Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
John Kerry, Secretary of State, offers to withdraw United States missile defense batteries from the Far East, if China will agree to restrain North Korea from launching nukes at us.
We’re outsourcing the defense of our nation to China. Well, why not? They’re already our biggest creditor. What could possibly go wrong?
Joe Doakes
Como Park.
On the one hand, that was a common tactic in the colonial era; turn one of the tribes in an area of your interest against the other, thereby neutralizing everyone and keeping order.
On the other hand, that only worked when you had some power and influence; the Danes could never get the Sikhs to turn against the Hindi to colonize India; the British could.
And we’re becoming more like Denmark, only deeper in debt.
Dear China,
Cut us a little slack. In most countries in the world (including you), the imperialistic hegemon, i.e. the US, is the default bogeyman upon whom to blame the country’s woes. The US rarely complains about the aspersions cast its way, or even notices. So please spare a brief moment of sympathy for the US. Who is our default bogeyman? True, Americans also blame the US government, but you can’t do that if you are the government, or plan to run it. So we need a go-to country on the blame front. The Soviets were great while they lasted, then they fell apart. The Japanese were the perfect villain for a while, all inscrutable and cryptic, but then they went into long-term stagnation. So who are we left with? Sure China is relatively poor, but the country is really big, and they have nuclear weapons. So China will just need to accept it’s turn in the barrel, and treat it as a badge of honor, because only important and powerful countries get blamed for problems they have little to do with. Be proud to be the US’s bogeyman of choice. And we promise to move on to someone else if another promising candidate comes along. We had high hopes for a united Europe for a while, but things aren’t going well there. But every country needs their bogeyman. We promise not to act on our overheated rhetoric (we never have yet, have we?).
Peace out,
The US of A