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Why the Chinese Military Is Only a Paper Dragon
- cafard 12y agoIt can hardly be worse equipped than it was 60 years ago, yet then it inflicted quite a few casualties on the US and NATO forces in Korea, and drove them back south of the 38th Parallel.
- cowardlydragon 12y agoI've read of certain things (such as a fleet of diesel submarines to defend against the much more expensive american naval fleet), drones, and others where they get more bang for the buck than american investments. ... and as if our military's 640 billion in spending isn't grossly inflated by corruption by the small number of defense contractors. If a country has ICBMs and nuclear warheads, it is certainly NOT a paper tiger. This kind of thinking, besides disrespectful, leads to stupid generals conceiving of "acceptable losses" in nuclear exchange wars and other horrifying fantasies. And it almost happened several times in the Cold War.
- simonblack 12y agoThe articles contains quite a bit of wishful thinking. The same sort of disparagement of an prospective enemy that occurred pre WW2 when 'Made in Japan' was a derogatory term. That soon stopped when US forces came up against the superior Zero fighter and the very capable Japanese Navy. Just because an army's equipment may not match yours in technology is no reason for complacency. The US and Soviet weapons in WW2 were inferior to German stuff, but as Stalin famously said 'Quantity has a quality all of its own'.