by Higgenbotham » Wed Sep 17, 2025 5:40 pm
FullMoon and tim, you are both right in saying that we have been and are at war with China, and it's been going on for a long time. A couple related thoughts that come to mind. We're used to discussing the four horsemen as if they are separate things - war, pestilence, famine, death. What's different now is that governments have the ability to inflict pestilence and famine through deliberate actions rather than nature being the means of unleashing it. So to discuss pestilence and famine or even weather changes as if they are always acts of nature and never acts of war isn't correct. Some people seem to be stuck in the mindset that, for example, the Wuhan virus originated from a bat when it's pretty obvious that it originated from a lab. Also, that China (or any nation state) could inflict a thousand cuts through asymmetric war and, after doing that, try to knock us out through direct war, either conventional or nuclear. Even people who recognized the thousand cuts strategy fully expected direct war. But as decline accelerates and things become more unstable, that might not be necessary, or even possible.
FullMoon and tim, you are both right in saying that we have been and are at war with China, and it's been going on for a long time. A couple related thoughts that come to mind. We're used to discussing the four horsemen as if they are separate things - war, pestilence, famine, death. What's different now is that governments have the ability to inflict pestilence and famine through deliberate actions rather than nature being the means of unleashing it. So to discuss pestilence and famine or even weather changes as if they are always acts of nature and never acts of war isn't correct. Some people seem to be stuck in the mindset that, for example, the Wuhan virus originated from a bat when it's pretty obvious that it originated from a lab. Also, that China (or any nation state) could inflict a thousand cuts through asymmetric war and, after doing that, try to knock us out through direct war, either conventional or nuclear. Even people who recognized the thousand cuts strategy fully expected direct war. But as decline accelerates and things become more unstable, that might not be necessary, or even possible.