It would be irresponsible of us to believe that negative eschatological prophecies are unavoidable. When we believe in such, either we act apathetically and fail to mitigate risks, or worse: we actively promote negative scenarios, consciously or unconsciously. The responsible approach is to consider the negative prophecies as warnings, intended to keep us ever vigilant. There is precedent for this in our scriptures. One example is the story of Jonah, who God commanded to prophecy the destruction of Ninevah. Although there were no conditions on the prophecy, Ninevah changed their ways and avoided destruction. Of course, this made Jonah angry, much like some of our bunkering brothers and sisters may be angry if we manage to avoid the negative eschatological prophecies. But let them be angry. Their assumptions of destruction and reflecting behavior are plainly immoral.

A multiple volley nuclear exchange is still feasible with China. They’ve been nuclear for quite a while. And Clinton’s administration allowed US companies to sell them the technology for MIRVs and high accuracy targeting in long range ICBM’s. (Anyone remember the LORAL deal?)

China has been investing hugely in its military, and it would be unwise to assume they haven’t built up a nuclear arsenal along with their conventional arms and multi-million man army. China’s foreign trade has made trillions of dollars for their army, as their army is one of the biggest employers/manufacturers there. (A lot of Americans have bought plenty of chinese-made rifles and ammo over the last 16 years.) and it’s not just armament stuff either. Their military makes a wide range of items for foreign sale.

Also, the USSR’s nuclear arsenal never went away. Sure, it was reduced by dismantling some of them, but only a degree, over 50% of the warheads are still in existence.

All that really changed was the ownership. Most all the USSR nukes were inherited by Russia, but some of the other republics, notably Ukraine, kept some, if I recall correctly.

Putin has been rebuilding the Russian military. Even with the recent decline of oil prices, they still produce enough oil, gas, gold and diamonds to fund the rebuilding of their military to near former Soviet levels.

Don’t forget that many small portable nukes and field artillery nukes from the USSR have gone missing. Those could be in the hands of anyone, from Arab states to N Korea to Iran to any wacko terrorist.

The break-up of the Soviet Union was NOT a “peace dividend”. That was pure illusion. The nukes did not disappear or go away. They merely spread out, and came under looser control.

Also, without the old Soviet Union, the crazies who were under their influence or control, are now on the loose, Saddam was one of them. Iran is another. So instead of one big enemy, we’ve got a dozen smaller anti-social dogs to deal with who escaped the dog-pound when it went bankrupt.

Back to China, with all the infanticides of daughters due to their 1 child policy, they have (or will soon have) 20 million excess men of military age who have no chance of having a wife. I wonder what they will do with all those “excess” men.

China is hugely economically dependent on trade with the United States. That makes them extremely unlikely to engage in a large scale war with us in the short term. The risk would go up significantly if we enacted trade crippling import tariffs of course.

Bookslinger, In most respects, China is about where South Korea was about thirty years ago. No one would confuse South Korea with a third world country today.

No country – the U.S. included – can elevate “squalid masses” through transfer payments. It is not economical, and it doesn’t work. All else being equal, I can’t imagine a more effective general strategy for lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty than the one China is executing today.

East Asian countries in general are intensely nationalistic, and the governments have a lot to do with encouraging it. Multi-party politics in the East Asian democracies are a relatively muted affair compared to the U.S. The policy differences between parties just aren’t that big.

However, I can’t imagine a China conducting a full scale war with any of its developed neighbors (except perhaps Taiwan) or the U.S. without a complete collapse of its economy as a precursor. Too much to lose. China holds ~$1.5 trillion in U.S. bonds for example. Its economy currently is largely dependent on exports. Any non-trivial war would be devastating.

One of the sad things about World War II is that we practically invited the Japanese to declare war on us by cutting off their oil supplies. Cutting off trade with China would likely have a similar effect. Otherwise a serious war would be a losing proposition for them at every turn.

China’s gross domestic product has been growing at seven or eight percent a year, a rate which is unheard of more more developed economies, and rarely achieved by less developed ones.

The most practical way to maximize economic growth is to use your comparative advantage to compete in the world market. In China’s case, this means using low labor costs (given existing poverty), well developed infrastructure, a strong work ethic, a high savings rate, and relatively high levels of education to produce manufactured goods for export to the rest of the world.

This is essentially the same strategy as has been successfully followed by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. It doesn’t work forever, of course, as a country gets wealthier the labor cost advantage goes down. The other problem is that China is so large that an export led growth strategy is capable of causing world wide financial dislocations, due to balance of trade problems. Part of the reason for the housing bubble is Chinese lending a healthy fraction of their export earnings back to us, in order to maintain favorable exchange rates. That is not a sustainable situation in the long term.