The lack of a U.S. carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months. But it shows how the open-ended operations with Iran are running some American sailors ragged, analysts say, while the Trump administration further retreats from the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the Western Hemisphere.

“The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere,” said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Instead, the U.S. is “doing the exact opposite” of its previously expressed goal of pulling out of the Middle East.

  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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    18 days ago

    It would be indeed incredibly stupid for Xi to try to invade Taiwan. There’s the economic cost and there’s a real possibility that he could wind up in the same situation Trump and Putin are currently in. Lots of those pesky drones creating a stalemate situation.

    But authoritarians are being really stupid lately, so we can’t discount the possibility of Xi being as stupid as Trump and Putin.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      18 days ago

      China is the one superpower who isn’t wasting their resources on a pointless war, and are investing heavily in infrastructure and their people, and their manufacturing base for EVERYTHING is unparalleled.

      They are taking over the world without firing a shot. Why would they screw that up just to take a tiny island that is no more than a symbol. Let the Westerners think they have some sort of power over them, they know the real truth.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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      18 days ago

      we can’t discount the possibility of Xi being as stupid as Trump and Putin.

      I’m trying to think of a comparable series of blunders the Chinese have committed.

      Xi’s much more in the mold of an Obama or a Merkle than Putin or Trump

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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          17 days ago

          The three-week incursion into Vietnam in 1979 was certainly a bad decision by the Chinese government. Idk if it stacks up against the American 13 year invasion, occupation, terror-bombing, and torture/assassination campaign that became emblematic of US Foreign policy. Easy to forget the scope of the difference between the two interventions, given how often modern China-watchers love to bring up the former while neglecting the latter.

          But do you have anything perpetrated by the Xi administration specifically? Or just something a sitting administrative official actually presided over?

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        17 days ago

        You need to cut back on all the tankie propganda you’re consuming a little bit, buddy.