you all don’t get it. this is a war.
remember what led up to the bombing of pearl harbor? is was americans unwilling to allow japanese access to raw materials...energy to be specific.
China is making a power play. actually this is not their first. one after another. they are threatening to sell american debt. they are buying up japanese debt to run up their currency. now they are blocking japanese imports.
This is not a benign series of events. this is war. they know obama and japan and know they can get away with it. they are thinking once they have all these things in place...a republican congress or presidency will not have the balls to reverse it. and they are probably correct.
To do so would require not less than 4 civil(ish) wars.
1. christian vs muslim in europe
2. mexican vs american in north america
3. capitalist vs communist in europe
4. liberal vs conservative in america
5. pro america vs anti america in europe
6. america vs europe
This time it’s China that is out to create the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
I disagree with the point of this statement. Your statements sounds like the embargo on business with the Japanese in the Thirties was in a vacuum, just because the USA was racist and picking on the poor undeserving Japanese. It wasn't.
It was because Japan invaded an ostensible ally of ours and was brutally occupying Manchuria, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (Nanking) spreading into China and finally, when it entered French Indochina, the US did what it SHOULD have done, slapped an embargo on various strategic materials.
What is going on here is a territorial issue where the aggressor (CHINA) does not have a legal claim to the areas it was forcibly attempting to fish in, even though it feels like it has a historical claim. It was doing this to provoke an issue, to give it an excuse to tighten the screws because it CAN. Then the aggressor (CHINA) slaps a punitive embargo on the country defending itself (JAPAN) and its legally verified interests. (The rest of the world RECOGNIZES Japan's claim to the waters, not China's)
Note that I don't disagree with your end result, it is the invoking of America as the CAUSE of Pearl Harbor, when in actuality, it was the JAPANESE who CAUSED Pearl Harbor, both in lead-up and in deed.
But again, you are right. Anyone who thought the Communists would behave any differently (because they wore the mask of capitalism in order to make money) was deluding themselves. They are Communists, and they are all about tyranny and naked power.
This is what makes the pathetic, slobbering Communist China admirers like Thomas Friedman particularly offensive to me.