One of the first battles in the American civil war took place near a Missouri town that it amused fate to name Carthage. Two millennia before, the Romans sacked the original, only to turn against themselves in the ensuing peace. Metus hostilis, fear of the enemy, had kept the republic together, wrote the historian Sallust, a favourite of the US founders. Without it, discord and corruption had licence to breed.
If the US is always recruiting for a Carthage (Gore Vidal referred to its âenemy of the month clubâ) it is not because of an innate militarism. It is just that peace can be a psychic ordeal. Without an ethnic basis, a nation can need something outside to define itself against. The civil war happened after the US trounced the closest thing it had to a local threat in Mexico. Urban strife grew between the world wars: it was armed mobilisation, not just the New Deal, that bound ethnic Italians, Poles and Irish into a civic whole. As for the cold war, note the surge in partisanship after its end. Unanimous confirmations of Supreme Court nominees are one proxy-measure of a co-operative Washington. There has not been one since 1988.
An unchallenged US is a divided US. It follows that Americaâs best hope of retaining some cohesion in the coming decades is a mighty China. What is disastrous for its relative power in the world might turn out to be a godsend for its internal cohesion. Decline has its uses. (...)
Last week, in his first appearance at the Pentagon as president, he made clear that US actions in Asia will be focused almost exclusively on deterring China and its rising military and economic power.
I assure you we are not going to war with China, they have everything they need from us now. We are completely in line and with their program. They own us.
hmm, that's the narrative most people hold. time to start to change that, is my point. not overnight, but you have to start somewhere/sometime, especially with a "partner" so adversarial and wrong.
I assure you we are not going to war with China, they have everything they need from us now. We are completely in line and with their program. They own us.
hmm, that's the narrative most people hold. time to start to change that, is my point. not overnight, but you have to start somewhere/sometime, especially with a "partner" so adversarial and wrong.
Evil. This is the 'war' we should be fighting with China. Send this to every company/CEO who does business with China. Stop buying anything from this country. Boycott China
garcon
hold the war, but i'll take a double order of press and political posturing
everyone just needs to tell them to free those people asap
yes, war of words and other measures, not guns and guts
I assure you we are not going to war with China, they have everything they need from us now. We are completely in line and with their program. They own us.
Evil. This is the 'war' we should be fighting with China. Send this to every company/CEO who does business with China. Stop buying anything from this country. Boycott China
garcon
hold the war, but i'll take a double order of press and political posturing
everyone just needs to tell them to free those people asap
yes, war of words and other measures, not guns and guts
Evil. This is the 'war' we should be fighting with China. Send this to every company/CEO who does business with China. Stop buying anything from this country. Boycott China
garcon
hold the war, but i'll take a double order of press and political posturing
everyone just needs to tell them to free those people asap
That can be a bit difficult if you're in a "War on Terror". See Guantanamo or the extrajudicial executions by drone.
You're likely going to sanction more, i.e. economic war.
Evil. This is the 'war' we should be fighting with China. Send this to every company/CEO who does business with China. Stop buying anything from this country. Boycott China
garcon
hold the war, but i'll take a double order of press and political posturing
everyone just needs to tell them to free those people asap