How can the two superpowers cultivate friendly relations / avoid escalating a cold war?

frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 49 points –
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One thing you can personally do is try to cultivate friendships on both sides, and make an effort to share and appreciate the culture, history, and daily challenges of each. If we have populations that really don't want to fight, maybe that will help de-escalate things a bit.

China is my neighbor now (I immigrated to Asia). Some of their literature and history is really quite interesting! I'm not an expert, but I could make a suggestion or two if you like.

I agree. I'm Canadian and recently started dating a Chinese woman and learning about eachother's cultures and languages has been a really interesting process.

Yeah I've ended up with some sort of syncretic mixed culture. It's quite good. You get to pick and choose what works best in your situation from both cultures. There are a lot of people from Asia who have done this, but not many from the West -- I think mostly because not many people immigrate from the West to Asia. I've managed to really push my business forward drawing on ideas from both cultures.

I've already started packing up and exporting concepts back to family in the West. The way Asian families handle family-level economics and real estate inheritance is something that I think early adopters would benefit from in the current ridiculous housing situation in many parts of Canada. Meanwhile, the Western tolerance of lawyers in family matters gives me a big edge here -- avoiding the family feuds that so much is lost to. Just the first two random examples that come to mind :)

What Chinese literature do you enjoy?

Sun Tzu's Art of War /s

Why sarcasm? It's a good read and it occasionally comes to mind.

I've read it too (a long time ago, in a galaxy far... ehm, you know what I mean). I remember it was pretty good and interesting read. This sarcasm is more like a joke - when OP asks why superpowers can't get along, just recommend book about warfare and getting upper hand on your enemy.

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" is often misattributed to Sun Tzu, but it's still a good joke in context lol.

I enjoyed Romance of the Three Kingdoms quite a bit. It was legitimately entertaining! I would recommend an abridged translation.

I've studied some Analects / Dialects / Neoconfucianism in school, Tao Te Ching, and Art of War. Those had some useful ideas in them, but were not exactly a laugh a minute (although Tao Te Ching has some funny bits). Those last two are very short texts as well.

Still on my list: Bandits of the Marsh, Journey to the West, and one other I can't remember the title of right now.

What two superpowers?

Why of course the US and Bhutan.

As a USA citizen I spit out my drink when I read this. Had no idea what Bhutan even was. It's now on my list of places to visit.

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Superpower wars are expensive and extremely unrewarding. Neither wants them. Sometimes they may talk the talk but when it comes to dedicating the next 10 or 20 years to a constant resource drain with no chance of recovering any of that, they'll find any excuse to get out of it.

Unfortunately it may be impossible because of game theory. In a perfect world everyone would get along and no one would have to dump billions into the military. That's impossible because there's always a "rat" that uses this opportunity to invade and conquer defenseless territories. A rat kind of like Russia or soon potentially China.

Because of them now everybody has to invest in their military and we are all worse off because of it, this can also apply to nukes. One power will exploit their nuclear advantage over one who doesn't, which is why the USSR and CCP, DPRK,, and Pakistan developed nukes, their rivals had one too.

I encourage you to watch veritasium's video on the concept of game theory and how it affects most things in our lives.

They know the answer already, and are probably both trying it.

In US terminology, since that's the language I know, they try for "competition" rather than "conflict". The difference being whether they respect each other's sovereignty for the most part while trying to bury the other, and don't take straight-up military actions.

To achieve this, you provide a long series of "offramps" - opportunities to pause and de-escalate - on the path between peace and MAD, and ensure there is no benefit to either party to do any specific escalation. Mistakes will happen, both deliberate and accidental, but they're very unlikely to all happen at the same time, so even if things get tense there's offramps left, and game-theoretically they will take one because nobody wants a full-scale nuclear conflict.

I suspect this question assumes that all “superpowers” are the same, namely that they’re all capitalist imperialist states.

Who is the second super power?

EDIT: Got a lot of tankie cope going on in this thread.

The US is a superpower if china is.

there's only been one, post world wars. ussr/russia has always been a wannabe--with nukes.

Yeah, OP doesn't mention who the 2 superpowers are. Leaves us to draw our own conclusions as to who they are, and currently only one nation has any real ability to project power wherever they need it. So, other than the USA, who is a superpower?

I think it's pretty clear that US doesn't have any real ability to project power wherever they need it. US is very clearly overstretched in Ukraine and the Middle East already, and it's only going to get worse from here. US lacks the industrial base needed for high intensity conflicts, and existing stocks of essential things like artillery shells have been depleted over the past two years.

Then we don't actually have any superpowers. Because if the US isn't one, none of the other countries who think they are, would even come close.

Edit: about the artillery shells, we don’t know how many they actually have.

China is the biggest trading partner for the majority of the world, and it's an industrial juggernaut. That's what an actual superpower looks like. Meanwhile, we know that US has been running around pulling artillery shells from South Korea and Israel last year, and that the entire US production capacity for shells is far below the rate of fire in Ukraine. These are basic facts openly acknowledged by US officials. If US can't even produce basic shit like artillery shells, it's not capable of engaging in any serious conflict.

And their nuke aresnal was found to have water in the fuel tanks.

Not a superpower move.

Edit: I forgot ask lemmy was on .ml and people kinda have rose tint glasses when they view authoritarian regimes on this instance.

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