And yet in Australia you will be arrested for going about naked, and we do restrict the availability and consumption of certain other substances for reasons similar to Muslim concerns about alcohol. These features of Australian society are not derived from respect for abstract principles such as ‘freedom of expression’ (p.s. I thought you were opposed to idealism?) but rather reflect the equilibrium values of the dominant cultural group in 2013; they are features which can, in principle, be altered at will. If the demographic make-up of Australian society were to change sufficiently so as to enable the dress and consumption practices favoured by orthodox Muslims to prevail at the ballot box, the changes thus wrought would be no different — that is to say, a requirement to wear e.g. conservative clothing is fundamentally no more objectionable than the requirement we currently do have to wear clothing at all. Of course, it is no less objectionable either: those who argue that folk should be allowed to go around naked and consume narcotics at will, etc. need not trouble themselves with this point.

To a degree you’re right. In the 1950s Australian society would not have approved of either bikini clad metre maids or sauvingon blanc (“What are you, a poofter? Real men drink beer!” :very_drunk:)

Still Muslims have an unalienable right to live as Muslims in a country like Australia. A Jew or Christian living in Saudi Arabia or Iran or Pakistan does not.

And according to the Islamists extremists living in countries like Australia and UK, Jews and Christians living in UK or Australia also don’t have the right to live as Jews and Christians and should convert to Islam lest something ugly happen to them.

That long?
I see relative parity, especially if we want to just talk about tactical quantitative strength, before the middle of the decade, at “worst”.

Which decade?

PLA is critically short of force projection tools (tankers, tactical/strategic transport, carriers, amphibious assault ships, supply ships, space assets ala communication, reconaissance and GPS satelites (COMPASS in service 2020).

Most of these will take decades to build up to any level of capability – especially naval assets.

Also USA has two big military advantages in the form of access to bases across the world together with a robust alliance system including control of key choke points (Malacca, Panama, Strait of Hormuz, Red Sea and Mediterranean).

Meanwhile China is contained by ring of potential hostile states and limited sea access. That means assets out of action for domestic defence.

A Muslim can leave their way of life, but has no right to demand that secular/Christian/Buddhist/Shinto/Confucian/Hindu/animist people should also live as Muslims even in Muslim majority countries.

This is what the UN Convention on Human Rights is all about – freedom of expression, religion, speech, secuality etc etc.

Certainly in Australia we don’t require Muslims to behave like secular/Christian Australians. They can live as Muslims and are free to live as anything else as well (provided they adhere to the laws of the state).

If they don’t like our lack of sharia law, our love of beer and wine or that parking metre girls in the Gold Coast wear bikinis, then they can always move somewhere there is sharia, parking metre attendants are old men and you can’t get a good bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to save yourself.

“The Russians haven’t exhibited great prowess in actual shooting wars. Lots of major deficiencies showed up in Georgia.”

They routed an enemy with almost no preparation. I’d say that is good enough performance.
Remind me the last time any Western power had to face a similar situation.
For every deficiency the Russian forces demonstrated they can still get the job done. And that was before reforms started.

They got the job done against a small foe who generally ran with their tail under the legs. Imagine if the Georgians put up more of a fight (e.g. like the Serbs in 1999). Russia’s military would’ve paid a terrible cost.

Russian military reform started in 1997.

Some of the findings from the Georgian War were (and I’m not going to dredge up the references – I’ve done it numerous times and people should know how to use Google):

1. Professional soldiers did not perform much better than conscripts
2. Russia was unable to fully suppress Georgian AD system.
3. Guided munitions were not used.
4. Poor coordination between ground and air forces.
5. Poor mission planning (e.g. leading to loss of Tu-22M)
6. Poor logistics and poor state of motor pool (they were losing vehicles to malfunction like it was 1941!).
7. Centuries old problem of poorly trained junior officer and NCO corps remained.

The Navy was commended for doing a good job in neutralising Georgia’s fleet in a very efficient manner.

The Russians got the job done in 1942-45, but were still suffering dismal casualties even up to assault on Berlin in 1945. Russian military has always been top heavy (i.e. too much emphasis on higher command and not enough delegation downwards to officers in the field), lacking in initiative and oblivious to massive casualties.

In essence it’s the same military culture as it was in Borodino in 1812!

By the way I really respect the Red Army for what it did in 1941-45. Despite losing most of the pre-1941 army and a huge chunk of its industrial/logistics base, it clawed back and defeated the Wehrmacht (some 90+% of German divisions were engaged in Eastern Front. Contrary to Western opinion, the Western campaigns in Italy and France mainly served to divert German forces from Eastern Front) .

http://china-pla.blogspot.co.nz/2011/08/evolution-of-plaaf-doctrinetraining.html

Very interesting article especially with regards to quality improvements. I’m impressed a Chinese JH-7 regiment outperformed a Russian Su-25 one (remember that Russians kinda pioneered CAS with Il-2 Shturmovick and had considerable experience with Su-25 in Afghanistan and Chechnya).

Seems that at least up to 1999 there were still some serious cultural issues with high level PLA brass not understanding role and importance of Air Force.

Who knows. Do we generally know the distribution of types of flight hours that western air force pilots experience?

No idea and it would fluctuate too.

Tphuang wrote a blog post a few years back detailing some of the massive restructuring in training the PLAAF had undergone, such as red and blue sword exercises, which while it certainly isn’t anywhere near real combat against a near peer foe (although one may argue no western air force has had to face a near peer since the gulf war, if that!), it is a massive improvement.
There are few examples to actually compare PLAAF fighter competency — there is the infamous turkish air force exercise, where PLAAF J-11As were apparently badly mauled by TAF F-4s, although a critical mind may wonder if PLAAF would want to demonstrate anything near its real tactics to a NATO member.

Regardless, the human factor of PLA capability will still have a big question mark hanging over it for years to come.

I did read about a PLA exercise a few years ago where they got their best batallion commanders to command combined arms groups in a modern fashion. Apparently not a single commander operated to satisfaction.

Obviously the PLA would’ve corrected it’s training syllabus.

With regards to Western experience, from a logistics and Command, Control and Communications perspective all the wars fought in recent years would provide good experience relevant to operations against peers.

And these things are critical in combat. E.g. if your command structure is inflexible (as Soviet ones were) it makes it difficult to respond to pressure points and it creates a culture of poor initiative amongst lower level officers (such as combat pilots).

Similarly logistic systems are critical – PL12 or AIM120 might be awesome but pointless if they’re in a depot somewhere as opposed to forward deployed.

The Australian Army had a shock in East Timor when it’s logistic systems proved to be poor – troops on the ground were lacking in even such basic things as water. Obviously this was corrected.

I remember reading about Allied amphibious landings in Sicily and Italy. Due to poor logistics coordination troops on the ground lacked radios yet there was tons of them sitting on board ships.

Didnt China and Russia had a joint exercise a couple of years ago ?
There should be russian comments on that which can be somewhat quantified compared to russian prowess,
which in turn is already measured vs western standard,

The Russians haven’t exhibited great prowess in actual shooting wars. Lots of major deficiencies showed up in Georgia.

tho, western standard varies greatly too,
and will become even more different with 2-tier policy etc coming into place to curb debt increase

Two tier is only confirmed for France.

Suit yourself. I think China, the Soviet Union, and the United States all demonstrate that even deep flaws in a society will struggle to overwhelm the power that follows from sheer numbers coupled with even inefficient economic development. The country might fall apart I guess…

Soviet Union is a terrible example. It’s super power status was gained at the expense of millions of lives in Stalin’s forced industrialisation.

And it was economic stagnation from the 1960s on with a disastrous collapse in 1991.

USA’s 19th and early 20th century societies was far less flawed than India’s in terms of key economic drivers (unbridled capitalism compared to India’s still heavily controlled economy), literacy rates (only 10% by 1900 and then that mostly with the Southern African Americans and that not industrial north).

China did what the USSR should’ve done. It rebuilt after the lunatic Mao Zedong period and was smart enough to figure out that capitalism was a far better way of going than Communism.

Yes, but then we don’t tend to regard doctors as heroes in any case

Doctors are made out to be heros, paragons of soceity and humanitarians.