I was chatting with my friend Jason earlier about the military buildup in China, and he brought up some good questions.
- They've built up forces to roughly one third of ours. Do they really think that's enough?
- Why would they want to go to war with the U.S.? If I'm not missing something, we're a substantial part of their export economy.
- Don't we have quite the list of Friends With Big Sticks? Does it make any sense to fight that?
- Why? Why? Why?
If you have some insight, leave a comment!
Because one day we decide that those China sons of bitches are goin' down!
(I hope you understand)
I think China's probably more concerned with India and Japan, among others, than fending off the US.
My previous comment was in reference to The End of the World flash animation.
Jim Kunstler says for the remaining oil in the world
Regarding 1/3 of our forces.
It's more than enough. Ignoring the cliched Sun Tzu quote I could drop ("In war, numbers alone conferr no advantage.") there's plenty of reasons why 1/3 of our troop strength could pwn us.
1) We've got our greedy, imperalist fingers in every pie in the world, that's not something we just pull our troops out of. China just needs to protect their sphere of influence, and/or mess up California, which is, by itself, the sixth largest economy in the world (or something like that.)
2) We're a democracy. Democracies rarely have the stomach for a protracted fight. 1/3 of our troops is enough manpower to bog us down and cause significant losses, after which point popular opinion forces us out of the war and to the concession table. (See Also: Vietnam, Iraq II: The Sequel, Somalia, etc.)
3) Like much of our country, the army is rotten at the core. Sure, we've got some elite stuff, and more hardware than we know what to do with, but the truth is, we've forgotten about good, old fashioned, soldiery. The new style of 'robot building' we've adopted removes the part of our military ideology that made us so damned good: the whole creative, independent thinking bits.
I don't think we're talking about 1/3rd the troop levels - China has no shortage of warm bodies in uniforms - but 1/3rd the level of military spending. That enough, way more than enough, because the yaun is undervalued compared to the dollar. They're not buying $500 toilet seats or paying Halliburton workers american union wages to maintain bases overseas. Think about how cheap junk at Walmart is because it was made in china - same goes for military hardware and soldiers.