The Most Dangerous Man in the World....Part 2

So democracies are nothing but a bunch of wimpy nations, focused more on arguing amongst themselves and how one political party can gain the upper hand against the other.   With democracies it is Party first and Nation second.  It is all about winning, with little regard for geopolitics.   It’s more about getting your local school board candidate elected than anything taking place 8000 miles away.

I do not want to state that Democracies are guilty of putting their head in the sand.  Germany has led the way in Europe on accepting immigrants from Syria.   Again I raise the very unpopular question of the American military going into Syria. 

 

Nevermind that Russia now has a foothold in the Middle East that will not be going away for a very long time to come.  Would there have been any mass Syrian immigration to Europe if the Marines were there?

But when it comes to living within a democratic nation, I do not plead ignorance to what is happening around the world today.   However, I do plead guilty to selfishness.

The world would be a better place today if the US Military had simply gone into Syria.  Look at the dead today in Syria and tell me I’m wrong?

Yet our budgets, our Media Sensitivity to casualties and our well founded belief that “we cannot solve their problems” all ring true.   As does the horrible belief among us that we don’t care what happens in Syria.  We don’t care what happens to a nation that opposed the United States for so long.    The Masses in that very Christian way of theirs simply shrug and say “Fuck em.  That’s what the bastards get.”

Now if Syria were a Christian nation, it would be a different story. 

Europe is tired of Syria, and everything else happening in the Middle East.  Aren’t we all?

And Democratic Europe has no interest in what happens in Asia either.

The window is open in China.  It isn’t going to close for a long time yet.  China’s pace of militarization hasn’t slowed.   And it keeps poking America in the eye.    The only nation standing in the way of China’s ambitions is America.  

We can say “yeah, just let China have what it wants, it’s rightfully theirs, they live there and we don’t and we have no business getting involved”, except we’d be wrong on all accounts.

When France stood down in 1936 in the Rhineland, in terms of historical speed it immediately paid the price.    And America to this day continues to pay the price for not having the stomach to deal with Iran in 1979. 

American leaders have typically been lawyers.  Wordsmiths.   Not men of action but men of words.  The last two Presidents who were not lawyers though, before 2017 were Bush Sr and Bush Jr.   And they both attacked Iraq.    If China’s focus had been simply “wait til America has a lawyer for President”, they’d have been right.    

Lawyers by breeding are cautious.  Risk adverse.   Otherwise they believe they haven’t done a good job.  Which is perhaps why lawyers in my opinion make poor CEO’s.  

But not having a lawyer as President is just as dangerous.   Because history shows those are the Presidents that may actually do something about a country like China.

I give you Trump.

Most decidedly not a lawyer and very much a man of action.    

While clearly lacking the intellect of Obama or Clinton, Trump is not only a “man of action” but a damn Nationalist.  Someone I wrote about quite awhile back.   America without question has been benevolent for too long.  It had to be.  How else to grow the economies of Korea and Vietnam and going back a ways, even Japan?   These economies at one time were too poor to buy anything from anyone.   Never mind they are nationalist by nature, themselves, and have had trade surplus after trade surplus for decade after decade.   Someone has to be the sop.  The buyer of all that product.  Someone has to run a trade deficit.  Play the role of “sucker”.  

And it’s been us.

A Nationalist leader, with an American First economy, would never have allowed anyone else to prosper to its own people’s detriment.  That’s economic suicide.  And it’s taken us 25 years to figure that out.  Because of Free Trade, America has become a nation of warehouse workers. Importing, stocking, shipping the goods that come from everyone else overseas, to every Smith and Jones’ that live on Main Street.

Someday all these jobs will even require a college degree.  Why is that?  Because companies know the pool of unemployed university graduates will happily apply.   And the companies themselves want to advertise the fact they are hiring college graduates.  Nevermind it was originally a job only a high school diploma needed.

This is the America China is going to face soon.  Wrong or Right, China will be the Fall Guy. It’s all about Symbolism.  Let the historians figure out the facts.

But I know this:

While my crystal ball is unable to tell me what China’s Global Ambitions are (nor can yours), China will not negotiate away its ability and right and freedom to build aircraft carriers or new fancy missiles or stealth airplanes.   And it won’t do this because it’s learned from Obama that it can do whatever it wants as it long as it doesn’t stop talking, and pretends to rein in North Korea.    Because lawyers always feel they have a chance as long as the words flow.

But with Trump in power words don’t necessarily mean anything anymore.  Trump is an intellectual lightweight.  He feels more comfortable expressing his thoughts not through a speech but through action.   Thus the flurry of executive orders.  It’s action. 

We are living in the Modern Day Version of High Noon.   Everyone knows China is coming to town.  Australia, Korea and of course Japan.  But the only nation that will probably be in the standoff at the end of the day is America. 

China has America properly figured out.  At least until November 2016.   And as it doesn’t have to deal with the niceties of a Free Press, it thus controls the narrative from within.   Yet while China understands American attitudes towards casualties, it does not understand Trump.   Don’t blame the Chinese.  Trump is a loose cannon.  We don’t understand him either.  Trump is a Dangerous Man.  He is the most dangerous man of recent times in American History.   This is not drama.  Nor is it hyperbole.  He is a man for whom facts are but fleeting things, to be twisted and used as his emotions see fit to interpret them.

And this is why finally we may have reached a perfect storm.  

It would behoove the Aussies, the Canadians, New Zealand, etc…..every country with a stake in the Pacific theater to not just use one’s energy to understand him, but to contain him.  Even, to manipulate him. 

And of China? China simply didn’t count on America having a Nationalist President.   As I’ve said before, they disdained Hillary, but they knew Hillary.   Yeah, she would go to Beijing and give speeches that embarrass the Chinese, but that was all.   She wasn’t gonna take any phone call from Taiwan however.  In a twisted sort of way, piss off Trump at your own peril.  Because he himself doesn’t even know what he’s gonna do.   And if that doesn’t scare you, than nothing does.  More than ever before, we may need to rely upon some anonymous mid ranking military officer to “minimize” or perhaps even “ignore” any crazy orders Trump may give.   How is this even important? Trump has turned the history of democracies and how they act in times of “Open Window” opportunities upside down.   And as his domestic policies begin to crash and burn on CNN and in the papers, and Trump responds with his predictable flailing about, Trump surely realizes the one sure way to regain support of the people is a sure fire military crisis.   This is where China deserves blame.  After all, it has stoked a fire that Trump can easily make larger.   And it wouldn’t take much to get the American People on board either.   Right or wrong, Obama, like Bill Clinton, was perceived as a pushover.  Someone the Chinese just weren’t afraid of.   Not a good time for a Nationalist President. Nevermind, that Xi himself would prefer a confrontation with a smaller power (the Japanese?). (this may have been the longest paragraph I've ever written on my blog...)

Certainly not with the Americans. 

Back to 1936.

It is easy to ridicule France today (and England) for what did not transpire in the Rhineland, and certainly easy to do the same with America in 1979 with Iran.   But would any of us have done anything different? Of course not.   In both instances America and France were in economic tough times.  I’ve heard said this is when countries go to war but I’m not so sure.  People are more concerned about their own problems than anything else.  

I believe it’s when countries are prosperous that conflict becomes more edible.

Jimmy Carter was America’s ultimate pacifist president, during one of America’s toughest economic times.   Did he start a war?  Instead he pulled America out of the Panama Canal.   He even contemplated withdrawing American troops from South Korea.   The Russians so disdained him they invaded another country on his watch.  America’s air force left Taiwan during his term.

China has had a string of tough talking, but once elected “now I see the light” American presidents to deal with.   Presidents so focused on America’s domestic issues they allow American Business to call the shots with China.  Many of whom happen to be donors.

But now they have to deal with a President so wealthy he just doesn’t have to suck up to America’s Business Elite.   As such China may have lost its leverage of control over The Man.   Add in his gross unpredictability and suddenly we have a Democracy we haven’t seen before.  A powerful nation high on war movies and led by a man crazy enough to just use the weapons at his disposal before any window closes.

And it may be overdue.

Since WW2, America has not gone a decade without involvement in a serious war.

The 40’s…..WW2

The 50’s….Korea

The 60’s and early 70’s…..Vietnam

By 1990 America was chomping at the bit.  Its younger generations nostalgic on movies memorializing Vietnam.   (Hussein really should’ve attacked Kuwait sooner than he did.  Sadly, people are already forgetting who this monster was)

9/11…….

Like a laowai living in China who goes a few weeks without Western food, the pangs start to kick in.  The America Nation has simply not endured two decades on this planet without serious bloodshed since the 20’s and 30’s.  Nearly a century ago.  

It would be unprecedented for America to last another decade without some type of serious conflict breaking out.   Hollywood demands it.  The conservative blogosphere demands it.   And now America has a leader more than capable of blaming China for its problems, with a great many people more than willing to cheer him on.  

Only time will tell.