Lets start a war with China...because anyone that thinks that's a great idea is still living in mom's basement playing wiki scholar and refuses to grasp reality instead.
Lets start a war with China...because anyone that thinks that's a great idea is still living in mom's basement playing wiki scholar and refuses to grasp reality instead.
Because America kicked some British ass not once but twice. But I digress.
We're not talking about forward defense here with the South China Sea. We're talking about the outdated imperialist doctrine of American exceptionalism that's propping up the illusion that we have some sort of right to park our boats in Asian territory. It's the typical World Police attitude that America has had for far too long. But all it'll ever amount to is "tensions" between the US and China because the two nations' economies are entirely dependent on each other. They loan us money so we can keep buying their crap. This entire conversation is almost entirely pointless.
"He who lives without discipline dies without honor" - Viking proverb
Umm, US Treasury Bills can't be "called in". That's internet fiction. Always has been. And besides, demand for US Debt vastly outstrips supply. If China were to dump them, they'd find many buyers and it wouldn't at all affect US creditworthiness.
I don't understand why people think that the international economy works on the same principle of loan sharks and debtors. If the US had to it could just "create" money and pay off "the debt to China", such as it is, just like that. What do you people think the three rounds of Quantitative Easing was, other than multi-trillion dollars exercises in creating money?
Trumps already been proven as paper on China.
Remember that currency manipulator statement? tariffs being imposed? military confrontation in the South China Sea being dismissed by his Secretary of Defense? the phonecall saying that he would abide by the one china policy?
Trumps rhetorical hyperbole has already been shown to be a bluff.
The US now has a president who probably doesn't read, can't conduct us foriegn policy and doesnt know how foriegn affairs work. Hes too busy fucking up the US domestically.
The Us has lost its credibility in the world and will struggle to contain China even moreso now.
Yeah wrong on a few points.
(1) The Asia-Pacific region accounts for over 60% of global trade. The US is principally a trade power. Our fortunes and fates are inextricably linked to the region, and with that comes our security desires. We're also (not coincidentally) allies with many countries in the region, including Japan and South Korea, two economic power houses. This is the very defintion of why "forward defense" is valid in this case. Our border, such as it is, is 200 miles off the coast of China, because that is where our economic interests lie and where the security requirements of our allies in the region lie.
That's not imperialism at all. That's just smart policy.
(2) The idea that "because they trade they'll never fight" has been throughly undermined over the last 10 years. It used to be called the "Golden Arches" theory - that if two countries had McDonalds in them, they'd never engage in hostility. And it's been shown to be bunk as the world has destablized over the past decade.
Furthermore RAND did a very comprehensive Economic analysis as part of their conflict assessment, that I linked in the second post in the thread.
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand...AND_RR1140.pdf
Pretty much, Economics would not constraint either side, because both sides prioritize security requirements over economic imperatives. Furthermore the fallout for China would be vastly disproporionate compared to the US.
Page 107 and 108. Read it and weep.Trade
• Glick and Taylor found that, on average, there is an 80*percent
immediate drop in trade between adversaries when war commences.1
• There was a 96*percent drop in trade in World War I and a 97*percent
decline in trade in World War II; trade between adversaries
in these wars was “almost totally destroyed.”2
• Therefore, we assume a 90*percent drop in bilateral trade (between
the United States and China) after one year of severe conflict.
• Every 1* percent increase in trade, divided by GDP, equals a
1.97*percent increase in GDP per capita.3
U.S. Losses
• Total bilateral trade in 2013 equaled $562*billion.
• U.S. GDP in 2014 equaled $17.4 trillion.
• For the United States, a 90*percent loss in bilateral trade equals
a 3*percent decrease in trade, divided by GDP, which lea
6*percent decrease in GDP per capita (per year). (See Figures B.1
and B.2.)
• The United States would suffer a 6*percent decrease in GDP after
one year as a result of a 90*percent bilateral trade loss.
China’s Losses
• Total bilateral trade in 2013 equaled $562*billion.
• China’s GDP in 2014 equaled $9.2 trillion.
• For China, a 90*percent loss in bilateral trade equals a 5*percent
decrease in trade, divided by GDP, which leads to a 10*percent
decrease in GDP per capita (per year). (See Figures B.1 and B.2.)
• China would suffer a 10*percent decrease in GDP after one year
as a result of a 90*percent bilateral trade loss.
• China would suffer a 30* percent decrease in GDP after one
year as a result of a 90*percent bilateral trade loss, an 80*percent
East Asian regional trade loss, and a 50*percent global trade loss
(because of the postulated “war zone” effect on seaborne trade in
the Western Pacific).
This is not how anything works, omfg.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapo.../#2325527b156d
"Calling in the debt" is legitimately the worst internet argument there is. It's a total work of fiction that somehow equates the US sale in T-Bills to a house loan from a bank.Consider this, the U.S. has around $16 trillion in outstanding debt and most of it is held by us, and the bulge bracket banks here at home: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank, Bank of America. Around 7.5 percent is held by China, the biggest foreign holder of U.S. debt.
One of the reasons why China has so much Treasury holdings is because of trade. Companies put money in short term Treasury notes and bills to settle trade payments. China's government could also call all of its own holdings and demand full payment of the money it lent us in principal plus interest, but under what circumstance would they do such a thing?
It would be a national security risk if China held a position where they could dictate U.S. policy on fiscal and monetary matters. They cannot.
If the economy was crashing and China got terrified and wanted their money back, unless the U.S. defaulted, it would hand it over and there would be nothing China would get in return. Moreover, when the U.S. economy was collapsing in 2008 all the way to the 666 low on March 6 in the S&P 500, China never retreated from Treasurys, or demand Congress get its finances in order or else it would choose to buy euros, or gold instead.
The Pentagon did an evaluation on the risks posed by China's ownership of U.S. debt in July and came to the same conclusion: "Attempting to use U.S. Treasury securities as a coercive tool would have limited effect and likely would do more harm to China than to the United States."
The report was sent to congressional committees by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who called China's ownership of U.S. debt non-problematic and non-threatening.
The USBC's take is that Chinawants its holdings of Treasury debt to gain value, not lose value. And just because interest rates are going down, that doesn't mean China is losing value on those holdings. Lower interest rates might be bad for income generation, but they mean more demand for bonds, which means higher bond prices.
This is factually wrong. The red line in Syria was a call for international action with the UN, and we did. There was no public support for another war in the ME, which is why Obama didn't go into Syria. If we did go into war with Syria, it would of made the situation worse.
The only things that have weakened our global position is withdrawing from the TPP (Trump) and having an administration using the cyber-warfare resources of a hostile adversary to get into the white house (Trump). None of these have anything to do with Obama.
- - - Updated - - -
There is only one party, one ideology, that has divided the US since ratification. Modern conservatism has always been antithetical to the central planks of liberal democracy. You can see it in the concessions made for slave states to join the Union. You can see the almost effortless push of pro-confederacy propaganda work on the impoverished and uneducated in the south and tidewater to fight for a lifestyle that benefits an extreme minority. You can see it in post-reconstruction south, where Jim Crow laws and lynching of black people because they dared to redress their grievances to their representative government. You see it in the Goldwater era, segregation, anti-CRA and VRA. And now you see it today, where the interests of conservatism and their media channels are now aligned with a hostile power to the US and all you hear is deafening silence from their side because they want a leader like Putin, they want a virtual and physical police state with over 1,000,000 "secret police".
"He who lives without discipline dies without honor" - Viking proverb