https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/xi-jinping-says...
Not our fault that the Taiwanese people don't want to end up in forced labor camps.
They also frequently describe themselves as against imperialism, weirdly.
("Realistic": a coalition of Japan, South Korea, Australia and Great Britain would have the means to help Taiwan effectively, but it is very unlikely they would have the will.)
On the other hand, defending Taiwan and Ukraine and Kuwait (the first gulf war, while motivated by oil interests there was a clear humanitarian principle too) are pretty honourable IMO.
I would definitely not want to see China or Russia as the major world power. The US is not perfect but it's not the worst either.
Seeing how morally confused the rest of the world is, I am thankful that my country has the biggest army, navy , and air force. I mean you can't even properly assign moral blame for who is the aggressor here (China... the state that continuously threatens a violent invasion of a territory that is not theirs).
Given the moral depravity of many non-Americans, I think it's reasonable to enforce basic ethical standards by force.
Yet, we're one of the few that can say that if your country was brutally attacked you are allowed to respond with force.
> Talk to a college student they can’t even say that rape, cannibalism, etc are absolutely wrong. Why step into any conflict if you can’t state with 100% absolute confidence that something is immoral or evil?
Talk to an American to find out what they think of what's coming out of Academia
And I think Americans are plenty aligned with academia, except the small fraction of ultra-conservative republicans who are against everything that's not in their 2000 year old handbook.
It's just that that fraction seems to have much more power than they should have based on their demography.
The average American completely ignored academia during the COVID pandemic. America's rates of compliance were way lower than other similar countries.