RWE – exactly: as observed by Deng Xiaoping and Mao themselves, the whole purpose of the opening to the West was to obtain Western technology. It was not, as many in the West imagine it, an admission of the defeat of the Leninisit system or enterprise. Lenin himself pioneered the deception with the New Economic Policy. Rather than demonstrating weakness, such a policy actually provides the Communist rulers with a new political lease on life and Enormously Expanded military and economic opportunities. They would be utterly unable to produce these themselves. And now they own $3 trillion in US T-bills. The strategy has worked. If Obama is allowed to go his way, the US will decommission almost completely our remaining nuclear arsenal on the basis of assurances from Russia and its Potemkin government. By the way – how many of the billions of $$$ spent on “safeguarding” Russian nukes was just used to upgrade the Russian arsenal and develop road-mobile nuclear ICBMs?

And even a bird’s eye analysis demonstrates that both China and Russia operate at about the same distance from their people/democracy. Please. These countries *are* conspiracies.

Nevertheless. I live in hope that all this is well-known to those who actually make such decisions in the USA, and there are nice shiny new nuclear weapons sitting atop unhittable ICBMs on in the CONUS hills well out of reach of the fools that be.