Solon_Mega said:
Better not to mess with China. Fallout 3 taught us something, and that is to NEVER F***ing piss of China.
Not so much, Fallout 3 was just dealing with a clash of super powers, using a retro future MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) logic. China was simply used because it's the current "evil empire" and the only group that could credibly challenge the US. Back when they did Wasteland which was Fallout's direct ancestor they used the Russians.
It's increasingly off subject, but one of the big moral debates right now when it comes to international strategy is whether or not the US should pre-emptively attack China. The reason being is that they are rapidly becoming a serious threat globally, and have been making a lot of noise behind The Bamboo curtain about counquering the world, for living space, resources, revenge, and of course destiny. The thing is though that as time goes on, MAD means less and less. ICBM delivered WMD was king for decades, but right now we're seeing effective countermeasures. MAD remained a balancing factor with the USSR because neither the US or USSR developed direct countermeasures to maintain the balance of power by treaty. When the USSR fell the US developed interception missles of great sophistication which we have demonstrated during "The War On Terror" and which has slotted them off to no end because Russia felt thos treaties should have been in force, while we argued that the USSR was gone. This was at the heart of WHY Russia got so upset about those missle interception bases present in Poland during the whole Georgia invasion thing because their prescence does a lot to pen Russia in. At any rate China is developing their own countermeasures, and their approach is a bit differant from ours, they are using ground based lasers of substantial power to blind satellites to make targeting and satellite reconaissance very difficult. There are articles on this if you do a search for China, Satellite, and Lasers as key words (and a lot of articles no less). China is also building up it's navy so it can project it's military, if you read up on the "Yuan Class" submarine, and about an incident involving the US Carrier "Kittyhawke", the implications are disturbing. Simply put a World War III scenario is liable to involve conventional warfare, as WMD will require something akin to physical delivery of the weapons. Due to simple manpower with the our edge becoming substantially reduced, and WMD off the table as they are now, time does very much play to China.
There is a lot of conflict between "moralists" and "militants" right now over whether China should be pre-emptively attacked and kept down until it inevitably starts a war we will definatly be facing an uphill battle to win. It's need for resources, living space, and other things means that it's not going to remain "peaceful" and content to merely exercise soft power forever, it's under too many very real pressures, not to mention the sheer anger over things like being "trivialized" globally, and things like "the Opium Wars". People of course hate wars, and China is offering some very beneficial trade right now.
Right now moralists definatly have a lead, and prefer to remain entirely reactive, especially in light of short term benefits. Hence why people walk on relative eggshells on issues like North Korea. As well as issues like what happens if North Korea decides it wants to take South Korea with it of course.
