What are you selling here?

America needs to prepare for war. The Red Chinese sure as hell are preparing for something big.

Grrrr! Yes YESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm selling awareness about the issue. It's just a matter of time until a crisis in this region. Hopefully it won't escalate.

Or hopefully America will de-escalate it when the Red Chinese figure out how powerful the United States military really is.

Snitchvictus is selling what he always sells. Doom, gloom, and imminent war with China.

Seriously if Snitchy here had a radio show of any popularity, millions would be on suicide watch from his 'sunny' disposition.

Yes, it's China that's the warmonger state. How perceptive of you, gunfighter. So, how many sovereign states have they invaded during the past 15 or so years?

Bob - the US isn't exactly expanding its submarine fleet, as the Chinese are, nor are we building carrier-killing ICBMs, as the Chinese are, nor are we expanding our nuclear weapons numbers, including SSBNs, as the Chinese are, nor are we building new mobile missile launching pads, as the Chinese are, nor are we building A2AD weapons systems, as the Chinese are.

I'm aware that the Chinese are merely militarizing in response to the overwhelming force the US military has, but they are doing it too quickly and quite frankly are scaring some powerful people in their neighboring countries.

^Oh, and the Chinese are building aircraft carriers too.

Congrats, China has one aging outdated Soviet carrier while the US has around 11-12 carriers in total.

Snitchvictus? You posted a link to pictures of a beheading without telling people it was a beheading. I followed the link and saw a man carrying another man's severed head. So yeah, I emailed a mod. That's a shitty thing to for you to do do and I don't want that on the forum. Call me crazy, but this shouldn't turn into 4chan. I also didn't call for your ban or anything like that in the email, just for the mods to set a policy with regards to graphic content like that.

But leave it to Putin33 to insult me and not actually discuss the issue here. It's an absurdly complicated dispute that has international legal scholars far more qualified than any of us idiots divided. China may well have a legitimate claim to the islands, but its actions are provoking and scaring its neighbors. Hell, VIETNAM is looking for closer cooperation with the United States in the face of China's claims and its actions with regards to freedom of navigation. Vietnam! This dispute is captures the spirit of the game of Diplomacy perfectly. We should talk about it intelligently, not wrap ourselves up in knee-jerk loyalty to ideology.

errr what pictures of a beheading? I don't see a link...

http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/2756/1333744030034.png

I haven't seen Chinese building nuclear supercarriers either. Only further improvement of DF-21 possess any significant danger to US ability to project its power in the region. And the whole South East Asia is majorly pissed off by Chinese efforts, making it closer to the US. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, China claims the US try to encircle it, arms to boost it defensive capabilities and ends up in a greater isolation.

A so-called intelligent discussion about your warmongering regarding the South China Sea has already been attempted a while back, in which you simply called people an idiot for disagreeing with you.

"Hell, VIETNAM is looking for closer cooperation with the United States in the face of China's claims and its actions with regards to freedom of navigation. Vietnam!"

Yes, and? This is the same country which fought a war with China 30 years ago. They've never gotten along. Nationalism gets in the way of socialist brotherhood.

"That's a shitty thing to for you to do do and I don't want that on the forum."

So we're not allowed to see the real consequences of the wars you keep cheering on?
Figures.

" It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, China claims the US try to encircle it"

Claims? How is the US not encircling China? It has a ring of client states around China and the 7th fleet has been parked along the Taiwan Strait since the Korean war. It has been trying to destroying the DPRK since time immemorial. It is bffs with China's most hated enemy, Japan. It is encouraging the Philippines & Vietnam to be belligerent regarding the South China Sea.

The USA is encircling everyone. Can you come to terms with the fact that when someone claims something, it might be true?

Look over the other side of the Himalayas, and the same thing is happening to peaceful, democratic India. Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and especially Pakistan all trip over themselves to balance against Indian power. Who do they look to for support in that endeavor? Evil China.

Anywhere where there is a regional power, the smaller states will look to whatever outside power that is capable of supporting them for aid. So naturally Vietnam, Philippines, etc will look to America for support so they can keep their claims to certain goodies.

Would you be more content if I wrote "The US encircle China, which is well aware of that"? Because that's the same thing.

The US and her allies are everywhere in the world, it is hard to argue that any country is not surrounded by the US's allies.

^ That's a good thing IMHO. Pax China would be a hell of a lot more malevolent than Pax Americana.

Putin, in regards to India its much more complicated, since India also has very close historic ties to the former Soviet Union and modern day Russia. But take a look at it the issue from an Indian perspective. You have a historic enemy in Pakistan who actively funds terrorist and rebel groups in your country, and said nation also has close ties to the United States and China. I would think in this case, Indian would be freakin scared, especially since all of their military installations are within striking distance of Chinese and Pakistani nuclear weapons.

But Putin is essentially right. Everyone tries to balance against the larger power, and the US has an advantage in this aspect since it is located so far away geographically.

@ulytau - I would disagree. Yes, China's current carrier isn't much, but it is planning on building 3 supercarriers of its own in the next decade or so, and the first one is well underway. It is also buying Akula-class nuclear attack subs from Russia (used or not, I don't know) as well as building its own fleet of SSBN's. That would be something to worry about, in addition to the new fighter planes they are rolling out and the DF-21 .

Also, I just realized that what I said doesn't necessarily contradict what Putin said.

^Don't you hate it when that happens? I feel that Putin holds such different views than me that I start doubting myself when we agree.

The point is that the isolation of China has little to nothing to do with China's conduct and everything to do with the structural imbalances within its region. If China were a liberal democracy the same thing would be happening. I think we agree.

Ehhh, on that point I might disagree, because liberal democracies tend to be trusted more by the US and regional powers than other structures of governments. I know this is a bit like democratic peace theory, but I think that the perception that the government isn't held accountable by the people makes us trust said governments less. Even when countries are democracies, such as Iran, little "tweaks" to the system (such as the Supreme Leader) cause us to be inherently suspicious.

For example, in the 1980s, Japan was in an economic position similar to that of China right now, and certainly the US felt the same way (economically) towards Japan that we do towards China now, but we didn't take any steps against them like we are to balance China now. This is attributable to two things in my opinion. First, the low level of expenditures on the Japanese Defense Forces and the presence of 50,000 US troops in Japan and secondly on the fact that Japan is a liberal democracy.

^^Ehh, that might be off due to the presence and then collapse of the Soviet Union, but I struggle to find similarities to China's rising economic prowess. The other one I can think of is the Soviet Union circa 1960, but that was a whole different ballgame.

The US is irrelevant. I'm talking about small countries that are near regional powers. Sri Lanka & India are democracies. They don't trust each other at all. Nepal is now a democracy. Their need for balancing against Indian power hasn't diminished. India faces regional balancing. Russia faces regional balancing. Iran faces regional balancing. China faces regional balancing.

Most East Asian countries hate Japan much more than China, but because Japan doesn't have a traditional military and is contained by the US-Japanese Security Pact, nobody is balancing against them (except China). It has nothing to do with their government type as Japan has functionally been a corrupt one-party state since WWII.

Even Germany makes its neighbors uneasy when it tries to actually exercise leadership, and they like Japan don't have a traditional military. The Greek crisis has brought up some pretty strong condemnations of Berlin. But we don't see military balancing because Germany is like Japan, a civilian power (at least nominally).