Maybe its my reading comprehension, but you did use the word import in the above. From what I gathered, we were talking in the thread about an embargo on china and what would happen. Everything that would normally be imported would have to be sourced from other countries, and delivered over land borders.
You tell me. how much petroleum does China import and where does it enter the country. If its by land, then I am betting its not going to be sold retail but allocated to the military. If it come in by sea, its going to get confiscated.
How much food does china’s population eat per day, and where does it enter the country, if its not domestically grown and actually has the fuel to transport it to markets. Given as well, that they are under a sort of seige, will the government create spot shortages. while holding on to a percentage for a strategic stock pile. Most . if not all North American cities only have a three day supply of food on hand, so I feel safe in sticking to my assumption that the food supply chain is what will break China.
The U.S. could not possibly blockade China. China has a huge land border through which trade would flow. Russia and the SE Asian countries would be profiting like gangbusters while laughing their socks off.
First no one is going to be giving a damm about ilegal, thats for the lawyers after the fact. Secondly, it wont be construed as an act of war, it will be an act of war.
Sarcasm or disbelief aside, it actually is a nuanced strategy. Not to mention , that i did ask up thread why exactly we were doing it, so i am more commenting on how to, rather than the why.
BG never actually gave a reason, just asked about how it might work. The USA is a power, while China is aspiring to be a power, both have interests and quite possibly will butt heads in the future.
Im sure that everyone would perfer to have the boys play nice, and everyone makes money and so forth, but when it comes down to it, people in the smokey rooms set strategy to win.
I’d say what your missing is the time element. China is a huge country by land mass, so yeah the neighbors allow goods to come via overland or over flight and then what.
Those food stuffs have to be shipped or rerouted to those countries, or third party countries who share borders with countries that share borders with china. So at minimum a week, for food stuffs to get to the chinese border and cross over, assuming there is no complications.
From there by rail, and who exactly is going to start getting this food supply. Also assuming that there is no complications getting the trains to the depots.
China is going to have to self insure the fleet of oil tankers, if they want those ships even making the attempt to enter an exclusion zone. Other wise they are going to have to start drawing on their strategic stockpile of petroleum, to get those trucks to and from the railhead, to move the food and other things like water and any medicines.
So its a race,if they can manage that and last long enough and they might win.
What percentage of the US national debt is held by the Chinese government, or individual Chinese investors?
Next, if we get in a war or war-ish situation with China, then the debt owed by America to China is irrelevant, because all we have to do is declare that we aren’t paying. Wars over debts owed are actually fairly common, one such instance is Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. Kuwait lent Iraq billions of dollars to help them fight the Iran-Iraq war, and when the war was over Saddam figured it would be easier to invade and conquer Kuwait than pay them back. And the debt to the Saudis could be nullified by the threat of continuing further south. See also WWII.
Of course, such a repudiation of our debt would have huge negative consequences in our ability to borrow money in the future, as well as a crash in the value of the dollar as various overseas investors attempt to divest themselves of assets in America. But all that will pale in comparison to global economic shock caused by the interruption in trade itself.
So any war or near-war between the US and China would be a global disaster before the first bullet is fired. The question of which countries would pay the highest price during the conflict is hard to determine, but it seems foolish to declare that the US would suffer far more damage than China. China is still a very poor country with far less resilient social institutions. Yes, a war would spark a wave of nationalism that could paper over the cracks. For a while. We’re familiar with the idea that a war brings a country together. But wars also tear countries apart, even if your country seems to be winning.
Plus, probably neither we nor they will exist as a country after the nuclear exchange. So there won’t be any entities to owe money to the other side in a no-longer existent currency.
In other words, we aren’t going to war with China for the same reason we didn’t go to war with the USSR. The same goes for any embargo that pushes China towards collapse; we don’t dare put the leadership in a situation where they start thinking in terms like “If we’re going down, we’re taking those American bastards with us”.
I think assuming that to ‘set strategy to win’ means some kind of conflict between the two state is just too realist. Too much is to be gained from alliance between the two states that would ever give them reason to consider conflict (assuming that both states are rational actors… or not Herman Cain).
I think the powers of China have only really aspired to largely regional issues and whilst I get this is very hypothetical, I’m struggling to look past the reality of the situation!
Actually I will give you an example of what I meant. Back when B Obama was elected, some American spy trawler was besieged by a fleet of greenpeace type ships. Which meant that instead of sending warships, like they may have had the right too, they sent something different but the same message was recieved.
So they gamed the American reaction, and set strategy. I’m not sure if they won, but in the eyes of the world they did.