63 Comments

whiskey:

Wretchard, China faces challenges too.

It’s coast is wealthy, but the wealth is thinly spread over the Communist Party elite. Most do not share in it. When I visited Beijing in 1996, a tour of a cement factory co-investment with GE revealed that most workers were from XianXing province, illiterate, and used to going to the bathroom wherever in the fields. It was a constant struggle to prevent them from using the bathrooms for cooking and the stairwells for the bathroom.

XianXing is just dirt poor. You can’t imagine the poverty. The Joads would have considered themselves rich compared to them.

Moreover, China faces a huge problem. IF oil stays at this level or even goes higher, much/most of their trade goes away. Because it will cost too much to ship it. They don’t have the skilled labor force to make the higher-margin precision goods. Much less the capital investment of their own. They still depend on massive corporate investment to fund most of their development, their capital system is a cronyist nightmare.

Not to mention, one shipping container nuke and all trans-pacific and trans-atlantic trade ends as we know it. Just too much risk.

China’s solution to a collapse of trade, and their bare branches is likely a resource grab in Indonesia and Malaysia, also Burma, and definitely Africa. Which is weak and unprotected.

China is a threat and competitor, but they have huge weaknesses, which can and should be skillfully exploited. Should the world hunker down in resource poverty and/or nuclear isolation, the US can ride things out. Not so China.

No question our Navy needs to be much bigger, about twice the size. With new weapons systems to deal with quiet littoral diesel subs. But America is not Britain, we can subsist on our own continental resources. While CHINA is a net food importer.

Yes the elites want a “humbled” America as they celebrated 9/11 and the “humbling” and they’re likely to get a nuclear version of that, eventually. But they won’t like the response I think. Nor will China. China won’t be able to FORCE the US, Australia, and Europe trade with it. In the event a shipping container takes out a city.

Jun 30, 2008 - 11:50 pm The Count:

I guess I’m not most people… or most of your commenters. What was Yamamoto’s famous warning?

Alfred E. Neuman I’m good with.

Jun 30, 2008 - 11:54 pm John Samford:

China is NOT a technological power. When did the Chinese last win a Nobel in physics?

http://almaz.com/nobel/physics/1998c.html

1998, if you consider someone who while born in China graduated from the University of Chicago and who works at Princeton to be Chinese.
The Chinese are stuck in the 80’s or earlier tech wise. Nothing state-of-the-art or even only a generation behind.
They make lots of cheap electronics. That’s about it. Weapons wise, they build poor copies of obsolete Soviet gear. What’s more as long as the Chi-Coms have to steal tech, they will NEVER catch up. When you steal tech, you don’t build the foundation in basic or applied research needed to move beyond what you have stolen. So you are locked in to staying one step behind.
As far as tonnage goes, how much they build isn’t the question. The question is can they build it faster then we can sink it? The answer is ‘not by a long shot’. 3 SSN’s can turn China into a land only power.
No, in order to be a threat to the west, the Chinese will have to be able to match the west in economic and military power, at least. In order to do that, they will have to convert to a capitalist democracy, after which they will be more interested in making money then fighting.
The fear of China syndrome is driven by the MIC here in the states. They need a big scary dangerous opponent to keep the tax dollars flowing into their coffers. The Politicans need the kickbacks and bribes to keep flowing into their offshore accounts. So the powers that be have a financial stake in China being an enemy,
China doesn’t. They are NOT going to play that game. They have a better understanding of what happened during the so called cold war then the west does. The Cold War was a war of attrition with obsolescence replacing destruction as the source of attrition.
So the Chinese leadership will build just enough weapons to make sure nobody disrespects them while trying to figure out how to counter the real threat from America.
That is American Culture.
Remember China has been conquered many times. Every time, they ended up assimilating their conquerors thru the stronger Chinese culture. This will be the first time the Chinese have faced another civilization that was stronger in all aspects of civilization. Chinese are the ultimate racists, so it shakes them up to look at a land of all races that is bigger, richer, stronger and better looking ( culture ) then the Middle kingdom about which the world is supposed to revolve. Keep in mind also that the USA has mostly been on China’s side during it’s brief time on earth. Except for the ‘yellow peril’ period and the 3 decades after WW2, America has protected China as much as we could. Went to war over China in 1941.
We scare them more then they scare us. The MIC would like to change that. They are not having much luck.

Jul 1, 2008 - 12:10 am Lifeofthemind:

Count - “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

China is a real long term strategic rival. We should have responded much more decisively when they forced down the Navy EP-3 in 2001. Essentially they are in the a similar strategic situation to that Japan was in 1940. They are dependent on foreign resources and tempted by the weakly guarded assets to the North in Siberia and to the South in the South China Sea, Indonesia and Australia. All their neighbors are scared to death but given the defeatism that is being broadcast from America the temptation is to appease. Essentially it is similar to the demoralized elite accommodation to the challenge of Islam but in a much more traditional way. The Australians have agreed to the Chinese purchase of major mineral resources. The current Australian Prime Minister is a Sinologist who is committed to turning his country from the US to an alliance with China. That is not simply a contract to purchase production or a supervised minority investment scheme but a selling of the physical integrity of the nation. It is essentially the opposite of what happened to oil supplies over the last 40 years when producing nations asserted sovereignty. China does face real problems and may implode. Historically the case for keeping it a single unified empire is pretty weak. We should vastly increase our naval and air assets and work with the Australians and ASEAN to build a solid long term alliance. One thing I would do is give the Australians the remaining B-52 airframes and air to surface missiles so they can control their surrounding sea lanes.

Jul 1, 2008 - 12:33 am anon:

Anyone who uses the perjorative “ChiCom” can be safely dismissed as not to be taken seriously. It’s usually a warning sign that the person in question is an ideologue who hasn’t studied China seriously.

Claims like this are especially repellant:

“That’s about it. Weapons wise, they build poor copies of obsolete Soviet gear. What’s more as long as the Chi-Coms have to steal tech, they will NEVER catch up. When you steal tech, you don’t build the foundation in basic or applied research needed to move beyond what you have stolen. So you are locked in to staying one step behind.”

…because it is ignorant of early American history. In the Early Republic, American technology was “copied” and “stolen” from the European continent, whether by osmosis or deliberately lax enforcement of intellectual property norms. Like China today, “piracy” was rampant; as were technology transfers of the sort viewed as improper by today’s IP standards. Yet that didn’t stop the U.S. from becoming an ascendant major world power and an innovative one at that within a few generations.

The view that China “imploding” is a good thing is also ridiculous. Believe me, we in ASEAN do want the implosion of China. China’s stability and economic survival is paramount for the entire region. Why you Americans prefer to steer U.S.-China relations towards confrontation rather than engagement is a mystery to the rest of us.

Engage China. Constructively. Plug her into the international system so that having a stake in the economic health of the world averts the possibility of war. In a war with China, no one wins and everybody loses. China is not irrational. Its leaders know that. The U.S. knows that. So why steer relations in a direction nobody wants?

Beijing 1996 is very different from Beijing 2008. Beijing 2008 will likewise be very different from Beihing 2018. Basing your prognosis of China in 2008 on your knowledge of Chinese peasants circa 1996 is like predicting China’s decline in 1980 based on the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution circa 1970. Don’t be silly.

Jul 1, 2008 - 1:59 am anon:

“All their neighbors are scared to death but given the defeatism that is being broadcast from America the temptation is to appease.”

We aren’t. China’s growth is great for the Asia Pacific region in general. You need to get a grip.

Jul 1, 2008 - 2:01 am anon:

Correction to 1:59 am, I meant to write “We in ASEAN do NOT want the implosion of China” of course.

Jul 1, 2008 - 2:02 am Ex-republican:

China is a growing threat to US influence and everyone should be concerned.

The simple fact of the matter is that while congressional democrats and other urban elites don’t give a damn about our country, the current administration and its supporters have been working on eroding US power with such intense ferocity that it borders on the psychopathic.

Our glorious Bush administration, for example, just threw into place a 2 year ban on new solar cell farms on government land in the West. Of course, the government owns the majority of land out there. The Bush administration appears maniacally intent on crushing our domestic solar power industry just at the time that it is reaching the ability to be one of the most cost-effective energy sources. Just wait: with all the electric cars that will be coming on the market soon will create a current draw that will lead to various brownouts and price hikes, all of which will be used for as a convenient excuse to demand more drilling. Drilling off our coasts, slurping down the last of our reserves of our most precious commodity, all for the chance of making a few bucks. The oil companies that control and fund the conservative think-tanks and media will have everyone convinced that this is our only salvation.

We have no energy strategy in this country, we have no industrial strategy, we have no research strategy, and Bush and co have made absolutely sure we have no space strategy.

Simply put, you cannot be a supporter of this administration and claim to be interested in the United States’ long-term strategic interests.

Jul 1, 2008 - 2:46 am RWE:

Actually, Adm Yammamoto never said that “Sleeping Giant” phrase - that was a pure fabrication from Hollywood - but he did warn about the potential of the U.S. Industrial base.

No one ever mentions that one of the secrets of Chinese economic success is a tax structure that is far more favorable than in the U.S. The depreciation rates for new factories would be thought insane here - especially by those politicians who are more obsessed with “tax fairness” than with good economic policies. Obama sounds more like Mugabe than someone who luxuriates in the comfort of Capitalism.

Plain fact is, the “Chi Coms” have proven to be better Capitalists than we are.

Jul 1, 2008 - 4:14 am Bob Murphy:

I agree with Anon’s comments about China.

The US’s main challenges are internal with a traitorous left, much of it dedicated to tearing down the country and the premises on which it was founded.

A strong US should not fear China.

But we should manage the relationship a lot more adroitly than we are now.

My main concern is the flashpoint of Taiwan where those people deserve the right to determine when and if they join China.

And why should they?

Other than that, much of what we (the US) do helps China including guarding the sealanes via which they get their Middle East oil and providing their biggest single overseas market for Chinese exports.

I have lived in Australia for years and Chinese demand for coal and iron ore underpins the entire economy in Oz.

I think China and the US need each other but the US has to rediscover its sense of cultural strength.

Jul 1, 2008 - 4:19 am Ex-republican:

Bob Murphy wrote:

“The US’s main challenges are internal with a traitorous left, much of it dedicated to tearing down the country and the premises on which it was founded.”

Noam Chomsky is a patriot compared to Bush and the Neo-conservatives. Traitorous left? Who do you think you are kidding?

Jul 1, 2008 - 4:21 am Jim Jackson:

When I see comments like those of Ex-republican, I have to wonder whether they are part of the Obama media campaign. The Bush administration was a great disappointment to many conservatives, but Bush is done. The challenge now is avoiding buyers’ remorse from causing a worse purchase: Obama.

Jul 1, 2008 - 4:35 am Ex-republican:

Jim Jackson:

“When I see comments like those of Ex-republican, I have to wonder whether they are part of the Obama media campaign.”

Hmmmm. Speaking the truth makes me part of the Obama machine? Hmmm.

Of course Bush should be a disappointment, he put the neo-conservatives in charge. Which, by definition, means he was opposed to real conservatism.

Jul 1, 2008 - 4:43 am hdgreene:

Another catch phrase for the sixties is: How I leaned to stop worrying and love the bomb (Dr. Strangelove). We can no longer love the bomb but we can vote for Obama, the object of much Strange Love.

What will you do during your vacation from history? I think I’ll watch “Seven Years in Tibet” seven times, with US being the Tibetans. The entire Chinese army is on the march and the Democrats in Congress respond by all going “AUMMMM” at the same time. They’re trying to create a Harmonic Convergence to keep away the Harm but they are all in different keys. However, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (now called The Hope and Unity Choir Director) does look lovely and ageless in her saffron robes. And we will find the answer to that ageless question: “What if they throw a war and only one side shows up?” We could ask the Tibetans, but who will believe that bunch of losers?

Jul 1, 2008 - 5:04 am Lifeofthemind:

Well it didn’t take long for the wingnut right to blend into the moonbat left over here. The very term Ex-republican has become a cliche on the web for trolls manufactured by koss kiddies and DU.

Mr Murphy saying that the economy in OZ is becoming dependent on China is to acknowledge that there might be a problem. The problem is the nature of the regime and the long term implications for the stability of the west and our shared civilization. No one wants war or an implosion of China. The fact is that much of the growth of China may be a bubble and much may be a matter of false accounting. The system is deeply corrupt. Numbers that are reported are much less reliable than those in the west. Enron was an aberration in the west, not the normal way business was done.

Technically China fits the definition of a corporatist fascist state. Most strategic investments are made by front companies that are owned by the army and used to channel funds to the children of a party oligarchy. This system is very unstable and is sustained by access to external raw materials and capital investment. This is the flip side of the problem of the Russian economy being sustained by artificially high oil prices. Eventually the wheels may come off this contraption. Hopefully by then the veneer of an educated modern elite that is developing in the coastal cities will have put down roots deep enough to permit a soft landing.

Jul 1, 2008 - 5:08 am anon:

“A strong US should not fear China … I think China and the US need each other but the US has to rediscover its sense of cultural strength.”

I agree. The U.S. should be firm — but not hawkish — with China. The closer the trade relationship and economies are intertwined, the less incentive there is to go to war.

I agree also that Taiwan is a flashpoint but it can be handled well by all three of the relevant parties. There is nothing to it but maintaining the status quo, with none of the parties rocking the boat. The Bush administration has done extremely well here, by dampening the Taiwanese fervor for irresponsible statements and attempts at formal independence. With Ma in office now and taking a more conciliatory approach to China, cross-straits relations are better than at any other point in recent history.

Beijing prefers the status quo and peaceful incorporation of Taiwan into China in the long term. Macau and Hong Kong have shown the way.

Any war over Taiwan with U.S. involvement is going to be costly for all sides, and to what end? It is in everybody’s long term interests to keep to the status quo for as long as possible, then sort it out when the time is ripe. China isn’t going to stay authoritarian forever. Internally, its politics will change. So a lose federation with China in the future is not out of the question.

For its part, China will hold to principle and territorial integrity and will not aggressively assert it unless provoked. Given the current balance of power in the straits, a prudent ‘wait it out’ policy for all sides virtually recommends itself.

Jul 1, 2008 - 5:11 am Lifeofthemind:

anon, To a point I agree with you. The caveats are three fold. First prudence should not devolve into lethargy. Patience and a long term approach should not be allowed to become an excuse for passivity and kicking the can down the road. Second there is a risk in overestimating the benefits of trade. The world’s largest trading partners in 1914 were Germany and England. A belief that others are paralyzed by trade dependence could encourage aggressive elements in the Chinese regime. Third is a matter of moral clarity. China is not a democracy now and when, I do not say if, it attempts to threaten or bully neighbors who are, such as Japan, India and Taiwan, we must stand firmly at the side of her neighbors. A credible American umbrella will we hope keep the peace but if it fails to do so then we must accept the conflict. The threat that China’s client North Korea poses extends this possible instability. It is in Beijing’s interest to ease that nasty little historical relic off stage.

Jul 1, 2008 - 5:28 am TmjUtah:

“Quantity has a quality all its own.”

Anyone remember who coined that? It was during World War II, and goes a long way explaining why the Sovs survived 1941 and the existence of the Sherman tank.

China doesn’t need Nobel Prizes. Why do you think they spend so much money on industrial and state espionage?

Mahan was right. Hell, he’s always right - and we are not paying attention.

Jul 1, 2008 - 5:56 am Cascajun:

hdgreene, you are hilarious!

Jul 1, 2008 - 6:09 am Jrod:

“The closer the trade relationship and economies are intertwined, the less incentive there is to go to war.”

Not exactly. It’s the expectation of future trade that moderates the incentives for war, that is if one believes that trade is a deterrent to war in the first place.

Jul 1, 2008 - 6:56 am Jay:

China has so many problems including a poor educational system. There are village youths who manage to get sufficient education to become citizen of the cities but they are real exceptions.
Their university systems are controlled by party members. Not all professors are party members but the party members get special goodies.
When I was invited to present a seminar on my political economy work to students at the School of Law of Beijing University (the elite school of that sort) I paid my airfare. All they did is put me up in their crummy campus hotel. My host paid for the meals and I often ate with his graduate students, which I enjoyed very much.
But they pay the airfare for biz school professors from even second rate biz schools to come a present their worthless theories about management.
The military does secretly sponsor scientific seminars so as to attract foreign experts whom they want to spy on. But the profits that the military gangs get from export industries divert their attention from serious military technological advancement. Yes they are getting stronger but the internal tensions in the country between the city elites and the peasants worry the party bosses.
China is not homogeneous as the Han Chinese would like us to believe and same holds from the KMTnick in Taiwan. Chinese people have different cultures and different looks but one has to notice the differences.

Jul 1, 2008 - 7:07 am Stosh2:

An interesting point of view is provided by Minxin Pei. The article is dated 2006, but still seems quite relevant from my dealings with China. I would suggest his other articles, as well.

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18110&prog=zch

Jul 1, 2008 - 7:43 am Lifeofthemind:

Stosh2
Thank you, wish I had written that.

Jul 1, 2008 - 8:10 am JR:

I think China’s creation of 300,000 new riot police in the last year and a half should give you an inkling of what it will be like there in the not too distant future.

They are approaching their own “Jimmy Hoffa” era. You can’t be a “little bit pregnant.” And, there is no such thing as a “little bit of capitalism.” Get ready for the next Chinese revolution…it’s coming…and the low labor costs are about to disappear as a result…as will China’s strangle hold on retail product production. China’s a sinking ship…propped up on a reactionary government to the increasing unrest among organizing workers. The earthquake and the recent famines will only escalate the ultimate conclusion. China will destroy herself.

Jul 1, 2008 - 8:37 am Zenster:

The core problem the US faces in coping with China is what to do about the huge differential in labor costs.

This is a monstrous distortion. American workers are some THIRTEEN TIMES more productive than a Chinese worker. Albeit, the Chinese worker earns a fraction of the wage, but that communist wage slave also produces a tiny fraction of the overall quality that we see in American products. As West notes, a truly malign influence is that of unions who resist industrial evolution towards automation and other productivity gains in favor of job retention to pay their artificially imposed middle management salaries.

The myth of Chinese labor economy pivots upon the fact that China’s adherence to EPA strictures and other environmental or safety controls is nonexistent. A simple fact: Sixteen of the twenty worst polluted cities in the entire world are in China. This should tell you everything necessary about how wages are kept at falsely attractive levels. It should also serve as a warning about why it is so easy for tainted and substandard Chinese products to reach our shores.

The principal obstacle to thinking about China may be the national elite’s obsession with itself and its petty hobbyhorses.

This disregards the equally poisonous external influence of how so many American political campaign contributors rely so heavily upon Chinese labor for their profit margins. Wal-Mart, The Good Guys, Circuit City, Best Buy and so forth all make massive contributions to BOTH parties and thereby sway our politicians against any real retribution for China’s routinely underhanded manipulation of its currency and trading policy.

Far more ominous are the implications of what sort of outcome awaits continued Sino-ascendancy. China has set itself up for a “perfect storm” of catastrophic economic, societal and environmental disasters.

1.) During China’s recent privatization, the vast majority of government-run big business was essentially handed over to the PLA’s military elite at fire sale prices, who—without a shred of business experience—promptly proceeded to run them into the ground. All the while, these well-connected Mandarins consumed massive loans from banking cronies to prop up these over-staffed and under-equipped enterprises. Government jobs were once known as “cast iron rice bowls”, in that people were so rarely fired that their source of income (rice bowl), could not be “broken”.

Moreover, oil prices continue to escalate—in some part—caused by Chinese arms shipments that exacerbate MME (Muslim Middle East) tensions. Should they rise high enough, bunker fuel costs will erode the profitability of long haul trans-Pacific container traffic and significantly impact the price competitiveness of already shaky Chinese manufacturing enterprises.

END RESULT: Mismanagement has left China with an estimated $500 billion to $1 trillion worth of bad debt that their own prohibitions on foreign majority bank ownership prevents any bailout of. All the while, their MME meddling promises to interfere with the free flow of petroleum exports doing further damage to their own economy. There also exists pandemic official corruption that is tacitly accepted by the government resulting in substandard civil engineering and a host of other dangerous or counter-productive practices.

2.) These same industries have historically operated with total disregard for environmental impact or pollution laws due to their immunity through contacts within the PLA. Examine the near-total absence of significant prosecution for the constant coal-mining fatalities and egregious lack of mine safety.

One single statistic tells the entire story. Out of the world’s TWENTY most polluted cites, SIXTEEN of them are in CHINA. Manmade disasters loom large in China’s future. More than once engineers have had to patch large CRACKS forming on the Three Gorges Dam face. Upstream, rising water has soaked into and destabilized massive earthen cliffs that slide into the reservoir causing destructive waves. There are concerns that these surges may even cause damage to the dam itself. A catastrophic failure of this gigantic hydroelectric project could cause the death of untold MILLIONS downstream.

China has also begun work upon a string of hydroelectric dams at the highest reaches of the Mekong River. This vital aquatic artery for much of Southeast Asia could effectively fall under Chinese control. Retention of too much runoff could cause the collapse of critical downstream aquaculture necessary for rural sustenance while impeding commercial traffic reliant upon riverine navigation. Given China’s rapacious nature, none of this bodes well for its Southern neighbors.

END RESULT: Massive damage to vital natural and regional resources, air quality and some of China’s most precious historical locations or archaeological sites.

3.) China’s “one family - one child” policy has led to endemic gender based abortion and female infanticide. This lopsided demographic is already beginning to affect Chinese society with the “Little Emperor” syndrome of intensely spoiled male children. As both parents toil in day jobs, these brats are left in the care of grandparents. Chinese culture deems even slight deformities as an insurmountable impediment to marriage. By threatening to injure themselves, these “Little Emperors” extort ice cream and candy from their grandparent caretakers. Imagine such manipulative, cosseted and ill-tempered only-children taking command of China’s nuclear arsenal.

Further, the lack of marriageable women can only presage some sort of increase in male homosexuality. Slowly eroding cultural mores will remove some of the stigma attached to homosexuality and lack of female companionship will do the rest. At present, once unmarriageable peasant girls from rural provinces now have their pick of male suitors. Starving North Korean mail-order brides are also being imported to meet this demand.

END RESULT: Extreme potential for a major upswing in male homosexuality. Complicated by:

4.) China’s medically caused HIV/AIDS epidemic is the largest in world history. Henan province plasma buyers re-injected aggregated red blood cells back into similar type donors, thereby spreading the virus like wildfire. Corrupt government officials—more concerned about covering up their connections to these plasma buyers—did little to quarantine or contain the crisis, allowing infected individuals to migrate into large urban centers.

END RESULT: A ticking time-bomb of gigantic proportions that may be facilitated through a host of other societal factors including heavy discrimination against HIV positive people, intense shame over homosexuality and government suppression of publishing any medical statistics regarding this as being damaging to China’s image.

5.) China’s ratio of urban versus rural earning power is incredibly lopsided. Conservative estimates place 1995 rural earnings at 40% of that paid to urban workers. The global figure for that time was 60%. Other estimates place China’s earnings gap at seven to one and even an astounding ten to one ratio. This disparity encourages migration to city centers in search of higher pay. Mao’s promise to break all chains binding peasants to the land was a tremendous lie that found farmers imprisoned by even more intense poverty than before.

END RESULT: Breakdown in agricultural productivity and lack of regulatory oversight in the haste to avoid food shortages. This creates vast potential for tainted goods, which has already manifested in dead infants killed by being fed nutrition-free baby formula, fake rabies vaccines and eggs injected with toxic industrial dyes.

All of the above factors are converging to combine into an onslaught of destructive forces that bode exceptionally ill for China’s future. Such internal pressures may cause civil war or drive China into territorial aggression in order to relieve surging demand for dwindling resources, marriageable women or unpolluted living space. Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, Japan, Eastern Russia and Southeast Asia all fall under the shadow of China’s looming crises.

Jul 1, 2008 - 8:53 am NahnCee:

It’s hard to take China seriously as a threat to America because (1) they’re still stealing ideas from us, and (2) they’re going to implode from their one-child only / not-enough-females policy one of these days. I don’t know that they should or could be “managed” any better than we manage Russia. We need to be stern with Russia about Putin’s increasing swaggering intransigence (and tendency to sell off their out-of-date nukes), but I think a policy of benign neglect will work just fine with China.

When they quit stealing secrets and techniques from us, then I’ll become concerned. And when more Americans are immigrating to China than Chinese are coming to America — that will be a tipping point of sorts, too.

Jul 1, 2008 - 10:21 am Roderick Reilly:

From the post and the comments, certain truths can be gleaned:

1) China is a force to be reckoned with that has a high probability of causing trouble. It does not necessarily follow that military conflict with China is inevitable. Do keep in mind that Britain and Argentina went to war over some small islands, despite the fact that both have solid, urbane Western credentials (that’s correct. Even with a military junta, Argentina was more European than Latin American in 1982). We could bumble our way into such a conflict with China if both sides are not careful.

2) It’s imperative that the U.S. maintian a large and potent Navy in perpetuity. Even our infant Republic maintained more Navy than they did land forces in peacetime. The one time the Navy was cut back — by President Jefferson — it led to a pathetic situation where the only “weapon” the U.S. had to combat British and French depredations at sea was an embargo of those countires’ goods. This caused an American economic depression. A very strong Marine contingent as part of the Navy is also vital and indispensible. Our powerful navy is also one of the World’s most recognized forces for good, having the greatest capability of anyone to effectively help in the case of major natural disasters and man-made human catastrphies as well.

3) We have to urge and get used to the idea of Japan taking a larger share of the military burden in the Western Pacific. I have the impression that the Japanese are slowly warming to and waking up to that necessity.

4) We have to deal with the real China, and not the China of distortion and fevered imagination. China is a mixed bag. It is wealthy, but not as wealthy as once thought. The IMF downgraded its estimate of Chinese GDP from $9 trillion to $6 trillion, for instance (as compared to the U.S. at $14 trillion). It is still a $6 trillion economy, however. It appears that many Chinese communities riot out of frustration because they don’t have a representative government or a true rule of law. This will hold China back, and has the potential of causing major internal strife. However, if I ere to visit China, I am not likely to stumble across any riots or other internal strife. China is a big place, and is not in turmoil across the board. It is not in danger of imminent collaps like the Old Soviet Union.

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:06 am Eggplant:

Wretchard said:

“American American shipbuilding is in rapid decline while Chinese capacity is in ascendance.”

I’ll have to expose my ignorance to public derision. I thought the American shipbuilding industry had been years ago killed by the Japanese and then the Japanese shipbuilding industry was later killed by the Koreans. Presumably the Chinese are now killing the Korean shipbuilding industry.

Also “Ex-republican” is an obvious troll. I urge Belmont Club commentators to ignore this shameless troll.

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:08 am Benj:

Write what you like of course! But given that Wretch has been questioning O’s patriotism for months - I’m a bit suprised that he went to China (as oppposed to Independence) yesterday…Though perhaps the issue was obliquely joined when
Wretch invoked Helprin’s rhetorical questions…

“And yet what candidate is alert to this? Who asserts that our sinews are still intact? That we can meet any challenge with our great and traditional strengths? That beneath a roiled surface is a power almost limitless yet fair, supple yet restrained? Who will speak of such things in time, and who will dare to awaken them?”

Helprin’s piece comes with a dig at Obama that hints at H.’s own distance from contemporary American culture. The novelist mocks O by invoking Betty Boop’s blinks – shades of Maureen Dowd’s “Obambi” – How can that girly-man O understand the “sinews” of American culture? (“Where’s the Outrage?”) But that pop cult reference is pretty far gone. It’s a reminder that Helprin’s own writing is less than engaged with contemporary American life. Helprin’s deepest work has charm and force but his imagination is not exactly at home with the horrors or the heights of American life over the past 50 years. Which is one reason why he famously saddled Bob Dole with a bridge to the past in that 96 convention speech that Clinton was able to exploit…

Obama, though, is no Clinton. In his speech on patriotism yesterday, he went out of his way (as he often does) to distance himself from the ease of old arguments. He pushed back on doleful Movement Conservatives and Move.On.com (criticizing their General Betrayus ad)…

“What’s striking about today’s patriotism debate is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s - in arguments that go back forty years or more. In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic. Meanwhile, some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself - by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.
.
Most Americans never bought into these simplistic world-views - these caricatures of left and right. Most Americans understood that dissent does not make one unpatriotic, and that there is nothing smart or sophisticated about a cynical disregard for America’s traditions and institutions. And yet the anger and turmoil of that period never entirely drained away. All too often our politics still seems trapped in these old, threadbare arguments - a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by some as unpatriotic, and a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.”

Compare O’s stuff with Helprin’s writing over the years and I’m guessing many readers might allow O has a more comprehensive understanding of recent American history and culture than Helprin has displayed. Not sure which of them knows more about China! But it’s pretty clear to me who has a better sense of America’s “great and traditional strengths.” And doesn’t Obama’s campaign indicate he has a clue about how to invoke the “almost limitless power” of the American people? Surely more than anyone associated with the Claremont Institute. No real surprise there. Obama’s patriotism comes down to facts of feeling. He’s not very touchy-feely but I suspect he likes Americans more than most Claremonters. (He’s certainly more inside American culture than CI’s royalists and classicists.) O’s patriotism is not…

“just a love of America in the abstract, but a very particular love for, and faith in, the American people. That is why our heart swells with pride at the sight of our flag; why we shed a tear as the lonely notes of Taps sound. For we know that the greatness of this country - its victories in war, its enormous wealth, its scientific and cultural achievements - all result from the energy and imagination of the American people; their toil, drive, struggle, restlessness, humor and quiet heroism.

That is the liberty we defend - the liberty of each of us to pursue our own dreams. That is the equality we seek - not an equality of results, but the chance of every single one of us to make it if we try. That is the community we strive to build - one in which we trust in this sometimes messy democracy of ours, one in which we continue to insist that there is nothing we cannot do when we put our mind to it, one in which we see ourselves as part of a larger story, our own fates wrapped up in the fates of those who share allegiance to America’s happy and singular creed.”

Beyond that happy talk, though, there are principles that link Helprin and Obama and even some Clubbers (as I’ve suggested in the past)….

“Beyond a loyalty to America’s ideals, beyond a willingness to dissent on behalf of those ideals, I also believe that patriotism must, if it is to mean anything, involve the willingness to sacrifice - to give up something we value on behalf of a larger cause. For those who have fought under the flag of this nation - for the young veterans I meet when I visit Walter Reed; for those like John McCain who have endured physical torment in service to our country - no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary. And let me also add that no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides.

We must always express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform. Period. Indeed, one of the good things to emerge from the current conflict in Iraq has been the widespread recognition that whether you support this war or oppose it, the sacrifice of our troops is always worthy of honor.

For the rest of us - for those of us not in uniform or without loved ones in the military - the call to sacrifice for the country’s greater good remains an imperative of citizenship. Sadly, in recent years, in the midst of war on two fronts, this call to service never came. After 9/11, we were asked to shop.”

I bet Helprin would’ve bought out of Bush’s prompts back in that day…And I’m reminded there was another moment of possible, ah, solidarity. In his last book of short stories, Helprin tells a tale about a woman working mad hard in a Cali WWII munitions factory (as her young husband fights the Japanese overseas). Taught me something about the inner lives of the “greatest generation.” But Obama needed less instruction than me as you’ll see from the following sequence in his patriotism speech yesterday - a talk that makes me doubt O needs lessons from Mark Helprin in how to embody the American idea…

”One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my grandfather’s shoulders and watching the astronauts come to shore in Hawaii. I remember the cheers and small flags that people waved, and my grandfather explaining how we Americans could do anything we set our minds to do. That’s my idea of America.

I remember listening to my grandmother telling stories about her work on a bomber assembly-line during World War II. I remember my grandfather handing me his dog-tags from his time in Patton’s Army, and understanding that his defense of this country marked one of his greatest sources of pride. That’s my idea of America.

I remember, when living for four years in Indonesia as a child, listening to my mother reading me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence - “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I remember her explaining how this declaration applied to every American, black and white and brown alike; how those words, and words of the United States Constitution, protected us from the injustices that we witnessed other people suffering during those years abroad. That’s my idea of America.

As I got older, that gut instinct - that America is the greatest country on earth - would survive my growing awareness of our nation’s imperfections: it’s ongoing racial strife; the perversion of our political system laid bare during the Watergate hearings; the wrenching poverty of the Mississippi Delta and the hills of Appalachia. Not only because, in my mind, the joys of American life and culture, its vitality, its variety and its freedom, always outweighed its imperfections, but because I learned that what makes America great has never been its perfection but the belief that it can be made better. I came to understand that our revolution was waged for the sake of that belief - that we could be governed by laws, not men; that we could be equal in the eyes of those laws; that we could be free to say what we want and assemble with whomever we want and worship as we please; that we could have the right to pursue our individual dreams but the obligation to help our fellow citizens pursue theirs.

For a young man of mixed race, without firm anchor in any particular community, without even a father’s steadying hand, it is this essential American idea - that we are not constrained by the accident of birth but can make of our lives what we will - that has defined my life, just as it has defined the life of so many other Americans.

That is why, for me, patriotism is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. Instead, it is also loyalty to America’s ideals - ideals for which anyone can sacrifice, or defend, or give their last full measure of devotion. I believe it is this loyalty that allows a country teeming with different races and ethnicities, religions and customs, to come together as one. It is the application of these ideals that separate us from Zimbabwe, where the opposition party and their supporters have been silently hunted, tortured or killed; or Burma, where tens of thousands continue to struggle for basic food and shelter in the wake of a monstrous storm because a military junta fears opening up the country to outsiders; or Iraq, where despite the heroic efforts of our military, and the courage of many ordinary Iraqis, even limited cooperation between various factions remains far too elusive.

I believe those who attack America’s flaws without acknowledging the singular greatness of our ideals, and their proven capacity to inspire a better world, do not truly understand America.

Of course, precisely because America isn’t perfect, precisely because our ideals constantly demand more from us, patriotism can never be defined as loyalty to any particular leader or government or policy. As Mark Twain, that greatest of American satirists and proud son of Missouri, once wrote, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” We may hope that our leaders and our government stand up for our ideals, and there are many times in our history when that’s occurred. But when our laws, our leaders or our government are out of alignment with our ideals, then the dissent of ordinary Americans may prove to be one of the truest expression of patriotism.

The young preacher from Georgia, Martin Luther King, Jr., who led a movement to help America confront our tragic history of racial injustice and live up to the meaning of our creed - he was a patriot. The young soldier who first spoke about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib - he is a patriot. Recognizing a wrong being committed in this country’s name; insisting that we deliver on the promise of our Constitution - these are the acts of patriots, men and women who are defending that which is best in America. And we should never forget that - especially when we disagree with them; especially when they make us uncomfortable with their words….”

Doesn’t Obama deserve Clubbers’ respect for his readiness to prod his own natural constituency? (And shouldn’t yall give it up to his cultural range - that Twain ref was nice - his sense of history and his feeling for the moment (the diss of Zimbob). As I’ve said in the past, he doesn’t pander – he pushes all-American sides out of their comfort zones into New Worlds. (That’s why Dylan has endorsed him!)

Let me close by giving Wretch a gentle push - But let’s tighten up first. Isn’t it apparent that Wretch shares with O a felt sense of internationalism…Note the range O covered in the speech above (which was not an address on foreign policy) - from Indonesia to Zimbabwe. Worthy of Wretch’s own worldliness. (Which often makes me feel like a piker!) Still, I wish Wretch’s internationalism was tempered by a little more of O’s American imagination. Look at the following passage and I think you’ll see why O’s world-view gets at something missing in Wretch’s…

“leaving aside the question of whether this strategy would work, those bare-knuckle solutions would be hard sell to an intellectual elite that instinctively recoils from dog-eat-dog change; and whose main worries are in any case about providing everyone with a sense of “self-esteem”, avoiding anthropogenic Global Warming and spreading Enlightenment.”

Sure - I understand the Wretch means to anatomize (as the academics say)the habits of “intellectual elites” but he ends up implicitly coming down against anyone who “instinctively recoils from dog-eat-dog change.” That’s to say he’s on the opposite side of most Americans. Social Darwinism will always have its proposents on the hard right. Reagan revived it with it a smile. But Obama is betting that most Americans don’t instinctively ID with a dog-eat-dog way of being in the world (at home or abroad). UNLESS the dog you’re dealing with is a mad one (right Wade?) I hope O wins his wager. Better angels anyone?

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:14 am Eggplant:

Zenster said:

“China’s medically caused HIV/AIDS epidemic is the largest in world history.”

China might have the largest “medically caused” HIV/AIDS epidemic but Africa by far has the worst HIV/AIDS epidemic (the African’s get HIV the old fashioned way). My brother-in-law had to quit medical practice in Johannesburg, South Africa because he was being continually reinfected with HIV by patients. He’s an orthopedic surgeon and getting cut while doing surgey is a professional hazard. If a person immediately takes AZT after infection then he can beat HIV. A huge percentage of the Bantu population is HIV positive (over 40% ??). Nobody really knows what the real percentage is (the South African government is in denial). My brother-in-law has since left South Africa with his family and is enjoying the good-life in New Zealand.

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:25 am Charles:

this is the sort of china story that grieves me. catepillar is one of the few american foundry companies that benefit from the low dollar. they make a product that is in demand world wide.

what a terrible thing that they open their first factory in china.

soon after they’ll discover that they have a chinese rival who makes machines just like their machines.

the rival will be making their catepillar copies less than 100 miles away from the catepillar plant. their chief of operations will be a former manager of the catepillar plant. many of their former employees will be working at the new plant.

they will get no compensation from the chinese government.

ten years from now cheap chinese copies of catepillar products will hit america’s shores.

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:40 am Charles:

OT: here’s an amir taheri piece in the ny post on an aq plan b.

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:43 am RWE:

A friend of mine who works for a company that does business in China told me an interesting story.

It seems that the U.S Company, Briggs and Stratton built a factory in China to manufacture small gasoline engines. They operated it for about a year and then decided to have a survey done on what the engines were being used for. The survey said that there were 300,000 of those engines in use in China. Now this sounded impossible, because Briggs had made less than 100,000 of their engines since they had opened the factory.

Then they found out that the managers of their Chinese factory were running the place one shift a day for Briggs and two more shifts a day for themselves. They had arranged for separate power meters so they could switch over during “their” period of operation, and separate suppliers and workforce.

Today, China is very much a “every man for himself” type of place. Trust is nonexistent, as Americans doing business with the Chinese have found. Micromanagement is a requirement; you have to sit on them and make sure they do exactly what you want them to. Any experience with Chinese-made consumer products will convince you of this fact very quickly.

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:46 am Ex-republican:

Also “Ex-republican” is an obvious troll. I urge Belmont Club commentators to ignore this shameless troll.

A troll, huh? Which fact I listed makes me a troll?

The fact is that I’m not an obvious troll, otherwise you wouldn’t have felt compelled to point it out. Just like i don’t feel the need to point out that you hate America.

Tell me, Eggplant, what’s your strategic vision for the United States? Thrill me with your acumen.

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:55 am Eggplant:

Charles said:

“catepillar is one of the few american foundry companies that benefit from the low dollar. they make a product that is in demand world wide. what a terrible thing that they open their first factory in china. soon after they’ll discover that they have a chinese rival who makes machines just like their machines.”

I have read that there was much consternation in the automobile industry after Volkswagen opened a car factory in China. Supposably most of VW’s manufacturing technology was stolen. My guess is that China will eventually crush the automobile industry by removing all of the profit margin (not that there was much left). The American automobile industry was already dying due to its failure to compete against Japan. Volkswagen’s error will cause more harm to Japan than it will to America.

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:57 am Eggplant:

Ex-republican:

You have failed. Go back to Daily Kos.

Jul 1, 2008 - 12:05 pm Lugh Lampfhota:

Obama’s speech sounds inspiring. But I don’t believe a word that falls from his lips. He doesn’t walk his talk. If Obama has such faith in individual Americans then why does he promote the big nanny state government? How could a man who believes what he claims to believe sit through even one of reverend Wright’s ’sermons’?

Obama is a liar.

Jul 1, 2008 - 12:09 pm Cannoneer No. 4:

People who use the term “Chicom” have long memories, anon, of tinny bugles in the frozen night, human wave attacks, bodies stacked like cord wood in front of our machine guns, insane insensitivity to casualties, American soldiers with their hands tied behind their backs and bullets in the back of their heads, of brain washing, Manchurian Candidates, and so much more.

Only this time you have 30 million horny surplus military aged males to throw into the grinder.

Jul 1, 2008 - 12:11 pm Ex-republican:

Eggplant:

You truly must be a neo-conservative. A demonstrated inability to deal with facts, no strategic vision for the US, and left with empty name-calling.

Come on, please.. share with me the neo-conservative vision for a safe and prosperous United States. Tell me your view about rising gas prices, how this will affect our ability to carry out military missions around the world, future trends in technology, immigration, infrastructure, anything.. please.

Of course you’ll say nothing. Because neo-conservatives never were interested in the well-being of the United States. From Strauss to now, the well-being of the United States was and remains irrelevant.

Jul 1, 2008 - 12:14 pm Stephen:

Ex-republican.

It’s the “neo-conservative” epithet that makes my troll alarm go off. I don’t know what a neo-con is (unless it’s a Jewish conservative as some have suggested) and I never see anyone claim to be one, but when that word comes out I know there’s a troll in the neighborhood.

Jul 1, 2008 - 12:27 pm Alexis:

One problem I have with Obama is that the means he used to become a state senator from Illinois, while legal, betrayed contempt for the kind of fair play that underpins the democratic electoral process. What was Obama so afraid of to lead him to invalidate the signatures of the petitions of his political rivals?

I have never been a fan of George W. Bush’s attempt to co-opt organized religion through governmental subsidies of faith-based programs. Now, Senator Obama seeks to expand this program. The essential problem I have with state subsidies for religion is that it tempts religious institutions to become subservient to the state. Religion is important as it often forms the conscience of a people. One of the reasons why religion has stayed so strong in America while it has withered elsewhere is because religion is left alone. In contrast, state religions are expected to support government policy no matter how immoral.

Benj, I took your advice and read Lawrence Goodwyn’s books about the Populist movement. He appears to have some understanding of the movement. In particular, I regard the “subtreasury” system to be a very interesting concept, although the idea itself is actually very old. According to the Bible, Joseph was involved in organizing a “subtreasury” system in Egypt, after all.

I see in Lawrence Goodwyn’s story of the silver lobby’s co-option of the Populist movement as a corollary to modern times. Beware the demagogue with a silver tongue. The Democratic Party aggressively attacked and defeated the Populists, only to be decisively defeated by openly pro-corporate imperialistic Republicans.

In contrast, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation is an example of worker ownership. Given the early leadership of Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, it could also be seen as a premier example of clerical syndicalism that avoided the pitfalls of anarcho-syndicalism and national syndicalism. This example shows how worker ownership can become the prevalent mode of industrial organization to the point where corporations voluntarily become cooperatives. And yet, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation started under the Franco regime.

According to conventional wisdom, one would think that the Franco regime would be infertile ground for any grassroots effort to build industry along the lines of worker ownership. The Omaha World-Herald is an employee-owned newspaper in a very conservative region. Please compare this to the power of George Soros, who generated his money by the most vicious speculation to the point of being credited with devaluing the British pound, and yet is now regarded as a great philanthropist by much of the American Left.

All too often, important reforms of labor standards and environmental protection have come from presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon (ironically enough!). Compare this against the actual record of the Democratic Party over the past century, and it becomes difficult to take anyone from the academic Left seriously when he says, “I am on your side.”

Over the past century, elitists have monopolized America’s political space, whether they have been academic elitists (usually on the Left) or corporate elitists (usually on the Right). Here comes Senator Obama, with his faith-based initiative, which ought to give the religiously devout the cold chills every bit as much (if not more than) George W. Bush’s programs. Among other things, churches that accept government money often tell volunteers to fill out paperwork on how many hours they donate. Some volunteers regard this as insulting. They are doing this work for God, not for Caesar; they help because it comes from their conscience, not because it is part of some politician’s social agenda.

All this makes one wonder if populists are better off with an ostensibly conservative regime that leaves cooperatives alone instead of a silver-tongued demagogue who does everything he can to take over the movement only to betray it to his corporate allies.

If there is anything underscored by my reading of Lawrence Goodwyn’s books, it is that false friends are no friends at all. Beware the well-dressed man with the silver tongue.

Jul 1, 2008 - 1:04 pm Richard Fernandez:

Zenster’s point about much of China’s growth being unsustainable is probably true to an extent. But some of its growth is undoubtedly real and there’s no reason why China, like the US, can’t adapt or cope with its problems as it goes along.

Stratfor argues that China’s fault line is between the interior and the coasts. That in the early 20th century, China was being divided between the Global Coast (dominated by European enclaves) and the backward interior. That China has now gambled that it can open the coasts while keeping the country together, which in an era of a retreating West may be possible.

However, that calculation is double edged. The combination of a retreating West and Chinese globalization means that Beijing must inevitably assume an increasing “system administrator” role in the empty spaces of governance. Nowhere will this be more pronounced than Central Asia and the Middle East. China has become one of the largest consumers of oil.

While the US maintains freedom of navigation China’s economic engine will continue to chug along. But a hostile or weakening America might compel China to look further abroad to preserve its interests. As to the one-child policy, different societies are reeling under different types of demographic bombs. The Islamic world is being overrun by an unemployed, militant, largely uneducated baby boom, while Europe, Japan and China are downsizing their future generations. The United States’ population mix is changing under the pressure of open borders. Everybody’s got their problems. But there is some worry that while China might have the political will to do something about its problems, Europe and the US may just coast along, ineffectually distracted by political correctness.

One thing that seems certain is that the Age of the Europe is now over. What America’s fate will be in the emerging world still depends; and it depends largely on how it responds.

Jul 1, 2008 - 1:15 pm Eggplant:

Cannoneer No. 4 said:

“People who use the term “Chicom” have long memories, anon, of tinny bugles in the frozen night, human wave attacks, bodies stacked like cord wood in front of our machine guns, insane insensitivity to casualties, American soldiers with their hands tied behind their backs and bullets in the back of their heads, of brain washing, Manchurian Candidates, and so much more.”

Google: “Chosin Reservoir”

The US got seriously mauled by the Chinese in the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir (one of the worst retreats in American history). The USMC consider it one of their proudest moments because they made an orderly retreat without leaving behind their dead and wounded.

China is enormously powerful and can be a dangerous adversary.

Jul 1, 2008 - 1:44 pm whiskey:

Zenster is largely correct except for one thing. Homosexuality is taboo in China, the bare branches will never adopt it, instead we are already seeing China raid it’s neighbors through organized sex-slavery (human trafficking) which is a huge problem in Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, and so on.

The combination of: HUGE migration from the interior to the coasts, rising expectations of the middle class crushed by high energy prices, tendency towards warlordism in China’s provinces, various Muslim jihad groups, and the bare branches angry at being excluded from family life, adds up to one way to maintain national unity:

WAR.

China, at some point, will HAVE TO make war to simply maintain unity. A bonus, many of it’s neighbors (in Central Asia, SE Asia) are weak, with no/few friends, and resource rich. Africa is tempting too, particularly if India and the US can be bargained with (they control the sea lanes).

[America’s PC is going to die of course under expensive gas. Suburban life allows PC. Witness South Boston’s reaction to forced busing in the 1970’s to understand how middle/working class whites will react to being forced into cities with lots of criminal minorities, their kids in schools getting beat up every day and learning nothing. It will not be pretty, rather Jacksonian, with an overthrow of the coastal (childless) elites.]

Jul 1, 2008 - 2:11 pm Alexis:

I’ll go out on a limb and say that the majority of voters from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin are not effete university liberals. Will southern Illinois and north side Chicago vote for Obama? Will Pittsburgh? Will South Boston? Will Green Bay? Or will they vote for McCain, even if they disagree with his advocacy of free trade?

Party affiliation is important in America. People will often vote against their own interests merely because of their party affiliation. Will enough blue collar Democrats cross over to vote against Senator Obama to counteract the power of ex-Republicans who support him? It’s easy to talk about blue-collar revolution in a tavern, but I have a hard time taking that talk seriously unless there is real action in the streets of south Boston and Peoria. Now may be a time for a blue-collar grassroots movement to promote a coalition of Democrats and Republicans who support a national unity cabinet for a future McCain administration. Yet, it is the Obama supporters who are the ones organizing while everybody else dithers and then wonders what went wrong.

Jul 1, 2008 - 4:53 pm Zenster:

Eggplant: China might have the largest “medically caused” HIV/AIDS epidemic but Africa by far has the worst HIV/AIDS epidemic (the African’s get HIV the old fashioned way).

I sincerely doubt anyone’s going to argue that Africa is an emerging threat to the free world. Hell, Africa can barely tie its own shoelaces. We’re talking about a continent that still has to plead with native populations not to disassemble railroad track plates or pull up rail spikes (for making blades and spear points), because the trains tend to derail.

China, on the other hand, is cruising straight ahead towards a clash of civilizations identical to Islam, only hundreds of times in magnitude.

Again, just like Islam, slapping down China right away could prevent untold future mayhem. As usual, in both cases our corrupt politicians are cheerfully selling us down the river, be it the Euphrates or Yangtze.

Jul 1, 2008 - 4:54 pm My other brother Darryl:

The goods the US buys from cheaper
producers will one day be made
in the US in robot factories.
How will Chinese labor compete
with robots?

Jul 1, 2008 - 5:23 pm Eggplant:

Zenster said:

“China, on the other hand, is cruising straight ahead towards a clash of civilizations identical to Islam, only hundreds of times in magnitude. Again, just like Islam, slapping down China right away could prevent untold future mayhem.”

Unlike with Islamic Fascism, I do not see a clash of civilizations with China. As you probably know, China calls itself the “central kingdom”.
Deep down inside, the Chinese accept as an article of faith that they are the center of civilization. The Chinese certainly respect western technology but to them it’s a no-brainer that their culture is vastly superior to anything else on the planet. They are not interested in conquering us because (except for natural resources) we have nothing to offer them.

However, China for its size is poor in natural resources. It is conceivable that China might take a snatch at a resource rich nation like Australia if China became desperate. However the Chinese are way too smart to go after Australia by direct military means. They’d take Australia over commercially or buy-off Australia’s politicians. History has shown repeatedly that the Chinese are very skilled at nonlinear solutions to complex problems.

Also the notion of “slapping down China” is laughable. One does not slap down China anymore than one would slap down the United States or Russia. China is the proverbial 500 lb. gorilla.

Fortunately, China has a basic weakness:

They like making money.

The United States has convinced China that they’ll make lots of money if they’re nice to us. Creating this situation was extremely intelligent. The trick is to maintain China’s belief that continuing to be nice to us will still make them money. Unfortunately, this will become harder to do as our economy goes down the toilet.

Jul 1, 2008 - 5:36 pm John Samford:

“Hmmmm. Speaking the truth makes me part of the Obama machine? Hmmm.”

Truth depends on POV. I would rather have facts, only you don’t seem to have any.

To compare 18th century technology to 21st century is mislead at best, duplicity at worst. Beside, I challenge you to name a stolen technology. You can’t because there aren’t any.

As for trade, in September of 1939, Nazi Germany’s #1 trading partner was France. After the war queered that, the Soviet Union became Nazi Germany’s #1 trading partner. In ‘41 the Panzers going east passed Soviet trains going west with food and raw material for Germany’s workers and factories. So much for the Liberal fantasy of trade preventing war.

China does not want a War with the USA. The citizens of the USA DO NOT want a war with China. The ONLY people that want war with China are the Politicians and the MIC ( Military Industrial Complex). That is because of all the money they can steal from the American taxpayer during the war. China is NOT a threat and anyone who says they are is lying, motivated by filthy lucre.
We already have a war, only it’s a guerrilla war and therefore low cost by MIC terms. Don’t need very many 10 million dollar fighters that you can sell for 200 million to do bug hunts.

Jul 1, 2008 - 8:02 pm rc:

America is currently waning..no doubt about it. We can’t even effectively confront and overpower 3rd world petty tyrannies in places such as Iran and North Korea…there is no longer the will to do so. Much less so, China. The Chinese win by default now because there is no longer even the pretense of a political will to oppose anything of their policies. Iraq/WOT is 2003 America, the last remnants of national self-interest and decent policy…2008 America is a completely different country…so much diminished in 5 years. So, worrying about dealing with China’s acedency isn’t on the radar because the ‘new’ leadership of the US (by popular will) is now preoccupied with implementing the US decendency.

Jul 1, 2008 - 8:43 pm rjsasko:

Anyone who uses terms such as “MIC” or “Military Industrial Complex” is a leftard troll and should be treated as such.

Jul 1, 2008 - 9:16 pm NahnCee:

I’m also suffering a little bit of eyebrow-raising about troll-like characteristics when someone declaims that American is waning, but then can’t spell either ascend or descend.

Ahem.

Jul 1, 2008 - 10:12 pm Scott:

wretchard,

The passage about ship building and the ascendance of Chinese capabilities coupled with that being helpful in an invasion of Taiwan unfortunately omits serious issues with moving large fleets without air superiority. I can fly 1 B2 with 88 250 lb GPS bombs and leave only a Chinese oil slick for the days work.

The 250 lb SDB is re-deployable and will hit moving targets, any invaion fleet is toast.

Jul 1, 2008 - 10:40 pm james wilson:

Simply put, without liberty, China will strangle itself economically, culturally, and politically. The most important feature of progress in free makets is failure. Failure does not happen in China.
That is not to say America is not in decline, or that China, like the old Soviet Union, cannot cause great distress to free countries for a nickel on the dollar.
Ironically, if China were to succeeed, it would only be through increased liberty, and that is a good thing for everybody.

Jul 1, 2008 - 10:48 pm Benj:

Alexis - juiced to hear you checked Goodwyn’s books on American populism - hope you’ll go to read “Breaking the Barrier” - his great disappeared history of Solidarnosc. Ends with an amazing “Essay on Authorities” that’s one of the best critiques of elitist world-views (whcih span the Left and Right)…Nobody knows more than Goodwyn about people’s movements..

G recognized O as a brother pretty quickly. I’m sure he wishes O had more clarity re economic democracy and the traditions of worker ownership - but I know he’d reject your parrallel to W. J Bryant…O doesn’t represent a shadow movement that’s contesting with the real populist thing - it’s not as if, say, Edwards ever got any traction last year…O’s “movement” is what there is out there is you’re in the party of hope…

And let’s not forget race matter bigtime in America. Goodwyn surely wouldn’t. bryant/free Silver was a bitch but in the South populism ran up against race - REmember Tom Watson? - O is already much further up the road on that front that the pops ever got. Reminds me of an anecdote I may have already passed on here - A few mnths back Mr. G. got pissed at me when I teased him about his affection for his homie Edwards - we made up quick and few days later he musingly allowed if O won the presidency it woudl be more important than SEVEN wins by Edwards (or his equivs). Goodwyn is a Southern Liberal - born in GA, liven TX and NC all his life. He knows fromn the inside what O’s rise signifies in American history - knows it in his bones better than an Easterner like me! Or a Midwesterner like you?

RE - that petition thingy. IF you read that Trib piece through I htink you’ll see O’s acts weren’t all that egregious. Even his ex-fried the former state sen allows O went out of his way to caution her about giving up her safe seat. Told her she should hold on to it in case her Bid of house of REps failed and that he would NOT run if she wanted to do that. But she told she was Gone - When she tried to get back to her sweet spot, he played hardball. Not lovely but not very ugly either. The woman was feckless…O isn’t.

I’m cutting and pasted a FIRST piece that Goodwyn wrote back in 04 about Obama and a hero of Solindarnosc. Followed that with a passage re Mondragon in Ohio from an interview with William Greder - you can read the whole thing in the Nation section at firstofthemonth.org…

The Cunning of History

By Lawrence Goodwyn

Poland and the world lost a relentless democrat this summer, even as another promising practitioner was emerging in Illinois. The Pole was Jacek Kuron; The American is Barack Obama.

In the post-World War II years, Kuron was raised as an idealistic young activist in the Polish communist party and remained so until he discovered in the l960s that the principal beneficiaries of the party-state were party members, secret policemen and army officers (middle to high ranking in each case). Noticeably missing was the rest of the population, especially workers in whose name the worker state ostensibly ruled.

In the 1970s, Kuron took up station among the democratic opposition, a small group of Warsaw intellectuals who focused more on the censorship and civil liberties generally than on the structural confinement of Polish workers. Kuron felt, simply and correctly, that any agreement with the Leninist state was unenforceable without the support of organized workers since they were the only ones who could stop basic production upon which the party and everyone else depended. Unfortunately for Kuron, his efforts toward this objective ended disastrously in 1976 in the nearby city of Radom when a “strike” of workers collapsed with the brutal beating and imprisonment of the one worker publicly associated with the effort. Kuron thereafter always insisted that strike activities had to come after, not before, large-scale organizing efforts. It was a conclusion grounded in a profound ignorance of the internal dynamics of organizing and one that effectively excluded him from the on-going and eventually decisive efforts of workers on the Baltic Coast centered in the shipyard city of Gdansk. There, organizing in the Lenin Shipyard, a historic hotbed of labor activism, reappeared in the l960s. By 1970, workers on the coast had reconstituted the prewar “occupation strike” and added a postwar refinement – the concept of the Interfactory Strike Committee. This elaborate organizing device offered the prospect of providing centralized labor leadership to multi-factory job actions along the whole of the Baltic Coast – nothing less than a proto-General Strike. The veterans of this long-term organizing effort, Lech Walesa chief among them, did not need guidance from Warsaw intellectuals. Indeed, whatever lessons coastal activists had internalized from their multiple experiences in the 1970s were unknown to the Warsaw intelligentsia, Jacek Kuron included.

Ironically, after Solidarnosc burst upon the world scene in August 1980, intellectuals in Warsaw endeavored to take credit for the achievement, citing Kuron as the operative agent. However, Kuron declined to participate in this high-jacking of historical causality. He candidly announced his unabashed amazement at the successful mobilization of shipyard workers at Gdansk and elsewhere. Said Kuron: “I thought it was impossible; it was impossible; I still think it was impossible.” It was an unsolicited burst of Kuronesque candor the existence of which no Warsaw intellectual (that I know of) has ever subsequently acknowledged. At the time, however, the effect upon knowledgeable coastal activists was telling: Walesa thereafter relied on Kuron, among others, to help him interpret the utility of Warsaw types. Indeed, upon hearing of Kuron’s death, Walesa used Kuronesque language for repayment. Kuron was indispensable, he said. Solidarity was “impossible” to imagine without him. Polish-speak.

After the rise of Solidarity and the fall of the Polish Party, Jacek Kuron became the best Minister of Labor in the world – though in the era of globalization he was necessarily confined to maneuvering for palliatives rather than for any measure of worker autonomy. Welfare money for the increasing ranks of Polish unemployed became known as “Kuron money” and his soup kitchens yielded “Kuron’s soup.” Bitter ironies dogged him throughout his long life of democratic advocacy. But no disappointment succeeded in destroying his morale.

In an environment such as post-Communist Poland where hopes were extremely high and serious opportunities severely limited by the American-imposed global economy, the surfacing of demagoguery was certainly not something restricted to loquacious oppositionists, dazed ex-party hacks, or worker activists. Kuron performed far better than most. He did not believe that consistency was the essential ethical measure of politics. When he thought he had been wrong, he said so. It seems hard for democrats to ask for more than that.

Jacek Kuron understood the subtle social corruptions and the systemic economic corruptions of Leninist power; he did not understand, or experientially learn to understand, how to organize against that power. His fellow oppositionists who formed a tiny minority within the Warsaw intelligentsia did not know he did not know, because they had not themselves come to possess any means to measure coherently his inappropriate admonitions about worker organizing. They thought, pompously and illogically, that Kuron had “prepared the consciousness of the workers” for the coastal upheavals. So within this segment of Polish society, the Warsaw intellectuals, Kuron remains valued for the wrong reasons, as many of his obituaries around the world reveal.

His enduring democratic legacy is his commitment to candor as an instrument of politics and his belief that one worked with anybody who was willing to help one deal with a persisting social malfunction inherited from the past.

Which brings to mind Barack Obama. A forty-two year old state senator, he emerged –astonishingly – from a tumultuous 2004 primary as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate in Illinois.

In the prevailing culture of political interpretation in the United States, Obama is perhaps too easily described as calm and thoughtful. Or alternately – in language that cannot be seen as immediately persuasive – he violates too many rules of spin control. That is to say, he does not sound like a man running for office.

One example should suffice. After defeating the labor-endorsed candidate in the democratic primary (an uninspiring hack it must be said), Obama appeared before a downstate Illinois meeting of mostly unemployed union workers whose jobs had been successfully “outsourced” by their erstwhile American employers. In Decatur, where the closing of two large factories changed the lives of thousands of local families, Obama said: “We have an Administration that believes the government’s role is to protect the powerful from the powerless.” The eleven-word summary of what the Bush administration believed resonated so totally with the exact lived experience of the audience that, according to an observing reporter, “the little community center rang with angry acclamation.” This was a situation that could be changed. “Take a leap of faith with me,” Obama, a black man, went on to say to his blue-collar white audience. As if to test just how far the leap might be, he further informed his audience of protectionists that he was a free trader.

The point, obviously, is not to praise Obama as a political lemming but to emphasize that he does not see political recruitment as requiring the fabrication of constant agreement. Does he consciously raise red flags in front of protectionists? “Look, these guys are all wearing Nike shoes and buying Pioneer stereos. They don’t want the borders closed. They just don’t want their communities destroyed.” The point is to confront serious and divisive issues rather than allow Republican consultants to use massive amounts of ad money to trivialize all politics with negative demagoguery. Says Obama: “If you make political discourse sufficiently negative, more people will become cynical and stop paying attention. That leaves more space for special interests to pursue their agendas, and that’s how we end up with drug companies making drug policy, energy companies making energy policy, and multinationals making trade policy.”

In the name of serious politics, a measured call for the merits of candor. It seems a useful way to honor Jacek Kuron’s memory is to lend a hand to Barack Obama’s campaign in Illinois.

HERE’S THE PASSAGE RE MONDRAGON IN OHIO…
FOTM:You recently heard Logue lead a workshop on what workers might want if they could create “an employee-owned industrial park.” Tell us about that and why you found it inspiring?

GREIDER: The discussion among worker owners and their allies about a “Mondragon in Ohio” - an industrial park composed of small, employee-owned companies sharing assets and overhead functions - illustrates for me the open-ended nature of human possibilities, once people imagine beyond existing structures of control. It also explodes the usual stereotypes about what workers want. They want whole lives, they want more control over their destinies, they want practical, intelligent, self-interested collaboration with others. The present system not only discourages such creative thinking, it makes it impossible for most workers even to entertain new ideas. Given the advanced level of our development, this seems to me a criminal waste of human capabilities.

WHAT ABOUT CHINA? Off-topic. Not as much as you might think. The concerns of Goodwyn/Grieder are pretty relevant to issues raised by China’s state capitalist turn (and the U.S. role as debtor nation)…The connections will be apparent to any reader schooled in Marx’s internationalism..Pace Wretch! Second time as farce? Seemed a bit strange to see you leaning on a writer you’d dissed and dismissed only a few days before. But - waht the hey - Obama’s liberal-mindedness must be catching…

Jul 1, 2008 - 11:15 pm Charles:

China’s premier urges US to stabilise dollar

Jul 2, 2008 - 12:45 am anon:

I think the doom-prognosticators are engaging in wishful-thinking.

You know what you remind me of? You remind me of the American left who have been ordaining doom for America for the past 25 years. Your modus operandi is the same: you cherry-pick some anecdotal indicators, and proceed to make sweeping, conclusory claims about the imminent collapse of [insert country].

Now, you MAY be right, just as the left MAY be right about their predictions about American decline; but you, like your leftwing doomsaying counterparts, in no way make your case despite a lot of hyperventilating.

Thank heavens the Bush administration knows the score on China, as did the Clinton administration, and as did Nixon.

Consider the possibility that conservative hawks are as wrong about China as liberal Bush-haters are wrong about Iraq and the greater War on Terrorism. I know you won’t, because it is a matter of ideology for ideologues like you; but try.

Jul 2, 2008 - 1:15 am maverick muse:

[Bush] “he put the neo-conservatives in charge. Which, by definition, means he was opposed to real conservatism.”

“Neo-conservative” which by definition means opposed to real conservatism?

Left to an ubertard.

Jul 2, 2008 - 3:22 am maverick muse:

“It’s hard to imagine how a policy elite which cannot even approve the drilling of new oil wells or the construction of nuclear power plants can seriously contemplate competing with China. And yet China’s strategy is in large part based upon a playbook that America wrote — and forgot.”

That’s it in a nutshell. Our only hang-ups are mental. Americans do want to work and produce and defend intelligently. Our leadership will say whatever to get elected, and once elected glut as they will. Our national economy needs to get to work on our national security, and voters must define the issues because our candidates won’t.

Jul 2, 2008 - 3:36 am Staring In Disbelief:

Benj: Lighten up the posts, man, you’re sucking all the air out of the comments thread with your long-windedness. Here’s another tip: have a point. Are you on Obama’s payroll? I thought I read somewhere that his campaign was paying people to work the blogs for him. If we want his campaign BS, we’ll go to his campaign site. Spare us. Cripes.

Jul 2, 2008 - 1:16 pm Peterike:

I have a different question for Benj. Despite his endless palaver about O’s “imagination” I haven’t the slightest idea what Benj wants from O as President (other than a bunch of touchy-feely nonsense about pushing us out of our comfort zones).

Now me, I can easily rattle off a dozen things — concrete policies — that I want my President to do. (I won’t bother listing anything, because I already know nothing I want is going to get done by either candidate.) But I never hear such stuff from Benj. It’s all just rhapsodizing and heavy breathing, like a teenage girl mooning over a rock star.

So Benj, can you give me, say, six concrete POLICIES you want the Big O to implement? I’m curious about what you want him to DO when he gets there. And “reflecting our better selves” isn’t a policy, just in case you were wondering.

Jul 2, 2008 - 3:02 pm NahnCee:

Hey, at least Benj is using paragraphs now. He used to post page after page after page of densely packed words all crammed together with nary a break.

He doesn’t make any more sense now and his message is still a glowing Obama-wears-halo one but baby steps.

Jul 2, 2008 - 4:12 pm

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