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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| How We Lose against China |
| 2021-01-31 |
| [National Review] The Cold War ended not on the battlefield but inside the Soviet Union. There were no tank maneuvers through the Fulda Gap in Germany, nor was there a nuclear armageddon. Instead, one of the two superpowers faced an internal crisis that shattered its society and its European empire. The Cold War was a global struggle, but its end was a matter of domestic politics. This history has profound implications for our new struggle with China, which has been likened to the Cold War. Experts including me have written many books and essays about Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula, not to mention cyber and space warfare and, as China advances its Belt and Road initiative across Eurasia, the struggle over trade and trade routes. As with the Cold War, we see the struggle with China as unending. We simply can’t imagine a world beyond it. But what if this new struggle were to end as the Cold War did in 1989: with a domestic evolution in either China or the United States that renders one of the two parties unwilling or unable to continue the competition? If we consider this scenario — a domestic conclusion to a global struggle — we of course assume the fatally weakened party will be China. After all, China is a society of increasing totalitarian dimensions, with a growing and increasingly restive middle class sitting atop a mountain of debt that carries the potential of igniting a domestic crisis. With its blend of communism and capitalism, China may not be truly Marxist anymore, yet it is more and more Leninist as its dictatorship suffocates the public space, leaving only the personal sphere for people to express themselves in. And regimes like that don’t end well, as we know from the examples of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. But what if we’re wrong? What if the society that undermines itself first is our own? Why would this come about? Consider that the United States thrived as a modern mass democracy only in the print-and-typewriter era, which lasted roughly through the end of the 20th century. In communications, that age was defined by major newspapers, which published professionally written and researched articles based on a commonly perceived historical experience. Among major media, objectivity and neutral politics were taken for granted, as public schooling and a military draft enforced a common destiny that pushed people toward the political center and away from extremes. Such centrism was seen on early television as well, with the three network anchors differing in style rather than in politics. Moreover, much of the 20th century was a time when travel overseas was largely the domain of the wealthy and immigrants substantially cut ties with their places of origin: Thus they had no choice but to become, in effect, as the late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington put it, honorary Protestants like the rest of us. Despite all our troubles, flaws, and inconsistencies, we were a nation. And this also had much to do with a particular level of technological development that spawned a solid middle-class system, encompassing more than just technology, from one coast to the other. It was this nation that waged the Cold War and did not so much defeat the Soviet Union as outlast it and out-compete it. That nation exists less and less, and principally because the technological context is no longer the same. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #3 The tipping point has nothing to do with material wealth or technical prowess or military might. It's simply a matter of society's will to defend its core beliefs and values. When the Russian elites gave up on Tsarism, the regime collapsed. When French nobles gave up on the court of Versailles and the Old Regime, the French monarchy collapsed. When 1930s-era conservative Catholic and leftist secular Frenchmen agreed that they hated each other more than they hated German aggressors, the fate of France's very formidable and well-led army was sealed. No one knows when or what will trigger America's collapse, but the underlying cause is certain. If we do not mount a ferocious and unstinting counter-attack against the Woke Nihilist assault on our Constitutional republic, our core values, beliefs and precious heritage as heirs of Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton and Lincoln, then we will go down the path of the interwar French and pre-1917 Russians. Woke-ism is far more dangerous to us than any foreign military arsenal or cyber-force or virus or other external threat. Only we can destroy ourselves. Only we can save ourselves. The enemy is here. It is our fellow Woke Americans. |
| Posted by: Jeremiah Unavinter2970 2021-01-31 18:15 |
| #2 How We Lose slowly at first, etc |
| Posted by: Knuckles Hupeck5188 2021-01-31 14:10 |
| #1 The "nation that waged the Cold War and did not so much defeat the Soviet Union as outlast it and out-compete it" no longer exists. After about a year of COVID-19 the USA has still not, for example, eliminated the critical shortage of N95 masks for its health care personnel and for the common folk, and is still dependent on Chinese sources. Had the USA been that careless and irresponsible in 1942, it would have lost WWII. |
| Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 2021-01-31 12:03 |