|
zraver, gunnut, please read the end of the article. It concludes by stating that while Americans are good at tactics and Russians are good at operations, the Chinese good at strategy.
I'm of the opinion that China is a weak country and should play its diplomatic cards as such. Every time it starts a war or does something aggressive, it is basing its strength on conditions; there's always some factor that prevents its opponent from reacting with full force and punishing China for its arrogance. This is all fine and dandy when you know what you're doing, but it's damn risky. Sooner or later this arrogance is going to blow up in your face and you won't have the mass to endure the blow.
LCol, once again, thanks for dealing with this idiot. But as I've said, you're being too subtle. I can't understand your point; reading CDF, CHF, and WAB, I'm familiar with most of the details, but only reading this, I can make no inference. I still can't see this as Chinese, instead of merely being among the 90th percentile of decision quality.
The thing is, the PRC has never been a strong country. Internally, it lacked technology, infrastructure, and economy. It didn't have foreign capital, I recall from a CCTV 9 program that China had to send boatloads of agricultural goods in order to receive a single small shipment of capital goods. Technology-wise, it could get a nuclear bomb, but the air force never got enough training and the planes were either obsolete or imported from Russia. And in infrastructure... the cities were tolerably provisioned, but until the next few decades, China will remain a primarily rural country. The 67 33 statistic. Militarily speaking, it lacked force projection because it didn't really have a military. The technology was always lacking, the training was insufficient, and the tactical and operational doctrine was inferior. The only way you could say it was militarily strong was in the fact that, while you could destroy China, you couldn't capture China. Occupying a large and densely populated area filled with idiotized nationalists, that's just idiocy.
In such a situation, what would American or Soviet leaders have done in response to an encirclement? I still stand by what I say, that Chinese strategic philosophy is among the world's most sophisticated. The action of invading Vietnam is what I'd imagine to be, out of a pool of 10 choices, the best possible choice. Out of a hundred choices, it would be among the ...
|