At 02:07 PM 4/2/2003 -0800 d.brin wrote:
>It is unnecessary for China to conquer. Our worry must be that a
>large enough group of nations will get so pissed at us that you'll
>see a coalition stretching from Paris to Berlin to Moscow to Beijing,
>then down to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, all dedicated to bringing us
>down a peg.
>
>The coalition I described above is totally plausible, incorporates
>half the people on the globe and many centers of high technology.
I respectfully disagree that the above coalition is sufficiently plausible
that it should dominate our foreign policy thinking. While the above
coalition is surely not impossible, it is highly improbable.
In the late 1990's, Russia was furious with us for our criticism of the
Chechen War and our attack on their fellow Orthodox Christians, the
Serbians. During this time, Russia and China attempted to form a
strategic alliance to counterbalance the United States, but failed. This
occurred because Russia and China are fundamentally at even greater
strategic odds with each other than they are with the US. China is
entirely reliant upon trade, particularly exports, with the US to fuel
their economic growth and prevent the economic collapse that might spell
the end of the Communist Party there. Russia, meanwhile, has the US
allies in the European Union directly upon its doorstep and knows that tits
long-term future comes from reconciliation with the West, not opposition.
Moreover, Russia is a dying country of declining population and a vast,
underpopulated and resource-rich territory right on China's border, which
it has long suspected that the Chinese have strategic ambitions for. The
Chinese on the other hand are a growing country (think US in the early
1800's) with a vast population and a desire for resources, and an
underpopulated, resource-rich area sitting right on its borders. Under
these circumstances, it is extremely difficult for Russia and China to
develop the strategic trust necessary to make such an alliance work.
As for the rest of your proposed coalition, the Malaysian regime is founded
upon the principle of oppressing their ethnic-Chinese majority in favor of
their ethnic-Malay minority. The Chinese and Malaysians simply hate each
other, and indeed have an ongoing territorial dispute in the Spratly's. In
the near and mid-terms, the odds of a Beijjing-Kuala Lumpur axis approach
zero.
As for Singapore, they are one of the more prominent supporters of the US
coalition on Iraq, so no fears there.
Meanwhile, in France, even Le Monde has begun openly questioning the wisdom
of Chirac's foreign policy in this crisis, and the wisdom of trying to
align Paris with Moscow and Beijing. In other words, France may well be
coming to their senses and starting to remember whom their real friends are
and should be. In other words, rather than fearing the French, I think
that we should try and forgive France their mistakes and try to re-embrace
them into the Western Alliance.
So.... yes, the future is a scary place, mostly because anything is
possible. In the meantime, however, the US continues to enjoy the
support of a solid majority of the world's democracies.... a majority that
will grow as soon as Schroeder's government falls in Germany, and a
majority that has not yet lost France forever. Moreover, the possibility
of Iraq joining the Western Civilization as a light among Arabs and
Muslims, situated directly on the world's strategic pivot definitely makes
the US' future in that great unknown yet to come *brighter*, not darker.
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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