Should we prepare for war with China?
China has been busily ramping up its military, working on strategies specifically designed to keep America at bay in Asia if necessary, according to a recent Pentagon report. Yet here in the US, the defense establishment is discussing cutting its budget, and shifting more and more resources to counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts, complains Peter Brookes of the New York Post. “Some increasingly worry about our ability to fight a big-power war,” he writes. “From the Pentagon report, it’s clear we have competition.”
The report credits China with “the most active land-based ballistic- and cruise-missile program in the world,” and says Beijing is intent on building its own aircraft carrier by 2010. “This muscling-up isn’t likely to end soon,” Brookes writes. The US has 11 aircraft carriers, but mobilizing them is a slow process. Many of our fighter planes are older than their pilots, and our edge in defensive tech is slipping. Yes, counter-terrorism is important, “but we need to be ready for possible fights to come.”
Related articles:
- China ups military edge over Taiwan, Pentagon says (reuters.com)
- Scholars say China unlikely to ever satisfy US wishes on greater military transparency (foxnews.com)
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Professor Mike
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War with China? Where would get our crappy plastic knickknacks? Mexico? They’re far too busy with that whole drug gig.
LOL!!
Trouble with building up your military as a jobs creation method is there’s little payback. Soldiers aren’t paid enough to put $ back into the economy, and if they’re overseas that $ doesn’t return. So better we should put the $ into non-military jobs creation – WPA type stuff.
As far as manufacturing, military ordnance sales overseas are often subsidized by the US taxpayer.
If we stopped the overkill spending (by overkill I mean significantly above what’s needed to maintain a strong military) on Defense and sunk the same $ into R&D and manufacturing marketable products to sell here and abroad we could make real progress towards closing the trade deficit.
why wouldn’t the Chinese want their own job churning military industrial complex. It’s socialism at it’s finest. Gotta piss em off that corporate America does it better than they do.
Good point man!
Don’t see it happening militarily, when they could crush us by calling in their markers for money. I glossed over something recently, while making up a lesson plan I had to turn in for grading, that we spend more than the entire world combined on our MIC. Anyone know if that is true? I don’t want to relive last weeks homework, so I don’t want to go looking for the information.
Jess..
Don’t know if this graph will go through the link…
http://static.globalissues.org/i/military/10/country-distribution-2009.png
It looked something like that but it was us spending more. Wow, that is a lot to keep hallibrton et al with high priced shower curtains and nice yachts.
Not saying that we don’t need a defense. But maybe we could drop down from 46 percent of all military spending in the world to just say…33 percent, we would still be 5 times what China spends (6.6%) and 10 times what Russia (3.3%) spends.
Then maybe we could pay our cops and teachers a little more or keep them from getting layed off, or fix some highway bridges that are collapsing. You know, general maintenance to keep that third world country label off a few more years.
Interesting. I doubt the public and private think tanks that project future needs assessments realized this. They will be most grateful indeed for your observations 🙂 🙂 All in good humor now…
Ya, I don’t see them giving me a call anytime soon. And I’m still looking for my party invitation to the Joint Chief’s annual Stripper and Barbecue Wing Ding. Must have gotten lost in the mail.
(or MH intercepted it. Probably for my own good)
LOL! I’ll see what I can do about that invitation. I’m tight with those folks 🙂 🙂
Iran actually has been very conciliatory.if we would drop the sanctions and allow US firms to invest there as well as Iranian purchase of our goods we could do some real damage 2 our trade deficit. Keep in mind too that our saber rattling helps the regime, it distracts the people from the economy, causes them to rally behind the leader.
Sadly there will always be an enemy somewhere. Today it is terrorism. Iran and North Korea are getting a bit nasty and some point action will have to be taken by someone to neutralize the threat they pose to their neighbors. Our nation needs to be secure. To sit back and say we don’t need to keep our military prepared is a rather naive view. I wish I was wrong but I am not. As long as there are people there will be wars. Again, some wars are necessary to preserve the peace and security of the nation.
China won’t deny it’s history of being a non-invading power. Hundreds of years ago it had the manpower and the technology to run roughshod over Asia and as much of Europe as they wanted. They chose not to, they even build a Great Wall to keep everyone else out. They won’t take their military on a jaunt round the world, not while they have a population that needs keeping down.
I think u hit the nail on the head both times Holte, both historically and by your “keep them down” observation. Sensible agreement on the Taiwan flashpoint would be a plus for all concerned.
Good point, Krell. If we stop all military spending and China continues to build it’s military at their present pace, by 2200 or so they may achieve parity. Fortunately the DofD has increased military spending beyond Bush levels so along with the deficit hawks slashing state spending we should remain safe from the sound of Chinese bugles heralding human wave attacks along Pennsylvania ave anytime soon.
I think we should start preparing right now. Eventually the Islam “problem” is going to go away and then who will be our enemy?
If the country doesn’t have a enemy, we may not care about the latest in weaponry and military technology?
Hell, we may even want to spend it on frivolous stuff like education or maybe infrastructure. Everybody knows what a dead end road that is.