The summary: Zeihan gives a short history of how the IMF Treaty collapsed. He then gives his view on Chinese naval capacity. He then discusses the US political and technical responses to the Chinese attempt to break the First Island Chain or to reintegrate Taiwan, depending on your point of view.
He suggests that US deployment of land-based and sea-based Tomahawk cruise missiles is comparable to the PRC's anti-ship ballistic and maneuverable hypersonic missiles. I tend to think, for reasons that he either ignored or did not understand, that it is an apple /.orange comparison, since time of effector fly out is an acute issue. The Chinese cannot hit our ships, but they can hit our allies and our own land based air forces. It might be nice to have a one-hour global strike option with some terminal warhead maneuver capability of our own, just to hold the CCP leadership at risk, in case they try something stupid. Decapitation for a top-down dictatorship is a viable deterrent and inducement for good behavior.
As to the politics, Zeihan was no fan of Republicans in general, sort of despised Obama, and had heartburn with Trump (As I do.), but seems to think that Joe Biden is the reason we are in better shape than we were in 2019. To this assessment, I write, "Is he kidding?" Biden was one of the very specific CCP loving idiots, who got us into this mess. It was Obama, of all people, who began the Asia pivot.
statistics: Posted by Carbon1234 — 4:21 PM - 3 days ago — Replies 4 — Views 175