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Comment by woooooo | Hacker News Reader

They weren't unfriendly until we decided to make them so about 5 years ago.

Policymakers in the late 90s couldn't necessarily predict swings in American opinion 20 years later.

Sure, but it's not like deciding to make china unfriendly wasn't provoked by china. The US was making legitimate attempt at "bringing china into the fold". Since xi jinping came into power, lots of sketchy stuff has happened on their end that made this strategy less tenable.

For example: being invited to rimpac and then sending uninvited ships (2014)

It's possible to be perfectly cordial without being a US client state.

Why should they have to be "in the fold"?

It is impossible to have cordial relations with China while they are threatening to invade our ally Taiwan, and building artificial islands as military outposts in the South China Sea. The unfortunate reality is that China is now our enemy. That situation will persist and probably worsen at least until Xi is replaced.

If china declared Puerto Rico to be it's ally and started building military bases there without US permission, the US would do more than threaten to invade Puerto Rico, it'd do it immediately

Dude, this is blatant whataboutism. Puerto Rico is in no way equivalent to Taiwan, and I suspect you know that.

Taiwan is a sovereign, independent, democratic nation. The Chinese Communist Party has never had political control over Taiwan. It just claims the right to overrule the right to self-determination of 23 million people because it feels like it.

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory, but it could leave at any time. The commonwealth has held four referendums, none of which have found a strong majority for either statehood or independence, so the island kinda keeps muddling along with the status quo. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and though they don't have representation in the U.S. federal government, they also don't pay federal taxes and have an elected local government.

The ethics of the situation are not complicated. The CCP can't just decide to subjugate an independent, democratic people.

of course, forget the history behind the formation of Taiwan. forget that the US props it up to maintain a military enclave where it has no right to be, in order to threaten China. it's just an innocent independent democratic people that China seeks to assimilate for no legitimate reason!

Even _without_ the historical context it is completely justifiable from a national security perspective to push out the military presence of the most aggressive nation in the past century.

Lastly - the gall for an American to invoke "self-determination" after its track record.. simply incredible. We are what, one week removed from the leaks re: Imran Khan?

> forget the history behind the formation of Taiwan

> where it has no right to be

Would you like to tell us your version of history according to which Taiwan has no right to be? Because in the one I'm familiar with, one of the factions fighting the civil war won almost everywhere but failed to invade that island.

The fact that they've resisted and survived certainly gives them the right to be, by definition.

The US also doesn’t have bases in Puerto Rico so I have no idea what that analogy is supposed to do.

The US Army has Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico.

https://home.army.mil/buchanan/

> Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and though they don't have representation in the U.S. federal government,

Delegates vote in committee. It ain't nothing. "Committees is where the real action happens"

Puerto Rico is a terrible example.

Cuba is a much better one, it's not even hypothetical.

> Cuba is a much better one, it's not even hypothetical

America doesn't claim Cuba as its territory.

If China requested parity with Taiwan in respect of America's relations with Cuba (recognition of sovereignty, trade restrictions and no American military presence there), it would be a good deal for everyone.

>America doesn't claim Cuba as its territory.

Where do you think the Guantanamo Bay torture facility is located?

It's a lease, not a claim. US even sends cuba checks for it.

Not even sure how you can equate a lease of one bay to claiming the whole island. Besides, If china stopped claiming Taiwan was it's territory and insisted on leasing one small base, I think we could all go to sleep better at night.

>It's a lease

A 'lease' at gunpoint is an occupation.

And the US pays a fixed $4,000/mo, which Cuba doesn't even accept.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN17200921

Monroe doctrine, baby. The whole hemisphere is our territory :)

We've punished Cuba continually for 70 years for having a government that we didn't approve.

By the the fold I meant a country that generally plays by internationally accepted customs and cordiality, not a "US client state". If a country invites you to their joint military exercise, you don't spy on them during the exercise. This is basic common sense.

I'm sorry, are you saying that the US doesn't spy on military exercises of our allies?

Nothing as cringingly stupid as this:

https://news.usni.org/2014/07/18/china-sends-uninvited-spy-s...

Happy to be corrected, show me.

>internationally accepted customs

Which are more often than not US dictated.

>If a country invites you to their joint military exercise, you don't spy on them during the exercise

This is nonsense. No-one does this more than the US.

Citation please. Heres mine:

https://news.usni.org/2014/07/18/china-sends-uninvited-spy-s...

Very cringey.

Add up the populations of the countries that were party to the formation of your "internationally accepted customs".

Then add up the population who weren't consulted.

They weren't unfriendly, but they were always brutal oppressive regimes. By trading with them, we became complicit in that.

Also, I take issue with the idea that we "made" them unfriendly. I'm pretty sure China and Russia can take responsibility for their own foreign policy.

Wait till you hear about Saudi Arabia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

> The United States was told last year that Saudi security forces were shooting, shelling and abusing groups of migrants, but it chose not to raise the issue publicly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-ki...

So? I'm talking about unfriendly countries. The fact that the Saudis abuse and kill migrants doesn't make them unfriendly to the West.

Are you trying to make a point? Make a point.

The person I was talking to was moralizing. My point was that it's power politics, and the moralizing is for suckers.

The point is the U.S. never cared about Democratic countries, and often destroyed them(CIA backed coups and so on.

This isn’t true, they always preferred them. They did a number of misguided things in the name of containing communism but all of that was

1. over fifty years ago or more at this point

2. Unpopular with the public

so it doesn’t seem like a good faith stance to pretend that’s current Us doctrine. It’s an ignorant whataboutism used by defenders of brutal regimes.

As if 2. Changes anything.

Heck they even did a coup not too long ago because a country rich with lithium elected a socialist government.

Is it possible that the US continues to interfere in foreign elections but we don’t know about it because we are subject to propaganda? 50 years ago, do you think the US populace was aware of their governments complicity in overthrowing democratically elected governments? Or did they only come to light 20-30 years later?

They are still doing it. They are still overthrowing governments they don't like.

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/the-u-s-supported-coup-i...

I mean, this is just the inevitable outcome with autocracies/absolute monarchies. I think we should just assume that countries that are not liberal democracies are poor trading partners and not aligned with the interests of oter liberal democracies.

What about our relationship with the Saudis says "poor trading partner"?

What does Saudi Arabia have to do with the fact that the Russian and Chinese governments decided to become unfriendly by threatening their neighbors?

Because Saudi Arabia is actively commiting brutal genocide on Yemeni people and US governemnt is actually supporting and taking part in that due to SA being US ally.

China's government wants to attack the people of Taiwan and occupy a sovereign, democratic nation. The U.S. didn't "make" Russia and China unfriendly, they decided to be unfriendly by belligerently threatening their neighbors.

China's intention to attack and occupy Taiwan has been known since its founding. If the U.S. thought it could use trade to talk China out of it, it was naïve.

China has been stealing IP and flaunting WTO rules for way longer than 5 years.

Snowden showed us that the US steals IP too, which is worse because it screams about how unfair it is when others do the same.

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