To answer the question in the title: EVERYONE.
Yea, didn’t watch the video, but had to post exactly this!
China is getting aggressive and the Philippines asked the US to help defend them. I’m amused at how the US is the bad guy here. Clearly the takeaway is the US should not defend her allies and should instead be aggressive like China!
Also LOL at ‘fisherfolk’.
The history of Philippines/US relations is a great example of how horrible the US can be to a nation. The really early history has the USA attempted to colonize the Philippines. Jump decades later and you have the US supporting the brutal Marcos regime against its own people. Then a period of relatively good relations. Then the Philippines kicking the USA out of the military bases the USA kept there and throwing their lot in with China. Then China stabbing the Philippines in the back (fishing rights and territorial waters problems I think?), and then the Philippines re-engaging with the USA against China. The most tragic thing about the Philippines is its amazing people, and its geopolitically important location. It seems they’ll always be courted and used by large powers.
Great reporting, solidarity to those Filipinos protesting against US presence in Philippines, I truly hope war doesn’t come to your shores.
In terms of conventional warfare, nation on nation, the US wins. The US Navy, the US Air Force, the US Naval Air Force are in a completely different league of power in comparison to China.
The thing would be what that war looks like and where it would take place. US mainland is an unlikely locale for the front lines due to the difficulties China would have getting a foothold.
In an all out war the US does have an access point to the Chinese mainland in South Korea. Granted, the US would have to get through North Korea and that’s already been tried once although the US wasn’t in all out war mode the last time troops were engaged in combat there.
Whether the US would actually be able to militarily defeat the PLA on China’s home soil I don’t know. We all thought Russia was extremely powerful and Ukraine just held them off and turned the tide with a bunch of NATO’s old equipment.
Obviously the Chinese economy and therefore military support capabilities are drastically different from Russia’s but many do wonder if Chinese military policies being perhaps closer to Russia’s than to Western standards does make one wonder if the tactics and capabilities of the US and it’s allies would ultimately be too much for the PLA to overcome even if relatively well equipped and bigger.
You seem to have sidestepped the point of this video which is the immense and horrific human cost which any kind of war, even minor, places on people in the region. I find these mental wargames you’re playing a bit tonedeaf in this context.
Gonna have to have some posting requirements at some point.
