China Confirms New Generation of ICBM 224
Taco Cowboy (5327) writes with news of the Chinese military's latest toy, an ICBM capable of delivering multiple warheads across the Pacific. From the article: The DF-41 is designed to have a range of 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles), according to a report by Jane's Strategic Weapon Systems, putting it among the world's longest-range missiles. ... It is "possibly capable of carrying multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles", the U.S. Defense Department said in a report in June, referring to a payload of several nuclear warheads. It also quoted a Chinese military analyst as saying: "As the U.S. continues to strengthen its missile defense system, developing third generation nuclear weapons capable of carrying multiple warheads is the trend." China's previous longest range missile was the DF-5A, which can carry a single warhead as far as 12,000 km, according to Jane's.
Oh, hi there, threat of extinction (Score:3)
I thought you were moving out, after those last couple "incidents" with the island. No, don't get angry, it's just that you never pay your rent, and you break everything.
I know, we depended on you a lot during that whole spat we had with USSR, but come on, you never do any chores, you just sit there threatening us until one of us decides it's easier to do it than put up with your shit.
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At this point, any talk about reducing nuclear proliferation that doesn't involve China is pointless and naive.
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I don't think we are quite there yet... China still only has enough nukes to ward off any hawks. If the US and Russia had the same number of nukes as China, we could all pat each other on the back.
Re:Oh, hi there, threat of extinction (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think we are quite there yet... China still only has enough nukes to ward off any hawks.
Well, how many nukes does it take, exactly, to destroy a country? Realistically, all anyone has is enough nukes to ensure MAD....it's not like the US is able to bomb Russia without retribution. Estimates of China's stockpile vary, up to 3000 warheads [dailymail.co.uk]. China is secretive and everyone is just guessing what they actually have. Any number you see is just a guess.
In any case, it's pointless to talk about arms-reduction without being aware that one important country is aiming for arms-increase.
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"China is secretive..."
Although not quite as secretive as Israel, which (rather cleverly) denies having any nuclear weapons while relying heavily on the fact that everyone knows it does. Reminds me of Raymond Smullyan's celebrated book on logic, entitled "What is the name of this book?"
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I bet it was ghostwritten by Abbot and Costello.
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Even that almost certainly inflated estimate is only 3/5 the number that the US has and 3/8 that of Russia.
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Referencing the Daily Mail in an internet forum is the forum equivalent of a nuclear first strike.
Seriously, these guys lie like hell every day. Anything they publish is likely to be complete horseshit.
In this case the root reference for numbers of Chinese warheads over a couple of hundred is known to be an extremely unlikely rant by a Singaporean graduate student in a 1990's vintage Usenet message.
If you see someone citing a number like that either they are trying to foment alarm or are just asshats. In th
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To do so, these countries would have to withdraw from the NPT. They are free to do this, of course, but it hardly seems like a popular thing to do.
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And hopefully they won't, ever. Because that's where I plan to head when SHTF. Illegal immigration works both ways IMHO.
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"To do so, these countries would have to withdraw from the NPT".
You mean the way Israel had to?
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So you really think never signing the treaty - but acquiring nuclear weapons anyway - is better than withdrawing?
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Technically it doesn't violate the treaty if you never sign the treaty, so from a lawyer's perspective, yes.
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Well, yes. I mean, I'd prefer if everyone signed the treaty but I can certainly see why they chose not to. Same with India and Pakistan.
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South Africa dismantled their nuclear program when it was no longer "necessary" to defend apartheid. They gave up all that crap to the IAEA and signed the NPT.
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"South Africa dismantled their nuclear program when it was no longer "necessary" to defend apartheid".
Because nuclear missiles are the repressive nation's weapon of choice against rebellious workers.
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They weren't missiles, they were 1940's style uranium gun-type bombs. And they were more worried about the rest of the world coming in and forcibly changing their political structure, which was the reason they spun up the project to begin with.
It's also why it became completely unnecessary when they finally came to their senses.
Almost (Score:3)
Basically, China is in the process of building their own NATO with a quiet spread out system.
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Why do you think nobody has dropped a US carrier since WWII, even though they make such great targets?
Because nobody particularly wants to start WWIII?
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Known since forever (Score:5, Informative)
This missile development effort has been known of since forever. Pictures of the TEL has even showed up. What has not been made public is if the missile is fully operational and deployed or not. The Chinese have also not displayed DF-41 in the National Day parade either.
This article brings nothing new as there is still no official report of it being operational.
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Re:Known since forever (Score:4, Informative)
The newness in the DF-41 is that it would be the first solid fuel Chinese ICBM with the ability to hit the entire Continental US. Plus it would be mobile since it is supposed to be launched from a truck mounted TEL. The only system the Chinese currently which can hit the entire CONUS is the DF-5A which is a hypergolic liquid fuel missile which is so damned big it can only be launched from silos. Supposedly the Chinese dug an mountain up in order to have make these silos decades ago but they are still vulnerable to first strike. Unlike the US, UK, France, Russia, the Chinese nuclear submarine force is pathetic so they can hardly count on the submarines as a viable deterrent either.
This would basically put the Chinese up with the Russians in terms of land missile capability. Ahead of the US too since the only land based missiles are silo based like the Minuteman. The US did have a project for a road mobile ICBM called the Midgetman at one point but it was cancelled.
Re:Known since forever (Score:5, Informative)
The US doesn't really need road-mobile ICBMs. We've got the best ballistic missile subs in the world, and a lot of them, not to mention our worldwide network of airbases, capable of launching nuclear strikes with stealth aircraft and cruise missiles if we so desire.
I'll give you the subs. The US boomers are plentiful and scary as shit. But stealth aircraft are very slow, and do not carry high yield MIRVs. They can carry up to 16 B83 bombs [wikipedia.org] These are variable yield, up to 1.2 Megaton dumb bombs. So they have to be dropped, not fired like a missile. Additionally, I don't think a B2 attack on China or Russia would be very effective. Especially if it came after they already launched a first strike, and presentably the US had already retaliated with land and sub based ICBM's
Currently the boomer fleet is the biggest deterrent there is. As far as we know, there is no reliable way of finding them, and one Ohio class sub can carry 16 Trident-2 SLBM's. With up to 8 of which can be MIRVed With Mk-4 reentry vehicles carrying up to 4 W88 warheads. The W88 is estimated to be a little under a half a megaton yield. The other 8 Trident-2 missiles are single warhead. Granted, many, if not most of the MIRVs are dummy warheads, but no one knows for sure outside of those who "need to know". So there is the potential of 40 half megaton warheads on each of the 14 SSBN Ohio class subs.
As far as I remember the W80 warhead for the Tomahawk cruise missile has been retired. So the Los Angles, Virginia, and Seawolf class subs can no longer carry nuclear warheads. If I'm mistake, then that's another 50 or so subs that can launch a nuclear strike via a Tomahawk
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This missile development effort has been known of since forever. Pictures of the TEL has even showed up.
So is it based on stolen U.S. designs, or stolen Russian designs?
WOPR (Score:5, Funny)
Herro, Professor Farken. Would you rike to pray a game?
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What side do you want?
1. USSR
2. USA
3. North Korea
4. China
5. France
6. UK
7. India
8. Pakistan
9. Israel
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Angry Proliferation Game (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear proliferation is becoming to sound like the plot to some absurdist classic Star Trek episode.
The leaders of all the planets' nations sit in a room, arrayed in a circle. The room is white and completely bare, except for their chairs, and in the center of the room a single gleaming, chromed post rising from the floor about 3 feet tall. Atop the shiny post is a single large, tennis-ball sized red button.
It is widely accepted among all the leaders that pressing the button activates a mechanism that destroys the planet. Yet this doesn't stop them from rising from their chairs, and arguing - yelling, taunting even - other leaders around the circle, so enraging them that at times several of them are close to snapping, rushing forward and pounding the red button.
Because at the end of the day, the leaders are all flawed human beings, driven by the psychological baggage of behavioral evolutionary holdovers, cultural and religious constructs, and overwhelmingly the inability to view the other participants in the room as peers equally deserving of resources as the tribes represented by the leaders.
Sooner or later, someone - in a moment of hubris, misplaced confidence in their own technology or military, or religious zeal - is going to dash out of their chair and smack that button.
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"The leaders of all the planets' nations sit in a room, arrayed in a circle. The men are all white and completely bald, except for the Chinese",
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Xorploxina, for one. The extensive military capability of the Xorplo race is well documented in any sufficiently-funded library.
However, your concern about the grammatical structure of the sentence is well-founded, as the Xorplo ambassadors have not attended any interplanetary events in recent memory.
Re:Angry Proliferation Game (Score:5, Insightful)
Or more likely, every country would do that, so we're right back where we're started, albeit with lower numbers of warheads.
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Little to early to say but so far it looks like removing nuclear capability isn't really working out too well for Ukraine.
Although it's lucky for the inhabitants of Donyetsk and Lugyansk. Because the nutjobs in Kiev would probably have used them by now.
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I don't think even those nut jobs would be retarded enough to effectively nuke themselves.
Or are you talking about tossing a few at Russia? That would be even stupider.
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Little to early to say but so far it looks like removing nuclear capability isn't really working out too well for Ukraine.
Anyway, the glove puppets in Kiev are being operated by people with plenty of WMD. Which they are hoping to line up, wheel-to-wheel, right on the Russian border. As well as filling up the Black Sea with nuclear-armed ships, especially if they can take Crimea away from Russia and deprive it of a sea port closer than the Arctic Circle.
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What good would nukes have done Ukraine? They could threaten to nuke Moscow, but only if they themselves were willing to be utterly obliterated. Moscow has a fairly advanced missile shield too, so it might not even work.
I really doubt they would have pushed that button over Crimea, or over the current low level conflict. Considering how fractured the country is and that the government was recently overthrown in a coup it isn't even clear if they could have launched if their leader wanted to. If they had had
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I really doubt they would have pushed that button over Crimea, or over the current low level conflict.
It's not low level if it's in your own backyard.
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It does very well, in fact.
You see, the reason why Ukrainian army is so weak is that while they have inherited a shitload of Soviet weapons (Ukraine was the second largest weapon site of the USSR), they have sold almost everything to unscrupulous buyers. Who knows where their nukes would be now.
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so we're right back where we're started, albeit with lower numbers of warheads
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And yet in nearly 7 decades of MAD, no one has ever done so.
The Romans managed 206 years in their "pax romana", it's not exactly proof MAD is working or everlasting. What we do know is that there's an awfully big boom when it doesn't work.
What's the alternative, trust that others will actually do what they say and remove all nuclear capability? Every country would see that as a golden opportunity to keep some hidden by hook, nook, or crook, so that then they're the only ones in the world with nukes.. win!
Enough to win if everyone else sees it as a madman's weapon that should be neutralized before they go all Hitler on us? Because when you pop outside that little bubble called global thermonuclear war everyone else who talked about killing hundreds of millions of civilians would be considered a genocidal lunatic. Could a rouge nucle
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Don't forget that the "nuclear club" has a pretty solid double standard where they perfectly legitimize having their own nukes and last I checked the official NATO and Russian policy is that they can respond to any attack, conventional or nuclear with nuclear force while they strongly work for non-proliferation to prevent others from having the same weapons at their disposal. They trust it so much they very strongly don't want anyone else to join the "MAD club", why do you think that is? Because they know the whole thing is fickle as hell and someone might end up pushing the button
You'll get no argument from me there. It's not a great solution by any means, but seems to be the most realistic at the moment.
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Rogue! Not the French for 'red'!
the official NATO and Russian policy is that they can respond to any attack, conventional or nuclear with nuclear force while they strongly work for non-proliferation to prevent others from having the same weapons at their disposal.
I get so tired of the arguments ad absurdum around here. The few nuclear powers we have now have--for the MOST part--proven themselves to be relatively sane and unlikely to actually use them. But no, let's just publish complete designs for The Bomb on the Internet and let every country with the raw material build their own. What could possibly go wrong?
I'm not a fan of anybody having nukes either, but they do, and your argument sounds to me like, "Wah! This other country has
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Ironically, despite my comment sounding as though I may be opposed to nuclear proliferation, I am not. I'm only opposed to nuclear capability falling into the hands of stateless organizations or despotic regimes unbeholden to the wishes and well being of their populace.
Nuclear weapons are an incredibly powerful normalizing force, creating symmetry from military, industrial, technological and population asymmetry.
In this century, nations such as France or Great Britain lack the ability or political will to
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Ironically, MAD works only when none of the participants are actually mad. Unfortunately for us.
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The only problem with MAD is if one of those people with a button to push is actually mad, like insane. But then again such a person is also highly unlikely to cooperate with eliminating their nukes too, so.. duck and cover.
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Say Country-A reduces its capability too much, Country-B might, if losing a war, find it to be an acceptable risk if it launches a first strike on Country-A, assuming Country-A can "only" take out a few cities (since Country-A's missile silos are also targets in that first strike) leaving Country-B, for the most part, intact, while annihilating Country-A. Of course there are other factors: number of desirable targets in a country, size,
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It doesn't matter if the silos are targets in the first wave - early warning satellites and whatnot would make sure the silos are empty before the warheads arrive.
Angry Proliferation Game (Score:2)
You're missing one critical piece in this example: the red button doesn't destroy the planet, it sends a message to other humans outside the room to destroy the planet.
This is how I understand both the US and Russian system to function, but I don't know about the Chinese system. I would hope the designers of these systems realize that leaving this decision up to a politician alone is not the right answer, as the other systems have recognized.
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Launch staff are consistently drilled to launch the nukes on command. They receive launch codes and attempt to arm the nukes. When the codes provided are part of a drill, the nukes don't launch. If the codes are legit, then the launch crew has no idea until they hear the silo doors begin to open.
So as long as the soldiers are properly trained and show a track record of doing what their told, they might as well be a hard circuit to the launch systems.
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Maybe I've seen too many movies, but I always was told there was a "DRILL" code book and a "LIVE" code book, so the operator would know.
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1963 called, wondered where the imminent apocalypse was?
This can not be. (Score:2)
And as the far left wingers know, there is no way that they are in active production that enables them to put 600 warheads on their subs (100-160 warheads / sub, with 3 subs currently, and another 5-6 coming ), another 500-1000 in their planes, and another 1000 on land-based ICBM (i.e. 100 missiles).
So, yeah, I have no doubt that the far left is right.
Fake name-brand watches direct to your door (Score:2)
Don't worry, its just their way of competing against Amazon's droid delivery service.
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Right, that or they're just working on a faster way to send letters to their mothers [xkcd.com].
This is just wrong ... (Score:2)
... version 41is better than 5A?
Throw Weight (Score:2)
The multi warhead capable assertion is lame. It's just a matter of the weight the missle is capable of delivering. Since the miniaturization of thermonuclear war heads has been done years ago, this is silly. A W-88 warhead in the US arsenal weighs little enough to be transported on an appliance dolly for heavens sake.
So our largest trading partner has... (Score:2)
No worries (Score:3, Insightful)
All current missile defense shields are kind of useless.
China felt the need to achieve military parity.
Developing ICBM technology comes with Rocketry and is simply a prerequisite for Space Flight.
Re:No worries (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No worries (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.civfanatics.com/ima... [civfanatics.com]
Re:No worries (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sure, just like america is.
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Could you please elaborate on your point.
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Hint: Almost all of China's wars were internal (or at least in the territory of current China). The Opium war and the invasion by Japan led the country to decide they need to play the game others are playing, which is what they've been doing since then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_wars_and_battles
It totally is about military power n
Re:No worries (Score:4, Insightful)
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Hint: Almost all of China's wars were internal (or at least in the territory of current China).
*cough* And whose territory were they before they were in China?
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Chinese. Their culture dates back more than any existing civilization. If you're going to pretend that they somehow have no right to their land because someone else arrived there first, you'll have to first go through the same claim against every single nation on European, African and Asian continent. Americas don't even need to be mentioned for obvious reasons. After you're done with those, you can start laying claims against nations that were there before the current nations. Then you'll have to do it aga
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I never said I supported the argument, and saying "China has always been here" sounds eminently like an argument that only a native Chinese person would ever use.
Cf. invading Tibet and those other western provinces. Or "those people were Chinese, too," I expect?
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Here, let me google that for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
There's an amazing animated map on the right. The entire east/south of China has been "China" ever since, roughly, 300 BC (yep, that's 2300 years ago). The west (which, must I remind you, is nowhere as populated as the east, and certainly w
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I'm not saying them making ICBMs is any more or less wrong than anyone else. Luckyo just made it sound like China should be the only country on Earth who doesn't get called out for having conquered their land from someone else.
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The Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations are by those standards at least a thousand years older than the Chinese. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re:No worries (Score:4, Insightful)
And trying to hide what you are up, combined with working to be able to take out spying and comm links at once, is NOT about achieving parity.
Re:No worries (Score:5, Informative)
Iron Dome is useless for intercepting ICBMs. The name of the Israeli system for intercepting ICBMs is the Arrow missile [wikipedia.org].
Iron Dome is "a public relations weapon." (Score:2)
http://thebulletin.org/iron-do... [thebulletin.org]
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if Portland is nuked, we should retaliate by nuking Tualatin.
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Doesn't matter what you do, you're still in the holodeck.
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All ready coming (Score:2)
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Busy dismantling "big government" space programs with the expectation that the free market will supply the slingshots and parachutes to get in and out of orbit.
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Aside from our plethora of Trident II missiles deployed in our nuclear missile submarines that utilize MIRVs. America has never been really into land based ICBMs and we don't deploy land-based ICBM MIRVs although the Minuteman III is MIRV capable. We've always prefer air launched (bomber) and submarine launched nuclear weapons. It was the Russians that really dove into land-based ICBMs and the big thing we were always concerned with during SALT and START treaties was the Russians increasing the throw-weight
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the US does not have MIRVs,
Yeah, except for the Minuteman III, the Trident SLBMs, and the now retired Peacekeeper/MX. You know, only 100% of the US ICBM force.
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MIRV has nothing to do with first strike. It has everything to do with making anti-ballistic missile systems entirely ineffective.
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The problem with that is the question of what's considered a "use".
Is the use of a small backpack nuke enough to justify an all-out assault? What about a dirty bomb set off by a state-sponsored terrorist? If a country starts a campaign using thousands of conventional explosive bombs against Chinese targets, is that enough for China to retaliate with a nuke?
It is a fallacy to assume that we will always fall down the slippery slope, but it is also a fallacy to assume that we can't.
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Or like the fake Polish radio station assault Hitler staged to justify the invasion of Poland. "Look, look! Somebody nuked us! Don't question how a U.S. operative with a suitcase nuke managed to get into [insert disposable Chinese metropolitan area], get out the codes, you fool!!"
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With the Soviet, we and them were committed to MAD. IOW, we really did not want to go to war because we really saw it as unwinnable. Many of Chinese leaders, e
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It could also solve their over-population problems as well.
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Funny, isn't it? But Lenin foresaw it exactly, when he remarked "the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we hang them".