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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (36762)	8/10/2002 4:02:30 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi CobaltBlue; Re: "Don't know about you, but as the mother of a fuzzy-faced 17-year-old boy, I am not in a forgiving mood. They won't let me take up arms myself, so my only weapon is my word." (1) China is a country of about a billion people. 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. The United States is somewhat outraged when China tells the US how much and what weapons the US can sell to Taiwan. The reverse operation undoubtedly grates just as much on the Chinese. (2) What's holding China back from being a first class world power right now is economics. But that is something that will inevitably slowly change. If you truly want to minimize the odds of the US getting involved in a long term pissing match with the Chinese, it would be best to recognize the Chinese for the eventual superpower they will be. The same applies to Russia, and to Europe. (3) As far as what will really happen between the US and China, I will make a somewhat startling prediction. The Chinese are working very hard on a space program. When it becomes clear that the Chinese are planning to land a man on Mars or to colonize the moon, this fact will revive the US space program in competition. This is the form of competition that the great powers should be playing against each other. And with military force becoming more and more useless in terms of suppressing guerilla conflict, it is inevitable that the great powers will slowly switch to competing with each other on science and exploration. This switch has already slowly been happening. For both the US and the USSR, the military allies are drags on the economy. (This is most obvious when considering stuff like the Soviet Union's subsidies to Cuba, or the US's bankrolling of Vietnam or Israel.) The US won the race to the moon, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union the manned space program collapsed as well. But who knows, China may bring new life to that program. -- Carl