Friday 19 September 2008


CHINA THREAT? IT'S A BLESSING

Francesco Sisci

Asia Times, September 19, 2008

BEIJING - Geography is destiny - perhaps the most inevitable of all. America's power projection throughout the world in the 20th century, after a period of splendid isolation, was first possible because of its borders. It had no enemies pressing on it. It was, and is, sandwiched between two geographically large countries whose economies and populations are tiny compared to those of the US.

Both of them, Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, are America's allies, integrated in a trade agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and with security treaties guaranteeing Washington's safety. They are de facto buffer states, shielding the US. At the time of the Cold War, the Soviet Union shared a small state line with the US, but it consisted of a scarcely populated area, Alaska, far removed from the American heartland. The only real border threat came from Cuba, which in the 1960s almost plunged the US and the USSR into a world war.

However, China is in a very different predicament. Embedded in the heart of Asia, it is bounded by nearly every other country on the continent, large and small. In fact, it is the Asian country with the greatest number of bordering neighbors. China has less than idyllic relations with all of them; it has open border disputes or only recently resolved ones with others. Many are unstable countries; others are ambitiously eyeing China's economic and political growth with fear and suspicion.

(...) [artículo aquí]

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