The following post....What Did We Expect....was from March 31, 2020. The government announced that 100,000 to 240,000 coronavirus deaths were possible. By the end of the year vaccines were developed and approved....and everyone was thrilled....this before we were taken in by conspiracy theorists....and thus the lingering and the protests eventually brought on more deaths....we are over 900,000 now....and extended the end of the pandemic to who knows where? Ten days later Trump said this in response about the number of possible deaths...."could be 60 [thousand]....could be 70 [thousand]....could be 75....could be 55." This is the mind that....launched a thousand Tweets....and sunk conservatism and evangelicalism and talk radio and Fox News in the process.
What Did We Expect
The plane that I was on left Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside Saigon on the same day that Air Force One landed in Beijing....February 21, 1972....(fifty years ago today!) This was President Nixon's attempt to make war with China less likely....or so he explained it as such. Four months previous....mainland China was admitted to the United Nations as Taiwan was expelled. Four months after President Nixon's arrival in China....burglers were caught at the Watergate Hotel. On April 30, 1975 the Chinese variation of the Soviet T-54 tank rolled onto Tan Son Nhut. China was admitted to the World Trade Organization on December 11, 2001....three months to the day after 9/11.
Today our relationship with China is like a clematis plant that has climbed in and out of the wires of a trellis. As a matter of fact the whole world is the trellis as China's economy weaves its way up and around and through.
China persecutes many of its people....and steals intellectual property....and its influence around the world has been spreading as an invasive plant. What did we expect? Its economy is said to need an annual 6% growth to sustain itself. We not only allowed this economic powerhouse to come about....we wanted it to grow....and we continued to feed it.
If China's economy were to totally collapse....what would happen? Economists attempt an answer on the economic side....but its our intelligence agencies that attempt to answer the sociopolitical concerns....but what good would that be anyway....for President Trump doesn't believe them. Well he may now with his own appointees in there.
It would have been one thing if our economy had been suffering and people were out of work in great numbers.....but that wasn't the case as we were constantly told that we were the greatest economy in the history of the world. So why did we pursue a risky tariff war? Was it on principle? Does Donald Trump seem to you to be a man who acts on principle?
China was being pressured big time. Their communist leadership was moving back to a cold war stance.....and then the virus hit....and if it subsides China will then be taken to task. The Pentagon announced just today that the Marines are changing their training and equipment to focus on a more likely 21st Century war with China.
If one is building a giant skyscraper hotel....one might be able to go back and forth on almost a daily basis....'OK we'll do it this way" and then "No we'll do it that way". If you make a mistake....worst case scenario you're out a few million bucks...but in world affairs as serious as potential major wars we need consistency. We don't need a novice stomping around saying that he's the smartest man in the room. Do we want China to at least survive....or do we want it to collapse? Let's look to both the immediate and long-term repercussions before answering that.
What has been getting in the way of common sense is the greed of profiteering....which is short-sightedness. The tariff war was ill-advised. The dispersions cast upon NATO were ill-advised....as were purging of experienced intelligence people because they were not a rubber stamp....and as was the arm-twisting of the Fed....as was a number of other decisions made only to increase profits that were supposedly through the roof already. Whatever decisions will be made on China have to take into consideration what the communist leadership might do if their backs are absolutely up against the wall.
