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My fear is decoupling just sets the stage for a global war. We’ve decoupled Russia, Iran, North Korea. With China we have a legitimate fully integrated axis cap

My fear is decoupling just sets the stage for a global war. We’ve decoupled Russia, Iran, North Korea. With China we have a legitimate fully integrated axis capable of producing independently with legitimate and perceived global grievances, and the means and will to exercise force.

nonethewiser 3y ago
This was the thinking in the 1980s when the US invited China into their global trade network. The thinking was they would move away from communism and Russia and towards an open Democracy. That happened in some small ways but has since been completely undone. Such as the Democracy movements in the 80s that were ultimately crushed in Tiananmen square. Or more recently, market reforms undone by Xi. Basically we are back to where we were in the 1980s in many ways.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  Is democracy the only acceptable endgame? I worry we're mixing up ends and means. Democracy is a means, and "good government" is the end. In the last few decades, the overall Chinese population has seen dramatic upticks on all sorts of quality-of-life measurements. It doesn't look like an obvious kleptocracy. The surveys we have, regardless of how much it can be claimed they're cooked, indicate the public is broadly happy with the government. Maybe a single-party system works for them, at least at this point in time. I'd argue if you have multiple diverse functioning government types, that's worth preserving. Ecosystem diversity is valuable, just from a perspective of "when we get the next big crisis, maybe one has better tools available to solve it." There's nothing wrong with dangling Western style democracy as an option to the Chinese-- "if and when you want to try it, here's a body of experience and we can consult", but treating it as an end-all-be-all for an audience that broadly isn't begging for it is asking for friction. This, of course, assumes a level of good faith which I suspect is delusional. The real narrative was always less about democracy and human rights and more about property rights. Saudi Arabia has a terrible human rights record, but the West feels safe enough that they're not going to nationalize their investments, so it all gets swept under the rug, alongside bits of Jamal Khashoggi's corpse.
  - Lio 3y ago
    > Is democracy the only acceptable endgame? In my opinion, yes. Any other system of government means that you're being governed without consent and without a means to remove those in power without violence. In short, any regime without a democratic mandate is an illegitimate dictatorship. No mater how enlightened it claims to be.
    - hakfoo 3y ago
      A problem is that democracy is hard to build and maintain. Even countries that are showcases for it have a hard time with keeping it stable in some situations. It requires either a lot of good faith by participants (most participants actually striving for the public good, and voters being able to disagree with an opponent, but still respectfully accept defeat) or systemic guardrails to effectively enforce good-faith style behaviour. Even with those guidelines in place, some countries are going to have a hard time with the nuts and bolts (How do you safely deliver ballots and count votes with an active insurgency? How do you campaign when only 10% of voters can read? How do you avoid a major ethnic/religious schism just being re-processed through the electoral system?) It's an aspirational goal, to be sure, but we can also respect that other systems are working reasonably well for some audiences, and in some cases might work better than a "more legitimate" democracy.
      - Lio 3y ago
        I’m afraid I don’t respect that at all. The “state” does not know best. The reason that dictators withhold the vote is the same reason they refuse to allow a free press. They are scared of criticism. If they really knew what was best for everyone it would be obvious and people would vote for them. …but it ain’t obvious, so the hang on to power by repressing anyone that points that up is up and down is down. 4211
        hakfoo 3y ago
        > If they really knew what was best for everyone it would be obvious and people would vote for them. I'm not sure most-- or even any-- people really know what's best for everyone. It gets even more complex when it turns into what's best for one group versus another, or what's best for today comes at a cost to be paid in 5-10-20 years. It's easy to catapult yourself into office by promising people ice cream instead of broccoli. The leader you want has to be persuasive enough to convince voters they want broccoli. An autocrat can just mandate broccoli.
- Lio 3y ago
  > Basically we are back to where we were in the 1980s in many ways. Except we've allowed ourselves to loose our industrial base.
- CoolestBeans 3y ago
  Despite the hope for a more democratic China in the 80s being mostly dead, contemporary China must still reckon with the immediate economic disaster being an military agressor and being sharply cut off from American trade would entail. By slowly decoupling US-China trade, we remove that economic risk for Chinese strategists, making agression more viable.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    I think China also needs to reckon with confronting adversaries with continuous deployment and a seasoned veteran force from the line to the top generals, while Chinas military hasn’t been meaningfully deployed beyond exercises in 60 years. No one - not a single person - has any meaningful warfare experience in China - while the US and it’s allies, for better or worse, is highly skilled and experienced in continuous warfare for the last 60 years.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      For real? You think the losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow gave valuable experience that in any way offsets the attrition on the armed forces?
      - proudeu 3y ago
        I mean US is aggressor state, so has experience in invading other countries. If they wanted to invade China they would have some experience in doing so. I just hope EU leaders won’t follow them this time.
        sudosysgen 3y ago
        The US does not have any more experience in defeating near-peer militaries in a defensive position, as the last time it attempted (and failed) to do so was against China. Iraq and Afghanistan may very well be more detrimental than useful. They made the US military focus on aspects of warfare that aren't relevant to a near peer conflict, and unlearning that is a difficult task that's currently consuming a lot of resources.
- goodbyesf 3y ago
  > This was the thinking in the 1980s when the US invited China into their global trade network. The US didn't invite china to anything. The US begged, threatened and cajoled china to open their immense and cheap labor force. China had what the US wanted. It was nixon that went to china, not mao that came to the US. > The thinking was they would move away from communism and Russia and towards an open Democracy. That's as stupid as saying we helped saudi arabia, kuwait, qatar, etc develop their oil and gas field so that they will become christian. If your assertion was true, we'd be trading with cuba and north korea today. If your assertion was true, we would have been top trading partners with the soviet union. Instead we isolated the soviet union and sanctioned them. Did we only want china to be a democracy? Not the north koreans, cubans and soviets? > Such as the Democracy movements in the 80s that were ultimately crushed in Tiananmen square. 'Democracy' movement. Right. And look where china is today? I think china made the right decision to crush the 'democracy' movement. Don't you? It's the same debunked propaganda I've been hearing from the likes of gordon chang since the early 2000s. Morons actually believed we invaded iraq to bring freedom and democracy. So it shouldn't be surprising that morons believe we exploited their cheap labor to bring democracy to china. It's cringe level propaganda.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    No, I don’t think China was right to crush democracy. It doesn’t flow that their economic success was tied exclusively to authoritarianism. One might argue they would have a stronger domestic consumer economy if they hadn’t.
    - goodbyesf 3y ago
      > No, I don’t think China was right to crush democracy. History has shown it to be right. All you have to do is look at the soviet union/russia. > It doesn’t flow that their economic success was tied exclusively to authoritarianism. No. But it is tied to the crushing of the 'democracy' rebellion. > One might argue they would have a stronger domestic consumer economy if they hadn’t. You can argue anything but you can't deny reality. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
    - 3y ago

nonethewiser 3y ago

This was the thinking in the 1980s when the US invited China into their global trade network. The thinking was they would move away from communism and Russia and towards an open Democracy. That happened in some small ways but has since been completely undone. Such as the Democracy movements in the 80s that were ultimately crushed in Tiananmen square. Or more recently, market reforms undone by Xi. Basically we are back to where we were in the 1980s in many ways.

hakfoo 3y ago
Is democracy the only acceptable endgame? I worry we're mixing up ends and means. Democracy is a means, and "good government" is the end. In the last few decades, the overall Chinese population has seen dramatic upticks on all sorts of quality-of-life measurements. It doesn't look like an obvious kleptocracy. The surveys we have, regardless of how much it can be claimed they're cooked, indicate the public is broadly happy with the government. Maybe a single-party system works for them, at least at this point in time. I'd argue if you have multiple diverse functioning government types, that's worth preserving. Ecosystem diversity is valuable, just from a perspective of "when we get the next big crisis, maybe one has better tools available to solve it." There's nothing wrong with dangling Western style democracy as an option to the Chinese-- "if and when you want to try it, here's a body of experience and we can consult", but treating it as an end-all-be-all for an audience that broadly isn't begging for it is asking for friction. This, of course, assumes a level of good faith which I suspect is delusional. The real narrative was always less about democracy and human rights and more about property rights. Saudi Arabia has a terrible human rights record, but the West feels safe enough that they're not going to nationalize their investments, so it all gets swept under the rug, alongside bits of Jamal Khashoggi's corpse.
- Lio 3y ago
  > Is democracy the only acceptable endgame? In my opinion, yes. Any other system of government means that you're being governed without consent and without a means to remove those in power without violence. In short, any regime without a democratic mandate is an illegitimate dictatorship. No mater how enlightened it claims to be.
  - hakfoo 3y ago
    A problem is that democracy is hard to build and maintain. Even countries that are showcases for it have a hard time with keeping it stable in some situations. It requires either a lot of good faith by participants (most participants actually striving for the public good, and voters being able to disagree with an opponent, but still respectfully accept defeat) or systemic guardrails to effectively enforce good-faith style behaviour. Even with those guidelines in place, some countries are going to have a hard time with the nuts and bolts (How do you safely deliver ballots and count votes with an active insurgency? How do you campaign when only 10% of voters can read? How do you avoid a major ethnic/religious schism just being re-processed through the electoral system?) It's an aspirational goal, to be sure, but we can also respect that other systems are working reasonably well for some audiences, and in some cases might work better than a "more legitimate" democracy.
    - Lio 3y ago
      I’m afraid I don’t respect that at all. The “state” does not know best. The reason that dictators withhold the vote is the same reason they refuse to allow a free press. They are scared of criticism. If they really knew what was best for everyone it would be obvious and people would vote for them. …but it ain’t obvious, so the hang on to power by repressing anyone that points that up is up and down is down. 4211
      - hakfoo 3y ago
        > If they really knew what was best for everyone it would be obvious and people would vote for them. I'm not sure most-- or even any-- people really know what's best for everyone. It gets even more complex when it turns into what's best for one group versus another, or what's best for today comes at a cost to be paid in 5-10-20 years. It's easy to catapult yourself into office by promising people ice cream instead of broccoli. The leader you want has to be persuasive enough to convince voters they want broccoli. An autocrat can just mandate broccoli.
Lio 3y ago
> Basically we are back to where we were in the 1980s in many ways. Except we've allowed ourselves to loose our industrial base.
CoolestBeans 3y ago
Despite the hope for a more democratic China in the 80s being mostly dead, contemporary China must still reckon with the immediate economic disaster being an military agressor and being sharply cut off from American trade would entail. By slowly decoupling US-China trade, we remove that economic risk for Chinese strategists, making agression more viable.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I think China also needs to reckon with confronting adversaries with continuous deployment and a seasoned veteran force from the line to the top generals, while Chinas military hasn’t been meaningfully deployed beyond exercises in 60 years. No one - not a single person - has any meaningful warfare experience in China - while the US and it’s allies, for better or worse, is highly skilled and experienced in continuous warfare for the last 60 years.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    For real? You think the losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow gave valuable experience that in any way offsets the attrition on the armed forces?
    - proudeu 3y ago
      I mean US is aggressor state, so has experience in invading other countries. If they wanted to invade China they would have some experience in doing so. I just hope EU leaders won’t follow them this time.
      - sudosysgen 3y ago
        The US does not have any more experience in defeating near-peer militaries in a defensive position, as the last time it attempted (and failed) to do so was against China. Iraq and Afghanistan may very well be more detrimental than useful. They made the US military focus on aspects of warfare that aren't relevant to a near peer conflict, and unlearning that is a difficult task that's currently consuming a lot of resources.
goodbyesf 3y ago
> This was the thinking in the 1980s when the US invited China into their global trade network. The US didn't invite china to anything. The US begged, threatened and cajoled china to open their immense and cheap labor force. China had what the US wanted. It was nixon that went to china, not mao that came to the US. > The thinking was they would move away from communism and Russia and towards an open Democracy. That's as stupid as saying we helped saudi arabia, kuwait, qatar, etc develop their oil and gas field so that they will become christian. If your assertion was true, we'd be trading with cuba and north korea today. If your assertion was true, we would have been top trading partners with the soviet union. Instead we isolated the soviet union and sanctioned them. Did we only want china to be a democracy? Not the north koreans, cubans and soviets? > Such as the Democracy movements in the 80s that were ultimately crushed in Tiananmen square. 'Democracy' movement. Right. And look where china is today? I think china made the right decision to crush the 'democracy' movement. Don't you? It's the same debunked propaganda I've been hearing from the likes of gordon chang since the early 2000s. Morons actually believed we invaded iraq to bring freedom and democracy. So it shouldn't be surprising that morons believe we exploited their cheap labor to bring democracy to china. It's cringe level propaganda.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  No, I don’t think China was right to crush democracy. It doesn’t flow that their economic success was tied exclusively to authoritarianism. One might argue they would have a stronger domestic consumer economy if they hadn’t.
  - goodbyesf 3y ago
    > No, I don’t think China was right to crush democracy. History has shown it to be right. All you have to do is look at the soviet union/russia. > It doesn’t flow that their economic success was tied exclusively to authoritarianism. No. But it is tied to the crushing of the 'democracy' rebellion. > One might argue they would have a stronger domestic consumer economy if they hadn’t. You can argue anything but you can't deny reality. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
  - 3y ago