War with China? You don’t say. 
I say, drive those fascists to the dirt.
America will be victorious.
Avoid it? Why would you want to?
…
"There are three primary powers in the world — the US, Russia, and China. All other nations are secondary allies, or tertiary powers. In a three-power system, the object of foreign policy for a primary power is to align with one of others to the detriment of the third.
A great power that does not pursue this policy becomes the victim of an alliance between the remaining two. Such an alliance need not be permanent; it can shift, as was the case with Nixon’s opening to China, which put Russia on the defensive and led eventually to the downfall of the Soviet Union.
This dynamic is not difficult to grasp. Adults playing the board game Risk know that, while the game begins with six players, it quickly evolves to three survivors. At that point, it is imperative for two of the players to align and destroy the third by systematically attacking it, and refraining from attacking each other. The victim is quickly wiped from the board.
Of course, geopolitics is more complex than Risk. Players are rarely removed from the board; they are just temporarily advantaged or disadvantaged in pursuing their national goals. But the three-power dynamics of two-against-one are fundamentally the same.
Bismarck knew this. Kissinger knows it today. Obama does not.
Obama subscribed to a post-national globalist ideology, which finds no correlative in the real world outside of faculty lounges and Georgetown salons. In Obama’s worldview, nation states are a problem, not a solution.
Global goals on issues like climate change, trade, the OECD’s world tax program, and the IMF’s world money program require global institutions. Nation states are temporary impediments until global governance can be built through non-democratic transnational institutions.
Meanwhile, Russia and China never lost sight of their national interests. While their leaders dutifully attend the same multilateral venues as Obama, such as the G20, IMF, and regional summits, they persistently put Russia and China first. For Russia and China, the world is a dangerous place in which national interest is advanced ruthlessly; not Obama’s Kumbaya-laced globalist fantasy of a one world order.
This hard-edged realism by Russia and China, combined with a lack of realism by Obama, has led to the worst possible outcome for the US. Russia and China have become deeply intertwined and are building a durable alternative to the post-war dollar-based system dominated by the US.
These Russia-China initiatives include deepening cooperation through the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank, the New Silk Road, and joint efforts in weapons systems and space.
Most threatening is that, in the past 10 years, Russia increased its gold reserves 203%, and China increased its gold reserves an estimated 570%. Such gold accumulations have no purpose other than to lay the foundation for a non-dollar-based international monetary system. No great power has prevailed long without a great currency. When confidence in the dollar fails, US power will fail with it.
Obama blundered because he allowed Russia and China to pursue the two-against-one dynamic leaving the US as the odd man out. Fortunately, it is not too late to reverse this dynamic. Signs from the new Trump administration are encouraging. Trump’s early actions and appointments suggest he understands the precarious position of the US, and is already moving to change the status quo.
Russia is a more natural ally of the US than China. Russia is a parliamentary system, albeit with autocratic overtones; China is a Communist dictatorship. Russia has empowered the Orthodox Church in recent decades, while China is officially atheistic. Russia is encouraging population growth, while China’s one-child policy and sex-selective abortions resulted in the deaths of over 20 million girls.
These cultural aspects — elections, Christianity, and family formation — provide Russia with a natural affinity to Western nations. Russia is also superior to China militarily despite recent Chinese advances. That makes Russia the more desirable ally in any two-against-one scenario.
The most powerful argument for embracing Russia to checkmate China is energy. The US and Russia are the two largest energy producers in the world. US energy production is set to expand with the support of the Trump administration.
Russian production will expand also based in part on initiatives led by Rex Tillerson of Exxon, soon to be Secretary of State. China has few oil and natural gas reserves and relies heavily on dirty forms of coal and some hydropower. The remainder of China’s energy needs is met through imports.
An energy alliance between the US and Russia, supported by Saudi Arabia, could leave the Chinese economy and, by extension, the standing of the Communist Party of China, in jeopardy. That threat is enough to insure Chinese compliance with US aims.
An emerging US-Russian entente could also lead to the alleviation of Western economic sanctions on Russia. This would open the door to an alliance between Germany and Russia. Those two economies have near perfect complementarity, since Germany is technology rich and natural resource poor, while Russia is the opposite.
Isolation of Russia is a fool’s errand. Russia is the 12th largest economy in the world, has the largest landmass of any country in the world, is a nuclear power, has abundant natural resources, and is a fertile destination for direct foreign investment. The Russian culture is highly resistant to outside pressure, but open to outside cooperation.
Just as 50 years of US sanctions failed to change Cuban behaviour, US sanctions will not change Russian behaviour, except for the worse. Engagement, not confrontation, is the better course. The new Trump administration gets this.
US voices such as John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are quick to say, ‘Russia is not our friend.’ Why not? Could it be because President Obama publicly humiliated Vladimir Putin by saying he was, ‘like a bored kid in the back of the classroom’?
Could it be because Obama proclaimed that Russia under Putin is ‘on the wrong side of history.’ In fact, Putin’s sense of history goes back to Peter the Great. Obama’s does not seem to go back further than 1991.
Most of the tension in US — Russia relations today stems from Russia’s invasions of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. But Russia’s Crimean invasion should have come as no surprise. US and British intelligence services and foreign NGOs destabilised the pro-Russian elected government in Kiev in early 2014, causing Ukrainian President Yanukovych to flee into exile in Russia.
Ukraine was always a bridge too far for NATO and EU membership. Better to leave Ukraine as a quasi-neutral buffer between east and west than put its status in play. Ukraine has always been culturally divided. Now it is politically divided as well.
Russia’s hand in Ukraine was forced by the short-sighted Western interventions of Obama and David Cameron. Obama will soon leave the scene; Cameron already has. Putin is the last man standing, unsurprising for a man whose pursuits include martial arts and chess.
Fortunately, it’s not too late to re-establish a balance of power that favours the US. China is a rising regional hegemon that should be constrained. Russia is a natural ally that should be empowered. The US has blundered in its foreign policy for the past eight years.
A new Trump administration has an opportunity to reverse those blunders by building bridges to Russia, and it seems to be moving in that direction".
Regards,
Jim Rickards,
For The Daily Reckoning
HA! I love this pic
I can not defeat you in battlefield so I hide 
We should avoid it because it is bad for us. Lots of people will die in war, also war is not good for all living things.
That paper is some ill informed crap, he might as well of mentioned the strategic advantage North Korea’s Unicorn Lancers have, and their ability to project force globally on rainbow bridges, whenever it rains.
Where do you find this stuff Shield Maiden?
You mean the US should ally with North Korea? Is it realistic conclusion or only your own wishful thinking?
TF wrote:
Be more specific with your criticism, which point is ill informed crap?
The entire thing. It’s interpretation of Russia as a parliamentary republic then China is just a Communist state… He as absolutely no insight whatsoever how either works. He doesn’t know what motivates them, their strategic Sims and needs. And assuming it’s structured like a game of risk, only three powers, presume all three are trying for hegemony. Only China claims that, and is half assed in trying to check that because they don’t believe it themselves.
Kropotkin writes better stuff than that.
Could you give even one piece of evidence for your assertion? All you do is talking endlessly.
Yes, of course America, China and Russia all take their national interests seriously, but it does not mean “national interest is advanced ruthlessly”. for example, America and China reached a landmark treaty on climate change this year against each of their own interests.
Also, will China, America and Russia ruthlessly push their national interests? I think no, because in this game of the world, there are other players, and those players all have their own interests: for example, it is against the interests of Australia if China and America went to war.
Here is a real expert, Kevin Rudd, who was twice Prime Minister of Australia, talks about this
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XQ1onjXJK0[/youtube]
google.com/search?ei=jf1tWK … t-ZbQTjZZs
People in the west don’t quite grasp what China means by hegemony, so get caught up in ideological speaking sessions trading jabs. Hegemony is like Shogon, control without sovereignty, world unified.
That’s not compatible with a tripartite superpower structure with several minor states, or a largely independent UN, etc.
That link is my one supporting piece of evidence, they’ve been saying it like a fucking mantra since the late 90s, I know a math professor in Guangzhou back then who used to have very nationalistic students write that on the chalkboard, he didn’t teach them, they just felt inspired from the political climate to grandstand, just as people here do on silly concepts.
I’m gonna go to Nairaland and accuse Nigerians of being hegemonic over Africa, then tell that to the South Africans, then the Moroccans and Egyptians, and just laugh my ass off.
That climate treaty is effectively dead once trump enters office.
So many ways to create the next world war, so very little time…
You call that evidence? Lots of those links are articles by think tanks wanting to push forward their own agenda.
let me say this: there is one myth that need to be dispelled, that is China wants to replace America to run the world, but it is not true.
China is not that stupid: The existing world order run by America costs billions American money and countless lives of American soldiers. Both the Party state of China and common Chinese understand this, and China as the world’s biggest trading nation benefits a lot from this world order, the existing world order run by America provides peace and stability for the whole world, and it enables China to be today’s biggest trading nation.
why would China want to spend billions and send troops to overthrown this world order? Of course it wants to rewrite some rules, but it is totally different from taking actions to overthrowing it.
If you were Chinese president Xi jinping, with your Daughter educated in Harvard, you weighted the pros and cons, what would you choose?
Oh, let’s wait and see if he really can repeal it.
He can talk whatever he wants in the election, but what he can actually do is another totally different story.
China and Russia are both similar in that they claim their attempts at territorial expansion are all part of an effort to ‘unify’ what belongs to them already. The US’ tactic is a bit different - control foreign lands without actually attempting to own them. Make no mistake though, all three have consistently tried to expand their power and influence.
At the end of the day all three are doing a similar thing - they are trying to secure resources. China and the US especially depend upon a relative degree of control of their supply chains (the US on its oil supplies, and buyers of its bonds, China on basic industrial materials like kobalt).
That Eric Li guy is an idiot by the way. “China has changed more than America”. Wow. 1960’s China: hundreds of millions of people starving, a broken economy, people being executed on the streets for political crimes. No fucking surprise it changed. And China IS run by a handful of billionaires, just like America. . Let’s not pretend the CPC is run by poverty stricken, sandal and threadbare trouser wearing idealists! Their children drive ferraris around Chelsea. (businessinsider.com/wen-jiab … 12-10?IR=T )
Realistically Trump can revitalise the U S of A’s economy, but even if he doesn’t (that’s if he makes it to Office) the U S won’t disappear into a bottomless pit, I mean what other country has the resources or the ambition to take it’s place as the future global leader and with change there is bound to be conflict, which will be impossible to avoid with China or Russia for that matter.
Of course, China today is not run by threadbare trouser wearing idealists nor did it in the past, if you read the resume of some of the top leaders in China you would find lots of them received some of their training in America and Europe.
I don’t know whether China has changed more than America because it is a very big topic but one thing can be certain that over the decades China did change hugely, and America certainly played a major role in pushing for those changes in China.
First, the children of the top leaders do “drive ferraris around Chelsea”, common Chinese folks know it from one way or another, it is not secrets.
And CPC is not run by idealists as I have said, in fact, all the people today who join the party are realistic but clever folks who pursue wealth and social status.
But combining the two, China is not run by billionaires. I don’t want to use too many abstract ideas to explain the reasons behind it, I want to give an example to support my point:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/28/obama.trains/
Here is a news in 2010, 7 years ago, saying that “Obama announces $8 billion investment in high-speed train system” , it says “
But 7 years later China owns much more high speed railway than America. Of course, there are many reasons for this, but one reason is building a national high speed railway network goes against the very self-interests of the American airline industry, therefore they fight hard to make sure there will never be a national high-speed railway network in America, even though America is technically capable of building a much faster and better railway than China. In China did, the airline industry is also a mighty interest group but it have to obey the party. China is a capitalist society but it is more a “state capitalist system” in which the power of money must follow the political authority.