China sends patrol ships to disputed East China Sea islandsTaiwan's not happy, either, since the islands are within rock-throwing distance of Formosa.
The islands in question straddle some shipping lanes, are near potential energy finds and, perhaps most importantly, when you say "Japan" to the Chinese, they don't picture today's smilingly polite and increasingly geriatric producers of Hondas and Hentai, but rather a swarm of hard-faced killers decapitating everything they didn't rape at bayonet point. The Japanese, in turn, feel about the Chinese pretty much the way they feel about everyone else who isn't Japanese.
Two legs of this love triangle are nominally our allies, and the third has nukes and a bunch of our IOUs. Were I Japan, I wouldn't be making any moves that required Uncle Sam to hold my coat right now, given the decisive command team in the White House, where apparently people have to be practically chased down hallways and arm-barred into making foreign policy or national defense-related decisions, which will then probably be changed or modified within 48 hours anyway.
This could get interesting.
I see that for added irony, you have used "interesting" in the "Chinese curse" sense of the word.
ReplyDeleteThis administration seems determined to make Carter's foreign palsy look like Roosevelt's foreign policy.
ReplyDeleteEither Roosevelt. Take yer pick.
And the current administration apparently doesn't have the word "ally" in its dictionary, given its treatment of Great Britain and Israel. To the Obama adminstration, all disputes are between equally guilty parties who must endure patiently the President's Solomonic...dithering.
ReplyDeletethey don't picture today's smilingly polite and increasingly geriatric producers of Hondas and Hentai, but rather a swarm of hard-faced killers decapitating everything they didn't rape at bayonet point.
ReplyDeleteFunny, that. Somehow I don't picture today's Germans as the goose-stepping, black uniformed folks who gassed and incinerated a quarter of my family just because they were Jewish. Doesn't excuse the Holocaust by any means, but doesn't inform my current thinking about Germans, either.
Methinks the Chinese need to find another bugaboo. Like, their own government.
Actually, I think the Japanese detest the Koreans more than the chinese.
ReplyDeleteFuzzy -- the Chinese/Japanese thing wasn't a brief aberration. Centuries of a tradition of, whenever one thought they could destroy the other, taking advantage of it.
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese were brutal invaders and occupiers of the East Asian coast LONG before Tojo.
The cultural paranoia is more like the Russian fear of Germany or China, or the Polish/Finnish/Baltic fear of Russia.
Hey, let's get involved in a Land War in Asia! That'll keep the Electorate's mind off the Economy!
ReplyDeleteThe other issue is that the Chinese seem to consider any hunk of land however miserable that may once have been occupied, stepped on or claimed by China or a Chinese vassal, or Chinese sub-state at any time for at least 15min, 400 years ago, to be theirs for-ever.
ReplyDeleteIn their defense, I see their paranoia a little, if everyone around them is allowed to claim all the little rocks then "Chinese Waters" basically extend as far as they can swim and everyone can tell China that their ships are passing through someone else's domestic waters all the time, which annoys them a lot.
(Imagine if in 17hundert and change the Royal Navy had laid claim to EVERY island off the east coast (Long island, Nantucket, etc...)"US Domestic waters" would be a joke and the US doesn't even really have the problem seriously on the East coast of lots of islands just over the horizon.)
'Specially as the Chinese are as racist as anybody else and think all the monkeys all around them should worship glorious Chinese-ness. Because.
Well, a land war in Asia would have teh advantage of renewing our nuclear stockpile with shiny new bottles of sunlight.
ReplyDeleteBecause we'd need to use the existing stockpile in curtain barrages just to try and pull a Dunkirk. . .
I pity the uninformed who highlights Hentai, right clicks, and selects "Search Google for..." thinking it's a Japanese car brand they've not heard of...
ReplyDeleteActually, I think the Japanese detest the Koreans more than the chinese.
ReplyDeleteNot half as much as the Koreans detest the Japanese.
The one thing that would unite the ROK and the DPRK would be a joint deceleration of war on Japan.
I used to hang out with a Half-Nip gal (her Dad made his living for a while dropping incendiary bombs on her Mom's head) who said that you could always tell the bad guys in Chinese martial-arts movies, as they looked Japanese.
ReplyDeleteFurther, I recall reading about some old Chicom general making a point of looking up Colonel Tibbets and shaking his hand, and thanking him, and regretting that we only used two bombs.
I wonder how the news media will blame this on Romney?
ReplyDeleteCapt. Malcolm Reynolds: Define "interesting".
ReplyDeleteHoban 'Wash' Washburn: [deadpan] Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die?
And when the US rattles sabers on the side of Japan the PRC will respond "All your factories are belong to us." I was expecting that - but though it would involve some foolishness out of the DPRK with backing from the PRC.
ReplyDeleteIf you call reliving 1935 all over again intresting. This whole world is heading for something and it isn't good........
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll be here when it happens. Yay me.
ReplyDeleteangrymike, that is one of the reasons why I drink too much.
ReplyDeleteJoe in PNG, at least you can eat your neighbors when things get bad, and nobody will think the worse of you.
Justthisguy: That works both ways.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read from some people in the know, the Chinese tend to truly believe they are the Middle Kingdom, and EVERYONE else ought to remember it. Or else(they're working on the 'or else' pretty constantly, the past few centuries).
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese consider the Chinese to be cultured, but still ought to be taking orders from the Emperor; and the less said about the Koreans and everyone else, the better.
The Koreans... look up 'comfort women'; they're still VERY pissed about that and a lot more.