There are several excellent articles currently up at <A HREF="http://www.foreignaffairs.org">Foreign Affairs</A>. A good read on United States primacy on the world's stage: <A HREF="http://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/brooks0702.html">American Primacy in Perspective</A> Another interesting article covers the Palestinian suicide bomber - Israeli response: <A HREF="http://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/luft0702.html">The Palestinian H-Bomb: Terror's Winning Strategy</A> Mango
Thank you for the links. The article on "American Primacy in perspective" was especially good. You can throw out possible stats on why the EU could be another pole, but I don't see it, like the article alludes to. Too many different cultures, too many different objectives, not enough substantive power to wield. I don't see it lasting.
the first article was very good, thanks Mango. TPL - do you mean that you see China emerging as the other Pole? Do you think we could have a second Cold War with them? I thought China was improving, becoming more open?
The first article is a little biased towards USA, and here is why: The way the first article used to exaggerate the USA's edge over other countries is to measure everything in US dollars and ignore the different value of money in different countries. For example, it states that the R&D fund of USA is 20 times more than that of China, while it conviniently forgets that everthing in China is far cheaper than in USA. One labor in China cost 90% less than the USA's. Reduction in cost goes for nearly everthing else. Another point is, when it comes to national defense spending, the cost of weapons and personels in USA has skyrocketed over the last several decades. A piece of heavy machine gun can cost around $15000, while it's a lot cheaper in China. A Chinese soldier gets paid less than 100 dollars a month with their room and board being paid by the army, how about that in the USA? Using money to gauge a country's power, especially military power is quite misleading as money's power varies considerably under different contexts. When it comes down to a prolonged wartime, it's the production capacity that matters, that should be measured with the numbers ,scales and facilities of factories of the relevant industries.
Panda, I must be missing something in this scenario because China has had over 5 decades to develop weapons systems, yet has ended up buying advanced military technology from other countries such as Russia and Israel. Even the United States has unfortunately sold some dual use technology to China. If China has the spending edge over the United States in terms of lower manpower costs, why are they still in a huge catchup mode? The following is perhaps a year old, but still fairly on target. <A HREF="http://www.cdi.org/issues/Asia/CHINAMIL.html">Assessment of China's military ability</A> <i> ..........Capable of defending Chinese mainland against all existing and foreseeable threats. Capable of offensive land warfare against smaller bordering states individually (Vietnam, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal) but would find logistics daunting even at this level of warfare. Clearly, logistics problems combined with the need to maintain security along borders with Russia, India and Pakistan are major inhibitions on Chinese offensive operations. China has no effective naval or air forces capable yet of projecting attacks against Taiwan or Japan and could not sustain a military presence in South China Sea against the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Its military capabilities have continued to advance significantly but while it can target, for example, Taiwan's shipping lanes and lob missiles at the island causing serious disruption, it does not yet have the ability to make an opposed amphibious landing. In short, China is impregnable, secure from external attack even by Russia, but has little offensive power to project against other nations........</i> Mango
