Instapundit notes that the Chinese military's leaders are getting more aggressive in their rhetoric. The problem is that the Chinese might act on that rhetoric:
China is strong in some ways, but is really a paper tiger. But it may not realize that, as the hotheaded Japanese officers didn’t realize it in the runup to World War II.
Yes, in 1941 Japan's GDP was a tenth of ours. Yet they attacked anyway. But it did take us nearly four years to throw them back, recall, despite their miscalculation.
And we've seen other miscalculations regarding China. In 1950, their friend North Korea attacked our ally and we were taken by surprise before we recovered. And then China itself took us by surprise and nearly threw us off the peninsula before we recovered. China was fairly weak, then.
How much more difficult would it be to defeat China if they take us by surprise and throw us back from the western Pacific?
Remember, China doesn't have to be stronger than us to win a war in the western Pacific. No, China has to be stronger than their target and merely strong enough to delay our intervention long enough to defeat their target. Those are two different things. China has the great advantage of being close while we are far.
If we even try to roll back China, shouldn't we be worried about how long a war between two nuclear powers can remain conventional?
But yes, China is a danger because their chest is swelling over their regained military stature. And while their actual power will help decide the outcome of a war, their beliefs about their power will help decide whether they start a war.
I liken it to new soldiers just out of boot camp. You enter probably out of shape and a pure civilian. You endure and come out part of the mean green fighting machine, with new muscles and the new skills of killing planted in you. You think you are a bad-ass SEAL Team 6-level killing machine in your still-crisp BDUs (or whatever they are called now).
But you are not a killing machine. You aren't even a cog in the killing machine. You are just the first rough stamping of a cog that will eventually be sanded and polished into a part of the killing machine. I remember our drill sergeants telling us that we need to avoid being full of ourselves when we leave basic training and move on to a new base or go back on the block. We are stronger than when we arrived. Do not mistake that for being stronger than other people, they warned. If we do, we'll get our butts kicked.
China has gotten out of world power basic training. Let's hope they don't throw a punch before they realize how much farther that they need to go to be actually powerful.
