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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

Similarly to how agreed-upon overflights increase security (as your opponent knows you're not preparing an attack and/or are keeping to treaty obligations) one could consider this a good thing.

Of course China is not currently a military threat to the US, at least at the level deserving attention of a US president (e.g. random encounters in the Spratleys are jostling, not escalation).

I certainly don't think this is a responsible practice but it's interesting to consider it in a game theoretic context.

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Overflights check on what countries are physically doing. Stepping up that concept, trust but verify, to include policy changes is a big leap. Overflights do not provide a chance to directly alter behavior in the way that diagramming a president's cellpohone patterns can. This isn't verification. This is intelligence being used to alter policy. That isn't trust but verify, that's, examine, meddle and influence.

>Of course China is not currently a military threat to the US ...

I would disagree. China routinely threatens U.S. naval vessels which transit disputed regions of the South China Sea, and maintains a large battery of missiles pointed at Taiwan, an American diplomatic ally. They have also developed hypersonic anti-carrier missiles, and are rapidly expanding their blue-water navy.

I referred the jostling in the Spratleys in my comment and on their ability to project force in another comment down thread.

They are rapidly expanding a blue water navy from a tiny starting point (e.g. recently bringing online a Ukranian aircraft carrier (not a super carrier) doubled their carrier force) and have a few remote naval bases, but their strength, to the degree it exists, is locally strong and externally mainly soft power.

There is no question the US would abandon Taiwan the same as Macarthur pulled back to the southern half of Australia in WWII. Pragmatics argues this -- as pragmatics argue against China actually attacking Taiwan militarily any time in the next 30 years. E.g. bombing Hon Hai would degrade Chinese manufacturing unacceptably.

In surprised to hear someone say China is not a military threat to the United States. Can you expound on this?

For example, I believe China could easily organize and fund far more terrorist attacks than, say, bin laden ever did. Furthermore, their terrorist attacks could much more easily utilize nuclear material.

China has no interest in funding terrorist attacks against the U.S. or anyone else. They want to be a Great Power, not a rogue state.

Aside from nukes, which would draw an obvious and unstoppable reprisal from the U.S., China does not have the military capability to meaningfully threaten the U.S. They don't have the aircraft, ships, subs, landing craft, etc. And again, I don't know why they would want that.

They do have the means to threaten their regional neighbors, though, and some of them are U.S. allies. That's the WWIII threat: that Chinese regional aggression sucks the U.S. into a military confrontation on China's turf.

Interesting. I feel I could say the same of the USA vs China - any outright attack against China would draw a massive response, and I hardly believe the USA is capable of occupying China in any meaningful way.

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "massive response" as China's nuclear capability is more for regional prurposes (i.e. India) though I do believe they have some ICBMs capable of reaching anywhere in north america. But their military resources are much smaller (e.g. they only have a couple of aircraft carriers and no supercarriers) and the PLA isn't really set up for projection of force at a distance.

I do agree to the extent that though the US would win any initial skirmish the long term viability of such an effort close to or on the Chinese mainland is probably not great.

Then again I can't come up with any reason the US would want to fight a war with China either (or vice versa), but who knows these days.

A physically violent and currently-attacking-us Russia, spying on the communications of the US President*, is _not_ a good thing. This is a very clear military threat.

China isn't a military threat, but Russia has proved that military power isn't necessary to sow chaos and destabilize the US. You don't even need military-grade hackers.

Russia has "destabilized" the US? That is hyperbole at best, unless you know something I don't. What exactly are you referring to? They seem to have destabilized the US media, in the sense that they can't publish enough stories about Russia. But have they actually achieved anything in any real way?

The problem is that American interests have extended beyond the limits of the American borders for too long - China exercising its rights to protect its own interests outside its borders is a response to that, which automatically triggers American hubris: "nobody, but the 'greatest nation on Earth', should have the right to say its interests extend beyond its borders" .. this is the point of American hegemony in the world. If America doesn't do it, someone else will - so eventually, America becomes the very threat it was resisting all along: a totalitarian state which uses its military might to usurp the interests of other nations, at any and all cost.

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