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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> by insisting that the major instance of military intervention by a world power that's happened in the last year shouldn't be counted

I’m not. I’m saying exempting that, we have an even field of conflict mongering. Counting Iran, the field is biased, but we have significant sampling-timing issues for something like “is there war.”

China has violently annexed sovereign countries in the past decades. Its threats to do the same again are at least as serious as Trump’s Greenland nonsense. There can be more than one baddie.

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Iraq war? Venezuela raid? Libya? Syria? Afghanistan for 20 years? And that's just some of the higher visibility cases.

If China had special forces deployed and conducting ops in random African countries it would be a massive aggression. When we do it, it doesn't even make the headlines.

> If China had special forces deployed and conducting ops in random African countries it would be a massive aggression

It’s literally doing this across its maritime and mountain boundaries! It does cause outrage, albeit less so in mass media.

What's a good example you would say?

I think they're referring to occasional fist fights between the Indian and Chinese deployments at the top of the Himalayas where there's a dumb territorial dispute. There were a couple of times decades ago where the forces shot at each other and the governments had to scramble to calm things down and deescalate, so somehow they've reached this gentleman's agreement to have fistfights instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_border_dispute

We're talking about this kind of thing balancing out, say, Fallujah or shock and awe over Baghdad.

> We're talking about this kind of thing balancing out, say, Fallujah or shock and awe over Baghdad

Nonsense. For that comparison you’d look to the invasion and annexation of Tibet. (And it’s not ancient history if it’s currently endorsed and un-apologized for.)

Ok, then we expand the US horizon back to the 50s as well. We've added Tibet, and the 1979 3 week Vietnam war to the Chinese column, plus them being involved in the Korean war and to a lesser degree the American Vietnam War. This comes with way, way more added to the American column. At least it's no longer a shutout.

Any fair look at both countries' records puts the US as doing 10-100x more military intervention, on a global rather than regional scale. It is actually a little bit "sheeple" to look at that scoreboard and start calling China aggressive. They're less aggressive than every other UNSC member without even going to a pound for pound basis.

> Any fair look at both countries' records puts the US as doing 10-100x more military intervention

Sure. I never claimed otherwise. I’m saying it would be news to anyone in Asia-Pacific (or Eastern Europe) that America is or has been the destabilizing force. That was the original claim.

If the choice is 10x or 1x, go with the latter. But that is a false dichotomy. You can be anti-invasion and annexation broadly. There is no moral high ground in choosing Chinese models; no more than a person in China choosing Anthropic or OpenAI.

The Philippines definitely have a right to be aggrieved over the south china sea stuff, but one bias I'm cautious of is "the natural norm is American hegemony in every region, so any change from this is destabilizing". Other countries have their natural interests as well.

I’d say the South China Sea island building in violation of UNCLOS text and judgement comes pretty close to American CIA-style fuckery in South America and Africa.

To be clear, American fuckery is broader. But if we agree we’re discussing magnitudes and not kind, we agree on all I’m arguing.

>"China has violently annexed sovereign countries in the past decades."

An outright lie. The only possible candidate is Tibet but it's former sovereignty is very questionable and not clear cut

> it's former sovereignty is very questionable and not clear cut

Same as Taliban-run Afghanistan, same as Iraq, same as Ukraine, same as Taiwan. If you’re Tibetan, the line is academic—you faced, by modern definitions, genocide all the same.

Calling the territory you’re invading and/or annexing illegitimately independent, illegitimately governed is how these always go.

The US was literally founded on genocide. Glass houses.

> US was literally founded on genocide. Glass houses

Most nations have been. The American one was particularly bad, being both recent and extensive. But I’d venture that a strong minority of us descend from lineages who never committed genocide. It’s a unique trait to humans (and chimpanzees, apparently).

If any history of genocide invalidates an accuser, genocide becomes a consequence-free crime. The general defence becomes pointing out the accuser’s history.

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