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Gloire_bb

Gloire_bb

Colonel
Registered Member
GulfLander said:
also, is this like a trend in Panama? like recently sa friendship monument was destroyed too..
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This is going to be a trend everywhere.

China may not have been especially dependant on Venezuela, but Venezuela itself wasn't the point either.
The point was that US now holds absolute dominion over decisions by all states of western hemisphere (Canada pretends it isn't Latino and it doesn't apply to them, but explanation...won't take too long).
Panama, Mexico, Columbia ... like, even in Brazil(!) question of nukes got raised up again; as things stand now, they have no way to physically resist US coercion(they for obvious reasons aren't exactly happy on Donroe).

Frankly speaking, this will be a major test of popular Chinese "do nothing - win" meme. B/c even if ~3% of oil supply(Venezuela) were negligible - half a trillion of trade with Latin America (including major metal dependancies) isn't negligible at all.
plawolf said:
True the USA isn’t held together by mere words, but once you loose the core fundamental attraction and benefits of unity and have increasingly polarised values and beliefs, it becomes harder and harder to convince people to stay with just the threat of force.

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I am not a hardcore enough SW fan, but if i remember correctly, Empire was more of a confederacy in all but name, as individual planets had powerful local forces, and could easily muster forces to resist imperial forces; Empire had only one bet to become a proper nation(death star), and it went poof.
In comparison, US states...do of course have their national guards, sometimes quite numerous. but those are semi-fake by design; you can't take them out of US force and resist central government, not without many years of work.
 
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H

henrik

Captain
Registered Member
Overbom said:
Your money can reach as far as your military can reach

Since the PLA cannot credibly reach Panama, Chinese assets there are open for Panama and the US to steal them



When your military cannot reach there, only thing you can do is reciprocate by domestic (exports/imports sanctions) means or throw your weight internationally to indirectly damage them



Australia is easier for PLA to reach but it's still not a credible reach. However, China has vast domestic means to damage Australia so it's unknown if Australia will have the guts to do the same thing. However letting your assets to get stolen left and right for sure will send the wrong signal to the rest of the world.


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Fundamentally, I never believe in money or assets. I only believe in big pointy missiles and warplanes. When 7th gen sub-orbital bombers are developed with (almost) worldwide reach, thats when I will believe in money again
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That sis why the Chinese are now expanding their CV fleet very quickly. Also, the Chinese have financial means of whacking the US economy, which will also whack Panama.
 
Lethe

Lethe

Captain
plawolf said:
Very random question, but how do you get YouTube videos to play just audio? Or are you just running the video in your pocket and only listening to the audio?
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I just mount the phone on the handlebars and run the video at 144p with screen brightness turned down so it doesn't chew through too much data or battery, using one earbud only. I believe Youtube Premium allows you to play videos in the background or with screen off, and I think there are unofficial apps and workarounds to get the same functionality without that subscription, but I haven't felt the need to go down either path.
 
Blitzo

Blitzo

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Lethe said:
Having listened to this discussion twice over now, mostly while on the bicycle, I just wanted to follow up with a few comments.

The first is both comment and clarification: although Hugh White has spent the last quarter-century or so writing and speaking about the implications of a rising China for Australia, this discussion rarely addresses China directly, though brief analogies between historical events and contemporary circumstances are made with some regularity. Rather, the discussion is White's account of the works that have shaped his intellectual worldview. At one point White addresses this obvious China-shaped lacuna in the manner that would be expected of a realist: by pointing to the structural similarities shared between otherwise distinct nations, cultures and eras of history.

Of the books discussed, E.H. Carr's 'The Twenty Years' Crisis: 1919-1939' is the only one I've read. There's a line from Carr that has always remained with me, as he attempted to navigate a path between the contrasting dangers of supposed "objective" history on the one hand, and an unbound relativism or narrative imagination on the other. I'm probably paraphrasing a little here: "Just because a mountain appears to take on different shapes from different aspects, does not mean that it therefore has an infinity of shapes, or no shape at all."

Having read bits and pieces of Kennan over the years (mostly from 'The Kennan Diaries'), I was surprised to hear in this discussion that Kennan devotes a considerable portion of 'American Diplomacy' to examining the course of American relations with Japan, including in relation to its conduct in China. Previously, my impression had been that Kennan's attention was largely devoted to Russia, the Soviet Union, and the European aspect of the Cold War.

Folks might enjoy
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. I've paraphrased for brevity:



While I don't anticipate that more than a few people are really interested in a >4hr discussion, I think White's
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are worth attending to, as he sweeps across and brings together a number of different strands of the perspective that he has articulated at greater length elsewhere: the growth in China's power that currently makes Australia so uncomfortable will be joined in future decades by the growth of India and Indonesia. That the United States will likely not continue to play the strategic role in Asia that it has in decades past. That adaptation to these circumstances will require Australians to re-evaluate how we conceive of ourselves and our nation. That Australia's political class appears incapable of seriously attending to these matters beyond the presumption of ongoing American supremacy, and that AUKUS is a leading exhibit of this failure of imagination.
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that part at the end about language studies in Australia is somewhat fascinating as well.
 
Randomuser

Randomuser

Major
Registered Member
AF-1 said:
Without US style military spending, having dozens and dozens navy and aviation bases all over the world, China simply can not be more than a regional power.
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Russia or the USSR spent loads and loads of money on military. Yet thinking about it, I don't think they ever got close to really hurting the US where it hurts. At least China's monetary strategy triggers those Zuckerbergs and other capitalists hard. They hate communism but you know what they hate even more, someone who can play the money game better than them or rather invent a new way that deprives them of a lot of capital.
 
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