"Inconceivable" does not in any way mean "impossible".
Posted on 02/20/2016 9:41:52 AM PST by Sawdring
When Barack Obama meets this week with Xi Jinping during the Chinese president’s first state visit to America, one item probably won’t be on their agenda: the possibility that the United States and China could find themselves at war in the next decade. In policy circles, this appears as unlikely as it would be unwise.
And yet 100 years on, World War I offers a sobering reminder of man’s capacity for folly. When we say that war is “inconceivable,†is this a statement about what is possible in the world—or only about what our limited minds can conceive? In 1914, few could imagine slaughter on a scale that demanded a new category: world war. When war ended four years later, Europe lay in ruins: the kaiser gone, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the Russian tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of its youth and treasure. A millennium in which Europe had been the political center of the world came to a crashing halt.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Bump
I hope not. That would be ugly.
"Inconceivable" does not in any way mean "impossible".
If we are we can thank the Left. They always make war much more likely and dangerous by weakening the United States, it’s defenses, institutions and social fabric.
"European countries will never go to war with each other. They're too economically interdependent!" --talking heads, circa 1900.
Our Terrorist in Chief would do anything he could to bring on a war. The end of the US has been his goal all along. He’d go so far as to give up state secrets, all the codes and play Geraldo drawing maps in the sand. He likely has an agent in Cuba scouting around for a cushy estate so those burdensome girls will be safe. He’d give up his “10 year” reign early to Hillary if he could get a war started.
The advantage of dealing with a command economy - and strong leader - is we don't have to figure out the culture. All efforts can be focused on minds and patterns of 'the few'.
If a pollster has the 'right' sample - an accurate poll can be done with as few as twelve people.
In politics some years back it occurred to a group that the effort involved in changing a culture was overwhelming... but the effort involved in changing the top 30 people in any given area - those with the most influence and reach - was manageable. Rather than moving the minds of hundreds of thousands of citizens, analyze and move the mind of the editor of the local newspaper - how news 'decisions' are made...the minds of a few intellectuals... or the 'twelve'.. etc.
You don't pick a fight with the guy across the street who owes you $10,000 and provides you with employment.
12 of 16 led to war. The other four are interesting:
US-UK in the early 1900s. 1. We fought two wars with them a century earlier. 2. External events sidelined that conflict as we fought on the same side in a major war while we passed the UK in global power.
Soviet-Japan and Soviet-US until the 1980s. 1. We fought proxy wars against them. 2. Mutual Assured Destruction may have limited that conflict from crossing over to all out war. 3. The Soviet Union collapsed, perhaps ending a threat that otherwise would inevitably have matured.
UK&France-Germany in the present. 1. They have not gone to war. Yet. I am not such an optimist that I would rule that out in Europe, not even in the EU.
I see nothing more than luck in the absence of wars in those cases. I would have liked to have found a positive solution in those examples, but I do not see even a hint at one.
“You don’t pick a fight with the guy across the street who owes you $10,000 and provides you with employment.”
Exactly.
However, I’m open to the idea of an all out one. Besides, just like the line in Red Dawn, ‘the 2 biggest dogs had to duke it out’, or something like that. Someone has to settle it eventually..
“If China went to war with us their people would starve”
You assume China considers this a problem.
It’s not. It’s standard long-term population control policy there.
Greed makes people blind. When the globalists started moving our manufacturing into China they didn’t allow for the possibility that they could be building up their next enemy. The globalist CFR crowd are still thinking like they are the Western colonists and the other nonwestern nations are always going to be third world but things can change—China can turn the tables on the West.
China does not want war with the USA, period. We are their bread and butter.
There is a story going around of Obama looking for a house in Dubai but it may not be true. But I think it would be just like him to bail after doing everything he could to destroy this country. Remember Obama can now be a *citizen of the world*. barf
The UK&France vs Germany 1990s example does not belong with the others. Europe faces a conflict between national interests on one hand and elite interests on the other.
This is most visible in Britain where popular pressure is forcing a vote on Britain’s future in the EU.
Britain, unlike the continental EU states still has a political system that allowed the general publics concerns a voice. In continental Europe, the political system has marginalized anti-EU sentiment, pushing it to quasi-fascist/socialist parties.
Other than that, it is a good article.
God save us from conventional wisdom...
But for how long? Xi Jinping's shift from an export economy to a consumer economy will change this.
It should because their military has to eat too.........The US exports literally millions of tons of food stuffs to China every year.
Probably not. Both countries are way too dependent on each other economically and would both go bankrupt really fast if the trade stopped.
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