(November 14, 2013 at 7:56 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote:

(November 14, 2013 at 5:48 pm)Drich Wrote: It's N/K doing the fighting with equipment from China. That was like the US subsidizing with the taliban with wepons in the mid 80's when they were fighting the USSR. This ultimatly is what broke the back of communism in Russia. China learned this by watching us, and is in the position to do the very same thing to us with N/K.

Your forgetting a few things. First off is that the Korean tanks are home brewed, and have no real service record compared to a Abrams which can out manoeuvre and out shoot them. Another and more important is aerial superiority. Neither the Chinese nor the Koreans have anything that can touch a raptor or a f35. That not even thinking about what a arely Burke, or a los Angelo's class could do. The issue is insurgency warfare which I think would evaporate if you kept them well fed after the war.

Where do you think we get the parts to put into our missles, tanks and planes comes from? I saw a documentry "Death by China" it says that 95% of all of the avionics (Flate panel displays, flight sensors and computers) come from China.

If we went to war with them directly do you think they would continue to allow the export of parts to companies like lockheed martin and Boeing? We may do the final assembly of the planes here, but where do you think the parts for our over priced places comes from? How will we maintain our advantages if we can not service our equipment?

(November 15, 2013 at 11:49 am)Drich Wrote:

(November 14, 2013 at 7:56 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: Your forgetting a few things. First off is that the Korean tanks are home brewed, and have no real service record compared to a Abrams which can out manoeuvre and out shoot them. Another and more important is aerial superiority. Neither the Chinese nor the Koreans have anything that can touch a raptor or a f35. That not even thinking about what a arely Burke, or a los Angelo's class could do. The issue is insurgency warfare which I think would evaporate if you kept them well fed after the war.

Where do you think we get the parts to put into our missles, tanks and planes comes from? I saw a documentry "Death by China" it says that 95% of all of the avionics (Flate panel displays, flight sensors and computers) come from China.

If we went to war with them directly do you think they would continue to allow the export of parts to companies like lockheed martin and Boeing? We may do the final assembly of the planes here, but where do you think the parts for our over priced places comes from? How will we maintain our advantages if we can not service our equipment?

Mmmhhhmmmmm those effects would be interesting to say the least. In China you would have huge lay offs, while in the us you would a massive remobilization. With a huge Hick up in production and possibly price.

(November 15, 2013 at 11:54 am)Lemonvariable72 Wrote:

(November 15, 2013 at 11:49 am)Drich Wrote:

Where do you think we get the parts to put into our missles, tanks and planes comes from? I saw a documentry "Death by China" it says that 95% of all of the avionics (Flate panel displays, flight sensors and computers) come from China.

If we went to war with them directly do you think they would continue to allow the export of parts to companies like lockheed martin and Boeing? We may do the final assembly of the planes here, but where do you think the parts for our over priced places comes from? How will we maintain our advantages if we can not service our equipment?

Mmmhhhmmmmm those effects would be interesting to say the least. In China you would have huge lay offs, while in the us you would a massive remobilization. With a huge Hick up in production and possibly price.

You know that China is the worlds largest producer of rare earth materials, right?.... and largest is a bit of an understatement... they produce something like 95% of those things... And all electronics rely on them.
The US does have a rare earth production industry, but it can't economically compete with China... until the chinese cut it off... like they did a few months... (years?) ago.

(November 15, 2013 at 12:04 pm)pocaracas Wrote:

(November 15, 2013 at 11:54 am)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: Mmmhhhmmmmm those effects would be interesting to say the least. In China you would have huge lay offs, while in the us you would a massive remobilization. With a huge Hick up in production and possibly price.

You know that China is the worlds largest producer of rare earth materials, right?.... and largest is a bit of an understatement... they produce something like 95% of those things... And all electronics rely on them.
The US does have a rare earth production industry, but it can't economically compete with China... until the chinese cut it off... like they did a few months... (years?) ago.

Canada has large reserves of those too ircc

Actually, rare earth reserves are common. But their extraction and refinement is environmentally polluting. If China cuts of rare earth export to the rest of the world, the rest of the world could easily make good the deficiency, provided that relax the environement constraints on mining operation.

It was stupid for China to use rare earth export for political leverage on sensitive, but not instantly critical issues in relation to Japan. Rare earth is not such a overwhelming trump card, and using it prematurely simply means others would have become better prepared to defeat it if China faces a really critical issue and needed all the cards it can get.

(November 15, 2013 at 11:54 am)Lemonvariable72 Wrote:

(November 15, 2013 at 11:49 am)Drich Wrote:

Where do you think we get the parts to put into our missles, tanks and planes comes from? I saw a documentry "Death by China" it says that 95% of all of the avionics (Flate panel displays, flight sensors and computers) come from China.

If we went to war with them directly do you think they would continue to allow the export of parts to companies like lockheed martin and Boeing? We may do the final assembly of the planes here, but where do you think the parts for our over priced places comes from? How will we maintain our advantages if we can not service our equipment?

Mmmhhhmmmmm those effects would be interesting to say the least. In China you would have huge lay offs, while in the us you would a massive remobilization. With a huge Hick up in production and possibly price.

which would force their hand in other areas.

China is buying up huge tracts of land in Africa along side the nile and using it to grow their crops/rice. If their economy faulters, they still need that food/land, and the water the nile provides. alot of the countries who depend on the nile for water are already mad at china for diverting so much of the water of the nile onto crops that do not benfit that region at all. If China can not buy what it needs they are big enough now to simply take it. They are now the only true world power. When a country monoplizes manufacturing it controls the modern world. Allowing it to simply do as it pleases. All it need do is simply make it's wants a 'moral mandate' and the people of the largest nation and most powerful nation in the world will follow their popular morality where ever their goverment leads them.
Kinda reminds me of revaltion, and how it speak of this massive army of the 'east.' The nile drying up ect..

(November 15, 2013 at 1:35 pm)Drich Wrote: China is buying up huge tracts of land in Africa along side the nile and using it to grow their crops/rice. If their economy faulters, they still need that food/land, and the water the nile provides. alot of the countries who depend on the nile for water are already mad at china for diverting so much of the water of the nile onto crops that do not benfit that region at all.

I would hate to see the Nile river at Cairo, then, because if the Chinese pollute the Nile like they've polluted their own rivers, it will be a mess.

(November 14, 2013 at 7:56 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: Your forgetting a few things. First off is that the Korean tanks are home brewed, and have no real service record compared to a Abrams which can out manoeuvre and out shoot them. Another and more important is aerial superiority. Neither the Chinese nor the Koreans have anything that can touch a raptor or a f35. That not even thinking about what a arely Burke, or a los Angelo's class could do. The issue is insurgency warfare which I think would evaporate if you kept them well fed after the war.

Any war in North Korea probably won't happen today, but in the next decade or two. In general it is far harder for the leader in military technology to keep finding and breaking the right new ground in unexplored territory in order to maintain his margin of lead, than it is for a well funded, well organized, and determined power to observe the paths taken by the leader and catch up. During the course of the Cold War the Soviet Union made prodigious progress in closing the military technological gap the US over 40 years despite having an economy at no times larger than 30% of US economy. As far back as 1995, US department of defence assessed that it would take China 30 years (that is to 2025) to fully catch up with the US in military technology. Since then Chinese economy has grown at far faster rate than had been anticipated in 1995, consequently the amount of funding and resource the chinese have been able to devote to catching up in military technology has been much greater than that DOD assessment has foreseen. The Chinese have also achieve major military technological milestones, such as the first 5th generation stealth fighter, the first competitive 3rd generation MBT, the first experimental 4th generation MBT, mastery of active electronically scaled, low observability radar, etc, etc, much sooner than anticipated.

So based on this trend, it would appear any major technological and capability gaps between the US and China would largely disappear within the next 12 years at most.

In a little more than 10 years, a war in Korea could involve the US taking on a China that can essentially match all aspects of American military capability, but command far larger manpower reserve and much greater industrial production capacity, as well as a larger economy overall, right on China's own door steps. In 10 years, if the US were to choose to fight China over North Korea, the US would likely face much worse odds than was ever faced by the NATO on the plains of central Germany. China would also be much more capable of deterring the US from taking any active part in a conflict in Korea than she is today.

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(November 15, 2013 at 1:59 pm)Doubting Thomas Wrote:

(November 15, 2013 at 1:35 pm)Drich Wrote: China is buying up huge tracts of land in Africa along side the nile and using it to grow their crops/rice. If their economy faulters, they still need that food/land, and the water the nile provides. alot of the countries who depend on the nile for water are already mad at china for diverting so much of the water of the nile onto crops that do not benfit that region at all.

I would hate to see the Nile river at Cairo, then, because if the Chinese pollute the Nile like they've polluted their own rivers, it will be a mess.

The Chinese rationale for getting a foot in the door of Egyptian food supply is pure geopolitics, and has nothing to do with Chinese food supply. The truth is Egypt can't even feed itself and has relied on subsidized food imports to feed its own citizens since at least the 1960s. There is not even the slightest possibility of the farms along Nile being used to export food back to China.

The truth is the recent Egyptian political upheavel has its ultimate roots in China. China like Egypt, has also lost the ability to feed its own citizens and has had to resort to large scale food imports since the late 1990s. But China is now importing food on such a huge scale that the world prices for food has shot up. China has the ability to keep paying the higher prices, but Egypt doesn't. Egptian government under Mubarek basically bankrupted itself subsidizing food imports to keep domestic food prices low and lower classes contented. When Egyptian government finally ran out of money and stopped subsidizing the food, popular discontent rose and Mubarek is overthrown.

Egypt is in no better situation now. It still can't grow enough food to feed itself, it's government is still bankrupt, and it needs massive subsidies from Saudi-Arabia to keep paying for its own food import needs. So the Chinese undoubtedly calculating that by buying up any domestic food production capacity in Egypt, when the prices are cheap due to uncertainty surrounding political stability, it could in effect put a knife to the jugular of any future Egyptian government.

(November 14, 2013 at 5:48 pm)Drich Wrote:

(November 14, 2013 at 5:35 pm)Doubting Thomas Wrote: The North Korean military itself would be but a speed bump to our military now. China, on the other hand, would be more formidable.

It's N/K doing the fighting with equipment from China. That was like the US subsidizing with the taliban with wepons in the mid 80's when they were fighting the USSR. This ultimatly is what broke the back of communism in Russia.

No it wasn't.

America just out spent Russia with vastly expensive schemes that they had no way of competing with. When Gorbachev came in he looked at the financial mess his country was in and called it a day.

(November 15, 2013 at 3:28 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote:

(November 14, 2013 at 5:48 pm)Drich Wrote: It's N/K doing the fighting with equipment from China. That was like the US subsidizing with the taliban with wepons in the mid 80's when they were fighting the USSR. This ultimatly is what broke the back of communism in Russia.

No it wasn't.

America just out spent Russia with vastly expensive schemes that they had no way of competing with. When Gorbachev came in he looked at the financial mess his country was in and called it a day.

Not really. Data does not support this. I think the west suffers from a degree of post cold war trumphalism that encouraged it to distort the narrative to make its own triumph seem more congruant with one's own notion of natural law, and therefore more inevitable and more deserving than it actually was.

When Gorbachev became general secretary of the communist party Soviet Union had indeed lost much the economic and political dynamism it had enjoyed from end of WWII to mid 1960s. But it was still financially solvent. It's geopolitical position was also not bad, in many way better than it was during the helcyon days of world communist expansionism in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It's military and military technological position was also not that bad. Soviet Union was behind in some emerging fields of military technology like stealth, and probably getting increasingly further behind, but it had also caught up in some other vital fields like submarine silencing, where the US has long held a huge lead. Furthermore Soviet Union had raced ahead of the US in still other technologies, like space launch, deep sea operation, exploitation of meteological and oceanographical environments. Some of the leads in applied military technology the Soviets built up in the 1980s the US has not matched even to this day. Overall the Soviet Union was certainly still in a position to cut its losses abroad and hold its own in the Cold war when Gorbachev came to the helm.

When Gorbachev ascended to the supreme position he had, by his own admission, never before seen a copy of the Soviet government budget. He didn't seem to know where the Soviet government got vital parts of its annual revenue. He though most of what's wrong with the Soviet Union lies in a sort of moral malaise. He implemented a series of idealistic, but spectacularly ill judged, reforms that drastically curtailed state revenue without any immediate offsets in state expenditures. In his 6 years at the helm the Soviet state went from slight annual budget surplus to several hundred billion rubbles of annual deficit. (at the time a rubble was worth more than a dollar). In a way he was doing to USSR what Ronald reagan was advocating doing to the US. He began the ruination of both Soviet state finances as well as public confidence in the Soviet State. He then coupled his blunders with a dilly dallying style of management in dealing with the consequences of his blunders. As the trouble in Soviet Union mounted, Gorbachev buried his head in the sand, and judged his own successes by the applauses and accolades he is receiving from the west rather than by concrete achievement in improving the actual performances of Soviet society and economy. Ultimately as accolades from the west reached a crescendo, the Soviet Union collapsed around him.

You might say cynically that Gorbachev won the race with Ronald Reagan to see which of them can ruin his country first with deficits, in part because Soviet Economy was much smaller and therefore easier to ruin. Proportionally, Gorbachev cut taxes a lot more than Reagan did.

Why Gorbechev was so incompetent and how it came about that he was put in the supreme leadership position of the Soviet Union is a rather involved and complicated story.

The west tend to want to lionize Gorbachev for causing the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he was not a hero, nor a visionary, nor a believer in the capitalist system or political liberalism in the western style. He was simply a man of modest abilities, excessively high opinion of the abilities he did have, expansive ambitions not rooted in deep thinking, who was in way over his head. He didn't want to end communism. He didn't want to stop the monpoly of power by communist party, he didn't want the Soviet Union to retreat from Eastern Europe. It all happened in defiance of his wishes because he blundered time and again.

If one wishes to examine the current Chinese government for some hints of what sort of prior experiences animates its current policies, one would find "avoiding the mistakes of Gorbachev in any reform" to be the single unifying mentra that runs through all fractions of the Chinese communist party, regardless of whether they are politically liberal or conservative, economically for state control or for free market.