Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "Toshiba’s Big Technology Export Scandal" video.

@passantNL "they strive to be independent entities, not aligned with the west but in competition" - you're mixing two things up there. After the fall of the USSR they haven't strived to be anything of the sort, they readily joined the global system. Being 'not aligned with the west' is NOT part of that - open trade is a concept independent of the having to be buddy buddy with the west. Else you're basically saying that being a western ally and being an open trading economy are the same thing. They aren't. Just cos their political decisions may not be to your liking doesn't mean they've decided to close off their economies. You did that. Also keep in mind that YOU are filled to the brim with their products as well, especially in the case of China. Yet somehow that doesn't seem to discount your position, nor do you consider yourself to have to bow to their political expectations? Hypocrisy.
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@The31stcenturyfox "it wasn't the US that started the conflict" - that's not the only conflict the US has been in bruh. It's been at war for most of its history. Just looking at its post-WW2 history, here's a partial list of places that it has screwed over - Angola, Argentina, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Savador, Grenada, Gautemala, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Nicaragua, Panama, Sudan, Vietnam, Yemen, etc. There's a reason a lot of the world outside Europe don't exactly adore the US. Hell that last one, Vietnam, killed far more people than the atomic bombs. 3 MILLION dead. Yet what does America tend to highlight more, and which drove it to leave (after nearly 20 years of war btw)? The 50k American deaths.
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Apparently empowering the USSR makes the world a less safe place, but America having power doesn't. The country that's been at war somewhere or the other for most of its history, with its last one ending just a little over a year ago, and the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons on people. Yeah, real balanced perspective you got there. If anything, maintaining the balance between the USSR (and now China) and the US is what would prevent the kind of adventurism that both nations seem to have propensity for.
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@passantNL "then the alignment (of values) just happens" - I would question why you feel the need to have the whole world turn into little copies of the west in the first place. It reminds me of ye olde white man's burden, and its underlying assumption of the west being the peak of humanity. The American version would be the Manifest Destiny and conception of America as the supposed City on the Hill for everyone to follow. Just replacing race with 'culture' in that doesn't change the fundamental hubris involved. The Chinese certainly didn't - as long as you recognized their emperors' greatness with a few gifts they didn't give a shit how you organized your internal politics. The Russians briefly did during their communist heyday, but they quickly dropped the puritanism even then and just worked with anyone. And the west has been quite willing to use force to this end, both in modern times and even more so during colonial times. Did you know that Japan wasn't entirely closed off until American admiral Perry came calling? They specifically traded with the Dutch, but everyone else was excluded. Why? Cos the Dutch agreed to mind their own business and just trade, unlike the previous Portuguese who went conversion happy and gave them a Christian headache. Evidently that style of thinking is quite hard for most in the west to accept. It's funny, I wonder what you'd think of them expecting you to become like them. It'd be laughable, and yet you do that to everyone.
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