In response to:
"The Soviet Union is gone. . . ." Yes, but Russia is still there, still run by thugs, still bullying its neighbors, still assassinating dissidents and foreign leaders, still aiming nuclear-armed missiles at us, and once again ahead of us in outer space. Lately it has made public threats to attack our puny missile defenses in eastern Europe. How lightly you pass over a country that can incinerate us.
SHANGHAI -- The Soviet Union is gone, al-Qaida is decimated, and Iran may never acquire nuclear weapons. But don't get too relaxed. If you're looking for reasons to be anxious about world peace, China offers an abundance.
It's a huge country with a growing economy, an expanding military and ongoing disputes with several neighbors. Nationalist sentiment has grown. China is a rising power, and history indicates that rising powers often assert themselves in ways that lead to bloodshed.
If you demand immediate evidence, look only to the South China Sea, where the Chinese are locked in an ominous...
When Red China gains enough naval strength,they will be doing the same on the open seas.
China is probably the graver threat. Russia is more technologically advanced and has more nukes, but China owns the Panama Canal and a growing percentage of the United States. Our economic entanglement with China makes a direct Chinese attack less likely. If we go down, so do they. On the other hand, if they go down, so do we. Even so, China has killed 60–70 million of its own people and wouldn't hesitate to kill more of ours if it took a notion. We'd have the short-term advantage in a nuclear exchange. But if we obliterated half of China's population, it would still have twice as many people as we do.