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Fr. Wah's avatar

A good discussion; the issues are complex, but with regard to China some things stand out for me. 1) The PLA has no institutional memory of live combat, very few officers or men have ever been in it. 2) The PLA is staffed largely by the sons of one-child families who depend upon them in lieu of social security. What happens -domestically, politically- when they start taking casualties? Unknown: how deep & how destructive is PLA corruption?

Still, the US has plenty of problems. DEI has sapped the military's readiness as a fighting force. (In conversation yesterday with a retired Marine commandant, he was disgusted about what they've done to his beloved Corps.) Our officer corps includes a large contingent of go-along-to-get-along careerist types. On the upside, the incoming administration looks to shake things up; how well they can do that is unknown. Questions: has the Ukraine war enabled the US to offload a lot of shelfworn or even obsolete equipment? And how long does it take to rebuild those stockpiles?

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Harry's avatar

I agree with you generally, but whenever I consider China’s military, I am reminded of Stalin’s old line about quantity having a quality of its own. The PLA has a quantity advantage that they may try to exploit before the US can gear up manufacturing to counter it.

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