Dear Paul,

Referring to your post on page 1:

«America with its capitalist's greed are the real danger to world peace, that's obvious.»

World peace in our times is a dream as we were born in the wrong era (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga).

Yet no matter when, as individuals we can always find peace within our own heart and need not have any enemy whatsoever.

If America's capitalist's greed sets us off-balance, then the solution is to work on eliminating our own greed.

«Our government is taking the right course in its dealings with our largest trading partner.»

Why "Our"? I don't have a government - search my pockets if you will...

Treating people collectively is problematic and cannot be the right course because they are so different from each other. You are not trading with every Chinese anyway, nor should you - trade and sympathise with the good ones and disregard the evil ones, including the Chinese government which oppresses the ordinary Chinese, not to mention the people they conquered.

Actually, not all Americans are greedy and evil either - just ignore their government too, as well as their greedy large corporations.

In fact, it is best not to relate to any governments at all, only with people.

«The instigator of war in our region is America, since WWII they have instigated wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan etc»

I supported the American war on the Taliban, because I care for the Afghani people, especially the women, but then it appears like the Americans only fought for their own interests and bitterly betrayed the Afghani women the moment it was no longer convenient to protect them.

I think what mhaze was referring to when he mentioned Japan was that - Japan went to war with the west, when the League Of Nations denied Japan oil, because of the Sino-Japanese War. I think mhaze is implying that to deny China too much would be to force them to invade Australia. Personally I believe that Western Trade has created the current problem with China- they have taken what the west has been willing to give, in exchange for aspirational good behavior, and stabbed us with it. The West thought they could use Soft Power to set an example for China, a taste of the benefits of free trade, to encourage them to give up Marxism on their own terms. The Chinese have misused our good faith attempts, now is the time to take away our benevolence, but we can hold out any malevolence. But just remember Machiavelli says we only delay war to the enemies advantage.

Canem Malum,

The oil embargo was a trigger, yes, but Japan was already set on imperial expansion. Their war decision came out of ideology, overreach, and miscalculation as much as supply constraints. History doesn’t reduce cleanly to “deny trade = invasion.”

And I don’t think anyone serious believes China would respond to trade limits by invading Australia. Taiwan is the pressure point, not Toowoomba. Their play is regional dominance, not random adventurism.

You’re right that engagement fed China’s rise, but that wasn’t pure “benevolence.” The West benefited enormously from cheap Chinese manufacturing and access to Chinese markets. We weren’t giving alms, we were feeding our own consumer economies.

As for Machiavelli, fatalism isn’t strategy. The job is to hedge - trade enough to avoid pushing China into a corner, but not so much that we become dependent or enable coercion.

War isn’t inevitable, but bad strategy can make it more likely.

Perhaps China's regional dominance, built on complicit Western and especially Australian... benevolence. It's good that JD at least sees some of the danger of 'Bernays' consumerism, and it's complicit effects.
It's interesting to see that consumers on eBay are complicit in Chinese tyranny.

Jocko says some interesting things about hedging and overthinking.

Is an avoidance of bad strategy an excuse for doing nothing. Prove it...

"I think mhaze is implying that to deny China too much would be to force them to invade Australia. "

Not invade Australia. They've got a lot of nations they have to get through before they get to us!

No, my point, based on all sorts of past historic evidence, was that gratuitously cutting China off from receiving the resources they require for their economy to function, just forces them to seek those resources by other means. Desperate men take desperate measures.

By CM is right. China, after being invited into the world global trading system in the 1990s, has cheated and misused that system to grow their economy unfairly against others. Trump is now, finally, addressing that and that puts pressure on Peking. But there's no need to up that pressure by deliberately cutting them off from coal and food which they utterly rely on.

Paul's whole thread has been rather silly. His caricature of those of us on the right is virulent Sinophobia so he just assumes we'd want to cut China off from all resources. And he tried to goad me into saying so. But that's Paul's utter misunderstanding of the world he sort of inhabits.

I feel China can be nudged into playing fairly on the world economic stage. They'll be poorer for it and therefore resentful. But smacking them around by cutting off supplies won't work and has been shown to disastrously not work in the past.

mhaze- Not sure of what information you are drawing from, with the highest respect, but I don't think that China won't back down. China are true believers in their own greatness. They will have to be nudged hard... There will need to be a reality check to change their direction. Either way the situation is bad. Hopefully they prove us wrong.