After reading this I realize it's a long post, and there's much in it about the place of the US v China on the global stage. In my opinion it's not a political piece nor a versus piece, but because politics play such an important role in preventing and causing wars politics are addressed in it, though imo those parts sum to a point relevant to this thread. It's an assumption of one country vs another, as the two likely major world players will be these two countries in the near future. I want to point out that I don't say that one country is “better” than another, because I think my opinion of that is irrelevant; what will be relevant will be the opinions of the people who shape policy in the future and those who control or elect them, and the views of those people will be shaped by politics. I think it describes the fundamentals behind the likely mistrust by America of Chinese designs as well as the fear of American designs by the Chinese, and it is a supplemental to my last post and a response (and further explanation) to Sampan.
Unless China suddenly did a total volte face and followed a path of aggressive militarism, I see no impetus for any nation to mount any kind of campaign against China worthy of the name.
The day will surely come when the PRC will no longer be outsource heaven, but that day is still a very very long way off and China still has vast territories and populations to open up and bring online.
Any attempt of ideological boycott would be; for the foreseeable future, doomed to fail as companies want to invest in China and want to buy the products that China makes. They will do whatever has to be done to be able to do so.
A rapidly developing country with a population set to approach 1.5 Billion over the next few decades has a momentum of its own and an internal market which will soon dwarf all others. It is also the engine of growth for entire regions and these too are already an effective hedge against weak demand in the West.
To Rip
Countries which adhere to strict and narrow ideologies and which are unable to learn the lessons of others and unable to recognise and adopt the good ideas of others are at a serious disadvantage to those that can and do.
Pride and Madness often go before a fall and delusions of divinity is a prime symptom of the condition.
I suppose this relates to the possibility of WW3 in the sense that often when a great power falls it falls with a bang. If it does, and even if it dies with a whimper, new great powers often try to carve up the fruits of its empire. However, the assumption that America will "fall" is misguided, imo, because America isn't an empire in the classic sense, and when we use history to predict the future we're judging the inevitability of the American fall by the classical sense. We're also judging the inevitability of the Chinese rise by the rises of previous powers, though I believe doing so does the PRC a favor by omitting the fate of the Soviet Union, the only great communist power of which history gives us an example.
Regardless of whether it should be classified as an empire, America doesn't “rule” with an Iron fist. It's a nation with great posture and influence, and a decade ago it was beloved for its blessings, though it has recently sinned greatly. Those blessings haven't vanished they've only been obscured. Even the war in Iraq, which is the event that turned the world view of America from unquestionably positive to unquestionably negative, is now looked upon by the American people, their intellectual establishment (which writes doctrine as well as history) and their government as a failure from which to learn. So if in 30 years the world has two runaway superpowers with differing ideologies I do think there
could be sides taken, and that could spell the beginnings of another cold war.
I think the choice for individual countries, in the event of a cold war between the PRC and the US, will be more greatly colored by ideology than it was during the Cold War. If it is indeed a choice between which country you want to “rule” the world in the way America does now, would you, as the policy maker of a country side with the PRC instead of America?
Consider this. For now, China seems generous and amoral (not to be confused with the word “immoral”) which many countries like, but I very much doubt it will continue to be so as it gets more and more powerful. China has 1+ billion people, each of whom is getting richer (on average not in practice). This means each Chinese will be demanding more and more products, which will mean a need for more and more resources. China will have a need for American-like influence, but on a scale that grows greater with each rise in GDP. In essence, China will need to stop giving and start taking.
On the other hand would be America. With a population less than half a billion, America we be an extremely uncrowded country with great natural resources. Exports will become more relevant to the US economy as the rest of the world gets richer. Which one of these countries will have a greater need for the individual freedoms of people across the world? If China needs the stuff in your ground and America needs the stuff in your pocket, which one do you think would be more aggressive toward you?
America likes to influence governments toward economic freedoms and democratically-aligned systems of government. Though that may seem like it's trying to make the world in its image I think many countries will recognize that America doesn't own freedom and freedom doesn't necessarily look like America. Furthermore, it is a society that has thrived with freedoms and it is certainly a vindicated model and viable option.
How this relates to the thread is that the rise of the rest, as Fareed Zakaria termed the effects of globalization, is in a large part the product of an American effort to effect it. American goods are expensive and the mainland is very far away from just about everywhere, so developing markets in other countries to help them become rich enough to buy American goods is central to American economic policy. An American president traveled to China to normalize relations and began trade with it in the 70s. Some decried America's exploitation of the Chinese to gain access to a cheap source or labor,
but look at what China gained from that transfer of wealth. However, a country like China will be so populated and so rich in minerals that it won't need the rest of the world to be as developed as it is in order to prosper – that is, it won't need more people only more resources.
This is why in the long run a Chinese superpower is a terrifying prospect to America, one which the US will likely see as a threat not to its status (which is an abstraction) but to the lives, liberties, and pursuit of happiness of its people. It will also be a threat to the legacy America believes it has left for its species. Basically, America is concerned about China because China has so much potential; and America doesn't trust the designs of the party to uphold the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the individual. This isn't because America is paranoid but because the PRC's party has a very poor track record (extending into today) in these areas. The PRC's party also has little incentive to change these practices.
So will there be tensions between China and the US? Yes. Does one need the other more than it needs security from the others designs? No, and that's why the possibility of a war between them will remain, imo, until one of them falls or they both become so intertwined that their common interests merge. I hope sanity is maintained by ours and future generations and we come together to the point where harming each other is tantamount to harming ourselves, but this thread is about the other option... you know, the fun one with the guns and the tanks and the pew pew=p
Also, I want to point out that, in response to Tony's assertion that the US controls the world, I don't believe it does. It has influence not control, and from a moral perspective I think that's an important distinction.
