We weren't going to do it before...

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Garth Vader
Yeah, China can't cross like 70 miles of water and invade Taiwan, but suddenly they can do the whole Pacific?!?

China might try that very thing if they could be certain of no US response . . But my understanding is that Taiwan is a pretty heavily armed camp. Taking it might mean destroyinmg most of the industry thatr would be the prize for capturing it anyway

[Drake Tungsten]

This is a pretty dumb move. In a few years, the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free thanks to global warming and I don't think these new icebreakers will be of much use when the US parks a carrier battle group up there.

[Flubber]

O said at the beginning it was a far-fetched scenario (but I like them)

I am surprised to see such high confidence that we would have advance notice . BUt lets play what if-- If the Chinese get 10,000 troops with some light armored cars and entrench them in Vancouver ( 2 scheduled 747s land and take the airport in both Vancouver and Victoria and then dozens more land before we even know what happened), What Canadian forces are there to evict them?

If you are the PM what can we mobolize? If the Chinese suddenly reveal that they have mid air refuelling capabilities and land a dozen of their best fighters plus 200 1970s vintage ones. How do you evict them? Could Canadian pilots dominate?

Remember use Canadian only forces!

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
This is a pretty dumb move. In a few years, the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free thanks to global warming and I don't think these new icebreakers will be of much use when the US parks a carrier battle group up there.

Actually nothing we can conceivably do could make us compete with the US military.

BUt I don't think sovereignty is about that. You don't have to be able to beat everyone else. But you might have to be able to occasionally patrol the area

[Odin]

The Arctic is going to be ice-free in the summer in 50 years, I don't get the point of this.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Flubber

In the Tom Clancey novels , China makes their play for a chunk of Russia They succeed for while until Russian resolve and an American expeditionary force crush them

The Bear and the Dragon: Good book.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Odin


The Bear and the Dragon: Good book.

I actually like his crazy "what if" type scenarios. You know the Yanks will always pull it off in the end using magic, high technology etc but its fun nontheless.

and a lot of it has an vague plausibility about it. Does anybody believe that there hasn't been some Chinese high level guy look up at the empty vastness of Russia and fantasize that it might not be alll that difficult? . . . you know wonder is there any way to get away with it without getting nuked or something?

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Flubber
O said at the beginning it was a far-fetched scenario (but I like them)

I am surprised to see such high confidence that we would have advance notice . BUt lets play what if-- If the Chinese get 10,000 troops with some light armored cars and entrench them in Vancouver ( 2 scheduled 747s land and take the airport in both Vancouver and Victoria and then dozens more land before we even know what happened), What Canadian forces are there to evict them?

If you are the PM what can we mobolize? If the Chinese suddenly reveal that they have mid air refuelling capabilities and land a dozen of their best fighters plus 200 1970s vintage ones. How do you evict them? Could Canadian pilots dominate?

Remember use Canadian only forces!

Considering we're playing in fantasyland, we'll vaporize them with our photon torpedos!

Seriously, what the hell are you talking about? There's this little thing called radar that even we have. Dozens of unscheduled planes simultaneously inbound from China that we'd know about ages in advance of them getting anywhere near Canada would kind of clue us in to something being up.

[KrazyHorse]

Indeed.

Somehow I think that our CF-18s wouldn't have too much trouble splashing them by the dozens 300 miles west of Vancouver...

[Winston]

"Sovereignty is something, you use it or you lose it," Harper said at the pre-Christmas announcement in Winnipeg.

If those were his exact words, I'm afraid this Harper fellow isn't bright enough to pose any real threat to anybody.

Yeah, by all means, "use your sovereignty", otherwise you might lose it. Or something.

[Asher]

He's an economist.

Bachelor and Masters from the University of Calgary.

[KrazyHorse]

Oh, and even if you've got 10000 of them on the ground in Vancouver, where the **** are they going to go? They don't get air support because at the first hint of inbound fighters we splash the fighters and their refueling planes (which we are more than capable of doing, by the way; the RCAF would rape anything the Chinese could put up). They don't get resupply because we sink anything that even thinks about getting near our coast at that point.

Now we've got 10 000 Chinese light infantry sitting at Vancouver airport (which, by the way, is now useless as we've already bombed the **** out of every runway). They have no reinforcements. They have no resupply. They have no ability to take and hold large parts of the city even against civilian violence. Their positions are being bombed night and day. About a day later we park 50 Leopard mk2 tanks ouside in a perimeter around their position along with every man in uniform in Canada (probably can gather 10-20 k on very short notice in a national emergency) and 100-200 artillery pieces. We start shelling. 24 hours later we walk in and accept the commanding general's sidearm.

It's certainly an interesting way for them to kill 10 000 of their own soldiers, but the invasion of Canada it will not be.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Asher
For b) -- I'm wondering if the increasing value of the Alberta Oilsands makes that less true today.

Not really.

Even just the cost of fighting the war and holding the territory would be tremendous. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars simply in direct military expenditures. No way it's worth it.

[Asher]

Hundreds of billions of dollars for trillions of dollars worth of resources doesn't sound like it's not worth it.

[KrazyHorse]

Trillions over dozens of years (maybe hundreds)

Plus, you can't figure the whole price of the resource; we're already selling at market rates, so they only pick up the price minus the extraction cost. And when you figure in the likely loss to their economy through loss of trade, serious global economic repercussions etc. we're starting to talk in the trillions of dollars as far as costs are concerned.