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irateplatypus, each of these "showdowns", vis a vis minor "actors", if the U.S. experience in Iraq holds any lesson, results in the U.S. emerging with a military and the treasury that finances it in a stronger.....or a weaker position?

Did pre-emptive invasion and occupation of Iraq discourage the leadership in Iran or in NK from emerging as belligerent adversaries who are now likely targets of the Bush doctrine of pre-emption?

Consider whether Russia or China are weaker or stronger economically and militartily than either country was just three years ago.

I am an anti-war protestor from the Vietnam era. I am also a student of history with a practical streak that can be confused with pessimism.

The dollar has weakened against the Chinese yuan and the euro since the FOMC interest rate hike that was supposed to end this series of rate increases.

Oil is $74/bbl tonight......and $70 oil was considered to be a post Katrina, fall 2005 "spike"...temporary. The U.S. military and intelligence budgets fuel a $500 billion annual deficit, with no end in sight....the "supplemental" budget resolutions do "count"....they add to a treasury debt figure that will be $3 trillion higher, six months from now...than it was six years ago.

Afghanistan looks like a "do over"....a new, expensive and uncertain fight to retake "control" of that country. The history student part of me just read the lesson here.... http://www.khyber.org/publications/0...onreport.shtml ....reinforcement of the lesson of the loss of Elphinstone's entire army after it was forced from "Cabool" in Jan., 1842. No foreign force has ever taken and then held control of Afghanistan.

Iraq is by no means decided....an 100 acre, $1 billion U.S. embassy compound, it's 23 buildings, built entirely by an imported, non-Iraqi workforce rising on the Baghdad skyline, not withstanding. The geniuses that chose to win hearts and minds by constructing this comedic contradiction to the notion that the U.S. "presence" is not an "occupation", and then to choose to build it at the exclusion of Iraqi laborers, is not a confidence builder for me that there is time or talent to stem the deficit, and rebuild conventional U.S. forces and their "worn out" equipment, and quickly stabalize challenges in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and NK.....cheaply or even effectively.

While this juggling act goes on....thje treasury bleeds money, the U.S. consumer is tapped out buying expensive oil (i've documented that the bottom half.....$150 million Americans. controlled only 2-1/2 percent of the wealth when oil was half the price it is now.....), and the military is ground down fighting encounters of attrition that do nothing to solve the big threats to near term security. The U.S. grows weaker.....China and Russia grow stronger.

China and Russia are as feeble tonight...militarily and economically, than they're gonna be again....for a long time into the future.

The U.S. is as strong militarily and econmically, most especially in non-conventional force and in dollar purchasing power, as it will ever be, judging by where trends are taking it today. Common sense and practicality seem to indicate that this would be the time to discuss how the U.S. can remain a superpower, and prevent the decline of the dollar and discourage the rising hegemony of China and Russia, and deal with the wasting effects of sideshows like Iran and NK, and the continued expensive quagmires in Baghdad and "Cabool".

The reluctance or avoidance of discussion of realistic "big picture" challenges and the few options (one that I see...) to deal with them, IMO, are symptoms of hubris and of denial.

The King of Spain failed to use his 600 ship Navy to destroy Britain, and Britain failed to survive the debt it built fighting WWI. Both lost their "sole superpower" titles. Is the U.S. somehow exempt from the fate of the dominant powers throughout history?

At first, I was reluctant to even think, let alone write these opinions.
That changed because, I know what I see. I see that the U.S. is failing economically now. The recent military expeditions have worn out a signifigant portion of the ground force equipment, and it is hard to imagine that 3 and 4 "rotations" through Iraq experienced by ground troops have not negatively affected their overall readiness.

In the past 15 years, I've witnessed the sudden collapse of the Soviet Navy and much of the ground and air forces, followed by the economic collapse of Russia. Now comes the recent experience of the economic emergence of China, seemingly overnight, and now the raw material revenue driven ressurgence of the Russian economy. Will the military investment and ambition of these two re-emerging nations, not follow?

I've witnessed the U.S. spending $260 billion annually on it's military just 7 fiscal years ago, with a balanced federal budget at that time. Consumers paid less than $20/bbl for oil, and the trade deficit was half the $800 billion annual deficit level that it is now.

I see where the trends are taking the U.S. ability to finance and maintain it's armed force......$3 trillion in deficits added to the $5.5 trillion prior deficit in just six years. I have no way of knowing how much of the more than docubling of the gold price, and the tripling of copper and oil prices, has to do with demand...or just the weakening of dollar purchasing power.

The current U.S. leadership's track record in Iraq and now with Iran, and the refusal of the U.S. population to conserve petroleum consumption that it now borrows hugely to pay for, along with the direction and trend of federal borrowing, aggravated by my projection of the consequences to the economy of the just now beginning real estate collapse, are icing on the cake of my new thinking.

shakran, I headed this way because the U.S. leadership and the mindset of the electorate has convinced me that it is inevitable that the U.S. will "take
on" China and Russia, militarily, but not until the odds are much more in favor of failing in that endeavor.

Since I am convinced that it will happen, from a practical standpoint, now is the time that comes with the best odds of succeeding either via a demand and deadline for disarmament, resulting in success and domination without firing a shot.....or in the event that U.S. demands are met with refusal or ruse, a devastating first strike which annihilates Russia or China, but leaves much of the U.S. intact, would, to me, be a better outcome than what I foresee happening, anyway.

It is that bad, shakran. There is no solution to the competition for oil and other resources, or for the crippling twin U.S. deficits, or for where Bush/Cheney foreign and military policy is leading the U.S.

I think that Cheney and Rumsfeld could pull off a "big bet" all or nothing showdown like the one that I'm describing, if they are good for anything at all. The only justification for that opinion, is that I think that Russian and Chinese politcal and military leadership would take an disarmament ultimatum from Cheney, seriously.

Isn't that at least half the challenge in deadly showdown....convincing the other guy that you are serious about what you're demanding, and that you won't blink?