North Korea launch missiles

Chakar

The main doctrine seems to be MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction] which is why India, Pakistan and other countries developed nuclear weapons.

zuma

Liber8or wrote:

With regards somebody saying the re-building of arms between Japan and China on the previous page, i just wanted to clarify that this is not a worrying situation. This is because under the "Peacy Treaty of 1951" between Japan and America, Japan were only given a strict plan on their military. Meaning they were only allowed to build a defense force to protect themselves from foreign invaders, which at the time, was recognised as Communism.

Please read here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/22/AR2005112200672.html

Manic Moran

The US never went to a 'no first strike' option for two reasons.

1) It would have been difficult/impossible to defend Western Europe against the Warsaw Pact without nukes. The Soviets in 1982 when they made their declaration were in a very good position to make it, as they (and most everyone else) knew that they didn't need nukes to overrun NATO. That situation didn't really change until the last generation of NATO's Cold War equipment really came on line in strength.

2) As the US retains no operational chemical weapon stocks, it has a policy of a reply with nuclear weapons to a chemical attack, regardless of if the country in question is nuclear-armed or not.

NTM

Manic Moran

Please read here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...112200672.html

Wrong focus.

The problem isn't Japan: It's had an extremely capable military for several decades at this point, and in pure dollar value has, I believe, the 2nd largest annual defense budget in the world. What the country itself is allowing itself to do is little to do with the country's capabilities, which are limited offensively, but more than capable of carrying out defensive operations within Japan's sphere of influence (As opposed to the territory of Japan).

China, on the other hand, is undergoing a massive military resurgence. Give them another ten or fifteen years, and they're going to have a very capable offensive force. Right now, they suffer the problem of limited overseas offensive capability: All the troops and tanks they have are of no use if they can't get to the Spratleys or Taiwan or wherever due to a lack of transport vessels, blue-water combat ships or whatnot. China is also looking to be recognised as a world superpower, and a decent power projection capability is liable to be an integral part of that. The NorthWestern Pacific is liable to become a very interesting place come 2020.

NTM

Liber8or

zuma wrote:

Please read here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/22/AR2005112200672.html

Ahh i see the Peace Treaty of 1951 is effectively gone now. Thanks for updating this.