Posted on 11/12/2005 6:41:36 AM PST by kellynla
The history of the United States is the history of confrontation, even conflict, with the other great powers of the earth.
At the dawn of the 19th century, the young Republic found itself confronted with the two great powers of that world, Britain and France. We fought them both. Everyone knows about the War of 1812, but perhaps we’ve forgotten the quasi-war with France from 1798 to 1800; during those years the U.S. Navy seized some 80 French vessels.
By the beginning of the 20th century, America had made its peace with Britain and France—although many in London, as late as the 1860s, would have been delighted to see Washington lose the Civil War—but the U.S. soon found itself in wars hot and cold, against Germany, then Japan, then Russia.
Now, in the 21st century, the looming great powers are China and India. So if history is our guide—and it should be—we can expect forthcoming collisions with those countries as well. Of course, most Americans today are preoccupied with the Muslim Middle East, but our fight with Islam does not alter the challenges posed by the “twin pillars” of Asia—nations that might well possess economic outputs equivalent or even superior to the U.S. by mid-century. Yet at the same time, those two pillars will no doubt contend with each other, as well as with secondary nuclear powers such as Pakistan.
So America’s grand strategy for the next century should be twofold, First, we must recognize that rising powers inherently bring rising threats. Second, such rising powers should be balanced, played off each other, and not directly confronted. Why? Because the cost of American participation in nuclear-era world war, for any reason less than national survival, is simply too great.
(Excerpt) Read more at amconmag.com ...
Interesting
Ping!
Understanding is coming in fits and starts...
Trade is not a national security issue.
Really.
Tell that to the British, whose empire fell because British industry could not meet the needs of the British military in two world wars.
Tell that to the Spanish, whose empire fell because they could not maintain command of the seas and pay their armies because they thought gold was the only form of wealth.
Tell that to the Byzantines, whose empire fell because they let the Venetians and Genoese take over their trade and to whom they outsourced control of the seas.
Child, if history has anything to teach us it is that the industrial superpower of today is the military and financial superpower of tomorrow. If history has anything to teach us it is that trying to base great power status on finance the way the Dutch and the British ended up doing just doesn't work.
It's James Pinkerton, you expected more?
IMO wherever Chinese officials go, they should be picketed and hassled by pro democracy protesters.
"Trade is not a National Security issue?"
so you wouldn't mind giving the Chicoms our missle, submarine and other military technology?
ya, might want to rethink your position...
oh, and BTW while the Chicoms are selling their junk at Walmart, Target et al...employees who work there instead of the manufacturing plants issue. who used to make those products are now making minimum wages and signed up for food stamps just so they can afford to purchase groceries where they work...
Let me also remind you that ONE THIRD OF THE TRADE DEFICIT is with the Chicoms.
Lenin's "sell them enough rope and capitalists will hang themselves" theory was incomplete. As China may have figured out, you have to sell them the rope on credit to really hang the little piggies high (or, at the very least, to keep the protectionist wolves at bay).
The Auerbach Report
9/13/2003
blush ... I won't in the future. ;)
Something similar was done in the 20th century. The USA decided there was only 1 industry we needed to defend ourselves against China, and then launched a conscious nontechno-industrial policy to make sure this single vital industry remains offshore throughout China. Today any citizen of China can go to McDonald's, or KFC or Baskin-Robbins or Domino's Pizza and eat junk food bombs courtesy of America. China is being westernized with ever bite out of a Big Mac. In effect the showdown has already occurred. The USA knocked China right on their Woks.
This part is scarey:
From George Soros on the Left to Bill Clinton in the center to George W. Bush on the Right, it is a given that the U.S. will administer more than six billion people—their politics, their trade zones, their human-rights practices, their baby-whale protections. How could this not be?
We already have that posted here: A Plan to Save American Manufacturing
I'm so glad you mentioned Germany and Russia.
Germany got all the trade it wanted. To what end Carnack?
Russia didn't get the trade it would have liked? To what end Carnack?
Geez, wake up and smell the sell-out to China. We are financing their rise to global player. We are creating the next Germany and Japan.
It was wise of you to have posted the whole article. When you hit the link you provided to this article...it's gone.
No, it's George Soros on the left fringe, Bill Clinton mired in the marxist left and George Bush slipping ever further left of Center.
Too long a read, excess verbiage etc etc.
Well put.
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