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Comment by sdfghswe | Hacker News Reader

> Biden’s “friend-shoring” initiatives

What's CRAZY to me is why this hasn't always been the case. Who thought it was a good idea to depend on unfriendly countries like China? Right, I know who thought that. Those who also claimed "if we trade with them enough, they'll like us" did.

Fuck depending on China, or Russia, for that matter. The West should have all its critical dependencies within it. At most we could get non-critical niceties from the outside, no more than that.

Change my mind.

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It was Bush Senior, Clinton (with PNTR), Bush Junior. The story of why the US thought PNTR was a good move is long, and has to do with the events of 1989. Also... Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were both very different from who we have today. China was not necessarily friendly, but they thought there was a good chance of them becoming friendly, especially if their market opened up. For several years after Tiananmen, the Democrats in Congress actually wanted sanctions against the PRC, but it kept getting vetoed, so as not to torpedo the chance.

I'd blame the prevailing economic mantra that "profits are the only things that matter" more than any set of UD presidents.

Its both though.

It's both in the sense that politicians are executives whose job it is to meet the demands of Capital. This also means that politicians are beholden to Capital and their personal ideological inclinations are largely irrelevant — the only options are to serve Capital or be ejected from their position.

The individual executives serving Capital are interchangeable.

> China was not necessarily friendly

It also wasn't a dictatorship. China under Xi is stupider, more short-term oriented and weaker than it was when it had internal competition for power.

China was, for a few years, rapidly modernizing and a relatively open society, unless you were notably politically active. That's not exactly "freedom" but it wasn't a pervasive surveillance state run by a president-for-life. Nor were they a serious military threat to anyone, much less Taiwan or Japan. I saw this firsthand interacting with people in tech in China.

The US <cough>Obama</cough> was too optimistic about the effects of trade engagement with China (and Russia) and now we get some whiplash making up for lost time.

The whole existence of EU is to prevent war between countries within the union through making all depend economically on each other. So far it's been quite successful (0 wars so far AFAIK), but of course it's quite early to say.

Many of the countries in EU have quite the war history with each other.

It's easy to forget that countries like Denmark and Sweden, France and Germany, etc etc used to be bitter enemies with so many conflicts and wars between them that it's difficult to keep track.

Sure.

So in your opinion why is it that it worked the countries in Europe, but not for West vs China/Russia?

> So in your opinion why is it that it worked the countries in Europe, but not for West vs China/Russia?

It would've absolutely worked for Russia, if the EU was offering it path to EU membership together with Ukraine instead of forcing Ukraine to choose between tighter economic/political integration between its two neighbors. Time for that was early 2000s, but Europe and USA chose otherwise.

Well, Russia isn't entitled to anything. As a European I wouldn't want corrupt countries like Ukraine and Russia accepted in without _deep_ reform.

Ok so why didn't it work for China then? What's your explanation for that?

> Well, Russia isn't entitled to anything. As a European I wouldn't want corrupt countries like Ukraine and Russia accepted in without _deep_ reform.

Well, Europe is not entitled to anything either. With that attitude we ended up where we are.

I think it takes more than money (i.e. culture). There's also a lot less integration between the West and Russia/China than the countries within the EU. In general, I think it takes a lot of time. Actually, the more I think about it the more I think it's quite complex, so too hard to go into all aspects here.

Then of course, as for China VS West, AFAIK there hasn't been any wars for almost a 100 years?

I also think expectations are set too high. Let's not perfect be the enemy of great - some tension is probably inevitable (Greece VS Germany, UK VS rest of the EU). But the trade war between China and the US (as media likes to put it, or at least did for a few years) is a lot (like, infinitely?) better than a real war.

After the fall of USSR it was widely assumed that market economy will make China a democracy given enough time. The euphoria on the early ‘90s in the West is hard to imagine now. End of history and everything.

They weren't unfriendly until we decided to make them so about 5 years ago.

Policymakers in the late 90s couldn't necessarily predict swings in American opinion 20 years later.

Sure, but it's not like deciding to make china unfriendly wasn't provoked by china. The US was making legitimate attempt at "bringing china into the fold". Since xi jinping came into power, lots of sketchy stuff has happened on their end that made this strategy less tenable.

For example: being invited to rimpac and then sending uninvited ships (2014)

It's possible to be perfectly cordial without being a US client state.

Why should they have to be "in the fold"?

It is impossible to have cordial relations with China while they are threatening to invade our ally Taiwan, and building artificial islands as military outposts in the South China Sea. The unfortunate reality is that China is now our enemy. That situation will persist and probably worsen at least until Xi is replaced.

If china declared Puerto Rico to be it's ally and started building military bases there without US permission, the US would do more than threaten to invade Puerto Rico, it'd do it immediately

Dude, this is blatant whataboutism. Puerto Rico is in no way equivalent to Taiwan, and I suspect you know that.

Taiwan is a sovereign, independent, democratic nation. The Chinese Communist Party has never had political control over Taiwan. It just claims the right to overrule the right to self-determination of 23 million people because it feels like it.

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory, but it could leave at any time. The commonwealth has held four referendums, none of which have found a strong majority for either statehood or independence, so the island kinda keeps muddling along with the status quo. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and though they don't have representation in the U.S. federal government, they also don't pay federal taxes and have an elected local government.

The ethics of the situation are not complicated. The CCP can't just decide to subjugate an independent, democratic people.

of course, forget the history behind the formation of Taiwan. forget that the US props it up to maintain a military enclave where it has no right to be, in order to threaten China. it's just an innocent independent democratic people that China seeks to assimilate for no legitimate reason!

Even _without_ the historical context it is completely justifiable from a national security perspective to push out the military presence of the most aggressive nation in the past century.

Lastly - the gall for an American to invoke "self-determination" after its track record.. simply incredible. We are what, one week removed from the leaks re: Imran Khan?

> forget the history behind the formation of Taiwan

> where it has no right to be

Would you like to tell us your version of history according to which Taiwan has no right to be? Because in the one I'm familiar with, one of the factions fighting the civil war won almost everywhere but failed to invade that island.

The fact that they've resisted and survived certainly gives them the right to be, by definition.

The US also doesn’t have bases in Puerto Rico so I have no idea what that analogy is supposed to do.

The US Army has Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico.

https://home.army.mil/buchanan/

> Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and though they don't have representation in the U.S. federal government,

Delegates vote in committee. It ain't nothing. "Committees is where the real action happens"

Puerto Rico is a terrible example.

Cuba is a much better one, it's not even hypothetical.

> Cuba is a much better one, it's not even hypothetical

America doesn't claim Cuba as its territory.

If China requested parity with Taiwan in respect of America's relations with Cuba (recognition of sovereignty, trade restrictions and no American military presence there), it would be a good deal for everyone.

>America doesn't claim Cuba as its territory.

Where do you think the Guantanamo Bay torture facility is located?

It's a lease, not a claim. US even sends cuba checks for it.

Not even sure how you can equate a lease of one bay to claiming the whole island. Besides, If china stopped claiming Taiwan was it's territory and insisted on leasing one small base, I think we could all go to sleep better at night.

>It's a lease

A 'lease' at gunpoint is an occupation.

And the US pays a fixed $4,000/mo, which Cuba doesn't even accept.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN17200921

Monroe doctrine, baby. The whole hemisphere is our territory :)

We've punished Cuba continually for 70 years for having a government that we didn't approve.

By the the fold I meant a country that generally plays by internationally accepted customs and cordiality, not a "US client state". If a country invites you to their joint military exercise, you don't spy on them during the exercise. This is basic common sense.

I'm sorry, are you saying that the US doesn't spy on military exercises of our allies?

Nothing as cringingly stupid as this:

https://news.usni.org/2014/07/18/china-sends-uninvited-spy-s...

Happy to be corrected, show me.

>internationally accepted customs

Which are more often than not US dictated.

>If a country invites you to their joint military exercise, you don't spy on them during the exercise

This is nonsense. No-one does this more than the US.

Citation please. Heres mine:

https://news.usni.org/2014/07/18/china-sends-uninvited-spy-s...

Very cringey.

Add up the populations of the countries that were party to the formation of your "internationally accepted customs".

Then add up the population who weren't consulted.

They weren't unfriendly, but they were always brutal oppressive regimes. By trading with them, we became complicit in that.

Also, I take issue with the idea that we "made" them unfriendly. I'm pretty sure China and Russia can take responsibility for their own foreign policy.

Wait till you hear about Saudi Arabia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

> The United States was told last year that Saudi security forces were shooting, shelling and abusing groups of migrants, but it chose not to raise the issue publicly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-ki...

So? I'm talking about unfriendly countries. The fact that the Saudis abuse and kill migrants doesn't make them unfriendly to the West.

Are you trying to make a point? Make a point.

The person I was talking to was moralizing. My point was that it's power politics, and the moralizing is for suckers.

The point is the U.S. never cared about Democratic countries, and often destroyed them(CIA backed coups and so on.

This isn’t true, they always preferred them. They did a number of misguided things in the name of containing communism but all of that was

1. over fifty years ago or more at this point

2. Unpopular with the public

so it doesn’t seem like a good faith stance to pretend that’s current Us doctrine. It’s an ignorant whataboutism used by defenders of brutal regimes.

As if 2. Changes anything.

Heck they even did a coup not too long ago because a country rich with lithium elected a socialist government.

Is it possible that the US continues to interfere in foreign elections but we don’t know about it because we are subject to propaganda? 50 years ago, do you think the US populace was aware of their governments complicity in overthrowing democratically elected governments? Or did they only come to light 20-30 years later?

They are still doing it. They are still overthrowing governments they don't like.

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/the-u-s-supported-coup-i...

I mean, this is just the inevitable outcome with autocracies/absolute monarchies. I think we should just assume that countries that are not liberal democracies are poor trading partners and not aligned with the interests of oter liberal democracies.

What about our relationship with the Saudis says "poor trading partner"?

What does Saudi Arabia have to do with the fact that the Russian and Chinese governments decided to become unfriendly by threatening their neighbors?

Because Saudi Arabia is actively commiting brutal genocide on Yemeni people and US governemnt is actually supporting and taking part in that due to SA being US ally.

China has been stealing IP and flaunting WTO rules for way longer than 5 years.

Snowden showed us that the US steals IP too, which is worse because it screams about how unfair it is when others do the same.

China's government wants to attack the people of Taiwan and occupy a sovereign, democratic nation. The U.S. didn't "make" Russia and China unfriendly, they decided to be unfriendly by belligerently threatening their neighbors.

China's intention to attack and occupy Taiwan has been known since its founding. If the U.S. thought it could use trade to talk China out of it, it was naïve.

When the USSR was around, especially near the end, China was actually a quasi-ally of the US. We sold military hardware to them until the Tiananmen Square massacre. We wanted them as a way to counter balance the USSR. Investing in China and engaging in free trade with them seemed like a reasonable way of changing them from communism to something closer to capitalism. China was willing to reform their economic system but we were much less successful in nudging them towards a democracy.

Furthermore, until 2008 and our financial meltdown, China was a willing student of the US. After 2008, China saw how we allowed our financial systems spiral out of control, they turned away and started looking for their own path.

That said, in thing in general, the world should diversify its supply lines. It's just good policy in general -- be it for political reasons, wars, natural disasters, or pandemics.

> What's CRAZY to me is why this hasn't always been the case. Who thought it was a good idea to depend on unfriendly countries like China?

This was a complaint from the beginning and it was brushed aside as xenophobia and not understanding modern economics. Its been a legitimate complaint from the beginning that has been completely ignored, even now whike we are trying to move away from China.

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