knyte
Level 55
America, Fuck Yeah!
Comin' again to save the motherfuckin' day, Yeah

Wow, I honestly thought I was the only person to have seen that. Boy was I wrong xD

China has few close friends (North Korea, Pakistan) and is surrounded on the south, east, and west by a counterbalancing coalition backed by American interests (India, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, the list gets very long). On the north, China faces a dying ex-superpower with its own motives- and the American-backed sinoskeptic russoskeptic democracy of Mongolia. China is isolated, lacking a blue-water navy, and a volatile factor-driven economy.[/quote[

Few close friends? Try the SCO and number one exporter in the world. India is not pro-American (not anti-American, but still) at all, it is much closer to China. Vietnam - way more pro-China. Phillipines, they depend on China quite heavily, though they don't like to admit it. Thailand - China's friend (and America's enemy). So just Japan and South Korea, really, which depend on China quite a bit and could flip ship (especially South Korea). On the North, China has it's second best definite ally: Russia, and between China and Russia, Mongolia is friendlily split. To the east, China is making buddies with Russia's buddies, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan. Afghanistan isn't friends, but Afghanistan's weak.

On the other hand, the United States is an innovation-driven economy that's far less volatile, backed by the greatest concentration of hard and soft power the world has ever seen. I do not see China becoming the omnipower anytime soon- even as they pass us in GDP, they've got three times the population.

Sorry, what? The Chinese Yuan is the most stable currency there is right now. China has the greatest big of soft power. Hard power is impossible to measure. China passes America in GDP - and they have three times the workforce! That's not a detriment, that's a benefit.

Hard power- there is no dispute. Soft power- China is just beginning to match favorability in the Global South. Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa are still, however, the strongest believers in America for the most part, and Chinese investment in these regions simply means more consumers for Americans to sell to.

No disupte in hardpower because we can't measure hardpower. Soft-power - China already has half of Africa (Chinese neo-colonisation), Indochina and Central Asia, combined with the SCO, it has more allies in even farther places. Egypt, for a big one. America only has soft power with NATO, Middle America (which is useless except for Mexico) and a couple other European countries (Ukraine being one).

Joseph Nye, the pioneer of soft power studies, has himself noted that China and Russia lack right now anything approximating actual soft power. Meanwhile, American film outdoes Chinese film- see Kung-fu Panda. America's fast food suddenly becomes a status symbol in China. America's exploitative phone manufacturers are being gobbled up by Chinese consumers.

Softpower studies' pioneer - according to who? An employed geostrategist is not a geostrategist, by the way. Employed geostrategists have to tell the folk what make folk happy and confident. Notice how geostrategists rarely ever say bad news or that they're in a bad situation. Russia is no superpower, but has loads of softpower (going all the way to Nauru and Venezuela). China is a superpower and has even more (Indochina). Film? Pirated. America's fast food becomes status symbol - tshhh. It's a bad place for fatsos to go no matter where you go (unless you're in some absolute poor country like Somalia). Who makes those telephones? Yes, China does.

By all meaningful metrics of power- hard and soft- America is winning. America will win.

Neither is it winning.

If that's all you have to say, then I rest my case. I haven't found anything in Europe approximating the innovation capacity or venture capital funding of Silicon Valley, so I think we've got the edge in the tech market for the foreseeable future as well.

Called Moskva, Hamburg and London.

Edited 5/18/2015 03:43:57

Sorry for weird quotes. Too lazy to fix.

ZXC - you handle the parts where America's living standards are worse than Britain's.

America isn't Communist. Thus better than China :P

Strength:
China>US>UK
Living:
UK>US>China
:)

Thomas 633 is actually right here.

I mean, most of what Juq said is easily countered by any expert on IR or anyone vaguely aware of current territorial and maritime disputes so I'm not gonna bother. Just gonna wait for the PRC to slowly collapse once labor becomes expensive and it's unable to transition to a resource-driven economy.

You're no expert, mate.

"India is America's ally".

Please get away from my geostrategist eyes (and no, I didn't steal them).

Edited 5/18/2015 05:02:08

India is not an absolute American ally, of course, and its chief interests are isolationist. But there's an argument to be made for the formation of a de facto tripartite counterbalancing coalition of India, Japan, and the US against China in the Asia-Pacific region.

Since the fall of the USSR, India's been opportunistically warming up the US- you can see this reflected in immigration waves, economic agreements, nuclear/military treaties. At the same time, China is now warming up to Pakistan (who now is clearly drifting away from the US, especially since 2001) and India has territorial disputes with both Pakistan and China, both of which claim entire states' worth of Indian-controlled and -claimed territory. SCO membership is not an end-all-be-all; SCO is by far a looser coalition than NATO and even CIS. However, GUAM makes CIS a decent analogue for the SCO- it's not a tight pact but rather a loose coalition of states that are part of the coalition to pursue their own interests, states that are not fully aligned with each other and in many cases better aligned with external groups like the US, EU, and NATO.

Am I saying India's America's bitch the same way the UK is? Nope. India is isolationist and heavily self-interested; one needs look no further than India's retconning of its own history to see that. However, currently India's interests are against China and very coincidentally align with American interests in the Asia-Pacific region. Moreover, the current Indian BJP government buys heavily into the American right-wing neoliberal capitalist narrative, unlike India's previous INC governments, and moreover has a strong mandate for its pro-private sector policies that can easily be compared to the economic policies promoted by successive American governments.

As someone who actually holds an Indian passport and has a stake in the foreign policy and geostrategic behavior of India, I'd rather not be lectured to by an Internet "geostrategist" on the political alignments of my country. I'm all too aware of them.

And as far as your understanding of general strategy goes, don't make me remind you of your simple errors of analysis in our 1v1 game. Before you attempt to analyze the behaviors of other rational actors, I'd encourage you to first understand how a rational actor behaves given a particular set of circumstances- an understanding you clearly lack as you can't seem to think beyond one turn or step at a time.

Edited 5/18/2015 05:27:18

UK has a richer history and greater apex. However, u.s. is military superpower since WW1 and has been a great source of economic prosperity.

Britain's apex is only greater until you consider the relaity that power can be exerted (more efficiently) without direct or explicit territorial control. British military power at its peak wasn't able to halt the American Revolution; in contrast, American military power's closest equivalent failure (Vietnam) did not give birth to a powerful state and ended up causing massive damage to an area without resulting any outright loss to the United States- it's like a version of the War of 1812 in which Britain caused actual, long-term damage through sheer military power and retreated not because it lost a series of major battles and had to defend itself at home (against France, Spain, and the Netherlands) but simply due to a democratic nature and overwhelming domestic opposition at a time when American losses were still easily dwarfed by Vietnamese losses.

That said, I would say that Britain's major contributions to civilization at the present match or exceed those of the United States, simply because Britain has been contributing for a longer period of time. However, as far as contributions to Western civilization go, neither Britain nor the United States come out on top when competing with entities like Rome, Greece, the Han Dynasty, and the Islamic caliphates.

knyte
shut up

good. Now stop posting large blocks of text. also... this is a UK vs US argument, on which I was completely right.

Yup, im bringing out the big guns now.

1v1 me brah

Here's the link: https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=8717526

100 coins say Thomas isn't going to join.

Edit:

Also one for Juq: https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=8717554

Edited 5/18/2015 07:46:26

(well, what did you expect?)
I accept the bet and the challenge, but I won't shut up if I lose :D

Alright. What's the fastest way to transfer 100 coins, anyone? The interface, given our constraints, will only let me transfer coins in increments of 8 for now, so that kind of sucks.

yeah...so I end up with 104 coins though!! :)

but we do need an easier way.