Showing all posts tagged WWII

In Cadence

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, August 24, 2020

Author SymphonyPosted on

These days, Taiwan is the perfect poster boy in China bashing. Yes, China needs to be confronted. No, China can’t own the world. Yes, China wants to own the world. Yes, China responds to anything and everything like a friendless student carrying a Grandiosity complex. But, that doesn’t mean mindless China bashing will help.

We are engaged in mindless China bashing.

Learn from Germany. WWII developed because the free world punished and insulted Germany after WWI. We need healing, gentle leadership, and grace. Trouble maker countries must be coached and guided, not merely insulted and smeared. Whatever conflict we see with China on the horizon, it will only grow back with a vengeance if we fail to handle it correctly now.

In the China bashing narrative, Taiwan is the perfect innocent—the victim everyone pities. Poor little Taiwan struggles to stay afloat with the tsunami of Chinese conflict. But, as part of that narrative, don’t deify the poster boy.

Taiwan has many of its own problems that go unreported. It’s people are friendly in many ways, but also oblivious. Success with the pneumoniavirus developed a Royalty complex, where Taiwan has a higher regard for itself without understanding the foreign nations that struggle with relations, investment, and trade in these times. There is a growing reputation Taiwan’s government continues to set for itself and Taiwan will need to face that sooner or later.

Taiwan’s troubles are not uninvited. But, when we over-simplify global conflicts, brainwashed thinking wants pure villains attacking pure victims. There is no such thing. And, a peaceful future requires us to stop living a news narrative of fantasy.

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In Encore

Encore of Revival: America, April 13, 2020

Author SymphonyPosted on

In America, many WWII measures are being reenacted and reutilized—fireside chats, not from the president, but from governors, massive government spending packages, unemployment, sporadic activity in the stock market, groceries in short supply, and, not least of all, hatred for an Asian country. This time, it’s not “the Japs” (as the news called them), but “the Chinese”.

While Democrats act like Democrats, Republicans act like Republicans. The president wants everyone to go back to work, Republicans talk about civil rights and freedom of gathering for religion, Democrats want money, big government, and fewer Christian gatherings in particular.

Then, we have citizen reports from around the world of empty hospitals reported on the news as overflowing “war zones”. While conspiracy kooks claim the end of the world, this activity indicates more of a “virus drill”, much like a “fire drill”. Governments should run a kind of drill to see how to respond to a real pandemic. Of course, being semi-secret and all, Democrats and Republicans won’t tell on each other, but they’ll still try to push their partisan agendas. Leave it to a politician to capitalize on a fire drill.

But, that’s what everyone does, right? Salesmen send free medical masks to prospective customers to break the ice. Companies offer their reinvented services, supposedly to “help with the situation”. And, not least of all, while the world wakes up to need of domestic manufacturing, many countries are opening and reopening factories to make stuff at home once again. That’s yet another WWII measure being reenacted.

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In Cadence

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, May 13, 2019

Author SymphonyPosted on

Trump knew the Chinese all along, all too well. The “trade war” never risked creating a real war; the “trade war” was a ploy the whole time—part of an elaborate scheme to provoke the Chinese into striking too soon. He says talks are going well with China—he can’t not say that. China is indeed willing to have another talk. Trump announced tariff hikes and they still showed up. That’s not exactly bad on the part of the Chinese.

Trade might never go well, but the talks certainly are for now. When has talk in politics ever looked bad?

But, don’t make the mistake of thinking for even one second that negotiations aren’t going exactly as Washington planned, whether with China or North Korea. The US provoked Japan through trade wars and embargoes leading up to WWII. This isn’t just a strategy, it’s a proven playbook tactic, and China’s irritability is performing right on cue.

As Symphony said previously, the war will start when the US is ready to field-test the F-35 in an actual combat situation that we really need to win. The F-35 was made for this and, like nuclear technology at the end of WWII, if the US doesn’t use its fifth-generation fighter jets before Russia and China perfect theirs, it will have failed its initial purpose. Japan is ready to buy the worlds largest non-US fifth-generation F-35 fleet. They want the Marines’ vertical take-off model for their helicopter carriers. Perhaps those carriers also had a purpose all along.

Talk isn’t deteriorating, not with China anyway, but trade suddenly is. That’s because the F-35 is ready to make its entrance onto the world’s stage. Taiwan’s election could prove to be a convenient lynch pin.

Businessmen are the presidential trend. Foxconn Chair and Founder Terry Gou is running under the KMT, a political party whose platform is “Chinese-Taiwan re-unification”, yet he demands that China recognize Taiwan’s history of de facto existence; China never will. Moving some production from among Foxconn’s twelve factories in China back to Taiwan in Kaohsiung shows that his loyalties don’t reside in Beijing nor in Nanjing as KMT old-hats still pine for. He’s also beefing up supply in Houston, Indianapolis, and Mexico, atop his newest plant in Wisconsin. That will make the US less dependent on China and better ready for war. As an accomplished businessman, Terry will tear up the inexperienced populist Mayor Han of Kaohsiung in the primaries. After all, he brought jobs back to Kaohsiung.

Even if Gou loses primary or presidency, his campaign rhetoric, though less unacceptable to China than others, could force all other viable candidates to sympathize with Taiwan independence, if that proves to be the only electable platform. That’s more than likely. Equally likely, China will see no way to “talk” its way toward absorbing Taiwan. Talk would thus breakdown and “the military option” would be the trigger in the gas tank known as the South Sea. Then, F-35 moves to centerstage.

Trump says China has one month. If we make it that long, then China would be stupider than we thought because the F-35s would have more time to fuel up.

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