If the growing US-China rivalry leads to ‘the worst war ever’, what should AU do

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Do you know, every one of those 14 points... they're all about China not being able to buy stuff. Either buyers have been directly refused, thieves have been thwarted, or environments have turned contentious and deals are harder to make quietly.

On any other interpretation, the list makers are a bunch of crying rubes.
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I think China knows far better than to emulate the growing violence in the US.  Armed civilians only stop a tiny fraction of armed criminals.  Any country that looks at the stats will see the US as a warning, not a model.

Did you bother to look up who Sri Lanka owed money to?  Debt to China was a very small part of a huge debt problem that was also compounded by mismanagement of the country's economy.  The good news is that the port still is operating and can accept foreign emergency aid, including food shipments from China.  Or would you prefer to have seen the USA, foreseeing the possibility of a financial collapse, have started bombing the country flat a few years ago in an effort to help fix their problems?

In the meantime, per capita GDP is rising at a faster rate in multiple African countries thanks in part to Chinese BRI projects.  Out of those many countries, at least one will probably find a way to wreck its economy with or without participating in BRI.  The rest will continue to expand their economies and provide models on how to rebuild the few that fail.

Wow. Aussies are shocked that continuing to spew anti-China propaganda actually annoys Chinese people, Chinese businesses, and the Chinese government.  I guess they miss the good old days when China wouldn't publicly react to repeated provocations and that a thinly veiled "But responding to deliberate abuse is something only the west is allowed to do!" diatribe will be forthcoming.
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See, it's the humorlessness. That'll be why the public have genuinely started being haunted by thoughts and fears of war.

For the purposes of this particularly humorless exchange, humorlessness is ""objective" argument without admission of subjective horsehittery"

Horseshittery, btw, is the level of horseshit a person at any one time accepts as wisdom
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It's a bit hard to enjoy the humor when the potential outcome of a completely senseless and useless war fought to enrich US defense contractors could easily be seeing 7+ billion deaths and sends the whole world back to the stone age (assuming the roaches don't decide to finish humanity off).

Instead, let's replay that really fun game from the 60's.  Whoever can slap a flag on the moon first wins round one, but this time we keep the game going.  It's actually great fun and leads to all sorts of very helpful technology being developed.  Assuming everyone can sit at the table like adults, we also figure out how to divide lunar and asteroid resources in a reasonably fair way while whoever harvests them also pays a modest tax (how does 10% sound) to a UN agency dedicated to economic development of impoverished nations.  This way, the whole world comes out ahead at the end of each round of play.
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So anyway, this is UFWD effort right? Identify the enemies, unite the front. I was wondering when "enemies" talk first appear. Well, knock me down with a feather, turns out for the CCP, it was with Mao. United Front being one of the three magic weapons. (Didn't Xi also use that magic weapons rhetoric too? In internal speeches describing the United Front Work Department business.)

Jeepers. What a miserable approach
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I think the "enemies" problem really began when Trump's poll numbers started sinking deeper and deeper.  Screwing over Canada, Mexico, and then Europe didn't win him any points at home, so he suddenly flipped from acting like a great buddy of China to trying to paint it as an enemy hellbent on world domination and the destruction of America's Divinely granted right to sanction, destabilize, or bomb any country it felt like at any time for any (or no) reason.  Mix in some "they took our jobs" and slap up a few sanctions that actually harmed American companies and consumers and it turned to a great way to rally redneck racists looking for some group to hate. The UK and it's favorite former prison colony's PMs both decided this was a political winner.

Now all 3 are out of office and the ice between China and down under is finally showing some hints that cracks may start forming soon.  Perhaps even if the US continues down the path of provocation, the leaders will realize that spilling a lot of Australian blood for US politicians and defense contractors really isn't the brightest idea for the countries future.
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I'm not sure your point of view can be trusted. It sounds compromised. Interacting with this point of view as if it were a point of view has begun to seem foolish. Sorry bud.
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Of course, this is just another set of incredibly mobile goal posts for you.  You always try the very tired "China doesn't have the ability to understand X, unlike white people the West."  Then you shift to another tactic and another.  Then you tried claiming the whole thread was just being humorous.  Now that all of that failed, you without any supporting reasons decide to declare my point of view can't be trusted and is foolish.

My direct answer to the question in you thread title is that Australia and every country should let the USA know that their soldiers and navy will stay home and only adopt defensive positions if the US manages to push the world to the brink of a war.  Imagine if the USA decided to throw a war and no one showed up.

And why should anyone place trust in your POV?  If you want to kick back and let your country throw away its soldiers lives away because the USA wants another proxy war no matter how many dead Australians it takes, I'd say that's not just foolish, but also rather homicidal towards your fellow countrymen.

I've consistently made it plain throughout this thread that I want to see the sabre rattling reduced so that a war will be less likely.  My hope is that then some trust can be rebuilt to further stabilize the situation, further reducing the chance of war.  If you think wanting peace is bad and seeing millions die for no better reason than to please the USA (the same country that increased a number of exports to China to make up for reductions in Australian exports to China), then your mental processes have a major malfunction.

In the meantime, I'll be watching imports and exports between China and Australia to get an idea of how backroom negotiations are really going instead of listening to parrots of the US point of view.
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You have a tendency to select from among possible interpretations, like there's a preference or a strategy at work. Reading the interpretations over time can suggest the character of this preference or strategy, marking it as either compromising or constructive. I think your interpretations suggest a partiality that undermines the easy acceptibility of your claims. You're defending your country.
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Many things have multiple ways to view or interpret.  Unlike you, I don't repeatedly use racist arguments like "Chinese people are culturally incapable of understanding the very concept of interpretation X."  You also do your best to claim that this interpretation only a true westerner can comprehend is actually the best interpretation.

In terms of partiality, you are firmly glued to interpreting everything that makes China look bad.  You seem particularly willing to see your own country used as a pawn and your own soldiers used as cannon fodder.  History (even VERY recent history) shows that the US being more than willing to abandon allies is not an interpretation or a bias, but instead is a long established pattern.

If me thinking that war is so undesirable that it should always be the LAST POSSIBLE option and that distant countries shouldn't be trying to push their allies into risky behavior that can easily lead to "accidents" that can lead to proxy wars is a bad thing somehow can be called "partiality", I'll happily accept the label.
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for example ^^

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A few examples of the USA abusing pawns allies:

"Hey Australia, go ahead and get in a trade spat with China.  The USA has your back!"  (US promptly sells more coal to China.)

"Hey France, how DARE you sell submarines to another ally without cutting the USA in on the deal!

Hey Australia, you REALLY should be buying subs from us, not France.  Scomo, sit up and beg to take the deal.  That's right.  Who's a good doggy.  Yes, Scomo's such a good doggie. Now roll over and we'll pet you."

"Hey Afghans who helped the USA.  We're leaving in the middle of the night to avoid pictures of you hanging off the skids of one of our evacuation helicopters (that was terribly embarrassing).  It's SO secret that your troops outside the base only found out after others broke in, released prisoners we'd abandoned, and did some looting.

We spent 20 years "nation building" to support your puppet government.  As a final show of support, we decided to drone strike a foreign aid worker and some children and claim they were terrorists.  That should make it easier for you to keep your people afraid of you.  All that and then you ungrateful bastards lost control so fast that other countries couldn't get all of their people out before the government we threw out and spent 20 years dropping bombs all over your country to suppress came and threw you out.

Oh, and we're really upset that some of you hung onto the outside of airplanes and fell to your deaths.  Do you have any idea how bad that looked in the press?  Just for that, we're freezing all your money and confiscating at least half of it.  Good luck feeding your people."

"Hey NATO, even though you are all on schedule complying with our requirement request to increase your military budgets, one of your leaders offended our leader, so we're going to move a bunch of hardware away from the offending country and park it where it will be less useful, but at least it will be in a place where the local leader didn't annoy us.  We'll use Didn't meet final budget requirements 3 years before schedule as the excuse."

"Hey Canada and Mexico.  You are our only neighbors and well trusted trade partners. Instead of sitting down and negotiating some reasonable adjustments to NAFTA, we're unilaterally cancelling it.  If you want a new trade deal with us, come back and kneel on your side of the table."


"Hey Syrian Kurds.  We counted on you for many things and know you've been counting on us, but we've decided that you're ready to fight alone.  Best of luck!"

"Hey South Vietnam.  We finally got a peace treaty signed.  It even says that we SWEAR (and cross our hearts and hope we die if we break the promise) that we'll be back within 5 minutes if the North Vietnamese send even one soldier across the border.  You know you can count on the USA to defend you no matter what happens.

Oh wait. We've decided that it's not worth the effort to help you any more.  We're sure you can take care of your northern border.

WTF!  We don't care that the entire North Vietnamese Army moved south and has entered your capital.  Get your damned hands off of our embassy evacuation helicopter before someone takes a picture."


Enough examples?  Nah, let's toss in a 19th century one just to show that the USA betrayal and abuse problem didn't originate in the 1960's or 70s.

"Hey Cherokee!  Thanks SO much for helping my army win the war against the Creek.  I solemnly pledge As long as the sun shines and the grass grows there shall be friendship between us, and the feet of the Cherokee shall be toward the East. at least until I'm elected president.  Then I'll evict you from your remaining lands and send you on a long walk down the Trail of Tears.  You and others like you will be safe west of the Mississippi, until we decide to take those lands and drive your people onto smaller and smaller reservations."
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deep state
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The Australian way of war

In a span of nearly 90 years—from 1914 to 2003—Australia chose to go to war nine times.

In the 100 years from 1914, Australian military personnel were on active service for nearly half the time—47 years.

Finding that frequency ‘startling’, one of the greats of Australian military history, David Horner, an emeritus professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, has penned a book on how and why Australia keeps going to war.

The war game: Australian war leadership from Gallipoli to Iraq starts with a quote from Jonathan Swift: ‘War! That mad game the world so loves to play.’ Then Horner examines the deadly way Australia plays: ‘Warfare certainly has elements of a game: there are two, sometimes several opponents; there are rules, although these are sometimes broken; there are winners and losers; and it becomes addictive.’

What explains the addiction? Why did a nation with its own continent—‘largely remote from countries that might pose a major threat’—go out to fight?

Horner seeks the themes in the nine conflicts: the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesian Confrontation (when Indonesia sought to prevent the formation of the new nation of Malaysia), the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War.

He offers this judgement about the constants that connect the fights:

"Australia has always gone to war as a junior partner in an allied coalition. Its leaders have had little scope to influence allied strategy and their decisions have been unlikely to affect the outcome of the war. The main decisions of Australia’s leaders have been whether Australia should go to war, and the level of commitment to the war."

One big change after World War II is that Australia fights not to decide a war, but to buttress an alliance.

The purpose is to get credit without too many casualties. In the seven conflicts since 1945, Australia’s eyes were on political ends. Our weight was not decisive, since the level of our military commitment was not critical to victory.

Alliance politics shape and drive Australian strategy. The war decision is a culmination, not the start. What Australia did in Vietnam echoes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

‘Like the commitment in Vietnam,’ Horner notes, ‘Australia’s military involvement in the Middle East had grown over the previous dozen years to a point that made it difficult to avoid continuing once the Americans sought further assistance.’

The lesson to draw from Iraq, he writes, is that ‘the US process for going to war was deeply flawed and Australia would be wise to treat any US plan for war with deep suspicion; and Australia should not smugly assume that it might not engage in the same faulty process in the future’.

The calculations in Australia’s war game involve a ruthless realism.

Our leaders sent the military off to what became the failures of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Australia’s military performed well, as failure took a long time to arrive. The alliance prospered.

The voters of Australia have often blessed the alliance politics of their leaders. The commitments are embraced. The failures are regretted and the losses mourned, but the game is repeated.
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unironic collectivist critique: "all ur collective are fall apart"

western collectivism ftw
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