（From Wallstree Journal Readers' Comment）

There would have been some serious arm twisting behind the scenes over the weekend. I am quite sure Russia was involved to make sure America is not given a excuse to stir things up.

My concern is that America is looking for a pretext to quietly shut down the growth of China.

Incidents in Korea could play the same role as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, or the USS Maddox Incident, did in Vietnam.

To consider for a moment, at the extreme ….

America’s economy is based on war and it may do that economy no harm to have a war with China.

It is not a war that could be won and it would certainly throw the economic world into chaos but, on balance, America could come out ahead economically.

Thinks of the implications for the $US and all that money America owes China.

Americans would go back to work to build for the war. All the unemployed would have a job, with a certain amount of risk attached, but still a job while they remained alive.

Indeed, it was World War II that pulled America out of the great depression, if you recall.

Best of all for America, it will be a war fought far away, unless it went nuclear. Still, that would be in no country's interests, so it probably would not be used.

And for the senior politicians, captains of industry and financiers … it would be a war fought by the children of the workers and middle class. It would be their children who would die, not the children of the politicians, captains of industry and financiers who would make money or political capital out of it.

It would be a judgment call in the long run, but a call made when America is the greatest military power on this planet.

As I said, ‘at the extreme’ … however China must have seriously considered this possibility, so must of Russia.

They do not want their quiet rise to economic power halted by America.

We live in interesting times.

Graeme Mills