02-07-2017, 09:18 PM
Quote:Because China is actively developing economic relationships in Africa and Latin America.
Also Central Asia, Mongolia, and Europe.
Quote:This says to me that China is seeking a maritime/trade version of great power expression, like Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain and the US.
But as you already pointed out, it can't fully play this role. It is not a flank or insular state. A hegemonic China would be a hybrid power like France, never able to fully invest in the maritime realm because it always has to look watchfully at its own borders.
Quote:Russia has been and continues to act like a Dehio hegemonic power like Spain, France, and Germany, who sought more old-fashioned territorial empires.
One, France was a hybrid power (Bourgeois, Braudel, Kennedy, etc.), not a continental one. And territorial empires always have frictions with each other.
Quote:Were the US removed from the scene, Russia could install friendly regimes in Europe and have privileged access to European markets. That’s probably all she would need or want.
Which a Trump/populist moment could help them with anyways. And they'll still remained concerned about their position in Central Asia and the Far East.
Quote:China should have no concern over what happens in Europe if the global south (the future of humanity) is left open to them.
I'll believe Africa is the future of humanity the moment they manage to feed themselves on a consistent basis, or sustain an economic boom outside commodity exports.
Quote:It’s a win-win relationship, there simply is no basis for conflict.
Other than two large continental empires sharing the largest land border in the world with each being able to cite historical claims to control/influence in Central Asia, Mongolia, and the Russian Far East?
Quote:Unlike America, who has to worry about electoral politics, China and Russia are in a position to behave like rational actors. I am assuming they will
Autocracies are not exactly a new phenomenon in world history. Are you familiar with history at all? I would have said yes, but you say something like this and I am not sure.
Quote:If the US retreats into its own hemisphere, it has decided not the play the great game anymore. If the US retreats into its own hemisphere, it has decided not the play the great game anymore. In that case, China and the US cease to be competitors and the US has no incentive to assist Russia in meddling with China.
I really dislike this recent tendency for people these days to deny the existence of any gradations between full-scale global hegemony (or the attempt of it, at least) and autarky. The US is a maritime power, secure in its own region, it will always maintain interests outside its own region. I would have sworn somebody here agreed with me...
Quote:The US is not going to become a pipsqueak. In addition to maintaining an adequate home defense against India and Russia, they will need to expend considerable resources to maintain hegemony in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans against India, Japan, Southeast Asia and the Pacific nations.
AHA! FOUND 'EM!
Why would a US secure in its own hemisphere NOT meddle? More subtly than now, of course, but what leading country would not take the opportunity to keep its greatest rival occupied?
Quote:Remember, a US that retreats into is hemisphere has given up on the globalization project, (i.e Empire). It will no longer care what happens in the Old World.
Again with the all-or-nothing approach. No great power acts like this.
Quote:And as I pointed out there is no rational reason for either China or Russia to come into conflict
No, you have asserted this. It's not the same thing.
Quote:What the Chinese did with the inferior cultures they encountered was quite different from what the Westerners did. I believe this difference shows how approaches to geopolitics may be culturally dependent. We may be relying too much on a Western model for what non-Western powers might do.
Wait, I have been banging my head against the computer arguing with you that a hegemonic China would not look like Gladstone's Britain and you give me this?
Quote:They set out on voyages of exploration fifty years before the West. You probably have read of the voyages of Cheng Ho.
And what political distraction canceled those voyages, again? Do you know?
China is fairly unique in that for almost all of their history they were the regional hegemon, so we have an idea what that would look like, culturally speaking. Not a perfect one, by any means, but an idea nonetheless. They are far more likely to be concerned with their immediate neighbors than they are with mucking about in Africa or Latin America. This is not the same as Xenakis' nutjob idea of them going to war in the next couple of minutes, but it's not your idea of perfect amity either, particularly in the absence of a common threat.