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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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From first principles, wouldn't you assume that if the US cabinet and White House was full of names like Chang, Zhang, Yuan and Dongfeng, the US would lean more pro-China than makes strategic sense?

Not necessarily. I could also paint a just-so story that diaspora emigres could be significantly more hawkish towards the governing regime of the land of their birth if it's out of step with their personal values - a cabinet full of Miami Cubans wouldn't be pro-Castro. And indeed, because U.S. Jews are overwhelmingly liberal, secularized, and assimilated, support for Netanyahu's nationalist government was a minority position in the U.S. before and after 10/7.

Certain items would never make it onto agendas, some policies would be carried out enthusiastically and others would be given up at the first sign of trouble. People could find reasons why military aid to China was a good thing - stabilizing the region, countering Russia, Vietnam and so on. They could find reasons why China causing problems for the US was acceptable, they have certain legitimate interests and mistakes happen. They could create framing where China is a traditional ally of America, we fought together in WW2 against those awful Japanese, it's a vital trading partner, predestined to be a superpower...

Yes, but people do this all the time for all sorts of reasons unrelated to ethnicity; allegedly FDR had a soft spot for the Chinese because his family had a longstanding history of involvement in the China trade and with yankee missionary efforts over there. Similarly the british foreign establishment has had a reputation of being fairly arabist without any significant muslim or arab component in british society; they just felt more comfortable with those relationships. Almost nothing works on hard strategic logic.

Alternately, if the US cabinet was full of Muhammeds and Husseins, I expect Israel would encounter lots of problems. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are amongst the least pro-Israel politicians in America.

Sure, but I don't know how to disentangle their ethnic and religious interests from contemporary American leftism, which is quite happily third world-ist and "anti-colonial" without any arab/muslim immigrant help.

People have natural sympathies for those of the same race and creed.

White people don't.