So what do we say about 2020 then?

In Venezuela, Americans Attempt to Stage a “Bay of Piglets”
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/in-venezuela-americans-attempt-to-stage-a-bay-of-piglets

"The Venezuelan military’s ambush last week of a small marine invasion force, consisting of several dozen Venezuelans and two American “freedom fighters” attempting to overthrow the government of President Nicolás Maduro, immediately had journalists and political observers drawing comparisons to the Bay of Pigs, the disastrous C.I.A.-backed maritime invasion of Cuba, in April, 1961."

Cracks are starting to show in the facade of America as it gets closer to collapse.

They lost the trade war to China.
What happened to Trumps huge tariffs, backs down to 25%
Spaks out threatening everyone including its own allies.
Yes they're going really well, not.

When's this Iranian attack.
Should be any day now.

I hope the U.S. and Israel don't attack Iran, but if they do I hope the Iranians level Israel and put a hypersonic missile through the flight deck of the Lincoln.

China makes 3 bln profit a day in it's trade surplus.

OK JD. I get your point. I just don't agree with it.

You assert that if we don't know all the data we can't reach any conclusions. (Although elsewhere you're happy to make 'scientific inferences' - it must be nice to have such 'flexible' 'standards').

We'll never know if the Venezuelans were fully prepared for the US attack or whether the Chinese, Russian and Cuban forces protecting Maduro were all that competent. Then again, neither will the Chinese.

The fact is that prior to the attack, the Chinese and the Venezuelans were supremely confident in their readiness and technology and they were rapidly disabused of that. I know you don't want to concede the superiority of the US technology and therefore conjure all sorts of scenarios where the technology worked and the operators didn't, but some of us prefer to live in the real world.

________________________________________________________________________

"China makes 3 bln profit a day in it's trade surplus."

That's true..... if you believe their claims. I don't.

It appears you don't get it, mhaze.

//You assert that if we don't know all the data we can't reach any conclusions.//

No, I'm saying that the strength of the conclusion has to match the strength of the evidence.

But you already knew that.

Drawing some conclusions from incomplete data is unavoidable, drawing sweeping strategic ones from a single operation against a degraded client state is optional.

You keep asserting that Chinese and Venezuelan confidence was "supreme" prior to the operation, but you haven't shown where that confidence was expressed, by whom, or how it maps to Chinese homeland defence planning. And "the Chinese won't know either" cuts both ways - uncertainty undermines certainty claims, it doesn't license them.

None of this denies US capability. It just rejects the leap from "US forces executed a highly effective combined operation" to "Chinese confidence is shattered and Taiwan is safe." That leap still hasn't been justified.

So it seems we're not disagreeing about facts so much as how much weight one event can reasonably bear.

"That leap still hasn't been justified."

Not to you.

But to me, based on history, its very much justified.

That's fair, mhaze.

//But to me, based on history, its very much justified.//

I'm asking whether the inference is justified by the evidence at hand; you're answering that it feels justified to you based on history.

We're just applying different standards.