Clearly everyone should just let China do whatever they want to avoid war, if we appease them by expanding their territorial claims and avoiding conflict then surely everything will be fine. The politics of appeasement has historically been very successful.
Edit: Stop replying please, I don’t want to waste any more time arguing with y’all.
It is the USA that has been the target of appeasement. Every expansion, every death squad, every war crime, every black site, every assassination, every war of aggression, every single time the world appeases the USA.
If you think the USA is appeasing China, your head is screwed on backwards. I know it’s a common trope for abusers to feel offended and attacked when their victims standup for themselves, and I know you probably stand with the victims and see through the abusers’ bullshit. You need to do that with the USA.
Abu Ghraib - appeased.
Nord Stream 2 - appeased.
Solemaini - appeased.
Iraq - appeased.
Iraq 2 - appeased.
Vietnam - appeased.
Laos - appeased.
Cambodia - appeased.
Korea - appeased.
Hiroshima - appeased.
Nagasaki - appeased.
Guantanamo - appeased.
Libya - appeased.
Syria - appeased.
StuxNet - appeased.
Pulling out of nuclear treaties - appeased.
Refusing to be accountable to ICC - appeased.
Refusing to sign landmine treaty - appeased.
Agent Orange - appeased.
Napalm - appeased.
White phosphorus - appeased.
Depleted Uranium - appeased.
Yugoslavia - appeased.
Afghanistan - appeased.
School of the Americas - appeased.
Wiretapping the entire US civilian population - appeased.
Wiretapping every embassy through Siemens supply chain attack - appeased.
NATO expansion - appeased.
Economic shock therapy kills millions - appeased.
Training terrorists - appeased.
Airlifting terrorists into other countries - appeased.
Environmental devastation - appeased.
Sending expired vaccines - appeased.
Refusing to send vaccines - appeased.
Refusing to follow the predefined protocol for sharing vaccine research - appeased.
Iranian regime change - appeased.
Color revolutions - appeased.
Extracting trillions from Africa - appeased.
Child separation - appeased.
Toddlers in solitary confinement - appeased.
Forced hysterectomies - appeased.
Collective punishment of civilians - appeased.
Support for Israeli apartheid - appeased.
Iran-Contra - appeased.
Fast and Furious - appeased.
CIA drug trafficking - appeased.
Haitian assassination - appeased.
Bolivia - appeased.
Nicaragua - appeased.
Pinochet - appeased.
I can keep going if you want.
Fuck the United States. They’re easily the worst, most imperialist nation on the planet. But we’re capable of more nuance than “any country in opposition to the US can do no wrong”
What the fuck is wrong with you? The idea that the USA could possibly engage in appeasement is completely undermined by the fact that THEY ARE THE AGGRESSOR WHO IS BEING APPEASED. When China pushes back against the USA they are not doing something wrong, they are doing something against the USA’s interests. When China doesn’t push back against the USA, they are appeasing.
The entire analysis of “oh everyone is bad and therefore the USA shouldn’t appease them” is completely structureless. It’s all moron vibes.
Fuck the United States. They’re easily the worst, most imperialist nation on the planet.
“But somehow I keep finding all these familiar geopolitical flashpoints where I support them.”
I agree, we are capable of more nuance than the ludicrous position you just made up right now to shut down the conversation before you have to do any uncomfortable introspection.
The Fast and Furious thing is not a bit, btw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
Do you not believe in supporting the lesser evil? I thought libs loved that shit.
Whatabout, whatabout, whatabout.
You realize that if country A does something bad, “Country B did something bad too!” is not actually a defense of country A’s behaviour? Indeed, it just implies that you agree that that behaviour is bad.
Moron vibes.
China isn’t doing something bad. The USA is an aggressor in the region and has been for decades. The USA took over for the French in Vietnam, and that goes back a long time. The USA took over from Japan in Korea, and that goes back awhile too. The USA is the active aggressor here. The idea that China pushing back against USA aggression could ever be considered appeasement is completely illogical.
What China is doing is not capable of being appeased. It would be like saying that if Nazi Germany left Poland alone because Poland was fighting back then Germany would be guilty of appeasing Poland. It’s moronic beyond fucking belief.
No. It’s not whataboutism, it’s evidence that your argument is illogical. The USA cannot possibly appease China because the USA is the one being appeased the world over. The USA is the Fourth Reich. When China opposes it, China is doing its part to create a future where the USA no longer can hurt the supermajority of the world’s people.
Fuck your liberal brain rot.
Also “appeasement” is a made up post-hoc explanation for the western Allies’ actions before WW2, blaming the supposed naivete or lack of spine of the leaders for simply allowing the Nazis to make expansionist moves uncontested, rather than it being an intentional policy to get out of their way and try to direct them eastwards against the Soviet Union.
The 21st century indo-pacific is not a comparable issue to 20th century Central Europe. Also appeasement wasn’t even the complete disaster casual observers like to make it out to be (who still won the war after all?) but that’s beside the point here. Taiwan is not some defenseless independent country being threatened by the reincarnation of Hitler calling for world domination. It’s a part of China that broke away in an ideological civil war that China wants back. Even the US state department acknowledges this fact, yet they still believe it is very important that they protect one part of China from another part of China and extend their civil war which should have ended for good decades ago. This is not an act of peace or charity, this is creating a conflict situation, with Taiwan right in the center of any potential explosion.
See, the US doesn’t care about these concerns is because the real reason America is in Taiwan is so they can use it as a strategic base for operations to oppose and weaken the PRC, a “West Berlin of Asia” so to say. And somehow, liberals and social democratic opportunists have deluded themselves into believing that stationing the most powerful naval fleet in history (US 7th Fleet) to permanently do ‘freedom of navigation exercises’ (armed provocations) in Chinese coastal waters is the “moderate” solution to this conflict. And I suppose we’ll just have to keep the navy there forever right? Or until the PRC finally collapses? (I’m still waiting lol)
I say we should cut a deal with the PRC, let them have Loser Island in exchange for mediating other border disputes with their neighbors. A majority of Taiwanese citizens want more integration with China, and they’re still their largest trading partner. While immediate annexation wouldn’t be popular, a gradual process of integration would be best for the entire region. It would allow the two biggest military powers to step down their aggressive actions against each other, end the period of Taiwanese citizens being used as a geopolitical pawn, and provide a solid diplomatic framework to settle future disputes in the region (as this would be a massive rapprochement in Sino-American relations) This wouldn’t even weaken American national security (which is what everyone hates about ‘appeasement’) since it’s, you know, an occupied imperialist outpost on the other side of the world’s largest ocean, not even in America’s hemisphere.
Of course this option would be totally unacceptable for the American imperialist apparatus, they would never be willing to lose such an important base in the Pacific (just ignore that they would still have Japan, Guam, Philippines, etc). So what’s going to happen instead is that the US is eventually going to get distracted and entangled in some other imperialist mess, because they can’t recognize their empire is hopelessly overextended, and China will just take Taiwan when they think the balance of power is in their favor. This would be the worse thing to happen: a chaotic breakdown of the region instead of a negotiated reordering. There will be decades of bitterness and calls for mass violence. Maybe it will also escalate and some ships get sunk and the nukes fly and oh well its World War 3. Beware those who call diplomacy ‘appeasement’ in the post-atomic age, they seek your death.
How can you consider yourself anti-imperialist when you’re talking about unilaterally giving entire countries to other countries?
Is the Donbas a separate country because it declared independence from Ukraine?
EDIT: Which is actually more than Taiwan has done, the government in exile on Taiwan considers itself the rightful government of the entirety of mainland China and parts of Mongolia.
Taiwan isn’t a country. They don’t consider themselves independent, China doesn’t consider them independent, the U.S. doesn’t consider them independent.
How can you consider yourself anti-imperialiat when you don’t know the basic facts of the situation?
Did you even bother to read the comments you’re replying to? Taiwan isn’t a country and it never has been. It has been a part of the nation of China for centuries. When the civil war broke out, it was between two political groups inside the nation of China, a nation that includes the island of Taiwan. The communists won the war and the KMT lost and fled to Taiwan, an island in the nation of China. Because the KMT fled, the civil war continues, but the imperialist countries (UK, USA) intervened to protect the losing army that was holes up on an insland in the nation of China.
That army, the KMT, never declared independence, never said they were a separate sovereign entity, and never created a new country. They said they were the rightful rulers of the nation of China, which includes the island of Taiwan.
The imperilaists wanted the civil war to continue because they wanted control over the nation of China, which includes the island of Taiwan. So they made the KMT their proxy and funded and armed them, even while the KMT engaged in brutal mass murder campaigns and brutal political repression for 4 decades. It’s called the White Terror. Look it up. People living on Taiwan, an island in th nation of China, were Chinese nationals. When the KMT lost, many of those people wanted to end the war and recognize the communists as the new leaders of the nation of China, of which they were a part. The KMT murdered thousands of them. The imperialists agreed that this was right and good.
The UN had a seat for the nation of China. The recognized the KMT and gave them the seat at the UN. Not two seats, one for one nation and one for another, one seat for one nation, the nation of China which includes the island of Taiwan. Eventually it became untenable to recognize the KMT as the leaders of the nation of China and the world shifted to recognizing the communists of the nation of China, a nation that has an unbroken history of having an island called Taiwan which no one has challenged.
And since then, the imperilaists who cannot allow other nations to govern themselves in their own interests, has been maintaining and exacerbating the civil war to keep their proxy war against communists going.
It is anti-imperialist to support China against the interests of the West.
Have you considered the possibility that people living in Fuzhou, Putian, Quanzhou, Xiamen and Zhangzhou (among many millions of others along the coast) don’t want to have American nukes pointed at them a mere 200-300 kilometers away?
Also neither China, the US, the :international-community-1::international-community-2: or the rest of the world do not recognize Taiwan as independent. Only the :nato-cool: despite this, want to wrest Taiwan away to build a puppet state.
Oh yeah and the official acronymn is “CPC”.
different from a hundred years ago and compared to a world without any nuclear weapons
I don’t see why, China is constrained by the same consequences of nuclear war, and has the same responsibility to avoid it, e.g. by relaxing claims that it owns and controls the entire South China Sea. Especially because I don’t think you’d say the same would be justified if the US claimed the entire Gulf of Mexico, or bearing sea, for example
The United States is clearly evil and doesn’t have good intentions. I’m not an idiot. But we also need to be critical of the wrongdoings of the Chinese state.
The politics of appeasement has historically been very successful.
the one singular lesson liberals were able to tease out from all their history classes on ww2
“I can’t refute your argument so I’ll just call you uneducated, instead.”
I’m not a liberal, by the way.
lmao is this literally a lemmy instance for British feds? this has to be some reverse psychology from the Ml5
Britain doesn’t have “feds”, fed is a really American thing. It’s short for “federated reddit” basically.
Britain doesn’t have “feds”, fed is a really American thing.
wiktionary says otherwise and even has a newspaper citation for British use of it to refer to local cops.
(I guess thanks to Hollywood’s influence…)
These are the territorial claims of the government on Taiwan, from a state the US and much of the Western world support or at least de facto like to defend in Asia. They never made any remarks regarding Taiwan’s claims with 18 other countries. If the US supports peace in the Asia Pacific (besides looking at a map and asking why the US has even a say about Asia in the first place), then surely Mainland China must be supported, as by protecting & legitimizing Taiwan’s constitution, you’re approving this shit in Asia.
But let me guess, neoliberal countries get a pass from the crackerverse?
Holy shit, you’re telling me that both sides in a civil war think they should have full control of the country they’re in a civil war over? Hang on I need to sit fucking down my head is spinning
Civil war is when two sides of a nonviolent conflict peacefully negotiate reintegration.
Better send weapons to Taiwan!
No, I think you need to read my comment and your’s again. You say appeasement politics will lead to no good, so… you protect the ROC’s claims instead, which is even appeasing more that just leaving China. I caught your illogical argument, and distilled it to the meaningless content that it was. Now you pretend stupid to run away from that illogical claim. But you can’t win against me, who studied at Oxford, Nato boy
Well, if they are so democratic, and support other nations sovereignty as they would like their own, why don’t they remove them from their constitution? I have a feeling you have no idea of the ideology of the state on that island.
Isn’t is great when someone speaks and tells you everything about who they are as a person.
Wanting US empire to collapse is certainly not everything I am as a person. I guess some are only capable to see others are cartoonish cardboard cutouts as opposed to actual people.
The only territorial claims China has tried to enforce recently are to literally uninhabited lands (Aksai Chin and the SCS islands) and Taiwan (which they are still at war with).
How much do you really care about a piece of rock with no people and no animals living on it?
China creates conflict with all its neighbours and tries to steal their territorial waters.
China threatens the existence of an independent Taiwan.
China commits literal genocide against Uyghurs
And it’s the US starting shit this time? Give me a fucking break imperialist sympathisers.
So first, the US having military bases surrounding China is tied into why they disagree with their neighbors. They allowed the US on the boarder so it makes sense they aren’t stoked about it. The US has at least 750 military bases around the world in 80 countries. The next closest country has 145 bases and thats the UK. If we want to reference imperialism, then starting with the US is the most practical based on this alone.
In addition, only 12 countries consider Taiwan as an independent country. Regardless if this is correct, the actions the US has recently taken with Taiwan is without question increasing tension in an already tense situation.
Furthermore, following the numbers on the Uyghur women being forced to have contraception implants would mean each woman has 8 impants. This makes absolute zero sense. The fact the US media’s primary source on the Uyghur situation is an outright lunatic does help make it all add up though.
All in all, it takes two to tango for sure. Yet the US seeing it’s global power drastically decline makes their moves less obfuscated and vividly more desperate.
It’s not imperialism when the bases are invited and accepted. These bases open up because the host nations are worried about China and the US is the only country that has the scale to oppose a murderous regime from dominating the region.
It’s not that the US hasn’t also done bad things - it’s that they’re seen as a safer bet, despite those bad things, for those countries maintaining their independence.
Tell me you’re a lib who doesn’t know what imperialism is without saying it directly holy fucking shit
Why are there so many brain dead takes in this thread? Who the fuck can possibly believe that imperialism can’t be imperialism if it’s “invited”?
Ah, there’s the lemmy.ml tankies trying to obfuscate China’s human rights abuses.
If you’re concerned about human rights, why gloss over the US being notorious for human rights abuse? They have the largest prison population ever, comprised primarily of minorities who were obscenely experimented on during MK Ultra. Plus the prior and current treatment of Native Americans or the 6,000,000+ innocent citizens killed in the war on terror. The US is no longer even classified as a first world country. But it doesn’t matter cause the news said the US is definitely the best choice for the world police.
Are you for bombing Mexico to stop the opioid crisis too? While the idea is gaining traction stateside, it takes minutes to understand of the 14,000+ pounds of fentanyl seized at the Mexican boarder in 2022, over 90% was from US citizens. But logic is totally overrated when it comes to international law I guess.
Explain why any of that is the US’s problem or necessitates a response from the US at all.
Morally, we made a commitment to preserve democracy and we keep our word.
Geopolitically, microchips.
Well the moral argument is obviously false on its face.
But the microchips argument is also bizarre. Taiwan isn’t the only country that makes microchips. In fact the US has been spending large amounts of money to stand up domestic chip manufacturing. And China is also the leading global supplier of plenty of other commodities. Why is it that only matters for microchips?
The well-being of the world should be everyone’s problem. It’s just that with the largest economy and comparative power in the world, the US has a greater responsibility than most. Queue the Spiderman quote.
This role of “world police” has not paid off for the US for the last 50+ years we’ve been doing it.
Taiwan is a sovereign nation
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft is a boarding school for wizards.
Same energy in this statement.
I mean, you posted provably false bs. How can I not troll? Even the state on Taiwan claims Taiwan is only a region of a country, and not a nation lmao
I didn’t know Truthout was a CCP propaganda outlet. Glad to know.
If the source isn’t negative about China, or doesn’t cast them as the villain in every scenario, it must be propaganda.
But naturally, the opposite is never propaganda.
containment, encirclement, etc
Exactly what Russia said pre February 2022
How weak do you have to be that sailing boats 100 mi from your shores is an act of war, and by the way, if it is an act of war there’s a concerning lack of response to it
No see it’s NOT a threat when the US surrounds China with literally dozens of military installations placed as close to their border as possible and actively practices military drills on their borders with their puppet states because the US is “good” and China is “bad” and our understanding of geopolitics shouldn’t go any further than that because China scary bad
Vietnam us puppet state confirmed
If China wants to set up navy bases in mexico or whatever they’re more than welcome, but they should recognize that their own harassment of shipping hundreds of miles from its shores is why those bases are there in the first place
You know full well that if China were to attempt to establish a military base in Tijuana then the US would invade Mexico within the month. Don’t be dense. The last time a geopolitical rival set up a base near the US we invaded, nearly started a nuclear war, and blockade them for 80 years.
The US is the walking embodiment of “rules for thee, but not for me” in international politics
