Rod Dreher

View From Your Table

Chinese Nationalism — Great, Just Great

By Rod Dreher • August 19, 2012, 3:17 PM

In one image said to be from the southwestern city of Chengdu, deep in China’s interior, the number of protesters appeared to be in the tens of thousands.

“Defend the Diaoyu Islands to the death,” one banner said. Another said, “Even if China is covered with graves, we must kill all Japanese.”

Another photograph showed a handwritten sign taped to the entrance of Suning, a popular electronics store, telling customers it was no longer selling Japanese products.

Some protests appear to have turned violent. According to several postings, demonstrators on Sunday attacked sushi restaurants or other businesses perceived to have a Japanese connection. Several photographs said to be from Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong, showed what appeared to be damaged or overturned cars — most of them Japanese models — as well as several police vehicles.

The demonstrations appeared to be sanctioned and chaperoned by the police, who generally prohibit public protests unless they suit the needs of the Communist Party.

Makes you wonder how much — or rather, how little — it would take to turn out Chinese masses calling for the deaths of all Americans.

Posted in China. Tagged China, Japan, nationalism.

45 Responses to Chinese Nationalism — Great, Just Great

39Joshua says:

August 19, 2012 at 3:36 pm

I’m certainly not an expert on China, but from what I’ve read it would seem that the U.S. does need to increasingly prepare for the dangers of Chinese nationalism and bellicosity. It’s only going be time, I would think, before China tries to take Taiwan – will the U.S. try to stop this? In order for the American presence to be taken seriously in that region, I think the answer to that question is yes. Therefore, I think it makes sense to withdraw more from the Middle East and Europe, in order to build up our hegemony in a region that is going to become increasingly significant in the coming years. Yes, I’m aware of the dangers to this kind of build-up, but are we just to allow China unfettered ability to bully whoever they want to? That seems to me unwise, although I certainly might be missing something in this analysis.
SteveL says:

August 19, 2012 at 3:50 pm

There is history there with Japan that China simply doesn’t have with the U.S. One could propagandize but it wouldn’t have the same effect.
Dan Davis says:

August 19, 2012 at 3:50 pm

Maybe memories of the “Rape of Nanking” are emerging after years of the Chinese government trying to keep them tamped down for its own pragmatic reasons.
What says:

August 19, 2012 at 3:52 pm

While most Chinese don’t particularly like or trust the USA, their hatred of the Japanese is far more visceral and intense due to historical memory and geographical proximity. WWII, occupation, etc.
Don Quijote says:

August 19, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Makes you wonder how much — or rather, how little — it would take to turn out Chinese masses calling for the deaths of all Americans.

It wouldn’t take much, but then again it doesn’t take much to convince people to go kill foreigners as was seen after 9/11 when the US invaded and destroyed a country that had never attacked the US,,,
Coldstream says:

August 19, 2012 at 4:02 pm

There’s a special hatred within China for Japan going back a while, with roots from the Sino-Japanese war through WWII, with all the associated horrors the Japanese inflicted on China.

So, I’d imagine it’s easier to whip up anti-Japanese sentiment in China than against most anyone else.

That doesn’t mean growing Chinese nationalism isn’t something to watch and monitor in the future, especially in connection to demographic changes in China and the rest of East Asia.
Beauss says:

August 19, 2012 at 4:02 pm

This has more to do with longstanding historical relationships and grievances than blind nationalism. China and Japan have a rivalry extending back the entirety of formal Japanese history. Within living memory, the atrocities committed by the Japanese military against China during World War II would make your stomach turn: the use of chemical and biological weapons, the wholesale slaughter of civilians, medical experimentation on prisoners, and so on. The Japanese right still denies that any of this occurred and regularly honors war criminals.

In the last few years, there have been two Chinese epic film treatments of the Rape of Nanking, one starring Christian Bale and directed by Zhang Yimou. The Chinese government finds it useful to keep this history in the popular consciousness.

While I’m sure the Chinese government could drum up protests against the U.S., the reservoir of enmity just isn’t there for this level of intensity.
Turmarion says:

August 19, 2012 at 4:13 pm

If they really wanted to, the Japanese could take them.
sdb says:

August 19, 2012 at 4:27 pm

“Makes you wonder how much — or rather, how little — it would take to turn out Chinese masses calling for the deaths of all Americans” I’m sure it is possible, but the brutality of the Japanese in China two generations ago provides a lot of raw material for propagandists in the Chinese government to work with.
JT says:

August 19, 2012 at 4:28 pm

Makes you wonder how much — or rather, how little — it would take to turn out Chinese masses calling for the deaths of all Americans.

Eight years of war crimes in the quest for empire and a world war would probably be a good start.
none says:

August 19, 2012 at 4:31 pm

Chinese have a long history of hatred towards Japanese. While they generally like Americans, if not the U.S. government. So it would be a lot harder to have them vent this way directed at Americans.
jaybird says:

August 19, 2012 at 4:57 pm

Makes you wonder how much — or rather, how little — it would take to turn out Chinese masses calling for the deaths of all Americans.

I wouldn’t read too much into this –
The Chinese have hated the Japanese for centuries. In fact, most other Asian people – Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos… have hated the Japanese as well, just as much, and for just as long… My brother-in-law’s Mother was a little girl when the Japanese invaded the Philippines during WWII… to hear her tell it, we should have dropped a lot more atomic bombs on Japan.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

August 19, 2012 at 5:04 pm

Don’t you miss the days when China called for the unity of the international working people of the world?

The cold war lasted for enough decades that we easily forget, before the capitalist – communist divide, it was the nature of capitalist nations to fight great wars with each other over the resources and territory of the earth.

You wanted capitalism in China?

Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

Fighting Japan we had a great industrial machine that could produce all the war materiel we needed. Now we buy our products from overseas…

If war comes, blame Nike.
MattSwartz says:

August 19, 2012 at 5:09 pm

The Chinese don’t want war. Not with Japan, not with anyone. Their politicians are making (stealing) too much money, and war would disrupt that. I suspect that all we’re seeing is a show of strength by hardliners in China’s Wild West (where the economy is weaker and the Communist party is more ideological). And I assume that the show of strength is primarily directed at their (richer) rivals who run the State Communist parties in Eastern China.

Mark my words: War in China is unlikely, but they will have a civil war before they have a foreign one.

Few Americans realize that the Tienanmen Square protests were held to criticize Deng Xiaoping’s liberalization of the economy. Yes, the protesters were lashing out at an oppressive regime, but they were doing it because that oppressive regime wasn’t Communist enough for them.
Noah172 says:

August 19, 2012 at 5:28 pm

So if you go to a Chinese protest, will you still be angry an hour later?

Defend the Diaoyu Islands to the death

Had to do an internet search on that. This is a string of five tiny (total area: 1700 acres), uninhabited, resourceless hunks of rock, located midway between Taiwan and Okinawa.

These Chinese protesters are even stupider than the Christian Zionists. Israel, whatever else justifiably negative one might say about it, at least has a few million people and some tourist attractions of note.

Makes you wonder how much — or rather, how little — it would take to turn out Chinese masses calling for the deaths of all Americans.

About as much — or rather, as little — as it would take (likely will take) to get Americans whipped up to kill Iranians.
Kirt Higdon says:

August 19, 2012 at 5:33 pm

Hey, remember when Chinese nationalism was a good thing and it was Chinese communism that was bad? Now it turns out the Chicoms were closet nationalists all along. As for them trying to “take Taiwan”, the US, the Chicoms and the Chinats have always agreed that Taiwan is part of China. At this point in US history, do we really want to be trying to dictate who rules what in East Asia?
Dan Davis says:

August 19, 2012 at 5:35 pm

I’m not sure how many atomic bombs dropped on Japan would have been enough for them to be considered to have “paid” for their war crimes, but it’s worth noting that in contrast to Germany, they have a freaking shrine to their war criminals. But maybe we should let the past go and start worrying about the war crimes of our own Evil Empire.
JonF says:

August 19, 2012 at 5:42 pm

China has an ugly history with Japan, and one not quite gone from living memory.
By contrast there is no such history with the USA, in fact in the bad old days of European colonialism the US generally dealt rather fairly with China. Even Chairman Mao’s rabid propaganda doesn’t seem to have created much anti-American passion in the Chinese.
David J. White says:

August 19, 2012 at 6:02 pm

Another photograph showed a handwritten sign taped to the entrance of Suning, a popular electronics store, telling customers it was no longer selling Japanese products.

In the summer of 2003, my then-girlfriend and I had a picnic with her brother and his then-girlfriend. One of us had picked up a loaf of French bread at the supermarket. The manufacturer’s label reading “French Bread” had been partially covered over by a store label reading “Freedom Bread”. I really wish I’d taken a picture.

Anybody remember in the late 1980s when it seemed like the Japanese were cleaning our clock in the auto industry, some companies instituted a policy prohibiting the parking of Japanese cars in the parking lots? As I recall, there was also some vandalism of Japanese cars.

Of course, it was pointed out at the time, if you have a Ford assembled in Mexico, and a Honda assembled in Ohio, which one is really the “American” car? Which one is providing American jobs?
Beyng says:

August 19, 2012 at 6:17 pm

Makes you wonder how much — or rather, how little — it would take to turn out Chinese masses calling for the deaths of all Americans.

We could probably avoid this scenario if we largely ignore them. Evidence, Exhibit A: Japan didn’t, if you’ll think back just two short generations ago. Evidence, Exhibit B: The United States was the most popular nation in the minds of Middle Eastern peoples until around the 1960′s–you know, when we started bombing them to hell, installing unpopular regimes at will, inciting destructive revolutions, and supporting Israel at all costs as if she had something to do with us and not an ill-begotten British colonialist dream.

Which brings me to the first comment in this thread–the one by the bellicose Mr. 39Joshua. Why oh why would we want spend money we don’t have deliberately provoking an enemy we don’t need to establish “hegemony” in a region thousands and thousands of miles from our shores? Just because we “can”? To incite a war with China? To honor one of the numerous ill-advised “foreign entanglements” we’ve left outstanding in Southeast Asia (e.g., why do we need to “protect” Taiwan except to satisfy some WWII nostalgia)?

Such carte blanche imperialist thinking boggles my mind.
Beyng says:

August 19, 2012 at 6:24 pm

On the other hand…

SiarlysJenkins, may I politely ask what is the color of the sky in your world? I’m a strong critic of the neoliberal global order and of corporate capitalism in general, but you’re comment indicates that you’ve superimposed a thick layer of delusion over the recent history of international relations (the “narrative fallacy,” anyone?). The thesis suggesting that “free market” capitalist nations don’t generally wage war against one another has thus far been proven flawlessly true. No major capitalist powers have gone to war since the invention of modern capitalism (not to be confused with mercantilism or, God help you, fascism). This is but one of the reasons I feel comfortable proclaiming that China doesn’t want war with America (or with Japan for that matter): they need us far too much.

And emphatically no, I don’t reminisce fondly of the days when Red China participated in the Marxist imperialist, internationalist rhetoric in which America, as predicted, would be surrounded and eventually wither from the vine. Nor do I miss the age when Mao–while spouting said rhetoric–was slaughtering millions of his countrymen in pursuit of a pathological utopian vision.

Seriously, what color is the sky where you are, Siarlys?
Polichinello says:

August 19, 2012 at 6:27 pm

Chinese movies have demonized the U.S. before. Jet Li did one where he took on U.S. postwar occupation authorities in China.

OTOH, we shouldn’t panic. Look at a map of China. Almost every country it borders has been at war with China in the last half century or so. It’s ringed with enemies closer to it than us. We could easily keep China contained with a coalition.
cka2nd says:

August 19, 2012 at 7:12 pm

I had some friends in the Chinese Christian Fellowship back in college 30 years ago and was pretty stunned one day when one of them said that he wished the U.S. had dropped more nukes on Japan. I wouldn’t be shocked if his kids shared those sentiments today.
Mick says:

August 19, 2012 at 7:15 pm

MattSwartz…That is fascinating, I had never heard that before(about the Tiennamen Sq as protests against liberalization of economy). Where did you hear/read about that? I don’t doubt the veracity of what you say, I am just interested in the topic and would like to learn more about it.
cka2nd says:

August 19, 2012 at 7:20 pm

jaybird says: “The Chinese have hated the Japanese for centuries. In fact, most other Asian people – Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos…have hated the Japanese as well, just as much, and for just as long…”

Centuries? Why would the Vietnamese and the Filipinos have hated the Japanese for centuries? It’s the Chinese that the Vietnamese, have been fighting for hundreds of years and as recently as 1979.
Pacific moderate says:

August 19, 2012 at 7:57 pm

most Chinese don’t particularly like or trust the USA

Sorry, but I can’t let this kind of comment pass without correction. Most Chinese have a favorable impression of the US, just as most Americans have a favorable impression of China (the country and civilization, not necessarily the government). This is consistent with my own experiences in China as well. See, for example, this survey.
Chris Atwood says:

August 19, 2012 at 8:24 pm

Actually, these demonstrations are proof that China has no vision or plans for great power status. By pursuing border claims with almost all her neighbors (Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, India, etc.) the PRC is guaranteeing that the vast majority of its military will be tied in strategically unimportant border positions. For comparison, how much power could the US safely project across the oceans if we were devoted most of our military to garrisoning our border with Canada, in order to vindicate claims to rocks off of Nova Scotia and British Columbia? As long as China is pursuing these territorial claims, she is not credibly pursuing great power status, a status that could only be based on consensual leadership of smaller Asian nations.
Beyng says:

August 19, 2012 at 9:09 pm

cka2nd: I believe a more correct observation would be that “Most Asians hate most other Asians.” It’s impossible to communicate my message here without grossly unfair generalizations, but it’s absolutely true that Asians–by which I mean the diverse group of people who inhabit China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, etc.–are some of the most ethno-nationalist (in the externally directed, “racist” sense) groups of people on the planet right now. They all hate each other. That’s not even to mention the internal ethnic cleavages in China–e.g., vis-a-vis the Uyghurs and Tibetans.

To hear some Chinese, Korean, or Japanese citizens discuss their respective others and what they would like to befall them makes any discussion of “racism” in America seem trite.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

August 19, 2012 at 9:13 pm

Beyng, today the sky has been steel grey, with occasional bursts of rain which may be too late to save the corn crop. There have been some pale orange patches of cloud when the setting sun broke through. And a bit of pale blue.

My comment which seems to have touched a nerve or two was, in part, meant to facetiously tweak a lot of facile assumptions. Others, you may have noticed, also pointed out that people who welcomed “Chinese nationalism” as an antidote to “Chinese communism” have had reason to swallow their fond hopes.

I’m not sure what you mean by “modern capitalism,” but if it post-dates World War II, you have sustained my point. Up until the time that the primary contest for geopolitical power became one between NATO and the Soviet Union, capitalist nations and their empires fought each other. Remember WW I?

No, World War II wasn’t just another “imperialist war,” but WW I was, which is why there was such a powerful “The Yanks Aren’t Coming” movement in the late 1930s, far beyond anything the feeble communist party could have generated.

There is a fallacy to the notion that “now we all have free markets there will be peace and plenty.” Rather, now that we don’t have a common quasi-socialist military power as a common enemy, muted conflicts are free to come to the fore again. One cartoon about the fratricide in the former Yugoslavia showed a starving, freezing mother and children huddling behind a military entrenchment, while the man operating a machine gun announced “Communism was very bad. It it wasn’t for communism, we could have been doing this years ago.”

As I’ve said before, communism has failed on its own terms. Party discipline does NOT insure fidelity to founding principles. Slobodan Milosevic proved that. In fact, it creates further problems, some of which you have alluded to. On the other hand, if there was more centralized discipline in the Occupy movement, it wouldn’t have degenerated into an anarchist free-for-all — no, make that a nihilist free-for-all. There is a difference.

With regard to nationalism, anyone who has read much about Mao would know he was ALWAYS a nationalist, and found communism a promising vehicle for Chinese national regeneration. His first words upon entering Beijing and declaring the People’s Republica were “The Chinese people have stood up. Nobody will ever insult us again.” But, as a leader of an international movement, he did not call for extermination of any nation. Chinese propaganda always distinguished, at least rhetorically, between the people of the United States (or even Japan) and the government.

What is coming out of China now has a different ring.
Mr. Patrick says:

August 19, 2012 at 10:33 pm

Extreme nationalism is to the Chinese regime as Russian Orthodoxy is to the Russian regime: prolefeed. The mob isn’t whipped so far into frenzy as to be uncontrollable, it is their frenzy that makes them controllable. And the men who dominate them have no interest in wrecking Japan, the USA, or their own powerbase.

It’s hard to maintain a capitalist, yet totalitarian society. Some folks on the American right still don’t seem to think it is possible, but this is exactly how it’s done.
Anthony says:

August 19, 2012 at 10:34 pm

Why whip up hatred against the US?
It’s China’s largest debtor and largest market for its goods. China needs the US as much as the US needs China. The hatred of Japan has various historical justifications in the Chinese mind.
MattSwartz says:

August 19, 2012 at 10:38 pm

Mick,

In understanding the politics and style of the Tiananmen Square protesters, the New Left analogy is useful. For these were leftists, in a Chinese context, in their ideology as well as in their provocative style.

From the very beginning, the student rebels marched into the Square singing the “Internationale,” and toting portraits of Mao. According to Lee Feigon’s pro-student protester account of The Meaning of Tiananmen, the leaders of a prominent student group, who in alliance with city workers organized the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Trade Union,

“hung big pictures of Mao in the tents they pitched on the square. They talked openly and boldly about the good old days of the Cultural Revolution. Mao, they felt, had the right ideas, although he sometimes used wrong tactics. Now they were determined to use what they considered the right ones.” [p. 211]

Those tactics were as confrontational as any employed by any band of Yippies that ever marched through the streets of American cities in the sixties. The leadership of the student movement was fractious, and rarely spoke in a single voice, but the elected “Supreme Commander” of the Tiananmen Square encampment, Chai Lin, carried much moral authority, and it was largely through her influence that thousands of students failed to evacuate the Square even after word had reached them (reportedly from Deng Xiaoping’s son, Deng Pufang) that the tanks were rolling.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justinchina1.html

I think this article’s assertions about press freedom and state socialism in Deng’s China are a bit simplistic, but he seems to have the motives of the protesters pinned. Our context for talking about anti-Communist protests is the Eastern European model, and that just doesn’t apply here. The Soviet Union and her satellites were troubled by the repression of their mother religion and the promise of western consumer goods that were tantalizingly known yet unavailable. The Chinese experience, at least in 1989, was totally different. Here’s a marxist site that says fundamentally the same thing:

http://www.marxist.com/tiananmen-20th-anniversary.htm
Mick says:

August 19, 2012 at 11:52 pm

MattSwartz-

Thanks a lot. I greatly appreciate the links. Very interesting reading.
TTT says:

August 20, 2012 at 12:07 am

The most virulent, unrepentant, red-fanged racism I have ever heard in person in my life is that of Koreans against Japanese. As noted above, the popular sentiment is that two A-bombs were not enough.
EngineerScotty says:

August 20, 2012 at 12:09 am

@Chris Atwood. Google the “pig war”, for some amusing Anglo-American history.
Political Atheist says:

August 20, 2012 at 12:28 am

Christianity has been spreading rapidly throughout China, I think in large part because traditional Chinese culture was largely abolished by Mao. Often it is the highly educated who convert. My hope is that the continuing evangelization of the country will be a factor in maintaining harmonious relations with the US, as well as help the Chinese people overcome a deep sense of grievance at having been humiliated by the West in the nineteenth century (Opium War) and then brutalized by Japan in the twentieth. The rise of China, given its catastrophic history of political radicalism, does make much of the rest of Asia nervous, which has the effect of strengthening pro-American sentiment in the region.
Dave Dutcher says:

August 20, 2012 at 1:17 am

Extreme nationalism is to the Chinese regime as Russian Orthodoxy is to the Russian regime: prolefeed. The mob isn’t whipped so far into frenzy as to be uncontrollable, it is their frenzy that makes them controllable. And the men who dominate them have no interest in wrecking Japan, the USA, or their own powerbase.

It’s hard to maintain a capitalist, yet totalitarian society. Some folks on the American right still don’t seem to think it is possible, but this is exactly how it’s done.

Problem is that it’s not sustainable in the long term. Eventually they go to the well a bit too much with the distractions, and you get incidents that can’t be easily explained away. This increases as the short term thinking of those authoritarians leads to even bigger internal crises, requiring more meat for the masses.

Plus, people tend to overestimate rational responses and the power of inertia. Maybe it’s because we have been living in the weariness after the great ideologies have fallen, but one day societies wont be exhausted or fearful. Then the new irrationalities hit, and God save us all.
M_Young says:

August 20, 2012 at 2:41 am

“Most Chinese have a favorable impression of the US”

Yes, that’s why Baidu marketed its search engine with a battle between a cartoonish, yankee clipper era American versus a classic Chinese scholar.

“The most virulent, unrepentant, red-fanged racism I have ever heard in person in my life is that of Koreans against Japanese.”

Having been invaded several times, and colonized within living memory — and having your women turned into prostitutes to serve the Japanese Imperial Army, will do that.
Dimitry Aleksandrovich says:

August 20, 2012 at 2:48 am

This is all the more reason for the United State’s government to abandon the crazy notion that they can police the entire world. Do we really want a shooting war with China over Japanese nationalists waving the “Rising Sun” over an island disputed by both countries? Do we really want to sacrifice 30,000 soldiers on the DMZ between North and South Korea some 60 years after the Korean War? Mr. Buchanan is right on the money when he says close the bases abroad, reign in the Empire and bring the troops home. Nation’s like Japan and South Korea have their own militaries let them defend their own nations.
Gus says:

August 20, 2012 at 9:52 am

The Chinese don’t want war. Not with Japan, not with anyone. Their politicians are making (stealing) too much money, and war would disrupt that.

This is on the nose. It’s a useful distraction for the government from the Gu Kailai trial, which is in itself a useful distraction from the real reason she’s on trial, i.e. corruption at the highest levels of the government.
Colin says:

August 20, 2012 at 10:13 am

I work in China, close to Chengdu. The China company I work at is very international, we have about 60 people from Europe, Australia and America. There are several hundred Chinese who work at the company too. These days there was a message circulating around our companies web boards that said “donate a months salary to go to war to Japan, donate a year to go to war with America.”

What would it take for the Chinese to call for our deaths? Not much.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

August 20, 2012 at 10:43 am

I live on the opposite side of the world from China, so I don’t care if they call me nasty names or not.
Steve says:

August 20, 2012 at 11:05 am

Its ugly and a sign of a sad decline in Chinese culture, but not too much to get worried about yet.

Of course these protestors are hateful and obnoxious, but they don’t really reflect a broad trend towards actual aggressiveness or actual revanchism in the society, like in pre-WWI Germany or France.

It just isn’t a very militaristic culture – there is plenty of military propoganda put out by the government, but there is no prestige in being part of the military – the rank and file are composed of peasants looking for a living, and being an officer doesn’t have the same prestige among young people that ROTC does in the states. The main image of military officers is of people who can take advantage of various special privelages, not the glorious defenders of the motherland.

Also Chinese people don’t really put there money where their motuh is in terms of anti-Japanese sentiment.

These protests pop up once in a while, but young Chinese prefer to work for Japanese employers than Chinese, they prefer to buy Japanese goods (if they can afford them), and often try to study in Japan or even emigrate there.

This intense anger is mainly concentrated among a fairly small set of young men – if you see these protests there are hardly any middle aged people there- of course protestors skew young globally, but in contrast with, say, anti-Israel protests in the middle east, it just isn’t a serious concern for the society as a whole, especially when it comes to moving beyong cheap talk.
Irenist says:

August 20, 2012 at 12:19 pm

The Chinese economy is slowing down. Expect to see more of this nonsense as the Chinese people seek state-approved outlets for their frustration.
cecelia says:

August 20, 2012 at 5:22 pm

Irenist has it – distract the proletariat from internal difficulties (not just economic but the scandals among the leadership class as well as the widespread corruption) by directing their attention towards imaginary external enemies. Last month it was the Phillipines – over another bunch of rocks in the ocean. The problem is that even the PRC rulers have to pay some attention to the demands of the people and as nationalism of the violent sort becomes more ingrained in the society – the government could find itself in a weakened position wherein they must act to satisfy these extreme nationalist demands. And the PRC has been propaganizing the whole “victims of the Japanese. victims of the Western powers” line for generations. One of the more disturbing aspects of this are the calls for “vengeance” that show up among this extreme crowd.

I agree we need to get out of the middle east for a number of reasons – but in part because it is distracting us from the real dangers (and opportunities) in the Indo-Pacific. One seriously volatile area of the planet – countries that hate each other and have nukes (Pak India, India China), countries with still simmering resentments from WWII (Korea Japan, China Japan) then smaller countries fearful of Chinese expansion (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand). Geez – even Australia and Indonesia almost went to war in the 90′s. Biggest arms build up in the world going on in that region. And our diminishing Navy charged with keeping things cool there. Going to take much wisdom and patience too avoid military confrontations in that region.