Had it played those cards earlier the US would have pivoted to China earlier and we might be looking at a different history right now where the US actually did something before it was too late.
Hope this doesn’t come across as too sectarian, but this is one of the things that does frustrate me about the “anti-Dengist” types (and I’m not trying to accuse or attack anyone with this!), who think that China should’ve thrown their economic and military weight around like USSR, ignoring the fact that they just flat out had neither of those things until very, very recently, and if China was belligerent and not vital to the US economy, the US would’ve destroyed them in the 90s, just like they destroyed the majority of socialist states in the world at the time.
Hope this doesn’t come across as too sectarian, but this is one of the things that does frustrate me about the “anti-Dengist” types (and I’m not trying to accuse or attack anyone with this!), who think that China should’ve thrown their economic and military weight around like USSR, ignoring the fact that they just flat out had neither of those things until very, very recently, and if China was belligerent and not vital to the US economy, the US would’ve destroyed them in the 90s, just like they destroyed the majority of socialist states in the world at the time.