Re: Another American Spyplane about to land in a foreign country

[Robert "J." Hansen <rjhansen@xxxxxxxx>]

>        Seriously though, China doesn't want to play by ANY rules....there is 

And the US is different?  Maybe I've been abroad too much and picked up
too much of the viewpoints of foreigners, but the general perspective
abroad is that the US refuses to play by any rules that we don't make
ourselves.

This is no different from any other country.  Every country wants to
write the rules, because then the rules will automatically be favorable
to that country.  When people overseas deride the US for not playing by
any rules but its own--take a look at our brazen refusal to sign the
land mine treaty, or the fact that the US still hasn't agreed to the
Geneva Accords--they're usually more angry about the fact that, since
the US is the sole remaining superpower, we're able to -get away with
it-.

China wants to be a superpower, and we've got to expect them to act like
they think they're a superpower.  Part of being a superpower means the
ability to look the other superpowers in the face and say, "No, we're
/not/ going to play by those rules, you can play by /these/ rules
instead."

The problem is that this sort of arrogance is tremendously dangerous, as
Kennedy and Kruschchev each found out in the '60s.  We had nukes in
Turkey capable of hitting Moscow.  That was a destabilizing act, but we
stupidly said "what are you gonna do about it, huh, Ivan?"

Then Ivan put nukes in Cuba and said "What are you gonna do about it,
huh, Yankee?"

In the Cuban Missile Crisis, both sides discovered that it made a whole
lot more sense to play nice with each other, with respect, than it did
to get into these constant Mexican standoffs.  I'm just afraid that
we're going to have another Cuban Missile Crisis-type event with China,
and call me nuts, but I just don't -like- the idea of standing on the
brink of World War Three.

-- As a point of historical note, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended with
the US pulling our nukes out of Turkey, and the USSR pulling their nukes
out of Cuba.  Things got much saner, diplomatically speaking, once we
stopped having five-minute first-strike capabilities against each other.

>  Russia was always, at least somewhat, honorable.....China has no such record.

The USSR cremated some of its dissidents alive.  The KGB's human-rights
record is a demon's list of crimes against humanity.  I wouldn't say the
USSR was honorable.

They were predictable, and they clearly had considered just how far they
could take things without taking them so far they couldn't be taken
back.

At the moment, I don't think China is either.