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

To the extent that US practice impoverishes it's own people, it is in decline. The more wealth is concentrated, the more rigidly maintained those mechanisms for concentration, the less the nation as represented by it people can be great. That seems to be the way it works in America.

But if "the west" had its origin in the Ancient Greeks, stories of decline are nativist entertainment. Even talk of hegemons is misguided.



Science isn't uniquely western, but I do think the eastern approach is destructive of scientific knowledge. Which, by the way, means China IS Darth Vader. "Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the [East]."

That technological terror, though, that's what enabled all those people in poverty in China to be "lifted" to less absolute a poverty. China did it. With the tools of global interconnectedness.

I don't think China can sustain as productive, and terrible, an empire as the US and the Europeans have done. For better or worse, we'll be poorer, and dumber, and saddled with duller entertainment, under the Chinese thumb. It'd actually be bizarre if somehow western crisis collectivism somehow didn't respond to being so bored.


That's probably one of the stronger reasons China keeps trying to separate western powers. Don't trust the US, don't be led by others, you're in decline, know your place. It's telling just how miserable the Chinese approach to other powers is.


The "decline" of the US is the "rise" of China inasmuch as the condition described by US "decline" is kind of an ideal world. That "rise" isn't a rise to prominence of glorious, what achievement? It's a settling at a lower level.


Papermaking, printing, gunpowder and the compass. Anything else over "5000" years? What were the social and cultural achievements? Pottery?

Seriously, why is it going to be a better world for most people?

That's to say, since Chinese appear mostly to undermine, not build up, the world, their's is not a "rise".

You need to revisit China.  Yes, it has build some intersting weapons, but that's been the case of all countries with advance science.  You conveniently skip over the fact that China is putting larger efforts into not only civilian use technology, but also into basic research.  No one's going to weaponize the world's largest radio telescope any more than NASA's Hubble and Web Telescopes.  Your Darth Vader reference is amusing, but misguided.

Weapons didn't lift people out of poverty.  Improved agricultural techniques and improved economic opportunities for the impoverished did.

You really should do some research on more recent Chinese technological developments.  Check the US Patent Office to see how many patents Huawei and BOE got last year.  Check the amounts of scientific and medical data shared in major journals.  Then come back and try to pretend that paper was the last "worthy" item invented in China.


I'm a space fanatic.  I'll let you in on a little secret I figured out watching China's space program.  The time lags between the first few crewed launches drove me bonkers.  WHY WHY WHY wouldn't they launch faster?  Outside hate is strong too.  Every time China accomplishes something in space, it gets attacked as copied, will fall apart in 10 seconds, a piece of a Death Star (or a Force focusing weapon if you like), and allegedly proves that there's a brand new SPACE RACE.  Stop and think.  If it really was all copied, China could never pass the US, so the US already won the race before starting.  If it was all going to fall apart in 10 seconds, it could never win the race or make a useful weapon.  But the critical secret is . . .

China is NOT racing the US in space.  China's space plans are laid out long in advance and progress is at a stately pace to help avoid bad things like the Apollo 1 fire.

Similarly, China isn't trying to be economically bigger than the US.  China is growing its economy to help it's own people and helps other economies grow which provides more trade opportunities which helps its economy grow more.  If China's population was only 50 million, the same economic growth rates from impoverished towards prosperity would not have even ruffled the feathers of US hawks.  China will continue to try to grow in a fast, but stable fashion whether the US economy doubles tomorrow or falls into Great Depression II tomorrow.

China wants to progress.  If it can do this in beneficial cooperation with others, great.  If not, China will march on anyway.  Happily for China, the majority of nations (including the USA) seem more than willing to continue economic cooperation.

Sadly, at current rates, I think we're about 20 years from China and India having to provide massive foreign aid to keep Americans from starving.

Again with the idealism?

"we've entered a new phase of miserable great power relations, and it behooves us all to stop talking the bullshit of the previous phase"

That was me being idealistic, I guess.

the polarisation that goes together with this "debate" is too warlike. if I were to be idealistic, I'd say alienating talk is a sign of talk refused. If "discussion" leads to "sides", someone knows about the middle way and doesn't want it. War is too expensive really to imagine that the profit of warmongers is enough to make it happen. So however complex international relations are, if people can't get it together to get together, then after a while, just fuck it. let's do a war. Finding deep states or nefarious multinationals behind conflict is fine. Why not have someone profit from the mess. But, idealistically, it's people who can unfuck this situation, and its people who don't, so let's just do what the people want. It'll be fine. It's too much work to keep saying the west has to be contrite or the west has to keep China from losing her shit and blowing up an island. Fuck them. Let em do it. Shoot back for a bit. Don't listen to the negative nancies. War isn't that bad, not really. Because, seriously, do you really have anything better to be doing? Enough with the shooting holes in water.

Let me think.  Try to promote good ideals vs. spreading hate and beating the drums of war.  The ideals I was taught in America don't jive with American actions, historical or recent.

If you don't understand the power of corporate profits and wars, you should study what the US was up to in Central America between the wars.  If you don't understand the power of the US military manufacturers, you should look up Eisenhower's speech about the Military Industrial Complex and also check to see which corporations regularly make massive campaign donations to hawkish candidates.

Have you even been following weapons shipments to the Ukraine.  First the US got it's Eastern EU allies to send all their old Soviet gear.  Then they got their allies across Europe to send all other old gear.  How's NATO supposed to do whatever it is NATO does unless it replaces all that old gear.

Now they've worked their way up to newer items and are sending those just fast enough so that Russia can advance in some areas and be pushed back in others.  Both sides retain hope of victory, keep fighting, and keep expending ammo and weapons.

Kindly tell me why the mighty and powerful Oz USA and NATO would do it this way instead of sending stuff as fast as they can train the Ukrainians how to use it (and why not send LOTS more things they do not to use continuously)?  How does "Drain Russia as try as possible so that it can't possibly regain economic or military power any time soon AND drain NATO of as many items as possible so the US defense manufacturers will have a great time "helping" them restock over the next few years" strike you?  The US is ready to fight Russia with every drop of Ukranian blood and reap financial benefits (including sending natural gas to Europe at special extra high war rates) in the process.

But, the Ukraine might decide to offer the Donbas region up to save a lot of lives and the US would have a hard time preventing this, so it's time to provoke China and beat the drums of war in SE Asia.  "Hey Japan, Australia, and S. Korea!  See if you can also provoke China.  We've got your back, and we'll give you a few percent off on some overpriced weapons to show you how important you are.  Just ignore us trading more and more with China while we try to convince you that China will eat you unless you kneel before the US flag."


Before the "All things of China are evil" campaign was embraced, America was perfectly OK dealing with China despite various disagreements.  America still deals with China while trying to convince other countries not to (even selling coal to make up for China not buying Australian coal).

The optimal US play is to push one or more nearby countries into a "small" war with China, throw up a few sanctions, and sell a lot of weapons (but not so many to result in a quick resolution) while bragging about how helpful the US is being.

Unfortunately, the more likely scenario is the US getting drawn in and then what would have been a "good for TV ratings war" turns into a serious conflict massive casualties and a large chance of going nuclear.  Maybe you think that's fun, but non-psychopaths disapprove of blowing up cities.

The world would be safer if the US took a vacation from Asia.