Yeah, was just joking. It was of course never on the table for the soviets, and would be an absurd thing to plan in the first place. I doubt even deng ever thought China was doing anything more than developing their productive forces and buying a modicum of security by opening up. The idea that the west would be stupid enough to deindustrialize itself (by offshoring to a communist country no less) to the extent it has makes sense in hindsight, but I doubt anyone had the foresight to anticipate things turning out quite like this, let alone actually plan it.
Holy shit. How did people ever get it in their heads that drone strikes are not military incursions? Is it because there’s no humans physically entering the territory? Would you think the same thing if we were lobbing artillery shells over the border?
And how would doing either of those things without the cooperation of the Mexican government be anything other than an act of war?
I mean, I get that there is a difference between sending an armored column to occupy Juarez and a drone strike, and it’s not clear from the title which one we’re talking about, but you can’t really dispute that either of those things would be an act of war under any meaningful definition.
It’s an insane thing to say, regardless, because if you know anything about US Mexico relations you know he’s not talking about some kind of cooperative anti-cartel police action. He is in fact talking about an act of war. And a particularly stupid one at that.