continue procrastination.

my pass time is in roughly in an hour so i have time to burn. peters not around so i have no one to discuss politics with as of now. i usually try not to discuss politics in my blog, so please dont be offended. and if i make any errors, please do me a favor and point them out.

it probably took me a long time, possibly too long, to realize that bush is an idiot when it comes to international relations. yes yes, this is all old news to you now. typical of republican foreign policy is the never-ending goal of spreading democratization. im not going to debate whether thats good or not, take polisci2 and find out for yourself. obviously to satisfy his platform and fulfill this task he has tossed america in iraq for the sake of spreading democracy in the middle east and whatnot. im not going to debate about that either, perhaps another time and in person. so here we have it, we can help justify invasion of another country with the democratization argument.

okay.

now, how about we break 30 years of ambiguity regarding the conflict between china and taiwanese independence (spelling out full democratization). and we decide to say, WE LIKE CHINA MORE. maybe it isnt that blunt. explanation: taiwan wishes to put up a referendum asking china to stop pointing its missiles at taiwan. that is all. perhaps thats asking a lot from the chinese because theyd really like to make sure taiwan doesnt try to slip into independence. america has just broken its semi-neutral stance by nitpicking at this referendum, one that doesnt even mention anything about independence. its simply saying "we cool, no need to keep the hostile look." during the clinton term, china fired missiles into taiwanese water territory after a pro-democratic president was elected. clinton merely scolded china and never spoke of it again. in fact, he scolded china so mildly that he was able to maintain americas ambiguously neutral stance. now instead of keeping his mouth shut, bush has decided to warn taiwan to back down from its referendum. this has been perceived by the rest of the world as possibly the first or one of those rare occasions in which america has backed china when it comes to conflict between the two countries.

the question is: so why break 30 years of attempting to appear neutral, AND in doing so not favor the pro-democratic effort? honestly, i can only use the little knowledge i have, to speculate that because of recently increasing favorable economic relations between the US and china, the US doesnt want to do anything to hurt itself. and there goes the whole pro-democratization argument. rather than do the world and mankind a favor and increase democracy (this is arguable, but i wont take a stance), america chooses to prioritize itself economically. yes, taking up 25% of the entire world economy, its of our utmost importance to make sure that percentage doesnt go down, even if it means backtracking a pro-democratic effort.

and the funny thing is, half of what we learned in IR last year was that increased democracy equates to increased economic prosperity. usually.