North Korea: Threat or Blackmailer?

[Alvin Walton]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

In China's shoes:

Guam is a launching base for US aircraft, and naval vessels. If they felt we were an aggressive opponent, they could see defending those assets as a threat to their ability to defend themselves. Just as in football, a good defense enables an offense to be more aggressive.

My main point is you are looking at it from a skewed view that pre-supposes the US to be a gentle giant, but much of the world looks at us as a heavy handed military power, and any additional military hardware or expertise is going to be considered at some level as a threat.

Outside of the Chinese theater, look at the anti missile batteries we had proposed in eastern europe to protect against iranian threats. The russians didn't accept those, and put a lot of pressure on the us to change their locations. Why? What was their rationale? Because us having that ability to stop incoming threats enabled us to launch a strike in such a way that their first wave defense wouldn't then carry out an effective retaliation.

China clearly has wargame scenarios, as we do, where their first goal would be to reduce our effectiveness in the Pacific theater, which would, I imagine, taking out our Guam base. A missile defense system there forces them to account for that and target it more heavily.

Whatever...you're kinda all over the place in that repsonse.
Anyways, I wouldnt get too wound up what the Chinese think about Guam considering we can park equipment in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan which are a lot closer to China.
And there will be no conflict between us and China, not in my lifetime anyways. They have no blue water navy and they are not going to attack their cash cow and biggest debt holder.
Guam is only relevant right now because the media keeps mentioning it.