China’s Army posts “Preparing for war!”

First rule of negotiation- never make a threat that you’re not prepared to carry out. I guess you could read it two ways- Threat of Nancy going to Taiwan vs Chinas threat of hell unleashed as a result. It might be that they’ve both decided behind the scenes not to rattle each other’s cages anymore on this incident.

But you’re right- appeasement just doesn’t work any more-how many countries will be force-ably taken over? How many “incursions” is too many? Is there such a thing as a red line not to be crossed or is that too limiting when it’s crossed?

The old tactics of negotiation don’t appear to work any more and the West hasn’t developed an alternative playbook - there’s too many dictatorships and despots around who don’t care about diplomacy- China uses diplomacy when it’s convenient but then accuses countries of interfering with internal affairs when it doesn’t. We know Putin has the predatory instincts of a pedophile so no point trying to negotiate anything with him- he’s beyond reform or redemption and has long passed the capacity of trust.

Agreements are broken before the ink has dried; we tethered our economic bows to Chinas cheap labour and lack of workers rights manufacturing capabilities and were stuck with that now, but we’re still allowing China to buy up precious natural resources, place 3rd world countries in massive debt in return for a super highway road that goes nowhere or simply allow them into our countries so they can steal genetically modified crop seeds that took billions to develop like in America - and all the time, China hides behind “cultural understanding” initiatives which makes it much harder to call their bluff- they use cultural understanding, appearing friendly and interested in developing trust, as a weapon to push their own agendas. They are, quite rightly as you say, bullies.

It’s a nice history lesson but what has that got to do with where we are now? For starters, most Chinese probably don’t know the half of their rich history because their god like leader has decided what they should learn instead. So to them all that matters is now.

The future of the world is all that matters today - the balance of power is shifting like quick-sand to the degree that we’re seeing a very clear us and them situation and fear is the over riding emotion- diplomacy international agreements and cultural understanding initiatives have all obviously failed - bullets bombs military spending and defence seem to be top of the list of priorities for a lot of countries- that’s very worrying.

We don’t have time for history lessons - China is far away from the closed land it once was- it’s keeping the west out in some respects but it’s invading other countries under the guise of cultural understanding while it steals the resources ideas and research and development of those countries ; Putin is brainwashing his people with talk of Make the USSR great again - which is nothing to do with history and everything to do with manipulation. I’d consider history if I though it could do some good but The minds of the people of these countries have been tainted by decades of indoctrination- what they are told to think, they think- North Korea is an extreme example but all dictatorships do similar in varying degrees of intensity and success.

If only we could depend on “cultural understanding” - but the culture and mindset of these countries today, bears absolutely no resemblance to that of even 50 years ago no less 500 years ago

Whilst not only scaring the sh1te out of me with your not impossible predictions, it’s your final sentence that really stands out- I think all countries need to take more personal responsibility for their security and defence and where they don’t have the resources, to engage and collaborate with friendly countries who do and share the burden and responsibility.

Ireland should ditch its neutrality - were European ffs, we have no neutrality- we can always offer ourselves as peaceful negotiators and state our preference for a diplomatic and peaceful resolution always over conflict, but we need to get off the fence for once.

In fairness NATO is what I was thinking- but investment in military or defence related areas means new skills and new jobs- no reason we couldn’t specialise in counter cyber terrorism or drone technology as our way of contribution - it doesn’t have to be all about soldiers and bombs