DJS: Competition is a good thing. We shall see what this symbiotic Russian/Chinese deal can do. These two are playing nice together right now; that's got to be great for the planet in the long run - assuming world domination militarily speaking isn't on the horizon! Then it could get ugly.
There's a saying in Aussie politics: "Today a rooster, tomorrow a feather duster."
Which highlights the way that political change can be very fast. However, attempting to analyse the situation, it think it could be argued that neither Russia or China are very much interested in attempting to dominate the world by building 900+ military bases all over the world (grin-and I'm sure you will get my joke). I've spent six years attempting to understand Chinese history and thought, so I just may see it a little clearly. I found early that I could not study China in isolation.** So I've also had to spend some time looking at surrounding political units and their thinking.
I'm not sure if Americans get the idea that other people may think differently. Russia, is the inheritor of Byzantine thought and culture, and once you understand that, its all a bit clearer. As far as China is concerned, I suggest they are far more likely to use the traditional Chinese method of building alliances with surrounding states (which is what is happening with Russia) than to seek world domination.
But to me, there is a delicious irony in the way that they are using 19th century European arguments, to trade their way to wealth. We could look back to history to see examples of previous Chinese stategies to build wealth, and I'm still thinking how appropriate that may be, or whether the labels of the past are just being used to explain something new.***
The worst thing you can do though, is believe your own propaganda. (Even the communists knew that.****) So can I ask you, was Teddy Roosevelt's concept of American Expansionism, different to world domination?
And, is the American policy of using sanctions to attempt to alter state behaviour very different to the Christian concept of ex-communication, etc?
Anyway, this is getting too reflective, so I'll stop there.
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** And, by the way, western propaganda notwithstanding, no East Asian nation has ever been isolationist. Its true that in the 19th C, they closed their borders to Europeans, but study each act of closure and you find that bad behaviour on the part of Europeans was at the root of the closure.
*** btw, there's a very interesting paper by a Chinese scholar, that looks at contemporary American methods of attempting to control the world, through the lens of the Chinese tributary system. Seen through that lens, we can understand a lot about contemporary Australian politics.
**** My GAYXJW friend, when he was a witness, converted an East German refugee - that had been granted refugee status in OZ- He had been a member of the Central Committee of the East German Communist Party. At Party school, they were taught. "Don't believe our own propaganda." I always thought it so ironical that he escaped East Germany, and then spent his life in an autocratic religion, country Victoria
