--- "Robert J. Chassell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A former Israeli paratrooper told me many years ago > that he thought > the US supported Israel because it was an > `unsinkable aircraft > carrier' in a part of the world which provides much > oil. > > (A consequence of this theory is that the > establishment of secure US > military bases along the Gulf coast and in Iraq will > eventually lead > to a decline in US support for Israel. This > consequence is diminished > if it is felt that Israelis will fight for their own > purposes, but > that the results will help the US at lower cost to > the US than having > the US do the fighting.) > > Past reason to support Taiwan was that mainland > China was a US enemy. > It is only a generation or so ago that the US made > an (unwritten) > alliance with mainland China against the Soviet > Union. Currently, > some think of mainland China as a possible future > enemy of the US. > Others think of it as a huge market or as a source > of cheap labor. > > In any event, mainland China is printing money (or > more accurately, > adding zeros to computer accounts) to purchase US > government debt. > > Thus, support of another `unsinkable aircraft > carrier' helps if you > are more concerned with danger; abandonment of > Taiwan helps if you are > more concerned about big markets, cheap labor, and > funding the US > government and trade deficits. > > In both cases, these provide `plausible stories' > regarding the US > national interest without bringing in the question > of democracy.
Not at all. Both of those are very far from plausible. You need simply ask - how much did the US use that "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in any of its numberless conflicts in the Gulf? Not at all - it was a liability, in fact, every single time. The United States does, in fact, have effectively unsinkable aircraft carriers. They are _actual_ aircraft carriers, which no Arab country even approaches the capacity to sink. We have 12 of them. There are also quite a few other countries in the Gulf which we operate out of already (Qatar, for example) and which would be much easier to work with if we weren't tied to Israel. In the case of Taiwan the situation is similar. We would need some scenario in which we wished to actively attack China, could not use our bases in (for example) Japan, and could not rapidly negotiate agreements with another bordering state (i.e., the Philippines). Something that has not historically been difficult for the US, and would probably not be in any conceivable situation where we would want to be using air power against China. To argue that it is somehow in our national interest (narrowly construed) to make a conflict with China much more likely in exchange for bases of marginal (at best) utility makes no sense. Indeed, the only likely scenario in which we would go to war with China is over Taiwan. To go to war with China for basing rights in a country where the bases would only be useful if we went to war with China is, as Bismarck famously said about preventive war, "to commit suicide for fear of death." ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
