What happens if the bad guys win this time?
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2022
Location: Great Britain
Posts: 137
What happens if the bad guys win this time?
Since I was a kid I've been fed on the notion that the good guys always win.
Now we have Russia and China threatening this very notion.
The West is in a very weak position.
So what will happen if the bad guys win this time? If Russia and China dominates what can we expect over the next 10, 20, 30 years?
Now we have Russia and China threatening this very notion.
The West is in a very weak position.
So what will happen if the bad guys win this time? If Russia and China dominates what can we expect over the next 10, 20, 30 years?
Join Date: Jun 2011
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Originally Posted by uxb99
Since I was a kid I've been fed on the notion that the good guys always win.
Now we have Russia and China threatening this very notion.
The West is in a very weak position.
So what will happen if the bad guys win this time? If Russia and China dominates what can we expect over the next 10, 20, 30 years?
Now we have Russia and China threatening this very notion.
The West is in a very weak position.
So what will happen if the bad guys win this time? If Russia and China dominates what can we expect over the next 10, 20, 30 years?
If we look through 2500 years of history, or even post 1945 history there would be a lot of people disagreeing with the notion "the West" are always the "good guys" and have "always won" (maybe the people of Vietnam would have something to say about that.....). This may be how popular culture and the media you consume portray it but it isn't always the case. When you say "the Bad Guys" who's perspective is that from? China's Belt and Road Initiative is building a lot of sorely needed infrastructure in the 3rd world, something the West has generally failed to provide. For instance the Chinese have just completed a high speed rail line through Laos. In opposition the biggest contribution to Laos of the USA, which doesn't have a single kilometre of high speed track itself, was about 2 million tonnes of bombs dropped on the country. So from the perspective of the Lao people they may be a bit confused with your definition of "good and bad" guys.
There's also the issue of globalization and the third world constantly catching up to the West in living standards and economic power. If you take Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations definition of "the West" as primarily the Anglosphere and Europe the West only comprises 11% of the world's population. Eventually the remaining 89% of the non Western world will catch up and will dominate over the West.
There's a really interesting map you can find via an internet search. It's a world map with a circle around a relatively small proportion of the world, encircling India, China, Korea, Japan, Indochina and South East Asia. However there are more people on this planet who live inside the circle than outside it. Eventually it will be the world's dominant economic region, and maybe even it's dominant cultural one? From about the year 0 to 1800CE China and India were the two most dominant world economies. The rule of the British East India Company in India from the mid 1700s and the Opium Wars in China in the mid 1800s put an end to that up until the last few years, so what we are seeing as a shift of global power away from the West to the East may just be a return to a pre 1800 historical norm.
Last edited by dr dre; 12th Jun 2022 at 04:21.
Drain Bamaged
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Originally Posted by PDR1
History is written by the Victors, which is why the pages of French history books are mostly blank...
PDR
PDR
List of battles involving France in modern history
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2022
Location: Great Britain
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Originally Posted by NutLoose
Why is it in a weak position?
Looking at NATO as a whole. Got in bed with Russia and can't back out (Germany) and divided about what to do (France).
China. Well we are weak because we rely far too much on Chinese goods.
The USA is also politically weak.
World recession.
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Originally Posted by etudiant
If China makes most of your goods, you're in a weak position. That is the case for both the Us and for Europe.
Give it a year or two and The West can build new supply chains for its phones, iPads and microchips in friendlier countries. It will be a tough couple of years but we'll manage
China won't be able to find another "West" to sell the Trillions of dollars worth of stuff it produces to. So it won't be able to buy oil and wheat. That will be more than uncomfortable.
Thread Starter
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Originally Posted by vlieger
Who says the yanks are the “good guys”?
But on the whole we at least `try` to be good even when we fail epically.
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Originally Posted by dr dre
A very multifaceted and complex question there. "The West" and "Good Guys" can have multiple definitions. Are you talking about Western Civilization that originated out of Ancient Greece about 2500 years ago? One could say Russia would be a part of the West, or at least Orthodox Christian culture being very similarly related to the nations of Eastern Europe? Or the West as in the Western order post 1945 NATO/US hegemony?
If we look through 2500 years of history, or even post 1945 history there would be a lot of people disagreeing with the notion "the West" are always the "good guys" and have "always won" (maybe the people of Vietnam would have something to say about that.....). This may be how popular culture and the media you consume portray it but it isn't always the case. When you say "the Bad Guys" who's perspective is that from? China's Belt and Road Initiative is building a lot of sorely needed infrastructure in the 3rd world, something the West has generally failed to provide. For instance the Chinese have just completed a high speed rail line through Laos. In opposition the biggest contribution to Laos of the USA, which doesn't have a single kilometre of high speed track itself, was about 2 million tonnes of bombs dropped on the country. So from the perspective of the Lao people they may be a bit confused with your definition of "good and bad" guys.
There's also the issue of globalization and the third world constantly catching up to the West in living standards and economic power. If you take Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations definition of "the West" as primarily the Anglosphere and Europe the West only comprises 11% of the world's population. Eventually the remaining 89% of the non Western world will catch up and will dominate over the West.
There's a really interesting map you can find via an internet search. It's a world map with a circle around a relatively small proportion of the world, encircling India, China, Korea, Japan, Indochina and South East Asia. However there are more people on this planet who live inside the circle than outside it. Eventually it will be the world's dominant economic region, and maybe even it's dominant cultural one? From about the year 0 to 1800CE China and India were the two most dominant world economies. The rule of the British East India Company in India from the mid 1700s and the Opium Wars in China in the mid 1800s put an end to that up until the last few years, so what we are seeing as a shift of global power away from the West to the East may just be a return to a pre 1800 historical norm.
If we look through 2500 years of history, or even post 1945 history there would be a lot of people disagreeing with the notion "the West" are always the "good guys" and have "always won" (maybe the people of Vietnam would have something to say about that.....). This may be how popular culture and the media you consume portray it but it isn't always the case. When you say "the Bad Guys" who's perspective is that from? China's Belt and Road Initiative is building a lot of sorely needed infrastructure in the 3rd world, something the West has generally failed to provide. For instance the Chinese have just completed a high speed rail line through Laos. In opposition the biggest contribution to Laos of the USA, which doesn't have a single kilometre of high speed track itself, was about 2 million tonnes of bombs dropped on the country. So from the perspective of the Lao people they may be a bit confused with your definition of "good and bad" guys.
There's also the issue of globalization and the third world constantly catching up to the West in living standards and economic power. If you take Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations definition of "the West" as primarily the Anglosphere and Europe the West only comprises 11% of the world's population. Eventually the remaining 89% of the non Western world will catch up and will dominate over the West.
There's a really interesting map you can find via an internet search. It's a world map with a circle around a relatively small proportion of the world, encircling India, China, Korea, Japan, Indochina and South East Asia. However there are more people on this planet who live inside the circle than outside it. Eventually it will be the world's dominant economic region, and maybe even it's dominant cultural one? From about the year 0 to 1800CE China and India were the two most dominant world economies. The rule of the British East India Company in India from the mid 1700s and the Opium Wars in China in the mid 1800s put an end to that up until the last few years, so what we are seeing as a shift of global power away from the West to the East may just be a return to a pre 1800 historical norm.
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I would define Good by the freedoms to live, think and write as you wish, providing that your freedoms do not deny those of others. Those freedoms do not exist in China, and you can only live as the government requires. Advances in technology that should bring benefits to everyone are used to bring greater control of what they know and the way they think, and to apply brutal treatment to substantial minorities.
There are other countries and religious groups that impose some of this Badness, but none as ruthlessly and on the same scale as China which seeks to spread its ideology to wider areas.
By my measure, the world is certainly moving from Good to Bad.
There are other countries and religious groups that impose some of this Badness, but none as ruthlessly and on the same scale as China which seeks to spread its ideology to wider areas.
By my measure, the world is certainly moving from Good to Bad.
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Good by the freedoms to live, think and write as you wish, providing that your freedoms do not deny those of others.
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Originally Posted by Sallyann1234
I would define Good by the freedoms to live, think and write as you wish, providing that your freedoms do not deny those of others. Those freedoms do not exist in China, and you can only live as the government requires.
What you talk of there are "negative rights". Freedoms of speech, religion, association, privacy etc. Freedom from government intervention.
But there are also "positive rights". Rights to suitable housing, healthcare, education, social welfare, employment, safe infrastructure, internet access. Freedom to live your life at a minimum standard with government intervention.
Now Western countries have negative and positive freedoms in varying degrees, but the most notable Western country, and China's counter, the USA, has notably lower levels of positive freedoms. Only western country without universal healthcare, high levels of homelessness, higher education costs prohibitive for a large proportion of the country.
Now if China's living standards were truly bad enough to flee, then why did 150 million Chinese citizens leave China in 2019 for tourism purposes and not claim asylum or refugee status in the nations supposedly superior nations they "fled" to?
There are other countries and religious groups that impose some of this Badness, but none as ruthlessly and on the same scale as China which seeks to spread its ideology to wider areas.
I haven't seen China try to start a communist revolution in a single country post Cold War, even though they surely have had the means to. As Yanis states they have been non interventionist in a way the West can't really fathom. And this is what we really are talking about, the influence of the great powers on the rest of the world. No secret the US has no trouble with intervening in countries that aren't playing ball via use of hard power intervention, sanctions, bombing, invading or coups. China is intervening via "debt traps" (not dissimilar to what the IMF did anyway) but primarily soft power intervention like building infrastructure that most 3rd world nations are finding a lot more tolerable.
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Originally Posted by OvertHawk
If you are dependent on "the West" to buy all the stuff you make and will be financially wrecked if they stop then you are in a weak position.
Give it a year or two and The West can build new supply chains for its phones, iPads and microchips in friendlier countries. It will be a tough couple of years but we'll manage
China won't be able to find another "West" to sell the Trillions of dollars worth of stuff it produces to. So it won't be able to buy oil and wheat. That will be more than uncomfortable.
Give it a year or two and The West can build new supply chains for its phones, iPads and microchips in friendlier countries. It will be a tough couple of years but we'll manage
China won't be able to find another "West" to sell the Trillions of dollars worth of stuff it produces to. So it won't be able to buy oil and wheat. That will be more than uncomfortable.
For China, there will be a couple of tough years, but they will manage, they have the goods and the skills to make what they need.
