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Kevin Rudd: Are China and the US doomed to conflict? | Talk Video | TED.com

I do hope not! China is vast, in terms of conventional power. I seem to remember a programme on TV that estimated that China had enough soldiers-under-arms to equal "The Rest Of The World United"......if "The Rest Of The World United" DOUBLED it's army size!! If America and China do ever fight, WW4 will probably be fought with sticks and stones (can't remember who first said that, but copyright to them!).

Check out on Utube; China v America rap battle!

The US and China will not ever really go into serious conflict. We are their best customer, and they are our largest provider of goods.

The whole point of globalizing the economy is to make it very difficult for one nation to actually go to war with another. Everybody is a customer.

Reassuring, as far as it goes. Let's hope it stays that way!

LarsMac;1478238 wrote: The US and China will not ever really go into serious conflict. We are their best customer, and they are our largest provider of goods.

The whole point of globalizing the economy is to make it very difficult for one nation to actually go to war with another. Everybody is a customer.


War, on a world wide scale, is over for mankind and I breathe a sigh of relief. Larsmac is absolutely right. Oh there will still be small local conflicts, mostly over local resources. And, of course, terrorism by religious fanatics is here to stay, but that will abate over time as mankind grows ever more integrated and mature. Now come the long, dull days of summer, mankind's middle age, the rise of the corporations, and the technological paradise. Me? I'm kind of glad to have lived in the last of the Spring, when things and ideas were still free and a bit crazy....

Saint_;1478244 wrote: War, on a world wide scale, is over for mankind and I breathe a sigh of relief. Larsmac is absolutely right. Oh there will still be small local conflicts, mostly over local resources. And, of course, terrorism by religious fanatics is here to stay, but that will abate over time as mankind grows ever more integrated and mature. Now come the long, dull days of summer, mankind's middle age, the rise of the corporations, and the technological paradise. Me? I'm kind of glad to have lived in the last of the Spring, when things and ideas were still free and a bit crazy....


I'm with ya, there. The post WWII era was a good time to grow up. And mankind did some growing, too.

LarsMac;1478238 wrote: The US and China will not ever really go into serious conflict. We are their best customer, and they are our largest provider of goods.

The whole point of globalizing the economy is to make it very difficult for one nation to actually go to war with another. Everybody is a customer.


Just slightly over a hundred years ago people were saying exactly the same sort of thing, guess who was germany's biggest customer and who was france's. People couldnlt wait to bang the patriotic drum and go off to war. We like to think that was the war to end all wars then we had ww2 and a level of brutality and attacks on civilians that would have ben unimaginable before that. We could get in to a shooting war far quicker than we could back then and if nuclear weapons are used all it rtakes is some idiot to convince themselves a pre-emptive strike is what is needed to sort things out.

You're assuming common sense will come in to it all I have to say is iran, iraq, afghanistan libya syria let'as bomb a few and sort them out. I hope you're right I really do.

gmc;1478249 wrote:

You're assuming common sense will come in to it


Oh not at all. Common sense would not be enough, you are absolutely right about that. But business is a completely different thing. The rich control the entire planet now. In effect they act like and are a de facto planetary government. It is costly and wasteful to wage that kind of war. It's one of the reasons economic sanctions are so effective now.

Here this video says a lot:

Sanctions on Russia have not been too effective so far. The Ukraine is still simmering nicely thank you, and will,no doubt, continue to do so. The dangers with protracted sanctions are twofold.

1. Sanctions can lose their effect somewhat over time, as the nation UNDER the sanctions can "wriggle out" by finding and expanding alternate markets.

2. Protracted sanctions CAN do a lot of economic damage, possibly to the point that the recipient of these sanctions decides that there's no longer anything to lose by GOING to war!

My point is that we cannot be too sure that trade and industry will keep the "wolf from the door". I have found, as a rule, that when nations "tool up" with expensive hardware, they may well have forseen a time when it will be needed... Argentina are negotiating with Russia at present to secure the lend/lease of 12 Russian "Backfire" bombers from Putin, and a lot of Kifr fighter jets from Israel, a supposed ally!

This doesn't bode well for the Falklands.

Russia has also been arming at an accelerated rate for some time now.