The rise of China I'm referring to isn't just economic. Though of course that plays a major part of it, they also have ways of threatening the US even beyond proportionately to their economic prowess.


Not waging war, but certainly forging alliances. When Afghanistan harbors OBL, it is taken as an act of war against the US. So when China allies itself with Afghanistan and other states that harbor terrorists, it is an agressive move.

Nowadays of course one doesn't need to wage war on one's enemies directly - 9/11 proved that non-state proxies can do the job perfectly well.

Yes, partly. Their political stability is something that is lacking in someplace like India. With China, several decades of gradually relaxing economic policies give investors some degree of confidence that things will continue that way in the future. India, on the other hand, has opened up what in the last few years? Nobody really has that much confidence that things will continue this way very far into the future.


Fine, but Sun Zi does not belong to this well-defined platform, having lived thousands of years before it was developed.

When there isn't even the political will to end domestic subsidies for oil consumption?

A region where politics is heavily intertwined with religion...

As true as that is, we live in a democracy, and Bush isn't the one in charge. Any president would have had to take a similar course given the political demands of the time.

Exactly. People were looking for blood...Muslim blood.

Indonesia is the biggest Muslim country in the world in terms of size, but not fundamentalism - or at least the extent to which they mix their religion with their government.

I agree though, it doesn't make any sense. I think it goes into the general category of not having the will to finish the job completely - and also having been manipulated into going there in the first place.

Neither was Iraq. By your logic, why didn't we invade the KSA, which is easily the most fundamentally and strictly Islamic country in the world?

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If not economics then what are you talking about with rise? It can't fund an army unless it has liberal economic policies. All other types of growths in China are dependent on economic growth. No wonder you couldn't precise any of this in your post like a normal argument.


Yes, but that had nothing to do with economic growth in China or "the Rise of China" whatever in the blue hell that's supposed to mean. China allied itself with the Taliban and harbored terrorists now?

So China was behind 9/11 hey? Is that what you are trying to say? Bwhahaha.
You'll resort to anything to save this monster of an error you created.

The military does not provide stability anymore. The structure of the Chinese state does not at all rely on the PLA. When an investor comes to a country, he doesn't really care about its army unless it's directly attacking businesses. Economic stability is provided by policies, and even then, it's nothing constant.

Yes he does. It's not because he lived thousands of years ago that he wouldn't fall into that category. He puts the military and state foremost as the principle actor in international relations. You can't be much more a pupil of realism with a view like that. Most peddlers and merchants in ancient China were liberalists without knowing it, why wouldn't a general be a realist?

What domestic subsidies for oil consumption? 40+% of gas prices are taxes

Virtually all states within the middle East are secular. Alqueida opposes most of them. Wow, it is true, you don't know much of anything about the region.

Islam was not responsible for 9/11, extremists were. This is a war on these people, not on the whole of Islam.


I think you were just way off when you called this a religious war and now are trying to come up with any half ass theory to save face.

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Okay, I'll 'precise' this once more. China is creating a sphere of influence of loyal states, without regard to US interests - thus foiling any strategy of isolation the US could use against states on its terror watch lists. These states' weapon against the US isn't conventional force, so much as anti-liberal policies which provide the setting for terrorism to arise. (In some, actually many cases, this anti-liberalism emerges from below, creating somewhat of a policy paradox...but in terms of what we're discussing this is irrelevant.) Remember that Afghanistan for all intents and purposes attacked the US without any liberal economic policies to fund any armies...but still, poverty is not the root cause, and economic growth wouldn't help someone like them become an even greater threat to the US. In short, China, by giving these countries options for economic growth, nullifies the penalties for a state that might want to pursue policies that will result in terrorism in the long-term. This means it's at least two steps removed from any possible actual attack...but the sheer volume of such ties is still a cause for worry.

The 'rise' here is in China's ability to threaten US hegemony. Though much of this has to do with economics, it's hard to imagine that India, even if it did create a similar economic miricle, would be able to influence the direction of world politics the way China has - and (more importantly) will continue to do in the future.

This is nothing very radical here; nothing really in the way of original thinking on my part.

Sure isn't. China is contributing to the root causes of terrorism, which could manifest themselves in, say 20 or 30 years from now.

And they all oppose Israel, which just happens to be another religion.
And the Iran-Iraq war just happened to be across the Sunni-Shiite split.
I'm not going to seriously argue that thinks that religion dosn't have anything to do with politics in the Middle East - it's like trying to convince someone their nose is on their face. Of course there are things that go on there that don't involve religion, but when you compare the ME to someplace like China there is clearly a lot more religious religious base motivation for anti-American activities than here in China say.

Its neither. It does go a little bit wider than just the 21 hijackers. It's not a war on an entire religion, but rather the parts that cannot survive without a political motivation. And Islam has a much greater proportion of itself that works that way than any other major religion. This is why I picked on the area of finance - one of the most arcane subject possible with no other way to explain the need for such new thinking. There is still plenty of room for Islam to explain the origins of the universe, for anybody who is really interested in those sorts of questions - but much of Islam is simply a political ideology, which doesn't help the world even when it's not specifically being used to justify terrorism.

Not sure about this myself. All of the justifications given for going into Iraq would have been more convincing for KSA or Pakistan. (KSA's got more oil as well.) I guess Iraq was just a more obvious target, and given the short time allowed for introspection it was easier to just go with the flow. The military had presumably planned more thoroughly for going into Iraq, and most Americans probably can't do much more than pick the two apart on a map, so it was a perfectly fine venue to 'send a message.'

It's fairly obvious that Iraq was not part of any long-term endgame strategy, so we're basically left with some sort or another of consipracy theory.

Ok, usually I'm not one to criticize other's ideas other then challenging them but Mr. Dave you have failed yourself if you are a US citizen that thinks we are in Iraq for a religious war. I mean thats just failure.

Look go back and re-read the resolution that the administration used to take us to war the UN one after that and you et a good feeling why we went in i the first place.


http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf

UN Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq

Let's make this very clear, you don't just get to make crap up to support your points.

China teaches us much everyday, both good and bad.

1) Afghanistan did not attack the US, only groups within Afghanistan.
2) China has too many liberal economic policies for you to say that
3) There's no intent to rival the US by force because both are interdependent
4) These premises and yours defy the presence of anti-American terrorism in China, or the need for China to sponsor them in any way
5) Poverty is not a root cause for conflict, but it's a major variable. Further there's little political will in China to go against the US, a state on which it depends on for exports.
6) No state is responsible for terrorism. Terrorism is not a state war but intra-state conflict and a group against a particular state (including states in the Middle East)
7) You still have provided absolutely no evidence of ties between China and harboring terrorists. This is just a fault of your mis-perception on interstate relations and your blunt ignorance on the fact that China is liberalism in economic aspect.

Again, all baseless when China and the US are interdependent. Why is this relevant? Because interdependence means there are no zero-sum games. The growth of China in all aspects is not at the cost to Americans. And yes, everything you stated proves that all aspects of growth in China is due to its economic growth. China would have very little influence without economic growth. Why would it be hard to imagine India with influence? As a realist, you should value each state as units of power, and any units nevermind their state image has the potential to hegemony, but then again, even realists admit that states do not seek hegemony or to maximize their powers but merely to balance it relative to their competitors. But then again, all useless with the fact that's interdependence.

So China wasn't behind 9/11 but is the root cause of terrorism? None sense.
And I suppose to have proof of that?

I never stated that religion wasn't an actor in the relations in the middle east, but that wars are not driven by religious institutions rather by states. Have you noticed that all wars against Israel have halted what? 40 years 50 years ago? Religion is just a nationalist symbol states used to propagate war against the state of Israel.
Iraq-Iran war did not at all split along Shi'ite Sunni lines. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni and most of Iran is Shi'ite, but then again, most of Iraq is also Shi'ite. So you're just proving yourself the monopoly of force behind wars that states have. The Iran Iraq war was over the oligopoly troubles of OPEC. Resource wars are not at all uncommon when the state is in control of most resources.

Islam is a religion, politically speaking it has virtually no institution in control of the state. Extremists include more than 21 hijackers. Man all these posts from you are all faulty in logic, history, and political science.
I don't see how you can at all call these wars religious wars. The US is not driven by religious institutions, neither is the middle east.

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I think you're forgetting an Intifada or two...you don't think those are important?

To the extent this is true, it's only because most of the states in question are not democratic. Actually, though I'm not an expert in Islam, I know some quite moderate brands of Islam do consider the state to be in integral organ of their religion. If you have the attention span (a comment on the article, not you) check this out http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-w...4/Haneef34.htm - through the excessively technical language you can find some out some interesting things about what the author claims is an Islamic worldview (I wouldn't be able to verify it, but it seems credible.)

Not that I would necessarily agree with this argument - it seems fairly reasonable to consider Israel an essentially European state. But the author says that everything, including the state, is the dominion of religion. I think this author has basically spelled out an anti-establishment economic ideology, probably the way this (pretty alternative) journal would have carried a defense of Communism a generation ago. It's true that this author is most likely not involved in any terrorist activities, but this is an ideology that would merit opposition even if Bin Laden had never been born, for the same reasons we opposed Communism.

The Intifada is not a state, the state was only sponsoring it for its own purposes, not for religious ideology

Every attempt at Islamic law has failed, basically any ideology of law has failed except for the one ideology that accounts the individuality of each cases and the need for judicial discretion by an clear authority (the basis of positive law).
Islam might have a different worldview, but it needs to change into a more functional one. I'm not targeting Islam, or saying that Islamic people are wrong, everyone had to reform, including European Christians to the social axioms of liberalism. Normally this would be done by several entry and exit of competitive firms into the world market, but the Middle East is plagued by a resource curse. Their large reserve of oil means that regardless of what half ass economic policies the state initiates (highways in Saudi Arabia) it has the money to ride out its mistakes.

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It's not the state, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist..


And how do you suggest helping them do that?

China does not have any interests in doing so, but I still suggest that they would be able to do so just as well as the west if they had a reason to.

We were talking about interstate wars.


There's not much we can do, wait until we have an alternative fuel source I suppose.

What do you mean has no reason to do so? The only reason China left the dark pit that was the Cultural Revolution was by conceding to liberal views. The average income of farmers grew many times over as soon as the government allowed them to farm for profit (same with Lenin's New Economic Policy btw). The economic growth of China does not depend on the CCP, but on the free market.

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