LAT: Sailing Toward a Storm in China by Chalmers Johnson

[NewHampshireDem]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson15jul15,1,6131989.story

Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan.

This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our 12 carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster.

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Needless to say, the Chinese are not amused. They say that their naval and air forces, plus their land-based rockets, are capable of taking on one or two carrier strike groups but that combat with seven would overwhelm them. So even before a carrier reaches the Taiwan Strait, Beijing has announced it will embark on a crash project that will enable it to meet and defeat seven U.S. carrier strike groups within a decade. There's every chance the Chinese will succeed if they are not overtaken by war first.
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Are we slouching toward WWIII here? Or is this a (mistaken) ploy to lure the Chinese into a Soviet-style arms race in the hopes it will bankrupt them? Or--most frighteningly of all--are they trying to provoke a shooting war with a nuclear power?

[brokensymmetry]

1. Are we slouching toward WW-III here? Yes.

Trouble is, if we get into WW-III with China, we are very likely to lose.

[Spinzonner]

2. Nah

but we need another cold war to have a decent arms race to feed the Military-Industrial complex.

Real wars like Iraq are just to consumptive of real stuff and make them actually have to produce stuff that works - plus there tend to be a lot of rather plain commodities. Not enough profit in it.

They need to go back to producing stuff that nobody ever expects to have to use and so doesnt really have to work all that well.

[Warpy]

3. If we get into WWIII with anyone, we are likely to lose

We no longer manufacture things from fabric for unirforms to adequate boots to military electronics and many replacement parts for vehicles. We're not even manufacturing enough bullets to keep the troops in Iraq supplied.

The 40 years of exporting all the industry in the US to potentially hostile countries will make the US SOL in the next big war. After the first six months, we'll be throwing rocks.

[NewHampshireDem]

4. Aren't our soldier's uniforms made in China?

How ironic, eh?

[izzie]

5. Must get the news off the Middle East. Bush made a mess of it.

We have to be worried about something else by Nov. Another non-Christian country that can drive up his base to love Bush and how good he is.