George Patterson opined

Ash Wyllie wrote:

In a generation the Pacific rim will be a very dangerous place.

The Atlantic carried a story a month or two back on this. One of our military
experts was quoted as saying "Getting into a war with China is easy. I can
think of several trigger points; Taiwan, for instance. The question is, how
do get yourself *out* of a war with China?"

Some points the article made -- 1) China is a nuclear power. 2) Their sub
force is increasing rapidly and could control most of the Pacific in ten
years or so if they maintain the current build rate. 3) They have a small
carrier force and are working hard at developing it. Carriers give you
offensive capabilities that nothing else will provide.

In short, in ten to twenty years, China will have offensive capacity which
will allow them to do pretty much anything they want in the Pacific and they
will be able to easily sink any surface forces we deploy against them. What
they do with this remains to be seen, of course.

Very true. Our best hope is that a middle class democratic revolution occurs
and then behaves in a much less aggrexive manner.


-ash
Cthulhu in 2005!
Why wait for nature?