Devesh wrote:
It's unfinished business alright. The Chinese people view Indians and Americans as competitors, which they seek to undermine, but the Japanese are the enemy, which they seek to subjugate/destroy.
And yet it is the depredations of Imperial Japan in China which gave rise to the Chinese Communist movement. Basically, the attitude of the pre-Communist Chinese govt towards Japanese massacres of Chinese civilians during WW2 was very Kaangress-like.
("Oh, Japanese Jihadis have massacred your family? Yawn - let me know when they've finished off your whole village, because I can't really be bothered to get out of bed before then. Hey, why not start a Village Defense Council, if you're really so troubled?")
It was the Kaangress-like abdication of responsibility by the Chinese Nationalist govt that turned the people against them and drove them into the arms of the Chinese Communist Party. In typical Kaangress style, the Chinese Nationalists wanted to rule, but not actually deliver fundamental things like basic security to the public. Those rulers were in full Chidambaram mode. The peasantry were totally helpless and at the mercy of the Japanese Imperialist jihad, and ended up massacred.
I remember way back in school, a poli sci teacher pointed out to me that while American children may go outside to play cowboys-and-indians, or americans-vs-soviets, the russian children would play russians-vs-germans. Such was their trauma from WW2 German invasions, that the Germans were the #1 enemy in their psyche.
I'm in favour of Russo-German reconciliation and alliance of course, because I feel that Russo-German antagonism only feeds Atlanticism, which hurts us. Conversely, as the Atlanticists thrive on Russo-German antagonism in Europe, they favour China-Japan reconciliation on the Asia side, to minimize any distractions over there.
Many of us Indians have hoped - perhaps in vain - that competition between Japan and China would eventually benefit us. That doesn't look to have happened, since the US has tightly bound Japan in place.
Atlanticists, including Dalrymple in his latest posted article, want us to hand over Kashmir to appease Pak and end out conflict. By the same token, we could loudly ask the US to abandon Taiwan to China, which even the Atlanticists would gladly agree with, but this would of course upset Japan.
India has been the sacrificial lamb on the international altar, because we've been the weakest. When NPT was brought out, it catered to China while sacrificing Indian interests. Same with MTCR, same with the Afghan jihad policy, etc. But now India's economy is rising, we have access to the nuclear energy markets denied to us for so long, and our fortune is generally rising. So we're no longer the weakest, to be made into the international sacrificial lamb. Somebody else can take that role in our place.
Meanwhile, Japan seems to be declining, from one bad news to the next.
Their economy is contracting, their wealth is disappearing, their population is aging.
All the fundamentals seem to be on a downtrend for them.
Should we feel terribly bad for them? Well, if they were in vigorous competition with China, perhaps I'd feel a little more for them. But they seem to have bowed out of that competition, and only looked to the US for their future, which is now suddenly looking rocky. And they did give rise to the Chinese Communist phenomenon that has caused us so much suffering. So maybe we ought to view Japan as being the next sacrificial lamb. At least that would appease China, whose kids probably play Han-vs-Japanese in the schoolyard.
Maybe it's now Japan's turn to be the sacrificial lamb on the international altar, for everybody else to feed off of.
Oh, we can outwardly smile at them of course - just as they did to us while we were the sacrificial lamb.
Anyone with a right world-view can fill that position.
