01-25-2017, 10:38 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-25-2017, 11:08 AM by David Horn.)
(01-24-2017, 09:36 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: China didn't start their adventurism in the South China Sea until Obama pulled US carrier task force patrols from the area. That doesn't necessarily mean they would back off if we sent our carriers back, but there's a reasonable chance.
Trump did misstep by not saving TPP as a bargaining chip. Torpedoing TPP was worth quite a bit to China, and it could have been used to extract some concessions.
Even if this is true, just how many commitments should the US have taken-on simultaneously? As it is, we still have a Middle East we systematically disrupted, and found that Humpty Dumpty doesn't reassemble well.
The TPP, and the European analog: the TAP, were the last gasps of corporate economic diplomacy ... at least for a while. Let's see how this plays. To be honest, I'm of two minds on this, even though the TPP deal was clearly flawed in a big way. We're moving into a post-industrial world ... whatever that means. In an environment like that, rigid deals can be good or bad.
FWIW, China is happy we torpedoed the TPP, which puts them in the driver's seat in Asia.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.