Posted by Sir Four at 11:55am Mar 10 '13Brutal honesty, sure, go ahead! But I feel the line toward outright anti-Americanism has been crossed a bunch, and it's devolving rapidly. I'm also beside myself at the suggestion by multiple people that the USA is not presently the strongest nation. I'm not saying that as a brag, but as a fact. People are conflating China's rise--a trend that, if continued, will some day in the future result in China eclipsing the US. But the time context of my question was present-day, not 30 years hence. I find it likely that China will rival the US in time, but in any case the future is uncertain. After all, the fear among Americans in the 80s was that Japan was trending toward surpassing us--but then they entered an extended malaise. China isn't Japan, but faces many challenges as well.
That the US leads the world presently is objective fact. Again, this isn't a nationalistic brag--that's not what I was aiming for. The US GDP is twice China's. US per-capita GDP is 9 times China's. The US has more preeminent universities and research facilities; China acquires the majority of its technological gains via IP theft. The US military fields 11 large aircraft carriers (more than the rest of the world combined), just as China is only testing out its first--built literally from an unfinished Soviet-era craft purchased from the Ukraine. The US operates 57 nuclear submarines to China's 6. We could go on. The only area the US cannot match China militarily is in raw manpower. Another issue where China falls behind is, unless they partner with Russia, they don't really have any key military allies.
We've come of age in the era of Afghanistan and Iraq. The failures in these countries are rooted in the notion that we could transform them into stable, modern democracies. Even superpowers cannot do that. The Soviets certainly could not in the 80s. This was pure folly to even attempt. I recall specifically a neo-con (Canadian, incidentally) telling me, back in 2003, that in a dozen years Iraqis will be sipping Starbucks in Baghdad, and we'll all be better for it. This was always delusional.
That the US leads the world presently is objective fact. Again, this isn't a nationalistic brag--that's not what I was aiming for. The US GDP is twice China's. US per-capita GDP is 9 times China's. The US has more preeminent universities and research facilities; China acquires the majority of its technological gains via IP theft. The US military fields 11 large aircraft carriers (more than the rest of the world combined), just as China is only testing out its first--built literally from an unfinished Soviet-era craft purchased from the Ukraine. The US operates 57 nuclear submarines to China's 6. We could go on. The only area the US cannot match China militarily is in raw manpower. Another issue where China falls behind is, unless they partner with Russia, they don't really have any key military allies.
We've come of age in the era of Afghanistan and Iraq. The failures in these countries are rooted in the notion that we could transform them into stable, modern democracies. Even superpowers cannot do that. The Soviets certainly could not in the 80s. This was pure folly to even attempt. I recall specifically a neo-con (Canadian, incidentally) telling me, back in 2003, that in a dozen years Iraqis will be sipping Starbucks in Baghdad, and we'll all be better for it. This was always delusional.
=/ This thread isn't quite going as I'd hoped - Sir Four