Re: EJ & China

[Bertil Haggman <bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se>]

Giles Peaker wrote:

> Forgive a lurker bursting into polemic, and forgive the tone of the
> following, but I had to respond to Bertil's post on China.

Glad to have some fire on the list. So just fire away. I guess you
are claiming that the Soviet threat was just paranoia too ? And indeed
you ARE further down in the text. Forgive a citizen of a country
which had a nuclear armed Soviet submarine stranding a few miles from
the main naval base Karlskrona. Paranoia ? 

> This is sheer paranoia. All the fantasised 'enemies' of 'the west' are
> going to gang up on it. Of course, the oil rich islamic countries (few of
> which are fundamentalist) are going to abandon their western markets and
> join an atheist (or pantheist) China in an (un) holy war against... what?
> the western nations? christianity? european culture? the white race? What
> does 'the west' mean for you?

The West, well. Hope you forgive me for quoting Huntington in German
(just have the German translation handy):

"Der Westen unterscheidet sich von anderen Kulturen nicht durch die Art
seiner Entwicklung, sondern durch die Eigenart seiner Werte und
Institutionen.
Zu diesen gehoeren vor allem Christentum, Pluralismus, Individualismus
und Recht-
staatlichkeit". Or to quote Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in German: "Europa
ist die
Quelle, die EINZIGE Quelle... fuer Ideen wie individuelle Freiheit,
politische
Demokratie, Rechtstaatlichkeit, Menschenrechte und kulturelle
Freiheit...Dies
sind EUROPAEISCHE Ideen, nicht asiatische, nicht afrikanische, nicht
nahoestliche,
es sei denn, sie waeren uebernommen worden".
 
> 'If the United States forestalls...' Not, I hope,  a new cold war. We now
> know the cold war for the charade it was, massively encouraged by the US
> military industrial complex. (The evidence is that there was *never* a
> missile gap in favour of the USSR, quite the reverse). So now we (I
> presume 'we') must gird our loins against a new threat - also, naturally,
> one which is implacably opposed to 'our way of life'. Does anyone
> remember that 1950s US B movie in which the chinese were about to invade
> the US by tunnelling under the pacific?

Excuse me. Haven't I heard these left wing phrases since back in the
60s.
But I know they are still fashionable in some corners of academia. Some 
leftist academics cannot forgive the US for causing the collapse of the
Soviet Union, because it robbed them of influence in media, where they
could use the Cold War for their own political benefit without thinking
of the oppressed peoples behind the Iron Curtain (nothing personal !). 

> U.S. paranoia. They have tried Japan in the role, once the gulf war had
> eliminated other claims to global power (heavy irony). Now it is China.
> This has been said since the 1960s. Let us accept that it is entirely
> possible that China will be a major economic force. The lesson of the
> 'american century' is that economic imperialism has replaced military
> imperialism for any major power (c.f. Vietnam, Suez and the various ends
> of the British empire). So, perhaps you are concerned about domination by
> foreign capital.... unfortunately you are too late. We could play spot
> the remaining national capital, but there is little left of any
> significance. (c.f. Sony rebuilding Berlin Mitte). I will admit that it
> is possible that  paranoid and declining US capital might force a resort
> to military means. But it seems unlikely - on the whole they will be
> looking for investment opportunities. Let us watch Hong Kong and wait for
> the first major Chinese exportation of capital, before we decide on the
> nature of any confrontation. What if a chinese group follows Sony and
> buys a Hollywood studio? This seems a more more likely course of events
> to me.

Your reaction could have anything to do we the fact that it was the
British
who handed over HK to the regime in Beijing ?

Many people don't like cyclical thinking: Ibn Khaldoun, Giambattista
Vico,
Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. It is sort of gut reaction of some.
The cyclists have a right of hearing, though.

So what about EJs World State after the collapse of the communist
Chinese
regime ? Would that be something to discuss ?

With Juengerian greetings from an anti-totalitarian

Bertil Haggman
bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se