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China is an extremely interesting study in geopolitics. Nations should never be able to do this, rise in prominence completely unobjected. You see examples of

China is an extremely interesting study in geopolitics. Nations should never be able to do this, rise in prominence completely unobjected. You see examples of this throughout history, whenever one nation starts to expand its power and influence, another nation or group of nations tends to deploy power to check the rise. Accession of new geopolitical powers is therefore an extremely rare event, a complete failure of the nation's rivals to provide an adequate check. Those checks go all the way to declaration of war if it becomes necessary. We're seeing that with China, and no one is quite sure why. Russia is falling in line with Chinese interests, the US is just keeping mum, in the same way Europe kept mum for decades while the US rose in prominence. My theory has to do with nuclear weapons making the 'buck-stops-here' solution politically infeasible. Nuclear weapons didn't meaningfully change conventional warfare, but it threw a monkey wrench into international diplomacy, creating a situation in which China can push relentlessly hard to rise without a corresponding check.

novaleaf 9y ago
I think it's because we (global powers) are more civilized these days. In this modern era it's harder (not impossible) to go to war when there isn't an egregious threat/harm present. The populous now needs to feel it's justified.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Civilized? Us? You must have America confused with some other global superpower, like, say, ancient Rome. We've been pursuing one or more wars more or less continuously since WW2. They don't feel like wars to us, because our economic heft is such that fighting a war on foreign soil is pocket change. We just don't call them wars until later, when the historians can finally control the narrative.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    This is worded like propaganda. War and conflicts between countries have been on the decline for decades, and conflicts between major world powers have gone down to nearly nothing[1]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/ https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/
    - crimsonalucard 9y ago
      This is very true. There has never been a time throughout world history more peaceful then things are now. The news paints an exaggeration of reality as we know it.
    - echaozh 9y ago
      Yeah, but it's only valid argument after China has become a major world power.
adventured 9y ago
There are several reasons for it, including your nuclear weapons practical consideration. - The US allowed China into the WTO, urged by globalist corporations who thought it would be massively to their benefit. That was the spark that sent their economy skyrocketing. Their economy had been growing at a healthy clip, however immediately after joining the WTO it doubled in size in just five years from $1.4t to $2.8t. It is still widely believed, perhaps naively hoped for, by major US corporations and financial interests that China can be a growth opportunity for investment and trade. That keeps the criticism more subdued than it otherwise would have been (and that appears to be gradually fading, as it becomes obvious China is running an almost strictly mercantilist economic nationalism strategy). - China repaid some of the trade imbalance, which provided them with vast piles of dollars, by buying up a small chunk of US debt. China recognized it as being in their self-interest, just as it was with Japan, providing some additional influence. That bought them a small amount of political cover. - China has largely stayed out of several prominent spheres of US military dominace, including in the Americas, the Middle East and Europe. That may change of course, as China has begun pushing its military outwards. [1] - The US has a slightly unusual liking of China, which goes back a century or more. The US protected China from being nuked by Russia in 1969 [2]. The US destroyed the Empire of Japan and fought side by side with the Chinese to push the Japanese out of mainland Asia. The US was primary in working with China to open its economy, including work done by politicians like Nixon / Kissinger, and US companies / investors. The US is among the few global powers of the last 500 years that didn't seek to invade, conquer or humiliate China, but instead traded massively with them and invested massively into them (despite the fact that they were hard Communists and the US Capitalist). There's some kind of kinship (despite the occasional adversarial tones) between the two nations, the US maybe sees some of itself in China's rise. On the economic side there was actually less hysteria in the US about China's rise to global power than there was with Japan during the 1970s and 1980s (with Japan actually overtaking the US GDP per capita figures by 1987), despite China's climb being far more dramatic. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/china-djibouti/533385/ https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/china-djibo... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461/USSR-planned-nuclear-attack-on-China-in-1969.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461...
- 9y ago
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Even without nuclear weapons, I'm pretty sure that the US has no stomach for a toe-to-toe all-out conventional war with China. We're not willing to accept the casualties just to "keep China in check".
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  We don't really need an all-out conventional war with China in order to check its rise. We just need to make a sufficiently credible threat. Americans are more than willing to go to war in order to do this, we did it all throughout the Cold War, for instance, in order to check the USSR. That was only 50 years ago. This particular geopolitical dynamic goes clear back to the Middle Ages. Why we are not threatening China at the moment is a complete mystery.
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago
    What's a complete mystery to me is why isn't China keeping The USA in check? The US is the biggest CO2 emitters in the world and is slowing killing the world for everyone. China needs to arm those nuclear weapons to keep the US from polluting the world into oblivion.
  - echaozh 9y ago
    Because American Lives Matter? Because the Chinese are more willing to go to war to protect themselves, and there are more Chinese than Americans?
crimsonalucard 9y ago
The us is such a decentralized power that business interests influence policy. China is a business interest. On the political level China seems to be a rival, however the true nature of our relationship is equivalent to that of business partners. Political leaders will talk shit about china while more powerful big businesses are essentially reliant on trade with china. There is nothing to keep in check because nobody wants to keep china in check. Another thing is you seem to imply that they need to be kept in check. Centralized powers are better at keeping themselves in check then a decentralized power. No other powerful country in the world right now can even attempt to implement population control the way China did it. If the US becomes an environmental apocalypse in the future its because they couldn't take drastic measures the same way China did with their one child policy. I am aware that there were unintended consequences of the one child policy but i am referring to the underlying motives and capability of carrying out such policies, something that is impossible for the US to do. If anything the US is the runaway power that needs to be kept in check.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Sorry to pierce your holy pope box, but this stuff is really, really, really old. It's way bigger than peoples' economic interest. This deals with forces that people are willing to die for. Think about that for a minute. What causes people to sign up for war? 9 times out of 10, it's for "the good of the country." How do you define the good of the country? Only against the interests of other countries. What's in the best interests of the US is against the interests of China. That's what this stuff means. And it's a strong enough model to have prevailed for over a thousand years. Foreign policy experts are all over themselves right now wondering what the hell is going on and nobody really has a good answer. The United States has historically been the global hegemony that dictates how much other nations can get away with. That's something that usually sinks into the minds of the entire population and infuses them with the willingness and desire to fight, not just to safeguard that status, but also to punish insults to that status, even if they're just perceived. The EU is not an insult to American status. Neither is Russia, Africa, or South America. China is. They're creating global status for themselves that the US has historically held to be within it's purview. It's creating alternatives for countless small nations other than acceding to American dominance. American politicians are more than capable of setting the economic agenda. They've done this in the past. Why are they not doing this now, in response to geopolitical imperative that's held for every single other nation in the same position has for as long as we can study dominant nations for? China should have expected the American inquisition. The inquisition never came. So they get bolder and bolder. This is far beyond business. This is pride. America got to rise because the powers in Europe were too busy infighting to recognize the growing nation. Once the world wars concluded, they got their act together and are acting as a bloc to balance the US. The world learned to not ignore rising powers just because they're thousands of miles away. Look, the US is willing to check North Korea, which serves no real threat to anything but perceived American interests. Yet we're willing to make national news every little thing Kim Jong-Un does, and seriously rattle our sabers against him. Why is North Korea on our radar, but not China? It's got nothing to do with business. This is pure politics. The only entity capable of drumming up the resources to check China is us, and we're not doing it. By all analyses that have served us well for a thousand years, we're not doing it. Are we just waking up, just now getting ready to perceive the threat? Or is there something else going on? Does America just not care about the position in the world that previous generations spent their entire lives building?

novaleaf 9y ago

I think it's because we (global powers) are more civilized these days. In this modern era it's harder (not impossible) to go to war when there isn't an egregious threat/harm present. The populous now needs to feel it's justified.

vinceguidry 9y ago
Civilized? Us? You must have America confused with some other global superpower, like, say, ancient Rome. We've been pursuing one or more wars more or less continuously since WW2. They don't feel like wars to us, because our economic heft is such that fighting a war on foreign soil is pocket change. We just don't call them wars until later, when the historians can finally control the narrative.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  This is worded like propaganda. War and conflicts between countries have been on the decline for decades, and conflicts between major world powers have gone down to nearly nothing[1]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/ https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago
    This is very true. There has never been a time throughout world history more peaceful then things are now. The news paints an exaggeration of reality as we know it.
  - echaozh 9y ago
    Yeah, but it's only valid argument after China has become a major world power.

adventured 9y ago

There are several reasons for it, including your nuclear weapons practical consideration. - The US allowed China into the WTO, urged by globalist corporations who thought it would be massively to their benefit. That was the spark that sent their economy skyrocketing. Their economy had been growing at a healthy clip, however immediately after joining the WTO it doubled in size in just five years from $1.4t to $2.8t. It is still widely believed, perhaps naively hoped for, by major US corporations and financial interests that China can be a growth opportunity for investment and trade. That keeps the criticism more subdued than it otherwise would have been (and that appears to be gradually fading, as it becomes obvious China is running an almost strictly mercantilist economic nationalism strategy). - China repaid some of the trade imbalance, which provided them with vast piles of dollars, by buying up a small chunk of US debt. China recognized it as being in their self-interest, just as it was with Japan, providing some additional influence. That bought them a small amount of political cover. - China has largely stayed out of several prominent spheres of US military dominace, including in the Americas, the Middle East and Europe. That may change of course, as China has begun pushing its military outwards. [1] - The US has a slightly unusual liking of China, which goes back a century or more. The US protected China from being nuked by Russia in 1969 [2]. The US destroyed the Empire of Japan and fought side by side with the Chinese to push the Japanese out of mainland Asia. The US was primary in working with China to open its economy, including work done by politicians like Nixon / Kissinger, and US companies / investors. The US is among the few global powers of the last 500 years that didn't seek to invade, conquer or humiliate China, but instead traded massively with them and invested massively into them (despite the fact that they were hard Communists and the US Capitalist). There's some kind of kinship (despite the occasional adversarial tones) between the two nations, the US maybe sees some of itself in China's rise. On the economic side there was actually less hysteria in the US about China's rise to global power than there was with Japan during the 1970s and 1980s (with Japan actually overtaking the US GDP per capita figures by 1987), despite China's climb being far more dramatic. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/china-djibouti/533385/ https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/china-djibo... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461/USSR-planned-nuclear-attack-on-China-in-1969.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461...

9y ago

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

Even without nuclear weapons, I'm pretty sure that the US has no stomach for a toe-to-toe all-out conventional war with China. We're not willing to accept the casualties just to "keep China in check".

vinceguidry 9y ago
We don't really need an all-out conventional war with China in order to check its rise. We just need to make a sufficiently credible threat. Americans are more than willing to go to war in order to do this, we did it all throughout the Cold War, for instance, in order to check the USSR. That was only 50 years ago. This particular geopolitical dynamic goes clear back to the Middle Ages. Why we are not threatening China at the moment is a complete mystery.
- crimsonalucard 9y ago
  What's a complete mystery to me is why isn't China keeping The USA in check? The US is the biggest CO2 emitters in the world and is slowing killing the world for everyone. China needs to arm those nuclear weapons to keep the US from polluting the world into oblivion.
- echaozh 9y ago
  Because American Lives Matter? Because the Chinese are more willing to go to war to protect themselves, and there are more Chinese than Americans?

crimsonalucard 9y ago

The us is such a decentralized power that business interests influence policy. China is a business interest. On the political level China seems to be a rival, however the true nature of our relationship is equivalent to that of business partners. Political leaders will talk shit about china while more powerful big businesses are essentially reliant on trade with china. There is nothing to keep in check because nobody wants to keep china in check. Another thing is you seem to imply that they need to be kept in check. Centralized powers are better at keeping themselves in check then a decentralized power. No other powerful country in the world right now can even attempt to implement population control the way China did it. If the US becomes an environmental apocalypse in the future its because they couldn't take drastic measures the same way China did with their one child policy. I am aware that there were unintended consequences of the one child policy but i am referring to the underlying motives and capability of carrying out such policies, something that is impossible for the US to do. If anything the US is the runaway power that needs to be kept in check.

vinceguidry 9y ago
Sorry to pierce your holy pope box, but this stuff is really, really, really old. It's way bigger than peoples' economic interest. This deals with forces that people are willing to die for. Think about that for a minute. What causes people to sign up for war? 9 times out of 10, it's for "the good of the country." How do you define the good of the country? Only against the interests of other countries. What's in the best interests of the US is against the interests of China. That's what this stuff means. And it's a strong enough model to have prevailed for over a thousand years. Foreign policy experts are all over themselves right now wondering what the hell is going on and nobody really has a good answer. The United States has historically been the global hegemony that dictates how much other nations can get away with. That's something that usually sinks into the minds of the entire population and infuses them with the willingness and desire to fight, not just to safeguard that status, but also to punish insults to that status, even if they're just perceived. The EU is not an insult to American status. Neither is Russia, Africa, or South America. China is. They're creating global status for themselves that the US has historically held to be within it's purview. It's creating alternatives for countless small nations other than acceding to American dominance. American politicians are more than capable of setting the economic agenda. They've done this in the past. Why are they not doing this now, in response to geopolitical imperative that's held for every single other nation in the same position has for as long as we can study dominant nations for? China should have expected the American inquisition. The inquisition never came. So they get bolder and bolder. This is far beyond business. This is pride. America got to rise because the powers in Europe were too busy infighting to recognize the growing nation. Once the world wars concluded, they got their act together and are acting as a bloc to balance the US. The world learned to not ignore rising powers just because they're thousands of miles away. Look, the US is willing to check North Korea, which serves no real threat to anything but perceived American interests. Yet we're willing to make national news every little thing Kim Jong-Un does, and seriously rattle our sabers against him. Why is North Korea on our radar, but not China? It's got nothing to do with business. This is pure politics. The only entity capable of drumming up the resources to check China is us, and we're not doing it. By all analyses that have served us well for a thousand years, we're not doing it. Are we just waking up, just now getting ready to perceive the threat? Or is there something else going on? Does America just not care about the position in the world that previous generations spent their entire lives building?