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.
The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.
Based on the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not. Moreover, current underestimations and misapprehensions of the hazards inherent in the U.S.-China relationship contribute greatly to those hazards. A risk associated with Thucydides’s Trap is that business as usual—not just an unexpected, extraordinary event—can trigger large-scale conflict. When a rising power is threatening to displace a ruling power, standard crises that would otherwise be contained, like the assassination of an archduke in 1914, can initiate a cascade of reactions that, in turn, produce outcomes none of the parties would otherwise have chosen.
War, however, is not inevitable. Four of the 16 cases in our review did not end in bloodshed. Those successes, as well as the failures, offer pertinent lessons for today’s world leaders. Escaping the Trap requires tremendous effort. As Xi Jinping himself said during a visit to Seattle on Tuesday, “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.”
More than 2,400 years ago, the Athenian historian Thucydides offered a powerful insight: “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable.” Others identified an array of contributing causes of the Peloponnesian War. But Thucydides went to the heart of the matter, focusing on the inexorable, structural stress caused by a rapid shift in the balance of power between two rivals. Note that Thucydides identified two key drivers of this dynamic: the rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway, on the one hand, and the fear, insecurity, and determination to defend the status quo this engenders in the established power, on the other.
In the case about which he wrote in the fifth century B.C., Athens had emerged over a half century as a steeple of civilization, yielding advances in philosophy, history, drama, architecture, democracy, and naval prowess. This shocked Sparta, which for a century had been the leading land power on the Peloponnese peninsula. As Thucydides saw it, Athens’s position was understandable. As its clout grew, so too did its self-confidence, its consciousness of past injustices, its sensitivity to instances of disrespect, and its insistence that previous arrangements be revised to reflect new realities of power. It was also natural, Thucydides explained, that Sparta interpreted the Athenian posture as unreasonable, ungrateful, and threatening to the system it had established—and within which Athens had flourished.
War between the U.S. and China is more likely than recognized at the moment. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not.
Thucydides chronicled objective changes in relative power, but he also focused on perceptions of change among the leaders of Athens and Sparta—and how this led each to strengthen alliances with other states in the hopes of counterbalancing the other. But entanglement runs both ways. (It was for this reason that George Washington famously cautioned America to beware of “entangling alliances.”) When conflict broke out between the second-tier city-states of Corinth and Corcyra (now Corfu), Sparta felt it necessary to come to Corinth’s defense, which left Athens little choice but to back its ally. The Peloponnesian War followed. When it ended 30 years later, Sparta was the nominal victor. But both states lay in ruin, leaving Greece vulnerable to the Persians.
Eight years before the outbreak of world war in Europe, Britain’s King Edward VII asked his prime minister why the British government was becoming so unfriendly to his nephew Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany, rather than keeping its eye on America, which he saw as the greater challenge. The prime minister instructed the Foreign Office’s chief Germany watcher, Eyre Crowe, to write a memo answering the king’s question. Crowe delivered his memorandum on New Year’s Day, 1907. The document is a gem in the annals of diplomacy.
The logic of Crowe’s analysis echoed Thucydides’s insight. And his central question, as paraphrased by Henry Kissinger in On China, was the following: Did increasing hostility between Britain and Germany stem more from German capabilities or German conduct? Crowe put it a bit differently: Did Germany’s pursuit of “political hegemony and maritime ascendancy” pose an existential threat to “the independence of her neighbours and ultimately the existence of England?”
The British Grand Fleet on its way to meet the Imperial German Navy’s fleet for the Battle of Jutland in 1916 (AP)
Crowe’s answer was unambiguous: Capability was key. As Germany’s economy surpassed Britain’s, Germany would not only develop the strongest army on the continent. It would soon also “build as powerful a navy as she can afford.” In other words, Kissinger writes, “once Germany achieved naval supremacy … this in itself—regardless of German intentions—would be an objective threat to Britain, and incompatible with the existence of the British Empire.”
Three years after reading that memo, Edward VII died. Attendees at his funeral included two “chief mourners”—Edward’s successor, George V, and Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm—along with Theodore Roosevelt representing the United States. At one point, Roosevelt (an avid student of naval power and leading champion of the buildup of the U.S. Navy) asked Wilhelm whether he would consider a moratorium in the German-British naval arms race. The kaiser replied that Germany was unalterably committed to having a powerful navy. But as he went on to explain, war between Germany and Britain was simply unthinkable, because “I was brought up in England, very largely; I feel myself partly an Englishman. Next to Germany I care more for England than for any other country.” And then with emphasis: “I ADORE ENGLAND!”
However unimaginable conflict seems, however catastrophic the potential consequences for all actors, however deep the cultural empathy among leaders, even blood relatives, and however economically interdependent states may be—none of these factors is sufficient to prevent war, in 1914 or today.
In fact, in 12 of 16 cases over the last 500 years in which there was a rapid shift in the relative power of a rising nation that threatened to displace a ruling state, the result was war. As the table below suggests, the struggle for mastery in Europe and Asia over the past half millennium offers a succession of variations on a common storyline.
(For summaries of these 16 cases and the methodology for selecting them, and for a forum to register additions, subtractions, revisions, and disagreements with the cases, please visit the Harvard Belfer Center’s Thucydides Trap Case File. For this first phase of the project, we at the Belfer Center identified “ruling” and “rising” powers by following the judgments of leading historical accounts, resisting the temptation to offer original or idiosyncratic interpretations of events. These histories use “rise” and “rule” according to their conventional definitions, generally emphasizing rapid shifts in relative GDP and military strength. Most of the cases in this initial round of analysis come from post-Westphalian Europe.)
When a rising, revolutionary France challenged Britain’s dominance of the oceans and the balance of power on the European continent, Britain destroyed Napoleon Bonaparte’s fleet in 1805 and later sent troops to the continent to defeat his armies in Spain and at Waterloo. As Otto von Bismarck sought to unify a quarrelsome assortment of rising German states, war with their common adversary, France, proved an effective instrument to mobilize popular support for his mission. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, a rapidly modernizing Japanese economy and military establishment challenged Chinese and Russian dominance of East Asia, resulting in wars with both from which Japan emerged as the leading power in the region.
Each case is, of course, unique. Ongoing debate about the causes of the First World War reminds us that each is subject to competing interpretations. The great international historian, Harvard’s Ernest May, taught that when attempting to reason from history, we should be as sensitive to the differences as to the similarities among cases we compare. (Indeed, in his Historical Reasoning 101 class, May would take a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle of the page, label one column “Similar” and the other “Different,” and fill in the sheet with at least a half dozen of each.) Nonetheless, acknowledging many differences, Thucydides directs us to a powerful commonality.
* * *
The preeminent geostrategic challenge of this era is not violent Islamic extremists or a resurgent Russia. It is the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the U.S.-led international order, which has provided unprecedented great-power peace and prosperity for the past 70 years. As Singapore’s late leader, Lee Kuan Yew, observed, “the size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.” Everyone knows about the rise of China. Few of us realize its magnitude. Never before in history has a nation risen so far, so fast, on so many dimensions of power. To paraphrase former Czech President Vaclav Havel, all this has happened so rapidly that we have not yet had time to be astonished.
My lecture on this topic at Harvard begins with a quiz that asks students to compare China and the United States in 1980 with their rankings today. The reader is invited to fill in the blanks.
Quiz: Fill in the Blanks
Harvard Belfer Center
The answers for the first column: In 1980, China had 10 percent of America’s GDP as measured by purchasing power parity; 7 percent of its GDP at current U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 6 percent of its exports. The foreign currency held by China, meanwhile, was just one-sixth the size of America’s reserves. The answers for the second column: By 2014, those figures were 101 percent of GDP; 60 percent at U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 106 percent of exports. China’s reserves today are 28 times larger than America’s.
In a single generation, a nation that did not appear on any of the international league tables has vaulted into the top ranks. In 1980, China’s economy was smaller than that of the Netherlands. Last year, the increment of growth in China’s GDP was roughly equal to the entire Dutch economy.
The second question in my quiz asks students: Could China become #1? In what year could China overtake the United States to become, say, the largest economy in the world, or primary engine of global growth, or biggest market for luxury goods?
Could China Become #1?
Manufacturer:
Exporter:
Trading nation:
Saver:
Holder of U.S. debt:
Foreign-direct-investment destination:
Energy consumer:
Oil importer:
Carbon emitter:
Steel producer:
Auto market:
Smartphone market:
E-commerce market:
Luxury-goods market:
Internet user:
Fastest supercomputer:
Holder of foreign reserves:
Source of initial public offerings:
Primary engine of global growth:
Economy:
Most are stunned to learn that on each of these 20 indicators, China has already surpassed the U.S.
Will China be able to sustain economic-growth rates several times those of the United States for another decade and beyond? If and as it does, are its current leaders serious about displacing the U.S. as the predominant power in Asia? Will China follow the path of Japan and Germany, and take its place as a responsible stakeholder in the international order that America has built over the past seven decades? The answer to these questions is obviously that no one knows.
But if anyone’s forecasts are worth heeding, it’s those of Lee Kuan Yew, the world’s premier China watcher and a mentor to Chinese leaders since Deng Xiaoping. Before his death in March, the founder of Singapore put the odds of China continuing to grow at several times U.S. rates for the next decade and beyond as “four chances in five.” On whether China’s leaders are serious about displacing the United States as the top power in Asia in the foreseeable future, Lee answered directly: “Of course. Why not … how could they not aspire to be number one in Asia and in time the world?” And about accepting its place in an international order designed and led by America, he said absolutely not: “China wants to be China and accepted as such—not as an honorary member of the West.”
Americans have a tendency to lecture others about why they should be “more like us.” In urging China to follow the lead of the United States, should we Americans be careful what we wish for?
As the United States emerged as the dominant power in the Western hemisphere in the 1890s, how did it behave? Future President Theodore Roosevelt personified a nation supremely confident that the 100 years ahead would be an American century. Over a decade that began in 1895 with the U.S. secretary of state declaring the United States “sovereign on this continent,” America liberated Cuba; threatened Britain and Germany with war to force them to accept American positions on disputes in Venezuela and Canada; backed an insurrection that split Colombia to create a new state of Panama (which immediately gave the U.S. concessions to build the Panama Canal); and attempted to overthrow the government of Mexico, which was supported by the United Kingdom and financed by London bankers. In the half century that followed, U.S. military forces intervened in “our hemisphere” on more than 30 separate occasions to settle economic or territorial disputes in terms favorable to Americans, or oust leaders they judged unacceptable.
Theodore Roosevelt with U.S. troops at the Panama Canal Zone in 1906 (Wikimedia)
For example, in 1902, when British and German ships attempted to impose a naval blockade to force Venezuela to pay its debts to them, Roosevelt warned both countries that he would “be obliged to interfere by force if necessary” if they did not withdraw their ships. The British and Germans were persuaded to retreat and to resolve their dispute in terms satisfactory to the U.S. at The Hague. The following year, when Colombia refused to lease the Panama Canal Zone to the United States, America sponsored Panamanian secessionists, recognized the new Panamanian government within hours of its declaration of independence, and sent the Marines to defend the new country. Roosevelt defended the U.S. intervention on the grounds that it was “justified in morals and therefore justified in law.” Shortly thereafter, Panama granted the United States rights to the Canal Zone “in perpetuity.”
When Deng Xiaoping initiated China’s fast march to the market in 1978, he announced a policy known as “hide and bide.” What China needed most abroad was stability and access to markets. The Chinese would thus “bide our time and hide our capabilities,” which Chinese military officers sometimes paraphrased as getting strong before getting even.
With the arrival of China’s new paramount leader, Xi Jinping, the era of “hide and bide” is over. Nearly three years into his 10-year term, Xi has stunned colleagues at home and China watchers abroad with the speed at which he has moved and the audacity of his ambitions. Domestically, he has bypassed rule by a seven-man standing committee and instead consolidated power in his own hands; ended flirtations with democratization by reasserting the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power; and attempted to transform China’s engine of growth from an export-focused economy to one driven by domestic consumption. Overseas, he has pursued a more active Chinese foreign policy that is increasingly assertive in advancing the country’s interests.
While the Western press is seized by the storyline of “China’s economic slowdown,” few pause to note that China’s lower growth rate remains more than three times that of the United States. Many observers outside China have missed the great divergence between China’s economic performance and that of its competitors over the seven years since the financial crisis of 2008 and Great Recession. That shock caused virtually all other major economies to falter and decline. China never missed a year of growth, sustaining an average growth rate exceeding 8 percent. Indeed, since the financial crisis, nearly 40 percent of all growth in the global economy has occurred in just one country: China. The chart below illustrates China’s growth compared to growth among its peers in the BRICS group of emerging economies, advanced economies, and the world. From a common index of 100 in 2007, the divergence is dramatic.
GDP, 2007 — 2015
Harvard Belfer Center / IMF World Economic Outlook
Today, China has displaced the United States as the world’s largest economy measured in terms of the amount of goods and services a citizen can buy in his own country (purchasing power parity).
What Xi Jinping calls the “China Dream” expresses the deepest aspirations of hundreds of millions of Chinese, who wish to be not only rich but also powerful. At the core of China’s civilizational creed is the belief—or conceit—that China is the center of the universe. In the oft-repeated narrative, a century of Chinese weakness led to exploitation and national humiliation by Western colonialists and Japan. In Beijing’s view, China is now being restored to its rightful place, where its power commands recognition of and respect for China’s core interests.
A woodblock painting depicts the First Sino-Japanese War. (Toyohara Chikanobu / Wikimedia)
Last November, in a seminal meeting of the entire Chinese political and foreign-policy establishment, including the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army, Xi provided a comprehensive overview of his vision of China’s role in the world. The display of self-confidence bordered on hubris. Xi began by offering an essentially Hegelian conception of the major historical trends toward multipolarity (i.e. not U.S. unipolarity) and the transformation of the international system (i.e. not the current U.S.-led system). In his words, a rejuvenated Chinese nation will build a “new type of international relations” through a “protracted” struggle over the nature of the international order. In the end, he assured his audience that “the growing trend toward a multipolar world will not change.”
Given objective trends, realists see an irresistible force approaching an immovable object. They ask which is less likely: China demanding a lesser role in the East and South China Seas than the United States did in the Caribbean or Atlantic in the early 20th century, or the U.S. sharing with China the predominance in the Western Pacific that America has enjoyed since World War II?
And yet in four of the 16 cases that the Belfer Center team analyzed, similar rivalries did not end in war. If leaders in the United States and China let structural factors drive these two great nations to war, they will not be able to hide behind a cloak of inevitability. Those who don’t learn from past successes and failures to find a better way forward will have no one to blame but themselves.
Actors dressed as Red Army soldiers mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, in Beijing. (Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters)
At this point, the established script for discussion of policy challenges calls for a pivot to a new strategy (or at least slogan), with a short to-do list that promises peaceful and prosperous relations with China. Shoehorning this challenge into that template would demonstrate only one thing: a failure to understand the central point I’m trying to make. What strategists need most at the moment is not a new strategy, but a long pause for reflection. If the tectonic shift caused by China’s rise poses a challenge of genuinely Thucydidean proportions, declarations about “rebalancing,” or revitalizing “engage and hedge,” or presidential hopefuls’ calls for more “muscular” or “robust” variants of the same, amount to little more than aspirin treating cancer. Future historians will compare such assertions to the reveries of British, German, and Russian leaders as they sleepwalked into 1914.
The rise of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.3 billion people is not a problem to be fixed. It is a condition—a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a generation. Success will require not just a new slogan, more frequent summits of presidents, and additional meetings of departmental working groups. Managing this relationship without war will demand sustained attention, week by week, at the highest level in both countries. It will entail a depth of mutual understanding not seen since the Henry Kissinger-Zhou Enlai conversations in the 1970s. Most significantly, it will mean more radical changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet imagined.
Your case studies don't help your argument. Every "no war" occurred post-nuclear weapons, and every "war" occurred pre-nuclear weapons. MAD seems to work (of course, it also massively ups the ante if things do go south).
You don't even need MAD. Nations behave very differently even when a small exchange is threatened. This explains why we continually put up with all of the toddler tantrums from North Korea. Their conventional weapons would probably do more damage to the South and our nuclear weapons are the only side that has assured destruction of the other.
The only way China becomes a threat on the scale suggested here is if they can subordinate the Russians. Not likely.
I think the most dangerous global conflict 50 years from now will be the tension between China and Russia. Russia is going to turn into a de-populated husk*, and between that and climate change making Sibera a much more attractive neighborhood, I don't know how those two can reconcile their interests on their borders.
*that will still have a hell of a lot of military hardware and nuclear weapons
China has not been the country that is obsessed with invasion and killing sprees. America has, for the past 240 years, been invading, plundering and destroying countries and peoples. The fact is, the number of countries invaded by America is more than all other countries combined. Of course, Americans are not exactly ever eager to invade any country that can land a nuclear in Washington. In other words, all of the countries America has invaded have been countries that were militarily and economically weak. In fact, some of the countries America has invaded did not even have a standing navy or air force. Korea in the Latin America and South East Asia in the last hundred years; Korea in 50's; Vietnam in 60's, the Middle East in a variety of decades. However, in all of those cases, none of those countries could ever threat America, much less to destroy any part of America. All the difficulties America claimed to have had with Soviet Union, they never attempted to start a war with them. So, only countries America ever invaded were very poor and weak countries. China will not start a war with America, but they are very able to defend themselves and to do as much damage to the American country as America is able to do to them. Moreover, America owes China more than a trillion dollars and they have five times the population of America. And truth is, America is on the decline and China is just beginning to rise.
Maybe, or even probably, but if missile defense technology makes a leap in the next generation and China is confronting internal pressures that make it more desirable to focus its population's attention outward, who knows?
Russia is unlikely to ever fall so far behind the military technology curve that it won't be able get large numbers of nuclear weapons through an enemy country's defenses. Even today, their missiles aren't as advanced as U.S. ones, but it's still more than good enough to deter the U.S.
Even if the planet warms up in 50 years, the Russian Far East still won't be a fun place to live. For example, let's assume global warming happens even faster than people like Al Gore assume, and the fearsome "2 degree Celsius rise in temperature" happens by 2065 (50 years from now) instead of by 2100.
Add that 2 degrees throughout this climate chart for the Russian city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, and see how cold it still is. For five months out of the year, the average daily high temperature won't get above freezing.
If you're thinking China is going to be bursting at the seams with people in 50 years and will need Russian land as a relief valve, realize that China's population is going to peak in the 2020s and then start declining. Fifty years from now, they might have fewer people than they do today.
If the Chinese really need to spread out, a much better option that invading Russia would be to distribute people more evenly across their own country. The western half of the country is sparsely populated.
And if they absolutely can't resist the drive for lebensraum, Mongolia is a much lower-hanging fruit than Russia. Mongolia was part of China until the 1920s anyway, and some Chinese and Taiwanese still claim it is rightfully theirs. Mongolia is massive, too.
I think there are a number of things are missing in the debate of possible effects of global warming. To start with the 2 degrees is an average for the planet, for the north the equivalent effect of 2 degrees C is 6 degrees C. That is serious. This would mean a temperature shift 400 to 600 miles north. It would mean Toronto having what is Atlanta's climate. Obviously a temperature shift in actual practice would not be an exact climate shift since there are many factors such as rainfall etc. One of the factors not discussed is the climate shift in China itself which at least some models suggest major drying in some major crop areas.
It's indeed ridiculous that this article doesn't mention MAD, and the potential of anti-missile technology to disrupt it. To be honest, it's likely both the US and China already have significant anti-missile and anti-bomber capability. But even if both sides could take out 90% of the warheads, the world as we know it would be gone, and there would be little reason to fight anymore. If we ever get 100% effective anti-missile technology, MAD will be over, and wars will get hot again. I fear that way, way more than I fear Iran getting nuclear capability.
If ABM-tech gets effective enough (and its a long way off from effective against anything but a single warhead, limited strike), countries with the capability will just produce a few backpack nukes for their intel agencies. Hell, a few dirty bombs would be just as effective.
The destruction doesn't even have to be complete. It just has to be enough that the potential military gain isn't worth the likely pain. China's deterrence policy to Russia in the 60s and 70s I think translated to something like "we'll bite your arm off". Everyone knew that China couldn't stand against the Russian military if it ever came to war... but China publically stated that while it knew it would lose, it would still "bite Russia's arm off".
The US can whoop Iran's butt if we want... hell Israel could probably do so. But if it comes to armed conflict, they'll try to (and likely can) "bite our arm off", and that forces folks to look for negotiated solutions.
Even the best anti-ballistic missile technology is useless if the enemy fires more than two missiles at you at once. That's actually being generous. The U.S. ballistic missile shield has been a black hole of money.
Good point. Positive China-Russia relations are nice and convenient when trying to provide a counterbalance to the West. But when they actually turn around and look at each other, there are a lot of problems to settle.
I think Russia-China may be a better pre-WWI Germany v. Britain analogy than U.S.-China is. Love it or hate it, America as a superpower isn't likely going anywhere any time soon. Russia as a superpower, on the other hand, is a very different story. And you know what they say about low-hanging fruit.
Don't forget that China's population is set to level off and start declining soon as well. I can't see the Chinese taking in millions of immigrants, no matter where they come from.
Where is the proof of that? Anytime a country becomes more stable and see a great increase in standard of living they have a population boom. Every single time.
This is simply untrue—see Europe after WWII, Japan after WWII, etc. When they became stabile and saw a great increase in standard of living their population went from boom to bust.
No, Europe and Japan were a mess after WW2. That's why they didn't have a population boom like America did. Why do you think they call the "Baby Boomers' that? I said STABLE and an increase in standard of living both of which Europe and Japan didn't have after WW2.
If the [Chinese] government maintains the control it has, all it has to do is decree that everyone has 2 kids. They kept them to 1 child by fiat, why not increase it to 2 children by fiat?
That's not what will cause the population drop. Its more because of the very lopsided male to female ratio, on top of the fact that like everywhere else in the industrialized world, Chinese women are choosing not to get married and have kids in the first place.
Chinese families (more importantly Chinese women) are not going back to having 6 kids or whatnot at this point, regardless of what the government says or does.
It's far more whacked than other countries, but it's not a disaster.
What will cause the population to drop (but not much) is the post-WW2-and-Korean-War baby boomers dying out, replaced by their 1.6 children and their grandchildren (which will probably be more like 2 or 2.5 children). And unlike the rest of the industrialized world, Chinese kids are still under enormous pressure from their parents to have children - at least 1. I'm just guestimating, but I think an American or European won't get much pressure from their parents to start a family until they're over 30, whereas a Chinese woman is considered old and almost unmarriable when they're 30.
What will cause the population to drop (but not much) is the post-WW2-and-Korean-War baby boomers dying out, replaced by their 1.6 children and their grandchildren (which will probably be more like 2 or 2.5 children).
This is the disaster that you're overlooking. Because these will all be men. Far more than women.
And unlike the rest of the industrialized world, Chinese kids are still under enormous pressure from their parents to have children - at least 1. I'm just guestimating, but I think an American or European won't get much pressure from their parents to start a family until they're over 30, whereas a Chinese woman is considered old and almost unmarriable when they're 30.
As CeeTee55 and I are pointing out, cultural habits change. Especially as a country and its women become more educated, egalitarian, and wealthier. As we're seeing in Japan, Korea, and increasingly in India and SE Asia, all of this will change and will go out the window.
China's population growth will peak in around 2030 (or sooner), they will then age and grow older and greyer...like Japan. Younger faster growing democracies such as Indonesia, Philippines, India will far outpace them.
Even South and Southeast Asia, dense regions with traditionally higher birthrates, have fertility rates that are leveling out from highs of 4-7 in the 1960s-1970s because the effects of political stability and education have been taking hold.
Thailand = (67 million people, 1.51 fertility rate) Vietnam = (90 million, 1.83 fertility) Indonesia = (255 million, 2.15 fertility) Bangladesh = (156 million, 2.40 fertility) India = (1.2 billion, 2.48 fertility) Philippines = (102 million, 3.09 fertility) Minimum replacement rate needed to keep a population stable = 2.10
The only regions that are still experiencing significantly larger birthrates as a whole (2.5 to 6) are unstable parts of the Middle East and central Africa, and it comes down to higher death rates (from economic collapse, war, or famine) leading to increased birthrates in response, poor education, and stronger natalism promoted through tradition or religion.
That would actually be interesting as hell--what if Russia essentially had a homesteading policy to keep its eastern regions populated. I don't think they'd ever go for it given their less than stellar history with Muslims in Chechnya, but I wonder if Russia would rather have 50 million migrants who may not be wholly interested in being Russian, or to have China just take that territory outright?
Considering how highly xenophobic Russians are and always have been, not bloody likely. They'll happily go to war with China than become a more heterogeneous country.
Since the inception of America, it has been the nation whose prime purpose in the world seems to be predicated on war, plunder and oppression. Think of it, American has not had a three-year period in which it has not been in a war with some small and poor country.
Also, invading other countries to build up your territory hasn't worked since WW2 (or even earlier). Korean war? Ended as a stalemate. China's incursion into Vietnam in 1979? Same. Iraq into Iran? Same. Iraq into Kuwait? Massive loss for Iraq. Even 'great game' style influence is a costly endeavor; the US trying regime change in Iraq in 2003 was obviously a costly failure. In that 'conflict chart', every one has an expansionist power trying to conquer territory. That's not China.
China's incursion into Tibet seems to have worked out well enough for them though. Israel isn't letting go of the Golan Heights any time soon, and I think a case can be made that they might have been better off continuing to hold the Sinai Peninsula as well. Russia has taken land indirectly from Moldova and Georgia and obviously annexed the Crimea quite recently. Granted the latter example has been met with punishing sanctions and may never pay off, but very little stopped them from doing it.
You could argue that, but I think it would be fairly silly. When was the last time a Hebrew nation owned the Golan Heights, like two thousand years ago? In each of the cases I mentioned the land was taken from an independent nation which in no way represented the opposing side of a civil war. England might have a "historical" claim to the east coast of the United States, but if they seized it in an invasion it would be a case of one country losing sovereign land to another, rather than the reunification of a long-divided people.
Edit: also, Turkey in Cyprus. Definitely not unifying anything there. Armenia also occupies 15% of Azerbaijan, under some fairly dubious circumstances.
Those weren't the examples you used. In your specific examples, Tibet was once a part of China, Crimea, parts of Moldova, and Georgia were once a part of both Soviet and Tsarist Russia as using Britain is a bad example since we were just a colony of Britain and never a part of the home country like Crimea was to Russia. Agorabum is referring to countries that were never part of the invading force.
Tibet was never a part of China. That is a Chinese lie which constitutes their absurdly transparent pretext for invasion and theft of the resources of Tibet, and their repression of the Tibetan people. They are doing the same thing right now in the S. China Sea.
one has to remember that Tibet was under Chinese rule for as long as Texas was part of US. their brief independent did not have the unity required to form a nation, even during its peak, Lhasa did not control more then 1/4 of Tibet. most of Tibet remain in the hands of the Warlord. so when the Communist tookover, they wasn't facing serious resistance, Dalai Lama surrendered before the army even enter Lhasa controlled territory. the fact that Dalai Lama census records were based on chinese record during the period of brief independent show just how weak the government was, it exist only in name, the loyalty to Dalai Lama simply was there as Tibet is full of competing sect...
You're just moving the goalposts. The contention was that "invading other countries to build up your territory hasn't worked since WW2". Myself and others have provided over a half-dozen examples within the specified timeframe disproving that assertion. Census figures are irrelevant.
Two states - north and south vietnam - one nationality - Vietnamese (same language). Veitnam was united under teh Nguyen dynasty before French colonialism.
They were in Mexico at that time. NIII was more friendly with the CSA. That policy got adjusted rapidly when they noticed that the largest army on Earth, the Union Army, had nothing to do except remember that the French were messing around.
That is true - as is the Russian seizure of the Crimea (although I'm not really sure how much of a 'success' it is; it doesn't seem to be helping them economically). Although from the perspective of North Vietnam, the entire war was a continuation of a rebellion against the Japanese and French dating back to the 1940s. Vietnam later invaded Cambodia too, but after changing the regime, got out of there.
A stealth invasion of atolls. They aren't taking people.
Israel is a good counter-example, although it is somewhat sui generis. Israel did ask Jordan to stay out of the six day war, but Jordan refused. A bad-call in retrospect.
It also almost as though the nations of today have learned from the mistakes of their previous governments!
I don't reject Realist IR theory in its entirety, but the tendency of realists to treat every scenario in isolation, involving actors apparently divorced from historical antecedents, is wearisome at best.
I think, rather like Japan in the 80s, there is a tendency to overestimate China as a threat. To be clear, I don't predict a great downfall. China is here to stay. But it's hardly the Soviet Union 2.0 everyone seems to think it is. They're in a crowded, not-too-friendly neighborhood, largely thanks to their own actions. They have immense potential for instability at home. The CCP's legitimacy rests largely (albeit not exclusively) on 7-10% growth. That is already slowing down and as it continues to do so, problems will arise which will keep their focus squarely within their own borders. They lack a real blue-water navy and their air force remains well behind the American and Russian ones. Also, China is a poor/middle income nation which is likely to never match the West or Japan in wealth and well-being. China is rich but Chinese are poor, as the Chinese themselves like to say.
And you know the main thing? None of the above changes when China's economy becomes the largest. All of these problems will remain. Yes, China deserves hype. But not nearly as much as it's getting.
China is also geographically disfavored. It only has one coastline, which is hemmed in by islands that consist Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines--all U.S. allies. Most of China's oil and trade with Europe also transits through maritime choke points in and around Indonesia, most prominently the Strait of Malacca. In the event of war with the U.S., China could be easily blockaded, and none of their ships would be able to travel far from port before being detected. This is a basic reality of geography that China can't overcome.
Exactly. They can't really do to their neighbors what we did to ours at an earlier stage. The unquestioned regional superiority which existed during the Yuan and Ming periods (and which many Chinese still see as natural) simply isn't there. They'd essentially have to make several large, proud, and populous nations vassals or at least highly pliable, and deal with the United States in the inevitable event that these nations turn to us for help.
Imagine the 19th century with a powerful Latin America which enjoyed the more or less full support of Great Britain. We wouldn't be where we are today. That is China's geopolitical situation.
The risk of a limited war between China and someone else is still real. I could see an incident like a collision between a Chinese ship and a ship from another country that are both patrolling a disputed island or triggering a conflict. Patrol plane collisions, as happened in 2001, and hotheaded Chinese commanders going rogue and firing on someone else could also produce a crisis.
However, I don't see the resulting conflicts morphing into WWIII, nor do I think China is guaranteed to win. The Chinese haven't fought a real war since 1979 and still have a lot of qualitative problems in their military. They're just as likely to get knocked on their asses in a fight over the Spratly Islands or something, which would just make them fly into a rage since it would burst their inflated sense of national pride and power that their government has built in their minds through decades of propaganda.
Add to that the real chances of a Chinese economy permanently stuck in neutral, and you've got a recipe for an angry, aggrieved Chinese Internet troll army that would put even the Russians to shame!
You seem very eager to antagonize the Chinese. You want our economy to fail, you want to kick my ass and you want us to go into a rage. Perhaps you are the reason the world can't have peace.
You sound like a paranoid Chinese person who has been successfully brainwashed by his government's propaganda. If you ask the countries next to China why the world can't have peace, they will probably blame China instead.
I don't see how it is related. You want to kill me because our government is already oppressing us. Not sure how that makes you any better. Have you ever been to China? Do you speak Chinese?? I have lived in China and the US and speak both languages. Perhaps it is you who can only understand one side of the story because your language abilities are limited.
My Chinese is terrible but i do try to learn. Am in Asia now. Just spent 4 years in China. I can see how you would be offended by Eddie G's remarks but he's not exactly wrong, either. Eddie G doesn't want to kill you. I suspect he has no problem with the Chinese people. but many of us do have a problem with the CCP.
Now this is a document that was signed off on by Mr. Xi and disseminated to upper party members as instructional. Since you know both US and Chinese cultures, you know that if a US cabinet member wrote something like this, and sent it to the president of the US as a internal policy instructional, he would be dismissed and sent for a psych exam. No US president would condone such a stance.
As a Chinese patriot and a pro China person, do you support this neo totalitarian tyranny visited upon the Chinese people by the CCP? Do you think the rest of Asia should welcome this government as Asia's leader?
Firstly, I am not what you would call a "patriot and a pro China person". I have lived the the states for 1/4 of my life and have been educated in the States. I think the US is one of the best places to live in.
The insulting remarks people make here are just unbearable. The Chinese government does indeed need a lot of improvement but that doesn't give anyone else a reason to insult the country and it's people as a whole. The government doesn't equal the people nor the country. The government is a unit which has power. I'm pretty sure you have seen comments here where the commenter insults the Chinese government and then proceeds to insult the entire people of China. From these comments you can see the nationalism and racism in their hearts. These people do not wish the Chinese people well. EddieG was one of them.
Since you have lived in China, you probably know that the people there want nothing more than a successful business and a peaceful life. No one really cares about the "communist ideology" anymore.
The documents you have mentioned are very interesting. If you have read through them, it has no concrete material. It is mostly the bureaucracy of the government; writing a whole lot while expressing nothing. However, this is where misunderstanding happens. To the average Chinese person, the documents are bureaucracy at its best (we deal with stuff written in this tone very frequently, yet you do not see a Chinese person spreading communism in the states do you? ). Yet to the rest of the world, it seems very scary and imposing.
To answer your question, there are many aspects of the Chinese government I do NOT support.
And thank you for separating the government and the people in your comment.
China is also resource poor. While they have plenty of coal, they are running out of quality agricultural land and fresh water. As climate change intensifies, they may come under pressure just trying to feed their massive population. ----Compare with N. America, where Canada and US share 20% of the Earth's fresh water supply.
China's size and capitalism will easily eclipse the Soviet Union. Authoritarianism during the growth phase is normal for East Asian countries, and arguably the only reliable path to first world status that isn't predicated on colonialism. Individual happiness, rights, living standards aren't that important compared to national wealth and strength
Well they've already eclipsed the Soviet Union economically. The USSR never quite recovered from WWII, and Marxist-Leninist economics certainly didn't help. I mean that the comprehensive geopolitical threat the Soviet Union posed is highly unlikely to be replicated by China. Mainly for the reasons mentioned. They may have happiness (while the growth lasts, anyway). But China is terribly short on rights and living standards, beyond a few highly developed Eastern areas.
And those most certainly are problems, if China has any intention of being any more powerful than it currently is.
Growth period is unsustainable; thermodynamics kicks in eventually. It's just a question of how long you can sustain it, and I wouldn't bet on the answer being measured in months.
It's rather eye-opening in my view about just how deluded we are in general about what is possible energetically. Sooner or later, we'll hit that wall, and then things will change. There won't be any alternative. Unless of course we can completely decouple the economy from energy use, which I don't think is possible, but could be proven wrong.
It has little to do with the amount of 'rural areas remaining'. It has to do with the fact that China is designed around being a export-driven economy with low wages. Wages there are rising, and manufacturing of export goods is moving out of China to places where labor is cheaper. However, China has not developed its domestic markets, so it's ill-suited to sell its own products to its own citizens. It's also entered an asset bubble (which may have finally popped) very similar to the Japanese bubble which burst in the late 1980's. The fast-growth days are probably over.
Exactly the same thing said about Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc
Unless you believe the rural population wont be urbanized, it has everything to do with china's growth potential
China's export oriented economy is following the same trajectory as other developed asian nations - if and by the time it end in a japan-like bubble, it would still easily eclipse any other economy in the world
And the growth rate of those countries has slowed down considerably now...I didn't say China had no room left to grow, only that the stratospheric growth rates seen over the past few decades are most likely over.
i dont see how - given the amount of poor people left, this rate of growth should continue for at least a decade or so
the growth rates in developed asian countries only slowed when they grew considerably wealthy - by this model china's economy will be gigantic before it slows
I think you'd be right if China was getting a better return on investment, but it isn't. A lot of the provinces have way too much debt on the projects they pushed and way too little return on investment (ROI). The lousy ROI and skyrocketing hidden debt is what is stunting China's growth even though there are is a lot of room for future growth away from the coast.
What scenario do you envision here that leads to China becoming larger (I assume by "size" you are referring to physical borders) than the Soviet Union, without becoming a colonial / imperial power?
Okay. That makes more sense, but I also disagree. The USSR could legitimately claim to be one end of a largely bipolar world political order. China isn't anywhere close to being there yet.
I think you might be a little behind the times. China's economic growth, while still a bit higher than ours, is no where near the meteoric rates it once was. They have recovered from communism and realized their potential as a massive empire with 1.2 billion people and some resources. But now they have matured. At this point any number of factors could tip the economic growth scales.
And, we have an 8 trillion USD headstart. And a lot of allies.
America's neighbors include Canada and Mexico, which are cute. China's neighbors include India and Russia, which are batting in China's league and not too friendly. If the army gets diverted or bogged down, vast swathes of their territory are going to take the opportunity to rebel - Tibet, Xinjiang and maybe Inner Mongolia - and they'll have to commit cointel operations to a western theater. And India would love to see Tibet rebel.
That's just counting non-Han Chinese. Instability in the People's Republic is an opportunity for the Republic Of. China has a long history of local/regional rebellions, and the provincials have been antsy for a while. How many Chinese do you suppose still believe in the Mandate of Heaven despite the Four Olds campaign?
But the cities are safe, right? Well, let's see how much they like the Chinese government when the orders for toys and razors and vibrators and everything else they make for the Western Bloc stop coming in and they idle all the factories.
It's not gonna happen. China is weak in every way and everyone else knows it.
Looking at the thing through a westerners eyes misses the point by a mile. During the Long March, people were down to feeding on one another in order to survive. This is only one measure of how tough the Chinese are when the chips get really down. When this attitude is coupled by a China demanding expansion, and in the face of a weak American president and a totally consumed-with-other-issues EU, then the recipe is simple.
China, as with Germany between 1900 and 1914, will simply begin snapping up bargains on the periphery. They are closely watching with satisfaction, the Obama administrations weakling response to Russias own current games of RISK,[ Belarus is next up on their menu ] and the dismantling of US forces, especially naval, which are already diminishing US response to any Chinese decisions to move forward with East China Sea expansion of mineral and fishing rights in what are now international waters with its own naval buildup, unprecedented in scope, and moving into the waters of the Indian Ocean, which was once historically beyond their range or capability as a projection of their naval power. In addition, any incipient internal problems including a ''Tibet'' or more improbably, an ''Inner Mongolia'', will be ruthlessly crushed by the PA. The ''internal revolution'' remains an evergreen concept with both liberals and the right. China will remain and expand in the face of the allowance by western powers that it can do so.
Of course, liberals were miserably wrong about Russia, and about the ''Arab Spring'', which only produced wider conflict. There is no reason, in the face of what the dog is doing now in China, to presume that it has no bite.
I absolutely love that conservatives have, in typical fashion, transformed their greatest foreign policy failure (Iraq) into a *liberal* foreign policy failure. It was right wing military adventures, poorly planned and designed to be corrupt profit-vehicles for crony national security companies, along with their steadfast support of the apartheid regime in Israel, that resulted in the destabilization of the region and the "arab spring". When you define any president not willing to start a global nuclear conflict as "weak" you're the problem.
'Neoliberal' is a term that does not describe a political ideology, but an economic one. It is, politically, a very conservative stance. Take Reagan's 'trickle down economics,' toss in a big dose of deregulation, gush the monetary supply at the top of the economy (huge banks), permit rising monopolization, and you have a base level of understanding of neoliberalism. (There's more to it, but that will get you started.)
The word 'neoliberalism' in this instance refers to promoting freedoms for corporations, mainly freedom from taxation and regulation and reverse socialism - wealth transfers from the base of the economy to the top. Whereas 'liberalism' refers to promoting individual freedoms and quality of life for everyone, not just the wealthiest among us, and involves wealth transfers in the other direction.
'Neoliberal' is not a new kind of liberal. Liberals are not fond of neoliberal economics - though you might be forgiven for not noticing, as the Democratic Party embraced neoliberal economics starting with Bill Clinton's presidency. Democrats still talk the liberal talk. but they vote for neoliberal economic policies 98% of the time. (There are a handful of actual liberals in Congress, like Elizabeth Warren, but most Democrats in Congress are not. Sanders is liberal, but he only just joined the Democratic Party. He was an independent for over thirty years of his political career.)
Where Democrats and Republicans disagree (on economics) is a matter of degree only. Republicans would go on to dismantle or privatize all social programs and spend more on the war machine; Democrats would soft-peddle war and preserve some of the social safety net as government services. Both parties serve the 1%'s economic interests as vigorously as they can manage given their bases.
The Democratic Party's base remains largely liberal, and there is continuing tension between the party's leaders and the base. Thus corporate-empowering trade agreements like TPP have to be engineered by Obama in secret and delivered, if possible, as a fait accompli. He is not serving the liberal base with those negotiations; he is serving the 1%.
The same is true on the Republican side. Slavish devotion to the interests of the 1% among Republican leaders annoys their base, too.
Turns out nobody much likes corruption except the corrupters and the corrupted.
And really, that's what neoliberalism is about, more than anything else. It's a fancy academic justification for the 1% to corrupt the political process, avoid taxation and line their pockets.
I'm guessing that rather than replying on point, you'll prefer to parse the word "anti-Semite" to excuse yourself; in that you only hate a state with Jews in it, not the Jews themselves. That's terrific.
But allow me to redirect your attention back to the steaming pile of crap you just laid. You have asserted that support for Israel (i.e., "The Jews") is somehow responsible for the Arab Spring, the outcome thereof, and/or any American involvement therein. Please explain how that's not purest bullshit.
The conflation of the state of Israel with Jewish ethnicity and religious tradition is the same as the conflation of the Mullahs of Iran with the ethnicity and religious tradition of Muslims across the world. I don't meet Muslims in this country and say "How dare you advocate the slaughter of all Israelis!" IN the same vein, I don't meet Jewish people in the US and say "How dare you oppress and marginalize the Palestinian people and pen them up like they're animals!"
Israel is South Africa with a theological bent. It's simple, clear on its face, and the only reason they haven't been called out is because people like you jump to call anyone who even criticizes Israel for "mowing the lawn" (their macabre euphemism not mine) an "anti-semite". If you've ever read the parable "the boy who cried wolf" you will learn an timely lesson: using epithets carelessly weakens their meaning, until they have no meaning at all. If *everyone* is an anti-semite of some kind, then anti-semitism stops being something that exists at all, which both you and I know isn't true; it is virulent and awful and all-too-common.
Anyone who thinks that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has not contributed to the radicalization of the Arabic world is either stupid, ignorant, or intellectually dishonest. You take your pick of which category you fall into.
Yup, this ardent defense of Israel by our politicians when it's obvious that the Israeli government are A) in the wrong and B) the aggressors because "Jews are the lords chosen people" was the dumbest thing I had seen in politics... Until Donald Trump actually started campaigning.
Agreed that the cons are at least as culpable as liberals over the past couple of decades of misadventure. Now explain your anti-Semitic assertion about the Arab Spring.
And I love it even less that you people are incapable of correcting , let alone admitting, your own failures. This garbage nonsense on your portion, spewed by ideologues on the usual [ and useless ] MIC is totally and completely besides the point. Your fantasies, have impact on the tragedies of the extent hour. Do not deign to push what is occurring in Russia, China, or Europe into a ''Blame Bush'' column liberal.
Conservatives are full of bile over Democratic foreign policy, but when pushed to illuminate us with their wisdom and strength, they reply with pablums like "we'd be stronger" or "we have to show strength", or with terrifying, nationalist screeds about the need for war and "keeping nothing off the table" (in regards to nukes, of all things).
You're the one who brings up those countries; I was talking about the miserable failures in foreign policy the Republicans foisted upon the world because of their love affair with death and destruction, and their deeply hypocritical refusal to actually, you know, PAY for their wars of choice. I fail to see what your alternative would be to Russia, Iran, China or "Europe" (whatever you mean by that.)
The below, simply shows that you do not know what you are talking about.
''All options are on the table regarding the Russians'' [ invasion of Ukraine ].
John Kerry. Mar.02,2014.
The real ''pablum'' lay in the cowardice of liberalism as it is practiced today, which is why the world is a far more dangerous place now than it ever was under a Bush or a Reagan. Put plainly, no-one is paying attention to the empty threats of those such as the Kerry I illustrated above. Or the Syrian ''redline'' Obama. The ''degrade and defeat ISIS'' Obama. The ''confront China'' Obama.
I would simply settle for you bastards actually showing some backbone. In a world of tigers, you offer only effete rejoinders that fool no-one, least of all our growing enemies.
Yeah, man - SHOW SOME BACKBONE or whatever! Wooooo! Let's shoot beer bottles in the forest while we make some kick*ss foreign policy that takes NO prisoners. You know, if there's one thing real Americans understand, it's that it doesn't matter whats happening on the ground you can just throw a grenade at it and blow it the f*ck up!
You're just bitter than Obama caught Osama, decimated Al Qaeda, ended your sh*tty wars, brought Cuba back into the fold, and modernized relations with Iran. And you're angry that once he's done you won't have any countries to invade. Like I said in my response: he just needs "to be strong" or whatever, right? Where's his big stick?
Even you cannot be this stupid liberal. 1. You have no proof whatever that relations with Iran are ''modernized''. 2. You are lying to me and your readers regarding al Qaeda. If anything, it is stronger than it was when Obama took office. [ I see that it has entered into a pact with the Syrian AL-NUSRAH. Other than the fact that al Qaeda was not even there when Obama took office, what else could you possibly be wrong about]? 3. Those ''shitty''wars, are now the globes. Are you satisfied with this result liberal? Is the largest migration from war in human history under this president enough for you? 4. Cuba will only be ''brought back into the fold'', if you are OK with jailing political prisoners and others without trial. I am not good with that. 5. Obama gets a up vote only on the bin Laden raid.
#4: Is that not a definition of American policy in Gitmo, along with the persisting policy of extraordinary rendition and other human rights atrocities exacted upon the concocted fiction of an "enemy combatant"?
1. They are on the way; certainly further than the GOP/Neocon's "bomb 'em to hell" strategy, if you can call it that 2. "Al Qaeda" as it was on 9/11 isn't a threat anymore - they've been thoroughly destroyed; however, all the muslim men and women Bush radicalized with this poorly thought out, disgustingly corrupt, murderous wars of choice have started to form into terrorist groups. So I suppose if you mean "terrorist groups created by Republican actions who say they associate with the big bad Al Qaeda" then sure. 3. I will be fully satisfied when instead of spending the $3T on slaughtering dark-skinned foreign folk in a land 7,000 miles away we spend it on education, infrastructure, the arts, and any one of 1,000 considerably more important things. You conservatives all claim to be super financially responsible, but everything you do is fiscally insane! Just measure the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (who's bright idea was it to have two theaters?) as investments. WTF were you thinking? 4. I'm just less of a hypocrite than you. The sheer fact that Cheney and Bush aren't serving multiple life sentences right now for crapping on and then burning most of our constitution re: indefinite imprisonment of innocents and torture basically makes it impossible for any American to judge anyone like China, Cuba, Russia or others on their treatment of their prisoners. I'll believe you when you agitate to release all our hidden prisoners of war and actually start following the geneva conventions. 5. Gee, how factual of you.
''on the way'' BS liberal? You have no way whatever to determine this. If it is as ''factual'' as your ''Arab Spring'' and your ''JV Squad'' in ISIS, then we are in more trouble than even you ideologues can imagine.
2. That, is frankly, garbage. Al Qaeda acts as a force across two continents , with its most recent action being this just one week ago.
Now how could a ''decimated'' al Qaeda act in such a manner liberal?
3. You are incapable of doing this liberal. Your presidency has just rang up the biggest debt in the history of the human race. [at close to 19 trillion dollars, well over 20 by the end of the Obama presidency ]. Indeed, we could pay for THREE Iraq Wars on what you people continue to blow now.
4. Playing the Blame Bush game does nothing to deal with the miserable failures you phony ''liberals'' [ rank ideologues in truth ], have become in the present day. The largest displacement of human beings ever from war and conflict is occurring on the backs of your ''Lead from Behind'' and the even more wretched ''hope and change''.
5. Eastwood was wrong. All of you ideologues are empty chairs and not Obama alone....
My favorite part about all of this is that everybody who wants the US to "show some backbone" against terrorists actually thinks you can defeat terrorism with a military. Destroying multiple middle-eastern countries in a machismo-filled, revenge-induced rage willing to destroy EVERYTHING and ANYONE in the way in order to kill ONE MAN has created more, and more fanatical terrorists than anything we could have possibly done.
Do you know how hard it is to villainize a people who aren't in your backyard killing your uncles and fathers? It took bin laden some 15 years to find a handful of guys to convince of his bullshit to pull off 9/11. Could you imagine how incredibly deflating it would have been for his cause if they blew up the Twin Towers and we did NOTHING. Sure they'd celebrate in the moment, but once they realized that it had no effect on us, and did nothing to improve their lives... why sacrifice your lives? Those men sacrificed their lives to kill thousands of people, some of them were Muslim, and it didn't make their families' lives any better, it didn't make the fellow members of Al Quaeda's lives any better. How do you continue recruitment?
Don't forget that the method of intel, policing, and local population control was based disbanding the country's army and then rounding up all the males and torturing them.
China's economy is a house of cards. If there were an abrupt rupture in trade between China and the West - say, a war - there would be shortages here for a year or so until we resumed production in our own country or elsewhere. China wouldn't be able to replace the export manufacturing lost and it would lose a major source of income and employment. China can't feed itself either.
The most plausible supply route for a Han insurgency would be through Burma to Yunnan and beyond with Thailand as a point of origin. It's happened many times before and there are already ethnic Chinese militias active in northern Burma. The navy doesn't figure into it because the navy doesn't fight in the mountains.
Much more likely is that the government simply collapses in the face of sanctions and shortages, probably under a Romanian scenario that sees a mixture of protests and riots, defection and localized violence. And it helps that there's already a democratic Chinese government ready to step in.
No, Harvey's right. The only goods we import from China are mostly consumer and electronic stuff that we can live without and countries like Taiwan and Korea can pick up the slack. Considering how much of our produce and food, especially wheat, soy, and metals and minerals, they import from us they'd be hit harder from us.
No, we're not going to starve to death. But with the complete disruption to Pacific shipping (not just Chinese) a war would bring, we're going to be facing one heck of an economic crisis. I suspect Walmart and most other major retailers would not survive
And as Harvey is saying, it'll be an even bigger economic crisis for them. We've got more than the capability to be self-sufficient and stay politically and socially stable in the process. Not China. Any major economic crisis and shortage will tear that place apart.
That's not true. China is in many ways more economically self-sufficient with one exception: food. They cannot grow enough to feed their population, like almost every other nation on the planet. Canada, Australia, and USA are the only ones that still produce a surplus. Want the muslim threat stopped? Stop exporting food to them.
No, that's false. Food is China's second biggest import dependency. You omitted China's biggest import dependency: energy. They import 60% of their energy via the Straits of Malacca. Look it up you'll see it's true.
" Rapid reforms, in turn, increased domestic oil demand and led China to become a net oil importer in 1993, and net crude oil importer in 1996.[3] Since 1996 Chinese oil production has slowly and continuously decreased, while demand and imports have steadily increased.[4]"
Another factor. Many electronics "made in China" are more correctly assembled in China, the parts originate from up to a dozen countries. Manufacturing in the 21st century is highly mobile. Witness the rise of robotics and 3d printing. No need for Made in China.
In your wet dreams. They'll redirect their raw materials imports to Russia, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America. They can live just as fine. They're not dependent on the US.
China is not dependent on the US specifically, but 60% of PRC oil goes through the Malacca Strait. That's a stupendous energy vulnerability and there is no way to dodge that. That's why the push to build pipelines is so important to the CCP. But if all goes well, (and i wouldn't bet on that) it will take at least a decade or more to build them. China also imports a lot of food. A reasonably effective blockade of the Malacca Straits alone would be ruinous to the CCP. And everyone knows it.
And yet the Chinese economy, like the Russian, right on time, has been capable of a substantial military buildup that they are not using for defensive purposes alone, but to project their power. Indeed, China has already placed itself into a position to contest the ''Han Road'' by its flip of Cambodia from its loss to the US [ a stupid and unnecessary fail by the Obama administration under then-Sec of State Clinton ],to a regional ally of China, which has responded by pumping in billions for infrastructure projects and parking its Navy near the Thai border south of Koh Kong. Bear in mind that western liberals were confidently predicting just such a ''collapse'' in a Russia only a short year ago that is now back to playing the Great Game in the Middle East , positioning itself to move right up to the Polish border, massively rebuilding its military in the largest program since the Cold War, and is cementing ties with old adversary China with the signing with the Jinping regime, of two new economic and military agreements in a virtual ''Pact of Steel'' for the 21st Century that directly challenges the West. These economic issues are simply serving as bumps in the road for what the Russians and Chinese have planned for the globe in the near future. [ Brilliantly, as they have the means of ruthlessness that the Obamans and Euros instinctively shy away from, they can move forward with their own machinations behind the screen of the chaos that is now consuming the Middle East and Europe ].
Irrelevant non-sequitur noted. I am not here to play into your stupid games liberal. If you have a problem with what is contained within the analysis, then get off your dead one and get it out there.
Neither irrelevant nor a non suquitur. Your post was a wall of text, made worse still by a bunch of run-on sentences. Whatever point you were trying to make is wholly hidden by your poor communication.
My grade school English teacher would disagree. My adult self agrees with her.
It's not a liberal or conservative thing either. It's a literate, educated person thing. Especially when all we have to go on is your written word. It's a small thing, oft blown totally out of proportion, but it does matter all the same. It is not de minimus as we used to say in the business.
I happen to find the discussion about the future of the US / China relationship to be very, very interesting. Your particular comment, however, was largely unintelligible because of format. Happens to the best of us.
So, moving on. You appear to be concerned about Russian and Chinese intentions. Do you think their interests coincide for the most part?
None of this, even absent the wretched US policy in the MENA, helps this nation one iota. No-one is properly asking what will occur as Iran is drawn further and further [ as it is ], into the orbit of these two nations having been handed a virtual ''Get Out Of Jail Free'' Card by Obama and the Democrats.
First, the Great Game took place in Central Asia, not the Middle East.
Second, "Who lost Cambodia?" What is this, domino theory? Not strategically important.
Third "These economic issues are simply serving as bumps in the road for what the Russians and Chinese have planned for the globe in the near future."
Russia's economic issues are bumps in the road? I've read your other comments, and yes, Russia has acquired some impressive new toys for its military, but what is the strategic endgame other than Putin posturing for a domestic audience as the economy crumbles?
The hysteria over Russian aggression is classic threat inflation, and the calls for "strength from Obama", whatever that means, are foolish. When your opponent makes an error, don't rush into one on your own. Russia's strategic position is weakening by the day due to military overreach and economic weakness. I'm not sure how you define a "collapse", but a year long recession and a 50% decline in the ruble and stock market would come pretty close, no? The conflict in Ukraine and the seizure of Crimea are certainly tragic and lamentable, but haven't affected American security one iota, and now represent a festering conflict that may have been affordable, if stupid, at $100+ oil, but is hardly a strategic asset with oil at half that price.
I know hawks are nostalgic for the Cold War and an ideological, global, expansionist Russia, but that is the past. Today Russia is a diminished regional power ruled by an oligarchy that is utterly dependent on energy exports, and is being economically crippled by what will be sustained cheap oil. Yes, Moscow likes to make noise in the neighborhood, but what would be the result of getting into a shooting war with EU/NATO?
An immediate halt to the 50% of Russian export earnings from the EU that are the very lifeblood of the Russian economy in general and the kleptocratic ruling class in particular. Not to mention other states who generally don't respond well to naked aggression. Long story short, Russia's feeble economy means it has ZERO leverage. I don't think the ruling class will cripple their economy and squander their fortunes to capture Vilnius.
And, briefly, if they want to spend scarce resources propping up Assad and becoming target practice for ISIS...how does that hurt us again? Kick the jihadi hornet's nest and they'll be back in Chechnya in the near future.
If you have a scenario where Russian extraterritorial behavior is a positive for them, and why it wouldn't be economically catastrophic, I'm happy to hear it,
Russia's already collapsed its government once ramping up military spending in the face of a stagnant-at-best economy. Think they and China want to try it again?
What we are witnessing is Russia's ability to deflect US policy directed towards it at every turn. The sanctions, far from reducing or even eliminating Russian ambitions as backed by its military, have, because of this buildup, [particularly its new-gen T-14 tanks, AK-103 infantry rifles, S-500 surface -to-air, and finally, 40 brand-new TOPAL series nuclear ICBMS ], forced both Obama and NATO into a corner. Indeed, in the latest round of war gaming between the US and Russia as prepared by the Pentagon and RAND, the US ''loses every time against the Russians'' as ruefully admitted to FOREIGN AFFAIRS by Deputy Secretary of Defense for force preparedness David Ochmanek, and this was before the Obama administration announced a further 40,000 cut from the Army.
Has anyone been hearing lately on the US policy vis-a-vis Ukraine?
I thought not. It has all but vanished from western media radars and US foreign policy figuring. Certainly Josh Earnest has not been running his mouth on it lately and neither have Obamas outgoing generals in both the lackluster ''fight'' against ISIS, as well as the US Army Chief of Staff. Indeed, one would have to look hard these days to find any news at all. Yet surveillance sats continue to pick up Russian armor movement inside of Ukraine as well as Russian ''humanitarian convoys'' moving all over the area in the Donets Basin. Further, Putin is parking a new Russian military airbase right next to NATO member Lithuania and short air miles from the Polish frontier. This is, of course, totally divorced from their actions in Syria that now have the ''US worried''.
Are these the behaviors of a down -and-out regime or nation? What lessons can be used where the Chinese buildup is concerned that the US still has the time to learn?
So what of Russia's defensive behavior in its own backyard? Why should Americans care whose flag flies over the Crimea? The lesson for the U.S. to learn here is mind your own business. As for threats to world peace, lets look at aggressive actions and not frightened reactions.
Which nation spends as much on its military as the rest of the world combined? Which nation spends 20 times more per capita on its military than the rest of the world? Which nation has about 750 military bases in about 120 countries? Which nation has been almost continually fighting wars of its choosing since the end of WW2? Which nation has repeatedly attacked countries of no threat to it and justified it with lies? The world's premier warmonger, the bloodthirsty U.S., of course, whose defining exceptionalism is a perpetual yearning for war.
It is the U.S. that was involved in the bloody overthrow of the stable, secular Arab regimes ruling Iraq and Libya, and now it's laboring mightily to overthrow the secular regime ruling Syria. The Muslim extremist fighters of Al-Qaeda and ISIS are proxies for the American war machine. These murderous organizations have "made in America" stamped all over them. The so called "migrants" now inundating Europe are war refugees fleeing the death and destruction of America's and Western Europe's unnecessary military interventions in the Middle East.
The Soviet Union voluntarily disbanded the Warsaw Pact and peacefully dissolved itself into over a dozen countries. Instead of gratefully cashing in this peace dividend, the bellicose U.S. needlessly expanded the now obsolete NATO all over Europe to the doorstep of Russia. Russia didn't expand toward any NATO countries. Let's not forget that JFK brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 because the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Putin is likewise reacting to NATO's evolving first strike capability on Russia's doorstep. Can anyone blame him for these rational fears? Putin wouldn't now be arming Syria if the U.S. and its puppets hadn't destabilized the region in the first place by unleashing their lunatic ISIS ally on innocent civilians.
Whatever Putin and China's leaders are doing are reactions to America's psychopathic political class's willful disregard of our Founders' admonition not to get tangled up in other nations' affairs. The world could have enjoyed a generation of peace and prosperity after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but America's Merchants of Death would have none of it. They needed new enemies to frighten taxpayers into continuing to fund their lethal wares.
'What we are witnessing is Russia's ability to deflect US policy directed at it at every turn. The sanctions, far from reducing or even eliminating Russian ambitions as backed by its military, have, because of this buildup, [particularly its new-gen T-14 tanks, AK-103 infantry rifles, S-500 surface -to-air, and finally, 40 brand-new TOPAL series nuclear ICBMS ], forced both Obama and NATO into a corner'
Oh, please. Russia's new tanks are not any better than what the West has, and Russia doesn't have enough money to buy them. It's going to be stuck with its existing clunkers for the next 20 years.
Their new assault rifles are only a marginal improvement over the current ones, and again, I'm skeptical they will be able to afford a big purchase of them for years.
I am in no way basing anything in the above post on an opinion. [ unlike all too many liberal critics, who should know better ]. These observations are being made by global arms and weapons experts [ of whom I listed only one ] who have all carefully observed the new rise of Russias defense capabilities and how they are meeting, and exceeding, western advances just at the time this nation is cutting its own defense budgets again, to the full support of liberal-leftists that neither the Russians nor the Chinese, must contend with.
Thus you cannot possibly have it both ways, presenting on the one hand an ideological platform that we need more bread, less bullets [ and far less of the dreaded MIC ], and yet airily believing that the US can keep pace or move ahead of these Russian and Chinese improvements.
Meh, the "no known world equivalents" line was a quote by Jane's of, wait for it, a Russian official who, of course, would not elaborate. When Russians say their toys are better than our toys I'm always a little skeptical because, if they can't build a car worth S***T, how're they going to build a tank?
You're only taking specs at face value. It doesn't translate into real world results. Which I believe is Eddie's point.
The logistics of procurement and equipping will stifle whole adoption of any of the developments you listed.
It's the same reason that Russia still uses AKM's and 74's instead of AN94's, and still employs 47's in reserve. They don't have the capacity to support the logistics involved in a massive rearming given the circumstance.
Also the point regarding magazine capacity is almost irrelevant as effectiveness depends more on your equipment being reliable and effective in multiple roles COUPLED WITH the doctrine you employ. You're not going to have a whole squad firing 90 round mags at full auto unless you want to be changing barrels and burn through your ammo reserve in the real world.
"Pass to the AK-103, and its main improvement over the 47 is the fact that it now has the ability to accept a 90 round mag. [ JANES ]
When you are being faced with three times as many bullets flying in your direction without reload pause , is that a ''marginal'' improvement.........?"
I'm about to out myself as that rare creature, a liberal gun-enthusiast. There are tons of stats out there that indicate that firing more rounds is not necessarily an improvement. The US Marines are currently moving towards the more accurate fire of a higher quality rifle instead of high-volume fire of a light machine gun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
And yet it is not an impediment either. The point here being, that the Russians, after a long period of military atrophy, are rising precisely at the moment that the US is slashing its own defense program. [ the Navy and Army especially, being hard-hit ]. The 103 is merely one of many such upgrades to their military arsenal. The coupling of ceramic and iron to create a tougher tank hide for one instance, is a real innovation unmatched by the US whose ABRAMS heads into its fourth decade. While the response to the T-14 has been to seek the introduction of an upgrade for ABRAMS to match the main Russian battle tank [ the T-90 ], the continued use of the 105 mm remains inferior to Russian 125s which are now assisted by laser targeting systems mounted on the T-90. Worse, that the drawdown of defense spending here, [championed by the liberal-left at any rate ], simply means a US less able to deal with a resurgent Russian bear where ground operations are concerned. Of course, Russia will immediately export their armor tech to counties including Iran, China, and Syria and this is simply one aspect, of their own defense program.
I think you are misinformed with several of your above points.
1.) The AK103 is a modernized AKM, chambered for 7.62x39, which is more or less a niche-specific carbine for some Russian units. The mainstay is the 5.45mm-based AK74M, which will be upgraded again to accomodate newer optics, despite the recent testing of the AK12 and AEK carbines this summer.
The AK74-series and their 30-round magazines (there are rarer 60-round casket-types) will remain standard probably until the 2040s or until something drastically superior is developed. It is also more or less equivalent to the US service rifles and is not technically superior in any way.
2.) "ceramic and iron" comprising most modern tank designs is actually layers of steels comprised of layers of differing densities. This is called "laminate steel" and has been in use since the 1970s when it largely replaced RHA. The introduction of DU, ceramics, and other classified compositions have also been added to laminate steel armors to further improve effectiveness.
The US Abrams has always had laminate steel with a DU layer added in the newer varaints. Since tank's first adoption in the 80s.
The T14's exact composition is obviously classified, but numerous estimates have ascertained that it is more or less similar in terms of a broad comparison.It may feature updated explosive reactive armor (ERA) and hard-kill Active Protection Systems that further enhance its protection, although claims that its protection is vastly superior to the M1 are, IMO, overly optimistic predictions.
that is not even addressing the problem of budgets. Russia is preferring to upgrade existing T72s and fielding T90s. Their goals of 2,000 plus T14 chassis conflict with their precarious financial situation.
3.) Since the fielding of the M1A1 variant in 1985, the Abrams has been armed with a Rheinmetall-licensed M256 120mm cannon. The US M68A1/L7 105mm fell out of favor when the M60 was phased out.
There is little evidence that the 120mm and its numerous, licensed variants, will have trouble penetrating Russian and Chinese armor, even modern T90s and the T14.
4.) Iran and Syria lack the infrastructure to produce modern main battle tanks, and will be reliant on Russian imported technology to do so. China is producing their own modern tanks (MBT3000) which have their own unique attributes.
So while it is important to respect Russian weapon developments, keep in consideration that the trend to update older weapons (T72s to "B3" standard, upgrading AK74Ms, upgrading S300 SAMs with newer iterations, etc) is far more realistic than creating brand-new, ground breaking ones.
Keep into consideration that the Russians, like the Soviets did, tend to "overestimate" the capabilities of their systems, especially when making comparisons to their western counterparts. This is especially true when comparing fighter aircraft and radar systems.
No. It is rather, that both of us are operating in a fog that the Russians currently control. The fact remains that the weight of steel will outmatch anything that is being returned where small arms combat is concerned. If the 103 can deliver thrice the shell payload in real-time [ and it can ], then there will be thrice the lead being delivered on any battlefield especially as fired by multiple weapons. Pass to the T-14, and it is not the issue of ''laminate steel'' but what the Russians have been able to allegedly accomplish with it. If as JANES states, it has the ability to upgrade its explosive reactive armor [ or ERA ], with its ''new gen'' ceramic/iron technology, then this would outmatch the current generation of NATO and US ABRAMS tanks in their current M1/2 series, and it would certainly be a factor as introduced on any Syrian battlefield, let alone European. Finally, the ''precarious financial situation''. Not after what Obama did with Iran its not. Russia now has the ability to trade [ including arms ] with a sanction-less Iran which will be bringing billions of dollars into its budget that it can expend with growing Russian trade. The Chinese also , have already inked trade pacts with the Russians, thus ensuring a steady, if not large, flow of money for years to come. That this will already be directly poured into their defense program, [ Russias new deployment of 40 TOPAL series ICBMS ], there is no debate whatever. REUTERS Sept.25,2015: ''Russia Building Another Military Base Along Ukraine Border''.
How would the AK103 "deliver trice the shell payload in real time"?
1.) The closet thing offering that capability is the 75-round drum magazines, which are not standardized among general infantry for a reason. They are unreliable in harsh conditions, expensive, and more inconvenient to carry spares around than the regular 30-rounders.
As far as I know, drum magazines for the AK74 (5.45) are only prototypes and extremely rare. That is not counting civilian developments.
You are getting bent out of shape over a classic, late 1940s AKM with a modernized face lift. Especially one chambered in a caliber that was rendered obsolete with the advent of the "small, high velocity cartridge". They are more or less export guns.
That is not even considering the fact that AKs in a Russian infantry unit don't operate in a vacuum. They are supported by a variety of other small arms, to include automatic rifles (RPK) and belt-fed machine guns (PKM, PKP).
2.) . "If as JANES states, it has the ability to upgrade its explosive reactive armor [ or ERA ], with its ''new gen'' ceramic/iron technology"
This is an analysis by Janes of the T14's protective features,
"NII Stali is understood to have designed a new form of steel armour for the Armata family. Speaking to TASS, a NII Stali representative said the "steel armour alloy, named 44S-sv-Sh [44S--], is approved by the Armata's developer. The alloy's operational testing has been started and it can be used in prospective vehicles' parts". The use of the 44S-sv-Sh steel in Armata is intended to provide protection at a similar level to STANAG 4569 (first edition) Level 5. The high level of 44S-sv-Sh's protection is ensured by the short-grained material structure, the optimised legation process and the special heat processing. The steel has also been designed to maintain its characteristics in very cold conditions."
"The Armata design is also understood to utilize explosive reactive armour (ERA) within its base design (rather than the appliqué ERA tiles seen on previous Russian MBTs), with views from above the MBT showing a distinctive tiled pattern indicative of ERA on the top of the vehicle's chassis and turret. Although what appear to be ERA tiles are present on the turret roof, much of the sides of the turret appears to be just a thin cladding covering the various APS and sighting systems rather than armour. Appliqué armour (unclear if passive or ERA, or both) is fitted to the forward two thirds of the T-14's sides, while the rear third is protected by bar armour to provide clearance for the T-14's exhausts.http://www.janes.com/article/51469..."
So there is nothing particularly "revolutionary" that we know about the T14's armor. It is more or less an evolution of existing tech already applied on T72, T80 ,and T90 tanks since the end of the Cold War.
"then this would outmatch the current generation of NATO and US ABRAMS tanks in their current M1/2 series, and it would certainly be a factor as introduced on any Syrian battlefield, let alone European."
Except that they cannot field them in significant numbers, hence, the reasoning behind upgrading/modernizing existing fleets of older tanks. The T14 is a boogeyman.
This Russophobic fright-fest being perpetuated by certain political chuckleheads and the establishment media is quite tiring and completely over-exaggerated. we wont go to war with Russia for the same reason we wont go to war with China: nuclear weapons. Russia may have accomplished much shrewd maneuvering, especially recently in Syria against ISIS, although there are ultimately limitations in its power that cannot be overlooked.
You omitted the portion where I clearly stated by the use of ''multiple weapons'' being fired.
Context remains key.
I am not ''bent out of shape'' as you would have it. It is that we are having a disagreement bearing upon a subject which remains largely shrouded in secrets. Indeed, you have absolutely no way of knowing how many main battle tanks the Russians can deploy if it so chooses.
In sum, it is not about ''going to war with Russia''. That is a purblind error on the portion of others who may not advance a ''fright-fest'' where a game of MAD is concerned, but do advance ignorance in how the fulcrum of postwar power is shifting to nations such as Russia, China, and Iran as their policies coincide. Rather, Russia delivers by defeating Obama geo-politically, even as it steps back into its role as a provider to client states, that will add, along with Syria and Iran, nations such as Egypt to their list. [ Obama, again failing miserably here. Over a half-billion in treasure was expended for just a handful of these elusive , and now dead, ''moderate rebels''] . Russia also need not invade Ukraine, for one instance, to be able to keep it out of NATOS hands. By the mere construction of military bases, it can keep this entire region off balance. It can also muscle the so-called ''white Russian'' [or Baltic] states with little worry that the West can do anything about it. And it, not ''President Redline'' now acts as Assads shotcaller in Syria ensuring that Obama and Kerrys demand that he step down will bear no fruit. And thats only for starters........
I agree with your assessment of US geopolitical incompetence, and this is coming from somebody that initially supported the POTUS' campaign ideas, which ended up not happening the way they were supposed to at all (say for ending OIF, which didn't solve the problem of Iraq's unstable government or our undue america's stupidity in entering IMO).
Considering these have been problems festering from decades of US foreign policy snafu's, Im actually quite suprised things haven't began breaking down much sooner. Regardless of who the bread and circuses crowd has elected as POTUS, the situation will change very little, if at all. Diminishing returns (Rome) and all that.
The worst part was that finger pointing was rife in Rome as well, as soon as the realization hit any room temperature IQ person that shit was turning sour. Excuse my skepticism of the arbitrary clinging to political partisanship.
This is moving beyond such realms into realities of their own. Obama was insulted and pawned by Xi, who publically and before any US watchers that there were, proclaimed in the Rose Garden at the very seat of American power that the east China sea and islands set forth in treaty [ UN ] and a portion of American policy, belong to China and are not ''international''. That was simply the Asian side, and will generate it's own problems in time. Over in the Middle East, and after the expenditure of American lives that brought forth Obamas ''stable and sovereign Iraq'', an Iraq that is neither, has taken it upon itself to enter into an agreement with both Russia and Iran, who in turn, will protect Syrian interests as well as Iraqs own. For their part, in a violation of the Iran deal inked by Kerry, HEZBOLLAH stated today that it will be running its own program irregardless of either the deal or sanctions and will attack ''militarily'' where and as it pleases. For this mornings Washington Post, Obamas entire policy in the region represents ''an embarrassing failure'' even as the Russians continue to ship their armor [ where we may be witness to the T-series efficacy of their tanks ], men , aircraft and materiel to back up Assad and pound what little is left of Obamas allied ''moderates'' among the rebels, while , dangerously for the American president, it ignores ISIS. It can be argued that what we are witnessing, is also the result of stupidity in leaving nations as well...
That's all very prideful stuff but these are also facts: The Russian economy shrank 4% last year and is now the same size as Italy's. Half of Russian revenue came from energy sales, it is not a diversified economy. The ruble lost 40% of its value last year.
I expect US Russian relations to improve and think that new cooperation on Syria will be helpful. Russia is a nation with a lot of resources and proud military tradition. But what i wrote is also true.
Unless you think Russia is going to militarily impinge on a NATO member, and thereby commit national suicide, your talk about "being faced with three times as many bullets flying in your direction without reload pause" is probably not as important as the state of the Russian economy and demographics.
I have already read that ATLANTIC article. It was widely expected, people saw the Russians loading missiles on their jets. If you see my comments under that article, you will see that I wrote that I think the Russian entry into the Syrian situation is a good thing for everyone. (except ISIS).
But what you write is a "it does not follow". It has no sequential logic.
How does the Russian entry into the Syrian situation disprove the economic facts i have listed, or disprove my theory that in dealing with the west and NATO, the firing rate of a Russian rifle is not so important as is Russian economics?
Like their bullshit only a year ago that Russia would be ''brought to its knees'' over Obamas silly ''sanctions'' regimen.
How well that all worked out, is demonstrated by the above post which you , like a good liberal, greeted with another of your ideologies lame non-sequiturs. Thus if you ever want to know why the world is becoming more screwed up, well..
Have you noticed the shrinking of the Russian economy and the fall of the ruble? Russia has the GDP of Italy now. The ruble fell 40% last year. Half of (the rather small) Russian revenues come from energy sales, and energy is cheap. I'm not a Russia basher but you have to recognize some common reality. Russia is not at a high point here. The sanctions you inaccurately and dishonestly describe as "silly" bit very hard. California has a bigger and more diverse economy than Russia does. And a better bond rating. Those are facts.
Yet they are not ''facts'' that have any impact on Russias policies.
They are bombing targets in Syria as we write here. The speed with which Putin suddenly moved into a region not even remotely his own to set up shop and begin a campaign far more deftly than the more wealthy Obama-led US demonstrates that you are placing too much importance on an economic issue [ one that is being repaired also as we write ], that has no relevance to the desired outcome sought by Putin in Syria [and other nations ].
You think the shrinking of the Russian economy, the fall of the ruble, and the dependence of the Russian economy on energy revenues has no effect on Russian political policies? Nonsense.
Russia's ability to set up and (hopefully) do something useful in Syria in no way changes the truth or relevance of my post.
Russia's economic situation is not relevant to it's ability to act in Syria, I agree, but it is relevant in its ability to project power globally and against NATO. You say I am placing too much importance on economic issues... (which are not being repaired as I speak, the Russian economy is still shrinking) ..but you think the rate of fire of a Russian rifle is important?
We will have to disagree on the importance of Russia's economic issues. Yes, i think they are very important.
Long game, Russia has accelerated it's population decline. You can't build a military empire if your industrial and consumer base are in a state of terminal collapse. One reason the Soviet Union lasted as long as they did was due to sheer amount of highly educated people they had under it's control....Russia today is a sad joke. The final punchline will come when Putin kicks the bucket.
The Russian economy shrank 4% last year, the ruble lost 40% of its value, and the Russian economy is now about the same size as Italy's. And half of that revenue comes from energy sales. I'm not exaggerating.
While I'm not usually a big fan of the theory that economic interdependence prevents war, in a case as extreme as US-China trade I think it constitutes a pretty serious obstacle to war.
Government would not collapse. There is a large, strong, and influential middle class that supports this government. People get where they are now because of the current government. A collapse of government would do no good for them. People in China know how democracy did for Easter Europe. If China stop trading with the West, they would find partners elsewhere; like Latin America and Russia-the places China is now increasing its trade with. Although unrests by some aspects of the societies who feel they don't get anything from this government may occur in the future, they would be quickly put down by government troops because, unlike Romania, there aren't widespread popular support for democracy. The "democratic Chinese government" you mentioned wouldn't step in because that government is polarized between pro-independence fraction and pro-nuification fraction. The pro-independnce fraction is too weak to do anything and the pro-indepence fraction wouldn't even want to be a part of China. If unrests really happen, it's more likely for them to declare independence which would result in a mainland Chinese invasion.
If the Chinese economy is a house of cards, what does that make ours? Look, it isn't infallible but pretending China is weak and on the brink of collapse is just plain silly.
China has an enormous investment in the USA, which would be utterly lost if there were conflict. If anything China is mainly concerned about securing it's economic ties with the world, and preparing for India's likely collapse in coming decades.
Cannibalism is not "tough", it is depraved desperation. Because the Chinese people had to resort to cannibalism in some cases is a backward feature of some of the worst problems of communism and state-planned incompetence. It does not showcase any kind of strength of the Chinese people.
Try some reading comprehension, "cupcake". Here's the comment I replied to: "During the Long March, people were down to feeding on one another in order to survive. This is only one measure of how tough the Chinese are when the chips get really down."
I am very aware that the Chinese who resorted to eating people in order to survive were the peasantry and had no choice. That's why I said that it was depraved desperation. Communism and state-planned incompetence drove them there.
That is frank nonsense. It was not ''conservatives'' that ushered in the ''Reset'' foreign policy with Russia. Indeed, they had nothing whatever to do with it. That was Obama and Hillary all the way. Islams ''rise'' has simply worsened under Obama far more than it has other chief executives. It was you people who purchased the lie that was ''hope and change''. Not us.......
Correct, because "conservatives" don't exist in these United States not with any sort of prominence. Republicans are all a bunch of Bible-thumping, tax happy simpletons who think all the world's problems can be solved by taking people's civil rights away (unless it's the 2nd amendment) and pointing a really big gun at anyone who doesn't agree with us. There's nothing conservative about that.
To say otherwise is just ignorance and you're far to eloquent to be that stupid.
Liberals created the Arab Spring and the present war against Russia. It was Webster Tarpley whom correctly forecast that an Obama Presidency would lead to war with Russia and China. Read the prenomination book Obama: The Post Modern Coup.
Liberals were wrong about Russia? Russia is in far worse financial shape now than ten years ago. All self inflicted wounds. If anything, western Liberals warning on totalitarianism in Russia have been sadly vindicated.
I'm more familiar with American\European history but I doubt Chinese\Asian history greatly differs when it comes to the frequency of wars and invasions.
The US hasn't fought with Canada since 1812. Or Mexico since 1845 (unless you count the Pancho Villa raids). In a world where nationalism is a major force, taking territories isn't the same as it was in the time of kings, lords, and peasants (when conquest just meant trading lords).
But the U.S is arguably an exception, think of all the invasions or attempted invasions of just the last century -off the top of my head, World War 1 & 2, the USSR (both it's consolidation and the invasion of Afghanistan), the 1948 & 1967 Arab-Israeli wars, the 1980 Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf War.
Here is a more exhaustive list and while it does include civil and regional wars there are plenty of invasions. http://www.historyguy.com/m...
But of the major invasions of the 20th century, which ones worked out well? Germany declaring war on Russia in 1914 (and France), or really, Austria invading Serbia - ends with the collapse of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires. Nazi Germany invading...everyone? Germany in ruins. Japan invading China and then the rest of Asia - Japan in ruins. Arab invasions of Israel - only larger borders for Israel. Iraq invading Iran - failure. Iran invading Iraq after 1982 in an attempt to topple Saddam - failure. Iraq invading Kuwait - failure. I'd put the USSR / Afghanistan differently, because it was not an attempt to conquer Afghanistan so much as to prop up a fellow communist regime, but also it was a costly failure for the Soviet Union. One reason why the US was so easily able to take the territories from Mexico is that less than 100,000 mexican citizens lived in New Mexico and Alta California - and they didn't have a great attachment to Mexico anyway. The larger populations and stronger nationalism that exists today prevents that type of large territorial changes.
Oh I agree that invasions (at least in the modern world) rarely ever end well, I'm just pointing out that nations have a tendency to invade their neighbors when they feel able to win (even if realistically they won't).
Everyone knows what doesnt make it a fact, especially when you live in a country with brainwashing medias spout propaganda 24/7. Russia is China's closest ally, and India isnt anti-China and they got deep inferiority complex toward Chinese. So they are none issues. The only problem for China is the Japan and Vietnam. But too bad they combined togather with US still couldnt hold a candle against a China-Russia alliance. People in China does not have enough willingness or power to cause a rebellion, even if they put up a rebellion, Chinese communist party is not some third world banana regime that could be overthrown by peasants overnight. As for boycott China, China have 1.2 billion people which means it can consume well enough what they produce, but a devastating inflation followed by a completely collapsed West economy should be also taken into the consideration
A valid argument. In addition, China has rarely shown any interest in miltary backed expansion. The Soviet Union was just the opposite, in that they displayed no hesitation when it came to expanding into puppet states. Russia and China remain openly hostile to this day... which consumes a vast quantity of military resources from both nations. That has to be taken into account when it comes to assessing China's ability to project military power beyond their borders.
Wait, what ? Russia and China are "openly hostile" ? Is that why they recently made two record breaking natural gas pipeline deals ? Unless you mention that they are openly hostile to the US, which they most certainly are not. Economic competitors perhaps, but definitely not openly hostile.
Perhaps you should do some reading. The largest deployment of troops the former soviet union has... has ALWAYS had, is on the border it shares with China. More of their missiles are pointed at China than ever were pointed at us. They have conflicting ideologies, and compete for the same regional influence. There are tons of chinese citizens that speak russian, and tons of russian citizens that speak chinese (general description as there is no language called "chinese"). The do not like each other... at all.
That's an interesting viewpoint, one which I consider pretty foolish. Russia is China's Canada - only one with much better weapons. Like Canada to the US, Russia is building pipelines to China. Of course, Russia doesn't see it that way, but the reality is that US behavior is pushing these two historical rivals together. Good job, US Department of State! As for India, China has fought wars with India over various Himalayan mounds of rock. However, the cultural and geographical barriers are so large as to make most of that past largely symbolic. China is far more interested in selling India trains and infrastructure than making war. As for Tibet and the Uighurs and what not - certainly these minorities are restive, but sadly they all also know that their lives would have been incomparably worse economically if Tibet were Indian or independent, or if Xinjiang was Mongol or independent.
China certainly has its problems, but I'd look closer to home to see far bigger ones.
US income inequality? check US middle class income stagnant to negative for 15+ years? check US Senate turns over less often than the Russian Central Committee back in the Evil Empire era? check
