Quote:
Originally Posted by jimbuna
I honestly don't see NK or Pakistan posing that much of a threat but nor do I see Australia having the capability of defending herself without a strong US ally....same for us now unfortunately, unless things escalated to nuclear warfare....heaven forbid.
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I can't see either of them posing much of a threat either, but having a CBG in the area is enough to deter them from doing something monumentally stupid. The Norks have gone quiet again since Kim 2 died, I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing to be honest, you never can tell with the DPRK, but their military poses very little threat to even the ROK on its own.
Pakistan is playing a game that I don't think even Pakistan knows the outcome of, different parts of it trying to work with different people. I really don't know what they're playing at, but think it would probably be in our best interests to align more with India.
EDIT: In terms of a nuclear based conflict, I don't see China pushing for that since it will lose more than the US would in an exchange. It's a bigger country, yes, with a bigger population, true, but all of its major achievements lie in a cluster of coastal cities, there is a HUGE difference between the elite coastal cities and the poor rural interior, it's a bit like how it was in the UK in the industrial revolution where most of the countryside emptied into the cities looking for work and wound up in workhouses, only the workhouses in China are all owned by Apple and the like. China has quite a lot less nuclear warheads than the US does, so China could hit quite a few targets, but it would get a response that would put it back to the Feudal era. If, the US was stupid enough to get into a land based war with China then I could see nuclear weapons being potentially requested to stop the Chinese advance ala MacArthur, but even then it would be 50/50 if the release would be granted. After all, we were able to beat them back to the 38th parallel last time without resorting to buckets of sunshine, but admittedly this was the China of Mao, a completely different China to the one of today. Honestly there are too many variables to say for definite that a nuclear war would or would not happen...personally I couldn't see the PRC firing first, nor the US, both would be aware of the response that they would receive in terms of retaliation and global opinion, but there could certainly be situations arise where it could happen, just as there could have been during the Cold War, and almost were on a number of instances. Thankfully we have avoided that nightmare
so far.
EDIT: EDIT: Thanks Kraznyi, that's what I thought I'd read. I have no idea if they're going to be CATOBAR or STOBAR, given the Liaoning is a STOBAR, as will be the Vikrant class carrier that the Indian navy is building, I'd hazard a guess that it'll be a STOBAR, but until the actual things are built or reliable info comes out it's hard to know for certain. Heck, I was under the impression that the Liaoning was going to be called the Admiral Shi Lang but for some reason they called it after the province it was made instead, probably politically motivated.