Ladakh Flash Point

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Bright Sword

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discspinner said:
Why would Western allies, or any allies, want to cut off China's trade with themselves? Another fallacy put forth by Indian elites, that the Indian navy could simply 'cut off' China's trade. Assuming it could even be done, China's first reaction would probably be gain political support from countries affected (because we know trade is a two-way street). As China is the largest trade partner of the vast majority of countries, it isn't hard to guess who would garner more political support.
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I agree. But there is a twisted logic behind the mindset. Trade by itself is not of concern to the forces of Global Dominance. Japan from 1950 to 1980s, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan etc. became manufacturing and trading hubs. They became sources of mass produced, affordable, good quality consumer goods for Western consumption. China followed in their footsteps, alone replacing the combined manufacturing capacity of all these nations. How ever none of these nations had any military capability, a strong national cultural identity, or any vision of the future. Even the once mighty Japan, with its strong culture and history has been drained of its internal pride.The populations of Malaysia and Singapore have been the subject of colonial "population experiments" with indentured labor imports from India ( and the then fractured China) that has resulted in deep fissures with the resident Malay population. Such countries are easy to manipulate. A smaller political entity with no sense of identity with its population engaged in catering to Western consumption is much preferred over a nation that wants to build for itself a space launch vehicle and can build stealth fighters.,
If China like Malaysia confined itself to manufacturing shirts for Walmart it would be fine but that is not what happened. China overcame its isolation and today builds everything from micro-chips to aircraft carriers.
Singapore will never build stealth fighter jets or a global navigation system.
There was one other nation that did this transformation which was Russia which as part of the Soviet Union transformed itself from a backward feudal state with only 10% literacy to a space and industrial power. This incurred extreme displeasure for the forces of Global Dominance. One of the objectives of World War 2 and the subsequent Cold War was the destruction of the Soviet Union. This was not achieved militarily during World War 2 but over time during the Cold War. Today Russia miraculously survives instead of being broken up into entities for raw material exploitation but this goal was nearly achieved in the 1990s when Secretary of State Madelene Albright said Siberia was too vast and too rich in minerals as a resource for the "global community " to leave it only to Russia. Russia must relinquish its control of Siberia for the global community to invest in and exploit it.
China is now in the cross hairs of a new war meant to subjugate it. China is likely to face the same scenario as the Soviet Union which faced two wars of intervention, and a world war, a Cold War. There is a difference though. No Western ally was crazy enough to be a sacrificial lamb to take on the Soviet Union in a nuclear exchange but the forces of global dominance may have found just such a sacrificial lamb in India.
 
hullopilllw

hullopilllw

Junior Member
Registered Member
Bright Sword said:
I agree. But there is a twisted logic behind the mindset. Trade by itself is not of concern to the forces of Global Dominance. Japan from 1950 to 1980s, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan etc. became manufacturing and trading hubs. They became sources of mass produced, affordable, good quality consumer goods for Western consumption. China followed in their footsteps, alone replacing the combined manufacturing capacity of all these nations. How ever none of these nations had any military capability, a strong national cultural identity, or any vision of the future. Even the once mighty Japan, with its strong culture and history has been drained of its internal pride.The populations of Malaysia and Singapore have been the subject of colonial "population experiments" with indentured labor imports from India ( and the then fractured China) that has resulted in deep fissures with the resident Malay population. Such countries are easy to manipulate. A smaller political entity with no sense of identity with its population engaged in catering to Western consumption is much preferred over a nation that wants to build for itself a space launch vehicle and can build stealth fighters.,
If China like Malaysia confined itself to manufacturing shirts for Walmart it would be fine but that is not what happened. China overcame its isolation and today builds everything from micro-chips to aircraft carriers.
Singapore will never build stealth fighter jets or a global navigation system.
There was one other nation that did this transformation which was Russia which as part of the Soviet Union transformed itself from a backward feudal state with only 10% literacy to a space and industrial power. This incurred extreme displeasure for the forces of Global Dominance. One of the objectives of World War 2 and the subsequent Cold War was the destruction of the Soviet Union. This was not achieved militarily during World War 2 but over time during the Cold War. Today Russia miraculously survives instead of being broken up into entities for raw material exploitation but this goal was nearly achieved in the 1990s when Secretary of State Madelene Albright said Siberia was too vast and too rich in minerals as a resource for the "global community " to leave it only to Russia. Russia must relinquish its control of Siberia for the global community to invest in and exploit it.
China is now in the cross hairs of a new war meant to subjugate it. China is likely to face the same scenario as the Soviet Union which faced two wars of intervention, and a world war, a Cold War. There is a difference though. No Western ally was crazy enough to be a sacrificial lamb to take on the Soviet Union in a nuclear exchange but the forces of global dominance may have found just such a sacrificial lamb in India.
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Soviet Union and the US run on separate economic spheres, with the former never once being a big economic or manufacturing power against the latter. China today is even more integrated into the global economy than US herself, higher GDP PPP(2014) and already surpassed US as the manufacturing top dog(2009).
 
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Bright Sword

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hullopilllw said:
Soviet Union and the US run on separate economic spheres, with the former never once being a big economic or manufacturing power against the latter. China today is even more integrated into the global economy than US herself, higher GDP PPP(2014) and already surpassed US as the manufacturing top dog(2009).
Click to expand...
Perfectly correct. Which also raises the issue that unlike the Soviet Union China cannot be "outspent" in an arms race or economically isolated. China has learned from the Soviet Union's fate and ensured itself against this. But there is an ominous portent. If we turn the clock back to the 1920-1930s the Soviet Union was in the process of rebuilding itself after a devastating civil war and extreme damage in World War. 1. So far as trade was concerned the Soviet Union opened itself reaching out mainly to the USA. The USA at that time had not replaced Britain as the Global Dominating force and was itself in a isolationist mode interested only in bi-lateral trade.,Ford, Douglas Aircraft, International Harvester, and most leading US firms pitched in to do business with the Soviet Union ( Example: The Lisunov 2 was a license built version of the Douglas DC-3/C-47 which greatly aided Soviet air transport capabilities).
The Soviet Union rebuilt itself but foolishly entangled itself in the Spanish Civil War. The European imperialist powers with large empires ( Britain and France) began to help Germany and its Nazi government develop into a military threat to the Soviet Union. It was reasoned that hopefully Germany would attack and devastate the Soviet Union. This didn't go quite as planned because Germany turned on its western neighbors first after Poland. Stalin not believing the worst because of his ego was completely duped by Germany's fake peace deal. But much to Britain's satisfaction Germany did attack and devastate much of the Soviet Union taking out a third of its critical territory causing the loss of a quarter of its industrial capacity; a third of its agricultural output and the loss of 20 million citizens ( mostly Russians). For reasons still unclear the Soviet Union miraculously survived and inflicted a horrible defeat on the aggression.
With the economic option off for China
India today is being positioned as Germany of today to take on China militarily. It matters little what happens to India, What matters is China's reduction to a weaker entity.
 
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Bright Sword

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Bright Sword said:
Perfectly correct. Which also raises the issue that unlike the Soviet Union China cannot be "outspent" in an arms race or economically isolated. China has learned from the Soviet Union's fate and ensured itself against this. But there is an ominous portent. If we turn the clock back to the 1920-1930s the Soviet Union was in the process of rebuilding itself after a devastating civil war and extreme damage in World War. 1. So far as trade was concerned the Soviet Union opened itself reaching out mainly to the USA. The USA at that time had not replaced Britain as the Global Dominating force and was itself in a isolationist mode interested only in bi-lateral trade.,Ford, Douglas Aircraft, International Harvester, and most leading US firms pitched in to do business with the Soviet Union ( Example: The Lisunov 2 was a license built version of the Douglas DC-3/C-47 which greatly aided Soviet air transport capabilities).
The Soviet Union rebuilt itself but foolishly entangled itself in the Spanish Civil War. The European imperialist powers with large empires ( Britain and France) began to help Germany and its Nazi government develop into a military threat to the Soviet Union. It was reasoned that hopefully Germany would attack and devastate the Soviet Union. This didn't go quite as planned because Germany turned on its western neighbors first after Poland. Stalin not believing the worst because of his ego was completely duped by Germany's fake peace deal. But much to Britain's satisfaction Germany did attack and devastate much of the Soviet Union taking out a third of its critical territory causing the loss of a quarter of its industrial capacity; a third of its agricultural output and the loss of 20 million citizens ( mostly Russians). For reasons still unclear the Soviet Union miraculously survived and inflicted a horrible defeat on the aggression.
With the economic option off for China
India today is being positioned as Germany of today to take on China militarily. It matters little what happens to India, What matters is China's reduction to a weaker entity.
Click to expand...
An interesting take on the environment in India by a journalist:
Note: The video is professionally subtitled in English.
 
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gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
It is true that the Soviet Union opened up to outside investment and talent prior to WWII. Not just with US companies but also with German companies and others. It is not that the Soviet Union chose to isolate itself after WWII economically but more that it was forced to. Just read about the US Marshall Plan and COMECON. The Soviet Union was not interested in opening its economy to foreign capitalist enterprises since it was against their ideology. It was one thing to license technology for local production, but quite another to allow foreign capitalist companies to operate there and for the most part the West was not interested in licensing production anymore.
Compare this with Trump's talks about how US companies should not be forced to "give up" their intellectual property to China. They basically want China to just be the world's sweatshop.

I do not think it was a mistake for the USSR to get involved in the Spanish Civil War. It fit them ideologically, gave their new weapons combat testing, and they were paid to intervene. Every single weapon and crew was paid for and the Soviet Union even got Spanish gold in advance for weapons which they never ended up delivering because the Spanish government collapsed.
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So Stalin wasn't like Khrushchev giving weapons away for free to independence movements all over. He arguably did give weapons to China, but that was because of the threat of the Japanese to the Soviet border. Some of the lessons they learned in the war proved valuable, like that their tanks needed more armor which led to the successful KV-1 and T-34, but other lessons proved problematic. The Soviet Defense Ministry refused any new radial engine aircraft designs as too slow because of experience of I-16 vs Bf-109. As a result Polikarpov grew out of favor and new designs like the Yak-1 were pushed. But those designs required new factories, production methods, and had many teething issues so they weren't ready in numbers until the middle of the war. Had Polikarpov been given a chance with the I-185 I think Soviet Aviation would have been in a much better position in the early war.

You are wrong that Stalin was "duped" by Hitler. Stalin knew the war was inevitable, in 1930 he said the Soviet Union would be attacked in a decade how more accurate you want than that, that's why he negotiated the non-aggression pact with Germany, to gain time, but no one expected France to last so little as it did once Hitler turned West. The Soviet Union expected to have at least a year or two more to rearm, what ended up happening was they got invaded while in the process of rearmament.
 
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discspinner

Junior Member
Registered Member
gelgoog said:
It is true that the Soviet Union opened up to outside investment and talent prior to WWII. Not just with US companies but also with German companies and others. It is not that the Soviet Union chose to isolate itself after WWII economically but more that it was forced to. Just read about the US Marshall Plan and COMECON. The Soviet Union was not interested in opening its economy to foreign capitalist enterprises since it was against their ideology. It was one thing to license technology for local production, but quite another to allow foreign capitalist companies to operate there and for the most part the West was not interested in licensing production anymore.
Compare this with Trump's talks about how US companies should not be forced to "give up" their intellectual property to China. They basically want China to just be the world's sweatshop.

I do not think it was a mistake for the USSR to get involved in the Spanish Civil War. It fit them ideologically, gave their new weapons combat testing, and they were paid to intervene. Every single weapon and crew was paid for and the Soviet Union even got Spanish gold in advance for weapons which they never ended up delivering because the Spanish government collapsed.
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
So Stalin wasn't like Khrushchev giving weapons away for free to independence movements all over. He arguably did give weapons to China, but that was because of the threat of the Japanese to the Soviet border. Some of the lessons they learned in the war proved valuable, like that their tanks needed more armor which led to the successful KV-1 and T-34, but other lessons proved problematic. The Soviet Defense Ministry refused any new radial engine aircraft designs as too slow because of experience of I-16 vs Bf-109. As a result Polikarpov grew out of favor and new designs like the Yak-1 were pushed. But those designs required new factories, production methods, and had many teething issues so they weren't ready in numbers until the middle of the war. Had Polikarpov been given a chance with the I-185 I think Soviet Aviation would have been in a much better position in the early war.

You are wrong that Stalin was "duped" by Hitler. Stalin knew the war was inevitable, in 1930 he said the Soviet Union would be attacked in a decade how more accurate you want than that, that's why he negotiated the non-aggression pact with Germany, to gain time, but no one expected France to last so little as it did once Hitler turned West. The Soviet Union expected to have at least a year or two more to rearm, what ended up happening was they got invaded while in the process of rearmament.
Click to expand...

Bringing the subject back to topic, just to entertain your fondness for comparing today's events with WWII, the balance of power between China and India today is probably closest to that between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, respectively, in 1945. But the Indians believe it is June 21st, 1941, and China is Nazi Germany.
 
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Bright Sword

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discspinner said:
Bringing the subject back to topic, just to entertain your fondness for comparing today's events with WWII, the balance of power between China and India today is probably closest to that between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, respectively, in 1945. But the Indians believe it is June 21st, 1941, and China is Nazi Germany.
Click to expand...
Well actually the mindset is more like Germany looking at the Soviet Union and having mistaken its war potential.
Germany's evaluation was based off the Soviet Union's marginal performance in Finland ( Winter War 1940) and at Khalkin Gol ( Japan, 1938). This led the world and Germany to believe that the Soviets were a pushover. The Germans claimed a battle hardened modern lean and mean tough fighting force with state of the art weapons; numerically less than the defending Soviet Army but entirely capable of defeating them. There was some truth in their claim but the Germans made a dangerous mistake underestimating the will and determination of the Soviet people in defending their land and their capacity for taking punishment and sacrifice.
Ironically it is exactly this kind of thinking that is being propagated by Indian manipulated media being quietly encouraged by their Western counterparts.
Line of thinking and propagation of myths:
1. The Chinese are not battle hardened and experienced as the Indian armed forces. They performed poorly against Vietnam in 1979 and even their so-called victory against India in 1962 is qualified because they ultimately retreated to their previous positions because they had poor logistics. In short they are no match for India.
2. Chinese weapons are unreliable, untested and poor copies of their western counterparts. Indian weapons are modern and state of the art tried and tested by the western military in various theaters of war globally.
In short. India has a supreme equipment and weapons advantage.

3. India enjoys tactical advantage because of cold mountainous terrain which is familiar to Indian troops and where they are used to the climate.
( Note: Despite the fact that 80% of India is either hot or humid and 90% of Indians have very low tolerance to cold weather considering the deaths when temperatures are around 5 C).
4. Indians are brave and have defeated numerically superior Chinese forces in combat in a ratio of 1:10 inflicting heavy casualties
In short Indian soldiers are supermen.

It is dangerous myths such as these that builds public opinion in favor of a war that snowballs out of control.
 
Figaro

Figaro

Senior Member
Registered Member
Bright Sword said:
Well actually the mindset is more like Germany looking at the Soviet Union and having mistaken its war potential.
Germany's evaluation was based off the Soviet Union's marginal performance in Finland ( Winter War 1940) and at Khalkin Gol ( Japan, 1938). This led the world and Germany to believe that the Soviets were a pushover. The Germans claimed a battle hardened modern lean and mean tough fighting force with state of the art weapons; numerically less than the defending Soviet Army but entirely capable of defeating them. There was some truth in their claim but the Germans made a dangerous mistake underestimating the will and determination of the Soviet people in defending their land and their capacity for taking punishment and sacrifice.
Ironically it is exactly this kind of thinking that is being propagated by Indian manipulated media being quietly encouraged by their Western counterparts.
Line of thinking and propagation of myths:
1. The Chinese are not battle hardened and experienced as the Indian armed forces. They performed poorly against Vietnam in 1979 and even their so-called victory against India in 1962 is qualified because they ultimately retreated to their previous positions because they had poor logistics. In short they are no match for India.
2. Chinese weapons are unreliable, untested and poor copies of their western counterparts. Indian weapons are modern and state of the art tried and tested by the western military in various theaters of war globally.
In short. India has a supreme equipment and weapons advantage.

3. India enjoys tactical advantage because of cold mountainous terrain which is familiar to Indian troops and where they are used to the climate.
( Note: Despite the fact that 80% of India is either hot or humid and 90% of Indians have very low tolerance to cold weather considering the deaths when temperatures are around 5 C).
4. Indians are brave and have defeated numerically superior Chinese forces in combat in a ratio of 1:10 inflicting heavy casualties
In short Indian soldiers are supermen.

It is dangerous myths such as these that builds public opinion in favor of a war that snowballs out of control.
Click to expand...
The only difference is that the Indian high command (i.e. active duty military officers) does not see China as a pushover at all; on the contrary, they know how powerful China is and seek to project confidence by trashing on the superior force, which is understandable. But make no mistake, the statements of retired Indian military officers or the Indian media is not indicative of the general Indian military brass at all ... it would be extremely dangerous to operate under the assumption that the Indians are routinely underestimate Chinese military capabilities. Would you expect the Indian military to say we will be annihilated by the Chinese (which is the definite outcome) or would you expect them to say we can beat the Chinese (which is completely impossible but still necessary for maintaining morale and displaying strength)? The myths you listed have just been conjured to mask this perennial insecurity vis-a-vis the overwhelming Chinese advantage.
 
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