America's Dangerous Obsession With Invincibility - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15256741
Fasces wrote: This is what makes the United States one of the great dangers in the world and it stems out of fear and insecurity.

I think most dangers from countries stem from fear and insecurity, so this is a fair point.

Any individual, organization, business, country, or other entity that isn't able to be reigned in by a set of enforceable rules has the potential to be dangerous and harmful, especially if they have a lot of power. The US government can be reigned in by its electorate, though this has limits, including Americans actually caring about what they do to people in foreign countries or even being aware of it. Far from perfect, but these are more checks on power than a dictatorship. Donald Trump and Bush Sr were elected out of office, for instance, and actions during the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars etc faced a lot of domestic pressure over poor and inhumane actions by government.

The US can also be reigned in a bit by pressure from allies, some pressure from adversaries, international norms and laws etc. But there's still many gaps where the US can still get away with literal murder, like any other country. In terms of rule of law, there is no system in place to fully keep a check on US actions overseas, and have tried to skirt domestic laws by torturing people on foreign soil (rendition, gitmo etc). This is true of all countries however.

The US neocons pushed the limits of US arrogance for international control and the extremes they would go to achieve their goals.

So the question is what is the most peaceful way to set up the world order, and how do you create and maintain this?
#15256769
Potemkin wrote:
Is this some sort of Zen bullshit or something?



Did you just say Mao lost?

Because if you didn't, we didn't have China.

This is history, if you want to keep ignoring Japan kicking over the apple cart, and Mao picking up the apples, you're indulging in some sort of BS...

https://history.state.gov/milestones/19 ... hinese-rev
#15256772
late wrote:Did you just say Mao lost?

Because if you didn't, we didn't have China.

This is history, if you want to keep ignoring Japan kicking over the apple cart, and Mao picking up the apples, you're indulging in some sort of BS...

https://history.state.gov/milestones/19 ... hinese-rev

Historical inevitability. I didn't know you were a Marxist, @late. Welcome aboard! :up: :)
#15256775
late wrote:



no one in the U.S. Government wanted to be charged with facilitating the “loss” of China to communism.



this step failed to protect his administration [Truman] from charges of having “lost” China.



https://history.state.gov/milestones/19 ... hinese-rev



In real life I can't just *will* my wants into existence -- I have to participate in the real world, and use the capitalist political economy to get those things that I can't make for myself.

I say all that in order to note that if I *don't* take certain steps, then I *won't* obtain what I'd like from the economy. And, of course, I can't 'lose' anything that I haven't actually *obtained* in the first place.


---



By March 1927 the expedition was approaching Shanghai. A general strike erupted involving 600,000 workers, and an uprising by union militias took control of the city before Chiang Kai Shek arrived.140 Power in the city passed into the hands of a government controlled by the workers’ leaders, although it included nationalist members of the big bourgeoisie. For a few days it seemed as if nothing could stop the advance of revolutionary nationalism to destroy the power of the warlords, break the hold of the foreign powers and end the fragmentation, corruption and impoverishment of the country.

But these hopes were to be dashed, just as the similar hopes in Ireland and India, and for similar reasons. The victories of the Northern Expedition depended on the revolutionary mood encouraged by its advance. But the officers of the army were drawn from a social layer which was terrified by that mood. They came from merchant and landowning families who profited from the exploitation of workers and, even more, from the miserable conditions of the peasants. They had been prepared to use the workers’ movement as a pawn in their manoeuvres for power—and, like a chess piece, they were prepared to sacrifice it. Chiang Kai Shek had already cracked down on the workers’ movement in Canton by arresting a number of Communist militants and harassing the unions.141 Now he prepared for much more drastic measures in Shanghai. He allowed the victorious insurrectionary forces to hand him the city and then met with wealthy Chinese merchants and bankers, the representatives of the foreign powers and the city’s criminal gangs. He arranged for the gangs to stage a pre-dawn attack on the offices of the main left wing unions. The workers’ pickets were disarmed and their leaders arrested. Demonstrations were fired on with machine-guns, and thousands of activists died in a reign of terror. The working class organisations which had controlled the city only days earlier were destroyed.142

Chiang Kai Shek was victorious over the left, but only at the price of abandoning any possibility of eliminating foreign domination or warlord control. Without the revolutionary élan which characterised the march from Canton to Shanghai the only way he could establish himself as nominal ruler of the whole country was by making concessions to those who opposed Chinese national aspirations. Over the next 18 years his government became infamous for its corruption, gangsterism and inability to stand up to foreign invaders.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 459
#15256779
Potemkin wrote:Is this some sort of Zen bullshit or something? :eh:

:lol: You seem to be suffering from a reaction common to non Americans when dealing with Americans. I imagine that Churchill and Stalin probably had a similar reaction to Roosevelt's first suggestion for the permanent members of the security council, The United States, Britain, the USSR and China. Is he serious? Is this a joke. Churchill and Stalin both decided it was best to at least pretend to take him seriously. Churchill suggested adding France and Stalin really didn't care as he long as he he had free reign to play in Eastern Europe and Manchuria. Hence we ended up with the bizarre joke of Taiwan having a permanent place on the security council till it was sold down the river by Richard Nixon. But God forbid that any of us should fail to take "International Law" seriously.

So yes China was owned by America. Roosevelt wanted 2 permanent votes on the security council. Not only was China owned by the United States, it was its most prized possession. The Philippines as permanent security council member, no I don't think even Roosevelt could have maintained a straight face when suggesting that one.

I've noticed a lot of Americans like to live in a fantasy world of historical inevitability. To the American mind it was historically inevitable that York, Pointe-Ste-Anne and Halifax would be part of Canada, but historically inevitable that Caribou, San Antonio, and Honolulu would be part of the United States. It was historically inevitable that China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia would become Communist and it was historically inevitable that Thailand and South Korea would not. It was historically inevitable that Tripoli and Benghazi should be part of Libya. And of course it was and is historically inevitable that Crimea be part of Ukraine.

Returning to the real world from the pathetic fantasy world of the American, there was nothing inevitable about China falling to Communism. Or if it was, it was an inevitability that escaped just about everyone at the time including Roosevelt and Stalin. When Stalin moved his forces into Manchuria, he most certainly had no plan to take over Shanghai, let alone Tibet.
#15256783
Potemkin wrote:
Historical inevitability. I didn't know you were a Marxist, @late. Welcome aboard! :up: :)



late wrote:
Hardly, Mao did the heavy lifting, so people got behind him.



---



Chiang Kai Shek’s army was driven far inland by Japan and was no longer in any condition to fight the Communist forces. He had little choice but to agree that the rival Chinese forces should tolerate one another while fighting Japan. But his own army seemed incapable of fighting anyone. Most of its generals were motivated only by the desire to grow rich at the expense of their soldiers and the peasants whose lands they passed through. The People’s Liberation Army, by contrast, steadily built up its strength. It gained prestige among the educated middle classes by fighting Japan, peasant support by a policy of reducing rents, and even a degree of backing from some Chinese capitalists by providing stable conditions for their operations.

The Japanese collapse in 1945 found Chiang with much the bigger army and in receipt of vast sums of aid from the US (and lesser sums from Russia, for Stalin at this stage gave no backing to the Communists). But Mao had an army with higher morale and better discipline. When civil war broke out between the two, Chiang’s army began to disintegrate, with whole sections (including their generals) changing sides. By the end of 1949 Chiang Kai Shek had fled the mainland for Taiwan—where the Kuomintang still dominates the government today.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 555
#15256786
late wrote:Hardly, Mao did the heavy lifting, so people got behind him.

So Mao wrested China away from you. You had China, and then you lost China to Mao.
#15256793
late wrote:Japan had China, when Japan left, they went back to fighting the civil war.

When Japan left, the KMT had a bigger army and controlled more territory than the Communists. The Communist victory in the civil war surprised almost everyone, including Truman and Stalin. As @Rich has pointed out, it didn't look historically inevitable at the time.
#15256797
ckaihatsu wrote:
All done gnashing your teeth now, late -- ?



I'm bored.

We considered sending an armed force to secure China.

For about 5 seconds.

Let me leave you with a family joke: "The peasants are revolting. Yeah, ain't they?"
#15256803
late wrote:That much is true.

But we know a lot more now, don't we.

Everything that has ever happened was inevitable, @late. It couldn't have happened any other way, because we now know how it happened, and that makes it inevitable. Lol.
#15256806
late wrote:
I'm bored.



Fair enough.


late wrote:
We considered sending an armed force to secure China.

For about 5 seconds.

Let me leave you with a family joke: "The peasants are revolting. Yeah, ain't they?"



I can't be so *glib* about it all, myself -- China in the 20th century has mostly been a *tragedy* in my estimation.
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