Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tracer4201 2068 days ago
Serious question - which of these advance American national interests or prevent human rights abuses?

The first item in your list is President Trump calling the virus the Chinese virus. Aside from maybe bringing his supporters as a rallying cry, what does that actually achieve? It feels more like hollow political rhetoric and not something that delivers any kind of results.

What do the arms sales achieve? Is it merely profit for the American industrial complex, or are you saying Hong Kong now has some chance against China in the event of a military conflict?

3 comments

> Serious question - which of these advance American national interests or prevent human rights abuses?

You're moving the goal posts. OP simply said the president "accomplished jack-all". I can't stand the guy either but these are at least accomplishments, even if the effects of some of them are symbolic. What do you want him to do? A land invasion?

No, I don’t think I’m moving any goal posts. Op provided a list of items, and my question is very simple - what is the net impact? What has Trump actually achieved? What is the result?

From your last comment, are you implying no action can be taken that isn’t simply symbolic except for a land invasion?

Interesting that you turn this into a personal attack. If you agree with the OP, that’s okay. The goal has always been delivering results, not empty, feel good rhetoric that makes you “feel” good. If it’s about your feelings, then okay, I’m sure his strong man rhetoric is good enough over any actual policy shift.

The results are foreign companies moving out of China. Bringing much more world attention to the aggression of China in the South China sea, and uniting foreign powers (India, Japan, Philipines, Vietnam, Australia, etc) to contain the CCP's aggressive expansion. It's been made more clear how the Belt and Road initiative can create debt trap for less developed countries and as a sort of CCP imperialism.

Under all these external pressures, the economy of China has suffered. And this is more crucial than most realize, as CCP would remain in power, and the majority of its citizens tolerate the oppression and ignore minority's human rights abuse, as long as the economy is growing. Also as a result, CCP is experiencing more internal factional struggles. This is apparent in Xi's deployment of cultural revolution style tactics such as purges (under the name of anti-corruption, as vast majority of CCP officials are corrupt), requiring study of Xi thoughts (think Mao's little red book), and demand for absolute loyalty from the military to himself (generals have spoken out against him).

The 5G Ban gives other local companies the leg up.
> Serious question - which of these [...] prevent human rights abuses?

Replace prevent with reduce and I'd say almost all of them.

Say what you want about Trump but he has started to made it clear that there will be consequences.

What are the consequences, and what specifically has it reduced?