JMS Posted July 9, 2016 Author Share Posted July 9, 2016 The eve of war? We've been in a state of perpetual war for a long time. I fully expect that to continue. But if the meaning is that we are facing another world war, then all I can say is that I hope the powers that be decide war on that scale isn't worth the risk of mutual destruction. I don't think global war because I don't think we want that nor can China or Russia execute on that scale. We are going to see theatre wars. Limited conventional navy engagements in South and East China Sea. And perhaps fighting in the Balkans ( Latvia, Lithuania ) maybe Finland and Poland too... We are just so weak in Europe and Putin knows it, he's going to mistakenly think that's an opportunity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMS Posted July 9, 2016 Author Share Posted July 9, 2016 My guess is if the ruling goes against China they will ignore it. Everyone will be angry at them, but no one will have the balls to do anything about so the status quo will be mantained. We gain the moral high ground but nothing else. I agree with that scenario but I think your assumption is wrong. I don't think China will maintain jack. In the last 18month they've created 3 artificial islands with airstrips and militarized them. Now they have their eye on a reef 120 miles from the Philippine's capital. We've told them if they attempt to build an island there we would stop them. Or they will declare a no fly zone over SCS as they have in the East China Sea. Again we have told them we would see that as a big provocation. I think China is likely to lose the arbitration hearing at the Hage, and then will attempt to ignore the ruling while expanding their island building. I look for the US to drive home what are now confirmed international waters by parking destroyers within 12 miles of their artificial islands and stopping further island reclamation. That will put us in direct confrontation with China. China already see's us in direct confrontation anyway, but now we will redefine what direct confrontation means in their eyes. Don't discourage other people from starting polls just because your poll game is weak! I'm more concerned with Russia than China. Russia is in an economic toilet. Desperate times can lead to desperate actions. Today China has eaten through most of their foreign reserves. After this summer it's not sure whether China will have enough foreign reserves to operate. Likewise for the last two years china has had to borrow 8 dollars in order to generate every 1 dollar of economic growth.... China isn't doing a lot better than Russia believe me. Which is why a confrontation with the west is looking so good to China. Because their people like the image of a strong china sticking up for her rights against the west, and the communist party has convinced them they have a good claim on the East and South China Seas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zoony Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 South China Sea, huge reserve of oil. several US Oil men tried to take it in the late 1960s under the guise of domino theories aND other BS. They weren't successful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterMP Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 About China's ridiculous "nine dashed line" map under which they claim exclusive sovereignity over huge amounts of the South China Sea near the Philippines and Vietnam. and no, we are not on the eve of all-war. China's economy depends on selling stuff to us. Russia's economy depends on selling oil to Europe. Both want to throw their weight around in places they consider to be in their natural area of control/influence, but neither wants a direct confrontation with the US or NATO. The Russians are not going to go rolling their rusty tanks into Germany because even if they could succeed initially, they couldn't control it for long and they would get wrecked economically and by US retaliation. Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, the only place Russia directly attacks is places where there are a ton of Russian speakers who will welcome them in. China is similar. Someday, they will push their claim for Taiwan, but not now. They want to get it back without a fight, they way they got Hong Kong. War, especially at a large level, is not a logical act. It is carried out because somebody has illogical beliefs. France was Germany's number one trade partner prior to WWII. With that said, I don't see anything currently in the Russia's or China's leadership to suggest illogicalness at that level. But as things like Putin ages, you never know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMS Posted July 9, 2016 Author Share Posted July 9, 2016 What ruling against china? China is claiming like 90% of the south and east china sea extending from their boarders by 800-1000 miles and cutting across the standard 200 miles international maritime law allows for territorial waters of such neighbors as mentioned above. Several years ago the Philippines brought China's incursion upon their territorial waters to the United Nations International Maritime Arbitrator at the Haige. That ruling is widely expected to favor the Philippines and be will be announced next Tuesday July 12. China is signing they will ignore the ruling and accelerate their arressive acts in response to the Philippines bringing the case to the Hage. Likewise the US has drawn a few lines in the sand saying we will not permit certain actions such as any new island inside Philippians or Japanese internationally recognized waters. So the July 12 date may further inflame the dispute. Chinese newspapers which usually speak for the Chinese Communist Party are saying things like a military confrontation with the US is inevitable. This week they also called for China to inflict a heavy cost on the United States for our intervention in the region such as to make our future intervention less likely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGreatBuzz Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 Thanks. I knew the Hauge did war crimes and such but thought that was it. In not sure how much teeth their rulings have though or our "line in the sand". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twa Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 Thanks. I knew the Hauge did war crimes and such but thought that was it. In not sure how much teeth their rulings have though or our "line in the sand". other folk provide the teeth, it gives moral and legal cover....kinda like most courts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sacks 'n' Stuff Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 I'll be 50 in three years!In separate posts today I learned that Beal is a 50 year old white guy. A lot of my belief system has been shattered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TradeTheBeal! Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 In separate posts today I learned that Beal is a 50 year old white guy. A lot of my belief system has been shattered. 50 is the new 39, brah. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sacks 'n' Stuff Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 50 is the new 39, brah.I had always imagined that you were closer to 23 and not... You know... White. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TradeTheBeal! Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 I had always imagined that you were closer to 23 and not... You know... White. Huh...I've got a ton of posts in the Car Sales thread about my 20+ years in the biz and I've occasionally, in the RTT, made mention of my 20+ years playing guitar. Just made a Death Metal album last winter... But thanks...I guess! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgold Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 Huh...I've got a ton of posts in the Car Sales thread about my 20+ years in the biz and I've occasionally, in the RTT, made mention of my 20+ years playing guitar. Just made a Death Metal album last winter... But thanks...I guess! You're only as young as you think you are... or something like that. Hey, I wish my posts looked 23 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMS Posted July 11, 2016 Author Share Posted July 11, 2016 Tomorrow is when the arbitration ruling comes out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcsluggo Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 Huh...I've got a ton of posts in the Car Sales thread about my 20+ years in the biz and I've occasionally, in the RTT, made mention of my 20+ years playing guitar. Just made a Death Metal album last winter... But thanks...I guess! yeah.. we all imagined the 4 year old thrashing out death metal on a wee little guitar... personally, i always pictured you a tambourine player... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DallasCowboyFan156 Posted July 12, 2016 Share Posted July 12, 2016 Update: China lost the arbitration http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/12/asia/china-philippines-south-china-sea/index.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMS Posted July 13, 2016 Author Share Posted July 13, 2016 So the solution is to completely devastate their trading partners to appease their own populations? I don't see Russia or China being occupied, but you might have been able to semi-sell me on the idea of fighting for natural resources to survive as individual nations (which can be addressed with diplomacy if they get their heads out their ***es). It would be an unnecessary war of attrition on their turf, not ours, because I don't see the logic in trying to invade us in order to get what either country wants. Burgold is right, it would be more likely a dual-Cold War then WW3. All three of us are nuclear powers, remember? (1) I don't think it would bet a war of attrition. (2) It would be a limited war, maybe even an undeclared war. Those little green men in the Ukraine weren't claimed by Russia until just a few months ago. If they showed up in Lithuania in the guise of the Russian Ethnic minority raising up to defend themselves against some pretext. NATO would engage, and Russia would engage in a limited fashion; not sure Russia would own up to it though, and not sure we would act directly against Russia unless they did. South China sea is different. We could absolutely get in a limited shooting war with China contained to just the SCS. Limited wars in Asia is what we do. It's what we always do. It's not like China would want to expand the war either. It's to their advantage to fight 20-800 miles off their own coast. (3) Anyway there is a large meeting of Asian nations pretty soon, and a few months after that is the big 8 economic summit hosted by China. Nothing is going to happen until after that. 1 thing is for sure though, the US Navy has been running freedom of navigation exercises for 200 years. We even did it in the Black Sea at the height of the cold war with Russia. This ruling which totally rebukes China's claims is binding; and if China chooses to ignore it; we will definitely be stepping up our exercises and ratcheting up tensions. I don't think so. I don't think there is a will to war esp. on our side. We may engage in proxy wars, but mostly it's going to be economic and cyber warfare vs. bullets and bombs. We don't differentiate a cyber attack on American infrastructure from an actual attack / bombing of American infrastructure. Also we are on the record that a cyber attack against nuclear facilities would be considered a nuclear attack and result in a nuclear response... Both Russia and China have extensive cyber capabilities just nowhere near ours of course. If they went down that way and miscalculated it could be even more devastating to themselves and ourselves than a conventional attack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chipwhich Posted July 13, 2016 Share Posted July 13, 2016 LOL you mean if they attack our floppy disks? You mean cyber attacks with "coarse" sand paper on the disks of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMS Posted July 13, 2016 Author Share Posted July 13, 2016 The Russians are not going to go rolling their rusty tanks into Germany because even if they could succeed initially, they couldn't control it for long and they would get wrecked economically and by US retaliation. Back in the day when we had heavy armored corps in Europe and 100,000 troops we would have options. Today we don't really have much of a deterrence in Europe thanks to the Hillary Architected Asian pivot. Our idea of a show of force today is announcing sending a brigade to Poland or the Baltics.. A brigade. That's like 1000 guys.. what are they going to do other than piss off every American who will watch them die if Russia decides to attack. In truth NATO announced 4 brigades, 1 American, 1 Canadian, 1 UK and 1 German. Pretty much same outcome though. Tripwire forces designed to get killed is what has become of our once vaunted two war policy. Trip Wires in both Europe and the Pacific.( South Korea).. Anyway, As for Russia's rusty tanks. I'm afraid you are about 5 years behind the times with that line. The Russian T-14 is every bit as good as the Abrams. The Abrams designed 45 years ago is currently undergoing it's third major update, but it's hard to overlook the fact we first started designing that tank in 1972 put in service in 1980. The T-14 is a 21st century tank and has multiple features not found in any other tank in the world. unmanned turret to increase crew survivability, passive laminated armor combined with reactive armor and an active protection system designed to track, intercept and destroy incoming rounds. It's an impressive box. When these tanks are fully deployed Russia will have the most modern versatile tank on the continent. We are lucky they aren't fully deployed now. Russia is buying some 2500 of them by 2020 to replace their T-90's, T-80's, and T-72's. Although our Abrams is better than the T-90.. Our big problem is the sheer numbers of modern capable tanks Russia has created out of their rusty reserves in the last few years. They've got about 600 T-90's and are well on their way to upgrading all their 9000 T-72's to the T-72B3 standard which frankly is pretty comparable to their T-90s. This upgrade makes the T-72 a modern tank. It's true the Abrams is a better tank than the T-90 but we've got about 250, or will have 250 Abrams when our armored "brigade" is fully deployed to Eastern Europe in the coming year.. vs literally thousands of tanks comparable to T-90's.. The NATO commander recently said Russia could overrun all the Baltics and Poland in 36 hours and there is nothing he could do about it. In the face of that we announced sending a heavy "brigade" to Eastern Europe. Really? NATO commander was saying he would need at least a heavy division to fight a holding action if Russia attacked. Anyway it appears the US is pinning it's hopes on new sneaky weapons systems like All you gun enthusiasts will note we've learned to fire anti tank shells without a gun barrel. and then there is the less fanciful and combat proven CBU 105 cluster bomb 1 of which can take out 40 enemy tanks. It's a bad bad bomb.. about 1000lbs.. a raptor/F-22 could carry 2. A B-52 could carry 185 of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skin'emAlive Posted July 13, 2016 Share Posted July 13, 2016 For a laser guided bomb, they sure did completely miss all the tanks in the video... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMS Posted July 19, 2016 Author Share Posted July 19, 2016 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-ruling-idUSKCN0ZY0FJ Freedom of navigation patrols may end 'in disaster': Chinese admiral http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/07/19/world/china-announces-closure-part-south-china-sea-waters-due-military-exercises/#.V42IhFdiDUo China flies nuclear-capable bomber near Scarborough Shoal, vows to make South China Sea patrols ‘regular practice’ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGreatBuzz Posted July 19, 2016 Share Posted July 19, 2016 http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/07/18/china-close-part-south-china-sea-military-exercise/87262566/ Here's another good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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