MonteQuest wrote:Gridlock wrote: Not if it is futile they won’t...
How soon we forget history....
Actually, I think it is the fact that we don't forget history that insures that futile conflicts won't be fought. Japan's gamble is the closest you can come to a debatablly futile effort (from a '41 Japanese reference frame), and we all know how horribly that turned out for them.
Since that era, the world has scrupulously avoided direct fights between major powers for specifically this reason. Simple example that gets on people's minds the most... If the US and China went to war over ME oil. China would end up with no imported oil, and the central committee folks know this. The US would end up with no imported oil, and the exec&congressional powers know this. Who would end up victorious? India. So the US and China (and those we've pulled into our Pacific Cartel), play a dance of dollars instead, slowing stripping India of its ability to keep up; each of us producing what we're really good at, and the US keeping the flow of dollar denominated oil into the market secure.
This dance is only going to get tighter as the pressure rises on oil supplies.
Does it suck, in a way, to choose to dance till the closing song with a communist oligarchy and abandon the world's largest democracy. Sure. But China is an asset, and India is a leach; thus the dance card is set. No reason to pretend otherwise.