As I expected, most comments support Chandran Nair’s article, which is pretty much all about hating on the United States. My comment at the site:
So much hating on the US. Which gave us: winniing WW2, Marshall Plan, constitutions of Germany and Japan that allowed them to recover; stopping Stalin-inspired, China-supported North Korea invasion; then the GATT, WTO, WB, IMF, all of which China (and other AsianNations) joined; freedom of navigation for SCS and Straits of Malacca. Free for anyone. But go ahead and hate on the US. Go ahead and enable China's rule of the region! Be careful what you wish for.
(Final note, and a *huge* tell: What is the country that most people sitll want to emigrate to? China? Japan? Hint: no it's not them....)
You don’t have to like everything that America does or hate everything that China does. I know both of their societies. I’ve lived in both. If it’s a choice between a world dominated by the United States or a world dominated by China, I choose the United States. For all its faults, for all its failures, for all its frustrated freedoms and all its unmet ideals, I still like those freedoms and ideals, still prefer the United States' striving towards them.
Not so with China.
China not only doesn’t strive for freedom and democracy. It actively mocks them. China is now going all ad hominem on the US, criticising it for “systemic racism”-- the US' criticism of itself! As if China is not the most racist country in the world! So I’ll go all ad hominem on the commenters and say that those that buy into Nair’s take on this -- that America “needs to be reined in” -- are ignorant lickspittles. So there!
ADDED: An Occasional Reader draws attention to “Blinded by self-belief” from Harvard professor Dani Rodrick:
To those who wonder why we should care about the decline of America’s relative power, US foreign policy elites respond with a rhetorical question: would you rather live in a world dominated by the US or by China?
In truth, other countries would rather live in a world without domination, where smaller states retain a fair degree of autonomy, have good relations with all others, are not forced to choose sides, and do not become collateral damage when major powers fight it out.
To which: sure. No argument. It’s just that that’s not the way of the world works and hasn’t done in recorded history… thinking Greece, Sparta, the Moors. Even China, back in the Song, the Ming. Australian, now living here at a crossroads between East and West, I’d sure like it if it were not so binary; wouldn’t we all? Just that “One divides into two”.
Pedant's Corner: I’m not sure it’s a “rhetorical” question in the quote above. It does need an answer. In this part of the world there are plenty, some I know personally, who would answer “China”.
