With Trump, they are dealing with a very seasoned negotiator with balls, which is not something they have run into in the modern era. Certainly not since they threw off the last vestiges of pretending Communism could work in the 1990’s, in a naked bid to get money, wealth and power for their oligarchs, even at the cost of the continued and indeed increasing misery of everyone but their elites.
The Chinese has used government spies and hackers to steal all sorts of technology, not just from our military and government, but from our industries as well. They have likely stolen from Intel, Motorola, Apple. And they certainly openly allow Hollywood content to be openly copied and sold, as well as all sorts of other protected content.
It is past time we asked them to act civilized, to act like members of an international order characterized by mutual respect and the rule of law, and in so doing to act like something other than feudal warlords and common thieves, which is how they have been acting.
America, in many ways, is no innocent. I get this. Howard Zinn was only 90% wrong, and in some very few cases perhaps even mostly correct and even honest. Unless and until one studies the atrocities of the Communists carefully, it is hard to even consider defending, say, the United Fruit Company.
But very, very few tyrants in human history have approached the AVERAGE level of abuse and intrusiveness of the average Communist dictatorship (to say Communist dictatorship is of course redundant, as a Communist democracy is a contradiction in terms, the two being antitheses). Genghiz Khan, as a rule, felt no need to force people to think him. He simply killed people who disagreed with him. The Communists are every bit as murderous as the Mongols, but with the added humiliation and horror of placing large numbers of people in psychological torture camps for long periods of time, up to and including the duration of life, which is always shortened there.
So the Shah was better than Communists, certainly, and better than the Mullahs, certainly. Iran would be a prosperous place today, that we would all want to visit, if the Shah had kept power. The Revolutionary Guard–as is always the case with radicals–killed more people in their first year than the Shah had killed in his lifetime. That is my understanding. The secret prisons, which were largely empty, filled quickly once they replaced him.
Guatamala is a much harder question. But the easy question is: would we will the style of government of China as it exists today on the world, and that answer is an easy FUCK NO. They may not use literal slave yokes any more, but what goes on in the back country after the secret police make you disappear stays in the back country, and far from prying ears, no one can hear you scream. No one cares when you break. And no one mourns you when you die.
Since anyone who cares to likely has a detailed psychological profile on me by now, I will admit that my fear is not being shot, but being broken by psychopaths over a long period of time. That is the fear of all people with sense. You cannot read about what these murderous, horrifically evil human beings have done with anything but a stone in your stomach, and silent horror in your eyes.