I don't disagree with the lesser of two evils idea at all, I certainly don't want China in Greenland. It's just a big blindspot we have in the U.S. that we don't seem to realize others will see us as a threat when we pivot carrier battle groups to their backyard and we ending up forcing escalation as their only course of action. While we would freak the fuck out (and in Cuba we did) if someone did exactly the same to us.
WSJ: Trump wants to buy Greenland
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US and Russia are very similar in many ways, namely the concurrent victim/oppressor dynamic, not sure what it's called. Both countries see themselves as being used, threatened, constantly assaulted while at the same time repeatedly starting wars and oppressing others.
Russia for example always uses NATO as an excuse to deploy more weapons aimed at Europe, at the same time ignoring the fact that Russia has attacked and occupied a large part of Europe and their mindset has not changed at all. It's akin to punching someone in the face and then crying as if they're attacking you.
Yes, the anti chinese sentiment must be very strong at the moment in Philippines, wondering if it changed anything for mainlanders moving there, as recently as 2 years ago quite a few kept movig to the Philippines.
Reading international news, it seems to be chinese agression all over the South China Sea, militarizing islets not belonging to China, fishing in other countries´waters and impeding various Apec countries to explore and exploit their own national water.
Nowadays it seems all information about China is very negative, it definetely got much wrse under Xi Jinping, and as he has extended his leading position in the Mainland from the previous 10 years to life, issues might not cool down anytime soon.
Sounds crazy that some opinion surveys in european countries shortly after Trump was elected saw him as a greater threat to world peace than Xi Jinping, I´d be curious to see more recent surveys, it has probably to do with China and the surrounding seas seeming too far for most europeans
If you look at global geopolitics in the nuclear age the unpredictable and irrational is far worse for stability than the rational and bad. Trump clearly represents the former, Xi the latter.
Not convinced about that, China manages at the same time to antagonize much of the Western and Eastern world, is already powerful and is only getting more powerful and antagonizing, I suspect eastern europeans see Russia as a much bigger threat, but the size of China gives it a real mean look, even worldwide in the future - not sure how the country would deal internally with a major crisis, it is so packed it seems easy to get large portions of the population lacking of food.
Besides Trump will go away in the next few years, while the world might be stuck with Xi Jinping for quite a bit longer.
Why spend the money to buy when it already has access to do whatever it pleases by renting? You think spending the extra money and resources to run it from so far away is more cost-effective? All it needs from Greenland is mineral and military access; it has both already.
That would be a much better option than buying Greenland so far away when Canada's got everything that Greenland does but so much closer. But then again Canada already belongs to USA. Everything that USA says, Canada does. USA wants to screw Huawei, Canada arrests its CFO and holds her there even at the expense of getting flogged by China with no rescue from USA. USA wants access to the dairy supply chain in Canada, Canada lets USA in at the expense of its own dairy farmers suffering. Whatever Canada has, USA just takes.
US, Russia, China, they are ALL the same. None of those three countries are ever lesser evil than the others, never were, never have and never will. Depending on where you look, wherever they might be "lesser evil" in one way, they more than make it up in another.
What we do need is checks and balances and ironically this is where they are at their best, to keep checks and balances on each other.
On balance if you asked a random person in the world who they would want to impose their "evil" on them they would by a pretty clear majority pick the U.S. Obviously by a convincing majority they'd choose "no-one", but given the world we live in despite a lot of crap the U.S. has pulled it pales in comparison to Russia. I mean they built giant walls to keep people.....well we haven't managed to actually accomplish that yet, maybe we just suck at evil?
