25 karma · joined October 8, 2019
I also agree that part of China's rise is due to it's economic strengths and strategic investments. In addition to that, they 1.5 billion people, of which there's bound to be a lot of amazing innovators.
The documentary American Factory is a great documentary that shows how the efficiency in China is also helping them out compete the US. (sidenote: produced by the obamas company)
On the note of the defense sector, DARPA has funded so much research (they invented the internet) that has helped innovation and defense companies help provide jobs for many engineers and high tech peoples, which helps the growth in that sector. Defense spending is also how we maintain our safety. But I do agree, that a lot of it is immensely wasteful. I think defense spending is important and useful, but like what you're getting at- the amount we spend stupidly instead of investing or strategically is too extreme
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_%28international_relat...
As for book recommendations, is there a specific topic you want to focus on? What are understanding are you looking to get out of them?
There's books on the rise of Asian economies, books on political theory that go more in depth, books on the politics and economics of China, history books on wars between rival powers, books on the history of Asia..etc
Like the majority of people, I don't fully align with either party's exact and every positions like it's gospel. I think politicians should be examined on a policy by policy basis. When it comes to foreign policy, I support his actions against China and some other strategic moves. When it comes to domestic policies, I lean democrat way more.
I copied and pasted it below
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I care about avoiding war and avoiding exploitation.
Historically, the best way to avoid major wars, is to have a major power or an allies of power (possible in multipolar word), or strong enough attack power(nukes) to scare off the idea of war -- i.e a strong enough deterrent to make going war be a bad idea. No one wants to go to war if they know they will be destroyed. Like how a robber won't rob a house if they know a person with a gun will be waiting for them.
So if we want to avoid the loss of life on the scale of the world wars, then we need to avoid massive conflict between the major powers (who have the greatest destructive power by definition). Since they are major powers, with long alliances, a conflict with the U.S. and China would involve at least, U.S, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, the NATO countries of Europe, Canada. It's also very likely that it would involve Russia, India, Pakistan, Australia. Other countries that may be dragged in for strategic purposes would be essentially every country in Asia (including southeast Asia), North America, and the Middle East/any sources of oil.
The disruption to the balance of power, is extremely dangerous. That is the cause of war. It's creates such a powerful economic and political incentive to maintain dominance by obliterating the competition. Imagine your friendly giant corporation and their tendency to value money over everything, if they were allowed to kill their competition and killing them would lead to those sweet monopoly profits, do you think are moral enough to not just not just kill their competition instead of doing all that hard work of economic competition?
The fact that there's a strong chance of war is what concerns me so much about a rising China. Both the U.S. and China has the huge prize of being the dominant power if they destroy the other.
To maintain peace and avoid a huge loss of life, there has to be a big enough deterrence to make war not appealing. They each have to compete immensely in order to make the deterrence strong enough. This is why the U.S. and Soviet Union had an arms race. They also have to compete economically, so they can fund their defense.
Now, lets say war is avoided, and power is more evenly distributed. By definition, that means the U.S. has less influence than others do. Then should another country do something that exploits the U.S., then by definition we have less power to stop that. This could be some trade deals that hurt the U.S. economy (i.e. jobs, and livelihoods of people) to the extreme of war against an alliance far stronger than us.
I agree that the U.S. has done some horrible things during it's hegemony, and I do not support them. But the brutal reality is that, others would do the same to us.
I think the best case scenario is that we avoid war and reach a new stable/peaceful balance of power, and the many now powerful countries provide healthy competition to the U.S. while still bringing wealth to themselves and their people. For the sake of my country and it's people, I hope the we the U.S. is still powerful enough to defend ourselves from foreign exploitation, competitive enough to prosper in that world, and free enough to enjoy the rights that many in countries like China do not.
You're right, war is less likely among nations with strongly linked economies. The important thing to note is that, at the same time, the survival self-interest of a county to dominant the other does not go away.
Which means that economic interdependence only helps avoid war so long as war itself doesn't provide more benefits.
China loved the idea that was popular in the the US of "peaceful" rising China, it meant people ignored the long term strategic threats militarily.
China has risen economically, and now they are aiming to have a military more powerful than the U.S.. They are also growing their influence in South America and Africa to get new markets, resources, and ultimately get rid of the dependence on the US market.
So, the dependence helped deter war in the short-term, but the economic gains let China position them better to serve the self-interest of being dominant.
Historically, the best way to avoid major wars, is to have a major power or an allies of power (possible in multipolar word), or strong enough attack power(nukes) to scare off the idea of war -- i.e a strong enough deterrent to make going war be a bad idea. No one wants to go to war if they know they will be destroyed. Like how a robber won't rob a house if they know a person with a gun will be waiting for them.
So if we want to avoid the loss of life on the scale of the world wars, then we need to avoid massive conflict between the major powers (who have the greatest destructive power by definition). Since they are major powers, with long alliances, a conflict with the U.S. and China would involve at least, U.S, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, the NATO countries of Europe, Canada. It's also very likely that it would involve Russia, India, Pakistan, Australia. Other countries that may be dragged in for strategic purposes would be essentially every country in Asia (including southeast Asia), North America, and the Middle East/any sources of oil.
The disruption to the balance of power, is extremely dangerous. That is the cause of war. It's creates such a powerful economic and political incentive to maintain dominance by obliterating the competition. Imagine your friendly giant corporation and their tendency to value money over everything, if they were allowed to kill their competition and killing them would lead to those sweet monopoly profits, do you think are moral enough to not just not just kill their competition instead of doing all that hard work of economic competition?
The fact that there's a strong chance of war is what concerns me so much about a rising China. Both the U.S. and China has the huge prize of being the dominant power if they destroy the other.
To maintain peace and avoid a huge loss of life, there has to be a big enough deterrence to make war not appealing. They each have to compete immensely in order to make the deterrence strong enough. This is why the U.S. and Soviet Union had an arms race. They also have to compete economically, so they can fund their defense.
Now, lets say war is avoided, and power is more evenly distributed. By definition, that means the U.S. has less influence than others do. Then should another country do something that exploits the U.S., then by definition we have less power to stop that. This could be some trade deals that hurt the U.S. economy (i.e. jobs, and livelihoods of people) to the extreme of war against an alliance far stronger than us.
I agree that the U.S. has done some horrible things during it's hegemony, and I do not support them. But the brutal reality is that, others would do the same to us.
I think the best case scenario is that we avoid war and reach a new stable/peaceful balance of power, and the many now powerful countries provide healthy competition to the U.S. while still bringing wealth to themselves and their people. For the sake of my country and it's people, I hope the we the U.S. is still powerful enough to defend ourselves from foreign exploitation, competitive enough to prosper in that world, and free enough to enjoy the rights that many in countries like China do not.
It's still not as big of a focus of attention to the general public as are other issues, and it could potentially become ignored. Sometimes, I wonder if these politicians even know enough political science or have enough awareness of the global landscape to understand the threat.
One of the most disappointing moment was when Joe Biden said that China was not competition, echoing the previous U.S. excuse for inaction from before. I think he backpeddled on that statement after backlash, but I'm not sure.
The biggest issue about trade deficits with China is purely economic, it political/strategic. The trade deficit with China helps China grow in power. Their economy grows, and with the huge influx of taxes, they are investing in their military and foreign influence operations more and more.
Is it worth the economic benefit to cement the U.S's biggest strategic threat, who is also a brutal dictatorship? The long terms negatives, may outweigh the short term benefits.
You also bring up some good points. Any action against China back then could have hurt the U.S. as well, and our course of action may have been the lowest risk path, and arguably the lowest risk path may be the best one.
The "powder kegs" today are mainly the competition between the United States against China. There's also regional competition / "powderkegs", like Europe and Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, India and Pakistan.
Events that could have triggered these powder kegs/massive conflicts have calmed down a bit (relatively). The biggest ones have been when U.S vs North Korea rhetoric was at a tense high (China is heavily involved with NK and would likely get involved in any war there like they did in the 1950 Korean war), India-Pakistan (two nuclear powers bordering China) had some conflict on their border and were a the brink of war for a bit there (India is big competitor to China, Pakistan its big ally), and to a lesser extent Iran. If conflict were to arise in Iran, it would have probably been another middle eastern war (lots of money and death, few results), it would likely have Russia involvement like in Syria, and potentially China (although china like the money approach to influence, as they have put money towards influencing countries like Iran, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan and others).
The change in attitude began with Trump. He was to first president to bring the threat of China to the mainstream political discourse. Since then, China is so objectively a threat to the U.S. economically, militarily and through their direct actions of manipulating U.S. businesses, countering our influence internationally, that bipartisian support was easy to flourish once someone actually took an anti-china stance.
The power of the Chinese market, low wage labor, sophisticated and concentrated foreign policy manipulation, and their stated strategy of "hiding their strength and biding their time" (until Xi), has worked to make the U.S. turn a blind eye. The problem of China has been present to any competent political scientist for a while now. But the amount of money incentives and ignorance on the part of U.S. business and political leaders made it so they would in essence be bribed to ignore the issue.
Obama did a pivot to asia, with the TTP at its helm, but in reality after 8 years of presidency and negotatitions, the results were nothing unfortunately. TTP is debatable as a solution. Even with the TTP, the U.S. has been losing 300 billion a year to China in trade. Granted this results in cheaper products for us, but 300 billion dollar trade surplus for China is what funded the communist dictatorship growing military spending, leading to a military that can be as powerful as the U.S.'s one day. 300 billion each year is more profit that what all the U.S's top tech companies make each year combined. The rise of China is not a miricale, like Japan's, Koreas, and other early east asian miricales, it was bought by America's consumers and political inaction.
Some theory, although depressing admittely: There is no government for governments, so each country lives in anarchy. Therefore nothing is off limits to get what you need to survive, including war. Countries go to war and act in self interest because, if they are not strong, whoever is will likely use their power to exploit the other country.
A balance of power brings stability. If there is 1 superpower, the world becomes globalized ( US after fall of soviet union). No world wars, because anyone who fights the dominant superpower will lose. This is called unipolar, one of the most stable and peaceful states for major powers.
Now when another power comes to rise, it is like a startup rising to crush the industry monopoly. Except, instead of having to battle it out economically, they can litteraly kill each other (or on the scale of countries, war).
The incentives for major war skyrocket
Britian was was the major power, they controlled 3/4ths of the world through their colonies and their unstoppable navy. Then industrial revolution and trains led to the rise of land powers, and the rise of Germany's economy. The rising powers, the disruption the balance of power eventually led to the world wars.
After that was U.S vs Soviet Union. The two sole superpowers after WW2 were on the brink of the nuclear war. for about 50 years.
The soviet union collapsed because communism with corruption was unable to keep up with captialism.
Now the U.S once the sole superpower, faces the rise of China. The chances of World War 3 are higher than ever, although they have calmed down from the high tensions of year or 2 ago.
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I think it is important that we finally realize the immense threat that China is. Not just economically, but for our safety. Their goal is to be the top superpower, and to make the U.S. and anyone else bend to their will, as is every countries goal