Perhaps the title is a little too certain, but this is the Internet, and the drive for clicks supersedes the drive for truth.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to go all Bill Gertz here (I reviewed his book Treachery<\/em><\/a> in 2005 and followed some of his columns in the Washington Post<\/em> back in the day; he was\/is quite the, erm, cautionary voice<\/em> on China), but the plan after the Coronication is to decouple economically from a face-saving nation whose regime will be under the threat of losing the Mandate of Heaven, who faces uncertain demographics and dramatic, bad economic outlook but has a really big military, right?<\/p>\n So I would like to think that the Top Men are seriously thinking about what that might involve.<\/p>\n But, to be honest, I’m not very impressed with the Top Men and Women at this point.<\/p>\n UPDATE:<\/b><\/font> As seen on Ace of Spades HQ<\/a> later this morning, a story from the Washington Times<\/em> but not Bill Gertz: Semper Modify: Marine Corps to undergo ‘radical’ overhaul in pivot to take on China<\/a>.<\/p>\n But: <\/p>\n Pentagon officials argue that China\u2019s rapidly improving military capabilities make the prospect of a traditional Iwo Jima-type shore landing exceedingly unlikely, and the Corps instead will shift its resources toward becoming a \u201cstand-in\u201d force that can operate within enemy range rather than fighting its way into theater from the sea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So the Top Men are not planning a battle to liberate Taiwan is what you’re saying.<\/p>\n Top. Men. (And. Women.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perhaps the title is a little too certain, but this is the Internet, and the drive for clicks supersedes the drive for truth. I don’t want to go all Bill Gertz here (I reviewed his book Treachery in 2005 and followed some of his columns in the Washington Post back in the day; he was\/is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25921"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25929,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25921\/revisions\/25929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}