plawolf
Lieutenant General
You are missing the whole way this game is played.
The overwhelming majority of countries on earth are just flip floppers geopolitically. They will prefer to stay independent, but will follow the prevailing currents of power and follow the dominant power if forced to choose a side.
But the thing is, these same countries are also all but irrelevant when it comes to the global great game irrespective of which side they pick. You think Venezuela under Maduro was going to send troops to fight for China in the event of a clash with America? Do you think Venezuela post-Maduro is going to send troops in support of America? And even if they did send some troops and stuff, how much would it actually matter? The same even applies to the EU and NATO. If China was already at war with America, can the EU contribute anything militarily that would actually make a real difference?
At the end of the day, when the chips are down and the missiles fly, it doesn’t matter who these little countries say they support, it’s which of the superpowers that can take and hold them that matters.
You are playing the game entirely wrong if you think force flipping these flip floppers individually is going to work or stick with some token application of military power. To make any gains really stick requires you to commit significant boots on the ground to hold those territories, even with genuine support of significant proportions if not outright majority of the local population. Why do you think the U.S. still maintains its military occupation forces in Europe, SK and Japan? Even in those heavily pro-US countries, there is a genuine risk that they will flip back to neutrality without the American military boot on their throats. Which goes back to the original point, you only own what you can hold.
China’s game is to win the economics contest such that all of the world will want to trade with China out of their own genuine self interests. It doesn’t need to force flip nations and peoples with military force because it can let economic gravity do the heavy lifting for it. It’s America who has lost the economic game who is now forced to resort to military force to coerce nations into acting against their own self interest.
China is also building up its own military might to not only be able to take the U.S. head on and win, but win so overwhelmingly that the US itself chickens out of the fight. That is the ultimate prize, to win world domination without needing to fight a world war.
Fighting America directly and winning a world war is actually the sorry consolation prize because of how much death and destruction that war will cost everyone.
China’s play might be more boring than the Hollywood fireworks show of America’s, but for the good of humanity, boring is best. The Romans didn’t use ‘may you live in interesting times’ as a curse for no reason. Anyone who has actually seen the brutal reality of war will never want to see that visited upon their own homelands, and that’s precisely what will happen to both China and America in the event of a direct full scale war, even if they managed to avoid going nuclear with such a fight by some miracle.
