As much as I hate Kissinger, this is not what happened at all. This wasn't about "kicking Taiwan out", it was about acknowledging the fact that KMT no longer ruled China, Beijing did. Also, it was the seventies; at that time Taiwan was ruled by a fascist regime - those were the folks who had to flee continental China because they were even worse than Mao.
I don't know who are the "they" that are trying to destroy any kind of agreement, but there hasn't been any type of close agreement as Ukraine made it very clear that they don't want anything else beside Russia leaving their territory. Any type of territory concession is a non-starter for any agreement on Ukraine side.
I'm just going to assume that you are American. If Russia invaded Alaska.. would you advocate for a "ceasefire" and tell people they should negotiate an agreement... that would keep Russia on the sovereign territory of the US? I'm assuming no. Then why are you advocating for this?
They did what they did, so the decisions that are being done now need to be done with the current state of reality in mind.
Russia is responsible for it's own action. It's not a weird state machine reacting to "western" actions and applying appropriate response.
Russia was given everything they possibly could be given to become part of "the west" - growing, democratic nation, like many of the nation they formerly occupied. Instead they choose kleptocracy, mafia state ruled by the guy who bombed apartment buildings in his own country to become president - and it only went downhill from there.
And many challenges they do have: China made a huge progress on industrialization, put some checks on corruption and conquered widespread hunger, but it is still a mostly poor, agrarian country with a rapidly aging population. They, absolutely rationally, jump at the option of cheaper energy import, but I would not read that as a long-term support of the Russian view of the world (which, I heard from several folks, they often despise). They pursue their own agenda. My 2c.
Or maybe that's not enough and return to 1997 NATO borders would be necessary?
Or perhaps that would not be enough and return to the 1988 geopolitical situation would be necessary to make Putin a friend of the West?
What if even that wouldn't make Putin a western ally? Wouldn't we be just be letting our geopolitical enemy get stronger?
Which turned out to be worst of possible policies.
Depends on your metric. US companies gained the ability to outsource to low-cost china and this has been fantastically profitable for them.
For the average US citizen, they did benefit from a massive influx of cheap goods and cheap debt at the expense of hollowing out the economy. As it says on the back of most Apple products - "designed in California made in China".
Could be made in the US as well, but too many rules, too inflexible, too high labour costs.
https://theweek.com/articles/478705/why-apple-builds-iphones...
I'm certainly not picking on Apple, most US companies outsource but the Obama/Jobs question really hammers the point.
Probably not a long-term sustainable strategy but i did work for many years.
Instead of having a Cold War with China and proxy wars, we intertwined our economies much like MAD except with mutually assured economy destruction.
[1] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/local/archives/2001/09/12/0...
You prop up hard authoritarian or totalitarian government with trade. They get strong, and instead of "democratizing" they take a hard line and endanger democracies.
Europe also had economic MAD with Russia, yet they did not care. Now they flare gas and destroy Ukrainian cities.
Are you suggesting the West should deliberately keep countries poorer, in the fear of them becoming (more) authoritarian? I think that would be wrong (and also counterproductive) thing to do.
Keep hard authoritarian and totalitarian countries poorer. That's done with multiple countries right now, like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela.
Keep weak authoritarian (on a road to democracy) and democratic nations richer. EU and NATO expansion have been historic successes, with democracy extending farther than ever in the 90s and 00s. Moreover, US policy on India has been largest geopolitical tragedy of XX century. The largest democracy in the world is relatively hostile to "the west", despite being threatened by China.
Opposite policies - keep enemies close - drastically failed in case of Russia and China, with both countries being especially bloodthirsty right now.
It's also not done in multiple other countries which don't happen to be US military allies, like Saudi Arabia. You're seeing a pattern that isn't there. Totalitarianism is just an excuse.
Also, I'm sorry, but claiming China - which hadn't invaded anyone for decades - is as bloodthirsty as Russia (or US for that matter) is just silly.
I also think it's immoral to intentionally keep any country poor, whether authoritarian or not. I don't know where you live, but I would certainly not want Czechoslovakia to be intentionally kept poor during communist dictatorship just so that some Western politician could stroke his ego about how is he fighting against communism. I think that's very authoritarian and patronizing idea, to do so. It's just a double whammy for citizens of such countries.
He bombed his own people to come to power. If not then, then in 2008, when he invaded Georgia. Even if not then, then surely 2014 would be the final whistle, right? No. Nord stream 2 was started to be build 4 years later.
>I don't know where you live, but I would certainly not want Czechoslovakia to be intentionally kept poor during communist dictatorship just so that some Western politician could stroke his ego about how is he fighting against communism.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Pomnik_R...
This is Ronald Reagan monument in Warsaw. I, and many Polish people are thankful for his hardline stance he took against our occupiers, meaningfully contributing to crashing their economy, which ultimately made us free.
I think this is bordering on masochism. To me, hurting people (even economically) in order to make them "free" (which Reagan didn't, in fact) is just morally reprehensible, patronizing and authoritarian.
I also think that you don't know much about Reagan. He supported policies that were explicitly against education of the middle class (trying to made universities into a pay model) and pro-segregation (like hard stance on drug war). He almost started a 3rd world war. This is all on record.
That's the thing with authoritarians - they have many faces. They can be perceived very differently by different groups. That's why you cannot just to simplify it as you did.
I am very skeptical when somebody says, we need to sacrifice lives of X people today in order for Y people (Y>X) have better lives in the future. I don't know of an example where there isn't a solution (although possibly slower) without the sacrifice, and often you can have both. Human live is precious and therefore we should value human lives now more than some kind of vague improvement in the future. We can always change society, but we cannot resurrect a dead person.
>sacrifice
There is no sacrifice. People in Poland still had food and shelter. Even North Korea gets humanitarian help, if their tyrant allows it to. I'm not against that. I'm against making them more powerful. Food does not change that, but transfer of technologies or means of production - which happened with Russia and China, and even Poland [1] in the 70s strengthened the regime, making the fall longer and more painful.
US, and any other country, has no obligation to prop up failing dictatorships technologically or economically - which they and also famously Germany - did.
>I also think that you don't know much about Reagan. He supported policies that were explicitly against education of the middle class (trying to made universities into a pay model) and pro-segregation (like hard stance on drug war). He almost started a 3rd world war. This is all on record.
Internal policies of Reagan, and a lot of external ones were bad. Still, he was right on that one, compared to failed policies of Nixon and Brandt.
It doesn't really matter though, there seems to be no way to have a reasonable discussion on this topic without being attacked as a Putin sympathizer in most places of the "free world".