I grow more convinced by the day that China must have its dozen carriers purely for the psychological effect. This is the only yardstick in the popular imagination by which military strength is measured, even among people who should know better. We can go into a discussion of how it would be suicidal for these ships to operate near China and waste pages of digital ink, but why bother? Who cares what a supercarrier's actual combat capabilities and vulnerabilities are? Its psychological impact is worth far more than its military utility.
I know how this story is going to turn out just like I know how a footrace with Usain Bolt in it is going to turn out. As for arrogance, I'm arrogant - so what?
And India's problem isn't that it's arrogant, it's that it's a failed society.
That's like saying someone with terminal cancer is relatively less healthy than before - true, but misleading. The US has no shipbuilding industry whatsoever; those shipyards that churn out failures like the Zumwalt exist purely as a mechanism for private defence companies to price gouge the American government. It's daylight robbery, nothing more.
Instead of me remembering a wholly irrelevant historical factoid, how about you try to come up with a historical analogy that doesn't involve Nazi Germany. I'm sure you've studied history beyond the WWII era, or have you not?
Time and again we've seen societies that were gods astride the Earth fail and crumble. Italy could once muster armies that conquered Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East - look at it today. America is in no position to do what it did then; it's fiscally, economically, and socially exhausted. It's already spending $750 billion and getting peanuts for it.
China is just beginning its ascent. As superpowers go, it's in the adolescent phase similar to the US during the middle of the 19th century and it still has enormous room left to grow.
The real picture has already emerged and it's one of a failing state well on its way to becoming a failed state.
