I suspect from the point of view of the CCP nothing is ever quite pacified. The civil war that brought them into power is still in living memory. Granted Shanghai is currently quiet, but the thought of a pig ignorant loose cannon careening around Washington would not make the next serious economic downturn in China any more fun for the folks in power. If there is ever a need to wonder if the PLA can keep (say) Tibet in line, then little can be taken for granted. Still, that's a theoretical 'what if' sort of speculation.
So far as nations willing to bribe Trump to chase off the Chinese fleet, I would be surprised if South Korea and Japan don't think it's a reasonable investment as well. Almost any conceivable bribe would be a rounding error to the cost of a war they had to take part in (especially one fought without the USN), and China is directly threatening their interests as well.

Natrually it strongly depends on what the interests of the US (or it's government) actually are. But here is some brainstorming:

* If you want to have wars, it's good to have allied troops, that are more expendable, then yours, and that you can blame any attrocities on. Russia as ally seems ideal for that.

* If you assume Syria is going to be a mess, no matter what (which i consider a reasonable assumption), it's good to make it someone elses mess. If you can "sell" it to Russia even better, even if you just get a bread with butter for it.

* It might be in the US imperial interests to consolidate a border of influence spheres. Like Russia accepts Georgia as US ally, in return the US and via US preassue Georgia gives up claims on Abchasia and South Ossetia. It's easier to do that if you act chummy before that for a while.

* Quarrelling with China might be an end to itself too. A cold war style climate is very comfortable for governments. You have an outside enemy, to blame for all sorts of problems, where you can call for national unity against them, and the enemy is strong enough, that you don't need to explain, why there is little progress in winning.

Trump does not apeare to think like that, but either apearences could be deceiving, or someone in the second or third row could.

The Electoral College is supposed to do their thing on Monday (insider tip: it was created to protect us from a Donald Trump becoming president if he won the popular vote). So here we are, five days before the actual election of the President of the United States, and the fellow most likely to be elected has already gotten China to start rattling sabers.

Yeah, this is going to be interesting.

The Electoral College is little more than a rubber stamp, historically. I wonder if they'll actually have the guts to go against the grain and do their job with enough numbers to keep the lunatic from taking office.

If they don't pull the trigger this year, they might as well disband it, there's unlikely to ever be a more apt time for it.

...but I don't see that happening unless something absolutely crazy happens in the next 5 days.

...but I give THAT a fairly high probability.

Of course, if the Electoral College does go rogue, the country will explode.

If "Putin helped Donald Trump elected" isn't considered crazy enough to make the electoral college jump, nothing is.

Out of the very, very many things to be depressed about, I think I'm the most depressed about the death of facts. Reality has been buried in an avalanche of hogwash, bollocks, conspiracy, illogic and paranoia. There is so much manufactured ignorance circulating that nobody knows if any information can be trusted, and if you can't trust anything, you might as well believe whatever suits your ideology.

There will be no viable way for the public to assess anything that Trump does in office; he'll just flood the airwaves with publicity stunts and wild claims. The economy could fall in the toilet; millions could lose their healthcare, thousands could languish in detention cenres, and he'll just claim that the statistics are untrustworthy. His opponents will be sucked into spending all their time debunking him. Then Trump will somehow make this into a weakness. If you care about "facts" and "figures", you are a stupid prissy liberal. Real Americans can see how great things are with their own eyes! Just look at the latest photo-op! The US is sinking to Thabo Mbeki claiming that lemon juice and garlic cures AIDS levels of crazy-stupid gas.

Wanna know one thing that's really got me depressed? Scientists all over the country are going out of their minds trying to back up all the government data on climate change with the legitimate fear that Trump and his crew are gonna deliberately destroy any and all data that doesn't suit their "climate change is a Chinese conspiracy" views.

They're thinking small. Every bit of embarrassing data is going under the knife, both historical and current, in every part of the Federal government. Trump is, after all, the Siberian candidate; and if it's good enough for Putin, it's good enough for Trump.

Put aside Putin for a second, he's a latecomer to Bullcrap Mountain. The rejection of facts is the culmination of the last 16 years. Remember the Bush neocon who sneered at the "reality-based community" for not buying into their plans to make Iraq a capitalist paradise? And then the Republicans have spent the last 8 years claiming that inflation statistics were rigged, and that Zimbabwe style hyperinflation was right around the corner. Any minute now...any minute... They also spent the last 8 years harping on budget deficits while making up budgets with epic tax cuts that they claimed would magically pay for themselves. And then all of that teamed up with climate change denial and "truther" conspiracy theories to form the worst Power Ranger squad ever.

And underlying that is a genuine breakdown in the public's trust in institutions and even in democracy itself. This is some scary stuff.. Disturbingly high percentages of Americans now think that free and fair elections aren't all that necessary and that a military coup wouldn't be all that bad. That attitude is MORE prevalent among younger people.

Putin was a professional intelligence officer in a society where lying like a Republican was normative since roughly 1920, run by the party that pretty much invented talking to the public in code. He's hardly a latecomer to the ball. Granted the society all those lies built imploded (reality has a noticeable factual bias); but what professional Republican could possibly care less about tomorrow when there's power to seize and abuse now? We're only now seeing some of the flyover country electors starting to work out that as far as Trump and the RNC are concerned they're also the all day suckers to be ripped off, not the masters of the con. The rest are lockstep behind Trump.

And as for the folks who distrust democracy, what do you expect? The Republicans and their corporate fellow travelers have been deliberately poisoning that well since the 70s using media that reaches the entire planet. Ever since they figured out that the suicidally foolish white folks are not a governing voting bloc, but if you can poison the well enough to drive off the moderates then they'll outnumber the remaining liberals, we've seen a sustained anti-democracy campaign aimed at doing specifically what that paper you referred to reflects. And it's brilliant, in it's treasonable way; they just got to steal the White House for third time in five election cycles because the moderates stayed home during the only elections they bother to turn out for. The off year elections are pretty much a study in electoral pathology these days, which is exactly what they wanted all along.

I meant, Putin's propaganda machine showed up pretty recently the American scene. He was busy focusing on his own backyard before. I should've specified.

Just to indicate a trifle of displeasure, the Chinese navy has apparently seized an American oceanographic research drone off the coast of the Philippines (and not very far from it's parent vessel, either). Apparently president Obama's statement that the U.S. remains dedicated to the One China policy didn't go over as well as might have been hoped.

No great surprise; but it seems Trumps nominee for Secretary of State is an executive in a joint Russian-American oil company headquartered in the Bahamas.

Edit: Oh, and Trump told the Chinese to keep the drone. Mind you, the election isn't until later today. Can't wait to see how well he handles diplomacy as an actual president elect.

I can't say I expected it when I started this thread, but the man openly aligned with a hostile foreign power has just been elected head of the party of Jefferson Davis. Oh, and President of the United States. Since the unifying theme of his proposed administration seems to be making global warming worse while making Vladimir Putin happy, the rest of the world will probably do just about as badly as the United States out of this. Pity.

Eh, maybe we'll get lucky and Republican corruption and incompetence will quickly precipitate a significant global economic slowdown, in much the same way that they screwed up the occupation of Iraq and the global financial system the last time they held power. At least that way the CO2 level won't go completely berserk over the next few years.

Well, it's sure been interesting to watch the Republicans' attitudes towards Russia flip on a dime just because of Trump.

Before: Russia! Evil! Commies! OK ex-commies, but still, eeeeevil!
Now: We're cool with Putin, amirite? Strong leader, great country, lots of oil, what's not to like?

Well, I figure if Americans are determined to have down the line Republican government even with an orange narcissist troll monkey in charge, they should get what they want. I can only conclude that people want to live in a polluted country with weak labour regulations and outrageously expensive health care.