LogFAQs > #968499395

Yellow posted...

Ok, fine. Let me say something else then, because my post was lazy;

Maintaining good economic ties with a regime is a bad idea, that was wrong, like you say, because it supports them. Best you can do is wait for them to collapse and let the people know that you are not the enemy they've been taught to believe. The US used shock doctrine, which was largely considered a failure, and led to the rise of a strong man like Putin.

Is that better?

The problem with your argument is that it still makes no sense, though. You're advocating taking two different approaches to the same problem. Russia and China aren't all that dissimilar. And, considering China's reliance on slave labor, use of reeducation camps, spiriting away dissidents, and coercion of the WHO which greatly contributed to a global health crisis, the country is in many ways worse than Russia. The one and only difference -- so far -- is that it's not engaging in military campaigns. However, you call Putin a strongman yet you give Xi a pass. And, to be perfectly blunt, China *might* be closer to collapse than Russia. Considering China's economic woes, if we applied the same sanctions to them as we have to Russia, we could easily collapse the country and then go with your plan of rebuilding it in the US's image, although it's worth noting that plan has repeatedly backfired spectacularly most of the times we've collapsed foreign governments. I think our success rate on that is just Japan at this point. Central and South America, for instance, wound up overthrowing the puppet governments we put in place.