Originally Posted by
SASless
Is Canada going to sit out a War with China if one kicks off with the West?
Impounding Foreign Nationals and Assets is part of the initial stages of War isn't it?
Would not those Port facilities and Container Ports be of strategic value to the belligerents?
What happens should China prevail in such a War?
Will the West refrain from the use of Nuclear Weapons if it sees a loss coming in at Sea and a destruction of its ability to use sea transportation of commercial goods to/from its Nations?
China ain't the Argies.....we are talking War on a huge scale again should it happen.
But then....are not the Geniuses telling us there shall never be a conventional War again....what if they are wrong?
Do the Nukes stay in the holster and one side or the other merely accept defeat?
China pours more steel that the rest of the world put together, so the industrial capacity is there to win a large scale war.
That said, why would they? The countries where they are setting up ports and facilities usually are also heavily dependent on Chinese goods, so the local political leaders will be very leery of seizing the Chinese facilities.
As is, China is winning without firing a shot and China's global position continues to improve, eventually perhaps to the point that Taiwan is a layup. The main concern is that Mr Xi gets impatient about Taiwan in the near term.
However, China also knows that astonishing things can happen in war, as Deng learned when he tried to 'teach Vietnam a lesson'. So expect China to first stack the deck much more heavily than at present, which will take time.
Perhaps in Mr Xi's third or fourth term, he might feel pressed by age to get it done. No nukes will be used, there is no incentive to do so and the large expansion of China's deterrent forces now under way makes nuclear weapons pretty useless as a threat.