The US-China summit

[bigbadwolf]

A piece at wsws.org:

The mounting danger of war between the US and China, which would almost certainly escalate into a global conflagration, is rooted in deep-going shifts in the world economy and the global balance of forces: China’s rise to become the world’s second largest economy and the decline in the global economic position of the United States.

A rather disquieting read, I confess.

 

[Katrina]

The mounting danger of war between the US and China

kidding,right ? China isnt Iraq, just send a dozen planes and drop some bombs from the air and leave.
Bush administration has send a message to the world that it will not fight with a country that has a nuclear weapon or if it is uncertain that it has one..just forget China

 

[alain]

"World Socialist Web Site"? I think they have too much time on their hands and they have never experienced themselves what socialism looks like. Just read the title of the site and I basically stopped.

Bush administration has send a message to the world ...

Errr... Bush has not been the president for the last 2 years.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

BigBad, listen, we got it, you're a socalist, cool.

Posting links from Socialist websites is pretty comical. How about I go to theworldisflat.org and post articles about sea dragons at the edge of the ocean. Is that supposed to be factual?


"The decline in the USA". So funny. I didn't know rooting for China to overtake the USA was a good thing. Doesn't China have a peace prize winner in jail? Man, people are messed up.

 

[bigbadwolf]

BigBad, listen, we got it, you're a socalist, cool.

You're missing the point (yet again). Where I got the article from is immaterial: look at the arguments and facts it presents.

"The decline in the USA". So funny. I didn't know rooting for China to overtake the USA was a good thing. Doesn't China have a peace prize winner in jail? Man, people are messed up.

Here's Pat Buchanan writing (whom I also follow avidly), an excerpt of which follows:

As Hu Jintao wings his way home, America's hectoring still ringing in his ears, he must be thinking that maybe we Americans should stop lecturing them and take a closer look at ourselves.

... And what are the Chinese doing in their ascendancy to first power on earth that we did not do in ours?

Hu Jintao got an earful from us on his human rights records. Stop the repression of Uighurs and Tibetans. Stop jailing political dissidents. Allow more freedom of the Internet and the press.

But on his way home, Hu must be thinking to himself: Who are these Americans to lecture us?

Is this not the same tribe that enslaved black people for 250 years and segregated them for a century? Is this not the same tribe that drove the Indians off their lands, then stuck them all in Bantustans called reservations? Are these not the only people in history to have dropped atomic bombs on defenseless cities?

How would we have reacted if Hu, instead of pretending he couldn't hear the translation of that question about human rights, retorted, "We Chinese are also concerned about what we read of human rights at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, of renditions, torture and something called 'water-boarding.'"

...

But as America sinks economically and retreats strategically, while China grows at 10 percent and bristles with confidence, we appear to be a nation of whiners. They are eating our lunch, and we sound like losers in a locker room.

We can't win or end our wars, balance our budgets or control our borders. Great states like California and Illinois appear about to go belly-up. The U.S. government is running a third straight deficit of near 10 percent of our entire economy. We used our stimulus money to save government jobs. They used theirs for bullet trains.

Time to see ourselves as others see us.

You've really got to stop watching Fox News.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

So you read socialist websites and follow Pat Buchanan? God dude, could you be reading anything worse?


Pat is out of his mind. He is absolutely not credible.


Because the USA kicked Indians off their land 200+ years ago we cannot criticize China for 2010 human rights issues? Because the Germans participated in the Holocaust they cannot have an opinion? Because the UK was the original slave traders they cannot come out against racism? Really?


Oh, nice atomic bomb reference Pat. I am sure the Chinese really hold that against us considering the pure hatred they have for the Japanese.



Bad, I am so glad you follow Pat.

Quantnet readers, here are some quotes from Pat. He strikes me as a fellow I would want to quote to support my point.


"Buchanan on affirmative action: "How, then, can the feds justify favoring sons of Hispanics over sons of white Americans who fought in World War II or Vietnam?" (syndicated column, 1/23/95) "

"Homosexuality involves sexual acts most men consider not only immoral, but filthy. The reason public men rarely say aloud what most say privately is they are fearful of being branded 'bigots' by an intolerant liberal orthodoxy that holds, against all evidence and experience, that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle." (syndicated column, 9/3/89)

"Rail as they will about 'discrimination,' women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism." (syndicated column, 11/22/83)

In Right from the Beginning, Buchanan refers to Spanish dictator Francisco Franco as a "Catholic savior." He called Franco, along with Chile's Gen. Pinochet, "soldier-patriots." (syndicated column 9/17/89) Both men overthrew democracy in their countries.

In a memo to President Nixon, Buchanan suggested that "integration of blacks and whites -- but even more so, poor and well-to-do -- is less likely to result in accommodation than it is in perpetual friction, as the incapable are placed consciously by government side by side with the capable." (Washington Post, 1/5/92)


Pat Buchanan in His Own Words




How about you try and get some valid sources next time dude. Go back to reading about utopia where everyone works for someone else lol.

 

[happypantsmcgee]

You're missing the point (yet again). Where I got the article from is immaterial.

You really need to stop watching Fox News

Bahahaha. Am I the only one that sees the irony in this? You claim that the source doesn't matter and you then use the idea of viewing Fox News as some sort of conservative brainwashing machine.

Silly wolf...

 

[DominiConnor]

Personally I think the problem is not that the USA is very likely to crumble into some 3rd world state, but that it fails to adjust to realities as they change, causing pain to itself and everyone else.

For quite a while, America can expect to be vastly more powerful in military terms than anyone else. But the ratio is declining, in some ways that's harder to deal with than simple defeat.

There isn't an obvious enemy. If you avoid watching Fox news, it's hard to see anyone really seriously threatening the USA in conventional war. Yes there are 7-8 states that could launch a viable nuclear attack, but sine they'd be vapourised in retaliation, and can't be stopped, you just have to live with it. China will no doubt screw with some neighbouring states, as will Russia, but the old certainties of the Cold war are so far gone that for many people they aren't even a memory.

One of America's chief military advantages is the most boring one. Transport and logistics. Sustaining combat troops requires vast amount of stuff to get to places that other people are trying to stop you getting to. No one is remotely close. But that's the advantage that's easiest to erode, but it's boring. Even Fox would have trouble turning pictures of Chinese trucks into a scare story.

 

[bigbadwolf]

So you read socialist websites and follow Pat Buchanan? God dude, could you be reading anything worse?

Pat is out of his mind. He is absolutely not credible.

All I see you doing is making naked assertions not backed by any real argument, and dismissing out of hand anything that doesn't agree with your point of view. You couple this with random ad hominems like Buchanan being out of his mind. This is realpolitik we're talking about, which both wsws.org and Pat Buchanan are focused on. I realise this may differ somewhat from the banal cliches you bandy around, along with puerile moral judgments, but make an effort to understand the world objectively.

American higher education is an abject failure if it can't even endow people with the ability to make informed arguments and to be objective in appraisal.

The thread is about simmering and growing tensions between the USA and China. As is your wont, I haven't seen you make any real contribution to the thread besides throwing out disparaging remarks. I see you've enlisted some help. Good luck in your efforts. If anyone else contributes something substantive, I'll chip in. Otherwise a waste of time ....

 

[bigbadwolf]

For quite a while, America can expect to be vastly more powerful in military terms than anyone else. But the ratio is declining, in some ways that's harder to deal with than simple defeat.

There isn't an obvious enemy. If you avoid watching Fox news, it's hard to see anyone really seriously threatening the USA in conventional war.

The US, like Orwell's Oceania, is a state engaged in permanent war. We're all familiar with Eisenhower's speech in 1961 warning of the burgeoning military-industrial complex. Here is that old war horse, Douglas MacArthur, speaking about ten years earlier:

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. --Douglas MacArthur, Lansing MI 15 May 1951

It's not just "socialists" who talk about this but old-time conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Paul Craig Roberts (who, since they deviate from the narrow bounds of official orthodoxy, are "out of their mind" and "simply not credible"). After all, the USA is just around to promote peace and democracy. It's certainly not an empire. How do I know this? I just know it. It's true because I'm saying so. Anyone who doesn't agree with me is a commie or a racist.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Apologies to all and sundry (and a plea for indulgence from Andy) but this piece at Counterpunch is too good to miss:

Tough talk on Chinese currency and human rights issues and Beijing's irritating habit of supporting North Korea and Iran was carefully modulated, with both leaders performing a predictable and rather tedious tango for the benefit of the media.

Therefore, in the area of visuals, China got what it wanted: acknowledgment, not necessarily of its status as a burgeoning regional power, but of its role as an important US interlocutor.

Hu's visit puts China on a par with US strategic allies India (state visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, November 2009) , and the Republic of Korea (state visit by President Lee Myung-bak, June 2010), while nosing out Japan (which, presumably as punishment for its political dysfunction and inability to toe the US line on relocation of the Futenma Marine Air Base on Okinawa, has been forced to content itself with a non-state official visit by Prime Minister Naoto Kan, September 2010).

Being recognized as a nation that the United States talks to, instead of one that the United States talks at, is an important goal of Chinese foreign policy.

In the warm glow of self-regard occasioned by the election of Obama, who has restored US foreign policy to a posture of engagement, negotiation and multilateralism, US observers often dismiss the Bush years of unilateral and coercive anti-diplomacy as an irrelevant aberration.

China, it is safe to say, has not, and can remember times when US military, diplomatic and economic might was concentrated against nations whose political system, economic leverage and desire for an independent foreign policy made them appear a threat.

Times like today, in fact.

Despite the ostensible existential threat posed by North Korea's wobbly missiles and fizzling nukes, it is difficult for China to regard the strategic alliance between the United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan, ostensibly aimed at the denuclearization of North Korea, as anything but a containment effort against China.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

You post links to socialist websites as if they are unbiased and fact. You then bring Pat Buchanan into it as if he is a reputable source.


How about I start a discussion on race and quote stormfront and the Aryan nation as my sources? See my point.

I don't think socialist websites are valid sources of information,


Sorry man, wheneve I see you post clearly biased stuff, I will call you out.

Also, how am I disparaging? You're the one makes passive aggressive comments.

China is a great nation and is growing in power. Bush was more friendly, Obama is a little more confrontational. This is a function of the economy. Both nations are self interested.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

Also, counter punch is slightly better than your pure socialist site.

"muckraking leftist newsletter..."


Clearly biased.

And to think people use "Fox News" as a negative term lol.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

Pat Buchanan:

Buchanan was supported in this election run by future Socialist Party USA presidential candidate Brian Moore, who said in 2008 he supported Buchanan in 2000 because "he was for fair trade over free trade. He had some progressive positions that I thought would be helpful to the common man."[22]


I agree that the USA needs to reduce defense spending. We are engaged around the world because of our position. We've seen how effective the rest of the world has been in stopping ethnic genocide in Bosnia or stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear technology and eventually weapons.

More people have been freed under the stars and bars than any other country.

China will grow in power. So will the USA. Comparing China to the USA is a disservice because China is still relatively poor and has many issues. I hope in the future these issues are addresses as well as communism dying and making way for a free Chinese country. For all the anti American sentiment on this site, I never hear people wishing they lived in North Korea, Cuba or Venuzuala.

Democracy and relatively free markets are the best way to govern and live. You don't need to be educated to understand this since it is basic, human nature. Socialism fails and will always fail because it goes against this.


Hey BBW, I hope you redistribute your wealth to those who need it. Socialist are free to do that if they want. I generally find that they are not happy unless the force everyone else to redistribute their wealth.

Socialism is always backed by violence and force.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Trying to get back to the subject of the thread, an interesting article by Geoff Dyer in the FT on how China, regardless of its intention, may get involved in the affairs of other countries and perhaps assume a more interventionist role. Some meaty stuff here.

For all its rarity, the Sudan referendum is an example of what China will increasingly face as its overseas investments expand – the diplomatic burdens of being an aspiring superpower. Chinese strategists insist that their country will not be drawn by the temptations of empire and has no desire to become a powerful outside force in African politics.

Yet, realists would argue, it is interests rather than ideas that end up shaping the foreign policy of great powers. China’s expansion into energy, resources and infrastructure across the globe is likely to take it into new entanglements where neutrality becomes ever harder to sustain and Beijing is forced to take sides and influence events.​

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