Proud Canadian posted on Monday, June 20, 2011 12:58:15 PM: “Interesting scenario. Except the Chicoms lose their best customer. Their US treasuries are worthless. Their export business is gone. Their economy is toast. Their people starve, rioting and pillaging before they do. Then the US retaliates and wipes them out. Its a lose/lose.”
The problem here is we often think our enemies are more or less like ourselves, with only a few differences.
China currently operates more like a fascist country than like a Maoist or Stalinist state. Think how Hitler would have governed if he’d been satisfied with controlling only Europe through a militarized nation-state centered in Germany with various protectorates around the German heartland, basing his rule on a semi-socialist economy with the government supporting favored capitalists in return for their political neutrality or endorsement. However, given the radical changes in China’s ideology and government over the last four decades, I’m not sure we can presume that its future stability is assured by the development of a wealthy commercial class based on free trade with the West.
The two Bushes and Bill Clinton took a major gamble on their hunch that encouraging the development of a capitalist economy will stabilize China. They may be right — we did, after all, do something similar in Korea, Germany, and Japan — but we did that in countries that we controlled through a history of military occupation in all three cases, twice as the conquerors and once as the ally who saved South Korea, but in all three cases with a population that in the postwar period regarded the United States as the victors whose culture should be emulated.
However, if America’s leaders guessed wrong, we’ve enabled the creation of the world’s largest military and sown the seeds of our own destruction. I seriously question whether capitalist concepts of economic freedom can survive very long without at least some degree of political freedom. If the Chinese government doesn’t figure out how to loosen up its political strangehold on society without
As for North Korea, it is not at all clear that the North Korean leadership is even sane, let alone basing its decisions on a rational evaluation of solid facts. They’re so isolated from the rest of the world that even the most senior leaders may not have basic facts on which to make decisions.
Anyone who thinks North Koreans are purely puppets of China needs to remember that the founder of the Kim dynasty defied both the Chinese and the Soviets to launch his invasion of South Korea. Then, after MacArthur nearly destroyed the North Koreans, the Chinese were forced to intervene on their behalf and restore the Kim family to their de-facto throne in Pyongyang.
Kim and Tito may be the only Communist leaders to defy their masters and survive. With a history like that, I’m not sure we can rely on North Korea to do what China tells them, and I’m not at all convinced that the North Koreans won’t do something totally irrational based on wrongheaded paranoid beliefs about external threats.
If China's economy looks like it will implode soon, the old men who run things will want to figure out a way to hold off collapse for a few years. One way would be to intimidate other countries into paying tribute to China. Get some from India, some from Taiwan, some from Japan. Make some deal with Russia to take over Siberian resources.
We can see it coming soon. An aggressor nation has the advantage of being able to decide when hostilities will commence, and not have to spend on military resources until it's time to prepare to strike. China has shifted from building their economy to enhancing their offensive capabilities. They are building their deep water navy capabilities, and their ability to project power far from their shores.