Tag Archive for: Vietnam

The Guy Who Wouldn’t Take His Flag Down!

You might remember a news story several months ago about a crotchety old man who defied his homeowner’s association by refusing to take down the flagpole on his property and the large flag flying on it. Now learn who, exactly, is this old man.

On June 15, 1919, Van T. Barfoot was born in Edinburg — probably didn’t make much news back then. Twenty-five years later, on May 23, 1944, near Italy Van T. Barfoot, who had enlisted in the US Army in 1940, set out to flank German machine gun positions from which fire was coming down on his fellow soldiers. He advanced through a minefield, took out three enemy machine gun positions and returned with 17 prisoners of war. If that wasn’t enough for a day’s work, he later took on and destroyed three German tanks sent to retake the machine gun positions.

That probably didn’t make much news either, given the scope of the war, but it did earn Van T. Barfoot, who retired as a colonel after also serving in Korea and Vietnam, The Congressional Medal of Honor.

What did make news was a neighborhood association’s quibble with how the 90-year-old veteran chose to fly the American flag outside his suburban Virginia home. Seems the HOA rules said a flag could be only flown on a house-mounted bracket, but for decorum, items such as Barfoot’s 21-foot flagpole were unsuitable.

He had been denied a permit for the pole but erected it anyway and was now facing court action if he didn’t take it down. Since the story made National TV, the neighborhood association rethought its position and agreed to indulge this old hero who dwells among them.

“In the time I have left, I plan to continue to fly the American flag without Interference” Barfoot told The Associated Press. As well he should. If any of his neighbors still takes a notion to contest him, they might want to take a moment and read his Medal of Honor citation. It indicates he’s not really good at backing down. Van T. Barfoot’s Medal of Honor citation: This 1944 Medal of Honor citation, listed with the National Medal of Honor Society, is for Second Lieutenant Van T. Barfoot, 157th Infantry, 45th Infantry:

WE ONLY LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE…BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE! AND, BECAUSE OF OLD MEN LIKE VAN BARFOOT.

Thank you, Sir!

©2024. Lyle J. Rapacki, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Living History of Medal of Honor Recipient Van T. Barfoot

European Author Explains the Massive Disconnect between Young and Old Americans on Capitalism

FEE recently sat down with German author Rainer Zitelmann to discuss his latest book, the global financial crisis, and the future of capitalism.


The great writer Henry Hazlitt once observed that the path to prosperity is achieved through production, and the best way to achieve production is to maximize incentives.

“And the way to do that, as the modern world has discovered, is through the system known as capitalism,” wrote Hazlitt, “the system of private property, free markets, and free enterprise.”

Despite the fruits of modern capitalism, free markets around the world find themselves under assault and in decline. I recently sat down with author and entrepreneur Rainer Zitelmann to discuss this phenomenon as chronicled in his latest book: In Defense of Capitalism.

In a wide-ranging discussion, the German author talked about central banking, the rise of planned economies, and the uncertain future of capitalism. [Editor’s note: The interview has been edited and abridged for clarity and concision.]

Q: Your book was recently released. It’s your twenty-seventh book, by my count. Who is this book targeted for?

I wrote this book for people who are pro market. Maybe more emotional or anti-socialist. To provide them with the facts and all the arguments so they can have the discussion. Whether it’s about poverty, inequality, climate change, or monopolies. It’s not a book written for anti-capitalists.

It’s written for a global audience. It was an attempt to reach people in every country. It’s an expensive process. Every country costs 14,000 Euros. No one helped me. I paid from my own pocket (laughs).

This book is published in 12 languages.

You’ve written many books. What makes this one different from your other books?

The difference is, first, I address all these arguments from anti-capitalists.

It helped to get this international approach. There will be editions in Italy, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, the United States, the Netherlands, and many other countries. People in Albania can access it.

It includes a great deal of original research and surveys. It contains the biggest poll ever done on the image of capitalism, the most comprehensive.

What did you find?

I knew in the beginning that capitalism is a dirty word for many. I wanted to know how much. It’s not the word. Even if we don’t use the word, we still have a negative connotation. The difference is negligible.

Q: There’s a chapter in your book that breaks down attitudes about capitalism by country. But let’s first talk globally. What is the state of capitalism today?

I think it’s under attack almost everywhere in the world. When you compare the situation in the 1980s and 1990s with today it’s a huge difference. In the 80s we had Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. We shouldn’t forget Deng Xiaoping in China, he was very important. We had pro market reforms in Vietnam and Sweden and many other countries.

Today the situation is completely different. I read the last index of economic freedom from the Heritage Foundation. The US has the worst ranking since it started in 1995. There are sixteen European countries more capitalist than the US. The UK has its worst ranking ever. China has its worst ranking ever.

You see it everywhere. I don’t have to tell you about the United States. But in Europe we are heading the direction of a planned economy. It’s a total disaster right now. In China, we had these great economic reforms in the 1980s that made them so successful. Xi Jinping is now going back into the direction of more state intervention. In Latin America it’s much the same, right now in Chile, for example. One of the few exceptions, as I’ve noted, is Vietnam.

Q: I was surprised to see, from data in your book, that Americans have the second highest attitude toward economic freedom in the world. Can you explain?

Yes, it does. But it goes deeper than that though.

You see a huge difference in the perception of capitalism among Americans older than sixty and younger than thirty. Americans over 60, they are what Europeans think about Americans: pro markets, pro entrepreneurship.

They are very enthusiastic about it. We calculated this anti-capitalist and capitalist coefficient; Americans over sixty have one of the highest coefficients in the world. The younger ones, it’s slightly negative.

This is the biggest difference of all the countries we measured. There’s no other country in our survey where there’s such a large difference in age groups. In fact, in some countries you see the opposite, like in Italy. Young people in some countries are even more pro capitalist than older people. Not as a big a difference as it is in the United States, but it’s an inverse relationship.

That’s fascinating. What do you attribute this to? Why is there such a gap here in the US between younger and older generations in their perceptions on capitalism.

I’ve thought a lot about it. I don’t know if I have the answer.

Of course first you think about schools and universities. Every day they tell students about the evils of capitalism. But to be honest, this is also true in a lot of other countries. Maybe it’s worse in the United States, I don’t know. But if you go to Europe, universities are also this way.

Again, one exception is Vietnam. I was invited by four different universities, and had a lecture in Hanoi at Foreign Trade University, which is one of the best universities. They invited me to do a workshop on how to improve the image of rich people. Can you imagine a workshop like that at a university in the US (laughs)?

I have another theory as well. Take someone who is 30 today. In 2008, he was about 15 years old and paying attention to politics for the first time. The first thing he heard is there’s a financial crisis and this is caused by capitalism, and almost everything breaks down. This is the first political experience in his life!

Of course, you and I know that this was not a crisis of capitalism. This crisis was not because of a lack of regulation. But it’s not important what you and I think. Their interpretation is important. And for many young people this was the first experience in their political life.

And then there are other things like student loans and other problems. I don’t think there’s one answer but many.

You should know better than I. You live in the United States. What is your answer?

Hey, I’m asking the questions here. Just kidding. I agree that universities and schools play a big role. They have grown more naked in their anti-capitalism in recent years. I think culture plays a big role. Movies. Television …

By the way, sorry to interrupt you.

Not at all.

You mention movies. You should read a book I wrote on this. It was published by Cato: The Rich in Public Opinion. I have one chapter in this book—we had very detailed research about Hollywood movies, and how rich people are portrayed in Hollywood movies. It’s the first book about prejudice against rich people. Rich people as a minority.

There are so many books about prejudice against people. Against black people. Gay people. Overweight people, and whatever. There was not a single book on prejudice and stereotypes against wealthy people.

It was great stuff. We looked at more than 600 movies, and in the end we looked at 43 in which rich people played an important role. And you’re absolutely right…rich people were portrayed overwhelmingly negatively.

Your book is about capitalism, but it’s hard to talk about that without talking about socialism a little. I was in middle school when the Berlin Wall came down. The Soviet Union collapsed not long after. Yet Marxism seems to be thriving again in many parts of the world in various forms. Does that surprise you?

Yes and no. That was a long time ago. The younger generation hasn’t lived in a world with socialism. For them it’s only history. Of course they should learn this in school, but teachers don’t tell them about it.

I do lectures all over the world, and I have one test question I ask students when I visit them in Asia, Europe, the United States, and Latin America. I ask them, Have you heard about Mao’s Great Leap Forward at the end of the 1950s in school?

Whether I’m speaking to thirty people, three hundred, or three thousand, I ask this question. Very few people say yes. They haven’t heard about it! This is the biggest socialist experiment in history. Forty-five million people died. I write about this at length in my book The Power of Capitalism. They haven’t heard about it at school. And socialism is not part of their experience, and if teachers don’t tell them at school, most are not going to learn about it.

In universities, education is very left-leaning. I saw a statistic recently about the United States. In the 1980s, the ratio of left-leaning professors to conservative professors was 3-2. Today it’s 12-1. If you look at assistant professors, it’s about 45-1, or something like that.

So this is part of the explanation.

But not all of it.

No, no.

I also have this theory. Sooner or later people in most countries simply forget why they became successful. It happens almost everywhere in the world. Look at Chile. Chile was the most successful in Latin America for a very long time. Compare them to Argentina or Brazil or wherever. It happened because they were mostly capitalist. Now they voted for a socialist. [Editor’s note: In 2021, Chileans elected Democratic Socialist Gabriel Boric.]

They forgot why they became successful. The same thing has happened in Germany. We became prosperous because of Ludwig Erhard’s market economy. People forget it, and they go more in the direction of a planned economy.

Why did the United States become successful? Because of capitalism. But people forget it.

Look at China. What happened there was amazing. In 1981, 88 percent of the Chinese people lived in extreme poverty. Today it’s less than 1 percent. This started with Deng Xiaoping’s pro market reforms, and the introduction of private property.

I have a friend in China who wrote one chapter in this book. Zhang Weiying. He’s an economist at Peking University. He always says, “we became successful not because of the state but in spite of the state.” But this is what people forget. China today is going the other direction. This happens in almost all countries.

And then there are capitalists themselves.

Capitalists? I think I see where you’re going. Can you explain?

Sometimes I think the biggests problem is not anti-capitalists. Left-leaning people are not the problem. The problem is that people who should defend capitalism often do not. I speak especially about entrepreneurs. They are silent. This is a big problem.

In my first pages in my book, I have a quote from the founder of Whole Foods.

Yes, I saw that quote. John Mackey.

John Mackey, yes. I met him last year at a Students For Liberty conference in Miami. The CEO of SFL, Wolf von Laer, is a friend. He interviewed and praised Mackey for his book on capitalism and for opposing Obamacare. But do you know what [Mackey] said during this interview?

No.

He said, I wouldn’t do it again. Because of the sanctions from the left, and the boycotts of his company, and because he was targeted so much. And I understand it. Entrepreneurs don’t have to be heroes in politics; they have to be heroes in the economy. And it’s hard to be a hero in the economy and a hero in politics at the same time. So many are silent. Sometimes they give some money to free market think tanks. But this is a big problem: people who should defend capitalism don’t.

But you do. Is that why they call you “the big biceps of capitalism” in Germany? I notice you’re a pretty buff guy for someone in his 60s. What’s your secret?

I have been training with weights for 45 years. Always natural, no doping. I do not train long, usually only 30 minutes, but 4 to 6 times a week.

Back to business. What are the biggest threats to capitalism today? One you’ve identified already: time. People seem to forget. But what else?

It’s the development more and more of the planned economy. They don’t call it a planned economy, but of course it is. In a market economy, entrepreneurs decide what to produce; in the end, consumers decide what to produce. In a planned economy, government officials decide what to produce. And this is what we’re seeing today.

In Europe, the EU is forbidding internal combustion engines for cars. It means you as a consumer don’t decide what car to buy. Government tells you what car to buy. I think it will be a big disaster.

We have this development in Germany. They are transforming it from a market economy to a planned economy. First they banned nuclear power plants. Then they started to phase out coal power plants. They forbid fracking. Now they’re importing fracking gas from the United States. They made us dependent on Russian gas. It’s crazy. It’s an idolatry.

And what’s happening now? Our companies are leaving because of regulations and because we have the highest price for electricity in the world.

So BASF, the largest chemical company in the world, leaves Germany and goes to China. And automobile companies also say they’re leaving.

Joe Biden and others want to do similar things in the US. With the Green New Deal and so forth. They don’t call it a planned economy, but it is. This is a major threat.

And how about the global financial system?

Yes, that is of course a big problem: the crazy policies of central banks. They set themselves in a trap. We might be heading for another financial crisis, and I predicted all this in The Power of Capitalism.

You did?

Yes. Here is what I wrote (grabs his book, begins reading):

“Misdiagnosing the causes of the [2008] financial crisis means that the proposed therapies are also wrong. The financial crisis was caused by excessively low interest rates, heavy-handed market interventions and over-indebtedness. Are we seriously to believe that the right therapy involves even lower interest rates, stronger market interventions and more debt? These measures may well have a short-term impact, but markets are becoming increasingly dependent on low interest rates. Such low interest rates do nothing to solve the underlying problems — they only suppress the symptoms and push them into the future. The current combination of overly excessive regulation and interest rates of zero will cause considerable medium-term problems for many banks and is the breeding ground for new, even more severe crises.”

This is what I wrote in the book and this is what has happened. This is the next problem with central banks, not only the Federal Reserve but also the European Central Bank. They act like planning authorities.

A lot of people say we have no choice. Because climate change.

Of course that is part of the discussion. Chapter three in my book talks about this. I read a couple weeks ago the new book by Greta Thunberg (The Climate Book: The Fact), the Swedish climate change activist. The only thing I found in this book is that we should abolish capitalism (laughs). I explain in my book why that’s a bad idea.

Now, I don’t belong to the group of people who say it’s all a conspiracy. I think it’s a real threat, though maybe exaggerated. I don’t think it’s as bad as some tell us. I think there is a threat but I’m a hundred percent sure a planned economy has never solved any problem in history, particularly environmental ones. They’ve caused more environmental problems than any other system. So I think it’s foolish to believe this will be the first problem solved by a planned economy.

From our discussion, I get the feeling you are not very optimistic about the future of capitalism—at least right now. So, I guess I’ll just ask: Will we see a resurgence in free markets over the next few decades or a continued rise of statism and centralization?

If I look right now, there are more reasons to be pessimistic than optimistic. But by nature, I’m more of an optimist.

I spoke recently with Madsen Pirie, founder and president of the Adam Smith Institute in the UK. He’s older now, like 83. [Editor’s note: He’s actually 82.] He knew Hayek and Margaret Thatcher and others. He told me he believes the ideals will remain in the world, and there will always be countries that go in this capitalist direction, and they will be role models for others. Other countries will see that it works.

So, I don’t know, to be honest.

The good thing is I’m a historian, so I know you can predict some things. But history is full of surprise. Sometimes positive surprise, sometimes negative surprise. Let’s hope for positive surprise.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. (Follow him on Substack.)

His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

A Combat Veteran Remembers the Greatest Battles of the Vietnam War

I recently received an inquiry from Jim Taylor, a fellow combat veteran of the War in Vietnam. Jim sent me a link to an article about combat veteran Sergeant John Ross who served in 1968 with the 173rd Infantry Brigade (Airborne) in Vietnam. Sergeant Ross was part of the battle for Dak To in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. The article was written by Don Moore and titled “Sgt. John Ross in 173rd Airborne, took part in biggest battle in Vietnam War“.

Jim questioned whether the battle for Dak To was in fact the “biggest battle of the Vietnam War.”

For every soldier the battles they were involved in are, at the time, the biggest ones, and as time goes on they become even bigger. Our fellow U.S. Army airborne soldiers should be commended for their bravery in combat, and we should never forget our surviving and fallen comrades sacrifices. All gave some and some gave all.

The Vietnam War website column “What were major Battles of the Vietnam War?” lists the following battles as major:

Battle of Ap Bac (January 2, 1962)

Battle of Ap Bac was the first major battle in the Vietnam war. It was fought by the ARVN and NVA at Ap Bac – a village in Dinh Tuong province, approximately 50 miles southwest of Saigon on January 2, 1962. The battle resulted in heavy casualties on a much more superior South Vietnamese troops with American assistance in weapons and planning. It exemplified poor performances in both fighting ability and spirit of the South Vietnamese forces in compared to the Viet Cong.

Battle of Ia Drang Valley (October 26 – November 27, 1965)

Battle of Ia Drang was the first major battle between regular U.S. and People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) troops. The 2-part battle occurred from November 14 to November 18, 1965 at the Landing Zone X-Ray and Albany in La Drang Valley, Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Despite heavy casualties on both sides, both claimed the battle was a victory of their owns. As a matter of fact, Ia Drang Valley battle was considered essential  as it set the blueprint for tactics for both sides during the conflict. American troops continued to reply on air mobility and artillery fire to achieve their battlefield objectives – victory of the so-called “body count”. On the other side, the Viet Cong learned that by quickly engaging their combat forces close to the enemy (fighting at close range), they could neutralize American advantages.

Battle of Khe Sanh  (January 21 – April 9, 1968)

The Battle of Khe Sanh took place in Quang Tri province, North-western South Vietnam from January 21, 1968, when PAVN troops began a heavy artillery bombardment on the U.S. Marine garrison at Khe Sanh. For the next 77 days, ARVN and U.S. Marines fought an extensive fight until Operation Pegasus ended the siege. Khe Sanh turned out to be one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War.

Aftermath, both sides claimed victory despite heavy casualties on the communists and the fact that the U.S. had to abandon a key combat base due to enemy pressure for the first time. Although the U.S. officials expected a full-scale offensive from the North Vietnamese troops, it never came. Instead, Battle of Khe Sanh seemed a diversionary tactic to distract American & South Vietnamese forces from the Viet Cong build-up in the South for the so-called “Tet Offensive”.

2LT Rich Swier, Tet 1968 – Battle for Hue, South Vietnam

The author, a 2nd Lieutenant with the 101st Airborne Division during the 1968 Tet Offensive – taken during the Battle for Hue, South Vietnam. Photo by the author.

The Tet Offensive (January 30 – March 28, 1968)

While the U.S. and South Vietnamese were still focusing on Khe Sanh, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops surprisingly launched the Tet Offensive – a series of aggressive and coordinated surprise attacks on over 100 major towns and cities throughout South Vietnam on January 30 – the first day of Tet (Vietnamese Lunar New Year).

Despite its surprise and initial success, the communists were quickly repelled within several hours or days except for Saigon, which took around 2 weeks and particularly Hue, which took the PAVN nearly a month to recapture the former capital city of Hue.

The Tet Offensive was, in deed, a massive military defeat for the North communists. However, the offensive could be seen as a “strategic”, “psychological” win and a turning point in the war for them as it shocked the U.S. government and public at home.

What’s the difference between biggest and major? The battles impact on the outcome of the war!

I served with the 101st Airborne Division and was in Vietnam for the 1968 Tet Offensive. It was a major battle that turned the tide of the war against the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army. I know, I was there. It was a clear North Vietnamese defeat on the battlefield.

Cronkite vietnam

Walter Cronkite in Vietnam.

However, Walter Cronkite called it a loss for our military and the Tet Offensive of 1968 was the beginning of the end of our involvement in Vietnam. In his National Interest article “Cronkite’s Vietnam Blunder“, Robert W. Merry writes:

Douglas Brinkley’s new biography of Walter Cronkite has sparked an intriguing controversy about the CBS anchorman’s famous trip to Vietnam in February 1968. That’s when, as legend has it, Cronkite was so shocked at the devastation of the communists’ Tet offensive that he went over to see for himself what was really going on. And he concluded the war was a stalemate, probably unwinnable.

Brinkley buys the argument, put forth by the late David Halberstam in his characteristically portentous manner, that Cronkite’s February 27 [1968] broadcast, “Report from Vietnam,” played a major role in turning Americans against the war and inducing President Lyndon Johnson to abandon his reelection campaign.

Read more.

This lead to increased calls to exit Vietnam and eventually gave North Vietnam their final victory in Paris, France. Congress capitulated, the South Vietnamese were abandoned. The Christian genocide in Vietnam began.

I, to this day, say that our military won the war on the ground in Vietnam but lost the war on the streets of Washington, D.C. and in Congress due to the protests. We won the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people but lost the hearts and minds of the American people. Each battle during the Tet Offensive, from Khe Sahn to Dak To to the the battle for Hue, were part of the larger war against the Communist forces aligned against the armies of the free world.

Vietnam was a proxy war in the greater global war fought between the former Soviet Union and the Free World.

We continue to relearn that lesson today as we see the war in Iraq now lost and so too in Afghanistan. History is repeating itself. The players are the same, just the names of the battles have change – from the Battles for Fallujah in Iraq to the 101st Airborne Division in the Hornets Nest (watch the below video) in Afghanistan.

Winning the battles inextricably will lead to winning the war. That was true up until Vietnam. Since then the dynamic has changed, for the worse.

It’s the will of the American people that counts, not the victories on the battlefield by our soldiers. Sad but true.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of American soldiers near the ancient city of Hue in the Northern province of the former South Vietnam, taken during the Tet Offensive of 1968. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

VIDEO TRIBUTE: Vietnam 50 Years Later — All Gave Some Some Gave All

As a Vietnam combat veteran, who served with the 101st Airborne Division during Tet of 1968, I believe it is both fitting and important to remember that America must fight tyranny where ever it is found. The Communist tyranny was confronted in Vietnam and still exists today in places like Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela.

As with all wars all gave some some gave all. It is important to learn from wars like Vietnam. Our fight for the Far East was won by our soldiers, sailors, airman and Marines on the battlefield but lost in the halls of the U.S. Congress. Today history is repeating itself with a 1400-year old form of tyranny rising in the Middle East. Tyranny is always lurking in the shadows waiting to strike America and the free world. History tells us so.

The United States Department of Defense has instituted a nationwide program to remember those who fought and died in Vietnam on its 50th Anniversary – November 1st, 2015.

The below video, featuring the voice of renowned actor Mr. Sam Elliott, is a tribute to the 7.2 million living veterans and the 9 million families of all who served from Nov. 1, 1955 to May 15, 1975. Thank you for your service and sacrifice!

Thinking About China

Napoleon Bonaparte purportedly said “Let China sleep, for when China wakes, she will shake the world.”

Cover - China ChallengeAs Thomas J. Christensen, the author of his recently published “The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power”, reminds us, “For millennia China was arguably the greatest civilization on the planet and for many previous centuries its most powerful empire.”

China is no longer an empire, but it remains a huge nation geographically and huge in terms of its population.

From the website worldometers.info, we learn:

Christensen is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Currently he is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics and director of the China and World Program at Princeton University. After reading his book, you might well conclude that there is little about China and Asia he does not know.

We are mostly dependent on various news stories about China to have any idea what is occurring, but the fact remains that just as the U.S. has its optimists and pessimists, conservatives and liberals who influence policy the same exists for China, so a lot depends on who is being quoted. Generally, though, it is only the top leaders who are. That means we are getting the Chinese “party line” and the occasional general or admiral warning against any aggression.

China did not begin to awaken as a modern nation until after the death of Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, a Communist with a capital “C.” Christensen notes that, while keeping its political ideology, the leader that followed him made a “peaceful transformation launched under CCP leader Deng Xiaopping in 1978 and the collapse of the superpower Soviet Union thirteen years later that made China appear to stand tall again among the great powers.” The transitition was to a capitalist-based economy.

These days the Chinese and the Russians are making efforts to achieve areas of cooperation and, in particular, their militaries. They hold drills together for common defense strategies.

Christensen believes that “China’s return to great power status is perhaps the most important challenges in twenty-first century American diplomacy”, but to put that in context he points out that “China’s per capita income is only one fifth that of the United States” and “though a true trade superpower, many of its exporters are controlled at least in part by foreign investors.”

“Still, the pessimists do not give enough credit to the sustainability of U.S. leadership in Asia,” says Christensen. “For example, they often underestimate the value of American’s unparalleled network of allies and security partners.” You can be sure that the Chinese leadership does not.

They also have, as one would expect, concerns about U.S. military power in their area of the world, but they feel the same about Japan and South Korea as well. “China is not currently an enemy of the United States,” says Christensen, nor is it likely to be for a long time to come.

“It does not need to be contained like the (former) Soviet Union. Nor should China become the kind of regional or global adversary that we have faced in the past, although that outcome, unfortunately, is still a distinct possibility.” That possibility depends on China’s leadership now and in the future. For now they are concentrating on their economy and are likely to do so for many years to come.

Chinese Money“China’s economic clout is real and growing rapidly, especially since the 2008 financial crisis. China has been the main engine of growth for the world’s economy since that time and, by some measures, has become the world’s number one trading state.” There is only one reason why the U.S. has not yet recovered from the financial crisis and his name is Barack Obama.

I suspect that Obama is held in disdain by the Chinese leadership despite all the public handshakes. For one thing, China weathered the financial crisis far better than the U.S. “One of the burdens the new Obama administration inherited in early 2009 was a China bearing a mix of cockiness and insecurity that would negatively influence its policies in 2009-2010,” says Christensen and as the U.S. foundered in Afghanistan and Iraq “American power inspired less awe.”

“Sometime in 2012, the ‘Asia pivot’” of the Obama administration “would be jettisoned in Washington for the more subtle ‘Asia rebalance.’” If you get the feeling that the Obama administration has no real China policy or one that will have little influence, you are right.

With regard to China, It likely does not matter what the Obama administration does for its remaining one and a half years in office.

Various scholars and diplomats will continue to keep a watchful eye on China and most surely many corporate leaders and U.S. entrepreneurs will do so as well given its huge population as a marketplace. It’s already a great tourist destination.

Napoleon was right.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

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I Fought For You

A moving, patriotic tribute to our military, past and present. Thank you for your service! This video was produced by The Sound Tank.

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