I am no expert on international affairs, but I am a student of wisdom teachings from around the world. The thought occurred to me last night that China has a millennia old tactic of swallowing its enemies without necessarily needing to fight them. Perhaps the situation in Iran where we are spending billions on weapons to shoot down Iran’s incredibly cheap drones is no accident.
Sun Tzu said, “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.” And “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
Last night it occurred to me that we may be falling into one of the oldest traps of all time. The English Empire fell largely because they held onto a coal based economy while the world was moving to oil. They did so because their plutocrats cared more about hoarding wealth than what happened to their nation. While the U.S. has held onto a petroleum based economy (because that is what enriches our plutocrats) China has invested in renewable energy, which is the only possible door into the future. Perhaps China knows that most empires have fallen, not because of a stronger enemy, but because the rich of that nation have betrayed it by holding onto the obsolete technologies that make them wealthy.
As I say, I am no expert on geopolitics, but I wonder if history is repeating itself. While some imagine the strength of the American Empire is based on our capacity to inflict violence, perhaps China has learned how to defeat their enemies before the fighting even begins.