Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
If you haven't already, I really recommend that you read the Atlantic article I linked to. It presents several scenarios for how war with China could begin, each focusing on a different region/flashpoint.
Taiwan (Taiwan Straits)
Japan (Senkaku Islands in E. China Sea)
Philippines (S. China Sea)
It also explains why China might feel like their window of opportunity to seize territorial claims by force could be closing soon, due to increased military spending by Australia, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Arms races in the name of national defense deterrence often result in armed conflict. It's a dangerous game.
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I'm sorry but I didn't want to comment on that article, it's pretty awful. The author is writing some pretty sensationalist stuff and from a historical perspective he's on very shaky ground. I mean, his opening comments wish to frame a power as a real and present danger but the nearest phase of belligerence he can come up with was 50 years ago. In comparison I think every power arrayed against China has indulged in a lot more regime change, coups and outright illegal invasions since then
As for small scale actions, once again we're far more likely to pull egregious shit like shooting down airliners to make a point than China since then.
Don't get me wrong, China is no shrinking violet or choir of angels, like every large power they're a bully and can be a particularly nasty one. However they're up against a concerted alliance of bigger bullies. As Charles de Gaulle once said "Great Powers are Cold Monsters". However when we start shrilly pointing to China's very real abuses it asks the question why we aren't also doing it about places like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It's obvious that our concerns aren't their behaviour or threat of expansion, it's due to the fact that the West will not tolerate a rival in any situation.
The reason I say this is because China is already winning and all it has to do at far less risk is continue what it is doing now; outproducing the West. In fact the West is doing one of the weirdest things in history in that they are strengthening an enemy while trying to contain it by continuously offshoring manufacturing to China and then rattling sabres like crazy. The logical assumption is they want to have their cake and eat it too.
The whole reason the USA was an unassailable superpower was that it contained the three key ingredients of modern power; a large population, a massive manufacturing base and large resource deposits. Inexplicably the entire West have decided to convert themselves to 'service economies', in essence middlemen, when the obvious fact is sooner or later middlemen get cut out was ignored in the face of big fat profits. Worse, they shifted that manufacturing to a potentially hostile power and assumed they could keep it in check through military threats. It was a losing 'diplomatic' assumption and we're paying for it now.
Worse, we've so gamed the WTO that no one trusts it. I'm afraid the US has blocked the appointment of every member of the World Trade Authority Appellate Body so now there is no body to mediate trade concerns. The West can hardly tout it's allegiance to a 'rules-based order' when we try and game it like this.
China is seeing what we're doing to it, 'containment', because it has both experienced this before earlier in its history and been part of the process when they pulled it on the USSR in conjunction with the West. Since then they've been quietly watching. In 2003 when we went and unilaterally invaded an admittedly despicable regime on trumped up charges and to China's concern suffered no repercussions it was then China started rapidly remilitarising from a power capable of bullying regional rivals to a power capable of defending itself against the West. Sure enough here we are.
So what do I think the flashpoints will be?
Well, none in that article although obviously we should prepare for them. The flashpoints will probably be the same dangers of the Cold War; some hawk bungling an action what he thinks the other side will tolerate and sparking a peer to peer war.