Peter Zeihan is a China hater who has claimed that due to low birth rates and other factors. China will have half of its current population by 2050! He also claimed that China will collapse soon and it knows that so it will invade Taiwan soon while it still can. He also claimed that Taiwan will have nuclear weapons at a moment's notice and will use it to turn back China. Despite these outrageous claims, he has a lot of followers who believe he is an expert in foreign relations. Of course, lots of people make outrageous predictions and have followers. Gordon Chang comes to mind. But I was shocked that with such unintelligent babble, Zeihan was deemed credible enough for our defense community to be invited to speak at the Eisenhower School of National Security.
The Eisenhower School is part of the Armed Forces education system and is highly regarded in turning out leaders in the military. Eisenhower himself graduated from this school which had another name in the past. So I would think the school would be careful in inviting speakers who should be credible. It is not credible that China will lose 700 million people in population by 2050 unless there will be a war the magnitude of which we have never seen before. There is no way that demographic extrapolations will come up with this conclusion. I have never heard anyone else make that prediction.
Even if China is on a downward spiral, it does not mean it will invade Taiwan. And while Taiwan has the talent to produce a nuclear weapon, it would be unlikely that it would make even one on a moments notice, let alone multiple warheads. Zeihan said that Taiwan can destroy Beijing and Shanghai. Even if that is the case, China still has dozens of cities of over a million people.
Zeihan's claims become even more ridiculous. He said that China then will send millions across the strait in fishing boats with the hope of landing enough to overwhelm Taiwan forces. But he believes that Taiwan and U.S. navies will destroy these boats before they land, killing millions of Chinese and thus the invasion will fail.
It is laughable what he said. If Taiwan uses nuclear weapons on China, wouldn't China respond in kind with even more nuclear weapons? Maybe half a dozen would destroy the whole island, so why would they bother sending people across the strait? In fishing boats, when they have a powerful navy? Maybe Zeihan doesn't know that China has a navy and hundreds of nuclear weapons. If that is the case, what makes him an expert?
What bothers me is that our young officers who are learning geopolitics and military strategies are exposed to such clowns. It is like Trump listening to his cronies instead of real experts and make idiotic decisions that cause a million American lives. I think we can understand why Fox News keep inviting Gordon Chang and others like him to blast China. But who in our defense department invited this fool to speak at one of our prestigious military institutions?
I admit I have no idea who this guy and Gordon Chang are. I did look him up and he's supposedly a statistics guy? So maybe China's population will go down but it can also reverse that trend. The rest of what you wrote sounds outrageous. Taiwan could not defend itself very long and would definitely need the help of Japan and the U.S.
ReplyDeleteI am interested to see why he was invited to talk to the Eisenhower school. Do they have other controversial guest speakers? Is there a record of what he talked about?
-LBOAYM
This guy is new to me, I only saw video of him talking about this recently. Gordon Chang is well known in the anti-China circles. He has made numerous predictions about the downfall of China in the last 20 some years. Each time he has been proven wrong and yet he would go on tv and made outrageous predictions and be introduced as a China expert. He is not to be confused with another Gordon Chang who is a professor at Stanford and has written books about the Chinese immigrants, including the railroad workers. The Stanford professor is the good guy!
ReplyDeleteI find it curious that organizations or media who invite these people who predict the demise of China also support those who claim that China is very dangerous to the U.S. and the world. If China is going to collapse anyway, why are you afraid of it?
It occurs to me that maybe this Peter Zeihan guy is actually working for China. He is trying to make American military officers believe that China is weak and is collapsing, so nothing to worry about. This is the opposite of the warmongers and the military industrial complex who must find enemies, making them up if they don't exist. It is like the big lie about WMD to lead us into war with Iraq. Peter Zeihan is trying to prevent war with China! Otherwise he is the dumbest "China expert" ever!
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