tandav wrote:Unless there is drastic course correction under Trump and the blatant lies that seem to be the cornerstone of his presidency so far, this is eroding any respect that USA had among other countries. China is poised to step into the vacuum. Already China has fired warning shots against the USA by siding with Palestine and this will give them solid brownie points in the Muslim world, and most Muslim majority nations will accept the Sinification of Islam in some form by accepting the hanification or han pacification of the Uighurs in order to gain Chinese support against the USA.
Good post, but many moving parts.
1) Trump's view were dominant before this "Global trade" view became the norm, so really, nothing new there. BTW, the unions of those days were opposed to NAFTA and Clinton (a Democrat) had to push it to get into force!!! Go figure.
2) Dealing with your post sequentially, "blatant lies that seem to be ..." is nothing new. False news has always existed. What is new is, in the past year or so, the number of people who believe in it is disproportionately large. But, that is a diff thread - valid one tho'
3) China stepping into that vacuum - we need to wait. For teh following reason
4) Trump can move FAR faster to make deals with each individual nation than China can to deal with a group of them. IF China decides on moving to compete nation by nation, then China is following the Trump model
Just yesterday the probable nominee to rep the US at the EU (looks like he is a Prof at Reading (yikes)) very clearly stated that a) The US-UK deal could be struck in 90 days b) It really does not matter what the legealese is within the EU, but it will never impact a deal between the UK and the US (EU had stated that the UK must wait till it leaves the EU - in two years?) and C) will the EU - as we know it - survive in a year or two, the Euro is a dead duck
Take it for what it is worth, but, the point is that there are too many moving parts and the ONLY person I can see who is cool about all this is Trump (and perhaps Modi). Everyone else is following. China can bleat as much as they want (IMHO of course).
Chinese diplomats and leadership are probably working furiously overtime to tell the entire Middle east and other Muslim majority countries to come under the Chinese security blanket and Nukes and step away from the USA provided Nuclear umbrella. China can easily now become the savior of the Muslim Ummah, with support from Russia. Heck today if China offers adequate compensation the finest minds who are working in USA academics will be willing to come work for China, just as Russian Scientists post the Soviet collapse worked for Chinese special projects.
Too much credit to a China political mind. They have stolen techs for adv planes and got nowhere. They did something similar for a carrier and are getting nowhere (outside of threatening the IOR!!!!) (NPR had a bit on Trump's two China policy, every expert said it is not desirable, but push comes to shove China stands no chance.) China, IMHO, is a flash in the pan. BUT one that we must take seriously.
On Russia, it seems strange that American leaders are complaining about Trump being so close to Russia and we are still promoting China-Russia (check the sequence, 10 years ago it used to be Russian-China)? I happen to think that a major card in the Russian deck is Trump. I do not think Putin can play Trump either. To me this is the cold war times with China as the major player behind the iron curtain. Not as bad as the old times, but the ground shakes in that direction.
I happen to think Trump will "concede" much of all else to Russia - Syria, Ukraine, forward states in NATO, sanctions on Russia, etc. But ISIS, A'stan and SCS are three points I would like to keep a close track of.
On a sid enote: US minds can leave, but they can never take their stuff with them. There is a huge collection of hardware and data that is all over the place, that will never go across. Just the way the Chinese "stealth" crafts will be a punctuation marks in time, so will these folks.
I hope our foreign policy folks are also working to India's best interest in this world.
Modi has had a game plan, that he seems to be adhering to. It has no relevance to anything anywhere - as far as I can see. And, I think his plan fits both models or even keeping out of either, very well. At a high level it is a Trump model (the other way around actually), in that both are designed to benefit local employment. And, as an aside, both IF implemented properly benefit the trading partner/s too.
by Donald Trump as President Elect to describe the Mohammadden Terrorist Fomenting Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
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