Per capita military spending is a useful tool to shows the relative burden of each citizen, not how much each taxpayer"pay into" the military coffer, since who pay tax varies from country to country.
Norwegian missiles are designed and used only for defencive purposes, so unless you shoot at me no Norwegian missiles will come at you.
PS> Since everybody claim that their military force are for defence only, how can a war start?
If nobody is aggressive, who need defense?
Where the subs on surface, or did your Drillers have magic abilities?
I have been out in the fields off Southern Vietnam many times over many years, but never saw any Chinese subs, or CG vessels around.
The situations when a rig from Vietnam and another from China were drilling in disputed waters in the north has been well reported, both in the general and industry media:
China is making outrageous overreaching claims to the EEZ waters of several other SE Asian nations. Chinaās claims are blatantly contrary to international law. The International court has ruled against China. Yet China continues its naked aggression and illegal claims against these nations.
That really tells us all we need to know about China and itās intentions.
As to China needing a war to divert attention from internal problems;
A little patriotic saber rattling from time to time is enough, as long as the living condition for most people is improving every year.
The majority of Chinese doesnāt look at the ability to call their President an idiot and get away with as freedom. (They have little reason to do so)
Nor do they need Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Amazon to be happy. They have perfectly good substitute that is of Chinese origin;
Iām afraid that the US may be the one that āneedā a war to distract from internal conflicts, political ineptitude and corruption.
How long will the American people tolerate āinstitutionalized corruptionā in politics, stagnant living standard, 3rd world infrastructure and the most expensive health care w/o seeing the best result, to mention but a few of the grievances.
The demonstrations by young people in Washington today should be a wakeup call for the politicians.
Ombugge
You really have difficulties in differentiating between the rhetorical and the literal. I frankly had no idea that Norway had any armed forces.
The internal issue is really how fast the changes happen, the working class in the USA have been standing still for 40 years, so not really noticed.
If 900 million chinese go backwards so have missed the boat of the other 200 million, I guess they will notice.
Pushing the migrant workers out of the cities must be the start??
All the oil fields in Vietnam are in undisputed EEZ waters, but far outside territorial waters as well.
Only restriction on lawful passage is the restricted zone declared around the installations and rigs.
Yes the difference between those born in cities and in rural districts are a problem in China, where the Gini coefficient is creeping up as the overall economy is improving. (It now stands at 0.46):
The Gini coefficient in USA is not far from the same (0.48) and increasing as well:
This article in SCMP from Nov. 2017 is quite informative on this problem:
Not sure where you get your 900/200 mill. figures from though, since 57% of the Chinese population is now living in cities. The middle class has passed 430 mill. and expected to grow to 780 mill. by 2025.
According to this article in Foreign Policy from 1.Febr. 2018 there is the problem you pointed out though:
Letās hope China can solve the problem and not break up into a number of mini-states.
The US subsidized all these countries? How did that happen?
The USA is a democracy and you elect the people that represent you. A more accurate statement would be. We the citizens chose to have our representatives subsidize other countries and standby silently while seeing intellectual property theft by the likes of China. To show our support of these policies in our country we re-elect the majority of our representatives every time election time rolls around. We do this because they say they will do something about abortion and keep out immigrants out because everyone knows if those two problems were solved manufacturing would move back to the USA , the Chinese wouldnāt steal our patents and countries like Apple would move some of their manufacturing and bank assets back to the USA and help get us out of debt by paying taxes and building factories
Yes, like I said earlier, China need to grow and improve the living condition for their population to avoid social strifes.
How the US elite have managed to keep their people from rioting after many years of stagnated wages and even falling living standard is difficult to comprehend. Propaganda can only do so much.
Thereās truth in this Bill Vaughn saying:
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but wonāt cross the street to vote in a national election
Good article. Our founding fathers including James Madison and John Adams cautioned against the establishment of a pure democracy. āIn a pure democracy, there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.ā You wonāt find the word ādemocracyā in either the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. The United States of America was established as a Republic.
This is what Iām talking aboutā¦ This is how China treats their OWN peopleā¦ How do think theyāre gonna treat non Chinese (who they clearly view with disdainā¦ Part of their āgoodā brand of nationalism) once they establish themselves as a military superpower?