this just in...

from bloomberg:

 Defense Secretary Robert Gates will try to persuade Chinese leaders this week to be more forthcoming about the intent of the weapons they’re developing as the Pentagon rearranges budget priorities partly in response.

now, would someone care to explain to me why the chinese should feel any compulsion to explain to robert gates and the US military-industrial machine what their intent is in developing their new weapons systems?

i may not be one of the great strategic thinkers that populate all the exclusive think tanks in DC, but i think i understand what their goal is.

i'm sure the team in beijing will be mildly amused at their visitor. after seeing the conniption of the US government over the wikileaks affair, they no doubt find their global rival to be something of a pathetic spectacle. imperially overstretched, broke and riven by internal division, the US is a basket case.

china, on the other hand, is extremely successful, disciplined and on the move. before strutting on the world stage like some peacock on steroids, they have carefully, methodically built up their economy, and strengthened their institutions. they are making big deals all around the world with countries the US is too good to deal with, while raking in cash from their perch at the pinnacle of world consumer good manufacturing.

gates, looking like some ridiculous vagabond in a hollywood sitcom, sits atop an empty shell of a military establishment, a giant, unwieldy conglomerate of interests that conspire for but one overarching goal: to soak the US treasury down to the last nickel. between the rapacious military contractors and wall street's casion royale, the US economy is about to experience a major malfunction.

so it's no wonder gates will go begging the chinese to chill out on the weapons development. he'll no doubt assure them of the US' benevolent intentions -- the benevolence that so unmistakably infuses the wikileaks state department documents. what the chinese leadership will be hearing, however, will be a painfully frank cautionary tale of arrogance and ingnorace leading to a complete dissolution and eventual defeat.

like the implosion of the old soviet empire after the afghanistan debacle, the US will one day soon totally disintegrate as a great power, and then all these crying tea party douchebags will get what they want: a virtually non-existent central government, and a rough and tumble landscape of fiefdoms overseen by local warlords. watch the great consumer culture devolve into a subsistence society.