Posted on 05/18/2006 11:12:08 AM PDT by Paul Ross
Something to dwell on as the confirmation hearings continue on the new CIA chief.
At least outgoing DCIA chief Porter Goss was evidently a realist and "adult" about China...whereas the rest of the Administration, other than the FBI, particularly John Negroponte... appears to be in denial as described above.
Thanks for posting this Paul.
This is happening right now and at the highest levels of the current administration.
It is disconcerting and disillusioning.
This is happening right now and at the highest levels of the current administration. It is disconcerting and disillusioning.
Agreed...it's a form of cognitive dissonance. Where when reality fails to conform to our visualization of it...we rationalize and instead of correcting for the discrepancy in our understanding of the reality, we further delude ourselves.
This erosion of the U.S. ability to political assert self-interest is indeed happening.
Which completely refutes the position that Poohbah always so stridently made here.
Bears emphasis. And should prompt those in a state of complacency to reflect about this...and whether George Washington's Farewell Adress needs to be read before our Congress and President by each and every voter who bothers to write them...
In opposition to the "optimistic" economist Belieu, here is a more depressing, but credible set of reports on China's internal stability...
Ping.
The world economy is moving to the Pacific Rim; we either become players in that economy or convert to the Euro.
For later read.
This seems to be a non-sequitar.
Despite the connection, I think England is fairly well placed to participate if it uses it's relationship with Australia and New Zealand.
I am still curious as to what your comments have to do with this post?
China will be a large player in the Pacific Rim economy.
And how does that relate to this post?
BTTT.
As the military and economic threat of Beijing becomes increasingly apparent, the question arises: were we complicit in creating this communist monster? If we were, what can and must we do now to reverse course?
On complicity, I think we were complicit in creating this communist monstrosity: even now, most of the profits that the PRC receives from its massive international trade are from us. Worse, some of our largest companies are direct collaborators in the repression of the people under Beijing's rule.
As to what to do, I think that the only way to reverse course is to revoke all normal trade relations with the Chicoms. I don't know if that will be sufficient, but I think it is wrong and foolish of us to continue to build Red China up.
Something tells me the writer is more concerned about China's economic threat than the anything. There's no money to be made or power to be wielded worrying about muslim terrorism all the time.
Because we are pushing for that. What if we pushed for a return to sanity instead?
we either become players in that economy or convert to the Euro.
That doesn't follow. The U.S. is the Big Enchilada...and would stay that way if we didn't abdicate our manufacturing supremacy for doctrinnaire ideological reasons...or catering to temporarily more-powerful special interests. Example: England went whole-hog for Free Trade...and thought their economic supremacy would last forever. The Free Traders were, however, proven definitively wrong. Free Trade destroyed their advantages. Some telling observations therein:
"The decline of England has always been a favorite for this kind of analysis. As the prominent commercial lawyer and judge Lord Penzance warned in 1886, "The advance of other nations into those regions of manufacture in which we used to stand either alone or supreme, should make us alive to the possible future. Where we used to find customers, we now find rivals....prudence demands a dispassionate inquiry into the course we are pursuing, in place of a blind adhesion to a discredited theory." The "discredited theory" to which Lord Penzance was referring is "free trade." England had adopted this doctrine when it had a substantial lead in the Industrial Revolution and wanted to open foreign markets for its exports. But as conditions changed, its leaders clung to policies that no longer fit world affairs.
British historian D.C.M. Platt [Finance, Trade and Politics in British Foreign Policy 1815-1914, Oxford University, 1968] has argued that the leaders of Victorian England were so devoted to "free trade" that they were willing to sacrifice their direct interests to this intellectual ideal. Another British historian, Keith Robbins [The Eclipse of a Great Power: Modern Britain 1870-1975, Longman, 1983] has written, "To a few contemporaries, this devotion was perverse. It seemed obvious that the world was not following Britain's Free Trade example. Germany introduced a measure of protection in 1879, France in 1882 and the United States in 1883 and 1900....But there was no British retaliation."
The failure to adapt in a dynamic world is a central weakness of thinking bound by ideology; i.e., the belief that some doctrine is so perfect that it fits all times and places. Such blind faith can lead people to reject another idea they know will work, because it does not fit their misplaced "values."
Empirically, these are just unassailable facts. I further commend to your attention Kicking Away the Ladder: The “Real” History of Free Trade" by Ha-Joon Chang (Prof. Econ, Oxford University). Now on to your other points.
They already do. What's left of the old UK is, however, no longer a preferential enclave. England's ideological conspiracy to keep it locked into free trade...destroyed it as a super power. And will keep it down.
And it is and will do the same to us...as we now stagger economically under a military burden which isn't even half of what Reagan deployed just 26 years ago...
It is also important to stress here what the experts above acknowledge...but John Snow, Sec.Treasury doesn't, that China is not pursuing Free Trade itself. Quite the opposite. But it does insist that WE practice 'Free Trade'...
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