Countries are buying lots of weapons, but does it count as an arms race?

Exactly! We need stop this b.s. fanning the flames for war. Focus on economic growth, bi-lateral trade, and business competition. I just don't want US to be drawn into another "mini-war" on some pretense of being the cavalry to "save" some small Asian nations.

I would much rather sell them shyt.

"Why would the US "come to the rescue" in the South China sea?"

Bacause 85% of China's oil is shipped through the Malacca Straits (Singapore), and much of their coal and iron ore is shipped through the Sunda Straits (Indonesia).

If the US cuts those supplies in the event of war, China's military-industrial complex will grind to a halt.

This may be one reason why both Singapore and Indonesia are spending so much on weapons: because if war starts, Chinese forces will go directly to those two strategic waterways.

I hear two strands of thought.

1. The US would intervene because it can't stand the thought of China winning anything and is looking for any chance to keep China down.

The United States is not going to go to war with China over some small islands, even if it would be "a great chance to keep China down." The US and the Soviet Union were genuine implacable enemies for 50 years and there was never an actual war, despite much larger provocations and mistrust on both sides, the US relationship with China is peachy in comparison.

@Honest John

Are the Chinese claiming Singapore or the Sunda Straits? Even if this is all some sort of insidious plan to leapfrog towards their vital arteries, why should the US care? China's lifeblood is international trade and the global liberalization of markets, exactly the same as the US.

The thing about geopolitics is that sometimes is worse NOT to do something than to do something.

So in most US Foreign Policy, it actually has better "outcome" to act than not to act. The most obvious cases would be Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not going to go into a debate of whether the decision to partake in those adventures(looking back from today) was a wise one, but in someways it makes sense.
Most other nations would not have done that because it doesn't have the resources to do it. You would not invade another country because there lies a risk in it backfiring on you and you getting counter-invaded. But in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, those nations could not in a million years counter-invade the US, there is no possibility.

So in most cases, it makes sense for the US to act because it has "nothing to lose" since if it loses to fight, it simply comes home (Vietnam), but if some other nation does it (most likely its neighbors) they risk getting invaded themselves.

That comes to the USSR and US. The USSR comes as close to a true adversary and the US couldn't really risk that much.
But in China's case, it's strange because in my opinion, neither the US nor China can threaten each other's "inner core" (mutually assured destruction) but the US has the only global power projection so it can get involved in a secondary rather than a primary location. Thus, the US stand to lose nothing by targeting an external secondary target since if it loses, it simply backs away from it but the act itself is not enough to cause "extreme retaliation".

"why should the US care? China's lifeblood is international trade"

Since when has common sense ever stopped a war? Whenever an emerging power threatens an incumbent there is a war. Examples include Macedonia vs Persia, Athens vs Sparta, Rome vs Carthage, Phoenecians vs Persia, Constantinople vs Turks, Venice vs Turks, Britain vs Germany, US vs Japan. The only example of superpower rivalry that did not result in war was US vs Soviets, but that was because the Soviet Union disintegrated first due to the cost of trying to outspend the US on arms.

The US vs China is just the next in the series. It is not a question of "if" there will be a war, but "when".

Nevermind the whole in applicability of applying dynastic politics of pre toilet paper societies to modern ones and let's just get to the basics. The only remotely relevant ones are Germany vs. Britain and Japan vs. the US. In the first case, the trade between them was not huge and certainly not an integral part of either economy, the Germans miscalculated how much they depended on international trade, a mistake that neither China nor the US will make. THe US vs Japan. Different case, the US had already started to embargo Japan and cut off trade, so there was no risk that war would threaten it. The trade was gone BEFORE the war started.

If China and the US ever stop being eachother's biggest trading partners, then we can start to worry, but not before.

There are about a million Americans who believe a person in China stole their job. These are the people who vote for Republicans, because Republicans make noise about China's supposed "unfair trade practices", "undervalued currency" etc.

We are dealing with a country in which a former presidential candidate sings "bomb, bomb Iran" to a Beach Boys tune, on camera, and 85% of the population doesn't know, or care, where Indonesia is.

Do you think those people consider international economics when going to war? Me neither.

A bit naive. Each nation is for itself. Those nations might very well fear China, but they also fear the US.

Canada and the US are each other's largest trading partners, by a still-significant margin over US-China exchange. Mexico is third for the US. Chinese companies outsource to Vietnam and Mexico (even Vietnam outsources to Mexico now) just like the US does to China and Mexico (and everywhere else). China would seem to be in a more-precarious position here than the US.

At what point does the greed curve move outward with respect to the sensible economics curve in China? At what point does America, however reluctantly (?), decide that the Pax Americana is more valuable than a potential Pax Sinica? These are the questions at hand.

Those people are represented and bankrolled by guys like Mitt Romney, the ones who made their billions moving those jobs to China in the first place. The Republican voting class hates China, the Republican ruling class makes the right noises but they actually make oodles of money off trade with China and thus will never let their base push them into doing something that hurts their own pocketbooks.

@jtdees

A Pax Sinica in the South China Sea is exactly the same as a Pax Americana there. China isn't going to stop trading with the US, or close the area to foreign shipping.

Exactly. I am so tired of my tax dollars going to defend these "special interests" in Asia and Europe. Especially Europe. I know people stationed in Germany and view it almost as a vacation and come back with a BMW. I love how US citizen taxes provide cover for all these far flung countries.

It loses racking up 1.3 trillion dollars annual in these "adventures". So, YES there is damn consequences. I don't want me and my kids taking up this damn burden. I am so tired of all these smaller countries trying to ply their angle and get US to do the heavy lifting.

All strong military forces are built upon strong economies.

you voted them in office so pls dont complain. these special interests are the interest of multi nationals..not the common man. think about free trade? who advocated it? the usa of course. bigger market bigger profits

i agree but the only thing to fear about the US is their demand for free trade, democracy, human rights, womens rights..anything as long as their multinational companies make money

Since the conclusion of the Pacific War between Japan and the US nuclear weapons have existed.

That tends to make adversaries to give pause.

Otherwise, you had the US displace the British as a leading power relatively peacefully.

Not sure many examples prior to the 19th century are relevant or comparable. Certainly not when you start reaching back to the middle ages or antiquity.

New Conservative - great point: "Nevermind the whole in applicability of applying dynastic politics of pre toilet paper societies to modern ones "

Of course, that is one chinese invention I am very thankful for - but it possibly stretches back to at least the 14th century, in the Ming Dynasty if correct...

Nuclear weapons existed during the Korean war (at least on the US side), the last time US and Chinese forces fought one another.

Nukes weren't used then, and the US and China are quite capable of fighting a regional war now, without resorting to nukes.

Any regional war would be for the purpose of establishing regional dominance, no-one is going to push the button when the objective is simply to demarcate spheres of influence in South East Asia. A war there would not touch the main protagonists, and so is a low-risk enterprise for them.

You are mostly right except the last sentence on your post.

China did not create 'an environment of distrust' as you claimed.

instead, an environment of distrust of china was maliciously created by decades of well choreographed demon-isation and defaming of china that china was unable to fight off then. And most asian nations, being smaller asian nations as they were, knew no better than just follow the piped piper.

Incomink,

The Soviets had just tested a bomb prior to the Korean War. Also, do to the WWII agreements they had bases in Manchuria.

Allegedly Eisenhower did make a threat of using nuclear weapons once he came into office to muscle the Chinese into an agreement that Truman was originally seeking (roughly status quo ante, and resolving the POW issue). A bit of hearsay, but possible.

Toilet paper actually stretches back to the times of the Tang Dynasty. Early Arabic traders expressed with disgust that the Chinese cleaned themselves with paper, instead of water, after defecating.

Regarding "enviornment of distrust".

Don't forget that the Chinese are something like the Jews of Southeast Asia. In virtually every SEA country the Chinese comprise the educated, professional class who own a disproportionate amount of the wealth and who set themselves apart from the rest of the people and questionable loyalty to the state. Its been that way for more than 500 years. But whereas the Jews until very recently had no home country, the Chinese immigrant communities had an enormous home country just to the North that demanded tribute.

Said home country also regarded these Nanyang Chinese as foolish for leaving the Celestial Empire and living among the "barbarians". Thus, they didn't much care for overseas Chinese until Deng's reform and opening up, when their investment into China was a crucial component in attaining its current state of development.

For sure, I've even seen texts in which Ming dynasty officials referred to the overseas Chinese as criminals; but that doesn't change that the overseas Chinese still- at the very least- preserved their Chinese identities. Successful Chinese merchangs in "Nanyang" used their new wealth to bring in Chinese wives and even teachers to ensure that their children could grow up with knowledge of Chinese characters, history, and culture.

Chinese diaspora in Philippines (17th Century) and Indonesia (18th Century) were massacred by mainland Chinese as punishment for having left the "Middle Kingdom"

I thought they were massacred by the natives or European colonial overlords in these places? I can't believe that the Qing would go to all this trouble to send soldiers or agents overseas to kill a few merchants or fishermen.

Chinese are hardly buying up all the mineral assets around the world. Read Deborah Brautigam's "The Dragon's Gift" about western mining and resource extraction MNCs' powerful pull in Africa. Don't believe every single piece of news you find in the mainstream media.

Republic of China (Taiwan) is also pretty hunky-dorry since signing the ECFA preferential trading agreement w/ mainland China in 2010 and resuming direct flights and mail deliveries. As a matter of fact, I enjoyed some scrumptious mangosteens cheaply imported from Taiwan as part of ECFA this past summer in Zhengzhou.

Now I know this isn't true. I've lived in Taiwan for 2 and a half years and I have searched, SEARCHED! for mangosteens. They do not grow here. You have to go to hong kong to buy them and those ones are imported from Thailand.

That said, people on Taiwan do like trading with China, and going over to China to rule over Chinese people like kings. (This is changing gradually, but the vast majority of Taiwanese people in China are bosses or owners.) Taiwan still runs a better government than the mainland so Taiwan has no real reason to reunify.

Taiwan does not rely on the US security umbrella anymore, instead it knows that Chinese public opinion would never forgive a Chinese government that dropped Chinese bombs on what 1.4 billion people think are "Chinese people."

Interesting. I was told that the mangosteens came from Taiwan, and I didn't think much of it because I know Taiwan can also grow betel nut palm (Areca), so I assumed that it has the suitable climate for growing mangosteens. I also saw roadside vendors in Zhengzhou selling mangosteens marked as being grown in Taiwan. Pretty strange then, I guess.

There is no such thing as an "old-fashioned military superpower" - the term was coined following WWII to describe the respective positions of the US and the Soviets.

In reality, Britain may have approached that status following the concluson of the Napoleonic Wars, with paramountcy of its Navy and its industrial revolution in full swing in the mid-19th century.

Prior to that, you had maybe the Hapsburgs (a stretch) and the Mongols getting close to that kind of paramountcy.

Otherwise, powers other than the more recent European nations states were regional military powers in reality. Even with the European states, the bulk of military power was concentrated on the continent, like with France and Germany, although Russia had projected power across central asia and to the pacific.

China has had long experience on being an oversized regional power with many dynasties in the past.

I think Rudy's point was that in contrast to China's past regional dominance, it is now becoming strong enough to challenge the US's global hegemony.

The post-war world got used to 'Pax Americana', but now China is openly challenging the US (or rather, US allies) in South, South-East and East Asia.

I realize that China is no match - yet - for the US at sea, but a land war is a different animal, in which China's huge population and lack of an electorate could prove decisive. I hope we never find out.