Discussion
Unfortunately, because of the influence of IR realists and their paranoia on US foreign policy, the assumption has been that conflict with China is inevitable. Therefore the US started beating the drums of war, demonising China, and provoking what seem to me to be totally avoidable conflict.
If Taiwan, for example, is under greater threat of invasion from the mainland than it was a decade ago, it's because of US naval aggression around China's coast. Particularly in the South China Sea.
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Disclaimer: I'm not trying to paint China as some kind of paradise, nor its governing system as universally enlightened. The CCP is a despotic government, increasingly so under Xi Jinping. Its lack of respect for freedom of thought and expression seriously limits China's academic, scientific and techno-economic capacity. Just as the US has increasingly been doing as respect for those values is eroded, mainly to protect corporate elites.
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“I don’t think the basic nature of conventional warfare has changed – it still looks a lot like it did during the First and Second World Wars.”
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/09/tragedy-john-mearsheimer
I literally laughed out loud at this one. How can you look at modern warfare, which is played out mainly using drones and cyberattacks, and claim that it's anything like the world wars?! It's like claiming WW1 was like the Napoleonic wars. Just nonsense.
@strypey To be fair, he says "conventional warfare" rather than "modern warfare." Making his statement a bit tautological.
No doubt he's aware of the drones etc. but doesn't consider them to be "conventional"
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