All of this points directly to the US Government's continued rivalry with the Chinese Government, especially the emphasis on secrecy and authoritarianism.
One has to wonder if this is the same strategy used to bring down the Soviets, namely a war of attrition where one tries to out-spend an opponent through consistent escalation -- until the opponent runs out of resources to maintain the escalation. We know how that ended.
One has to wonder if this is the same strategy used to bring down the Soviets, namely a war of attrition where one tries to out-spend an opponent through consistent escalation -- until the opponent runs out of resources to maintain the escalation. We know how that ended.
Your sentence right at the end of the quoted paragraph from your comment prompts me to check whether you are writing ironically or at face value. Do you think the United States succeeded in bringing down the Soviet Union by outcompeting it?
Yes. As I understand it from my readings, the US developed a deliberate strategy of investing in things (like submarines, or the "star wars" defence system, etc) which would cause disproportionate investment on the other side to match them - ideally investment that would not help the offensive capability of the USSR. It switched to this model from the previous model which was to match USSR expenses (e.g. they buy more nukes, we buy more nukes too). This was deliberately designed to leverage the fact that the US economy was stronger and more flexible, and amplify that.
According to "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" (great book) this was the result of a paper written in the 1970s where this strategy was conceived, which was then adopted by the US military as its main strategy against the Soviet.
The Space Shuttle figures prominently in one such competition. I don't think it's been fully revealed what the payload at the heart of that competition was. But the Soviets were pretty impressed that the Shuttle worked.
That certainly isn't the whole story, but it's part of it.
That's not really fair to China. While the mass media line might concur, in truth China's no more authoritarian than many western states, and they're actually improving at the moment... a damn sight better direction than much of the west. I used to see them as 'meet in the middle' (maybe for a one world government afterparty? I jest...) but I think the US and UK might have actually surpassed them already.
One has to wonder if this is the same strategy used to bring down the Soviets, namely a war of attrition where one tries to out-spend an opponent through consistent escalation -- until the opponent runs out of resources to maintain the escalation. We know how that ended.