[shahadi]

Interesting thread. Hmm... I am reminded of Tom Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon" wherein Clancy weaves a story of a battle between China and Russia with support from the US. Although the book is over 500 pages, of particular interest to our community is the part story of an ACR commanded by Diggs, a native of Chicago. The battle is most interesting as Clancy rightly portrayed the value of predator drones. Now back to our discussion here in this thread, "Standing up to China," a scenario based loosely on Clancy's Bear and the Dragon (see the chapter: Deep Battle) where a Chinese PLA MD is blocked by an ACR (you know Clancy, he has a lot of sub plots going on too) is I suggest a very good starting point to develop a winSMBT scenario.

What I want to share in this thread is that it is conceivable that China would "invade" an area of Siberia to exploit rich deposits of rare earth minerals and gold (as their economy falters from over reaching economic growth) under the pretext that Siberia is historically Chinese. Politically, the US could back the Russians against the Chinese if US manufacturing assets were being diverted from China to another country, say India, Mexico, Brazil or Agentina as a check against Chinese industrial hegemony (and to cancel our debt to China to boot!)

Ha, that's my two cents.