwan, etc?
Lend Lease was a defacto joining into the war. It was the updated version of the WWI arsenal of democracy thing, which indeed drew us into WWI. A solid argument can be made that we would have eventually needed to fight WWII, but in WWI we absolutely had no interest. That was solely the result of England begging, cajoling, and scheming to get access to US manpower. In fact, the England defacto declared war on us when we were neutral. They created an explusion zone, and stated intent to sink any US ship that wanted to carry cargo to a German port. They announced what US companies may not sell to Germans and their intent to enforce it on the seas.
This exclusion zone was established *before* the Germans did likewise around the British isles with submarines.
So yes i am very wary of foreigners who are eager to have us fight their wars.
The road to getting dragged in is arming one side. the other side quickly sees you as the enemy.
If someone shows up with hard cold cash, id let them buy something. But not F-22s, (which we destroyed the tooling for i believe) and nobody in their right mind truly facing combat, over water, over long distances, against Sukhois would want to buy an F-35.
But yes, lend lease and other prewar entanglements certainly did draw us in. Even the Japanese attack resulted from prewar trade embargoes on behalf of China.
It’s still not an American fight. For me the equation should be, “will the profits of a few weapons sales be worth antagonizing the largest holder of US debt?”. Say we sell 10 or 20 billion in weapons, (a HUGE sale) but lose a few Trillion when Chine refuses to buy anymore T-bills?
And i hear no mention of Australia. They are right there in the backyard of this. Do they want to go to war over this, or provide weapons to these squabbling asians??
I think our security problem is that China is already way too big. We embargoed Japan to prevent it from incorporating China into the Japanese Empire. We fought in Europe to prevent Germany from controlling all of Western Europe. China has a population that is industrializing rapidly and has 10 times the population of pre-war Germany and Japan combined and 20 times their land area. We may not have the luxury of letting China get any bigger. Imagine a China with twice its current population and land area courtesy of a PLA tour of East Asia. A Chinese Empire in the Far East that includes Australia and New Zealand will put an end to the regional squabbling. But it will also put in great danger our holdings in the Pacific.
No, they do not claim it as an inland water. They want to do exactly one thing there. Drill oil. They won’t impeded shipping there.
What is there plan, close the shipping lanes that their economy utterly depends on? But if someday, someone tries, we can have a war over freedom of navigation. But that is not on the table currently.
And the Phillippines are no longer an American territory, and about 2 decades ago kicked us out and closed our bases. So no,, now they can’t come running that somebody wants their island. And as far as 20 miles from “mainland” Phillippines. WTF is mainland Phillippines? It’s an archipelago. So which island is China within 20 miles of??
Was it another unclaimed, uninhabited, unused, unowned sandspit that they built a colony on? Or did they invade it. Maybe the PI should have thought ahead before they kicked us out. If we were there, i doubt the Chinese would have moved. Decisions have consequences.
And as for China invading the PI? Seriously? Is there the slightest indication that they will? It’s far more likely that they’ll simply buy them.
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