In your mind, having an army to defend your country like China does is a crime... Better being like Japan that is defenseless against the very people who invaded them and continue there for 75 years.
You don't read my mind well if you think that I am against China defending itself. Most nations have an army for that purpose.
I am against China performing threatening exercises near Taiwan and against China claiming the majority of the South China Sea for themselves when hundreds of millions of other people live on its shores.
Do you understand that it is called "South China Sea" for a reason right? There is no way China can defend itself without controlling their sea. Also Taiwan, although self-governed is literally not an independent country, so defending Taiwan against other countries is literally China's responsibility. That's all distorted by media but true nonetheless.
Clearly Taiwan does not want to be "defended" by China, but is rather desperately asking for defence against China. Also, the international court ruled against China's claim to control everything behind the 9-dash line. It's not true that China needs that line to defend itself - it has done so perfectly well since 1947 without it.
Does India need to control the Indian Ocean in order to defend itself?
What about Mexico, should it control the Gulf of Mexico? Ireland, the Irish Sea? Etc.
And, by the way, as of 2024, you don't really need to control the entire sea (or even half of it) to prevent the enemy from landing on your shores. Any military worth its cost has a large assortment of missiles for that purpose.
Case in point: Ukraine has unambigously denied the Russians (the Russians!) control of the Black Sea while literally having no navy to speak of. By shooting at them from land. That is how it goes.
Taiwan also doesn't rely on its control of the seas to defend itself. Even the Israeli Navy is comparatively weak. Etc.
Taiwan is literally an independent country, although they promote a policy of strategic vagueness about this in hopes that it will discourage China from launching an invasion. The arguments China makes for its ownership of Taiwan are no more defensible, and arguably less, than Portugal's justifications for maintaining ownership of Goa.
The problem is not the army, but military posturing. It can too easily transition into an actual war.
Case in point: Russia. Putin's ratings were falling, and he decided to commit "a small victorious war", based on faulty assumptions. And his assumptions were faulty because all the secret agencies were filled with yes-men who were just telling Putin what he wanted to hear.
That's the problem with the authoritarian regimes: they don't have people who can stop the Dear Leader if the Dear Leader starts seriously believing in conspiracy theories and/or just goes mad with power.
The US starts a new war for posturing every few years. They have the faulty assumption that they can control the world, even as they keep losing wars. So, not a problem unique to Russia.
> The US is not in a real danger of becoming an authoritarian state
So you're saying democrats are lying? They say that may happen by the next election, so at least 50% of the population believes this is possible.
Moreover, from the point of view of foreign policy the US is already an authoritarian state. People have no say on weather to start or stop a war, anymore than the Russians have.
