Posted on 10/23/2001 11:15:16 AM PDT by tallhappy
T V Parasuram in Washington
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, fresh from his talks with Chinese leaders, said that China would continue to keep American cities within striking distance of its missiles and modernise its nuclear weapons.
He, however, suggested that this would not spark an India-China or an India-Pakistan nuclear race, as New Delhi and Islamabad were really concerned about the problems in their neighbourhood.
"The Chinese have always kept a relatively small amount of intercontinental ballistic missiles and they have never viewed them in the same way as the Soviet Union did during the Cold War when we were constantly building up," Powell told reporters.
"If we put them (missiles) in SSBNS (nuclear submarines), they would put them in SSBNS. If we had a triad (missiles in the air, on land and at sea), they had a triad," Powell said about the Cold War.
"The Chinese were never a part of that competition. They built a few first strike intercontinental ballistic missiles. They were not designed to go after somebody else's nuclear forces. They were designed to go after something of enormous value -- San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle -- and as long as they could do that, their nuclear forces were serving their purpose," he said.
"It is expected that over time one would modernise such a force. Can't keep an old force around forever. The Chinese have been working to modernise that force, which tends to make it more stable and safe," he added.
PTI
As for the future: their nuclear forces are slated for a modernization, but a modern ICBM costs far more for them than it costs us (in terms of total national wealth). So any force expansion is going to be fairly slow. And they have a LOT of structural problems that are going to catch up with them sooner rather than later.
I don't see China being a player on the international stage as either the next big baddie OR a "civilized nation." Instead, they're going to fall into yet ANOTHER round of warlordism and banidtry before 2020. Heck, the US Navy may reactivate the Yangtze River Station before 2030.
But that doesn't mean we have to be in a hurry to fight a war with them. Notice that we managed to defeat the USSR without a war.
Your post almost made me laugh. I had to reread it to make sure that you weren't being facetious. Yes, indeed, that is sure a friendly overture on the part of China, to point nukes at Seattle! There's no reason in the world for us to not just turn the other cheek and just help them refine some of those missiles so that they can hit multiple cities at one time. Oh, I forgot, Clinton already gave them the technology to do that.
It's really very simple, Mr. Powell: they aim weapons at us, that makes them our enemy. They're either FOR us or AGAINST us... how much of that isn't clear?
China has serious economic (and, ultimately, political) problems, tied to the structure of their economy. Being "sneaky" won't help them there, either. You cannot finesse your way around economic collapse.
China is going to go down for the count before 2020, whereupon they will have the good ol' days of warlords and bandits squabbling over who owns the next hill. They won't give a damn about owning the Panama Canal after that.
BTW, if you're so damn worried about the Chinese "owning" the Canal through Hutchinson Whampoa, why don't you organize a hostile takeover effort? They are publicly traded, after all.
I agree with Poohbah.
America and the Soviet Union both built up enormous stockpiles of Nuclear Weapons to cope with the first strike scenario, can one side win a nuclear war by attacking the other side with so many weapons that they would not be able to launch an attack back.
Tony
America has had Nuclear weapons aimed at China for a long time, Russia still has weapons aimed at America and America at Russia, does that mean the Russia and China are right to consider America an enemy.
What is different today than the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and 90s.
Would you agree to a further limiting of Nuclear weapons, would you agree that all Nuclear weapons must be untargeted.
Powell is recognising the world as it is today, not as people would like it to be.
Tony
You can skip the OJ and Hillary lines. I have no interest in either one. They are both irrelevant to current politics. Condit also. Who cares? They are all nothing more than a side show.
BS. Unless US population has grossly expanded or performed the most amazing shift in the past year, the total population of the top 20 cities in the US is just under 31 million. Let's double it (assume the folks in the 'burbs double the total body count when they go to work in the morning). That's 62 million. That's a lot of dead, but WAY under your guesstimate. It also assumes, for instance, that EVERY last bit of New York City's surface area is reduced to rubble (that's ONE bomb affecting 300 square miles), AND you assume that every resident is a citizen. If you're going to throw numbers around, would you mind not just pulling them out of thin air?
That's more than 1/3 of our populace. Care to venture how many nukes we'd have to use to take out 1/3 of their populace?
Fewer than you'd believe possible. Targeting: key infrastructure nodes (rail and road junctions, harbors, etc).
Sure, we wouldn't kill them all right away.
But you're just as dead from starvation and disease six weeks after an attack as you are if you're vaporized in the first millisecond. China imports food. China's food PRODUCTION is far away from most of its food CONSUMERS. No transportation means that most of China starves in a matter of weeks.
Probably 90% of China's populace lives in an agrarian culture spread out so sparcely that they would hardly be effected by a nuclear attack by the US.
Did you just make up this factoid, did you merely "assume" this factoid, or do you have some hard facts to back it up?
Our culture is exactly the opposite. We'd have to use 100s of nukes to even come near the 400 million figure to "get even."
Like I said, not very many for a "get even" mission. However, revenge, while briefly satisfying, does not usually accomplish anything useful, unlike (for instance) completely obliterating the PRC's capacity to create, support, and employ any sort of military force beyond spears and (maybe for the high-tech folks) bows.
You tell me who'd lose that war.
The People's Republic of China would cease to exist as any sort of political entity. The United States would be rid of 62 million or so folks who mostly voted for Al Gore. You tell ME who lost that war.
How do you bomb a nation back to the stone age when 90% of their populace already lives there? Unfortunately the same mind-set that "never thought" of the human missle aspects of a loaded 747, now thinks that a nuclear attack by China is unthinkable. It may not be thinkable to us. We have a lot more to lose in such an exchange. China already knows this, and I think it's time our populace realized it.
I see you believe that The Thoughts of Chairman Mao contain all strategic wisdom for the modern era.
There is a reason that the terrorists attacked us in the fashion they did. Believe me, they'd WANT to be able to rain thousands of nuclear warheads on us. The problem is very simple: THEY CAN'T. That's why they went wth Plan B.
China may WANT to win a nuclear war with the United States. Nuking 20 cities ain't the way to do it--but that's all that they have the means to do.
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