The Coming War on China

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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu May 21, 2020 12:49 pm

PufPuf93 » Thu May 21, 2020 12:41 am wrote: don't you mean Joe rather than Eugene McCarthy as the great anti-communist?


Of course, but Jack rolled with it so gracefully I didn't want to call attention to my mistake.

As for the US losing war game simulations, two things should be born in mind:

1) Actual security audits / assessments don't get released to the public, and conversely

2) "War Games" that do get released to the public are requests for elevated funding, not assessments of our military capabilities
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby PufPuf93 » Thu May 21, 2020 3:14 pm

Wombaticus Rex » Thu May 21, 2020 9:49 am wrote:
PufPuf93 » Thu May 21, 2020 12:41 am wrote: don't you mean Joe rather than Eugene McCarthy as the great anti-communist?


Of course, but Jack rolled with it so gracefully I didn't want to call attention to my mistake.

As for the US losing war game simulations, two things should be born in mind:

1) Actual security audits / assessments don't get released to the public, and conversely

2) "War Games" that do get released to the public are requests for elevated funding, not assessments of our military capabilities


Thought that was likely the case of Eugene instead of Joe.

I actually met Eugene McCarthy when he came to California in the 1968 election cycle before RFK entered the fray. My roommate at boarding school had a sister at a well-know Eastern prep school and one of McCarthy's daughters was her roommate. My roommate's mother was a national figure in NOW and also ran and lost several Democratic party primaries in their state. When McCarthy was in San Francisco for a rally, they stayed in the Clift Hotel and my roommates family came to visit so I got to eat a breakfast and a dinner at the Clift and us four children went to a rock show at Fillmore West (and the McCarthy rally at SF Civic Auditorium). We were staying in two rooms several floors away from the political entourage and outside that security. RIP Eric. I have been an antiwar Democrat ever since (which means I have never actually gotten to vote for a candidate I actually supported for POTUS).

A general shooting war between the USA and China seems highly unlikely. What I can see is trade war where China and other nations look to physically, economically, and politically choke the USA out of world trade markets. This is already at a slow boil. If a major hot war was to occur, the war would be initiated by stupid people in the USA.

Too bad we spend so much on military and that military is so imbedded in our national culture.
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu May 21, 2020 8:47 pm

PufPuf93 » Thu May 21, 2020 2:14 pm wrote:What I can see is trade war where China and other nations look to physically, economically, and politically choke the USA out of world trade markets. This is already at a slow boil.


"World trade markets" are essentially an extension of the American, British and European economies. Those trades are denominated in USD and lubricated by the eurodollar, a polite euphemism for formalized & legally protected money laundering at scale. OBOR was collapsing even before the nCoV shock hit, and China has a major debt crisis incoming. The only area where China is likely to achieve success is Hong Kong, which will come at great cost to them, and the South Seas, which will come very easily for them.

At least until they find out about our new weapons.

PufPuf93 » Thu May 21, 2020 2:14 pm wrote:If a major hot war was to occur, the war would be initiated by stupid people in the USA.

Too bad we spend so much on military and that military is so imbedded in our national culture.


Here, I disagree. The Chinese are even more obstinate than the Americans and would go to war simply to save face.

What we see domestically in the US is rival factions: one of them, the actual establishment, has little interest in actually fighting China and indeed, most of them are compromised by them. We're currently in the same situation we were prior to WWII, where major corporations and banks are essentially engaged with treason in their efforts to sell china weapons systems, technology, and finance their growth in exchange for access to their markets and their money.

They own the media, they own the banks and they own most of the nonprofit opinion-making institutions.

The other rival US faction, a handful of generals, longtime critics of China in journalism and academia, and Steve "Can't Stop, Won't Stop" Bannon, are agitating for the US to flex their economic might to push back on China. There are many means to do this. Just the same, I think, with Bannon especially, this is a disingenuous stance, because they know full well where these early soft power measures will lead: to a more direct confrontation. We're already seeing sabotage attacks and assassinations on both sides.

This faction owns very little in the way of platforms, depending upon friendly websites and Bannon's own "podcast" news rants from the Brietbart Embassy in DC.

However, consider China. There, you're seeing Bannon-level rhetoric coming not from the fringes of their political system, but directly from their diplomatic corps, their military establishment and the party itself. There is no idle talk, no open debate there. This is the party line, and they are preparing their population for war.
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Grizzly » Thu May 21, 2020 11:57 pm

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri May 22, 2020 1:17 am

what was the point of that clip? I don't get what Imus is saying, or why it's so short. this is not a rebuke but an honest question
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Grizzly » Fri May 22, 2020 1:57 am

That both wings of the war party sold us out? To the Chinese for thirty coins? It was a tweet by JFK jr about selling our technology to the Chinese. Note he says Democrats, but we both know it's both Coke and Pepsi.

It was a pinned tweet...
https://twitter.com/John_F_Kennnedy/status/1096550466824003584

Don Imus interviews JFK Jr. in 1997 and an interesting discussion popped up related to current events, China and technology.


And War.

That both parties have done nothing for the average working class American (benefit the country as a whole) in a long, long, long time, and that they've only done things that benefit themselves, to the detriment of our whole nation.

Image

Just as the CCCP are preparing their population for war. Our parasitic elite fucks are bunkering in themselves, and fuck the people.
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri May 22, 2020 2:26 am

John F. Kennedy Jr. is almost definitely dead. Based on his tenure with George Magazine, he also understood production values, so I doubt he was behind that video.

If you're interested in the subject he's discussing, highly recommend "Year of the Rat," a lean and devastating brief on the Clinton administration's corruption and compromise via China. They also lay out the satellite issue being discussed there. I thought the significance of the clip was Imus' point at the end there, which seems to imply that the subject is "entertainment," which threw me off.

One of the dynamics the book helps explain, though, is that it's not accurate to say that Clinton, or even his administration, sold our technology to China. Defense contractors did that. They become a tremendous liability when you've built a system to protect them at all costs -- and once your domestic demand starts scaling back too much to maintain the profit margins they demand. So, they start making deals with your enemies. The Clinton admin definitely enabled this, most especially William Perry and mystery man John Huang (via Jackson Stephens), allowing them waivers and gutting the COCOM system that was supposed to prevent such transfers.

In a lot of ways, Clinton reminds me of Trump, much more interested in his own image and perception than he was in any actual policy goals or strategic ends. He just the lucky sumbitch who got to manage the plaza, smack dab in the middle of DC's salad days of selling out the assets, foreign policy and future of these United States.
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Grizzly » Fri May 22, 2020 3:04 am

Thanks Rex. I always appreciate your reading recommendations..
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Harvey » Fri May 22, 2020 9:21 am

Here, I disagree. The Chinese are even more obstinate than the Americans and would go to war simply to save face.


Struggling to reconcile that comment with your general admirable grasp of current and past affairs, far superior to mine in every regard. I'm also aware you embody the consensus American view on China to quite a degree but can you defend this in terms which make sense of actual recent Chinese history, in the context of, say, the last American century which we know a lot about, you know, the arguable thirty million or so which US wars have killed since 45 compared to, well, what? For additional context, China was 6500 years into her civilisation when the first European feet were trampling grass in the America's.

In the context of the opium wars and the 'opening' of Japan, the subsequent pyschosis of the Japanese imperium and the western indifference or support for Japans rapid and brutal attemted crushing of China, what exactly do you believe the above sentence informs us with?
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri May 22, 2020 12:36 pm

Wombaticus Rex » Fri May 15, 2020 7:06 pm wrote:I do want to add a snippet I posted in the Coronathread 20 years ago in February, though -- an insight into the nature of China's regime and indeed, their national character.

This is from a conversation with Peter Piot, a gloriously out-sized man who made a credible case for why Ghebreyesus had to appease China's demands: it's the only fucking way to deal with them.

He praises the role of the World Health Organization, which he says is nimbler under Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian and its first African director. Dr Tedros has been criticised for going easy on China, which suppressed information in the early stages of the outbreak. “The dilemma is he could have his five minutes of fame by bashing China. But what happens afterwards? You need to work with them,” he says, scooping up some juicy borlotti beans.

“It’s a fine line. I learnt this the hard way,” he says, referring to 2002 when UNAids, the organisation he ran from 1995 to 2008, issued the so-called “Titanic Peril” report, which argued that China had many more cases of HIV than it was admitting. “It’s the only time that my then boss, Kofi Annan, called me on a Sunday afternoon. He said, ‘Peter, you’re a brave man, but nobody has ever won against the People’s Republic of China.’”

Piot gritted his teeth and publicly apologised. Still, he remembers a meeting a few years later with Wen Jiabao, then premier, in the Hall of the Purple Light in Zhongnanhai, the communist party’s inner sanctum.

“Wen asked me, ‘What’s the situation, what should we do?’ And I thought, you have 10 seconds to think. Am I going to be diplomatic or am I going to say the truth? He must have seen it. He said, ‘Forget who I am. Forget that we’re the Communist party. Tell me what you think and I’ll see what I can do.’ Piot advised Beijing to be more open about the problem and to work with people who were vulnerable, including drug addicts and sex workers, rather than jailing them. China’s policy changed decisively after that encounter.


So when they can take credit for it being their sole decision, they'll make the right decision. DOD is making a deliberate bid to deny them that option.


Look, I realize it sounds like I'm making some sort of racist conclusion that Americans are better than the Chinese, I am not. Bear in mind I hate everyone. But I also believe, and this is currently rather heretical in many English-speaking circles, that different people are different. The Mighty Han River has been flowing for a very long time and they are demonstrably different even from their fellow Asians. Indeed, they tend to dominate their fellow Asians pretty much everywhere they go, aside from Japan and Korea. This observation is not my own, and in light of the results they have achieved in recent centuries, it verges upon historical fact.

I am not saying that the Chinese leadership is more bloodthirsty, or more bellicose, or more savage than the Americans. I am saying they are more focused on their pride -- actual pride, too, "saving face" on a level that Americans do not, because frankly Americans cannot understand it. Americans are much more flexible animals, happy to lie to ourselves every bit as much as we lie to others. For the Chinese, an affront is an affront: they would never look the other way if Saudi Arabia attacked Beijing, for instance.

The American Way of Propaganda reflects this perhaps even more so than the American Way of War: our mediasphere is a system built for fast pivots, one-week about-face turns where yesterday's messaging is memory holed in favor of something completely different. Part of this is the cynicism of necessity, being something of a mercenary Empire for sale since WWII, but part of that is knowing cynicism: they know it will work good enough. It's never completely effective but nothing ever is and nothing ever has to be, in that line of work.

In China, they take more time and enact these changes at a slower, deeper level, which is a big part of why Golden Shield style censorship is so necessary for their system.

In short, the Chinese are locked into a dynamic they cannot escape, and a dynamic that American leadership could easily walk away from or change approaches to. And if Biden is elected, we will surely do both. They will not be sufficient to appease the party machine beneath Xi.
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby JackRiddler » Fri May 22, 2020 6:39 pm

WRex, I think you've avoided a few questions and points I've brought up regarding your premises, which is yours to do, but I do wonder if you've noticed this:

1. China has thoroughly infiltrated or compromised US intel, MIC corps, natsec agencies, etc.

2. China is the bigger risk for starting a hot war because of concerns over face (as a geostrategic and nationalist reality).

3. New US weapons are going to make them regret that, if they try it.

If 1 is true, then how do they not know that 2 would lead to 3?
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri May 22, 2020 8:04 pm

Beats the hell out of of me, man, I don't fuckin' work there. Why did the Bush administration think we'd be greeted as liberators? Why did Hitler think betraying Stalin was a good call?

"Strategy is often a matter of competing myopias," as some wag once put it. It's possible they believe that since they're compromised so many of the people involved, the US will never actually use it past testing and posturing. It's possible they believe that they've effectively neutralized those threats by introducing some kind of poison pill tech into those satellites and orbital weapons platforms. It's possible they believe that they have sufficiently infiltrated the R&D process to have developed and deployed effective countermeasures.

It's also possible they're wrong about all of that.

I would suspect offhand, though, that's it's none of that -- that they largely believe their own hype about their "economic superweapons" and upper hand against the debt-ridden US, and they've got us on a tight enough leash to play ball.
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri May 22, 2020 8:23 pm

This also bleeds into the limitations of "intelligence" as a strategic asset: it is not enough to "collect everything" if you don't have a culture that can use it. Early USSR had absolutely amazing SIGINT, but what good could it do them with paranoid dictators deciding what reality was? No wonder you got men like Beria, who just kept the dictator happy and used his power to rape women. That was no culture for strategic thinkers, for men of vision. Such men got killed.

The United States of America has often had the same problem, but perversely, we do have a culture for strategic thinkers and men of vision, and it's not our military. It's the one we inherited from the British Empire: it's the same mendacious vampire squid that's been hollowing out our economy and our government for centuries now, "The Private Sector." Sure, most of it is just grifts and cons, but at the core, you really have to have your shit straight and cannot be lying to yourself, at least not for long, and not without losing your place at the table.

By that logic, it stands to reason that the major countervailing force against Chinese aggression on the party level would be the same "Offshore Chinese" empire I mentioned earlier, who recognize the value in an uneasy peace and an open marketplace across the Pacific. This is why the tension between Taiwan and Hong Kong vs. Mainland China is so interesting and so fraught -- the CPC is practically chopping off a limb, trying to take ownership of assets they cannot manage as well as the existing owners. It indicates a severe lapse of judgement, an almost suicidal variant of the imperial will to power.

But I guess all empires squint towards suicide, though, eh?

The US had perfectly adequate on the ground intelligence to know they were losing all of their recent lost wars, but they persisted because those wars were simply not bring driven by any strategic aims, because "victory" was never the point, only the promise, the pitch.

As General Flynn so eloquently put it, "We are such a strong country, but we have gotten away from the idea of how to actually win anything. There is a machinery that is behind what we do, and it keeps us participating in the conflict because it generates wealth."

My long arc of my point is not that the US is some strategically superior intelligent superpower, just lucky by means of circumstances and facing an opponent that is far less so. Human beings are simply incapable of governing human society, none of this ends well for anyone.
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby PufPuf93 » Fri May 22, 2020 9:57 pm

There are economic reasons that drive the military machine and posture of the USA, other nations too, but in the USA far too much.

Military contractors for equipment, supplies, and services are immense, by7 far the most for any other nation. Local economies are too often dependent on military base or military contractor.

Politicians and corporations abetted by media hype the need for more government spending on military.

The money involved warps the entire endeavor.

I believe almost nothing we are told about the military in MSM. We hear stories about risks from China, Iran, Venezuela; hell just about anywhere is a threat that needs more money. There is a constant churn. Assholes get rich. Military even if just built trained and maintained has a huge environmental and social impact :mad2
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Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Fri May 22, 2020 10:40 pm

How will China buy American beef if they are at war with you?
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