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  1. #21
    Lets start a war with China...because anyone that thinks that's a great idea is still living in mom's basement playing wiki scholar and refuses to grasp reality instead.

  2. #22
    The Unstoppable Force Ghostpanther's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seja Victrix View Post
    And New England is called New England, but that doesn't mean it belongs to England yet.
    Hehe. Yeah, a bit like the Indian Ocean does not belong to India.

  3. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Seja Victrix View Post
    And New England is called New England, but that doesn't mean it belongs to England yet.
    Because America kicked some British ass not once but twice. But I digress.

    Quote Originally Posted by Skroe View Post
    Territorial defense _does_not_work_ for great powers. Forward defense does. Every time a great power has replaced forward defense with merely patrolling their borders, it's met with disaster.
    We're not talking about forward defense here with the South China Sea. We're talking about the outdated imperialist doctrine of American exceptionalism that's propping up the illusion that we have some sort of right to park our boats in Asian territory. It's the typical World Police attitude that America has had for far too long. But all it'll ever amount to is "tensions" between the US and China because the two nations' economies are entirely dependent on each other. They loan us money so we can keep buying their crap. This entire conversation is almost entirely pointless.
    "He who lives without discipline dies without honor" - Viking proverb

  4. #24
    The Unstoppable Force Ghostpanther's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shadowferal View Post
    Lets start a war with China...because anyone that thinks that's a great idea is still living in mom's basement playing wiki scholar and refuses to grasp reality instead.
    The US does not have to start a actual firing war to win this battle over China's claim of International waters.

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Skroe View Post
    If Trump wanted to engage in a foreign policy action I could get behind, he should order the US Navy to rapidly destroy as many of the remaining reefs and shoals that don't have a Chinese presence on them as possible, to prevent them from being used as foundations for artificial islands in years ahead.

    The rollback must begin at capping Chinese expansionism, and the best way to do that is to remove the thing they're expanding on from the map completely

    These are the kind of things China is building on. That's a dredging ship in the background for scale:



    They really aren't large and can easily be drowned.

    - - - Updated - - -



    One second hand one, that doesn't fly aircraft all that often, and when it does, because it's a old Soviet ski-jump carrier without a catapult, they carry less fuel and weapons than their land-based or US Navy counterparts because of weight restrictions.
    Yes. People who regularly accuse Trump of being a warhawk are totes going to stand behind Trump blowing up reefs to stick it to the Chinese. This is the guy people got pissed about taking a phone call from Taiwan that pissed off China.

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Ghostpanther View Post
    The US does not have to start a actual firing war to win this battle over China's claim of International waters.
    And all China has to do is threaten to call the US on all of it's loans. And Wall Street will be terrified enough to tell DC a resounding "Hell no! BACK THE FUCK OFF!"

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Hubcap View Post

    Is Vietnam and other countries going to have to go around these "fake" Chinese territorial waters?

    This is why the US violates China's territorial claims on a daily basis, so as to keep the shipping lanes free.
    Do you actually think China wouldn't keep the lanes free?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jimmy Thick View Post
    China would be the biggest pushover, worse than Iraq, if they tangled with the might USA. How many aircraft carriers do they have?
    China doesn't need carriers, simply because it has no need of projecting power far beyond its borders, and that is all carriers are good for.
    Quote Originally Posted by Maxos View Post
    When you play the game of MMOs, you win or you go f2p.

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Shadowferal View Post
    And all China has to do is threaten to call the US on all of it's loans. And Wall Street will be terrified enough to tell DC a resounding "Hell no! BACK THE FUCK OFF!"
    Umm, US Treasury Bills can't be "called in". That's internet fiction. Always has been. And besides, demand for US Debt vastly outstrips supply. If China were to dump them, they'd find many buyers and it wouldn't at all affect US creditworthiness.

    I don't understand why people think that the international economy works on the same principle of loan sharks and debtors. If the US had to it could just "create" money and pay off "the debt to China", such as it is, just like that. What do you people think the three rounds of Quantitative Easing was, other than multi-trillion dollars exercises in creating money?

  9. #29
    The Unstoppable Force Ghostpanther's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shadowferal View Post
    And all China has to do is threaten to call the US on all of it's loans. And Wall Street will be terrified enough to tell DC a resounding "Hell no! BACK THE FUCK OFF!"
    I am sure they are not stupid enough to do that over some stinking little sandy islands.

  10. #30
    Deleted
    Trumps already been proven as paper on China.
    Remember that currency manipulator statement? tariffs being imposed? military confrontation in the South China Sea being dismissed by his Secretary of Defense? the phonecall saying that he would abide by the one china policy?
    Trumps rhetorical hyperbole has already been shown to be a bluff.

    The US now has a president who probably doesn't read, can't conduct us foriegn policy and doesnt know how foriegn affairs work. Hes too busy fucking up the US domestically.

    The Us has lost its credibility in the world and will struggle to contain China even moreso now.

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Shadowferal View Post
    And all China has to do is threaten to call the US on all of it's loans. And Wall Street will be terrified enough to tell DC a resounding "Hell no! BACK THE FUCK OFF!"
    The US would default, everyone knows that. "Thanks for all that money!"
    .

    "This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."

    -- Capt. Copeland

  12. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by Ghostpanther View Post
    I am sure they are not stupid enough to do that over some stinking little sandy islands.
    I'm sure the US isn't stupid enough to create instability to begin with for the sake of a gamble.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Hubcap View Post
    The US would default, everyone knows that. "Thanks for all that money!"
    And Wall Street would burn when foreign investors pull out of it in droves.

  13. #33
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Wolfman31 View Post
    Because America kicked some British ass not once but twice. But I digress.
    Washington D.C. looked especially good after 1812. ;-)

  14. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Shadowferal View Post
    And Wall Street would burn when foreign investors pull out of it in droves.
    Naw, the next day we'd ask for a trillion dollar loan and get it.
    .

    "This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."

    -- Capt. Copeland

  15. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Wolfman31 View Post
    Because America kicked some British ass not once but twice. But I digress.



    We're not talking about forward defense here with the South China Sea. We're talking about the outdated imperialist doctrine of American exceptionalism that's propping up the illusion that we have some sort of right to park our boats in Asian territory. It's the typical World Police attitude that America has had for far too long. But all it'll ever amount to is "tensions" between the US and China because the two nations' economies are entirely dependent on each other. They loan us money so we can keep buying their crap. This entire conversation is almost entirely pointless.
    Yeah wrong on a few points.

    (1) The Asia-Pacific region accounts for over 60% of global trade. The US is principally a trade power. Our fortunes and fates are inextricably linked to the region, and with that comes our security desires. We're also (not coincidentally) allies with many countries in the region, including Japan and South Korea, two economic power houses. This is the very defintion of why "forward defense" is valid in this case. Our border, such as it is, is 200 miles off the coast of China, because that is where our economic interests lie and where the security requirements of our allies in the region lie.

    That's not imperialism at all. That's just smart policy.

    (2) The idea that "because they trade they'll never fight" has been throughly undermined over the last 10 years. It used to be called the "Golden Arches" theory - that if two countries had McDonalds in them, they'd never engage in hostility. And it's been shown to be bunk as the world has destablized over the past decade.

    Furthermore RAND did a very comprehensive Economic analysis as part of their conflict assessment, that I linked in the second post in the thread.

    http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand...AND_RR1140.pdf

    Pretty much, Economics would not constraint either side, because both sides prioritize security requirements over economic imperatives. Furthermore the fallout for China would be vastly disproporionate compared to the US.

    Trade
    • Glick and Taylor found that, on average, there is an 80*percent
    immediate drop in trade between adversaries when war commences.1
    • There was a 96*percent drop in trade in World War I and a 97*percent
    decline in trade in World War II; trade between adversaries
    in these wars was “almost totally destroyed.”2
    • Therefore, we assume a 90*percent drop in bilateral trade (between
    the United States and China) after one year of severe conflict.
    • Every 1* percent increase in trade, divided by GDP, equals a
    1.97*percent increase in GDP per capita.3


    U.S. Losses
    • Total bilateral trade in 2013 equaled $562*billion.
    • U.S. GDP in 2014 equaled $17.4 trillion.
    • For the United States, a 90*percent loss in bilateral trade equals
    a 3*percent decrease in trade, divided by GDP, which lea
    6*percent decrease in GDP per capita (per year). (See Figures B.1
    and B.2.)
    • The United States would suffer a 6*percent decrease in GDP after
    one year as a result of a 90*percent bilateral trade loss.


    China’s Losses

    • Total bilateral trade in 2013 equaled $562*billion.
    • China’s GDP in 2014 equaled $9.2 trillion.
    • For China, a 90*percent loss in bilateral trade equals a 5*percent
    decrease in trade, divided by GDP, which leads to a 10*percent
    decrease in GDP per capita (per year). (See Figures B.1 and B.2.)
    • China would suffer a 10*percent decrease in GDP after one year
    as a result of a 90*percent bilateral trade loss.
    • China would suffer a 30* percent decrease in GDP after one
    year as a result of a 90*percent bilateral trade loss, an 80*percent
    East Asian regional trade loss, and a 50*percent global trade loss
    (because of the postulated “war zone” effect on seaborne trade in
    the Western Pacific).
    Page 107 and 108. Read it and weep.

  16. #36
    Remind me, who was called the warmonger in the campaign ?

  17. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by Hubcap View Post
    Naw, the next day we'd ask for a trillion dollar loan and get it.
    Only in your fantasy.
    Reality would be that China would be on war footing on this point.

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Hubcap View Post
    The US would default, everyone knows that. "Thanks for all that money!"
    This is not how anything works, omfg.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapo.../#2325527b156d
    Consider this, the U.S. has around $16 trillion in outstanding debt and most of it is held by us, and the bulge bracket banks here at home: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank, Bank of America. Around 7.5 percent is held by China, the biggest foreign holder of U.S. debt.

    One of the reasons why China has so much Treasury holdings is because of trade. Companies put money in short term Treasury notes and bills to settle trade payments. China's government could also call all of its own holdings and demand full payment of the money it lent us in principal plus interest, but under what circumstance would they do such a thing?

    It would be a national security risk if China held a position where they could dictate U.S. policy on fiscal and monetary matters. They cannot.

    If the economy was crashing and China got terrified and wanted their money back, unless the U.S. defaulted, it would hand it over and there would be nothing China would get in return. Moreover, when the U.S. economy was collapsing in 2008 all the way to the 666 low on March 6 in the S&P 500, China never retreated from Treasurys, or demand Congress get its finances in order or else it would choose to buy euros, or gold instead.

    The Pentagon did an evaluation on the risks posed by China's ownership of U.S. debt in July and came to the same conclusion: "Attempting to use U.S. Treasury securities as a coercive tool would have limited effect and likely would do more harm to China than to the United States."

    The report was sent to congressional committees by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who called China's ownership of U.S. debt non-problematic and non-threatening.

    The USBC's take is that Chinawants its holdings of Treasury debt to gain value, not lose value. And just because interest rates are going down, that doesn't mean China is losing value on those holdings. Lower interest rates might be bad for income generation, but they mean more demand for bonds, which means higher bond prices.
    "Calling in the debt" is legitimately the worst internet argument there is. It's a total work of fiction that somehow equates the US sale in T-Bills to a house loan from a bank.

  19. #39
    The Insane Daelak's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alydael View Post
    After things like Obama's "red line" in Syria (when Asad crossed the "red line" and Obama extremely weakened our foreign position by doing absolutely nothing) and other things Obama has done have extremely weakened our global position.

    China actually called him the "paper tiger."

    That is why Russia and China have been emboldened and we have the current situation we have. The left will try to blame trump even though he has only been in office for a few months, because the facts and common sense don't matter- just their narrative does.

    What you see is the new pecking order being established. It used to be: US, Russia, China.

    China has been coming up and is trying to upset the order. Russia and China have seen 8 years of the "paper tiger" and feel we are vunerable to be pushed off the hill.

    Will we be? Nobody knows, it all depends how the next four years play out.

    We actually need to be unified now, but with the dems trying to do everything they possibly can and spending millions upon millions of dollars to purposefully make this president fail (regardless of the harm that will do to our country), I don't see that unity happening.
    This is factually wrong. The red line in Syria was a call for international action with the UN, and we did. There was no public support for another war in the ME, which is why Obama didn't go into Syria. If we did go into war with Syria, it would of made the situation worse.

    The only things that have weakened our global position is withdrawing from the TPP (Trump) and having an administration using the cyber-warfare resources of a hostile adversary to get into the white house (Trump). None of these have anything to do with Obama.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Alydael View Post
    Well, this is what the years of extreme division has cost this country, our credibility.

    Who divided us? The political parties that push division. Repub vs Dem, left v right, poor v rich, race v race. Go ahead divide us into "voter blocks." Whatever it takes to eek out that victory at the ballot box, regardless of the cost to our nation.

    Which is why I am 100% independent and completely believe that we will never get our credibility (or our prosperity) back until we manage to some dislodge the leeches (the Demn an Pub party) from their tyrannical (and I would even argue unconstitutional) grip on our nation.

    That's why they have to keep us divided, we come together and they know the first thing we do will be to give them the boot.
    There is only one party, one ideology, that has divided the US since ratification. Modern conservatism has always been antithetical to the central planks of liberal democracy. You can see it in the concessions made for slave states to join the Union. You can see the almost effortless push of pro-confederacy propaganda work on the impoverished and uneducated in the south and tidewater to fight for a lifestyle that benefits an extreme minority. You can see it in post-reconstruction south, where Jim Crow laws and lynching of black people because they dared to redress their grievances to their representative government. You see it in the Goldwater era, segregation, anti-CRA and VRA. And now you see it today, where the interests of conservatism and their media channels are now aligned with a hostile power to the US and all you hear is deafening silence from their side because they want a leader like Putin, they want a virtual and physical police state with over 1,000,000 "secret police".
    Quote Originally Posted by zenkai View Post
    There is a problem, but I know just banning guns will fix the problem.

  20. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by Skroe View Post
    Our border, such as it is, is 200 miles off the coast of China, because that is where our economic interests lie and where the security requirements of our allies in the region lie.

    That's not imperialism at all. That's just smart policy.
    You're right. America is just one big glorified East India Trading Company, asserting its influence both economically and militarily in the name of "good business". That's not Imperialism. It's Imperial Consumerism.
    "He who lives without discipline dies without honor" - Viking proverb

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