Our Next Enemy

China did some saber rattling today:

China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the US if it is attacked by Washington during a confrontation over Taiwan, a Chinese general said on Thursday.

“If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” said General Zhu Chenghu.

Gen Zhu was speaking at a function for foreign journalists organised, in part, by the Chinese government. He added that China's definition of its territory included warships and aircraft.
“If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond,” said Gen Zhu, who is also a professor at China's National Defence University.

“We . . . will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

Will the US stick by its decades long policy of defending Taiwan from China? My guess is probably not, even though China will look at us not acting to protect our ally as a serious sign of weakness.

Let's imagine that China moves on the island nation and launches a full-scale assault. In my opinion, we have to respond. Depending on when they do act (my guess is after Bush is out of office), we have several options. First we institute sanctions, which will hurt the US as much as China in the short term. Next we would have to attempt a blockade in the Taiwan Straight, which China would see as an act of war.

If we could persuade Russia to put heat on the Chinese from their northern border, they may have to stop and think of the consequences. They may threaten Japan with a nuke strike or the US.

The scenario's that are possible are endless.

What do we do before this nightmare occurs? We start by scaling back our tremedous trade with China. The cheap goods we receive can easily be made in South America or even Africa. By moving our trade to these areas, we kill two birds with one stone. With South America, we assist struggling economies in our hemisphere. With Africa, we give them something that Live 8 never could, a solid economic base with which to deal with their myriad issues.

American business gets hurt in this scenario, but again, only in the short term. With an American influx of capital into countries such as Peru, Argentina and Brazil, the US could make serious new allies and counter the attempted spread of communism by the likes of Hugo Chavez.
In China however, they lose out on hard American currency (currently a trade surplus of $162-billion) and will have to rely on less stable currencies. This would have to be a scaled drawback as we are into China for the bulk of our trade. Alot of American companies have alot of American dollars tied up in the Peoples Republic.

There has been some talk of this with regard to the CAFTA trade agreement. The Bush administration has been very lenient toward China of late.

I'm not remotely a China expert, but Washington Times columnist Bill Gertz is. He's been screaming this for years now.

Update: Stephen Green wrote a post that extrapolates on some points here.