I argued that the Spanish, British, Soviet powers faded for economic reasons. You made no attempt to counter the argument, but assumed extreme military adventure for powers fading was correct with no reason. Ignoring history is not a good way to build a reputation.John wrote: ↑Thu Jul 29, 2021 2:28 pmThis is absolutely, positively not true. The Chinese Communist culture is worse than the Nazi culture on steroids. The Chinese Communists consider their culture to be vastly superior to the Nazi culture and to all Western cultures, with the manifest destiny of colonizing other lands, such as the United States, Canada and Australia.Bob Butler wrote: ↑Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:38 pmThis is not like the last crisis when one’s on culture was viewed as superior, other cultures not, and military force was attempted rabidly to increase territory and thus power. There is just no comparable attempt at military expansion. Does this mean no major powers will fall? Not clear. Powers fall for other reasons.
Has China launched any wars of aggression lately? True, in Mao’s day they considered the communist theory superior to the Chinese culture, but the traditional Chinese culture was embodied by their opposition at the time. They were fighting against it for reason. They have more recently been into a hybrid capitalist - autocratic culture which is not much superior to anything and living on borrowed time. It has some semblance of the way the Emperors did things in the old days. They favor autocratic rule with an accent on the well to do elites at the expense of the people.
They are much more into brinksmanship and bluff than actually using military force against anyone but their own people. When did they hit the beaches of the US, Canada or Australia? Sure, they will play financial games, and by exploiting their people with bad air, poor wages and lousy benefits earn their enmity, but use military force against 'inferior' cultures to increase their power? The Axis powers last crisis tried it blatantly. Just ask Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, North Africa, France, the Soviets, etc... China hasn’t.
Their curse and boon has been a long trouble time between the opium wars and Mao’s Great Leap Forward. The people went though a lot of ugliness and are reluctant to enter such a period again. Until now at least, the opposition has been tentative. Now, though, the ugliness is passing out of living memory. The willingness to see faults in the culture is coming more to the foreground. The S&H concept of every four score and seven years the people see flaws in the culture and demand that they be fixed is coming due. In short, there could well be a crisis. You ought to familiarize yourself with the S&H theory.
Again, somewhere between the machine gun and the nuke, war of conquest became not cost effective. There are some slow learners, including yourself. China and the CCP is not one of them. In this era of proxy and insurgent wars, the faction that the insurgents can hide among have an advantage. China acknowledges this and uses it. They do not fight it by being the one to invade places and oppose the natives. They try financial games instead with very mixed results.