Posted on 05/10/2005 6:11:01 PM PDT by hedgetrimmer
The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was
For some time now no navy or air force has posed a threat to the United States. Our only competition has been armies, whether conventional forces or guerrilla insurgencies. This will soon change. The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacificâand when it does, it will very quickly encounter a U.S. Navy and Air Force unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the Asian mainland. It's not hard to imagine the result: a replay of the decades-long Cold War, with a center of gravity not in the heart of Europe but, rather, among Pacific atolls that were last in the news when the Marines stormed them in World War II. In the coming decades China will play an asymmetric back-and-forth game with us in the Pacific, taking advantage not only of its vast coastline but also of its rear baseâstretching far back into Central Asiaâfrom which it may eventually be able to lob missiles accurately at moving ships in the Pacific. In any naval encounter China will have distinct advantages over the United States, even if it lags in technological military prowess. It has the benefit, for one thing, of sheer proximity. Its military is an avid student of the competition, and a fast learner. It has growing increments of "soft" power that demonstrate a particular gift for adaptation. While stateless terrorists fill security vacuums, the Chinese fill economic ones. All over the globe, in such disparate places as the troubled Pacific Island states of Oceania, the Panama Canal zone, and out-of-the-way African nations, the Chinese are becoming masters of indirect influenceâby establishing business communities and diplomatic outposts, by negotiating construction and trade agreements. Pulsing with consumer and martial energy, and boasting a peasantry that, unlike others in history, is overwhelmingly literate, China constitutes the principal conventional threat to America's liberal imperium.
How should the United States prepare to respond to challenges in the Pacific? To understand the dynamics of this second Cold Warâwhich will link China and the United States in a future that may stretch over several generationsâit is essential to understand certain things about the first Cold War, and about the current predicament of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the institution set up to fight that conflict. This is a story about military strategy and tactics, with some counterintuitive twists and turns.
Imagine the bewildered Chinese strategists wading through this thread.
What in the world can they be thinking? Thier most important trading partner and free ride to world domination spouting off like unruly five year olds about nuking this and blasting that...unaware of killing Golden Goose and unaware of a teeming population of illegal immigrants that may exceed 10 million in five years or less.
These Americans. "Inscrutable!"
This is the Saddam lesson. When fighting with totalitarian countries, enemy troops collapse as soon as the winds change. Shock and awe happens when lightning speed meets with limited resistance. That said, I don't believe the Chinese want war. If Iran pulls them it, it'll be a disaster - and millions and millions of Chinese will starve to death. But it seems the Chinese are too smart to be played for fools -- and they'll choose to compete in the economic arena. On that field, they can win. And if they do, we need to be good sports, congratulate them, and schedule another round.
BTTT
Well, that much is true for some groups. But there are lots of immigrants who are working hard to be good Americans (South Koreans, Vietnamese, Eastern Europeans, Iranian refugees, etc.) To say that we should be a one race society (I assume you mean white) is just plain ridiculous. If that's what you think, then you need to take your hood and go home. When it's done right, as it was for much of the first half of the Twentieth Century, our melting pot can make us stronger because unlike China, we are in fact a free nation.
Hehehheh... well, my compliments... you've got the code phrases well placed.
Lemme guess: You've got a screen name over at StormFront, don't you...
We could go back to importing them from Mexico.
The irony is that they, like others before them have created just the society of "haves" vs "have nots" that communists accuse capitalism of creating. Now they have riots by poor farmers and coal miners who are worse off they ten years ago. At the same time the riches of Shanghai create a "Chinese Yuppie" class that is starting to spread their miney around.
It reminds me of the millionare socialists of Mexico in the 1930's that the movie "Frieda", in my opinion, unintentionally ridiculed(Diego Rivera never missed a meal or went to bed sober in life or on film).
The Vietnamese kicked their @$$ if I remember correctly.
Exactly. It is not culture or race that defines our rstrength. It is freedom. Here people join the military because they care about our country and freedom. In China and North Korea people join their military at gunpoint.
USA needs to shift our primary alliance to the Asia-Pacific region (China and Japan primarily)and begin to de-emphasize Europe.
Why?
Because Europe is moving toward Islamic influence and nobody will want to or be able to stop it. Europe is/will become the HQ for Islamic terror and they will likely have an Islamic led major nation within 20 years.
China and Japan, on the other hand, despise Islam and will begin to/continue to step up in the WOT, especially as the US-China alliance grows. The Chinese people are primarily pro-American and pro-Western and pro-Capitalism.
The problem with modern day China is a shell government (Chicoms) who probably fear their own military complex as much as they do their burgeoning capitalist society. If we can continue to help their economy grow, the commies will soon be run out of Beijing and there will be change. Sooner is better, before their military gathers any further strength and suffers any political setbacks.
If you piece together some of the comments and quotes on the rest of the thread (up to #37 when I began this post) you will find several reasons and realities that support my observations.
the chinese beating us at sea in the near future is nonsense, a joke.
I think the truth of the matter is that very soon, or perhaps already, China will have so completely adopted a capitalist economy that they will be unable to function without the good will of the rest of the world.
They depend on us, and other world markets, much more than anybody depends on them.
Capitalism is the greatest peacemaker.
China actually lost that war. For us Vietnam was winnable, but the leftists at that time had the upper hand.
I saw an interesting documentary the other night about a Swedish sub with a Stirling engine, very quiet and they had 30 days worth of oxygen on board.
China has been defeated by force of arms many times in the past 200 years. In fact, it is hard to find a world power that hasn't defeated China at some point in the last two hundred years: the First Opium War, the Second Opium War, Shimonoseki, the Boxer Rebellion, Manchukuo - China was the "sick man of [east] Asia" ().
Well written I'm sure, but (IMO) totally unlikely and I would categorize this as fictional.
I think he uses his burning cross to send his neo-Nazi pals smoke signals to tell them how successful his attempts to infiltrate Free Republic have been.
But... It's only fair they have their day in the sun. The US should discard their jingoistic rhetoric and step aside to let them hold the spotlight for a while. They have the largest population on Earth. It's only fair... <\puking MSM mode off>
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