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There's not much more to do since China is not currently attacking foreign soil.
Peace in our time.
It's easy to say things like this about your geopolitical enemies, but allies get away with it all the time.
But US the the 'aggressor' for rolling this back?
And the US gets many allies and works through the UN to do this, but it is somehow 'illegal'?
It sounds like in your perfect world, Saddam keeps Kuwait, also gets Saudi Arabia, and the US just sits on its hands after terrorists kill thousands in NYC because being 'aggressive' is always bad no matter what.
BTW war in Afghanistan wasn't illegal.
and why do you say that?
Intervention in Afghanistan was a response to 9/11.
Aginst Russia they backfired spectacularly because Putin had prepared better for the sanctions contingency than Europe did.
I'm struggling to think of an example where they actually led to the desired outcome.
Let's see if Russia is a problem in 50 years :)
Russian growth is now 5.5%, higher than all Western economies. It's difficult to see what sanctions would do that they haven't recovered from already.
BTW look up North Korean economy growth after the war :) North Korea was always the rich part. It was developing so fast after the war. And somehow now the South Korea has Samsung and Kia and Subaru, and North Korea has starvation.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Keun-Lee/publication/22...
The only economic bloc which cut Russia off was American allies and there's nothing Russia gets from them which can't be supplied elsewhere.
Russia switched from buying German cars to buying Chinese cars and changed the logo on their McDonalds and Starbucks branches. They now have access to inferior imitation brie and french wine is 2x the cost now but they'll probably cope.
If military spending were the only thing pushing GDP up, the deficit would be showing up in throttled consumer spending. It isnt. Indeed, if the sanctions were working as intended the military wouldnt be able to produce either, but they obviously are.
And for specialized items such as aircraft parts and chips, it forces them to do without or invent an equivalent local supply chain at enormous cost.
All that wasted money is diverted from making Russia stronger.
Russia is such a poor country compared to its neighbours that it’s very easy for them to have a lot of catch-up growth.
Both of these things worked as intended, causing USSR and China to work against each other and ultimately causing USSR to collapse. USSR was growing faster than the west early on. By 80s its economy was barely working.
It just takes time. Russia is in much worse starting condition already than USSR was in 70s, it is more isolated, it has less allies, it's further behind in tech.
If you want to believe Russia is doing fine, go ahead, it's just a very weird take.
I also showed us that stopping genocide matters more than anything - more than national borders, but we still support Israel's genocide.
Who is the aggressor in your mind here? Note: China don’t have any military assets off the US west coast… meanwhile then US has multi thousands of soldiers within staging distance of Chinese coast line from the very bottom to the very top.
Allowing China to prevent US or other aircraft to operate in such international waters or airspace would amount to giving them control over it, which is why it’s important to have regular freedom of navigation sailings and flights.
Chinese ships and aircraft are violating the territorial waters and airspace of other countries in the region, especially in the South China Sea. It’s annexing territory that belongs to other countries. It’s not at all the same thing.
Anyone familiar with history, recall that Mexico was bigger? Did the Chinese get involved in that conflict? I guess what we are saying is they should have to stop an aggressor annexing territory? Oh wait, but that was actual land, where as the annexing you are talking about is ocean… ocean that the US has filled with military bases. Do you think the conflict between China Vietnam and Philippines is unrelated to US activity? Maybe you should lookup a map if US military bases and perhaps you’ll change your mind in who the aggressor is.
China, except for Tibet and Korea (Both neighbouring countries) has never invaded another country. Should we look at the US? Just in that region It’s invaded Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, China directly. Philippines indirectly.
It’s quite telling that the examples you have to bring up of the US annexing territory are from over a century ago, before we had developed modern concepts of international law. We’re supposed to be past the era of annexation by force.
The area that China is annexing is not empty ocean, it’s a set of islands that belong to other nations, like the Philippines. Those are not theirs to take, and it’s a breach of international law, but their military power and UNSC veto means they can get away with it.
And, no, the conflict is not because of US activity. It’s because China, as it quite openly states in various forms including its doctrines, believes it has the right to regional hegemony over neighbouring countries. They, in turn, obviously don’t want that, so they’ve invited the US in as an ally. None of those are ‘aggressor’ moves toward China, because even the largest US military facilities in the area only have sufficient forces for defensive actions, not for an attack on mainland China.
The US didn’t invade Korea, it was part of a United Nations force protecting South Korea from attack by the north. It invaded Japan after being attacked first at Pearl Harbor. It was invited into South Vietnam, at the time under attack from North Vietnam. Laos I’ll give you, that was illegal and unacceptable. The US has never invaded China, it had a post-war force at the request of the then-government to disarm and repatriate the remainder of the Imperial Japanese Army from Manchuria. Similarly, it liberated the Philippines from the Japanese and immediately restored its pre-war democratic government. That’s not an ‘invasion’ as you cast it.
Of course of this is to say the US has always done good or is perfect. Far from it. But your whataboutism and insistence that China has done no wrong is ridiculous.
In the past two decades alone China has been in border disputes and land grabs with nearly all its neighbours, encroaching on territory in India, Bhutan, and the South China Sea. This should not be considered acceptable either.
Guess you need to look at the nations that took part in the various battles during the annexation of Hong Kong, Opium Wars etc. The US was not involved?
Didn’t say China has done nothing wrong, just if we are looking at nations that need to be reigned in. The US has done more to damage other countries sovereignty than basically the rest of the world combined. So it seems weird to focus on China…
So the US is just protecting Phillipines sovereignty… randomly? Interesting take on it. I wonder why they don’t care about Myanmar… same region… very clear cut destruction of a democracy (which was the reason they went to Vietnam…)
Or even Australia, that time they assisted in the sacking of a prime minister to protect their mining interests. Or the fact they passed laws to try to undermine nations (specifically its allies)to purchase drugs as a whole to prop up the pharmaceutical industry.
It’s not whataboutism. It’s the US is shit to everyone, and the fact that people even talk about China (unless you’re a Uighur, Tibetan, or Filipino) is just falling for US propaganda.
I was referring specifically to the example you provided of US annexation of formerly Mexican territory. As far as I know the US hasn't annexed territory since 1945. Which is also when the world collectively changed its approach in an attempt to avoid great powers creating another World War, and shifted to a model where annexation by force is a bad thing. Rather have stable borders shifted by appeals to the ICJ than by rolling tanks over the borders. It has never been a perfect system, of course, but by and large it held as a set of norms until recently.
> Didn’t say China has done nothing wrong, just if we are looking at nations that need to be reigned in. The US has done more to damage other countries sovereignty than basically the rest of the world combined. So it seems weird to focus on China…
That's a very myopic US-centric view, and I think one that can only be held because there's much more accessible
> So the US is just protecting Phillipines sovereignty… randomly? Interesting take on it. I wonder why they don’t care about Myanmar… same region… very clear cut destruction of a democracy (which was the reason they went to Vietnam…)
I never said it was random. Clearly, it's also of strategic value to the US. I said it's because they were invited in by those countries, and remain only because the democratically-elected governments that host them continue to renew those agreements and alliances because it's in their interests too. Myanmar is run by a military junta that doesn't want to be an ally of the US. In contrast, South Vietnam invited the US in.
> It’s not whataboutism. It’s the US is shit to everyone, and the fact that people even talk about China (unless you’re a Uighur, Tibetan, or Filipino) is just falling for US propaganda.
That's exactly whataboutism, and the fact that you think that nobody should even talk about China unless they're Uighur, Tibetan, or Filipino just proves the point. Everyone has an interest in a peaceful, stable, and fair global order, and that means opposing the actions of any country that threatens it whether it's the US, China, Russia, or any other power. China's clearly stated ambitions to take over Taiwan by force, for instance, would massively and negatively impact the rest of us through the knock on effects to the global economy and the shortage of key electronic parts like chips.
But the US actually did it: Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s not nobody should talk about China, it’s that it literally hasnt done anything worth talking about compared with a whole host of countries…
If you think the view is myopic… how about you challenge it? Who’s disturbed more foreign nations than the US? Like in the history of civilisation.
Myanmar was not run by a junta, it was a democracy and they did invite the US and are desperately asking for help right now… just like Vietnam did. So what is different?
I would say because the US only wants to fuck with China and couldn’t care less about these other nations. Which you also admit is the case. What is “strategic” about protecting the Philippines? The answer is China, most specifically “containing China” - but why “contain” a country that has never expressed ill will towards you?
Is the US also containing India?
It is like people purposely pretend the US are the “Good guys” and ignore any other possibility.
If you point this out, it’s whataboutism (a made up term pretending to be a fallacy used generally to justify American exceptionalism)
The USSR (and now Russia) and China have ‘disturbed’ just as many foreign nations as the US. Both have long pursued interventionist foreign policies, covertly and overtly supporting sub-national groups that worked in their interests. Even in the most recent years we have Russian intelligence causing a string of coups throughout Africa and funding and supporting disruptive extremist groups, and China has been caught spying on the African Union’s governance structures in order to influence continental policy and coerce leaders.
It’s less publicised and less visible because, unlike the US, neither Russia nor China have a free and unfettered press and civil society who can obtain and report on leaks and other embarrassing information.
It’s not enough that Myanmar was a democracy, because soon after winning elections that administration launched a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya. There’s also no strategic interest for the US there. As I said earlier, alliances happen when the two align.
The US’s strategic interest in that area is not to ‘fuck’ with China, but to preserve a rules-based order that’s open for international trade. If China is allowed to take over the entire South China Sea and other surrounding areas they can close it to any traffic whenever they want, they’ll be more easily able to take over Taiwan and maybe even countries like the Philippines, and there’ll be nothing stopping them from annexing more and more territory. We saw in the 1930s what allowing this sort of thing can lead to. I’d say it’s in all our interests, not just the US’s, that China not be allowed to simply annex more territory. I’d similarly be opposed to the US or any other country trying to annex territory by force.
China have pursued interventionist policies? You are going to need to cite that. Which African leaders did China coerce?
Your reasoning for "less publicised and less visible" doesn't make sense... couldn't the "free press" of the US shine a light on it? Taiwan has a free press...?
I think you need to understand Myanmar better, it was the military that launched the genocidal campaign, and it was the military that overthrew the democracy. Converting a state that shares a land border with China to be an ally of the US feels way more strategic than the Phillipines... or even Taiwan for that matter (sans the microchip manufacturing capacity).
"Rules based order" - Wow, straight out of "Western nations' talking points". You honestly sound like the communists quoting Mao from the little red book. Is the US following this rules based order? Seems to me China is following those rules more than the US ever did. Which rules is china breaking?
Like when the US signed the treaty that said space would not be militarised, then it created the "space force", and banned china for the ISS. Or that it wouldn't imprison people unfairly (according to both its own constitution AND its international treaties), so it created prisons on foreign soil to imprison them unfairly. Or that it helped establish the United Nations but then lied to them, and ignored them when it invaded Iraq... well and Pakistan... which no one even mentions. When it established the five-eyes then used that infrastructure to spy on its own allies.
Did you mean domestically? Like how it impeached its last president twice, has since convicted him as a felon... so he can't vote? But can still run as president? That rule based system?
Has it been? Where are the peace campaigns arguing against an invasion? The urges to use diplomatic methods and to win over the Taiwanese public for a peaceful 'reunification' if that's what they want?
> China have pursued interventionist policies? You are going to need to cite that. Which African leaders did China coerce?
Through both espionage[0][1][2] and economic and political coercion.[3][4][5]
>Your reasoning for "less publicised and less visible" doesn't make sense... couldn't the "free press" of the US shine a light on it? Taiwan has a free press...?
Do you think Chinese officials or whistleblowers involved in those programmes are going to speak to American or Taiwanese media? Seriously? These leak in democratic countries because there is a domestic free press that people can speak to. Russian and Chinese officials are not going to pick up the phone to the New York Times or the Washington Post...
>I think you need to understand Myanmar better, it was the military that launched the genocidal campaign, and it was the military that overthrew the democracy. Converting a state that shares a land border with China to be an ally of the US feels way more strategic than the Phillipines... or even Taiwan for that matter (sans the microchip manufacturing capacity).
The US and other Western countries condemned the coup and instituted sanctions against the military officers involved. What more do you want them to have done, invade?
>"Rules based order" - Wow, straight out of "Western nations' talking points". You honestly sound like the communists quoting Mao from the little red book. Is the US following this rules based order? Seems to me China is following those rules more than the US ever did. Which rules is china breaking?
This is not an American concept, it's a global one created in the aftermath of WW2's immense destruction, aiming to encourage countries to resolve disputes peacefully though diplomacy and the use of international institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. And that violent interventions should follow international law and be channeled through the United Nations Security Council where the immediate principle of self defence doesn't apply. The United Nations Secretary-General often refers to the term and concept.[6][7]
The US broadly follows it, though as I've said before I regard the invasion of Iraq as being contrary to it and a black mark on the US's history and credibility. I'd say that secret CIA 'black sites' and extraordinary rendition fall in the same category and are rightly condemned. China is not following it in many cases, including Tibet, its encroachment on Bhutan, its threats and promises to invade Taiwan, and its takeover of the South China Sea. It's following a traditional 19th century view of 'might makes right' and annexation by force.
Once again, this is not a 'US good, China bad' debate as you seem so eager to turn it into. We can and should condemn any country that acts this way, whoever it might be.
[0]https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN28Q1EA/
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_China–African_Union_espio...
[2]https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/ajicl.2022.03...
[3]https://www.aspi.org.au/report/chinese-communist-partys-coer...
[4]https://www.diis.dk/en/research/the-myths-and-realities-of-c...
[5]https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-political-significanc...
[6]https://operationalsupport.un.org/en/world-needs-commitment-...
If NATO escalated a little more in 2008 - hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine AND in Russia would still live.
Instead we made Putin think he can get away with it.
Also, according to Wikipedia page [1]:
> The Republic of China (ROC), which ruled Mainland China before 1949 and has been confined to Taiwan since 1949, also claims all of the Spratly Islands.
and under "Military occupations":
> Occupied by Taiwan (ROC)
> Centre Cay, Zhongzhou Reef
> Itu Aba Island, Taiping Island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_... in 2018.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28357880 MH17 shootdown in 2014.
and in the UK, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62068421
"Controversy surrounds that appointment, since it was alleged - first in a Tortoise Media podcast and then in the Sunday Times - that the peerage was granted despite a warning from the security services that it posed a national security risk."
People were very happy to overlook Russian misbehavior so long as the money kept coming.
Oh, there's a lot between not doing anything at all and repeating the mistakes from Iranian days:
- provide economic / humanitarian aid contingent on progress in democratic values and actually audit where the money goes. This ended being effective around 2010 when China began hitting the global stage though.
- supporting countries or democratic, pro-Western parties/groups that are threatened by an aggressor (e.g. every former Soviet state)
- when supposed "allies" end up funding our enemies (e.g. Saudi-Arabia, who not just financed Bin Laden and is the main ideological driver in fundamentalist madrasas (religious schools) all over the world, thus being the main contributor to Islamist terrorism), cut them off. Hell the Saudis butchered a journalist (a father of U.S. citizens) in an embassy and we didn't do shit. Instead, we allow Saudi-Arabia and Qatar to host fucking World Cups. What a bunch of bullshit.
- aggressive, actually effective sanctions instead of just making the lives of a few oligarchs a tiny bit more difficult
- increase our own security posture in terms of military and provide a credible retaliation threat towards any potential aggressor
- invest into academic research on other countries. That one got shamefully disbanded after the collapse of the USSR and the shift towards prioritizing STEM over humanities - we now lack the academic capacity for actually understanding other countries or provide actual evidence-backed advice to politicians. Instead we got completely dependent on think tanks and consultancies.
- respond in-kind to Russia and China banning Western activities: they effectively force pro-democracy organizations to close shop? Fine, no more Chinese police stations in Western countries. They engage in cyberwarfare? Fine, we cut them off from the Internet. They refuse to allow Western countries fair and equal access to their markets? Fine, we ban investments from China and force-divest existing investments, and raise tariffs on their exports.
The last part is the easiest... over decades we believed in "change by trade", we hoped that they would become similar to us culturally. That worked in certain areas - McDonald's and Coca-Cola show that - but politically, we didn't give a slightest interest in both countries getting ever more authoritarian. And now it's biting us in our collective arses.
Every one? I am from one of those states, and most of them are even worse democracy-wise than Russia.
The only thing we have over Russia is not going after neighbors' territories, and even that's debatable (see conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan vs Tajikistan).
Your governments do overlook serious human rights violations, though, when it suits them. We had widespread protests in January 2022 that were brutally suppressed by the government, which ended up killing more than 300 protesters (that's according to official figures that are thought to be undercounted).
No fucks given by Western propaganda or government talking heads because several European, US, and Canadian companies have massive investments in our oil, gas, and minerals industry.
About six months ago Macron visited Astana to beg for uranium fuel after France got kicked off from Niger, and a group of political activists tried to seize the rare moment and did everything they could to meet him for a few minutes and talk about human rights violations in our country. You can probably guess the result of that endeavor.
One of the major gas projects (managed by Shell IIRC) ends in 2030, and I have a strong suspicion "human rights violations" will become a permanent theme in our relations right after that moment.
I agree, and part of the cause is that us Western countries don't give a shit. We don't even give a shit about those countries right on our border like Ukraine or Bosnia.
> No fucks given by Western propaganda or government talking heads because several European, US, and Canadian companies have massive investments in our oil, gas, and minerals industry.
Or because they were bought off such as in the case with the massive corruption by Azerbaijan.
> About six months ago Macron visited Astana to beg for uranium fuel after France got kicked off from Niger, and a group of political activists tried to seize the rare moment and did everything they could to meet him for a few minutes and talk about human rights violations in our country. You can probably guess the result of that endeavor.
My opinion of Macron is probably just as low as yours, the only thing the guy can do is talk. All talk, no act.
People talk too easily about countries as if they are a person. I have lived in the east, I have lived in the west: every actual person has problems, everybody thinks their problems should come first, too many people have the tendency to think "outside influence" is very strong and lots of people think they have "the solution" which is different than what their government does.
At the end of the day I think the (boring) truth is that many countries end acting similarly to the average citizen. Including their fears, stupidities, insecurities and knowledge.
Yes, "the west of Europe" does not care as much as some people think about "the east of Europe", same way "the east of Europe" does not care that much about I don't know, Yemen, Myanmar or Sudan (just to name places with horrible conflicts that nobody seems to care about, unless they delay their Amazon package by a couple of days...).
Edit: as opposed to China and Russia that pour serious money into large infrastructure projects like the new Silk Road. Russia has only started doing this recently, though. People have their reservations about those countries, but can't help but see the difference between e.g. China that builds railroads and power plants, and Western countries that only suck out money, paying tiny salaries to local workers and circumventing things like air pollution regulations.
I said this already under a (now flagged and dead) comment, but it's worth repeating — "your" (not your personally) one-sided propaganda and continuing support for Putin (if indirect) have made "you" lose whatever anti-war and pro-West opposition there was in Russia. I only wish we'd seen how convenient Putin is for "the West" a decade earlier. This was particularly obvious in June 2023 during the short and failed putsch of Wagner PMC. If you care at all, you can dig into my comment history from the beginning of 2022 and see how my own opinion has changed. It's a pretty typical example, I think.
In 2014, when Joe was VP and lead person on Ukraine, I would not have refused to give lethal aid to Ukraine. And when Ukraine used our training to try to take back Crimea, I wouldn't have chastised the Ukraine government for trying to resist Putin.
When Putin built up forces on Ukraine's border to restart hostilities in 2021/2022, I would not have cowardly evacuated all US personnel from the country. I would have surged more in to deter.
When Putin restarted invasion in 2022, I would not have conditioned lethal aid on not shooting across border, tying Ukraine's hands. Instead, I would have conditioned it on attacking any military or military supporting targets anywhere in the theatre of war. Since Russia has defined the boundaries of this as well within their country, they only have themselves to blame for how deep these weapons would reach into Russia. Then we wouldn't have the ridiculous situation we just had where Putin was able to get his forces ready for the Kharkiv offensive in plain view, but Ukraine was not allowed by Joe to attack them until they actually started crossing the border.