Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnR
Not entirely wrong, not entirely right.
We, the USA, have done a poor job of leadership since the end of the Cold War. Remember the less than a couple decade Unipolar World?
Russia and China are doing their damnedest, successfully, to move back into a Multipolar World. Russia and China want to counterbalance us, and it has been increasingly easy.
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I agree with your assessment, with the possible exception that China does not merely want to counterbalance us. I believe it wants to replace us.
And that has been going on for a long while, with our help, way before Trump. If anything, Trump is actually putting a little monkey wrench into China's rise with his trade war.
Do I think that he will succeed in getting China to play "fair"? I have my doubts. the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people are two different things. The CCP is firstly and mainly about keeping its power over the Chinese people intact. Anything that would weaken that power or destroy it is a non-starter. Any trade agreement that would lessen its economic ability to fund its Belt and Road policy and its ability to expand its infrastructure drive to build more and more centralized mega cities that can attract its huge rural populations and their multicultural tendencies that tend to be a bit independent off those lands into those cities would not be a welcomed agreement.
I think The CCP would rather wait Trump out, hoping he will either be forced out of office, or lose support and not be elected nor have the power to exert any more pressure on China while he finishes his term. And anything the CCP can do to assure any of those outcomes would be preferable to it rather than bowing to some "fair" trade agreement that would make it poorer and less powerful.
If Trump had the full support of our political machines and our media and of the American people, and was a lock to be re-elected. China might well think differently about stalling or negating a deal that would end tariffs.
What other options are there to prevent China from achieving its plan to be the dominant world power? There is war, which nobody wants. And there is persuading the rest of the world that what China is doing is not in their interest, best or otherwise. No other administration did anything in either of those directions. If anything, they did the opposite.