The problem is that China does not want to become the US, they want to become colonial great Britain or France. The goal is classic mercantilism-all raw material have to go through them to become a product. It's barely disgused Manchester allover.
The US by comparison has been quite dedicated to free trade. They abandoned there own production base, imported more culture then they exported and overall been quite friendly an empire.
> The US by comparison has been quite dedicated to free trade. They abandoned there own production base, imported more culture then they exported and overall been quite friendly an empire.
Yes they friendly helped install military dictatorships in Latin American countries. They friendly invaded Iraq under false pretenses. They friendly waged wars and used economic sanctions against countries that for on reason or another didn't conform to their dominant position.
Don't misunderstand me. The US has the power to oppress, and is an opressor. It is business as usual. Just cut the crap of calling it "friendly".
Relatively speaking it's undeniable that the US has been the most "friendly" "empire" or "super power" in World history. That doesn't mean it's never done anything wrong.
I don't know how friendly or unfriendly previous empires were, so I'd like to read up more on it, but I honestly don't know what keywords I'd look for. Asking the one who made the claim for references seems like the best way for me to understand their comment better. Why do you expect me to provide arguments counter to theirs?
You want to look out for border regions, the small nations were other empires ended and went back and forth. You look for civil wars (empire lovers VS suppressed), cultural extinction attempts and empire imitators.. Aka small nations behaving atrocious to remain free by mimicry.. Sift through history and you get to know alot of empires that were and are worser.
I'd say the US is a hegemon but not really an Empire except for a few small islands. They've also made some terrible mistakes such as Vietnam and the 2nd Gulf War. The way the US prosecuted the Korean war was also inexcusable, although I think that one did need to be fought. Let's add some appalling interventions in South America while we're at it.
On the other hand the 1st Gulf War was unavoidable, and overall with the exception of the 2nd Gulf War over the last 40 years they've more or less tried to do the right thing. Today it's widely recognised across parties in the US that 2GW was a mistake. Still, since WW2 they've sunk vast resources into guaranteeing Western European security, and spent Trillions guaranteeing global freedom of navigation that's benefited everybody.
They've been aggressive economically, true, but that's a whole massive deal better than being aggressive militarily and overall global trade in the last 70 years has had incredible benefits. Global poverty has collapsed to a tiny fraction of what it was, the middle class has risen from about 5% to about 60% of the world population, life expectancy rates have soared. Death rates from war have collapsed. The stats on that are up on the last decade it's still historically low. The majority of this happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
What Russia and China want to do is take the world back to a cold war situation of vying spheres of geographic influence. What the US wants to do is get out of the world police business while maintaining a peaceful global order conducive to business. So we have Russia and China flexing their territorial military muscles, while the US builds networks of alliances such as an expanded NATO, AUKUS, the Quad and such to better share the load.
I say alliances, but for the latter US strategy to succeed it eventually needs to include nations that are not traditional US allies. India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, even places like Vietnam. These will or may never align with the US and Europe the way the US and Europe do, so such relationships will have to be transactional in nature. Partnerships rather than true alliances, based on common interests around eliminating the scope for military expansionism that favours big regional military hegemons.
So sure, a lot of past mistakes for sure, but the question for us now is where does the world go from here?
It's a shame I can't reply to sand_castles directly.
Countries freely choosing to allow allies to put military bases on their territory, generally with wide public support such as in Germany, Japan, and many others, is hardly colonialism.
Every country that has joined NATO did so with public support, even massive public enthusiasm. Public support is actually a requirement to join.
Do Indians and Chinese somehow not count? Both have benefited staggeringly from the global trade system built and secured by the US and it's allies.
On building alliances "and which 2 countries is pushing to bring about that change ?"
Russia and China have a tiny number of genuine military allies at most. NK and Myanmar for China, a few 'stans and Belarus for Russia. All of them horrific brutal dictatorships in their own right. Everybody else anywhere near them loathes their guts, even Vietnam in the case of China, but are sometimes so dependent or weak there's not much they can do about it.
>You cannot just wash away mistakes made in the past, there will always be blow back.
Agreed. America's mistakes will continue to haunt it for decades to come.
An interesting observation is that China is following the exact same economic/international-relations path the US did.
1. Become a global economic superpower (US 1910s, 20s)
2. ??? (US 1930s, 40s)
3. Military-industrial complex emerges and captures politicians (US 1950s)
4. Political leaders then begin looking at military capabilities and questioning why it isn't being used for military interventionalism (US 1960s)
5. Military interventionalism shows its flaws through failed post-intervention nation-building, and decreases appetite for intervention (US 1970s, 80s, 90s)
In the US case, step 2 was WWII, which was somewhat unavoidable.
In the Chinese case, I think it remains to be seen how steps 2-4 go.
Absent an external war they're forced to become involved in, I could see step 2 being a popular consequence of whipping up nationalistic fervor to boost government support... and then that populist tail wagging the CCP dog and compelling military action when a crisis breaks out (e.g. Taiwanese independence declaration or naval incident in the South China sea).
>Military-industrial complex emerges and captures politicians (US 1950s)
So far China has completely avoided this. The military is very firmly under Party control.
>Military interventionalism shows its flaws through failed post-intervention nation-building
Germany, Japan and South Korea have been fantastic successes in nation building. Sure there have been failures too, most recently in Afghanistan.
For China, their annexation of Tibet is going fine as is their ethnic hegemonisation there and in other regions. North Korea is an embarrassment, but eh.
Dictatorships must continuously work to maintain their legitimacy. This means they need to justify denying freedoms and opportunities to their own population enjoyed in other nations. They can do that by painting foreign nations as being horrible failures but with international travel and many citizens having friends or family living in those nations, that's not viable long term.
You're quite right. That leaves external threats which require such measures, with the added bonus of painting internal dissatisfaction with the government as disloyalty and betrayal. So for Russia, utter nowheres like Ukraine and Georgia have to be dire threats to Russia's security, so intervention can stop them succeeding where Russia failed. The Taiwan situation has to be escalated, and territorial claims in the South China Sea pushed in order to manufacture tensions that justify internal repression.
> The [Chinese] military is very firmly under Party control.
The point about the military-industrial complex capturing politicians isn't about control, but rather excess procurement.
On the one hand, China has a long way to reach parity with the US. On the other hand, they're building extremely quickly, and that means lots of government money going to corporations.
Subsequent restrictions to that funding flow tend to be when the system pushes back.
> Germany, Japan and South Korea have been fantastic successes in nation building.
These are all nation re-building efforts: they existed as economically and politically strong entities before the respective wars.
> The Taiwan situation has to be escalated, and territorial claims in the South China Sea pushed in order to manufacture tensions that justify internal repression.
I don't pretend to understand China's calculus with either.
With enough shore-based facilities, they can counter the US Navy.
But as soon as there's a shooting war over either, China is the aggressor to international order (Taiwan's sovereignity and maritime law), Chinese international trade evaporates (in terms of both exports and raw material imports), and their economy crashes.
So the only Chinese winning move, to me, looks like saber rattling right up to the brink, but making sure it never boils over.
Which was always the China-in-the-WTO argument -- addict them to the benefits of international trade, such that offending the global order would mean slitting their own economic throat.
So long as China knows that's their only winning move that's fine, but especially given Xi's tendency to shoot the messenger and pack his administration with barely competent yes men we have no idea what he 'knows'.
> I'd say the US is a hegemon but not really an Empire except for a few small islands
This is the ruse. The US is a global empire. Except, as history has shown, imperialism is somewhat unpopular to local populations. The US modern imperialism playbook is designed so the population really believes they are self governing themselves. The US doesn’t care who runs the day to day domestic government, so long as they have military bases, are the primary trading partner, and effectively direct this countries foreign and economic policies unilaterally. The fact you think the American empire is limited to a few vestigial takings from the pacific theater of wwii shows how effective this modern and silent hegemony really is.
The actual desires and interests of actual citizens, even in vibrant democracies with changes of elected government and free speech, don't count. Nice.
Its by design. Military is a separate entity from domestic elected government the world over. If you know anyone who is in the leadership side of the military or in the state dept, its very interesting having conversations learning about how these agencies view the world and how actual power is manifested.
Frankly it's bullshit. The Putinist narrative that democracy is a sham makes sense for a man isolated from the real world that doesn't use the internet, but it's stunning to me how disconnected some people in the west can be from the society they live in.
I have family in the British military at a moderately high level. A friend was a researcher for an MP, and another a government adviser. Sure politics is messy, it's the art of the possible and expedient. Of course it's not ideal, but as the saying goes Democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others. You're never going to get perfect, the best you can get is consensus and the consent of the governed. We have that.
I revile Trump, but he did do one thing for us. He proved that US democracy is real. All the Washington consensus clubbyness was pushed aside, corporate capture and bought influence were bulldozed over. None of the establishment wanted him, but he's what we got through a massive grass roots movement. He was an utter disaster, but it was a genuine demonstration of democracy in action.
Trump is case in point of the two government system between elected power and longstanding unelected power that remains between elections. He was just a loud mouthpiece to appease his political base basically. He, like presidents before him, did not do anything substantial to buck the steady march of the us hegemony. He was not unilaterally making any decisions. There is a lot of business in government and in military that the president is never briefed in. We like to think presidents are like a Napoleon figure, charismatic and in full control, but government would be so unstable if that were to be true and to turn over every four years. They are simply the presiding spokesperson of the hegemony, which is too large and well incentivized for the status quo for any one individual to meaningfully influence.
Basically the parties and individual politicians have their own political areas of intention and aspiration, which all overlap with each other. What actually ends up happening is 90% within the overlap area. But that's just because there's a broad consensus in the country, both among the electorate and among the politicians they elect.
In other words the people elect politicians that align with their desires and intentions. And that's a bad thing because.... help me out here.
I don't see how a choice between A or B, both neoliberals, can possibly best represent the opinions of 350 million. Thats basically our two party system though. You might be forgetting things like COINTELPRO.
But there is no coercion here, they are the largest trading partner because they make a lot of great stuff. "Empire" comes with implied negative connotations, but it's a win-win for everyone within this particular "empire".
Imagine you are a small island nation reliant on imports from american companies and american foreign aid and attempt to violate US imposed sanctions on another state. You’d probably lose your seat of power before long from the resulting social unrest from being economically isolated from the US and all her allies. US might even back an upstart power against you with money or arms or paramilitary training.
> The US doesn’t care who runs the day to day domestic government, so long as they have military bases, are the primary trading partner, and effectively direct this countries foreign and economic policies unilaterally.
This is more or less also how the Roman Empire operated.
This is just false, there is little evidence to suggest anything of the kind. China wants to secure its imperial borders (Tibet, Xinjiang) as a show of national pride, and it wants to ensure the security of its people by making sure the islands in front of the mainland can't be used to stage an attack and the SCS cannot be blockaded by the US. American senators and generals proudly proclaim they have the power to starve the Chinese with a blockade in the SCS or block access to the Pacific - it is only natural for China to not want to be in that situation.
None of the actions China resembles European colonialism.
There is actually some truth to that. China has very poor access to the ocean, so they are pretty easy to blockade. But this is true even if they can successfully colonize the South China Sea. There are just way too many countries around that part of the world who aren’t in China’s corner, who are mostly afraid of China after being invaded by it for thousands of years.
I think there is a bit of a difference whether the massacre happened in the 1860 or 1960, and whether the last larger massacre of protestors happened in 1970 and is generally, officially and publicly recognized as a bad thing with memorials etc. [1], or whether it happened in 1989, involved tanks and hundreds to thousands of deaths, and people are persecuted for even mentioning it.
Well, when Mao was doing his great leaps, American citizens had to literally had to march in the streets for basic civil rights. Again, not exactly a clean record.
Glass houses and stones and all that.
Point is, in the living memory of most people on the earth, i.e. people below 30, the only wars waged against non-neighbors have been Americans invading Iraq and Afghanistan. So from the place most non-Americans stand, America is a belligerent and irresponsible power.
What someone did in 1960 is important and can't be glazed over, but as a 30 year old, it's hard to understand and even harder to contextualize. But Iraq and Afghanistan is fresh enough in everyone's memory, to the point that I remember the headlines about the fake WMDs and the numbers about civilian deaths.
Very true and I’d also add something about ongoing effects. For example, while it’s true that the United States isn’t massacring native Americans in open combat right now, a 30 year old is going to have seen at least news about tribal poverty rates, broken promises about things like water rights or development, and the national guard working at the behest of oil companies to remove protesters who don’t want pipelines running through tribal lands. (Repeat for the heavy-handed response to black people protesting against police brutality, etc.)
That’s not the same as Tiananmen square but it’s far more visceral lived experience for anyone under 45.
Can you for one moment be not west centric? Ignoring tschetschenia , georgia, Ukraine, first Afghan invasion, the uighurs, the Tibetan, mount karabach, kashmir, Syrian proxy wars, Serbs vs Bosniaks, Yemen and all those funny little conflicts the lesser empires engaged in the last 30 years.
They did not always go medieval, but did so only because the US would deter the worst.
The US is not the center of the universe and lots of influence sphere pushing goes down in lots of backyards.
There is a difference between doing it on purpose (ie: evil) and doing it by mistake (ie: gross incompetence). The outcome is the same but the comparison is still not valid. One cannot be corrected, the other has a chance of being corrected.
This seems to be what's happening today. China has moved on and is now on track to become the world's first economy (at least by size) and the US is still the war mongerer it always was.
That may be perspective of US person with desperate need for feel-good. Hundreds of millions of people who have seen their lives destroyed by US military-industrial complex directly, or by CIA et al power games, be if communism scare, russian scare or now China scare would strongly disagree.
Also that abandoning it own production base was not action of some goodwill, rather just greedy cost optimization which is now deeply regretted and as much as possible reverted back.
I do get this is US forum so opinions are strongly biased towards one side, and I personally am very happy with current US hegemony, but lets be a bit honest here. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin america coups, African coups. CIA starting arab springs and ie war in Syria. The blood trail of innocents is more like amazon river during height of monsoon, all around the world. Now look at China. Not really comparable, is it.
The US by comparison has been quite dedicated to free trade. They abandoned there own production base, imported more culture then they exported and overall been quite friendly an empire.