At what point does all the nuke talk become more serious than just rhetoric?
Does anyone see the press playing this up at all? I am seeing more March Madness news than anything about taiwan and China.
Is anybody out there worried about China?
The Chinese government may be fanatical communist dictators, but they ain’t crazy. They have to know that a nuclear war with the U.S. would devastate them. Now, possibly, they don’t care if 500 million of their people are wiped out, but they surely care that the land would be polluted by radiation for generations.
I am suspicious of reports that China has anywhere near the delivery system that would be needed to inflict much damage on the U.S.
The Chinese government know that their path lies along economic growth and development, which requires U.S. cooperation and active participation. They will rattle their sabers at Taiwan, but they would not risk a nuclear attack.
OK, it’s Tom Clancy, but it’s still more than a little true: “Rattling a sabre makes noise, drawing it does not”.
Sounds like rhetoric for internal purposes.
Norman
Oh man!!!.. I’m gonna have to go out and buy some more RAM before its to late…shit
China won’t nuke nor attack Taiwan. They want in the WTO, they want more trade with US and certainly Taiwan. Taiwan’s got a lot of cash, and cash is flammable. If they just up and attack Taiwan, the US will place sanctions on them so fast, we’ll start making our own cheap plastic crap. The price of cheap plastic crap may rise slightly, but more Americans will have jobs to afford cheap plastic crap. China knows this. They want to continue making our cheap plastic crap.
Freedom said the Drudge Report said the publication said:
snicker
Despite years of U.S. research in its Space Defense Initiative, the U.S. still doesn’t have a weapon which can bring down a satellite. (Not one that we’ll admit to, anyway.) The odds that China has developed a real, useable anti-satellite weapons system are practically zilch.
Wasn’t there an air-launched anti-satellite missile ?
Norman
BRECKINSHIRE has it right! China desperately wants WTO membership, because this will allow them to export EVRYTHING to the USA-and it won’t be cheap plastic toys! GM is at thi moment, in negotiations with the Chinese, to source MAJOR components in China-not just radios or wiper blades-I’m talking engines, transmissions, body stampings, etc. Their plane will be to import these majoer components, and only do final assembly in the USDA-UAW labor $24.00/hr.;Chinese (prison labor) $0.00/hr. Makes you wonder why all these UAW members voted for Clinton!
I may be way off base here, but I think the Chinese were referring to U.S. interests or overseas outposts…not the actual machines in orbit.
I voted for Melin
ASAT - Launched from an F-15. I think one of the ABM treaties was responsible for its demise.
Although not trivial by any means, it is a lot easier to hit a orbiting satellite than a suborbital ballistic missile.
I was thinking the same way. It didn’t even occur to me that they were talking about SPACE satelites.
Of course that may because I agree with tracer, there is no way in hell they have a weapon to take out one of our satelites.
The Chinese do make a lot of noise about it, and they might even conceivably attack Taiwan (although I kind of doubt that they will). But I just can’t see them going nuclear over it.
First, they want the valuable economy of Taiwan intact… even just one nuke would go a long way to making the Taiwanese economy worth a lot less.
Second, the rest of the world would ostracize China. Definately not what the Chinese want right now, especially with their pre-existing border enmity with the Russians, Indians, Vietnamese, and slightly removed feuds with Japan and South Korea.
Third, Taiwan isn’t that far from valuable parts of China, and while I don’t know the prevailing winds in the area, I doubt the Chinese would themselves escape the fallout.
Finally, using nukes is such a devastating proposition, especially if you’re talking about picking a fight with the preeminent nuclear power in the world, the U.S., that I doubt it could happen with the exceptions of accidental loss and use by madmen. Millions of Chinese would survive a nuclear war, but I doubt theirs, or any other, government would. Even if the Party heads survive in their bunkers, once they come out, why would the local army commanders follow their orders rather than becoming warlords, and ruling their part of China completely in fact, even if not in name, like many in Chinese history have?
-Steve
“Heyyyy sexy mama! Wanna kill all humans?” -Bender, Futurama
“Your game shows reward knowledge. Ours punish ignorance!” -The Simpsons
I think that’s why the militants were specifically touting China’s ability to lob over a neutron bomb. I think that even the mainland apparatchiks realized that it would make no sense to threaten to flatten the island in order to reclaim it, so they wanted to create the impression that they could simply remove all the inconvenient people and leave the buildings and infrastructure intact. Not that that makes much more sense either . . .
DHR
If that’s true, I think it puts China’s statements pretty firmly in the category of “empty threats.” Nuclear warning shot? Errrmmm…doesn’t the USA have several thousand people under various mountains monitoring other Nuclear-capable countries for any sign of a launch 24/7/365.25? Something tells me that if a launch was confirmed, they wouldn’t wait around to see if it was headed for the Taiwan Strait instead of L.A.
I just thought I would update this thread. I’m not claiming this will lead to anything, but here is the latest from over there:
Erroneous wrote:
They wouldn’t have to fire a ballistic missile. A small nuclear warhead could be fitted on a conventional-looking short-range missile, or dropped from a bomber. NORAD has no way to distinguish between an enemy-deployed conventional bomb and an enemy-deployed nuclear bomb until it detonates.
I’m just throwing in another link to a good page about this.
This page compares the invasion of Normandy to the situation at Taiwan.
Details on link.
Launching a nuclear attack would do nothing except cause the U.S. to drop our semblance of “neutrality” in the dispute. China’s military strength is that if you ever kill 10 of 'em, there’s another 100 coming over the hill. That’s why the fishing boats are so ominous - if China ever desired to act aggressively towards Taiwan it would simply flood the island with a ton of soldiers delivered in whatever means it had available.
Can anyone come up with any other reason for China to be so hardup on Taiwan besides for the fact that China is just jealous and slightly embarassed? I get so tired of hearing this crap - I realize that diplomacy isn’t always honest - but I really wish the U.S. would just tell China to leave Taiwan the hell alone. China isn’t going to want to go to war with the U.S. - we could outlast them and then just pound them into submission with our superior weapons and technology. Am I wrong here?
Neat link.
Given that the Chinese have been saying that they would retake Taiwan for the past 50 years, but don’t seem to have done much to develop the amphibious and naval capability to do so… are they really taking their own rhetoric seriously?
If they aren’t, why should we?
-Steve
“Banned by the Space Pope”