Comments by "Alan Friesen" (@alanfriesen9837) on "Review: Asia's Cauldron by Robert D. Kaplan" video.

  1. Over the last three decades the government of China has proven much more flexible than that of the United States. The gentleman who best explains this is a fellow named Eric Xi. China has its issues, but rigidity in government doesn't seem to be one of them. Perhaps you're confusing it with North Korea.
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  2. Arvin, America does give a crap about other people. Our biggest problem is that so many of us believe that what people really need more than anything else is freedom and democracy and sometimes we'll let our ideology blind us from reality. Sometimes we'll burn a witch in order to save her soul but it's not because we're evil, it's because we're dogmatic.
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  3. I always see a lot of folks talking about how China doesn't want to police the world. That may be the case for the moment, but when China feels like it's strong enough and potentially influential enough to rewrite the rules of the game in it's favor away from the Western status quo that is likely to change. I don't think the United States is seriously going to decline in power any time soon and what loss of influence occurs will mostly be a matter of stable countries gaining confidence in their own abilities over time. I think at the heart the U.S. and China are extremely similar, large imperial states — natural regional hegemons. I think leaders in both countries are keenly aware of history and anxious to make sure it doesn't recur (or at least I did before this last election). But I don't think either country is inherently violent or inherently peaceful, both countries want to be influential and in control and there will always be tension but not necessarily conflict.
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