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

To: Bilow who wrote (36811)	8/10/2002 12:57:03 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

All well and good, Carl, but does not address the point I raised, which is what to do if the Chinese do sell SAMs to Al Qaeda. Yes, of course China is a nascent superpower. But China is also the country that walled itself off from the rest of the world for centuries, and now doesn't know how to behave in polite company. Maybe it's because they killed, threw out, or ground under most of the people who make good diplomats. We are fortunate on SI to have amongst us Jay Chen, who read what I wrote here on FADG, and fired off a number of responses on Booms Busts and Recoveries (BBR), starting here: Message 17860439 Message 17860446 Message 17860454 Message 17860458 Message 17860461 Message 17860473 Message 17860491 Message 17860600 Message 17860953 I invited him to join us here, maybe he will.

To: Bilow who wrote (36811)	8/10/2002 2:36:11 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 281500

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. I read somewhere the US space program lacks money not interest.

To: Bilow who wrote (36811)	8/10/2002 2:43:25 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

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