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> When the United States wielded power over corporations in the postwar era, our overarching goal was — with some notable exceptions — stability, peace, and pro

> When the United States wielded power over corporations in the postwar era, our overarching goal was — with some notable exceptions — stability, peace, and prosperity. When China wields its power over foreign corporations, the ultimate goal is — always — command and control. That's some narrow-minded thinking. Two different words for the same thing. I'm sure the south american governments who were dismantled in the cold war era by the CIA would see the actions as "command and control" as opposed to peace and stability. Likewise, the chinese government is going to serve the interests of itself.

kyllo 11y ago
"stability, peace, and prosperity" Exactly (the English translations of) the words the Chinese government uses to describe their own goals.
- user_0001 11y ago
  Has any government ever viewed their own actions any differently? Everyone sees themselves as the good guys, everyone justifies what they do as the right thing from the biggest empires down to the smallest country. American, British, Soviets back through all European empires to Romans and beyond. This whole good vs evil of the current global empire and the war names they give to operations is laughable. Yet they say it with a straight face and it is lapped up by those who get their news solely / mainly from the mass media
  - eru 11y ago
    > Has any government ever viewed their own actions any differently? Yes. There used to be a time when war was seen as more glorious, and not shielded behind euphemisms.
vinceguidry 11y ago
South America has a long tradition of interchangeable strongman governments, none of whom had any real interest in advancing the needs of citizens. Plenty of populist autocrats that paid lip service to social advancement, very little actual public service. It's understandable that the US would get a little jaded regarding which regimes to back. I can easily see how a CIA official, tasked with determining how to best advance US interests in the region, but otherwise having a good bit of autonomy, would come to the conclusion that whichever regime was most amenable to the American way of doing things would also be the best steward of the public interest. It's not like they had a bunch of upstanding, self-sacrificing public servants to choose from, and they deliberately chose the wannabe gangbangers to support. And Latin Americans themselves weren't much help either, often eagerly buying into the cults of personality that the strongmen built up. Hence the public fascination with thugs like Che and Escobar. I think you'd find that there's a real, discernible difference between Chinese strong-arming and American interventionism, on both ideological and practical levels.
- linuxkerneldev 11y ago
  > South America has a long tradition of interchangeable strongman governments, none of whom had any real interest in advancing the needs of citizens. This statement is generally true. Areas that were setup as encomiendas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda ) right from the period of Pizzaro and Cortez have retained that exact flavour. Individual strong men rule because that's exactly what was setup. Any "citizen" (ie: indigenous person, slave, or otherwise disenfranchised individual) who tried to go against this system or even escape its clutches was punished severely. It is extremely hard to break that structure. If you wonder why that did not happen in North America, it was because the North was much more sparsely populated and so the colonizers had to setup systems that gave rights to everyone (except of course the sparse indigenous population that needed to be exterminated since it could not be "encomienda"-ed), just so that the companies that sponsored the colonization in North America (like the Virginia company) could turn a profit. It is noteworthy that the Virginia company for example, did actually plan to use the same encomienda approach but was startled to find that there weren't enough compliant indigenous people to enslave. They then switched to trying to strongarm the colonialist/settlers but this had disastrous results. It was only thereafter they gave rights, and privileges to "citizens". This all happened when they became desperate to get a return on their investment. So yes, your statement is absolutely true. Long tradition indeed. Since 1492 in fact.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    To lay the blame Latin America's political failures wholesale on the West is to greatly overestimate the West and underestimate Latinos, not to mention to completely misunderstand geopolitics. One of the first things that gets forgotten about colonialism is how utterly tiny the European population was in comparison to the natives. Without the cooperation of the natives, Europeans could get nowhere. Natives were not the pathetic, stupid rubes that people often seem to think they were. They had their own political systems, agricultural systems, militaries. Sure, the locals were shocked when the white men with the powerful guns landed, but you can bet that every single one of their leaders had contingency plans in place for just how to deal with Cortes and his contemporaries once their political usefulness ended. Europe simply didn't have the manpower to field large enough armies in the New World to get what they wanted by force. South America has always been geographically stunted compared to North America. It cost too much to get there, what they had wasn't of interest to Europe, the terrain inhospitable. I think we vastly overrate how much damage Europeans did directly.
kbart 11y ago
Couldn't take the article seriously anymore after reading this quote.
brightball 11y ago
The author lost me when he equated libertarianism with sophisticated Orwellian systems.

kyllo 11y ago

"stability, peace, and prosperity" Exactly (the English translations of) the words the Chinese government uses to describe their own goals.

user_0001 11y ago
Has any government ever viewed their own actions any differently? Everyone sees themselves as the good guys, everyone justifies what they do as the right thing from the biggest empires down to the smallest country. American, British, Soviets back through all European empires to Romans and beyond. This whole good vs evil of the current global empire and the war names they give to operations is laughable. Yet they say it with a straight face and it is lapped up by those who get their news solely / mainly from the mass media
- eru 11y ago
  > Has any government ever viewed their own actions any differently? Yes. There used to be a time when war was seen as more glorious, and not shielded behind euphemisms.

vinceguidry 11y ago

South America has a long tradition of interchangeable strongman governments, none of whom had any real interest in advancing the needs of citizens. Plenty of populist autocrats that paid lip service to social advancement, very little actual public service. It's understandable that the US would get a little jaded regarding which regimes to back. I can easily see how a CIA official, tasked with determining how to best advance US interests in the region, but otherwise having a good bit of autonomy, would come to the conclusion that whichever regime was most amenable to the American way of doing things would also be the best steward of the public interest. It's not like they had a bunch of upstanding, self-sacrificing public servants to choose from, and they deliberately chose the wannabe gangbangers to support. And Latin Americans themselves weren't much help either, often eagerly buying into the cults of personality that the strongmen built up. Hence the public fascination with thugs like Che and Escobar. I think you'd find that there's a real, discernible difference between Chinese strong-arming and American interventionism, on both ideological and practical levels.

linuxkerneldev 11y ago
> South America has a long tradition of interchangeable strongman governments, none of whom had any real interest in advancing the needs of citizens. This statement is generally true. Areas that were setup as encomiendas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda ) right from the period of Pizzaro and Cortez have retained that exact flavour. Individual strong men rule because that's exactly what was setup. Any "citizen" (ie: indigenous person, slave, or otherwise disenfranchised individual) who tried to go against this system or even escape its clutches was punished severely. It is extremely hard to break that structure. If you wonder why that did not happen in North America, it was because the North was much more sparsely populated and so the colonizers had to setup systems that gave rights to everyone (except of course the sparse indigenous population that needed to be exterminated since it could not be "encomienda"-ed), just so that the companies that sponsored the colonization in North America (like the Virginia company) could turn a profit. It is noteworthy that the Virginia company for example, did actually plan to use the same encomienda approach but was startled to find that there weren't enough compliant indigenous people to enslave. They then switched to trying to strongarm the colonialist/settlers but this had disastrous results. It was only thereafter they gave rights, and privileges to "citizens". This all happened when they became desperate to get a return on their investment. So yes, your statement is absolutely true. Long tradition indeed. Since 1492 in fact.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  To lay the blame Latin America's political failures wholesale on the West is to greatly overestimate the West and underestimate Latinos, not to mention to completely misunderstand geopolitics. One of the first things that gets forgotten about colonialism is how utterly tiny the European population was in comparison to the natives. Without the cooperation of the natives, Europeans could get nowhere. Natives were not the pathetic, stupid rubes that people often seem to think they were. They had their own political systems, agricultural systems, militaries. Sure, the locals were shocked when the white men with the powerful guns landed, but you can bet that every single one of their leaders had contingency plans in place for just how to deal with Cortes and his contemporaries once their political usefulness ended. Europe simply didn't have the manpower to field large enough armies in the New World to get what they wanted by force. South America has always been geographically stunted compared to North America. It cost too much to get there, what they had wasn't of interest to Europe, the terrain inhospitable. I think we vastly overrate how much damage Europeans did directly.

kbart 11y ago

Couldn't take the article seriously anymore after reading this quote.

brightball 11y ago

The author lost me when he equated libertarianism with sophisticated Orwellian systems.