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Comment by ardy42 | Hacker News Reader

> Well, there are some things that need to be stopped like the endless wars on the other side of the world, the extrajudicial drone bombing of their own citizens, the lawless surveillance, militarized seat of government, ramming civilian cargo vessels with battleships, the list of things to stop goes in and on.

Of course an Adolph would try to distract focus from a oppressive unashamedly authoritarian regime towards smaller inward-focused issues.

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My apologies if I caused offense. In terms of focus I advocate for the power of "and" although I disagree with your characterization of the problems raised as "smaller inward-focused." The wars and droning are not small nor inward-focused. The ramming was referred to in gallows humor as I don't think the Navy is so incompetent that they would think ramming cargo vessels would be effective, just incompetent enough to be accident-prone.

The g-parent comment asserts that "China must be stopped" and I started thinking about what aspect(s) of China do they want to stop. Certainly they don't want to end the country and its inhabitants. Maybe they want to stop some behaviors that cause harm in the world? What behaviors would those be? The comment uses the past tense "stopped" instead of "stop" so the implication is that some not-China entity performs the stopping.

So what behavior to stop and what entity to do the stopping? Are the actions necessary to stop the behavior proportionate and are they likely effective? To predict this, I look to the track record of previous attempts to "stop" nations and it isn't pretty. My comment came from thinking about what has happened in the US over the course of this century as it has embarked on ever newer crusades to stop this or that.

> The g-parent comment asserts that "China must be stopped" and I started thinking about what aspect(s) of China do they want to stop. Certainly they don't want to end the country and its inhabitants. Maybe they want to stop some behaviors that cause harm in the world? What behaviors would those be? The comment uses the past tense "stopped" instead of "stop" so the implication is that some not-China entity performs the stopping.

> So what behavior to stop and what entity to do the stopping?

Honestly, it sounds like you're playing ignorant here. Those aren't hard questions to answer, though the post you're commenting on likely had some government/nation confusion. I suggest you spend some quality time with Wikipedia and a good newspaper.

> Are the actions necessary to stop the behavior proportionate and are they likely effective? To predict this, I look to the track record of previous attempts to "stop" nations and it isn't pretty. My comment came from thinking about what has happened in the US over the course of this century as it has embarked on ever newer crusades to stop this or that.

The US had at least couple of successes in the last century. Anyway, your thrust seems to be towards fatalism, which is perspective that should be rejected out of hand.

No, seriously, what ongoing action(s) of China “must be stopped” and what actions by whom are likely to succeed without causing more harm than that which would be stopped? Referring to Wikipedia without even a link to the “List of Internationally Recognized Chinese Bad Stuff” is a tacit recognition that there isn’t much that can be “stopped” short of an armed conflict nobody wants and nobody liked Trump’s attempts for economic sanction either. “Save the Spratleys” is a weaker rallying cry than “Save Tibet” and the navy is plenty engaged there already.

The win/loss/left-a-mess ratio of the US doesn’t engender positive predictions of future actions especially given how many are in endless overtime. Is it fatalistic to be realistic?

> No, seriously, what ongoing action(s) of China “must be stopped” and what actions by whom are likely to succeed without causing more harm than that which would be stopped?

I literally could give some likely possibilities of what they were specifically thinking about from memory, but it's basically a list of major news stories about the PRC from the past several years, which you're welcome to research yourself.

> The win/loss/left-a-mess ratio of the US doesn’t engender positive predictions of future actions especially given how many are in endless overtime. Is it fatalistic to be realistic?

The PRC is a genuinely difficult geopolitical problem. However, you seem to be taking Iraq and Afghanistan as your main precedents for action, when they'd be poor ones even if the US had been far more successful there.

You literally can’t give any. Handwave “must be stopped” or “aighta be a law” all you want in your fantasyland of no consequences.

I’ll take a tour of things at the top of my head:

* North Korea: we have nada, nuke horse is out of the barn

* Taiwan: prop up the post-KMT status quo and hope for the best

* Hong Kong: nada

* Nine dashed line (S China Sea): pray Navy doesn’t get shot up and apologize if they do [0]

* Tibet: lost and forgotten neverland

* India: duking it out for itself

* Uighers: an “internal matter” Holocaust, see also Christians and the occasional Jack Ma

* Global Warmer: the former industrialized nations exported their industry and pollution to places like China, what are we going to do, pay them to produce the same stuff but not pollute? Could have done the same with internal industry instead of outsourcing

* Endangered species: slightly bright spot for some well loved species like rhino and elephant, too bad about the sharks and fisheries tho

* Industrial espionage: ok, there’s room for work that might not make things worse

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident

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