Peter Zeihan

It's ringed by hostile countries, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia.

Um, it's not that deep.

So subs don't play a big role.

The energy in it, the reserves are not all that interesting.

And the sand islands that the Chinese have built are, as the name suggests, built of sand.

And so the Chinese have already stopped stationing aircraft on them because the runways aren't functional.

And if you see this as a naval projection issue, projecting through an area ringed by a half a dozen countries who hate you, you put a few of the new tomahawks that the United States is developing that are truck-mounted, and you can't do anything with that except for loose ships.

And even if you could secure it, you have now made it one-seventh of the way to the Persian Gulf.

Big fucking deal.

The Chinese are boxed in.

I've never found the South China Sea interesting.

Uh, when public relations is your strategic policy, it's not a very good policy.

Uh, if you want to take it seriously, the Chinese have to conquer Vietnam first, then we'll talk.

Cause if they don't control the coast, there's no point in controlling the water.

I won't rule it out, but there's nothing that they could do that would fix their underlying core problems.

They can't change their geography.

They'd have to conquer the entire first island chain to have a chance to project beyond.

And even then, they're not going to have a two-ocean navy because there's only one ocean.

They're not going to solve their demographic problems with a war.

The only country where you could maybe turn enough people into slaves to round out your demographic structure would be India.