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What exactly can he do outside of economics sanction? It’s either that or saber rattling. We don’t want a war with China, that would be a global catastrophe.
by oxymoran 6y ago
What exactly can he do outside of economics sanction? It’s either that or saber rattling. We don’t want a war with China, that would be a global catastrophe. We just want to keep them in check long enough for communism to inevitably collapse once again.
- DavidSJ 6y agoEconomic sanctions would be good, if they were conditioned on China's treatment of Uyghurs. But they're not. Right now, to the extent that they're conditioned on anything at all (and I'm going to refrain from a broader critique of Trump's goals and methods of negotiation here), they're conditioned on trade balance, intellectual property, currency manipulation, 5G, and the like. Some of these are worthy objectives, some not. But at the end of the day, they do nothing for the Uyghur population if Trump says to Xi, "do whatever you want with the Uyghurs, I don't care; I just want you to buy more of our stuff". For leverage to work on issue A, you actually have to say (and follow through on): "If you do A, I'll do X, and if you don't do A, I'll do Y." If you replace A with B, you can't expect any traction on issue A.