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Originally Posted by Snestorm
China is now the leading economic power (Thanks to the profit driven elite's practice of exporting jobs). Unless that changes, she will eventualy be the leading military power.
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I think you have been mislead, my friend. China isn't anywhere near being the world's leading economic power. By most measures it's a distant third, with economic output measuring roughly half of what the EU and the US produce.
China is indeed a developing superpower, but her time is not yet. As of now, she depends far to heavily on Western economies. Barring some radical political change, it will be at least two more decades before China picks herself up by her bootstraps and becomes a truly modern nation. If she ever reaches that point, there will be no reason to fear her. Affluent nations have no reason to wage irrational wars.
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Originally Posted by Platapus
How many American lives is Taiwan worth?
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How many Taiwanese lives is China worth? If we don't protect them, the answer is
all of them. The Chinese Communist party will steal everything the Taiwanese have worked so hard to achieve over the past half-century. I don't particularly care about Taiwan because I'm a practical person who doesn't believe that the US has any business or real ability to enforce its will upon the world other than being a haven for the poor and disenfranchised, but can
you accept responsibility for the fate of Taiwan? Will you vote to protect Taiwan? Will you fight for her? Will you do nothing to save all those people?
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Originally Posted by Ducimus
Is Taiwan, really any of our business to begin with?
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I don't know. Were the Jews enduring the Holocaust any of our business to begin with? Were the Koreans or the Vietnamese or the Somalians or Kuwaitis or the Iraqis or the Kurds or the Bosnians any of our business to begin with?
It all boils down to whether or not you think the wealthiest nation in the world has any kind of moral obligation to the rest of the world. I think it doesn't because I already know that there is nothing the US can do to rectify the rest of the world's problems. No amount of money will fix a genocide, and no amount of military intervention will correct religious hatred. It doesn't work like that. The only thing that will make people co-exist in relative peace is wealth brought about by capitalism and the resultant non-conflct over resources of any kind. You can choose to believe that or not while the wealthiest nations in the world spend their time fighting on behalf of other nations for silly political reasons.