First off, thank you for the deeper dive into the issues. Rec duly given.

Let's talk about Russia and China further.

I suspect Russia is no longer the threat that the USSR once was. Sure, they've got a vast nuclear weapon arsenal, which is definitely a concern. But they're not the economic powerhouse they once were.

Their war with Ukraine is taking a toll on multiple fronts. They're spending lots of money there - money that is gaining them very little. They've grabbed a bit of Ukrainian territory, but Ukraine isn't rolling over and letting them use that territory for economic gain. Ukraine is causing quite a bit of damage to Russian infrastructure - damage that is impacting the country's economy. Russian GDP is up from pre-war levels, but that's due entirely to government spending on the war. Russia has spent 2/3 of their sovereign wealth fund on this war effort.

They're running out of arms. They've dug back into WWII supplies of mothballed tanks and other hardware.

The human toll is staggering. Something around 1.4 million killed or injured. That's almost 10% of the prime fighting age male population. And that population is also the same group that should be raising families and maintaining the population. That's going to have a long term impact on Russian population trends.

So I'm not terribly concerned about Russia except for their nukes.

As to China, they are one of the world's oldest continuing civilizations. Thousands of years old. Throughout most of that time, they haven't shown too much interest in empire building, at least beyond their local area. Most of their fighting throughout history involves lands adjacent to the bulk of the country. Sure, we like to refer to periods as various Chinese empires, but those empires didn't span oceans or far flung lands.

Currently, there are concerns about Taiwan and various islands in the South China Sea. While reasonably consistent with China's historical claims to wider and lesser bits of land, I suspect those are more economic concerns than empire concerns.

While I'm not too concerned about China trying to take various lands away from others, what they are absolutely doing is becoming an economic powerhouse. And, frankly, so what? The US became an economic powerhouse on the back of a world war and the loss of economic infrastructure around the world because of that fighting. We built the factories (or converted existing ones) to supply WWII - not just ourselves but all of our allies as well. Once that war was over, we had the factories and the manufacturing know-how to supply the world and rebuild the damage from the war. And China remained largely separated from that effort. They rebuilt their own damages. They didn't help the rest of the world. And we all feared them simply because they practiced a loose form of communism. They had (and still have) a centrally planned economy. That's both a blessing and a curse.

With smart leadership, the economy can move swiftly and efficiently to keep up with the times. The government says build this factory and that housing complex and these roads and these railroads, and they all work together. With smart leadership, which is a big IF. With poorer leadership, you get giant cities built but have no one living there. Lots of wasted money.

I'd put the current leadership on the savvy end. While Xi is definitely the boss, he listens to those around him and make the country a reasonably good place to live. In the name of cost savings, we have turned our manufacturing over to China, helping them grow massively. And now, with China and the US on opposite sides of issues like the sovereignty of Taiwan, we don't have a lot of options. If we make them too mad at us, we loose access to their manufactured products, many of which are vital to daily life here as well as our defense systems.

China is not a military threat to anyone outside of Taiwan and the South China Sea. They are a threat to the US economic hegemony of the last 80 years.

Getting back to the question, how does propping up Israel's military protect us - or anyone anywhere - from the possibility (perhaps likelihood) of China becoming the world's dominant economy over the next couple of decades?

--Peter