3/23/2006

a new containment strategy

in the days of the cold war, the americans were relatively able to contain the soviet union and china for a while.. and in that effort they built a perimeter wall consisting of nato, cento and seato countries.. these include european, middle eastern and south east asian countries, and also taiwan, south korea and japan. it was a fairly tight ring of allies that prevented the ussr and china from operating outside of their national boundaries.. but eventually it also failed.. with the collapse of south vietnam, it was all over. and now a new containment strategy is developed just to contain a rising china.. its members will be nato, nothing left of cento or seato, but possibly india and indonesia and a reluctant australia.. then taiwan and japan but no south korea, who is still fuming mad with the americans for not allowing them to reunite with their northern brothers. now what do we have of this new chain of allies? no, there is no hole in the containment ring, but huge gaps of empty space.. so much of a containment strategy from a brilliant team headed by a brilliant anti communist ideologist in the name of rice and a brilliant president in bush.. and they believe it will succeed in containing china.. they still believe the asians are still as stupid as when they were colonies of western powers to be manipulated to serve big power interests. give it another couple of decades the ring will expand further. by then it will be japan, mexico, england and iceland.. this will be a tighter loop that will effectively keep the americans very safe inside the ring : )

2 comments:

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

There is already some diplomatic "dissent" viz a viz Australia - USA's "best friend in the Pacific".

Aust is "not allowed" to sell uranium to cuntires who might use the stuff form weapons - but the 2 potentially lucrative customers are India and China. The new Premier of WA - Alan Carpenter, a lefty with a capitalist tinge is cool about the mining of uranium in WA - congruent with Labour Party policy of being "anti-nuclear"

However, one of the recent floats (IPO's) for a uranium miner was OVERSUBSCRIBED 30 times! It seems the market likes uranium even though the WA PM is being "political" over the issue.

Politics and markets clash all the time - no surprise here.

The US is welcome to try its containment policy. Back to the eternal dance of "balance".

My selfish intent is to ride the wave of the long mining boom in WA. As long as the Chinese and Indians keep buying, I don't have to leave OZ, go to China or India to "get a piece of the action".

The irony is this: I spent the last 3 years or so "getting a piece of the action" in Asia - and we know the growth is coming from India and China. I came back to Oz a few months ago and realised that I could probably do quite well just staying put in Oz, and not having to worry about relocating. Don't get me wrong, I like China, but relocating is such a pain in the ass.

People are jumping on the band wagon to "get rich quick and go to India and China" - they've failed to realise that the best deal is probably lying quietly in their own back yard.

Even a cleaner earns around AUD100k in the mines these days. Met a young woman in her 20's the other day - truck driver on a mine site. earns $200k, owns 3 houses in Perth.

I just love a globalised world!

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

i want to be a driver too. that is very good money driving a truck.

dunno what happen to my forum. still can't get hold of the service provider. so got to hang around here for a while.