Fuckin'- A
I would NOT want to be over there right now. Sally08, the more I think about your theory, the less I would want to be over there right now.
No one is naive enough to think that the rest of the world loves and respects us sufficiently to continuously take shit from us... not if an opening in our armor becomes apparent.
Our military is spread too thin. It's a fact. We no longer own the world.
I agree. I'm a retired physicist that did work on the target tracking/acquisition systems upgrades for the Apache AH-64 C/D via Ft. Belvoir back in the late 80s, and we've got seriously compromised positions.
With respect to America's position in the Middle East, and the Iran/Russia/China alliance... it's a Nightmare scenario that no tactician would ever want to find themself in.
Begin with MAD. Which actually works really well for dealing with people who care about staying alive. Even so, all it does is prevent the use of nuclear weapons. Which certainly is important, don't get me wrong. But it triggered a HUGE strategic thinking flaw in our military's evolution. Centralization of technology and control.
The massive incorporation of GPS data into our mil-tech became a built-in Achilles' Heel. The advanced features of those systems don't work it they're cut off from the data stream. And the data stream is vulnerable in 2 key ways. The computers that it transits, and the satellites that relay it. Once our mil-tech became married to this philosophy, we had a major security risk.
And it didn't take the Chinese long to figure that out, as well as a simple solution to it. Neutralizing the functionality of the satellites. Since then, they've demonstrated they can destroy satellites with ballistic missiles, as well as interrupt them using energy beam weapons.
Then there's the economic and diplomatic weapons that the Bush admin handed to them on a silver plate... becoming seen as a pre-emptive war Aggressor, the trillions of dollars of debt borrowed to pay for it, and destabilization of our economy here at home due to the oil prices inflated by the fear of instability in the Middle East.
So the true situation is revealed to be this:
We possess nuclear weapons that would be apocalyptic and suicidal to use against a particular opponent... China, because it too has these weapons and is strongly allied with another country that also has them and shares a border with China. So the use of nuclear weapons against one would also likely harm the other.
We also have become deeply indebted to this country, to the point that this debt could seriously disrupt our economy if the debt is called and dumped.
We also have a cornerstone military technology (GPS) that can be defeated and almost instantly neutralize a significant portion of our conventional military superiority... and this opponent clearly possesses the means to use this against us.
Simultaneously, this opponent's ally has just finished creating its own version of this military technology (GLONAST).
This opponent enjoys an overwhelming superiority in manpower/numbers, and the advantage in the geography. As well as the ability to strike even harder at our economy by moving assets to a provocative location upon its own terrirtory that would be perceived as a threat to the world oil supply as well as the stability of the MiddleEast's 2 nuclear powers Pakistan and India... and send the price of oil soaring to $300 a barrel.
And most ironic of all, they can do all this and be perceived by the world as merely taking purely defensive actions to degrade the potential threat from a demonstrated "Aggressor" nation... the U.S., because of Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East.
Without firing a single shot at a U.S. soldier or ship, the Chinese can deal 3 crushing blows to America economically, militarily, and diplomatically.
America put itself in this untenable position the moment it refused to restrain Bush from diverting the anti-terrorism effort from Afghanistan, and let him push it into Iraq.
There is NO good option for fight a war against China. It will break our economy, break our military, and literally tear the world apart.