overcome economic problems. No telling what kind of deal the two have made, so he may be right.
Lets think about what could happen. This is not very cheery, so if you are prone to depression, stop reading now. This is not what I think will happen, it is just a thought exercise. Accepted military wisdom says that it is wise to prepare for what you enemy is capable of, not what you think that they will do. Perhaps Clancy may come back to do the novel and write in a happy ending.
Russia invades, NATO gets up to bat, we start pumping troops and material into Europe, the sanctions fly, and six weeks into the quagmire, China says, "He guys, you know that Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere that the Japanese wanted, well, we want it now, and we are willing to fight for it with sanctions and troops of our own. (You know, we have a gazillion of them)
"Here is our current shopping list; Korea, Japan, and, while we are at it, everything else between Beijing and San Francisco and from the Arctic to the Antarctic. And, by the way, Russia wants Alaska back, but you won't need it where you are going." They may go on to tells us, "Now you all don't go mobilizing that Navy, or we will just have to sink it." All of a sudden we have a global war with a one front military, a country that is not united, but divided and a congress that considers nothing but their elections and would refuse to agree that the sky is blue and members that are so damn dumb that don't know the difference in cold tomato soup and the secret police...
We have become so dependent on China that we can't brush our teeth without them. A flip of a diplomatic switch and retail sells die, almost overnight. After a couple of days of panic buying, there is nothing left on the shelves, and nothing in the pipeline. No amount of money will buy that hairdryer you want. The major shareholders split their profits and split. This is not considering that the Russians may have already hacked all of our infrastructure so we are deaf, dumb, blind and sitting in the dark. The right will blame the left for the problems and our belated civil war can get underway so that we can kill each other by the boatload under the flag and in the name of God.
The Russians, with our economic help, beat the Germans and won WWII. Our largest contribution was industrial production on a scale undreamed of by our enemies. Our secret weapon was spam, not emails, the meat. The Russians contributed bodies and blood, oceans of blood.
Guess where all of that productive power is today? Yea, it went to China when our Unions went to hell and billionaires multiplied like rabbits. China's productive capabilities combined with Russia's location could lead to a reprinting of all of the world's political maps after the slaughter of a cast of millions. Of course, we always have the doomsday option, a way of leveling the field a tad; it would be a sort of admission that we had nothing left to lose.
Happy VD!
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