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China could defeat US in East Pacific conflict by 2020: Russian analyst

Is not a UN mandate required for NATO military engagement and defense?

Ha, US presidents are keen to tell the UN to get beside us or get behind us when such "mandates" are unattainable.
 
Over 150 posts before anyone mentions the debt. Best sign that the original article is about what is literally possible, rather than what is actually realistic.

Whatever we think of the Chinese government, our economies are intertwined.

If they aggressively attacked our interests (violently seizing regional power unannounced would qualify in my book,) we could withhold all payment until after the dust settled, and then renegotiate the debt, likely in our favor.

Ceasing those payments is going to have a much more immediate and dramatic effect on China than us. Factories there would start closing immediately. The U.S. would get hurt too, but not to the same extent.

So WHY would China attack our interests? They can only hurt themselves.

Though I'd rather not, it could be argued a brief conventional dust-up with China (with them as the aggressor) is exactly what our economy needs. We could negotiate the debt, stimulate the economy, and "rightsize" the Chinese military.

This is lingering Cold War FUD.

I haven't a clue as to the purpose that Russia produced this paper, but I can tell you that my purpose for posting it here was not to insinuate that the Chinese are so ready to attack and defeat the US tomorrow. But to focus on the very real fact that the Chinese military expenditure has gone viral in the last decade. The last time the US Pentagon budget DOUBLED in such a short period of time was WW2. So while this is not "the sky is falling" story, it deserves far more respect than what it gets from the typical macho man response that we see here from so many. If (however big that if, is) the US became involved in a military conflict with China, it would be nothing like we have dealt with in the past 40 years. It would be hugely painful by comparison. All the armchair general scenarios that keep getting expressed would be rubbish. As arguably one of America's greatest generals (Eisenhower) once proclaimed, once hostilities begin, all plans go out the window. NOBODY, can predict dogmatically what China would do, or what they are capable of doing.
 
Oh, that would be nice. Yes just fly the finger to everyone else with an interest in the outcome. Sadly, your probably serious; in fact that's probably the way you handle conflict in your personal life, **** everybody else, I'm doing what I want.

Sadly your naïve enough to think that China will play nice if it ever came down to it. The allies didn't win WW2 by following international law because you just don't win a "total war" in that fashion.

As for my personal life I would prefer you didn't comment on that as you do not know me as a person, Thank you.
 
Ha, US presidents are keen to tell the UN to get beside us or get behind us when such "mandates" are unattainable.

Still it is not an automatic response which would be the case if EU was a country.
 
Sadly your naïve enough to think that China will play nice if it ever came down to it. The allies didn't win WW2 by following international law because you just don't win a "total war" in that fashion.

As for my personal life I would prefer you didn't comment on that as you do not know me as a person, Thank you.

See. There you go again, what are you a soldier and every problem is solved by a war? I'm talking about diplomacy to evade war. As for China, what would you consider playing nice? Following international law. Because you're suggesting the US fly the middle finger to it and just kick ass and the innocents be damned.
 
Over 150 posts before anyone mentions the debt. Best sign that the original article is about what is literally possible, rather than what is actually realistic.

Whatever we think of the Chinese government, our economies are intertwined.

If they aggressively attacked our interests (violently seizing regional power unannounced would qualify in my book,) we could withhold all payment until after the dust settled, and then renegotiate the debt, likely in our favor.

Ceasing those payments is going to have a much more immediate and dramatic effect on China than us. Factories there would start closing immediately. The U.S. would get hurt too, but not to the same extent.

So WHY would China attack our interests? They can only hurt themselves.

Though I'd rather not, it could be argued a brief conventional dust-up with China (with them as the aggressor) is exactly what our economy needs. We could negotiate the debt, stimulate the economy, and "rightsize" the Chinese military.

This is lingering Cold War FUD.

Not honoring the debt to China would have devastating effects on the USA - and is less rational than someone claiming they will stick it to the financial industry by refusing to pay their mortgage, car payment, credit bills and utility bills.

In the instance of China, the greatest damage would be lose of the one thing most holding the economy together - and that is the reputation of the American dollar and stability of the American economy. That would vanish, and so would our economy.

Otherwise, within weeks every retailer in the USA would be closing for lack of inventory. There are not idle USA factories to just turn back on. Already suffering, those retailers would quickly go defunct and defaulting on their business loans - plus the massive layoffs those would cause - and the other residual unemployment that followed.

T-note sales would go flat, causing a rapid increase in interest rates, just as there would be a rapid increasing in inflation, shattering people's savings and retirement funds. The radical increases in inflation, unemployment and interest rates would devastate the housing and real estate markets, shattering the banking and financial industries.

Oil would go off the dollar standard, another permanent devastating consequence to the value of the dollar.

China, of course, would seize all American assets in China, such as the 15 GM factories built with bailout money (13 USA auto factories closed) and GM all but instantly back in bankruptcy - since GM now sells more vehicles in China than the USA.

The stockmarket would crash.

Overall, the result would not be a depressive, but massive inflation where money became all but worthless.

China is manufacturing self sufficient. The USA is manufacturing dependent. China would be harmed, but China being a totalitarian society familiar with hardship would survive. The USA would be shattered and still another effect would be the country going radically to the left and socialism as people tried to use government to get a piece of the radically shrinking pie. Investment money would flee the USA.

Declaring we would not honor debts to China as a winning strategy is unbelievably naïve.
 
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It is foolish to think that armed conflict with China would be measures on planes versus planes and ships versus ships is also extremely foolish.

China has no real external enemies nor terrorism dangers. The USA and West does. China could arm and inflame much of the world. It could turn Iran into a nuclear power overnight. It could pour sophisticated small and medium arms to every militant and terrorist organization in the world, and cause civil wars and revolutions in many areas of interest to us.

It is China, not the USA, that is the manufacturing giant and "war" with China obviously cannot include bombing China, since China is a nuclear power obviously with ballistic missile capacity. Thus, China could be massively producing weapons to give to surrogate allies - who are not allies with China but rather serve as allies for hatred of the USA and the West.

MOST countries would have compelling reasons to side with China to avoid the chaos China could send their way, and our allies would opt out trying to remain neutral. You do not see "our allies" sending their ships to the region, do you?
 
In terms of debt to countries, who the USA is MOST debted to is, of course, ourselves.

#2 is China, at $1.3 trillion.

#3 is Japan, at $1.1 trillion.

The debt to Japan is generally older and new growing debt is to China.

A reason we are dancing with Japan is likely mostly due to that debt. The USA is not in any position to pay off ANY debts. If Japan OR China calls in it's debt AND stops putting more money into the USA, the USA is really screwed.
 
And don't forget, this Russian report defends the notion that by 2020, the Chinese navy will be more than problematic to the US, should the US wish to assert itself too much in the China sea!
 
Declaring we would not honor debts to China as a winning strategy is unbelievably naïve.

I didn't suggest that. I suggested that if China acted violently and aggressively against us or our interests and lost, that renegotiating the debt would likely be part of the peace accords at the end of the conflict.

Of course the main point of my post was that China wouldn't attack for that very reason, amongst others.
 
See. There you go again, what are you a soldier and every problem is solved by a war? I'm talking about diplomacy to evade war. As for China, what would you consider playing nice? Following international law. Because you're suggesting the US fly the middle finger to it and just kick ass and the innocents be damned.

the whole idea of the thread is a theoretical war between the USA and China....:roll:
 
I didn't suggest that. I suggested that if China acted violently and aggressively against us or our interests and lost, that renegotiating the debt would likely be part of the peace accords at the end of the conflict.

Of course the main point of my post was that China wouldn't attack for that very reason, amongst others.


I think the question in reality is would we intervene on behalf of Japan.
 
the whole idea of the thread is a theoretical war between the USA and China....:roll:

Right, and you want to move it from the theoretical to the real by telling the world and their international law to take a leap.
 
I think the question in reality is would we intervene on behalf of Japan.

I'm not sure that's a question, unless of course you mean opening up the possibility of the US not honouring a treaty.
 
Right, and you want to move it from the theoretical to the real by telling the world and their international law to take a leap.

no the thread title is "China could defeat the USA in 2020"". My point being that yes they could cause the US a lot of trouble unless the US "takes off the gloves". I wasn't advocating law breaking or saying that the UN should take a leap as this is all theoretical. However if the US and China were to go to war it most certainty come under the title "total war: and in total war both sides tend to overlook laws they would normally abide by ( WW2 being a good example of this). China already don't care much for international law especially when it comes to human rights, pollution, trade, computer privacy etc. So what makes you think China would play by the rules in a conflict against the worlds biggest superpower?
 
no the thread title is "China could defeat the USA in 2020"". My point being that yes they could cause the US a lot of trouble unless the US "takes off the gloves". I wasn't advocating law breaking or saying that the UN should take a leap as this is all theoretical. However if the US and China were to go to war it most certainty come under the title "total war: and in total war both sides tend to overlook laws they would normally abide by ( WW2 being a good example of this). China already don't care much for international law especially when it comes to human rights, pollution, trade, computer privacy etc. So what makes you think China would play by the rules in a conflict against the worlds biggest superpower?

Yes so sense the US already doesn't follow international law, your suggesting we should stay that course. I mean you have some company with that and the US already conveniently refuses to recognise the authority of the ICC so there's little fear of reprisal. And while your clinging to the notion that the US is the worlds biggest superpower, that status is being challenged in many ways, and this op points at one of them. Are you texting and walking at the same time again? :)
 
Yes so sense the US already doesn't follow international law, your suggesting we should stay that course. I mean you have some company with that and the US already conveniently refuses to recognise the authority of the ICC so there's little fear of reprisal. And while your clinging to the notion that the US is the worlds biggest superpower, that status is being challenged in many ways, and this op points at one of them. Are you texting and walking at the same time again? :)

Its being challenged but no one is close to the military firepower of the US. I'm British and served in the British armed forces so its not really that important to me that the US are considered the worlds most powerful country, its just a cold hard fact. The US has military out posts all over the world, it has a bigger military than the next 5 countries combined and its reach is worldwide ( unlike China). Then you consider that America is still culturally the biggest country in the world and its websites like Twitter, Facebook, Google are used worldwide, its movies are watched everywhere etc etc.
 
Yeah that's it, our movies will save us!
 
Yeah that's it, our movies will save us!

no but being a culture people can relate to certainly helps especially if you were ever in a situation where you needed to gather support from other nations. How many western countries do you think will rally around China?
 
no but being a culture people can relate to certainly helps especially if you were ever in a situation where you needed to gather support from other nations. How many western countries do you think will rally around China?

I guess your arguing with the Russian report in the op. I don't know, how many Latin American countries do you think will rally around the US? I suppose everyone has their detractors.
 
I guess your arguing with the Russian report in the op. I don't know, how many Latin American countries do you think will rally around the US? I suppose everyone has their detractors.
Yeh I am arguing with the Russian Report because well...Its Russian lol. It's a prediction nothing else probably drawn up and released in an attempt to shake up the region.

As for Latin American countries I could not tell you but I don't think the US will need them since they will have Nato at their disposal as well as the very valuable ANZUS treaty will could prove to be very valuable given the location of any conflict in that region.
 
Yeh I am arguing with the Russian Report because well...Its Russian lol. It's a prediction nothing else probably drawn up and released in an attempt to shake up the region.

As for Latin American countries I could not tell you but I don't think the US will need them since they will have Nato at their disposal as well as the very valuable ANZUS treaty will could prove to be very valuable given the location of any conflict in that region.

Yes of course, anything Russian is bound to be rubbish. So anyway, I mentioned Latin America just to point out that while China may not have many western countries that would rally around them, the US certainly doesn't have them all in their pocket.
 
how many Latin American countries do you think will rally around the US?

Against: Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela. Total GDP: 550b
Neutral: Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay.
For: Mexico, Panama, Chile, Colombia. Total GDP: 2.5t

Latin America
 
Brazil a BRICS nation and very rocky relationship with the US.

Argentina is a major non-NATO ally, but it is one of the most anti-U.S. nations in the world, having long since suspended its automatic alignment policy and distanced itself from the U.S., and is still embroiled in the Falkland Islands dispute with the U.K., the U.S.'s closest ally
 
Yeh I am arguing with the Russian Report because well...Its Russian lol. It's a prediction nothing else probably drawn up and released in an attempt to shake up the region.

As for Latin American countries I could not tell you but I don't think the US will need them since they will have Nato at their disposal as well as the very valuable ANZUS treaty will could prove to be very valuable given the location of any conflict in that region.


Sense you don't like the Russians.

China’s navy is not poised to speed across the Pacific to threaten America the way the Soviet Union once did, if not worse. This despite Peter Navarro and Greg Autry’s over-the-top polemic, Death by China: Confronting the Dragon—A Global Call to Action, in which they claim that “[T]he People’s Republic is moving forward at Manhattan Project speed to develop a blue water navy capable of challenging the U.S. Navy.”


http://thediplomat.com/2012/08/chinas-not-so-scary-navy/
 
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