I’ve been a China hawk all of my adult life. (I was 19 the first time I went to China, a visit that opened my eyes). I’ve long been outraged by the sheer suicidal stupidity of “free traders” who thought it was just great we were running massive deficits with China (I imagine they’d have been fond of Hitler, too), and that China was rising. Same with lefty morons who thought, and still think, it’s just great that China is rising.
We have been creating a monster, one with a stated ambition to subjugate the planet. Yet, and even still, useful idiots cheered its rise.
Perhaps this Wuhan virus came along in time to wake people up to the incredible danger China poses. We should not have needed it to do so, as it’s been glaringly obvious all along. If I sound angry, it’s because I am.
If China wants an open war, that better for US, because China has been at war with US for quite a long time.
So, doing stuff which would cause China to go from it’s current war to obvious war, should lead to the end of the war, pretty quickly.
It seems nuking China would cause less damage to China than the damage China is doing to China. And China seems to be also damaging the rest of world, fair amount.
But a reason to do something to avoid China going to an open war, it seems China is lying waste to the UN. And it would good if we can finally get rid of the UN.
I can’t disagree that this would be the “best” time to attack the United States, though I am at a loss to come up with a purpose for it. Short of invading the continental United States, something I think we would see coming, what could they do, and to what end?
Attacking ships in the South China Sea? To what end? Provoke a response? They’d get one, and how. A nuclear strike on the continental United States? China has nowhere near the ICBM force that the former Soviet Union did, and though they had us significantly outgunned in the early 1980s, it still wasn’t enough for them to try anything. I doubt if anyone who mattered in this country would have any objection to our responding to a nuclear attack by the Chinese with a counterstrike that would end their existence completely. We have that capability. And they know it.
I think that having Donald Trump in the White House is the one factor that undoes all of the other factors favoring a Chinese attack of some kind. They are afraid of him. And that’s a good thing.
I think you are looking too much at the kind of “final solution” campaign the Nazis thought they were waging in Russia – something that would, had it gone as intended, have resulted in the extinction of Russia as both a nation and a people. I think the Chinese understand they are not in any position to essay such a thing against the U.S. just now.
Instead, I suspect their ambitions are more along the lines of the more limited sort of “decisive battle” the Japanese were seeking early in WW2. The Japanese thought that if they could wreck the U.S. Navy in the Pacific and become the hegemon there, then they could keep the U.S. permanently bottled up in the North American coastal waters of the Pacific while they ruled the rest. The Japanese failed to achieve this objective outright at Pearl Harbor and so planned on Midway as the clean-up engagement. As we all know, that didn’t go quite as planned either.
The Chinese, should they essay some sort of explicitly military move against the U.S. in the near future, would likely be looking at an even more limited objective than the erstwhile Japanese. China would be perfectly content for an extended period if it could simply push the U.S. out of the western Pacific, cow the Japanese, Australians and the rest of the Asian Pacific Rim and accomplish the conquest and re-integration of Taiwan.
It is even possible the Chinese military leadership imagines that, as the Japanese mistakenly did in 1941, the correlation of forces now favors such a move. The PLA has a long history of insularity and consequent fundamental misunderstanding of the U.S. extending from the consolidation of Communist rule on the mainland in 1949 through the Korean War intervention to even things as recent as the 2007 ASAT test.
In this assessment, the Chinese would be even more off-base than the Japanese were 80 years ago. The USN is a far more powerful Pacific presence than was its pre-WW2 counterpart. And to say that the Chinese are hardly in a class, as a naval power, with the late IJN is still to indulge egregious understatement.
I suppose one should hope the Chinese drink their own Kool-Aid anent their alleged “long view” and patience. But, given that both are far more matters of fiction than fact, they may well not.
Should the Chinese be so foolish as to test the USN, the result will be the prompt destruction of most of the PLAN fleet and its base facilities on the mainland, Hainan and all the recently fortified islands built in the East and South China Seas.
They do run the Panama canal zone. Are they silly enough to sneak millions of troops into the zone and march north?
I’ve been a China hawk all of my adult life. (I was 19 the first time I went to China, a visit that opened my eyes). I’ve long been outraged by the sheer suicidal stupidity of “free traders” who thought it was just great we were running massive deficits with China (I imagine they’d have been fond of Hitler, too), and that China was rising. Same with lefty morons who thought, and still think, it’s just great that China is rising.
We have been creating a monster, one with a stated ambition to subjugate the planet. Yet, and even still, useful idiots cheered its rise.
Perhaps this Wuhan virus came along in time to wake people up to the incredible danger China poses. We should not have needed it to do so, as it’s been glaringly obvious all along. If I sound angry, it’s because I am.
Is war in the offing now? Quite possibly. I do not think it’s coincidental that I’m seeing stories like this.
https://www.csindy.com/TheWire/archives/2020/03/30/norad-northcom-personnel-shift-to-cheyenne-mountain-bunker-due-to-virus-spread
If China wants an open war, that better for US, because China has been at war with US for quite a long time.
So, doing stuff which would cause China to go from it’s current war to obvious war, should lead to the end of the war, pretty quickly.
It seems nuking China would cause less damage to China than the damage China is doing to China. And China seems to be also damaging the rest of world, fair amount.
But a reason to do something to avoid China going to an open war, it seems China is lying waste to the UN. And it would good if we can finally get rid of the UN.
I can’t disagree that this would be the “best” time to attack the United States, though I am at a loss to come up with a purpose for it. Short of invading the continental United States, something I think we would see coming, what could they do, and to what end?
Attacking ships in the South China Sea? To what end? Provoke a response? They’d get one, and how. A nuclear strike on the continental United States? China has nowhere near the ICBM force that the former Soviet Union did, and though they had us significantly outgunned in the early 1980s, it still wasn’t enough for them to try anything. I doubt if anyone who mattered in this country would have any objection to our responding to a nuclear attack by the Chinese with a counterstrike that would end their existence completely. We have that capability. And they know it.
I think that having Donald Trump in the White House is the one factor that undoes all of the other factors favoring a Chinese attack of some kind. They are afraid of him. And that’s a good thing.
I think you are looking too much at the kind of “final solution” campaign the Nazis thought they were waging in Russia – something that would, had it gone as intended, have resulted in the extinction of Russia as both a nation and a people. I think the Chinese understand they are not in any position to essay such a thing against the U.S. just now.
Instead, I suspect their ambitions are more along the lines of the more limited sort of “decisive battle” the Japanese were seeking early in WW2. The Japanese thought that if they could wreck the U.S. Navy in the Pacific and become the hegemon there, then they could keep the U.S. permanently bottled up in the North American coastal waters of the Pacific while they ruled the rest. The Japanese failed to achieve this objective outright at Pearl Harbor and so planned on Midway as the clean-up engagement. As we all know, that didn’t go quite as planned either.
The Chinese, should they essay some sort of explicitly military move against the U.S. in the near future, would likely be looking at an even more limited objective than the erstwhile Japanese. China would be perfectly content for an extended period if it could simply push the U.S. out of the western Pacific, cow the Japanese, Australians and the rest of the Asian Pacific Rim and accomplish the conquest and re-integration of Taiwan.
It is even possible the Chinese military leadership imagines that, as the Japanese mistakenly did in 1941, the correlation of forces now favors such a move. The PLA has a long history of insularity and consequent fundamental misunderstanding of the U.S. extending from the consolidation of Communist rule on the mainland in 1949 through the Korean War intervention to even things as recent as the 2007 ASAT test.
In this assessment, the Chinese would be even more off-base than the Japanese were 80 years ago. The USN is a far more powerful Pacific presence than was its pre-WW2 counterpart. And to say that the Chinese are hardly in a class, as a naval power, with the late IJN is still to indulge egregious understatement.
I suppose one should hope the Chinese drink their own Kool-Aid anent their alleged “long view” and patience. But, given that both are far more matters of fiction than fact, they may well not.
Should the Chinese be so foolish as to test the USN, the result will be the prompt destruction of most of the PLAN fleet and its base facilities on the mainland, Hainan and all the recently fortified islands built in the East and South China Seas.
They do run the Panama canal zone. Are they silly enough to sneak millions of troops into the zone and march north?