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Avoiding the Unthinkable: Preventing a US-China Nuclear War

Monday, February 16, 2015 3:47

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(Before It's News)

UNTHINKABLE IS RIGHT!

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE UNTHINKABLE BECOMES ORDINARY?

WAR WITH ANY NUCLEAR CAPABLE NATION COULD END MANKIND!

We should ALL hope and pray that World War III can and will be avoided, however Americans should wise up to the fact the deck is stacked HIGHLY in favor of our enemies and war is MOST DEFINITELY on the horizon. Within the next 12-24 months you should be prepared to see things fall apart on such a massive scale it will seem like fiction, only it’s going to be ALL TOO REAL. What people once considered “UNTHINKABLE” is going to become the new “ORDINARY” and that process is going to be extremely painful. The entire global financial system is on the verge of imploding within the year, and that will just be the beginning for the United States. Hear what some of the wealthiest men on Earth have to say:

Once the wheels DO finally begin to come off, there are TONS OF LINKS AT THE BOTTOM that can help you understand WHAT is actually happening, and they also explain WHY the collapse will take place. Unfortunately there is NOTHING that can be done to stop the collapse or to avoid it. What we will witness is THE END OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE as a result of decades of HORRIBLE decision making from our elected officials. Even though probably WAY more than 95% of Americans know nothing about the Petro-Dollar, or can specifically explain why it is so important to us, you can bet your bottom dollar the rest of the world does, and world leaders on either side will be willing to send millions of their countrymen to die over it.

JAMES CARVILLE SAID IT BEST IN 1992: “IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID!”

Any great military has to be grounded by a country with a great economy, because something has to pay for all that awesome hardware and for all the personnel operating it. Until fairly recently, China was financing the United States to live beyond our means by lending us vast sums of capital over the years, but those days are over and not likely to return.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH CONTINUING TO RUN ENORMOUS TRADE DEFICITS WITH THE SAME COUNTRY THAT WILL BE SUPPLYING OUR ENEMIES WITH STEALTH FIGHTERS THAT RIVAL OUR OWN, AND THE SAME COUNTRY THAT IS WORKING TIRELESSLY WITH RUSSIA TO END THE DOMINANCE OF THE DOLLAR?

ASK OBAMA! EVERYTHING IS FINE!

JUST DON’T DARE NOT FUND HIS ILLEGAL EXECUTIVE ORDER!

WHAT PLANET IS THIS GUY LIVING ON?

The Economic Collapse Blog reports: Did you know that we buy nearly five times as much stuff from the Chinese as they buy from us? According to government numbers that were just released, we imported 44.9 billion dollars worth of stuff from China in September but we only exported 9.3 billion dollars worth of stuff to them. And this is not happening because our economy is so much larger than China’s. In fact, the IMF says that China now has the largest economy on the entire planet on a purchasing power basis. No, the truth is that this is happening because our economy is broken. Every month, we consume far more wealth than we produce. Because the outflow of money is far greater than the inflow, we have to go to major exporting nations and beg them to lend our dollars back to us so that we can pay our bills. Meanwhile, the quality of the jobs in this country continues to go down and our formerly great manufacturing cities are rotting and decaying. We are committing national economic suicide, and most Americans don’t seem to care.

Barack Obama is constantly hyping a “manufacturing resurgence” in America, but the numbers don’t lie. In September, our manufactured goods trade deficit with the rest of the world soared to a new all-time record high of 69.16 billion dollars. For the year, we are nearly 12 percent ahead of last year’s record pace.

When we buy far more things than we sell, we get poorer as a nation.

How do you think that we ever got into a position of owing China more than a trillion dollars?

We just kept buying far more from them than they bought from us, and their money just kept piling up. Now it has gotten to the point where our politicians literally beg them to lend our money back to us. They are the head and we are the tail.

And we did this to ourselves.

Once upon a time, the United States was the greatest manufacturing powerhouse that the world had ever seen. But now China manufactures more stuff than us and China also accounts for more total global trade (imports plus exports) than us.

This should never have happened. Several decades ago, the Chinese economy was a complete joke. But decades of incredibly foolish decisions by our politicians have resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities, millions of good paying jobs and the destruction of vast stretches of our economic infrastructure.

During the same time frame, gleaming new manufacturing facilities have gone up all over China.

China is literally wiping the floor with us on the global economic stage and most Americans don’t even understand what is happening. Here is more on the trade deficit numbers that were just released from the RealityChek Blog…

The China goods deficit of $35.56 billion blew past the old mark of $30.86 billion, set in July, by 15.23 percent. The new deficit also represented a 17.77 percent increase over the August level of $30.20 billion.

U.S. goods exports to the still strongly growing Chinese economy fell on month in September from $9.63 billion to $9.33 billion (3.12 percent). U.S. merchandise imports from China jumped by 12.70 percent over August levels, from $39.83 billion to $44.89 billion – itself an all-time high.

The U.S. goods deficit with China this year is now so far running 5.62 percent ahead of 2014’s record pace.

The longstanding U.S. manufacturing trade shortfall shot up from $59.10 billion in August to $69.16 billion in September. This 17.02 percent jump resulted in a beat of the old record of $67.33 billion, also set in July, by 2.72 percent.

AND IT ISN’T JUST CHEAP PLASTIC TRINKETS THAT CHINA IS SELLING TO US.

IN FACT, THEIR NUMBER ONE EXPORT TO US IS COMPUTER EQUIPMENT!

MEANWHILE, ONE OF OUR MAIN EXPORTS TO THEM IS SCRAP AND TRASH!

For much more on how China is absolutely dominating us, please see my previous article entitled “Not Just The Largest Economy – Here Are 2

NOW, COMBINE THE WORST DEPRESSION IN HISTORY LOOMING WITH A MILITARY THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN GIVEN SEVERE BUDGET CUTS, AND A PRESIDENT THAT IS A WALKING, TALKING, FOREIGN POLICY ERROR…

WHAT DO YOU GET?

I FEAR WE MIGHT BE LOOKING AN ATTACK HERE AT HOME BY CHINA, RUSSIA, NORTH KOREA, IRAN, OR MAYBE ALL OF THEM COMBINED! IT’S NOT LIKE THEY HAVEN’T BEEN TRAINING TOGETHER!

Washington can’t be complacent about its relationship with an antagonistic nuclear power. We’ve known that for more than thirty years, since the Pentagon sponsored a highly classified war game called Proud Prophet.

Conducted in 1983, the game was designed to test the strategy Washington had honed for more than a decade. The United States had always relied on deterrence to prevent war between the superpowers. But, if deterrence failed, the West needed a Plan B—and they had one. If NATO and the Warsaw Pact actually started to trade shots, the alliance strategy would be to manage the conflict: demonstrate resolve, hold its ground and de-escalate the confrontation. It sounded plausible—IN THEORY.

Proud Prophet put Plan B to the test. It used a put-up or shut-up scenario, pitting Moscow against Washington in a mock shooting war. The results were terrifying. Tit-for-tat ended in an all-out nuclear exchange OBLITERATING MANKIND.

Now, Beijing is not Moscow. And that’s what makes the lesson of Proud Prophet so scary when contemplating modern-day, nuclear-armed China. Managing escalation with the Soviet Union was easy compared to managing potential escalation with China. One reason for that is because the competition between the United States and U.S.S.R. was relatively symmetrical. In many ways, the hard-power strengths of the two powers mirrored each other.

Additionally, East and West lived in separate camps. There was scant economic interaction between the two sides. We mostly talked among ourselves. They (mostly) talked to themselves. Yet, in Proud Prophet’s relatively simple two-player competition, once escalation started, it quickly spun out of control.

The U.S.-Chinese relationship is the polar opposite. The economies and public spheres overlap in a complex, foot-tripping web. Both sides have looked at mastering asymmetrical advantages to constrain and manage the other. If they ever started actually shooting at each other, managing that messy relationship would become nearly impossible. Just like Proud Prophet, it would lead to a horror show.

An easy answer to the conundrum would be to adopt the same policy as the great powers did during the Cold War. After all, Proud Prophet never became a reality show. In fact, Proud Prophet confirmed what both sides already suspected: there was no good Plan B once the shooting started. As the global confrontation dragged on, both superpowers accepted as conventional wisdom that a direct military conflict—much less any exchange of nuclear weapons—was unacceptable.

Still, the fact that the Cold War stayed cold is small assurance for those responsible for managing the fate of humanity thirty years later. If any leader had made a strategic misjudgment, it would not have been pretty. Historians still debate, for example, how seriously Moscow took another U.S. exercise: Able Archer. That 1983 NATO exercise took the alliance to the brink of nuclear exchange.

According to some accounts, the Kremlin pretended to freak out hoping to send a message to President Reagan that he shouldn’t act too much like the cowboy he played in the movies. Others still hold that the Kremlin briefly feared the U.S. president was about to “go cowboy” and launch a preemptive nuclear attack.

RELYING ON DETERENCE ALONE, hoping everyone gets the memo that firing nuclear weapons is a NO-NO, is no way to run a planet. Conversely, we know that President Obama’s road to nuclear zero is going nowhere. There is no getting rid of nuclear weapons anytime soon. A credible, modernized nuclear arsenal paired with missile defenses will remain an essential part of protecting and defending the United States for many years to come. Still, in the end, all nuclear weapons are really good for is reminding others that fighting nuclear wars is a bad idea.

When the Reagan White House realized that, if deterrence failed, Plan B was no good either, the administration opted for a “cost-imposing strategy.” It moved from managed competition to outracing the Soviet Union—counting on the wheels coming off when the Soviets tried to keep up with the full-court pressure of U.S. military upgrades, hardline diplomacy and a resurgent American economy.

The Soviet Union collapsed, and the world lived another day. That was then. But there is no reason to think that strategy can stave off Armageddon a second time. Washington needs to wake up. To avoid a scenario where the United States faces the prospect of a managed military conflict with China, Washington will have come up with a game changer now.

The Chinese are going to be no help here. It’s clear the Chinese want to see the day when the United States is no longer an Asia-Pacific power, and they are working to nudge the United States aside—sometimes not so gently. Meanwhile, WASHINGTON HAS NO PLANS TO STOP BEING AN ASIA PACIFIC POWER.

In the short term, the United States needs to come up with a regional strategy that makes China more cautious about thinking it can call the shots. Here the United States has some common cause with India, Australia and Japan. Working together, these powers could send China a message that would force Beijing to pause and consider.

But a proactive, regional strategy in itself won’t be enough to keep things stable over the long term. The United States has to close any gap in military power that the Chinese might think could be exploited. This isn’t classical deterrence. The United States doesn’t need to deter China, because right now there is no evidence that Beijing has any interest in engaging in armed conflict with Washington. The purpose of U.S. military power is to keep it that way. The United States has to be able to demonstrate that it has a resilient capacity to conduct military operations in the Asia-Pacific and meet its treaty obligations to its allies. This level of U.S. force is fundamental to two key U.S. objectives: maintaining freedom of the commons (air, sea, space and cyberspace) and limiting the potential for large-scale regional conflict.

This month, the Heritage Foundation will publish its first edition of an annual assessment of U.S. military power. The GRADE for U.S. military power in the Asia-Pacific theater looks pretty MEDIOCRE—and that’s not very comforting.

Part of making sure a nightmare scenario between the United States and China remains a remote possibility requires significantly recapitalizing the U.S. armed forces. This is not part of an arms race in Asia. Rather, it is a trust- and confidence-building measure. The goal is to leave everyone in Asia believing that when it comes to solving regional problems, there are better answers than the force of arms.

The Heritage Foundation’s E. W. Richardson Fellow, James Jay Carafano is also vice president, overseeing the think tank’s research on issues of national security and foreign affairs.

Image: U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Val Gempis

Read the article here at National Interest.org here:

THE VOICE OF REASON