Post AnuIW2llUvlVSfk4Ce by Canevecchio@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by Canevecchio@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #AnuE4UVQNhgFYkhmsa by interfluidity@zirk.us
       2024-11-10T16:57:13Z
       
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       one path by which this event may mark the end of the American century is that whatever vestiges of a soft power / aspirational advantage the United States still had over China is lost.if the indispensable nation is going to be a venal autocracy anyway, China may seem a lot more attractive than the United States. alliances and inclinations of the US’ erstwhile foreign partners may quickly reconfigure themselves to that.
       
 (DIR) Post #AnuIW2llUvlVSfk4Ce by Canevecchio@mastodon.social
       2024-11-10T17:46:58Z
       
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       @interfluidity If world domination post-1980 was to be the goal, an alliance with China should have been a no-brainer. Their industrial prowess and export expertise, our global-policing, trade route-securing navy. Concessions freely granted as often as necessary to keep them onside. And later on, when Putin struggled to the top of the Russian dungheap, it wouldn’t have mattered much whether he looked east or west. He’d have been screwed either way. (I’m Canevecchio, and I didn’t endorse this….)
       
 (DIR) Post #AnuJ4NNxM2jdFLycAi by interfluidity@zirk.us
       2024-11-10T17:53:13Z
       
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       @Canevecchio until around Y2K, i don’t think it was obvious that China was the essential rival or partner. but around Y2K, yeah. that’s when the US ought to have been doing some hard thinking about what kind of relationship it wanted to forge with an ascendant China. instead of hard thinking, we adopted a wooly market triumphalism that presumed commerce and development would automatically turn everybody into friends.
       
 (DIR) Post #AnuKUjrSVpGYRBuWh6 by Canevecchio@mastodon.social
       2024-11-10T18:09:08Z
       
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       @interfluidity I agree that 1980 was a little early for all but the truly far-sighted, but then there WAS the precedent of the Nixon/Kissinger danse macabre. Nixon may have just been interested in finding a way to weasel out of LBJ’s quagmire in Vietnam, but I suspect Kissinger had more grandiose aims. Too bad his American enablers were so effing stupid. A Greek amanuensis stuck serving a bunch of pig-ignorant Roman gluttons…. Glad I was a flower child at the time. Saved me a lot of grief.