America's China mistake

[mattster]

China's rise is happening at a time when the days of conquerors and conquests are long gone.
The Chinese are like the "party animal" that arrives to the party late, and finds that all the booze is finished.
So now what ??

So China is like a wounded tiger which selectively picks on weaker opponents in its neighbourhood by bullying them...a way of demonstrating strength to satiate the rabid nationalism that China has encouraged among its masses. What better way to deflect attention from their own problems and issues.

The CPC is already an idealogically bankrupt party. No one in China really believes in Communism, let alone the party members.
The gap between the Filthy corrupt and rich and the common man is probably greater than any other country.

So what do you need the CPC and its cohorts for anyway ??
The CPC has to convince the Chinese people of external and internal threats to stay relevant.

 

[TrueSpirit]

Mao was status quoist and he accused Russian Communist to be revisionists...

Russians accused Mao to be the revisionist in that he professed revolution through peasents....

From Pentagon's perspective:

Russia is a status-quo-ist power w.r.t. China but China is a revisionist power w.r.t. Russia & US

 

[J20!]

Countries don't have rights. Individuals have rights. I expect my government to provide national defense (so I can be "swathed in safety"). If that entails treaties for mutual defense with Pacific nations and bumping up against China's territorial ambitions, so be it. I understand that you want national defense from PLA etc. in a similar manner. But China's interest in fact extend beyond its national defense.

Considering the many threads on DFI having to do with the perception of Chinese - - for the lack of better words - - territorial aggression, I don't expect you and I will ever see things the same. Your tone approaches self-pity; but USA is not a threat to you and your family. Conflict of US with China has a low probability. Do you really something otherwise?

By the way, I disagree with LA Times article about China's participation in the exercise. US has no greater liability there than China does IMHO.

Oh, you mistake realism for self pity.

You're very right, countries have no rights. Those entitlements are earned with soft and hard power. It is very much well within the America's rights to dominate the Pacific region, because quite frankly the US navy has the hard power to make it so.

*shaking my head* The US's "interest in fact extend beyond its national defense." too you know, considering that the US mainland is over 3000 miles away from the seas the US navy seeks to control off China's coast.

You're saying its for "mutual defense" but how do numerous military bases, hundreds of combat aircraft, over a hundred vessels and thousands of troops positioned off China's territory provide defense for the American homeland thousands of miles away? There's nothing defensive about US military in the Pacific, considering that the PLAN or even the PLAAF doesn't even have the reach or the capability to inflict any significant damage to the US homeland. Say it like it is..

That why I doubt your article's reasoning, and if that's the general view of your countrymen and/or government, then a Pacific War doesn't seem so unlikely, because China's military might will keep growing at the current rate for the next few decades. Why, because its very much (I cant emphasize how much) in China's best interest to have the military capability to counter US forces.

The US Navy and the air force fighters and bombers I mentioned before a very real threat to me and mine. That's also fact, because China does not have the kind of military force needed to effectively stop them as of the present. The only thing stopping them right now is that its not in US interest to utilize said military assets. Will that position remain for the fore-seeable future? I wouldn't bet the safety of my country as a whole on that.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

You're saying its for "mutual defense" but how do numerous military bases, hundreds of combat aircraft, over a hundred vessels and thousands of troops positioned off China's territory provide defense for the American homeland thousands of miles away? There's nothing defensive about US military in the Pacific, considering that the PLAN or even the PLAAF doesn't even have the reach or the capability to inflict any significant damage to the US homeland. Say it like it is..

My view is different in that I question the costs of US defense of its allies in the Pacific and believe that especially in the case of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan those countries take on a greater part of those costs.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

How so? How is China's interests extending beyond its national defense? Currently, other than nuclear weapons, no hostile nation has large-scale, unblockable, conventional weapons platforms in range of the US homeland. What if China wants to extend the same criterion to itself - to create 2000km+ 'cordon sanitaire' around Chinese borders where every single nation is either an ally or militarily harmless? Why should only America have that comfortable right to itself, while China must live in a literal state of terror every day at B2s and F22s kicking down its front door, to quote General John P Jumper?



If conflict of US with China has a low probability, then what are all those USN and USAF assets in the Western Pacific for?

From the days when USN really was a threat to Chinese people.

The Sand Pebbles (1966) - IMDb

Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the "rice-bowl" system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.

The Sand Pebbles Motion Picture Website - Established January 1998

Ahoy - Mac's Web Log - A Short Philatelic History of The Yangtze Patrol by George Saqqal