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The media in OZ are repeating mouthpiece of US MSM. Especially the ABC (gov funded) & channel 10
Yeah our media and politicians are absurd
The media in OZ are repeating mouthpiece of US MSM. Especially the ABC (gov funded) & channel 10
We’ve largely halted the South China Sea expansion (of course a lot of damage was already done) and have armed and affirmed Taiwan’s sovereignty. We’ve revived the Quad, although that hasn’t officially done anything yet.
You’re right, we messed up on a lot, with an ineffective Obama and with Trump pulling out of the TPP, but I don’t anticipate for that trend to continue.
By “halted” I meant no further expansion than what they already have. We can’t stop them from fortifying what they already have or claiming the 9-dash line.Halted? They haven't retracted their claims, stopped their patrols, stopped militarising their "islands", nor stopped their development funding in the region. Obama's increase in US military presence hasn't achieved anything.
Trump's decision to pull out of the TPP and try "unilateral" agreements directly undercut regional economic alliances which could oppose China. Instead we've now got a CCP dominated RCEP, which excludes the US, and the rotting carcass of the WTO.
It was inevitable that US influence would decline as other nations became more developed and the disparities were decreased along with the US share of the global economy. Meanwhile increasing economic integration has meant that military force has decreasing utility in pursuing political goals (hence the questionable relevance of the Quad as anything but a signifier of an existing strategic alliance). Still, the US response, with Obama sticking to the old play book and Trump just up and running away from leadership (while alienating allies and hollowing out the US diplomatic corps), certainly accelerated that.
Keeping in mind that this is the global economic order which the US largely engineered. With militant evangelism of market liberalism during the cold war, and the immediate post-cold war period where the US was the sole super power and effectively the arbiter of any supranational disputes (with or without UN rubber stamping).
The only realistic possibility of curbing China's behaviour is to limit their access to the global economic commons, but that's not something that can be achieved unilaterally by the US, and certainly not by Australia. It'd take an agreement of at least the US, EU, UK, Japan, South Korea, India and the other allies (including Oz).
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