This brings up something I've been thinking about for a while: The west's economic interactions with communist countries.
Okay, so WWII is over, and relations between the US and the Soviet Union become rather cold. The US more or less decides that they are the evil empire, and that their system or government and sphere of influence should be contained. And from around 1950 to 1990, we have the cold war, in which we rather hate commies, and will fight proxy wars, build up piles of WMD's, and directly intervene with affairs of other nations to contain communism. (Korea, Vietnam war, Cuban blockade, Iran-contra, Afghanistan (the first time), etc)
Fast forward to today: Many of the clothes in department stores are made in communist Vietnam. Dare I say most consumer products are made in communist China - they are the single largest importer of goods to the US.
Questions:
1. What happened in the US such that it became not only acceptable, but widespread to do business with communist countries? Or were we always rather amicable to the idea, but the change was communist countries being willing to sell exports to capitalist countries?
2. Containment as a policy seems to have been abandoned with the dissolution of the soviet union. But other communist countries still exist, and China is growing to be a superpower - so why don't we regard communism as a threat anymore?
3. On a long enough timeline, can peaceful coexistence happen between capitalistic republics, communist states, theocracies, kingdoms, and all the other forms of government that exist in the world?
