Things that make you go "hmm:" Yahoo News reporting a Russian engineer is asking for asylum and offering Tu-160 secrets.
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Europe under extreme duress
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Ah yes….the love child of that time an American B-1 and RAF Vulcan had drunk sex in Russia.
Are those as good as A12 secrets? Or Iranian “stealth fighter” secrets?
Couple of interesting articles in Foreign Affairs and Bloomberg:
The US ‘Domain Awareness Gap’ Goes Way Beyond Balloons
If a major conflict breaks out with China, America’s once-vaunted defense industrial base will be exposed as a comatose geriatric, not a sleeping giant.If we go to war with China, our industrial base won't matter. Even if we had a good one, it'd be nuked if we ever got close to winning.Couple of interesting articles in Foreign Affairs and Bloomberg:
The US ‘Domain Awareness Gap’ Goes Way Beyond Balloons
If a major conflict breaks out with China, America’s once-vaunted defense industrial base will be exposed as a comatose geriatric, not a sleeping giant.
It's a bit like 2 guys having a duel, and each of them have enough rounds to kill the other 10 times over, but one of them being worried that he doesn't have enough money to buy more ammo after the rounds start flying.
Your assessment is that China will escalate to a global nuclear exchange and total annihilation over control of Taiwan? Curious what Schelling would make of that.
My assessment is that a war with China implies it has already escalated to a war. That means the US is fighting China. Is your assessment in that scenario that it will only involve Taiwan?
My assessment is that China will not cut off its nose to spite its face. Status quo antebellum, or the brunt of NATO's nuclear arsenal and the end of civilization as we know it. Which would you choose?
Good stuff, but Niall always sees the bad guys winning and Hagen always sees the bad guys losing. I am not a proponent of the “2034” Stavridis fictional thesis that a stunningly competent China will rapidly (as in days) defeat a flaccid, unprepared US simply by pushing buttons and using (my favorite new meaningless term) “high technology.” China knows full well they won’t be fighting just the US and they are probably aware that the combined forces they will face are beyond their capability simply because no one needs to invade and occupy China to beat China, but China needs to invade and occupy other places to prevail. Like @Brett327 I also don’t see them turning to nuclear war in an effort to “win” a war when the destruction of their primary cash cow - the U.S. economy - is the primary thing keeping them powerful today.Couple of interesting articles in Foreign Affairs and Bloomberg:
The US ‘Domain Awareness Gap’ Goes Way Beyond Balloons
If a major conflict breaks out with China, America’s once-vaunted defense industrial base will be exposed as a comatose geriatric, not a sleeping giant.
Add to that, the recent realization here in the US that we must increase our internal manufacturing capability if we want magical things like electric vehicles, more artillery shells for our proxy war in the Ukraine, and similar fun things and you find Niall just a little behind the power curve on this one. In, of course, my humble opinion.
From the cheap seats, the danger with China near term is they may well be cresting right now, and they know it. Demographically, they are on a downward glide path with a shrinking, aging population. If not now to take Taiwan, when?
I have a hard time believing China leadership was cool with crossing into our sovereign airspace with their inflato-spy, which suggests to me the right hand isn’t tracking the left hand, which suggests there are elements in China that could initiate a Taiwan thing before leadership could reel it in, and then they’d have to back it. Like they are trying to do with complaining about us downing their peaceful weather balloon. How dare we defend our airspace?
The overflight was a gift in many ways.
I have a hard time believing China leadership was cool with crossing into our sovereign airspace with their inflato-spy, which suggests to me the right hand isn’t tracking the left hand, which suggests there are elements in China that could initiate a Taiwan thing before leadership could reel it in, and then they’d have to back it. Like they are trying to do with complaining about us downing their peaceful weather balloon. How dare we defend our airspace?
The overflight was a gift in many ways.
Couple things.
If we go to war with China, that means they have already decided to cut off their nose to spite their face. As Griz pointed out, our economy is their cash cow, and it would be closed to them as soon as the first shot is fired.
Once the war starts, there is absolutely no predicting how it will progress. It is easy to predict, though, that it will not be constrained to Taiwan. Japan, mainland China, and whoever else allies or supports us will also be in play. Returning to the status quo antebellum is absolutely never going to be an option.. not in our lifetimes. Your idea that they could is ludicrous. We just won't trade with them, period.
If the war progresses such that the CCP fears for it's survival in a defeat, not only would ruling out nukes be foolish, but I believe it would be the likely end to the war. They would see defeat as an existential threat and likely employ nukes, crossing their fingers we wouldn't reply in kind. I hope I'm wrong. Even if there's a 10% chance I'm right, though, Taiwan isn't worth it.
I'm not suggesting that it would be in China's interests to go to war (quite the contrary), just that the possible outcomes aren't as binary as you're portraying. There's a continuum of potential conflict, and China has a lot of choices in how to respond that are short of going nuke. Status quo antebellum is always an option prior to the onset of hostilities, which was my point in using that phrase.
You yourself just said that there's "absolutely no predicting how it will progress," which is an interesting statement given that you unequivocally predicted a nuclear war just a couple posts ago.
A lot of this has been pretty well gamed out and baked into our OPLANs. Recommend taking a look if you have access.
That book was uniquely bad, and I was surprised at that given the authors.
I never unequivocally predicted a nuclear war or portrayed the outcomes of the war as binary. I stated that IF we went to direct war with China and ever got close to winning, which in my opinion would necessarily mean the end of the CCP, nukes would be used. Actually, I think there is an exceedingly small chance that happens, and I laugh when admirals/O6s say things like we will definitely be at war with China soon. As you said, I don't think they will cut off their nose to spite their face. If they do choose war, I think they will take Taiwan rather quickly and we will be forced to decide if we want to escalate to try to win or let them have it. If we choose escalation, it will be a very dangerous and unwise path that could easily end in mutual destruction.
That all said, this is not my area of expertise/study at all.