And I'm prepared to contest that. But that's a fight that matters and if China is trying to corner the world supply of oil and not share with the market, we're going to have plenty of allies to address the situation.
I sacrificed clarity for brevity. I was not challenging your main point. Rather, I was just making a point that, notwithstanding its internal pressures and challenges, China may have no choice but to create a two-navy ocean and follow a more interventionist policy due to its burgeoning reliance on oil.
Over time, more and more Chinese will demand a middle class standard of living. That requires oil. That requires protection of supply, by force if necessary. And, much like many poor non-slaveholding Southerner's views of Yankees in 1861, Osama and his ilk primarily hate us because we're there. Let the Chinese be in the sight for a change.....