I am not an expert on nuclear strategy, but I have read some stuff that leads me to believe we came closer to nuclear war than we might want to imagine. There was a long period of time where we could have had a successful first strike against the Soviets, and I am not naive enough to think we didn't think long and hard about it. Once the Soviets had enough weapons we went to the MAD strategy, at least for public consumption, but our victory in the Cold War was because we always explored the first strike option. That is, accurate silo busters and counterforce strategies put pressure on the Soviets to spend more on missiles because of the threat of a survivable first strike. Not many missiles are necessary for a credible MAD strategy, so I don't think the nuclear war planners believed in MAD as a strategy. As a result of their strategy perhaps, but not as the goal. The brilliance of the Star Wars program was that we sent the Soviets into a spending panic trying to keep up. We spent very little money, relatively, on Star Wars stuff but forced the Soviets to spend a very high percentage of their miniscule wealth on weapons. No doubt there was wasteful spending in the Cold War, but we got a lot more for our dollar than the Soviets.


China may not get into a direct conflict with us, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them take over Japan and other Pacific nations. They will test us by attacking Taiwan, then go on to other things. I think this is why they are developing technology for accurate MIRVs and nuclear missile submarines. Our response to the Taiwan attack will say a whole lot. Given the fact that the Chinese have a very long view of things, I don't think they've forgotten what Japan did in WWII. I don't think they have forgiven and forgotten the war crimes and genocide committed by the Japanese. But this is speculation on my part. Read some Bill Gertz stuff to heighten your suspicion level on China's motives.