It is natural that they, like every other large country, expect to get a certain amount of respect. It is natural for them to resist the United States, a country of 1/4 the population, telling them who they will or will not sell their goods to.
Geez Carl... I have always thought that respect must be earned, not coerced. We permit the Chinese economy to sell some $100 Billion worth of goods into our borders, yet we are denied the same right there, resulting in an incredibly large trade deficit between our nations and equating to subsidizaion of their industries.
But we do it out of hope and perserverance that we can change a bunch of octogenerian thugs into becoming more democratic and creating political pluralism in their society. We do this because we know, just as in our own nation, that democracies are loath to expend our blook and treasure and go to war.
But we both sell arms in order to influence other states to depend upon us, in exchange for us having some say in how they run their affairs in the international community. But we're a democracy, and we're trying to create democracies out of their societies in order to lower the threshold of potential aggression and conflict.
But the Chinese have a completely DIFFERENT motivation. They sell arms in order to further insolate themselves from having to democratize. They sell to non-democratic regimes, ruled by small percentages of the population in order to build up a constituency amongst these rogue governments, as to stir up enough trouble so as to distract the US from requiring them to change.
Yes, China will eventually become a superpower by virtue of its economy and the sheer will of its centralized totalitarian leadership. But it will not be a democratic superpower, but rather more of a fascist one. And as a Fascist state, they will seek to subjugate neighboring nations under their influence as "buffers". And that frightens me more than just a tad.
Surely you are under no illusions about the form of superpower status that China is embarked upon... One of perpetual conflict and struggle for dominance against democratic nations.
And btw, your prediction is not particularly startling. After all, didn't the US space program commence in response to the Soviet Union's activities in the arena? Remember the missile gap (that never was).. Or of all the people who witnessed Sputnik circling the earth, but not realizing that if they could launch a satellite into space, they could launch nuclear warheads??
Wouldn't you rather any revitalization of our space program come from mutual benefit to everyone, rather than as the result of a competition to see who can militarize it best?
Hawk |
