Report Card for Donald Trump

[Mikebert]

(01-27-2017, 03:05 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: I think the larger point stands, in the sense that it is wholly possible for the major powers to engage in a conventional conflict without having an incentive to trade queens, as it were, and a substantial incentive (vis megadeath of their respective populations) not to.

But where is the incentive to start the conventional conflict in the first place if there can be no winner.?

I would point out that the USSR engaged in military measures against the US after WW II up to the start of Korean in 1950--all at a time when the US did not yet have a sizable nuclear capability. They stopped doing so when this changed.  After the change they operated strictly within their own sphere--backing down the one time they tried to do otherwise in Cuba.  Now I see the Chinese actions in the South China Sea as them acting in their own sphere--its like the US in the Caribbean or the USSR in Hungary.   I think they probably see this as their affair to be handled by diplomacy with the affected SE Asia nations--and none of America's business. 

That is, this issue is for us what the Cuban crisis was for the Soviets.  We can't win, because they are in the geopolitical right.  Since there can be no ultimate resolution (which would require nuclear war) why would the US decide a hot war response would make sense?  Any hot war would give the results of a trade war, plus more lots of American servicemen getting killed for no damn good reason, why no just opt for the trade war, and keep all those American servicemen (that Trump says he cares about) still breathing?