Saturday, November 22, 2008

Forum :: Conflicts :: Is China and America entering a new cold war?

Page 1 of 3 Is China and America entering a new cold war?
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Sickle1001 Joined: 06 June 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 06 June 2005 11:30 AM With China building and buying many new advance weapons and the United States doing the same thing. Are we seeing the begining to a much larger arms race in the decades to come? Or is this just me? Post Reply
Nimrod1001 Joined: 04 February 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 07 June 2005 1:37 AM I don't think so. The money China is using to upgrade all areas of it's economy and military is based on trade with the US, and a fair percentage of Chinese businesses are owned by Taiwanese. All three countries have a mutual dependency these days. China needs the US market, Taiwan needs Chinese labour and the US needs China's cheap goods to keep inflation down. I think that the newer weapon purchases by China are not in themselves an offensive buildup, but more a realization that the old Chinese military couldn't have fought its way out of a wet paper bag. Unless some feat of anti-diplomacy is performed by a Taiwanese politician I doubt whether China would feel that a confrontation would be in it's best interests. Post Reply

Sickle1001 Joined: 06 June 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 07 June 2005 9:47 PM A fair point, but both of our nations are already planning for a future war with each other. Why would China upgrade its nuclear weapons? I know they were out of date, but there is no longer a threat of all out nuclear war. China is also building a massive information warfare program. Why? It seem that where we now stand is the great superpower fueling its enemies. Oil from the middle east and cheap products from China. Our we going to sit idlally by and let our economey further become dependent on theirs? Post Reply
Nimrod1001 Joined: 04 February 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 09 June 2005 10:13 AM Yes. Nuclear weapons are really an ultimate tool of diplomacy rather than the ultimate weapon, because you would never dare use them against someone else who has them. And information warfare is warfare of the future. And unlike other types of clandestine activities, you don't need to plant agents in someone elses territory. So I see a situation of China doing its best to put itself in a good position to bargain with the US. China want's Taiwan, and if they have the economic and military strength to bend the will of the US, they can have it without a fight. They know you can be worn down and bluffed. It's the only way anyone has survived war with the US for 70 years. Korea, Vietnam, and now some wavering in Iraq tell them you can be had. They just need to be patient. They don't need to actually go to war. Post Reply
Sickle1001 Joined: 06 June 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 09 June 2005 6:26 PM Well since China will eventually get the best of us, would it not be an intellegent move to strike first, while we have the upper hand as the "megapower"? Or should we just sit and watch China and India replace the Western powers? Post Reply
Nimrod1001 Joined: 04 February 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 09 June 2005 9:13 PM Strike first? Well sure, only if you think the downtown areas of your major cities need some urban renewal. Nuclear weapons make it fairly moot who wins such a conflict. Fighting by proxy could still happen, with a lot of posturing on both sides. Remember, If China does use a military solution get Taiwan, it can win by taking over the island. If the US uses a military solution, it can only win by invading China. Simply stopping an invasion only gets a draw and you are right back where you started. As to stiking while you are the only superpower? Eh, empires come and go. You've only really been at the top for 30 years, don't bring it all crashing down because suddenly there is amoment of doubt about whether it will last. Post Reply
Sickle1001 Joined: 06 June 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 11 June 2005 7:06 PM Well telling from your last post, I'm guessing that your not from the US. I was wondering what nation you are from. If we (the US) could get the missile sheild to work, I wouldn't really fear China's nukes. They supposedly they only have at tops 50 ICBM's and with only one SSBN what would be the threat. Anyways I really could care less about Taiwan, I'm more worried for the economies of Europe and US. I really do not want to see the fall of the Western powers to the Asian countries(India and China). Post Reply
Nimrod1001 Joined: 04 February 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 12 June 2005 1:52 AM I'm from the large landmass about as far south of China as you can go without meeting a penguin, so I am a friend, and with an economy tied closely to yours. Missile shield? Even the most optimistic projections for all of the technologies you are exploring do not protect the continental US from nuclear attack by multiple warheads. The system is designed to protect key points in the US and above US troops abroad from a small number of launches by smaller states. And you haven't got it all working yet! Perhaps that will change in the future, but regardless, when you are fighting against any nuclear delivery system (Whether it's an ICBM or a stealth cruise missile- China is trying to get a stealth fighter in the air, if they saw the need to penetrate a sophisticated US defence, a stealth missile is an easier option) the advantage lies with the attacker, as even a few missiles would ruin your whole day! If you don't care about Taiwan, why would you think the US and China would ever have anything to fight over? Post Reply
Sickle1001 Joined: 06 June 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 12 June 2005 12:24 PM If history has tought us anything to superpowers cannot exist together for very long. It has always been the strong will survive. It started with Anicent Greece. Sparta and Athenas had to go to war because they had different ideas and because each had a powerful military it was inevitiable that a war would come. Now 3,000 years later the same can be applied. Eventually China will have their own idea of how the world hshould turn, and they won't care about what the US and Australia think because they have four times our population and an incredible industrial base to turn out a war machine that would rival what the US had in WWII. Personally I think the US has become like the Germans or Japanese of WWII. We have a very powerful and advanced military but we can be overwhelmed by slightly less, but more numerous military. I.E. China. About Taiwan. I care, but I doubt that by the Chinese attack them. The US will be unable or unwilling to help. I read an article that told of two Exocet missile almost sinking the USS Stark a Ticonderoga Class Cruiser. So the point of that is that the invicible US fleet cannot stop a cruise missile as much as we thought. China is desperally trying to develop cruise missile that we hamper any attempt to support Taiwan. So Taiwan won't be the major breaking point that everyone has crack it up to be. Post Reply
Gemini1002 Joined: 14 June 2005 Posts in this thread: 1	Posted on 14 June 2005 1:48 PM One of the biggest dangers of a so-called 'missile-shield' is that someone might have enough confidence in it to lessen the priority of preventing the launch of enemy nukes. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) may seem insane at first glance, but it has successfully prevented a single nuclear attack from taking place for the entire time that multiple nations have had nukes. Of course there are some that see this as a failure: All those decades of spending on lots of nukes and we've never gotten to use one, despite being in a lot of wars in the meantime. Thus the major effort right now to make nuclear weapons 'tactically useful', by on one hand developing new weapons that fot today's battlefield, while on the other developing missile defenses to negate MAD. Post Reply
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