"We have no eternal allies," Lord Palmerston famously observed, "and we have no perpetual enemies." "Our interests are eternal and perpetual," Britain's 19th-century foreign secretary added, "and those interests it is our duty to follow."

The good Dr. is clueless. While I semi-agree about the MIC, any non-biased observer would have to admit that the MIC has been outstanding in delivering to the US military the best weapons on the planet. That is their job.
The Pentagon's job is forcasting what weapons will be needed a decade or so from now. DoD doesn't perform as well as the MIC, but then again, forecasting the future is notoriously difficult.
The Chinese guys that do that predict a conflict with the USA. I think the good Dr. is all hat and no cattle. He presents not a shred of evidence to support his claims, which are based solely on his feelings, as far as I can tell.
The Chinese government says it is preparing for war against the USA, they are buying weapons at a rate unprecedented in their history. They act against American interests where ever they can.
Yet the good Dr. tells us not to worry. What is in his pipe?
 

Hi stehpinkeln ,

Funny,I thought of Palmerston as well- though even interests are not perpetual as Britain itself proved.

The problem with the MIC - and Congress here should take a hit - is the cost spiral from add-ons that turn well-engineered aircraft into flying Christmas trees. Same for armored vehicles, they seem to mutate during development in order to lose any design advantages.

Every plane doesn't need every bell and whistle in the arsenal. There is an economic diminishing returns factor that impedes military performance when even losing a squadron of fighters becomes prohibitive.

In a major engagement with a " near peer competitor" we are going to lose some planes and ships. The Chinese could lose 10 planes to our 1 and we'd come off the worse from the exchange at present replacement cost rates. We need a lower tier of basic high performance craft in numbers that are a bargain to purchase to supplement the top tier planes.

China is not our friend ( states really aren't " friends" not even allies) but neither does it want a direct military conflict with the United States because it will lose and the regime cannot survive that kind of defeat.
 

You will know that China is our "friend," when they start using their export dollars to buy hard assets in the U.S.; instead of buying U.S. treasuries. This would mean that they think that we have a shared future. To date, they have purchased little physical assets in the U.S. and have only tried to purchase U.S. companies that have significant assets in asia and relatively little in the U.S. (even in the case of Unocal, they were going to immediately sell off the U.S. assets).
It would also be helpful if they allowed full U.S. ownership of Chinese companies and if they actually started to pay for our exports of software and DVD's. The relationship is markedly one-sided and this is a cause for concern.

Barnabus