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I think we've discussed this before, but I continue to be amazed at the parallels between the CCP and Japan's LDP, with its factional infighting. Do you see these factions within the CCP causing a rift and leading to a political system that encompasses a "loyal opposition," or do you think that...

Sorry for not congratulating you explicitly before; I have a fetish about keeping my post count as low as possible. But now that I'm writing, congratulations! We haven't crossed paths on PDF many times, but when we have, I've always been impressed by your rational thinking and professionalism...

These are very good points, and I admit to not having considered them (and in the case of the Philippines' and Vietnam's actions in the SCS decades ago, I was totally unaware). As I have wondered before, why isn't China's public information effort more coordinated in the West? Even though I...

True, but not all dictator-removals result in such long-term destabilization; Egypt didn't create an ISIS, and neither did Tunisia. While removing Saddam did change the situation, we had no hand in the creation of ISIS. On the contrary, ISIS was created as a reaction to the Shiite mis-rule of...

Good for China, but my comment was directed at @Genesis 's claim that Ebola is an American problem, not a Chinese one. As far as the Chinese vs. US approach, this stems from a different ethos. The US has many physicians and nurses volunteering to treat Ebola, but their efforts are outside of a...

A word to the wise, it's best to just put such "people"* on your ignore list. I learned a while back that when I asked such people to quantify or prove their propaganda, the conversation tends to divert into more trolling. Such "individuals"* are uneducated (the educated know better than to...

We were allies once, and we don't have overlapping claims anywhere, so it's indeed possible. Who knows what the future will hold, but a US-China alliance is certainly a viable one, and I've often said that of the Asian cultures, Chinese culture reminds me the most of my own. You have also...

Interesting analysis. I have a political response to many of the points made, but I'm aware from other threads that you prefer to keep politics at arms-length, so I'll keep it short and simple. We are the world (we are the children...), but we are also the "exceptional nation." It's our...

I laughed out loud when I read the bolded part. Sometimes it feels like we are talking about a mentally ill patient, but then again, maybe that's the best way to look at geopolitics. But otherwise, a very reasoned and well-thought position. We can already see China allying itself with Russia...

@Genesis @Chinese-Dragon Excellent points, thank you for your feedback. This again comes down to a learning process, specifically how the US is learning to deal with a peer of a kind it's never had before (the USSR was a different kind of peer), and China's attempt to formulate "a new kind of...

Thank you for this thought-provoking post. I like the general tilt of your thinking, but I wanted to comment on some specific points and ask for clarification. I hope my Chinese friends will not interpret these comments as belligerence, but rather as a relatively dispassionate presentation of...

Welcome back, @AUSTERLITZ !

@Nihonjin1051 Good presentation. I wish I had a copy of the slide deck he used, do you know if it's available anywhere? The video reminds me of this article I read about Japan's experience in Iraq, and lack of lessons learned (War is Boring, sorry for the low quality source, but still...

Hahah. In the same way that Oliver Stone set out to create Wall Street as a cautionary tale, but instead created a legion of Gordon Gekko fans, some people saw Mad Max and, well...

What can I say? No one is perfect. I hope criticism of the US system doesn't stem from disappointment that we are not perfect. As I said, this problem tends to balance itself out. Obama ran a campaign in excess of $1bn and won in 2012, then we raked in the cash in reaction to his incompetent...

I don't think the fact that elections can be essentially bought these days is a good thing, but I think the US handles it in the best way: we each have our own billionaires to fight the other side's billionaires. Silicon Valley left-wing billionaires vs. industrial right-wing billionaires. New...

Sorry, I could go on and on about this. The ratings agencies, the hedge funds and auction rate securities, syndication, the precedent of Bear and the "moral hazard" implications that led to Lehman being allowed to fail, etc. but it's just a personally exhausting subject for me, and I wanted to...

I should have known things would go bad when I met in 2001, for the first time ever, a recently hired colleague who had just attained a master's degree in "financial engineering." I kid you not.

Whole books have been written about the global financial crisis, but I will try to condense it down into a super executive summary, so please forgive the short-cuts I use in explaining this: Lehman Bros was primarily a victim of the GFC, not its cause (I would blame Countrywide Financial and...

Heh, this thread is quite the tar baby. I don't claim any expertise on this, and politics has a way of corrupting language (e.g. "liberal" in the United States now means exactly the opposite of its original meaning, which is still understood in the rest of the world as "free from government."...