Syria...Flashpoint to Armageddon?

[Bob Kohm]

Dude, your sarcasm detector needs a MAJOR fix.

Thanks, I didn't want to have to be the one who said it.

[Bob Kohm]

Wow. Thank you for the explaination.

Not to stir up a massive politcal debate. What kind of President would be needed to navigate through a war with China? It doesn't seem like the Repubs or the Dems have anyone that gives the warm and fuzzies for this kind of problem.

You need one who avoided the pitfalls of getting into a war with China in the first place. The President who handled China better than any other (including Nixon) was Bill Clinton-- sending the CBGs into the Strait of Taiwan sent the PRC into such a tizzy that they're dumping all of this money, time and technology into these offbeat and likely unworkable area denial systems when they could be actually strengthening their military in workable ways. China talks tough but has always been reasonably easy to intimidate-- they like to feel that they're a big player in world affairs and like to talk tough, but they also tend to retreat when confronted. Our foreign policies around security are fundamentally unworkable-- we're interventionists, they fear an intervention and constantly work to avoid precedent for them anywhere for any reason-- but we can work together against common problems like the Russians and Arabs if just a bit more basis for trust can be established. In short, we need to manage and cushion their downturn to prevent them from losing their minds and doing something dumb like striking out at the Philippines over the South China Sea or god forbid using the crazy number of amphibs they're building to go after Taiwan. It's time for some tough love int hat direction, honestly-- it's time to ease arms restrictions on Taiwan, even though it will piss off Beijing in the short term.

[SeaDogStat]

The average annual rate of growth of the Chinese economy has been roughly 10% over the past three decades, which is roundly seen as unsustainable and as having been artificially inflated through pegging the yuan, other currency manipulations and the government's manipulating of marketplaces and manufacturers to boost exports.

Since Tienanmen, China has turned to economic growth and the huge expansion of the urban middle class as the pacifiers for its politically restive society. As Deng and his political descendants opened up the economy of Maoist communism and largely replaced it with a controlled open market with huge government investment and direction, the transformation of China from a nation where the bicycle was the primary means of transportation to one in which "normal" status symbols became luxury automobiles and children being educated in Western universities has relived internal political tensions. Whereas in the 1980s we saw Tienanmen and various other outbursts of public anger with Beijing, now we see huge gambling junkets to Macao, Mercedes lining the streets and extensive foreign travel. While the rural peasantry has suffered and as the lower classes have been pressed into sweatshop conditions to make iPhones and other luxury exports, the educated classes who were the drivers of political thought and innovation have quietly allowed the Beijing government to go about its business.

With growth rates falling already and their continued fall inevitable, a lot of the affluence being enjoyed by the Chinese middle & upper classes will evaporate over the next few years, leading to not only a resurgence of political strife but also magnifying it over the loss of standard of living in the classes that will drive the resurgence. With China unable to use its economy to pacify the nation, it will be forced to either find a nationalistic cause to get people to rally round the flag-- almost certainly a military campaign-- or it will have to return to the harsh authoritarian rule of the '70s and '80s. I doubt that the return to a police state can work now that the Chinese people have seen it recede, and a military campaign (say an invasion of Taiwan or a general war in the SC Sea over the Spratly & other island groups) would only be a short term solution.

China is currently trying like mad to put the assets in place to deny the US Navy access to the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits, building Hail Mary weapons like the DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missile (basically a MRBM with steerable re-entry vehicles to put warheads on US Navy carriers from space), this new found fascination with aircraft carriers and their new generation of anti-satellite weapons. I read that as tacit acknowledgement by Beijing that they will need to make moves to enhance domestic stability over the coming decade that will put them in jeopardy of war with the United States. I suspect that we may find out sometime in the next two years that China actually has a larger ICBM inventory than the either US or (and?) Russia given the incredible steps they're going to in order to hide their launch capabilities and warhead numbers. Everything that China is doing militarily signals preparation for precipitous action and deterrence of the United States & NATO from responding to that action.

We're already seeing China start to show signs of economic instability; as that increases, the signs of social instability will follow and increase. What that will mean to the US economy is the subject of a lot of speculation.

What generally tends to be the flaw in those opinions from my point of view, however, is a lack of understanding of the nature of the Chinese nation-- they tend to come from economists. If one were to try to find a nation similar in structure to the current China, the best choice would be Yugoslavia-- a collection of disparate (and historically, violently unfriendly) nations without a single unifying factor held together primarily through an overbearing government. Tibet, the Uighurs, the Mongolians, the Fujianese-- there are already at least two major areas of violent nationalistic unrest going on within China as we speak and several more waiting to pop. While the Chinese government suppresses newsflow, the Uighur situation may already feature as much weekly violence and animosity as the Israeli-Palestinian one does. To date these restive peoples have been held together first by the Chinese military/security regime and then, more recently, by economic growth and the emergence of private wealth. When you take away the private wealth, something has to hold them together or they will break down and apart. What's the social glue, El D, when the money stops serving that purpose and the standard of living amongst the now very comfortable, educated urban middle class declines? I just don't see them laying down for a return to 1970s internal security regime, do you? This is already a nation that's made a cottage industry of getting around government security controls on communications and the Internet; the midnight knock isn't going to be something they welcome back.

The other factor that the people who share El D's statements in my opinion overlook is the military direction of the nation. A nation like China that foresaw a future free of internal strife would be moving militarily into distant force projection and security roles; instead they dump billions upon billions into area denial weapons with no utility past the South China Sea and Taiwan Straits. They are building Ro-Ros and amphibious operations ships and focusing on anti-submarine warfare assets optimized for shallow water ASW work. The only forward role the PLAN is working on are some destroyers that look like they're intended to operate around the Straits of Malacca to perform basic maritime security operations in the Indonesian straits. They would focus their Army conscription and unit layouts to guard the Amur and train for expeditionary work; instead they've been revamping their internal force structure to ensure that the military garrisons of various Provinces are composed primarily of soldiers whose ethnicity is different from the areas they're garrisoning. How do you read that other than to say they are guarding against their PLA units from going over to the opposition in the case of regional rebellion? Want to stop a rebellion in Fujian? Make sure the majority of the troops there aren't Fujianese but rather from the north.

Like anything, you can isolate certain areas of a problem and come up with different interpretations. When you look at the totality of the Chinese situation, though-- economically, sociologically, politically, militarily, diplomatically-- I think it becomes clear that Beijing itself is getting rather nervous and that its spending directions and military posture and preparations make that even more clear. They are acting in a manner that suggests a wary eye on the 1977-1990 era of the Soviet collapse-- a collapse that nearly took them into the abyss as well. While I understand what El D is saying and acknowledge that there is some sense to it in isolation, I don't think it withstands a more holistic analysis. As he said, there are things that China can do-- but that their government is highly unlikely to do. To my mind international affairs are a matter of applied probability, and to me the probabilities suggest a period featuring a highly unstable China lashing out militarily over the coming ten years presaging a dramatic realignment of the Chinese nation.

You need one who avoided the pitfalls of getting into a war with China in the first place. The President who handled China better than any other (including Nixon) was Bill Clinton-- sending the CBGs into the Strait of Taiwan sent the PRC into such a tizzy that they're dumping all of this money, time and technology into these offbeat and likely unworkable area denial systems when they could be actually strengthening their military in workable ways. China talks tough but has always been reasonably easy to intimidate-- they like to feel that they're a big player in world affairs and like to talk tough, but they also tend to retreat when confronted. Our foreign policies around security are fundamentally unworkable-- we're interventionists, they fear an intervention and constantly work to avoid precedent for them anywhere for any reason-- but we can work together against common problems like the Russians and Arabs if just a bit more basis for trust can be established. In short, we need to manage and cushion their downturn to prevent them from losing their minds and doing something dumb like striking out at the Philippines over the South China Sea or god forbid using the crazy number of amphibs they're building to go after Taiwan. It's time for some tough love int hat direction, honestly-- it's time to ease arms restrictions on Taiwan, even though it will piss off Beijing in the short term.

Ditto...

[Bob Kohm]

Ditto...

Thing is I wrote all of that off the top of my head in the time it took you to write "Ditto"

[SeaDogStat]

Thing is I wrote all of that off the top of my head in the time it took you to write "Ditto"

Only because I was flip flopping between "Ditto" and "I concur"... harrumph, harrumph... sweetcheeks

[Bob Kohm]

Only because I was flip flopping between "Ditto" and "I concur"... harrumph, harrumph... sweetcheeks

I did forget about the "I concur, Snookums :P

[heyelander]

I can't believe Kohm has ruined the surprise of this whole thing for me... I was really excited to see which way this thing broke.