Shooting customers is bad for business

Strategy & Tactics, a magazine for which I write, recently published an issue examining the Chinese military buildup. Accompanying the lead article was a game in which two players can simulate a war between the United States and China.

In the comments section of S&T's site, one player decribes how any Chinese move is hampered by Japan's suprisingly large fleet numbering more than 40 surface combatants including five destroyers based on our own state of the art Arleigh Burke Class.

One is tempted to invoke Japan's recent pacifism, but does anyone really beleive they would sit itdly by as China gobbled up, say Taiwan? And of course, there is the American Pacific Fleet.

China's massive naval expansion is aimed at something, but what? Maybe it's just an old fashioned grab at prestige like the battleship races before WWI. Great nations, afterall, have big fleets.

Would whatever goal the Chinese have be worth a war with the United States? Anyone reading this is wearing, or has within arms reach, some product made in China. How long would it take for a boycott of Chinese goods to bankrupt the country. Chinese nationalism may be all well and good, but is gaining Taiwan worth losing your vacation house and second car?

It is not hard to imagine a group of important businessmen, with interests in Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai and San Francisco, sitting communist party functionaries down and explaining to them that shooting one's customers is bad for business.

Of course, all this assumes China is a rational actor.

For more about Will, visit http://www.gulfwarone.com/. His novel, 'A Line Through the Desert' can be purchased here.