To be honest NATO should have been disbanded when the Soviet Union fell, as the purpose of NATO was to contain the Soviet Union.
At the very least we should have welcomed Russia into NATO when the Soviet Union fell as a sign of good faith.
We welcomed Japan and West Germany after WWII so we wouldn't repeat the mistakes we made in the aftermath of WWI. The same should have been done for Russia.
The opportunity I see is this, friendship.
The United Stated should drop the propaganda against China and Russia and welcome them onto the world stage and give them the respect that they deserve as fellow Superpowers.
Russia has a lot to offer in untapped natural resources not to mention the fact that up and until the war in Ukraine they were our only option to get our Astronauts up to and down from the Space Station.
China is going through their industrial revolution and they have a lot to offer as well.
We are so economically interlocked with China that there is no reason to be so hostile for them.
Simply put this anti-China / anti-Russia spiel is Boomer-think.
The Boomers grew up under intense government and religious propaganda that combined to create an outsized year of Russia and Communism as a whole.
That time has passed, but the Boomers with their induced trauma remain.
As a GenXer I don't have that fear because I watched as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved.
I watched China, while being nominally Communist, become hyper-capitalist.
By the way China now controls both sides of the Panama Canal, which was made so we could get our Navy from the Pacific to the Atlantic. If China was that bad would we have allowed this to happen?
If you look at your clothing it's likely to have been made in Vietnam, which is Communist.
President Obama had us on a path to have normalized relations with Cuba, until former President Trump reversed course.
All of these examples, to my mind at least, show that this irrational fear of Russia, China, and Communism in general is just that; irrational.
As far as Ukraine goes, I hate to seem callous, but that's their issue, not ours.
With the amount of money we've spent there we could have had Universal Healthcare and Universal Basic Income here at home; at the very least.
Our military spending doesn't reflect the danger in the world today.
America is not the world's police force.
America should not be poking our nose into the affairs of other nations. How would we feel if NATO or the U.N. decided to send troops into Texas to relieve the humanitarian crisis on our border.
You say my thinking is "old thinking", but your thinking is actually older. Like Obama, you have imbibed so deeply of the old Soviet-influenced thinking of the left that you can't even see its anti-American roots. The leftward factions of the Democratic Party are still dominated by this idiocy, and now it is taking over the Republican Party as well.
We welcomed China into the international order, and the Chinese communist leadership has exploited its membership in the international community to do everything in its power to subvert that order. We had previously tried to welcome Russia into the international order via a partnership with NATO, but Russia spurned the offer.
The notion that the US can abdicate its international role is historically illiterate. We attempted that twice in the early 20th century, resulting in WW1 and WW2. The only reason there has not been a third world war is because the US has stayed engaged with the world to prevent it.
If the US were to abdicate its role as the world's policeman, China would gladly fill the vacuum. I can guarantee you would not like the results unless you are on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party.
I could easily say that you are steeped in 1950s era American propaganda and McCarthyism.
So let's tone down the insults shall we?
Most of what you have stated is inaccurate at best.
President Nixon opened up China to the West for commerce purposes and this has been very successful as we get most of our goods from China. Check the manufacturing data on most of the stuff you own.
Not to mention the reaction against Chinese people and Chinese Americans during and slightly after COVID.
Russia has never been offered membership in NATO, though it has made overtures that it would welcome this opportunity as long as they were on equal standing with the other members. Can you guess how that went? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93NATO_relations#
China and Russia aren't blameless and innocent in anything, but neither are we.
We all have our issues. The point is that we need to set these issues aside and work together.
If you're more in favor on the enlightened self interest approach let's go this way.
Wouldn't it be better for America to be in a PTO rather than a NATO?
Imagine the 3 super powers uniting and what we could accomplish.
When I "imagine the 3 super powers uniting", I imagine the world of Orwell's 1984, where the leaders of Oceania, East Asia, and Eurasia collude to oppress their own peoples and to rape the rest of the world.
Why should the US unite with corrupt autocracies against our natural allies, who share our enlightened traditions and values? It sounds like you want to live in a world that is safe for corrupt autocrats and everyone else is a slave. If that's the kind of life you want, you should just move to Russia or Hungary instead of trying to drag the rest of the world into that hopeless abyss.
France drug us in to WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Haiti (I would of placed them first but it's still ongoing).
Germany well I shouldn't have to relay their history to you, but they started both WW1 and WW2 and they were our enemies.
Britain is our only natural ally, if you want to use that term (Britain includes Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and all the other of the Commonwealth states).
Russia was our ally in WW2 and bore the brunt of WW2 and was the primary engine of defeat of WW2 Germany (check your history, it's true).
In general France and Germany are bad times and bad I wouldn't call them allies at all.
As far as 1984 is concerned, well it's a dystopian novel.
Have you ever heard of the five eyes?
The five eyes are an anglosphere alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and America.
Read your history and you will see that we had Oligarchs as well and there was plenty of shenanigans going on with our version of them.
China is a bit different, but their culture is so alien to ours and their history goes back so far it can be difficult for us Westerners to understand it's intricacies.
For example I recently discovered that the Uyghur people came about because of the many Mongol and other northeast invasions of China.
I learned this from the Great Courses and not from Wikipedia. I posted this because it is publicly available.
This explains, but not condones, the Chinese treatment of this population as they are descendants of the people group that kept invading and conquering parts of China over the centuries.
History is important and it's effects ripple forward in time.
The Mediterranean Europeans had the same sort of history with the old Muslim Empires.
The difference is how the European governments treat these people groups today.
In short your premise is faulty because it lacks the historical perspective necessary, is based on a dystopian novel, and mid 20th Century American propaganda.
Think what a decades long friendship could bring and how much humanity could benefit from this friendship and the technology we are developing.
Tell us about the great grocery stores in Moscow, please. Food for thought: do you like your iPhone and other creature comforts? You wouldn't have them without America's world leadership and nuclear umbrella.
Europe gets most of their natural gas from Russia, without it they would have faced some pretty hard winters.
Wars happen.
America had the French-Indian War, The Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The Canadian American war, The Indian (Wars against Native Americans) Wars, The Mexican American War and so on...
Heck, we even invaded Canada on three separate occasions. Once in 1775 during the American Revolution, rebel forces invaded Canada, occupying Montreal and attacking the town of Quebec.; once between 1812-1815 during the War of 1812 saw the United States launch a series of land and sea invasions of British North America (now Canada); and once in 1837, saw American rebels from the HuntersтАЩ Lodges invade Canada, with the Battle of the Windmill being a notable event.
Are we giving California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas back to Mexico?
Are we giving back the land snatched from the Native Americans?
Have we apologized and made recompense to Canada?
To be honest we are not likely to be giving any land back to anyone or apologizing to Canada.
To try and take the moral high-ground with Russia reeks of historical hypocrisy.
Yes war is bad and in general unwarranted, but all countries throughout history have fallen into the trap of war.
Like Battlestar Galactica said, тАЬAll this has happened before, and all of it will happen againтАЭ.
That's the old way of thinking.
What I see is opportunity.
To be honest NATO should have been disbanded when the Soviet Union fell, as the purpose of NATO was to contain the Soviet Union.
At the very least we should have welcomed Russia into NATO when the Soviet Union fell as a sign of good faith.
We welcomed Japan and West Germany after WWII so we wouldn't repeat the mistakes we made in the aftermath of WWI. The same should have been done for Russia.
The opportunity I see is this, friendship.
The United Stated should drop the propaganda against China and Russia and welcome them onto the world stage and give them the respect that they deserve as fellow Superpowers.
Russia has a lot to offer in untapped natural resources not to mention the fact that up and until the war in Ukraine they were our only option to get our Astronauts up to and down from the Space Station.
China is going through their industrial revolution and they have a lot to offer as well.
We are so economically interlocked with China that there is no reason to be so hostile for them.
Simply put this anti-China / anti-Russia spiel is Boomer-think.
The Boomers grew up under intense government and religious propaganda that combined to create an outsized year of Russia and Communism as a whole.
That time has passed, but the Boomers with their induced trauma remain.
As a GenXer I don't have that fear because I watched as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved.
I watched China, while being nominally Communist, become hyper-capitalist.
By the way China now controls both sides of the Panama Canal, which was made so we could get our Navy from the Pacific to the Atlantic. If China was that bad would we have allowed this to happen?
If you look at your clothing it's likely to have been made in Vietnam, which is Communist.
President Obama had us on a path to have normalized relations with Cuba, until former President Trump reversed course.
All of these examples, to my mind at least, show that this irrational fear of Russia, China, and Communism in general is just that; irrational.
As far as Ukraine goes, I hate to seem callous, but that's their issue, not ours.
With the amount of money we've spent there we could have had Universal Healthcare and Universal Basic Income here at home; at the very least.
Our military spending doesn't reflect the danger in the world today.
America is not the world's police force.
America should not be poking our nose into the affairs of other nations. How would we feel if NATO or the U.N. decided to send troops into Texas to relieve the humanitarian crisis on our border.
I bet we wouldn't like it one, single, bit.
Just food for thought. :)
You say my thinking is "old thinking", but your thinking is actually older. Like Obama, you have imbibed so deeply of the old Soviet-influenced thinking of the left that you can't even see its anti-American roots. The leftward factions of the Democratic Party are still dominated by this idiocy, and now it is taking over the Republican Party as well.
We welcomed China into the international order, and the Chinese communist leadership has exploited its membership in the international community to do everything in its power to subvert that order. We had previously tried to welcome Russia into the international order via a partnership with NATO, but Russia spurned the offer.
The notion that the US can abdicate its international role is historically illiterate. We attempted that twice in the early 20th century, resulting in WW1 and WW2. The only reason there has not been a third world war is because the US has stayed engaged with the world to prevent it.
If the US were to abdicate its role as the world's policeman, China would gladly fill the vacuum. I can guarantee you would not like the results unless you are on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party.
I could easily say that you are steeped in 1950s era American propaganda and McCarthyism.
So let's tone down the insults shall we?
Most of what you have stated is inaccurate at best.
President Nixon opened up China to the West for commerce purposes and this has been very successful as we get most of our goods from China. Check the manufacturing data on most of the stuff you own.
From what I have seen, the history I have read, and the documentaries I've watched it all points to the fact that China has always been relegated to a second class position by America. We had the Chinese Exclusion Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act, the Anti-Coolie Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Coolie_Act, the Pigtail Ordinance of 1873 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigtail_Ordinance, and the Page Act of 1875, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_Act_of_1875.
Not to mention the reaction against Chinese people and Chinese Americans during and slightly after COVID.
Russia has never been offered membership in NATO, though it has made overtures that it would welcome this opportunity as long as they were on equal standing with the other members. Can you guess how that went? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93NATO_relations#
China and Russia aren't blameless and innocent in anything, but neither are we.
We all have our issues. The point is that we need to set these issues aside and work together.
If you're more in favor on the enlightened self interest approach let's go this way.
Wouldn't it be better for America to be in a PTO rather than a NATO?
Imagine the 3 super powers uniting and what we could accomplish.
When I "imagine the 3 super powers uniting", I imagine the world of Orwell's 1984, where the leaders of Oceania, East Asia, and Eurasia collude to oppress their own peoples and to rape the rest of the world.
Why should the US unite with corrupt autocracies against our natural allies, who share our enlightened traditions and values? It sounds like you want to live in a world that is safe for corrupt autocrats and everyone else is a slave. If that's the kind of life you want, you should just move to Russia or Hungary instead of trying to drag the rest of the world into that hopeless abyss.
Natural Allies?
France drug us in to WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Haiti (I would of placed them first but it's still ongoing).
Germany well I shouldn't have to relay their history to you, but they started both WW1 and WW2 and they were our enemies.
Britain is our only natural ally, if you want to use that term (Britain includes Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and all the other of the Commonwealth states).
Russia was our ally in WW2 and bore the brunt of WW2 and was the primary engine of defeat of WW2 Germany (check your history, it's true).
In general France and Germany are bad times and bad I wouldn't call them allies at all.
As far as 1984 is concerned, well it's a dystopian novel.
Have you ever heard of the five eyes?
The five eyes are an anglosphere alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
They already spy and "oppress" their own people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
That's why Edward Snowden had to flee the Occidental world.
There's over a billion people in China. If they didn't like their government then their government wouldn't be in charge anymore. Period.
You are judging these other nations by Western values.
There hasn't been a Soviet Union since the 90's.
Russia is a major world power that currently resembles late 19th, early 20th century America during the age of the Robber Barons and the Guilded Age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age.
Read your history and you will see that we had Oligarchs as well and there was plenty of shenanigans going on with our version of them.
China is a bit different, but their culture is so alien to ours and their history goes back so far it can be difficult for us Westerners to understand it's intricacies.
For example I recently discovered that the Uyghur people came about because of the many Mongol and other northeast invasions of China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs
I learned this from the Great Courses and not from Wikipedia. I posted this because it is publicly available.
This explains, but not condones, the Chinese treatment of this population as they are descendants of the people group that kept invading and conquering parts of China over the centuries.
History is important and it's effects ripple forward in time.
The Mediterranean Europeans had the same sort of history with the old Muslim Empires.
The difference is how the European governments treat these people groups today.
In short your premise is faulty because it lacks the historical perspective necessary, is based on a dystopian novel, and mid 20th Century American propaganda.
Think what a decades long friendship could bring and how much humanity could benefit from this friendship and the technology we are developing.
One could say that it's a Star Trek future. :)
Tell us about the great grocery stores in Moscow, please. Food for thought: do you like your iPhone and other creature comforts? You wouldn't have them without America's world leadership and nuclear umbrella.
We wouldn't have our IPhones or most of our consumer goods without China either.
Aren't most of Foxconn's manufacturing facilities located in China?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn
Europe gets most of their natural gas from Russia, without it they would have faced some pretty hard winters.
Wars happen.
America had the French-Indian War, The Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The Canadian American war, The Indian (Wars against Native Americans) Wars, The Mexican American War and so on...
Heck, we even invaded Canada on three separate occasions. Once in 1775 during the American Revolution, rebel forces invaded Canada, occupying Montreal and attacking the town of Quebec.; once between 1812-1815 during the War of 1812 saw the United States launch a series of land and sea invasions of British North America (now Canada); and once in 1837, saw American rebels from the HuntersтАЩ Lodges invade Canada, with the Battle of the Windmill being a notable event.
Are we giving California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas back to Mexico?
Are we giving back the land snatched from the Native Americans?
Have we apologized and made recompense to Canada?
To be honest we are not likely to be giving any land back to anyone or apologizing to Canada.
To try and take the moral high-ground with Russia reeks of historical hypocrisy.
Yes war is bad and in general unwarranted, but all countries throughout history have fallen into the trap of war.
Like Battlestar Galactica said, тАЬAll this has happened before, and all of it will happen againтАЭ.