Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
The only thing that actually matters right now is this
Fire sale for tomorrow. Only charging 9.99 for everything (passport and 052D not included).
I advise that everyone take a look at historians like Yang Shaoyun's The Way of the Barbarians, Yang's "The Uses of Environmental Determinism in Han and Tang Chinese Interpretations of the ‘Barbarians'" and Kathlene Baldanza's Ming China and Vietnam. Imperial China was always very reluctant to interfere with the internal affairs of barbarians, even highly Sinicized barbarians like Vietnam, because at least from the Han era onwards there was a very strong belief that barbarism comes from nature (either environment or for some anti-Khitan/Jurchen scholars, even certain bloodlines) and cannot be changed. Conquest and annexation was even more rare and officials who wanted annexation needed to first prove that that province was once under the rule of the Han and Tang and were once civilized. The European-style civilizing mission of conquering someone and making them turn into a copy of yourself is very alien to Chinese history. If Imperial China was really as determined as the Europeans to subjugate and convert all nations, they would not have permitted Burma and Vietnam to make peace with just a nominal tribute and cease trying to subjugate them; these nations wouldn't exist today.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Trump is a bully. That means he respects strength and will seek to ruthlessly capitalise on weakness.
He is also vindictive and stubborn, but above all else, greedy.
My view is that he will start his new trade war, and China will punish him and America savagely for it. But China is also likely to somewhat pull its punches and offer him a way to back out of it with some dignity left. His pathology makes it almost inevitable that you need to fight him and beat him first before he will respect you and make deals with you. If you seek to just make deals with him first, he will just keep pushing for more and it will never be enough to satisfy him.
I also think Trump would much prefer to go back to the old world where he was happy and comfortable. Which means throwing the Ukrainians under the bus to make nice with Putin and maybe starting a war with Iran in the ME.
But I think more than anything, Trump is an isolationist and wants to just focus on America, where he will have the most fun purging all his domestic enemies.
I can actually see Trump seeking a grand bargain with China on Taiwan. Where for economic concessions to help him bolster his crumbing economy (after loosing Trade War 2.0 much worse than his first trade war with China), he will support peaceful reunification.
The biggest losers will be the EU, I can actually see the EU and NATO dissolving as America unilaterally makes peace with Russia and withdraws security guarantees while also actively harvesting the EU nations as it seeks to advance American interests at all costs across all fronts. Russia will swallow up all of Ukraine and basically start to pay the rest of Europe back for all the Russian blood they enthusiastically helped to spill in Ukraine.
So it may end up being that America strikes a grand bargain with Russian and China where the Monroe doctrine is revamped and the former keeps out of America’s hemisphere while America retreats out of the Eurasia world island and becomes real life Gilead.
