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Comment by ntsplnkv2 | Hacker News Reader

We can no longer say "the west" and expect a unified response - brexit, the constant attacks on member nations of NATO by Trump, The Iran deal that Europe still backs but the US doesn't.

There's a reason Russia and China are bold right now.

EDIT: I get it, it's politically charged, but I remind everyone to discuss, rather than downvote, based on your own political opinion.

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Sure, but that owes more to the fact that the ruling classes in “the west” now exist in solidarity with those in China, nationalist posturing aside.

Globalization unified Chinese elites with oligarchs in the US and Europe so they both could profit from exploitation of the Chinese labor force. But now that the country has developed past the point of this being easily profitable for all parties, the Chinese regime has to resort to ever more authoritarian tactics to keep the wheels spinning. Average people in western countries might oppose all of this, but the people who rule them put as much stock in these objections as the Chinese leaders do their dissenters.

That doesn't make sense. Trump is pro Russia and anti China. Chinese facing more heat now than in the past 50 years.

> That doesn't make sense. Trump is pro Russia and anti China. Chinese facing more heat now than in the past 50 years.

Trump is schizophrenic on China. His "anti-China" attitudes right now seem more of a function of a need for an external enemy to blame/distract from his domestic failures. His trade war with China occurred around the same time he initiated trade disputed with even allied nations. There are even indications that he is not bothered by, and perhaps even approves of, Chinese human rights violations (e.g. IIRC Bolton has said he expressed approval of the Xinjiang camps directly to Xi).

I believe some of his advisors are more opposed to current Chinese government actions, but Trump's shown a willingness to do foreign policy 180s against their advice before.

That's not "schizophrenic". He dislikes China insofar as it harms US economic interests, not based on their internal policies. It's fully aligned with his motto of "America first" - first means before everyone, including the Uighurs.

Frankly, it doesn't even strike me as that different from previous administrations (it's not like the US particularly cared about what happened to the East Timorese, for example), he mostly just seems more short-sighted, by focusing on money rather than power.

The West is not just the US. I clearly said "A unified western response to China."

His public anti-china stance is just a show. Many of his family business dealings are total opposite. Moreover, his presidency is good for China. Fomenting domestic division, weakening law and order, constant attack on the constitution, weakening alliances, being cozy with dictators, on and on, only benefit china, russia and other dictators.

> His public anti-china stance is just a show.

This is confirmed by John Bolton (I guess if you believe what he wrote in his book that the President attempted in court to block).

Trump “turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/trump-lies-china...

Most of the West wants to appease China. What response are you talking about. It's not standing in front, that's for sure. EU silence is deafening, except for some weak, mild comments here or there. China's diplomacy barks back, and EU commissioners become silent.

Exactly - the west is not unified on China. Which is what I said.

Sadly, EU institutions in the area of direct foreign policy have been continuously undermined - mostly by French and UK governments who wanted "their hands free", but also by tactical US moves to ensure NATO would stay relevant. There are real contrasts in outlook among member states when it comes to larger geopolitical issues (even extremely close to home, like Lybia and Turkey), coupled with a general unwillingness, among most member states, to engage in dangerous (and expensive) geopolitical games. That makes it hard to formulate robust action plans beyond the usual platitudes. There is no EU military force yet for that same reason, in practice.

The hope is that long-term economic integration will progressively reduce these problems, by turning "national spheres of influence" into "European spheres of influence". But at the moment, EU foreign-policy mechanisms (and appointees...) are fairly weak. We'll see what happens after we digest the loss of Britain, which was an extremely vocal (and followed / respected) member on these topics. Maybe we'll finally grow up a bit.

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle. That's against the site guidelines and we ban accounts that do it because, as the guidelines explain, it spoils the curiosity that this site exists for. So would you please stop doing this?

If you want more explanation there are plenty of past explanations at these links:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Why responding to me, and not to the post I was responding too, in the same kind?

Do whatever you must do.

As I said, it's an issue of what the account is primarily being used for. The important word is 'primarily'. See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

There's another issue, which is that we don't see everything that gets posted to HN, even in the same thread. There's far too much material here for anyone to read it all. So if you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

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