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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: h0db who wrote (120690)	11/30/2003 12:36:07 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi h0db; Re: "I seem to recall that before WWII, the United States was Japan's largest trading partner (one of the reasons that oil and scrap steel embargos bit so hard)." World trade was very small in 1940, in terms of total trade over total GDP. The US was nearly self sufficient then. Our trade with Japan was only a tiny fraction of their total GDP, though it was a significant fraction. US investment in Japanese assets and vice versa was essentially zero in 1940. This is in reverse of the current situation between Taiwan and China. And most importantly, the Chinese and Taiwanese share a language and culture. The sharing of these sorts of things tends to promote peace, all other things being equal. By contrast, the US and Japan are very culturally distinct, and were even more so in 1940. Re: "And Taiwan does have a modern airforce, but it is hard to generate combat sorties if SRBMs with submunition warheads are raining down on your airfields." Historically, bombing has done little to stop enemy air forces. The primary reason for this is that humans, devious creatures that they are, tend to be very good at hiding or protecting valuable assets. The problem is that SRBM damage to airfields can be quickly repaired. Fighter jets like the F-CK can take off from fairly short runways. They can be carried around by heavy equipment over damaged runways and launched from highways and parking lots. And humans have a marked tendency to escalate a war of words before actually beginning hostilities. This tendency is universal over the species, in everything from dictatorships to democracies, and it gives the foe a warning to disperse assets such as fighter aircraft. In short, the number of "air field" targets in Taiwan is in gross excess of the amount of SRBM weapons that China has available. -- Carl