Sarah Paine: uncertainty

Transcript context

…What level of competence should we assign our estimates of how well the PLA would function in a war, whereas at least the United States military has had these practice rounds in Iraq and Afghanistan? We don't even know how the modern PLA would actually function in a war. And obviously, as you were mentioning earlier, in authoritarian systems, there's this lack of information and feedback that could lead to all kinds of catastrophes where people are not prepared. What should we think of the PLA's competence? I don't know. But I think the people who are worried about that are the Vietnamese and the Indians, the people who are likely to meet them. Back in ‘79, when the Chinese tried to work their magic in Vietnam, they had massive casualties. The Vietnamese killed more Chinese in a matter of weeks than all US losses in Afghanistan and in fact, all US losses in Vietnam over however many years we were there. Do you think the Chinese would be good at expeditionary warfare and sending these people anywhere? Think about where would you be fighting them? It's great that they have got a big army. So where are they going to deploy them? Why have the wars in China been so deadly? You have millions of casualties sometimes.…

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