How China's Military Views the United States

So are you saying that Hitler's Nazi Germany was misunderstood? That we should be concerned that they did not think highly of our Lend-Lease Act support of England and Russia during the opening years of WWII? The Germans of WWII should get a vote in how these events should be perceived by everyone else, right? We shouldn't be judgmental of Nazi Germany before we consider their point of view, correct?

It is very noble and open-minded of you to try to look at things from all possible perspectives, but at some point, you have to decide, based on a country's actions, whether their intent is good or bad. Every nation tries to do what's best for their own people, but you have to decide whether they are willing to take things from other nations by force to determine if their actions are worthy of praise or scorn. China is clearly such a nation. They prefer propaganda and intimidation, of course, but appear to be willing to use force under the right circumstances to get what they want. Why else would they continue to develop their military at maximum speed when no one is threatening them? And the more they develop their military as a hammer to deal with potential problems, the more these potential problems will look like nails to them. At some point, you will have to decide between appeasement and opposition. It sounds like you are leaning towards appeasement. That didn't work too well for Neville Chamberlain in his dealings with Hitler.

 

I think war can be avoided if Europe and the U.S. can work together on severe economic sanctions against China. China's spending on the military is the icing on top of their economic cake. A powerful military is very limited in its ability to keep China's elites in power if the economy collapses. Federal employees (teachers, police, etc.) need to be paid, and infrastructure needs to be supported, or the country falls apart. The military is not a necessity by any definition, especially since no other country is threatening to invade China. If you remove 20-30% of their income from international trade, it greatly reduces their ability to continue funding their military. It creates a financial burden on countries that boycott China, but eventually, we would be able to get products from other Asian countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. China would still have whatever modernization that they have achieved to date, but would not be able to maintain complex weapons systems, or maintain training levels (which aren't currently very good to begin with). They would be another version of Russia--a thorn in the side of the rest of the world, but not a major existential threat to NATO or the U.S.

The most important thing that economic sanctions could bring about in China is regime change. There would be no tolerance for a leader that brought economic collapse to the nation by flouting international laws and offending (and threatening) its international customers. They would realize that China is not "special", and is not exempt from international rule of law. The new regime would have a different view of how to deal with other countries, and would be more willing to follow international law to get back in the good graces of their major customers.

 

I never said that all was perfect in the U.S. at any time throughout the history of the U.S. I don't think that mistreatment of blacks, native Americans, or Japanese-Americans during that time frame rises to the level of genocide, which is what might draw the attention of other nations and cause them to consider sanctions against us to correct that behavior. Discrimination against people of color and foreigners in general was rampant throughout the world at that time (I'm not saying that makes it right), so few countries could say that they have taken the high road and be morally superior to the U.S. Nazi Germany invaded its neighbors and started exterminating entire groups of people that it didn't like, taking natural resources and subjugating people as they went. Those are clearly actions that are (and were) extremely morally repugnant and unacceptable to the majority of nations in the world, and it caused those nations to take economic and military action against Germany.

In your effort to see all perspectives on these issues, you seem to be lacking perspective on what a serious offense is versus a lesser offense, and what kinds of offenses should cause other countries to take a stand to correct them. Mistreatment of various citizens in the 1940's was an internal problem that the U.S. needed to correct on its own, without threat of war or sanctions from other countries. And considering the fact that no country took a significant stand against Joseph Stalin's murderous rampage in the Soviet Union through out the 1930's and 40's (with tens of millions killed), it's safe to say that the rest of the world was not interested in correcting anyone else's diversity problems.

 

Good grief. You still don't understand. I am talking specifically about actions that a country takes that offend other nations to the point of the other nations considering severe economic sanctions or declaration of war against the offending country. That is a much higher standard, and a different standard, than offending one's sensibilities with something that is morally wrong but does not generally affect people in other countries. This discussion is about whether or not the U.S. and European countries should take severe economic sanctions against China for their crimes and offenses against humanity.

We do not need to occupy the "absolute moral high ground" in general terms to consider taking actions against other countries. We would be hypocritical if we committed the same crimes that the other country is accused of committing, of course. But the truth is that no country is lily-white and pure and free of sin in today's world. We are far better than most countries, but you probably wouldn't agree with that because you only get the news from this country and tiny snapshots of what goes on in other countries. And positive news is usually not considered newsworthy, so people usually hear negative news. All other countries seem better than your own because you hear fewer negative stories from those countries. Once you live in another country for a while and interact with the locals enough, you realize that every country has its own problems, especially with racism. None of this should dissuade the U.S. from standing tall and opposing China's crimes, lies, and destruction of the planet. We would be fairly imbecilic if we stood by and allowed China to destroy the planet while we dickered about who was pure and holy enough to take a moral high ground with China--that would be similar to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it approached the iceberg.

There is nothing wrong with opposing the internal injustices and screwups of American society, but it is a TOTALLY separate issue from the external issues between nations. If you want a thread about opposing racism, by all means, start your own thread. (By the way, China has its own issue with racism against blacks. When I last worked over there, it was common for managers of new apartment buildings to hire western people to pretend to live there when they showed prospective clients the building--it made the building look more respectable if it was good enough for westerners. They paid black westerners a fraction of what they paid white westerners.)

 

Regardless, my point is still valid. You don't need some sort of mythical moral high ground on all potential ethical issues to demand that international law be followed, especially if you (and most other countries) are following international laws. The law is the law, and should be respected. Furthermore, if another country is destroying the earth in some way or another, they become an existential threat to you. One that you should deal with sooner, rather than later. You don't sit around arguing "before we tell them to stop eating all the world's fish and wildlife, we should do a better job protecting the snail darter in Oregon. We don't have the moral high ground on this. It could look bad if we say something. We should wait until they finish off a few more species like rhinoceros, tigers, sharks and tuna fish so we have time to protect the snail darter." Or, "they're killing people on the west coast with pollution from thousands of unregulated coal-fired power plants, but we shouldn't say anything, because we still operate one coal-fired power plant in Pennsylvania. We don't have the moral high ground here." Stranger still is the ridiculous argument, "We can't say anything about them building reefs into islands and militarizing them for future use in naval warfare, because we don't do a great job of protecting the legal rights of black people in America. We don't have the moral high ground. It could look bad if we say something, so we should just keep quiet and let them do whatever they want. We should stop all leadership positions in the world until this issue is addressed and corrected to my satisfaction."

 

There are other theories that China might collapse internally and fracture into multiple countries, which it has done multiple times during the last 4,000 years. It's very hard to predict anything based on China's economy, because many of the economic numbers that China puts out are suspected to be falsified.

The Silk Road and their Africa initiatives have as much potential to be disasters as they do to be great benefits to China.

 

O.k., then, let's just say that you have a very poor ability to stay on topic and are easily distracted.