Read this analysis from Rand before spewing out more nonsense. According to Rand, if war breaks out today they expect heavy casualties & significant loss of military hardware from both side (much higher for the Chinese side) and in their 2025 scenario they expect the gap between US & China casualties to be much smaller. In both scenarios, they expect the war to be protracted, high damaging for both sides and inconclusive. Also why are you talking about J-31? J-20 is their newly operational stealth fighter & J-31 is an export oriented project with very little interest from the Chinese military themselves. J-20 & J-31 with their interim engines are "underpowered" when compared to F-22 & T-50, but it's not underpowered when compared to just about any other fighter (F-35, F-15, F-16, F-18, Euro Typhoon, Rafale etc) http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1140/RAND_RR1140.pdf Also I fail to understand why China's "rock grab" is somehow much worse than the land grab by Russia. China grabbed a few uninhabited car sized rocks in a disputed region; the Russian took actual Ukrainian territory with millions of civilians living in those areas, participated in a civil war that resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties & thousands of military casualties. The idea that somehow China can use these rocks turned artificial islands to somehow control and shutdown the South China sea trade lanes is simply absurd and utterly unrealistic
Russia is a big problem for USA for a long time because it has more military power than China, and its location. Now this new president and his supporters want to make a friend with Russia, and start to do some stupid somethings with China. It is just funny.
2016 is the year that has proven experts trying to predict the outcomes of complex events wrong - from electoral polling to economic modelling. The Chinese army has never won a conflict with a significant opposing force. Ever. They don't have quality of soldiers and officers to match the US. The J-20 is a giant turd. Literally. It's way bigger than the F-22 thanks to quality Chinese engineering. That's why they ever bother with the J-31 - because that was based on the stolen F-35 technology. The J-20 doesn't have any significant advantage to Gen 4 fighters apart from its supposed stealth. I wouldn't worry about it at all. I think we'll soon find any military posturing from China being a situation where their bark is louder than their bite.
The last time our military won a conflict against a significant opposing force was more than 70 years ago, not exactly recent either. Sure our military definitely have the better quality officer & soldiers, but it doesn't mean they are a bunch of incompetent bumbling buffoons either. J-20 is bigger than the F-22, but it's not some kind of giant oversized monstrosity. The J-20 is smaller than the Su-27/30s while being lighter & using a more powerful interim engine. Again, J-20 is their premier 5th generation fighter and J-31 so far is just an export oriented project with little to no support from the Chinese military, not the other way around. They are bothering with the J-31 because they have no intention of exporting J-20 and want to develop J-31 as some sort of 5th gen fighter export project for the countries with no access to F-35. I'm not worried about the Chinese military, but I also don't view them as pushover that we can defeat easily with little loss of life & material.
Exactly. We had zero problem transporting our army across the ocean, maintaining supply lines, and had very minimal casualties when we overthrow Sadaam. Doing so against China would be very costly in terms of resources and lives since they have built their army to defend the US from doing exactly that.
I know it will be hard to sleep over the Memorial Day Weekend. but cheer up, guys to counteract this grave threat to American national security we will just need to build a few more super aircraft carriers to park in the China Sea across from these "islands". Good for jobs and the stock market. Sort of b**** that we will need to sacrifice Meals on Wheels and the school lunch program. If things get worse we might even have to hold back on another tax cut for the one percent.
I agree that we are pouring money into our gigantic "super-carriers" that no other country can come close to building, and we shouldn't be. They are hugely expensive targets that we have to spend a bloody fortune attempting to protect in a conflict, and the means to sink them is far cheaper than what it takes to have a good chance at protecting them. And trump's budget? A disaster that was dead on arrival in the Senate. If it manages to get passed in anything close to its current form, look for an even bigger disaster for the GOP in 2018 than we will see before trump's budget monstrosity. Because it is so intertwined with the budget, I would say the same thing about Trump Care. Dead on arrival, and if it isn't, an even bigger disaster at the polls in November of 2018. I wouldn't be flippant about China, however. They and North Korea are the premier dangers to peace in the Western Pacific
I've learned not to make any predictions about elections. I laughed at candidate Trump for more than a year, and then the election happened.
WTF anyway, what gives them the right to call it the South China Sea? In this advanced era of modern world history we should rename it. All the seas are the American Sea and in our region of influence.The Western Pacific should maybe be renamed too. Maybe we can call it the Western or Eastern? American Sea. Some of the Russians and the Chinese and a few other pipsqueak countries are wanting to have spheres of influence in the immediate areas around them.. OMG Russia, if you can believe their gall think they have an interest in Ukraine. China omg believes they have just as much right to interact with Taiwan or N.Korea as us. Can you believe that slht. How dare there want that? This imperialist desire of non-American countries to have a sphere of interest outside their present borders is a "premier danger" to America or at least our allies which include countries in all part of the world and thus naturally in our legitimate sphere of interest and a threat to us, The Rulers of the World. It's a b****, but our innate goodness and generosity unique in history makes us reluctant not to accept this the "white man's burden" as the British of the 18th Century called it. Besides remember the Alamo-- I mean Neville Chamberlain.
Deckard, perhaps a more serious approach might appeal to you more. As far as foolishness what do you call for more of the same when it doesn't work? Your foreign policy beliefs are sort of like the folks who keep expecting trickle down to occur if we just stay the course. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-beltway-foreign-policy-blob-strikes-back/ rebuttal comes in the form of a report issued by the august Brookings Institution. Bearing the title Building “Situations of Strength,” the document is at once pretentious, proudly nonpartisan, and utterly vacuous. Yet in its way, it is also instructive. Here in a glossy 66-page publication is compelling evidence of the terminal decline now afflicting an establishment whose leading lights fancy themselves as the designated heirs of George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson. To see just how brain dead the Blob has become, Building “Situations of Strength”—hereinafter referred to Building Situations, or simply BS—is an essential text. Yet strip away the clichés and the self-regard and you end up with this: an exercise in avoiding critical engagement with recent U.S. policy failures, offered by a group of like-minded insiders intent on propping up the status quo. The authors of the report, ten in number, make for a diverse group, at least as Washington defines diversity. Within their ranks are Republicans and Democrats, men and women, Jews and Gentiles. All possess impressive credentials, acquired over the course of years spent rotating in and out of government, in and out of the op-ed pages of the Washington Post, and in and out of network news green rooms. They are, in short, sound and eminently respectable, Talbott offering his personal assurance that “all come from the internationalist school.” In this context, “internationalist” functions as a code word. It excludes anyone who when discussing U.S. policy employs terms like militarism or imperialism. It excludes anyone associated, however remotely, with a principled opposition to war, not to mention anyone finding fault with Washington’s marked propensity for armed intervention abroad. Notably, in this instance, it also excludes anyone who has actually experienced war at firsthand while serving in the armed forces. BS purports to outline a grand strategy promising “prolonged peace, an open and prosperous global economy, and capable democratic partners.” For the first two decades after the Cold War, the authors testify, this utopia looked to be right around the corner. Other nations had “acquiesced to American global leadership.” By all appearances, “the world was converging on a single model of international order,” with peace, prosperity, and democracy beckoning. So at least it appeared from vantage points inside the Beltway. .... Overall, however, the BSers appear to believe that the real problem was that Washington wavered in its willingness to lead. In any event, as a direct result, the United States today finds itself facing four simultaneous crises: 1) the sudden reemergence of great power competition; 2) “chaos in the Middle East;” 3) the proliferation of “increasingly disruptive” technologies; and 4) “Western dissatisfaction” that has “sapped the appetite” for U.S.-led activism. As depicted in BS, problem number one takes priority over all the rest, as Russia and China seek to carve out spheres of influence and thereby challenge the “principle that all states get to decide their foreign relations free from military pressure or coercion.” The authors of Building Situations do not admit to the possibility that the United States presides over several spheres of influence. Nor do they reflect on whether and how the United States has relied on military pressure and coercion to police regions it seeks to dominate. Put simply, Russian and Chinese coercion is reprehensible. Coercion undertaken by the United States is leadership. Turning to problem number two—“highly infectious and spreading disorder” in the Middle East—the BSers struggle to explain why forceful U.S. leadership applied over a considerable period of time at great cost has not produced the intended results. The “collapse of the U.S.-led regional order in the Middle East … has deep roots,” they write. Yet those deep roots remain unexplored and unexplained. Instead, the authors focus on the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which they implicitly endorse. Saddam Hussein “threatened the existing regional order,” so he had to go. Rather than transforming Iraq into a “functioning pro-American democracy” that would serve as a “catalyst for democratic change in the region,” however, U.S. occupation “exacerbated pre-existing trends, including by opening Iraq to Iranian domination and by fueling violent Islamist extremism.” The BSers describe the outcome as ironic—good intentions inexplicably gone awry. They direct no hint of criticism at those who concocted or endorsed this cockamamie scheme, which, of course, includes some among their own number. The guy who really screwed things up, in their view, is Barack Obama. By withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, Obama “exacerbated conditions that facilitated the takeover of the Sunni provinces of Iraq by ISIS.” Worse still, when Syrians mounted an effort to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, Obama’s “consistent reluctance to take steps to address the burgeoning crisis” both “opened the door” to Russian and Iranian meddling and led to “a devastating civil war that still rages today.” Throw in the ambiguous effects of technology-driven globalization and the surge of populism throughout much of the West and you have a situation calling for “a new U.S. strategy,” one that BSers promise will result in the “renovation and reinvigoration of the international order.” What exactly is that strategy? Wade through the slough of platitudes and you eventually get to this: Stay the course. Allow perhaps for just a tad of fine tuning, but under no circumstances entertain the possibility that the basic premises informing U.S. policy are wrongheaded, obsolete, or the very essence of the problem.... So Building Situations urges the United States to “adopt an uncompromising position on any issue or dispute in which a rival power uses force, or the threat of force … to undermine, coerce, or invade its neighbors.” So the United States should “block and deter Russian aggression” and prevent China from “establishing control over a sphere of influence in the western part of the Western Pacific.” In the Middle East, the United States should “restore stability in the region, through increasing engagement with our traditional friends and allies.”... To sum up: The United States should stick to a game plan that shows no signs of producing success. Moreover, it should do so despite the fact that, as the BSers note, in “the United States is no longer dependent on Middle Eastern oil,” and despite their claim that present-day Arab leaders “all view Israel as a highly capable partner in the common cause of combatting terrorism, Islamist extremism, and Iranian hegemonic ambitions.” By extension, with Arab leaders no longer interested in promoting Palestinian statehood, “the old bromide of distancing the United States from Israel to curry favor with the Arabs is no longer relevant”—a conclusion that, in effect, greenlights the further expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. But if the United States doesn’t need the oil and if Israelis and Arabs are making common cause against a common foe, what U.S. interests are at stake in the Middle East? The question is one that the BSers don’t ask and certainly don’t answer. Presumably, the exercise of leadership is an end in itself. What the BSers ignore, overlook, or downplay is as revealing as what they choose to highlight. Here is a partial list of subjects that don’t qualify for serious attention: the configuration and positioning of U.S. military forces around the world; the size of the Pentagon budget relative to allies and adversaries (although BSers lament what they refer to as the “self-inflicted wound of a trillion dollars in defense budget cuts”); the cost of recent American wars; the ever-increasing size of the national debt; the utility of nuclear weapons; the influence of the military-industrial complex on the formulation of U.S. policy; the strategic implications of climate change (dismissed with a hand wave); the actual exportability of values that Americans have recently discovered and insist should be universal; the consequences of NATO expansion; prospects for ending the war in Afghanistan. A so-called grand strategy that ignores or slights such matters does not constitute a “deep dive.” It does not offer “in-depth analysis.” Indeed, their exclusion testifies to a quality that permeates Building “Situations of Strength.” That quality is dishonesty. Ultimately, BS is an exercise in evasion. It is indeed BS. As such, it deserves to be ignored—and will be. The gullible saps who funded it should demand their money back.
Glynch, those quotes deal nearly entirely with the impact of George W.'s mad invasion of Iraq. I opposed it before the invasion occurred and said so here, repeatedly. With all due respect, your post, as it pertains to me, is nonsensical.
Not really you are still concerned with the great threat of China disputing some rocks/islands close to what should be their area of interest and do not see the foolishness of not seeing how other countries might not see the American areas of interest all over the world. Such frankly nutty American exceptionalism plays into the hands of the folks who like continual war, cold wars or at least continual large scale "defense" expenditures. I must admit that given your overall hawkishness imho I am surprised if you were greatly against the Iraq war before it started.
