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> In retrospect, keeping China a weak communist nation was so easy. This is extremely naive, and fallacious. As policymaker, you do not know beforehand how countries are going to develop over a 40 year period (not even your own country :P). Thus the only realistic option would've been a catch-all sanction regime against... possible future geopolitical rivals? Non-democratic nations? States with different cultural values? No matter which you pick, sacrificing trade like that would've been extremely expensive and limiting for US growth (might've included India, Africa, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Europe, Russia, depending on what criteria you pick). You might have seen other countries jumping at the opportunity, filling the gap and benefitting immensely in the process, like the EU, or India, Russia, Japan, some pan-African Union... The only certainty in the outcome is that the US in such a scenario would NOT be as wealthy as it is today. |