"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." -- Leon Trotsky, original founder, along with Lenin, of the Russian Revolution
America cannot fight China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran all at the same time. To his credit, Donald Trump is desperately trying to take a few of these players off the board before any possible war starts.
I therefore predict that the U.S. will soon reach a horrible and almost worthless deal with the mullahs of Iran. Our Israeli friends are going to be furious. Iran will quickly have a half-dozen nuclear bombs, enough to share with their friends, assuming they have any left.
The mullahs already have enough enriched plutonium to build a half-dozen nuclear bombs. Although 90% enriched plutonium is better, you can build a pretty mean-spirited nuclear bomb with uranium that is only 60% enriched. They already have pounds and pounds of this lesser stuff.
"But George, if Iran had a nuke, they could then sail a container ship close enough to destroy much of Tel Aviv." If they did, eighty nukes from Israeli subs would immediately reduce Iran into a nuclear wasteland. I know that this is not what you want to hear, but we cannot defeat all four evil dictatorships at the same time. Iran's mullahs will therefore get to live another few years, until the Iron Dome and the combined naval blockade of Iran is flawless.
North Korea is modernizing its missile forces with technology from Russia. North Korea has already flown a test ballistic missile over parts of Japan. Kim even claims to have a missile that can reach the American west coast.
Oops. That missile test really-really scared Japan. They just increased their defense budget from 1% to 2% of GDP. That doesn't sound like much until you consider the fact that Japan does not maintain a large land army.
Instead, the Japanese spend their funds on high tech stuff, like their own hypersonic missiles, their ship-mounted rail guns, and their high-tech stealth destroyers that carry 128-cell vertical launch systems (they can fire lots and lots of missles). In addition, Japan's economy is the third largest in the world. Two percent of a huge GDP is a big 'ole defense budget. Hopefully this pins North Korea in place in the event of a war.
The following is going to surprise you. Russia is not only replacing its monthly losses of 30,000 casualties, but its army in the Ukraine is growing slightly. Russia is using its sovereign wealth fund to pay enormous recruitment bonuses.
This is interesting: Russia no longer uses armored fighting vehicles to move their troops to the front because these vehicles are easy targets for Ukrainian drones. Instead, Russian units are now moving by motorcycle because they are fast. An entire battalion can advance using motorcycles.
Servicing rights are how B&S stayed in business
for 45 years. Everyone else closed down.
I sure hope President Trump can negotiate a peace deal with Russia. Like the one with Iran, it won't hold. We just need the peace to last four years in the Ukraine, so we can survive the Chinese onslaught.
Now let's talk about the Chinese. When World War II started in the Pacific, the U.S. had four aircraft carriers. The Japanese had seven aircraft carriers. At the end of the war, the Japanese had four damaged aircraft carriers. The Americans had 100 carriers. The difference was ship-building capacity.
Last year, the U.S. built just eight warships. That same year, twelve U.S. warships were retired. Last year, China built approximately twenty-five (!!) warships.
Imagine, after a major victory at sea, the Chinese anchoring off the coast of California and using their sea-launched, long-range missiles to destroy our shipyards, our factories, our airfields, our train depots, our power plants, and our freeway interchanges as far east as the Rocky Mountains.
Yesterday, China announced that it is almost done building a drone mothership that can reach 45,000 feet in altitude, travel 4,300 miles, and then release 100 drones. It can't quite strike Hawaii. but if you owned a condo on Guam...
China also announced last month that it had successfully tested a non-nuclear hydrogen-based explosive device that produces a fireball exceeding 1,000 degrees centigrade, lasting 15-times longer than TNT explosions. It uses magnesium hydride to trigger a chemical chain reaction without any radioactive fallout. Buildings, steel, and aluminum just melt. Now imagine one of these at the tip of a hypersonic missile.
We have our satellites, right? Hmmm. China has missiles that can reach our satellites. They have ground-based lasers for killing satellites. They recently tested a satellite-killer spaceship that grabs enemy satellites with robotic arms. Moonraker, James Bond, 1979. Folks, we are not going to enjoy a war with China. We could easily lose.
So why am I scaring the poop out of you today? Yesterday, Moody's downgraded the debt of the United States. This morning, the stock and bond markets were in real trouble until "profit-seekers" (Plunge Protection Team?) intervened.
The risk to the United States today is existential (the country could cease to exist), even without the detonation of a single nuclear bomb. A portfolio of high-yielding first mortgages on small commercial properties spread out throughout the country might be a safer place to be invested than stocks or corporate bonds - mere paper assets. As they say in New Jersey, "Just sayin'."
