LOL! Come on, r, you gotta love these "head to the shelter quick and don't forget the kids" posts. I don't honestly understand the mentality myself. Perhaps people think they're Mr. Exclusive and they just gotta get the story out!
WW III is already over. Read Sun Tzu. If today the US would stop exporting anything then the rest of the world would carry on without too much of an issue. If China would stop exporting then some parts of the rest of the world would have some very serious problems and cannot function. If India would close all its "remote administartion", "helpdesks" and "telephone support" then there would be severe disruption in some other parts of the world. (that is if they somehow manage to keep their infrastructure going) If the middle East would stop pumping oil.... hmmm... we could get by with some sacrifices.... PS CHina already owns almost everything of importance. Maria
Chinese purchases in South America and Africa had been annoying the hell out of America, this latest venture is certainly not welcomed either. So now we have two potentially strongest ,at least militarily, countiries doing size business with Iran.... and unless there is another revolution in Iran, going the other way this time, USA or Israel is going in, its only a matter of time...
Lucky for the US, China's goal is only economic domination and not military. I'll never forget something I read about 20 years ago that said that the China thought it was a great thing that the US spent 2/3 of our money on our military instead of our economy... because it gave every other nation on earth a chance to catch up and beat us. Lo and behold. China won't fight us unless we take it to them... and then, a 250 million man standing army (the entire US population of every man woman and child is 300 million), with nukes, and the newest weaponry (a large chunk of our 2/3 annual budget for defense is spent on maintaining/repairing old equipment and bases, 100% of their 5% is spent on the newest self-developed military technology, for which not many leaks gets out), would put a hurting on us to say the least. We could not win that fight without knocking earth off it's axis with nukes (our only assumed superiority are our nuclear subs). So I've been puzzled for years why we keep spending 2/3 of our money on the military instead of R&D and our economy. We're doing what the Soviet Union did... building arms at the expense of the economy, and we all know what happened to them under Gorbie, and what's still going on today. We can't win a fight against China. We not only can't win, we probably can't hope for a stalemate. Again, good thing China has no interest in military expansionism, they just want all our money. Around 20 years ago, I attended a State Dept function with invited Chinese dignitaries in DC. For about an hour, a not very high ranking State Dept official browbeat high level Chinese officials mercilessly about how they 'needed' to buy more US products. The result of this browbeating was China ordering a bunch of wheat, corn and oranges from the US for appeasement, then taking a long tour around the country looking for other things to buy from us. They did their best to not make us angry. It was an eyeopener to see how things have changed, when Bernanke and Paulson personally went to China (vs calling them here on whim) to 'request' they devalue their own currency...because we can't function without buying from them. Diplomatic language is completely telling about the status of a nation's negotiations. There was no longer the assumption of Chinese subordination to the US... actually, I've never read the US taking the tone they did in China with any nation on earth before... no critique or demands, rather polite requests (even at the height of the cold war where the Soviets had military parity with the US, you never ever saw the language toned down to this degree FROM the US. We are typically an unbelievably arrogant nation in any negotiation, because we know our military is a big stick). We're in trouble all right. Not a war, but if we don't wake up and get competitive with our tax dollars (2/3 of our tax dollars in military expenditure without CRANKING up the R&D is stupid), I don't wanna think about where we will be in 20 years if the next President is as stupid as this one. Why would China want a war with us? We are moving towards becoming indebted indentured servants. They can't lose by letting us owe them more and more. If they tried to kill us, we may not want to keep on giving them our money. We won't have WWIII. China is no military threat to us at all. They're just a threat to our way of life if we don't wake up soon.
You forget China and Indian economies basically leech off the American economy. If the American economy shuts down, you better believe your sweet ass that the Chinese and Indian economies will go into a depression.