> That depends if you think some Americans would be offended if you claimed Hawaii was its own country

Of course not. They'd just ignore you. Not force you to suspend online sales to your 300 stores in the country. Why is there always someone willing to twist things into a pretzel in search of moral equivalence when it comes to China or Russia? There's no pot. There's no kettle. Using your leverage to force a company to stop doing business for a liked tweet is uncool for any country.

>Of course not. They'd just ignore you. Not force you to suspend online sales to your 300 stores in the country.

That's because there's no threat to them. If the situation was tenser, and there was some open controversy about Hawaii, with another superpower taking sides, they could do all that, and worse.

For a liked tweet? No, not even in a tense situation. We have to stop excusing government sanctions for something like a liked tweet. It's a dumb equivalence and harms the real point by deflecting.

>For a liked tweet? No, not even in a tense situation.

It's not the "liked tweet" itself, it's having come into attention, people demanding something to be done, media blowing it, etc.

Tons of similar gaffes go by without an incident as well...

Palestine is a good example, it can be politically detrimental to have the wrong opinion

What they did was an economic sanction and it is something the US does engage in to further political goals. The US uses similar tactics to force countries to comply with US drug laws, punish Russia for invading Ukraine, as well as other less noble political goals. It’s often in the form of sanctions but can also be in the form of withholding aid from poor countries or embargoes. They do this to many central american countries to uphold inane policies that make no sense for the welfare of those countries except to serve American political interests.

There’s really no good reason for the decades long embargo against Cuba except that the US considered it an enemy all nations partake in to pursue political goals.

Not just about what they did, it's also about why. It was a liked tweet.

(Why bring up US foreign policy again? Many don't agree with those decisions either and it's unrelated.)

I’m simply replying to your comment that America do in fact enact policies to further its own political goals all the time. In fact the US is a frequent offender of doing so to influce foreign countries while at least China usually focuses on itself.

If you meant just the American people, well not all Chinese side with China on the Tibet issue, but most do. But then that’s personal opinions and you can’t really blame them for having a personal opinion.

Using political leverage to force an outcome is inevitable, and frankly, discussing right or wrong on the matter is pointless as you cannot ever achieve politically neutral policy. All policy is enacted with a certain goal so it cannot be neutral by definition (unless your policy does nothing).

Either China wants Tibet as part of its territory or it doesn’t. In either case it will use its political powers to further whatever the goal is.

Whatever your views on US foreign policy, I'm not really sure you can equate invading a country with liking a tweet or making a mistake on a web form.

The government of the United States does not demand that mainland China relinquish control of Tibet. Nor does the USA insist on censoring mainland controversies or on punishing foreigners who say inconvenient things. This difference is essential.

You are free to criticize America. People, including politicians, regularly do so. China, despite claiming to be a strong, ascendant power, is remarkably sensitive when it comes to such fictions as there being one China or the historicity of their nine-dash line.

Also, though the USA certainly was a conquerer -- few powers on this violent planet were forged in peace -- it's also the foremost defender of the modern rules-based order. There are Hawaii and the Mexican-American war in its past, but there are also Japan and Micronesia closer to today.

> You are free to criticize America. People, including politicians, regularly do so.

Legally you are, yes. However it’s not seen that way but a large swath of people including the current president - the NFL kneeling/sitting controversy being an example.

Just because free speech is not without consequence, does not mean it is illegal to do so. Every single person in the US who has spoken out has gone through some jail time. Most of them have been vindicated only in history or extremely long after the initial events.

I'm a bit concerned what the world is going to be like once they assume leadership from the US.

Marriott didn’t criticize China so much as enacted policy that China didn’t feel served its political interests and policies. As a result they retaliated by denying them the market and money making opportunity that they do not have a entitlement to in the first place.

It’s no different from say US enforcing political policies such as the Nixon era drug wars against black and other poor minorities, sanctions against Russia to deter their invasion of Ukraine, US withdrawal from the TPP, denying aid in retaliation to Central American countries if they refuse to enact anti-drug law or specific policies (policies that only really serve the short term interests of the politician in office).

Denying a foreign company certain rights is not inherently any different from a preferential tariff such as the ones Trump is trying to enact. Doing so for political purposes—well that’s the whole point of the government: every move it makes is politically or policy motivated.

This would all be fine if it weren't based on a false premise that all actions are equivalent. Proportionality matters. I may not agree with it, but if this was based on, say, Marriott issuing a statement calling for a free Tibet, then it would at least be a little more proportionate. However this was a liked tweet and an error in a web form, swiftly corrected.

But how do WTO rules and China's claim to have a free and open market fit into the discussion?

>or on punishing foreigners who say inconvenient things

I wonder how many people are/will be affected by current DHS policy…[0].

Also like another comment here said, with the passage of the CLOUD act (which mostly legalizes behavior that of which was already being engaged in), the US can get foreign powers to act on their behalf if they so choose.

As an US citizen who has been living abroad for almost two years now, I'm not here to point out equivalencies, but state that technology will be leveraged by those who see fit regardless of the country or if one believes in their "foremost defender of the modern rules-based order".

>This difference is essential.

Only if one believes it to be so (and I suspect many people do), though the ones who seem to suffer most will be the poor and the marginalized, and will continue to be so long after when the war drums eventually stop and the battles breakout…

[0] https://papersplease.org/wp/2018/01/05/new-dhs-policy-on-dem...

> The greatest conquerer on Earth and its modern beneficiaries

What'd England and the commonwealth do now?

Maybe he's talking about Mongolia. :-)

or Alexander, 'the Great'

Not sure exactly when the modern age began, but pretty sure it wasn't ancient Greece.

He said "modern beneficiaries", not that the conquest itself was modern.

Maybe he was talking about Spain, Portugal, or the Netherlands.

I’m talking about Americans and everyone here benefitting from the fruits of the conquest. We exist because it happened, and to deny it is to deny our own existence.

You used the words: "the greatest conquerer" - it's just this that's doubted, not that the conquest happened.

Historically, in terms of area, or percentage of (world) population involved, there are strong contenders for the title, other than the one you mention. Not to mention, some capital cities are stuffed with treasures they looted a millennium ago - so if you mean "the amount of conquest summarized over history" then your "greatest conqueror" doesn't seem that special at all.

They were the greatest. Now they’re primarily for money laundering.

"That depends if you think some Americans would be offended if you claimed Hawaii was its own country."

Do you have an actual example of someone being fired for claiming that Hawai'i was its own country?

Edit: apparently you don't. Your analogy does not hold water.

I think the Hawaii example was rhetorical, but you can find examples of Americans being fired for supporting BDS movement or speaking against Israel occupation of Palestine, we even have laws against doing business with BDS supporters in some states. So we do evidently care enough about these sorts of disputes to make laws about them.

"I think the Hawaii example was rhetorical"

And my point was that it was a very poor analogy.

"we even have laws against doing business with BDS supporters in some states"

Link? I see some laws against state governments doing business with those companies, but nothing that says that a private business (like Marriott) has to fire supporters of that movement, nor do we have laws that prohibit those companies from doing business at all.

US government banned contractors using China-manufactured electronics.

You can make up all sorts of excuses about how it’s for national security, but from the otherside it looks like the US is simply unfairly preventing a Chinese company from competing in a foreign market that it has not natural entitlement to.

Whether or not the reasons for it are true, the reality is it has real financial consequences for Chinese electronics companies, even if they are fully legitimate and with good intentions. Thus it’s an example of how the US is potentially using political power to suppress foreign influence.

Here is a link for your convenience too: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/12/us-government-agencies-zte...

That's a completely different case than preventing private companies from engaging with BDS supporters. If you were talking about the government preventing Holiday Inn from taking reservations from BDS supporters, that might fit, but you're talking about a proposed bill to prevent the government from doing business with contractors using foreign electronics systems. That bill is very unlikely to pass, by the way.

Reasons matter.

We have basically the entire state of texas doing that

As well as our most notable internal conflict was trying to split the country in half, and you still have a good chunk of supporters for it in the south. And the only real thing that offends people about that support is the racist underpinnings; and a common joke is that California should split off and form its own country (and take its politics with it).

It's hard for me to imagine that many would care if hawaiians also joined in and started claiming sovereignty.

Perhaps when they actually attempt to split off, but until then

Offended? Maybe. But 1st Amendment means that you are allowed to do that in America, generally speaking.

Case in point: our current President called the last President a Muslim born in Kenya. People take offense, but overall its an understanding that speech is free in the USA.