Mongolians Are Not Stupid

Cold War II: Pres. Obama warned China that unless it puts a muzzle on North Korea, the US will deploy new troops and equipment to the Korean peninsula as well as step up the tempo of joint military exercises. Even though the 6-party talks are gaining momentum, Obama's threat is scaring investors and escalating tensions. Nevertheless, Obama is doing the right thing because there is no easy button to push and magically make Cold War II go away. Americans, who think war is like a football game, often fail to understand that one makes a war go away by either winning or losing it.
Here is one news item that tells us everything we need to know about Cold War II... Mongolia has a gigantic and largely untapped coal deposit sitting only 200 miles from China. Rather than building a short rail line to bring this coal to the lucrative Chinese energy market, Mongolia is building a nearly 1500 mile long rail line that ends at a Russian port and links Mongolia's rail system to Russia's. The Mongolian coal will be transported all this distance and then sold to other Asian countries other than China.
If we ignore geopolitics and simply look at economics, the Mongolian rail line is insane. But with this rail line in place it will be pretty much impossible for China to seize Mongolian coal deposits by force. Such a move would threaten Russia directly and also Japan and South Korea, the customers of the Mongolian coal. And a forcible seizure would require China to build a new rail line, which would be very difficult with an anti-Chinese guerrilla war raging in Mongolian.
Do you think the leaders of Mongolia are stupid? Do dovish pin-head liberal Western academics have a better idea of China's intentions than the people actually living in the shadow of the great dragon?

Long War: Karzai may use Afghan troops to block the opening of the Afghan parliament. Like any parliament, the one in Afghanistan is designed to check the power of the executive branch and Karzai doesn't like being checked. Simply put, Afghanistan does not have a democracy. Nor does it have a functioning dictatorship. On the ground, the US Army & Marines are trying to build a tribal society, not an advanced industrial democracy. Because the US was so eager to end the Afghan war, it slapped together Afghanistan's pseudo-democracy years ago and has been making plans to leave ever since. I'll repeat myself, the war will end when the US wins. After that happens a democracy can be built.
Of course the Taliban could win. But that will only bring a temporary pause to this theater of the Long War, not an end to conflict. Here's why: We know that in at least two instances the Pakistani Taliban seized control of Pakistani nuclear weapon assembly stations. The goal of every insurgent guerrilla movement is to become a conventional army backed by a nation-state. The existence of a nuclear armed Taliban nation-state will lead to a much bigger war than what we are seeing right now even if America were to become totally disengaged because India would be forced to act.