01-24-2017, 10:11 PM
(01-24-2017, 07:30 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:(01-24-2017, 07:21 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(01-24-2017, 01:49 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Jordan, if Trump decides to press the South China Sea issue, as Spicer suggested, how would you respond if you were China? I'd rather play China's hand in this situation and ours. Not sure what I would do though.
If I were Chinese leadership I would start pushing a version of a One China deal in which Taiwan gets an "offer that it could not refuse". I would allow the Republic of China to keep its democratic system at the expense of surrendering its formal independence and going into the military and diplomatic orbit of the People's Republic. Nothing changes on the Mainland, but there will be no possibility of any American military presence in Taiwan.
Checkmate. The USA loses any possibility of starting World War III.
P.S. -- I would also try to pull South Korea and Japan into the diplomatic and military orbit. Farewell, advanced American military bases in Rast Asia.
What makes you think that would work? The Taiwanese already have the example of Hong Kong to see that it doesn't. The majority of Taiwanese don't even identify as Chinese anymore. How would it set about prying South Korea and particularly Japan from the US orbit?
Good point. The world scene changed dramatically on January 20, 2017 with the inauguration of Donald Trump as President and the complete rejection of liberalism and a consensus of foreign policy seemingly entrenched indelibly since Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter as President. President Trump's economic ideology is erratic enough in itself with the establishment of a plutocracy that resembles a Marxist stereotype of capitalist exploitation at its worst. Many people see the USA as the new Evil Empire in the sense that the old Soviet Union was. I am one of those. The only hope that I can have in America is that the People will resist and undercut the authority of a vile leader.
Who would want to die for an inhuman, amoral, rapacious elite that imposes the duty of the masses to enrich and indulge it, no matter how much suffering that requires? I don't. Sure, China has a police state, but its leadership is at least predictable. If America has sacrificed steady-hand leaders like George H W Bush and Barack Obama for a demagogue who subsequently betrayed the masses that he got to vote for him, at least China is predictable.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.