If you think the deterioration in relations between America and China is just a temporary situation that will be reversed in the near term, think again. Just because Chinese leaders do not emulate dementia Joe Biden and yell out insults, this does not mean that the Chinese are apathetic. Just the opposite. They are furious.
When the United States chose to shoot down the Chinese balloon (Beijing insists it was a weather balloon, the U.S. claims it was a spy platform) without contacting the Chinese Government, the Chinese initially expressed their outrage by refusing to accept a phone call from U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin. Austin continues to ask for a telephone conversation between the defense ministers of the two countries to discuss the situation around the weather balloon, but Beijing refuses to do so.
The Chinese then vowed to retaliate, but did not initially spell out what those countermeasures would entail. Then, last Thursday, Beijing announced sanctions and fines against two key American defense companies due to their participation in arms sales to Taiwan: Lockheed Martin Corp. and a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies Corp.
The Biden Administration had a choice — take steps to try to repair relations with China or double down on antagonizing Beijing. Joe Biden and his feckless team, who have a knack for doing the wrong thing, opted to poke the Chinese in the eye. This week, the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of State, claimed they had intelligence that China was preparing to give Russia military aid and warned China in the strongest terms not to do so.
Talk about hypocrisy. The United States is free to supply Ukraine with billions in weapons and equipment but declares itself the sole arbiter to decide who China can support with military aid. Beijing was not amused:
“The so-called ‘US intelligence’ [about Russian arms supplies] is speculation and slander against China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
Wang Wenbin did not stop there. He accused the United States of being the greatest threat to peace on the earth:
The United States violates the sovereignty of other countries the most and interferes in the internal affairs of other countries;
America is the largest producer of war;
The US has not been at war in just 16 years of its 240-year history;
The United States has initiated about 80% of the armed conflicts in the world since the end of World War II;
After the end of World War II, the US tried to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments;
Violently interfered in elections in at least 30 countries and tried to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders;
NATO wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria under the US have resulted in over 900,000 deaths and 37 million refugees.
As long as America’s hegemonic policies and warlike tendencies continue, there will be no peace in the world.
You may be shocked by what I am about to tell you — the Chinese monitor U.S. media and pay attention to what the various think tanks that populate Washington, D.C. write and do. The Center for Strategic and International Studies aka CSIS recently war gamed a scenario where China is provoked and invades Taiwan. The CSIS players concluded that:
- The Chinese military capabilities are comparable to the U.S. but ultimately the US could defeat an attempted amphibious landing on Taiwan;
- Taiwan’s infrastructure and industry would be destroyed but it would maintain its political autonomy, trading its physical existence in to maintain its political existence;
Here is Brian Berletic providing a detailed breakdown of the war game:
China, for its part, is doing some war games with its new partners. During the past week China, along with Russia and South Africa, took part in a joint naval exercise. China’s participation was not sparked by the latest tensions with Washington. The planning for this exercise started 18 months ago. Nevertheless, it does show that China is serious about forging with ties outside the orbit of the U.S.
Joint naval exercises of China, Russia and the Republic of South Africa will improve the skills of the BRICS countries in ensuring maritime security. This was stated on Thursday by the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the People’s Republic of China Tan Kefei.
The era of the United States dictating to China is over. While the Chinese will try to avoid a shooting war with Washington, America should not make the mistake of confusing Chinese restraint and patience with weakness. The dragon is awake.
Chinese are definitely awake. They are currently de-risking from US controlled exposure. Here’s a scathing report about US actions that is unfortunately true: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-02-20/U-S-Hegemony-and-Its-Perils-1hzPTDFI8KI/index.html
The Chinese MFA white paper is stunning in its condemnation of the War Party.
Also worth close reading is Peking’s Formal Peace Proposal. A 12 step proposal.
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202302/t20230224_11030713.html
Thanks for the link!
Scott Ritter had stated when he was at the Pentagon they ran every conceivable war game possible against Russia and then against China and against both together. There is no way the US can defeat Russia in its sphere of influence nor China in its sphere. Both joining together is of course much more devastating for the US and west. Ritter said the only way they actually won was by making up weapons that the US does not have nor exist like a star wars science fiction movie. The US navy and its air force in the South China Sea would simply be destroyed by China’s hypersonic missiles. It is also interesting that it was the Russians who designed and implemented with Chinese input their whole missile defense system ironically against the wishes of Russia’s neocons who already wanted to nuke Kiev and ask, “Who’s next!” They wanted to force the US either to WWIII or move all assets back east of the Oder River per agreement. Either way the computer models at Armstrong Economics which has never been wrong on geopolitical events has the west losing this coming war badly and collapsing the whole western economies with the result of breaking up not only Europe and many borders there but also the US and Canada. Ironically there is a few in Congress like Marjorie Taylor Greene are calling for the red states to move away from the blue as the US gov. no longer serves the interest of anyone in the red states. Yellen has admitted trading volume is down in treasury bonds, dealers are saying there are periods of illiquidity and bonds are being dumped internationally as everyone who has bought bonds since Draghi went negative in 2024 is losing money as rates rise which is what caused the disaster in London recently when pensions, banks, insurance firms, etc almost collapsed with the central bank intervening. If not destroyed by war which is a high probability from the models the US government collapses by its inability to no longer fund itself which is why Yellen wants to buy long bonds and swap them for short term. They are isolating themselves from the world even in trade as confiscating assets from other countries in the trillions the last decades had caused other countries not wanting to do business with the US nor west in general as they all have been exposed as nothing but a giant criminal enterprise posing as governments.
jjhm, the computer models of a US-China/Russia conflict at Armstrong Economics sounds interesting – would you have a link?
As I recall from reading about the (hones) wargames, one of the critical factors was that the satellite network is immediately taken out, reducing the US military from an army to a group of small, uncoordinated fighting groups, which are easily mopped up – whereas Russia and China have invested in hardened military ground communications outside of satellite. Heck, Russia still uses vacuum tubes in many of their electronics as they survive an EMP.
Russia sent one (1) frigate. The Moskva not being available for such exercises. The South Africans would be better of tracking the Chinese fishing fleets rather than ‘training’ with two parties that can’t help them, and one which will rape their seacoasts the same way they do everyone elses.
“trading its physical existence in to maintain its political existence;” Sounds like the usual neocon CSIS rhetoric. Didn’t that have great things to say about Afghanistan and Iraq? How is their analytical track record?
Methinks S.A. Wants to be on the winning team with 87% of the world
Yea, one frigate that can sink one aircraft carrier battle group.
You should go there and tell South Africans what is good for them. Maybe they should join NATO, or volunteer to be the target of next USA bombing for peace/equality/democracy campaign.
I have replied to the wrong post. Sorry about that.
It’s still good for a laugh. The South Africans have a lot of domestic issues to fix before they need bother get involved in the international MIC/graft complex.
A military exercise with one frigate and a few boats doesn’t really count as getting into the international MIC/graft complex. USA citizens have a lot of domestic issues to fix before they need bother get involved in the international MIC/graft complex, and yet care even less about that.
South Africa can’t do proper naval exercises with USA because they lack required infrastructure. They need to build a pipeline first.
Ha! Now THAT is funny.
I think China will appear to be somewhat patient and restrained until they manage to unload all the US treasuries they own.
They had to observe the nonsense with Russian assets and will quietly and expeditiously minimize their exposure. After that, look out.
The US, and Americans in general, don’t understand cultures that have a long term focus. They think everybody is focused on the next quarter and subject to capricious whims and are easily distracted by threats. China has 3 thousand years or so of experience and understands the strength in patience. They’ll wait until the time is right, playing the US like a cheap fiddle.
5,000 years of history actually, of which the last 4,200 years have complete unbroken written records. The Chinese government measure strategy in centuries and measure tactics in generations. The American government think in terms of election cycles as strategy and the evening news as tactics. Hence they don’t understand why other people remember their actions from last week.
China knows all their US assets would be nationalized in a war however, if they don’t provide people jobs making stuff there will be a civil war and ripe for color revolution. The problem with divestment from US assets is what do they do with all the dollars we give them? Have to get rid of dollars somehow. UST and other US assets is what they have to purchase. They are trying to move trade to non-dollar and countries willing to use non-dollars. They are doing this. That’s what BRICS is all about. Then you’ll see see them able to cut trade and cut investment. Will take years. US is trying to goad them into war before that.
What to buy with all those excess dollars ?
Gold
I think it’s the Belt and Road Initiative. China is turning dollars into tangible assets and good will almost everywhere, except the G7 countries. It may be where much of this inflation is coming from.
De-dollarizing is not that simple. Yes, China can spend dollar-demoniated assets to buy tangible (real, material) assets, BUT the selling party must be willing to accept those $ assets as payment. Those $ don’t disappear until they are destroyed (taxed out of existence) by the USG. Fewer parties are going to be willing to be the last unfortunates holding the bag of $ when the music stops.
deberian (en caso de que sea factible) liquidar esos bonos en prestamos a paises del tercer mundo. Prestando 200-500 mil millones de dolares y aun les quedaria un mundo de dlls para gastar.
I wonder if China would be willing to trade a peace treaty with the U.S. wherein we agree not to oppose them re: Taiwan in exchange for cancelling all their U.S. TSY debt holdings. We both avoid war, and the U.S. cancels less than a year worth of federal deficit off the total national debt. Nah, they’ll just assume the U.S. will renege b/c we are clearly non-agreement capable.
Only if it’s signed in Belarus and called Minsk agreement.
“I think China will appear to be somewhat patient and restrained until they manage to unload all the US treasuries they own.”
I don’t think they’re as worried about their own USTs as they are about everybody else’s.
The Chinese have lots of shiny new civil and industrial infrastructure that they built on those Treasuries which will survive intact. What I think the Chinese are worried about is the developing nations of Africa, S. America etc. They’ll lose their reserves should China dumps theirs, and they’ll have little or nothing to show for it.
Under the IMF treaties they’ve almost all signed, without reserves they couldn’t issue their own currencies to keep their economies running. Much of the developing world would fall into social and economic chaos and/or abject poverty until a global non-$ trading system based on real assets rather than fiat currencies was in place. That takes time and the interim chaos benefits no-one, including China.
The US knows all that, of course and IMHO is simply trying to intimidate China by threatening that shiny new infrastructure with demolition. We’re all in a world of hurt if China calls their bluff and dumps.
Agreed – de-dollarization will proceed glacially
Figure 2025 for first real effects of De-Dollarization and maybe 2030 for full blown casacade
Note – no foreigner needs to sell their Treasury debt, all they need to do is not roll it over when the debt matures. Slow but steady exit
It feels strange understanding what is coming when our government works wonders keeping it hidden from people. It seems most people aren’t curious about the world. Willful ignorance is what it looks like. I just can’t imagine what is going to happen when the majority understand what the rest of their time is going to look like.
The shock will be tremendous and the backlash unhinged.
I sense a very bad geopolitical storm coming. If and when this blows up into a global conflict, supply chains around the world are going to disintegrate, and only truly autarkic (meaning completely energy-self-sufficient) countries or blocs are going to be able to avoid or at least effectively mitigate stagflation. For those countries reliant on international trade for their socioeconomic welfare, the combination of severe recession (deep and widespread job losses) and recalcitrant, oscillating inflation (repeatedly shifting between goods and services) will lead to mass immiseration and impoverization the likes of which haven’t been seen in living memory. The political chaos will be unprecedented. I can see small countries surviving intact, but ones with larger populations and larger geographies? Welcome to splitsville – precipitated by civil war, or if fortunate, negotiated partition.
Trade figures give key hints on the big picture. US China Trade is about 700 billion, Africa EU trade is 300 billion. Africa US Trade is 100 billion.
India to US EU Exports is 400 billion, I guess Japan, Asean etc trade with US is probably 400-500 Billion.
Except for Africa EU trade which is bigger than China Africa trade which is 150 billion.
All areas and countries do not have EU or US as their biggest trade partner.
Indias biggest Trade partner is UAE. Though exports it’s heavily depends on US and Europe. A key part of the Exports is IT services which is nearly 150 billion and constitutes 80% of it’s IT Exports.
While shrinkage of US and EU trade by 50% by most areas and countries will significantly reduce their total trade it can be to realigned to other parts of the world. It wouldn’t cripple the world.
Africa is rapidly Industrialising. This will reduce their need to import food from EU and US and export raw materials to them as they can consume more of it.
It’s possible to let US and EU sanction the rest of the world and this reduce their control around the world. They have been the biggest destroyers of economies and stunting of economies of dozens of countries
With them out of the picture or at least significant interference from them the world will see a rapid boom of countries and economies bouncing back from the direct and indirect destruction caused by these.
So I’m quite hopeful that after some initial hiccups and manageable pain most of world will be much better off without the malign influence of the west.
I have hens for eggs, horses (to pull plows) and 1 year stockpile of cans because I see this as well. Stuffs not gonna be on the shelf.
reminds me of the dying carthage empire poking rising roman empire and got totally destroyed ..
poor fools in US who constantly fed propaganda on how great US military and yet will be shocked beyond belief when Russia or China beat them down in real fight.
any conventional war with russia and/or china will escalate quickly to nukes as US govt will resort to nukes to cover up their massive battlefield losses. And this will end up bad for US as it will be outmatched even in this field.
yet we saw ordinary american still under delusion they are safe from this kind of destruction. only few people in america understand the risk and continue yelling like prophet in the wilderness.
Carthage example is not valid in my opinion. It was Rome that was behaving like West today (after all, West’s empire is kinda of a copy of Rome), where it was pushing “allies” into poking Carthage, and once Carthage responded, they pounded on them while fighting “just war” in defense of their ally – and to be honest, only reason why that was an “ally” was because it could poke Carthage (kinda reminds me of something), not because of any other legitimate reasons…
Ha ha
Russia = Carthage and USA = Rome
When the ground freezes Hannibal and his elephants will make their big move and Rome will be annihilated! Hannibal is killing Romans at a 10 to 1 favorable ratio! The Romans are running out spears.
What Carthage is burned? The fields have been plowed with salt and all of the males put to the sword? Inconceivable!
An my throat is getting sore….
While the Soviet Union existed the the worst elements of the US were constrained in a number of ways. One of which was proving to US citizens that they were the best provided people in history. Since the Soviet collapse all those constraints slowly disappeared leaving a small minority to loot everything they could get their hands on.
One egregious example is borrowing money for share buy back schemes to maintain share prices instead of investing in industrial and civil infrastructure.
This has replaced the industrial and entrepreneurial class that built America with a kleptocratic class that has impoverished Americans (the bill will be arriving shortly)
While the US was wasting money on 21st century wars, China was building it’s industrial and trading empire and Russia has been rebuilding it’s economy and developing new classes of innovative weapons.
I assume Trump derangement symptom was created to defend against his interference with the existing pernicious plan. An internal color revolution was staged.
I had not thought I would live long enough to see this happen. I can’t see how the US can now stop it’s collapse.
I am unlikely to live another 30 years to see if the US will be able to rise from the ashes in the same way Russia has.
Everyone had a feeling that this great reckoning will come but all thought it will be far away enough but collapse alway happens faster than expected. The beginning is already happening right before our eyes which we didn’t expect. The end will happen much faster than we expect too. I don’t think it will take 30 years. Look at 2 years of Biden and how far USA has fallen. The next 2 years will be faster than the first two.
Biden = Andropov
Well said. I was in Washington DC in 2016 then to Moscow in 2017. Any objective person seeing what I saw in these two capitals would conclude we are the poorer country of the two. From the subway system to the general appearance of the streets and buildings, I was shocked at the difference. In fairness, Moscow was preparing for the 2018 World Cup so things were getting spruced up, but Moscow has only improved since then. Washington DC is a mess, literally and figuratively speaking.
Washington has always been a dump and a ghetto. There is an old joke that “D.C.” stood for “Dark Continent.”
have you seen NYC lately?!
how about San Fran?
Portland?
LA?
Seattle?
Philly?
Baltimore?
Detroit?
“3rd world country” does not even start to describe the dumps that the US big cities turned into over the last 15-20 years. And it’s accelerating…
Rural America is hardly better. The sad little towns that used to be something and now consist of a dollar store and a gas station. There’s a Walmart 30 miles away where everything comes from China (same with the dollar store).
There’s not the homelessness problem and the drug problem isn’t as obvious but it’s there. It was rural America that took the brunt of pharma companies running opioids like the average corner dealer.
Remember in the late 80s/early 90’s when DC was the freakin MURDER CAPITOL OF THE WORLD?
(Note: guns were completely banned in DC back then, but it certainly didn’t help and might have made it worse!)
Crime is starting to go up again.
District of Criminals
Excellent observation and comparison.
The US can’t even take care of itself.
The kleptocracy, the corruption, the nihilism and the increasing decrepitude of infrastructure in the US remind me of descriptions of the late Soviet Union.
Hope this is not off-topic. Came across this write-up just after reading Larry’s post. This chap made an astute analysis of the current American state of affairs. Link below:-
https://worldaffairs.blog/
Thank you, its an interesting website.
> “The Center for Strategic and International Studies aka CSIS recently war gamed a scenario where China is provoked and invades Taiwan.”
i wonder .. was NATO’s Ukraine provocation of Russia similarly war-gamed with promising results?
LOL mijj…yeah it makes you wonder. War gaming is an absolute necessary step in planning military operations but my guess is CSIS and NATO have war gamed both Taiwan and China through a Western bias. My Command and General Staff tactics instructor frequently reminded us: “The enemy always gets a vote”…meaning the “enemy” does what they want to do not what we think they are going to do.
Such has been the case in the Ukraine and so it will be in Taiwan if it goes hot.
Brian Berletic pointed out in his most recent video yesterday that while the CSIS (a bunch of liberal arts grads) ran THEIR computer simulation of war with China – and concluded the US might possibly be able to “win” (with “winning” looking a LOT like losing to a sane person), the Pentagram ran its own separate simulation. While the Pentagram’s results are top-secret, word has leaked out that the US would “get its ass handed to them”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyAq8xAhmSI
It would be bloody that’s for sure. The average American can’t conceive of the loss of even one aircraft carrier let alone several naval vessels in a battle group…we have this WWII f*ck fantasy that our “shiny thing” military is invincible. Don’t get me wrong the US Military is bad ass but it is not invincible especially against a peer military (China/Russia).
The difference between Russian and Chinese societies and the American society is that Russia and China are doctrinally and societally prepared for “total war” e.g. a war where there are high casualties and loss of equipment…the US is not. Check out Simplicius76’s discussion on this very topic: https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/in-the-spirit-of-russian-total-war
Many Americans who thought that a vote of hate “against” DJT, did not necessarily mean a vote “for” a demented mummified carcass, pretending to be president, who could then be easily manipulated by a gang of criminals into launching WWIII, are now, no doubt, spending many sleepless nights, maybe even doing something they never thought they would do… kneeling beside the bed and praying they won’t wake up in a world turned into a fireball, ha!
Those who replaced Trump are doing all the rash and heedless things that they predicted he would do.
Nuclear war will not end bad for the US alone, it will end bad for the whole planet. Only the simple think nuclear war is winnable.
No, a nuclear war would not be bad for the whole planet. The Argentines, Peruvians and Chileans would emerge largely unscathed. Most of sub-Saharan Africa wouldn’t be directly affected. Indonesia and Micronesia would do just fine. That’s almost 1.5 billion people, which is about the total population of the world at the turn of the 20th century. It would simply be a rebirth for civilization, infintely easier to recover from than a comet strike.
Austin should just get Milley to call them. I hear he is good at contacting the other side without anybody asking or telling him to call.
At the core the USA only cares about capitalistic gains / profits. All of the MIC is about generating maximum money to squander amongst the war mongers and their sychophants.
China is steadily buying gold and selling / dumping US treasuries. Where will the USA go with its trillions of debt if nobody is buying. Will be a bit of a bother to feed the staff of 800+ overseas bases without local funds. Mutiny anybody? Probably Civil War II when the “deplorables” get fed up.
One doesn’t have to support the Biden regime to recognize China has been involved in an asymmetric war with the US for decades, gradually weakening the US with the intent of ultimately dominating the US and the world.
Its interest coincided with that of the globalists and a great many politicians, education institutions etc, enriching themselves by selling out the bulk of Americans (and Europeans). Ironically, of course, Biden was one of those corrupt politicians selling out to China.
That does not justify attempting to start a kinetic war with China. It particularly doesn’t make sense when the US is relatively industrially weak and when it does not have the military capacity to win a fight on China’s doorstep.
A war with China will involve a simultaneous one with North Korea. In that case the US would get its butt kicked big time, losing Taiwan and South Korea.
Such an event would likely lose Japan as an active part of the West. Not suggesting China would attempt to invade Japan. It wouldn’t have to. If the US is “seen off” from Taiwan and South Korea, threats by China to blockade a then-isolated Japan and launch missiles at it (or allow a united Korea under Kim to do so) would force Japan into a neutral status, but essentially vassal to China.
That would ricochet throughout all SE Asia and potentially India.
Unless the US rebuilds its industrial capacity, it will continue to fade economically and militarily relative to China until China is indisputably the dominant power and able to coerce the US (and the rest of the world).
Ironically, the globalists may now be supportive of re-industrializing the US. They are finally realizing that the CCP understands them and the CCP will never subordinate China to the globalists (why Soros has got so cranky with China). So the globalists’ dream of taking control of the whole world is fading to be replaced by a fear they end up in control of the US/Europe which are at best second tier powers in future.
China just successfully developed and you and your fellow countrymen (or is it countrypeople?) can’t get to terms with it.
It’s not really clear how he knows China is bent on world domination. Did he get that idea from Call of Duty or Battlefield?
While I have heard of Call of Duty, I have never seen it let alone played it. I have no knowledge of the “Battlefield” to which you refer. Perhaps they are both part of your experience, and the source of your own observations.
My ideas come from studying the world and participating in it for more than 70 years. I don’t impute any uniquely nefarious intent to China nor even the CCP but nor are they uniquely angels and China, throughout much of its history, has been an imperial nation — just not a seaborne one like Britain and the US.
Historically the world has seen numerous nations vying for dominance, with various ones attaining it for a period when their relative strength was great enough.
The notion that there is some unique purity to the CCP that exempts it from this urge is risible.
India doesn’t care much for most of the world. It’s been mostly been isolated economically for most of nearly 75years since independence.
We have two neighbors Bangladesh and Pakistan not on good terms travel between them is virtually nonexistent. Myanmar is too far in the east and virtually inaccessible as India’s Far East itself quite difficult to acess. To the South we have the sea
It’s only Nepal with which we have close interaction. Bhutan is minuscule and a vassal of India.
Till 1990s our exports were less than 10% of our GDP. Post that IT and engineering goods too EU and US took off and gave the big boost to the exports plus ores mainly to China. We were heavily dependent on technology imports from West. Now not so much China has taken it’s place largely.
There is a very large diaspora in US and UK. Millions more in the IT industry have extensive interaction with US. But still it an urban phenomenon.
The US in no case can abandon Indian IT without significantly crippling itself accross industries.
Your country is destined to break into component parts I think. It is a shame India could not fulfil a destiny as a counterpart to China, but it is clear it cannot. Maybe a return to the princely states is a good thing. It was after all the nature state of the subcontinent long before the English got there.
I am surprised to see your comment. Most here would never say anything bad about China. Larry, who is a great patriot, says things like the United States shot down a Chinese weather balloon without contacting them. Why didn’t the Chinese call Washington and ask if it’s okay to violate our airspace? One thing for certain is that the CCP has for decades ran an elite capture program to compromise western governments. Right now they have their hooks into the President, the senate majority leader, the speaker of the house, and the joint chiefs. I doubt that whoever is running our government blows their nose without asking China if it’s okay. I would guess that the tension between our countries is manufactured to keep our eye off the ball while a bigger plan plays out. As to what that plan is no one but the puppet masters know for sure but the destruction of the United States is certainly part of the plan. We deserve what is coming to us. We have allowed evil to run rampant in our government and done nothing to try stop it. In fact, most Americans don’t even realize how much trouble we are in.
The US government is weakening itself, warmongering worldwide; and destroying our currency with its fraudulent monetary policies.
The globalists (WEF, Schwab, Sorors, Gtes, et al) will end up trying to control a mess where everybody’s at each other’s throats trying to survive. And the last thing anybody will listen to is them.
China has a long memory, and anyone who has ever set foot in China militarily is “remembered.” The Americans were there in the Boxer rebellion and supported Chiang Kai Shek, who later escaped to Formosa (Taiwan) after losing to Mao. The British had the opium wars, and Japan is a perennial enemy.
I believe, based on travel there and knowing a few Chinese people, that a key focus of China is to be in a position that nobody can dictate to them. Over 95% of their people are Han Chinese, and I don’t believe they want territory, just a controlled buffer, and the BRI and other economic measures seem designed to provide this security.
Taiwan is part of China according to all parties, including Taiwanese, with the disagreement over who the legitimate Chinese government is. Foreign meddling in Taiwan is foreign meddling in China, and you can bet they’ll respond at some point, when they are in a position to decisively win.
The globalist gang can’t understand nationalism, and China can’t understand not nationalism. They are China first. The west is global elites first, with no regard for any country or its borders. The globalists seek to replace all cultures with one designed by them, and are now finding the east isn’t going to ply along.
Our only hope, and ironically the globalists only hope of salvaging anything, is re-industrialization, but their conundrum is that it puts more power back in the hands of people, at odds with their long term objective of a neo-feudal world. I suspect they’ll be going apoplectic soon.
Assume that the conflict between the USA and China will not be settled with an agreement, what other solution is there except war? Does anybody think that just waiting for the decline of the USA is the best strategy?
I came home yesterday from a short vacation in Italy. The autobahn is crowded, the shops in Italy as usual offer a rich choice. The only thing that may annoy is the price for gas, which is 50 percent above the pre war.
The news in the radio tells us, that 141 out of 190 countries in the UN ask Russia to return to pre war.
I know that the situation in the western world is not perfect, but again, I wonder whether those who wait for the decline to happen may be wrong. A decline may happen, with more poverty, but this is a process that will take years. And the problem is not the wealth of the people, but the millitary strength. Here, the NATO is weak, but will ramp up production.
So, as Gorbachev said: Who comes to late will be punished by life.
As a summary: Time for a natural collapse of the western society will be years, but within these years, the military will become more dangerous.
So, if China wants just to survive, it may wait. But if China wants to get rid of the US threats to its existence, they have to go to war.
The decline in Europe…”is a process that will take years”? Really?
Only a few days ago, BASF, Germany`s largest industrial concern announced that it will be closing down large parts of its ammonia production in the country – with immediate effect, that is. This closure alone will lead to the loss of 5`000 jobs.
The de-industrialisation of Germany is now in full swing, the domino-effect of job losses such as at BASF will be absolutely massive: The above example being one out of literally thousands. Germany`s economical ruin will, in turn, lead to Europe`s economic ruin as a whole…fully stocked highway stopovers or not.
There was an even worse situation after 1990 in east Germany, when the before closed market had to compete with the whole world, and hundred thousands of jobs were lost. But this took years, and east Germany recovered.
There are good reasons to see the West in decline, as lack of school education, more administration than productive work, but don’t forget: There are 80 million Germans. 5000 laid off is how many percent?
If you see the product output of the German car industry, you see that there is a reduction of 25 percent in the recent years. But still, no mass unemployment.
The decline will take years. And while there is a decline, Nato will push for more weapons, more amunition. Seeing how slow Russia proceeds, I wonder how Russia can win when the West delivers artillery amunition.
I would not be overoptimistic about China winning against the USA when China doesn’t start a war. China will not win because they prefer to wait. Maybe they are afraid of the nuclear threat. But at the moment, China just accepts the status as it is. It does not push the USA into defense.
Roland –
What’s the most popular ad in Germany these days ? One sees it plastered everywhere:
PLEASE COME WORK FOR US !
I know that. But I know it is because there are too many people who don’t want to work as they happily live on social support.
Germany and the West are far behind of the industry in China and Asia. I am in that business.
Anyway: Will China risk a war?
Where is the light switch that HATO will flip and begin this massive reindustrialazion?As with all HATO B.S. easier said than done.
Believing that China needs to “win” as if it lives to be an adversary is a uniquely American take. It is a mercantile power which seeks to prosper through trade. Thirty years later, the Cold War is still crippling our thinking.
Europe is still running on cheap Russian gas.
By next winter we will be on US LPG at many times the price.
The iceberg has been hit, but the folks aboard have not yet realised what’s coming.
The reason why you don’t see much change in Europe is the govts used their printing power to subsidies energy but this is a debt thinking better times will come.
Cheap Energy and Turkish and African labor is what made Germany a power house.
The storage of gas and oil at beginning of conflict enabled them to ride out this year with relatively low cost increases controlled with subsidising the energy price increases.
As the storage dwindles new supplies at 3 times the cost will come in and they are permanent and not going to change.
Industry will loose competition to China and Asia. Eventually making European industry insolvent all those exports will vanish I hope EU sanction car exports to China. That will set a chain reaction. Once luxury brands from China catch the market world wide not much can be done. Watch TATA move it’s brand Jaguar to India in future. Same will happen to many other brands of Europe similar to what happened to US manufacturing over last 30 years.
Industrial and economic power is the key to military power. Remove those military power becomes hollow
Well said. Europe is a pancreatic cancer victim. It has the diagnosis. Now it is a matter of time. Tick Tock. Tick Tock.
The only way that has any chance of success for West to get out of the modern crisis is to get into full scale war, turn economy into wartime economy and martial law, and attempt to remake it into something more efficient, altho time for that might have already passed – last time they did that (ww2), they had country full of hard working people – so much hard working people that they have caused hyper-production – this time, fat, lazy, woke, etc might just not work well enough for that system to work… It was also much easier back then to repurpose factories – for example car factories today use much more specialized equipment that is not of any use for creating tanks, while during WW2 same equipment could easily be repurposed.
But in order to get into full scale war, they need it to be a “just war” otherwise population resistance to martial law, privilege cutting, rationing and similar would be enormous and generally self defeating.
So, only things that has any chance of igniting “just war” would be undeniable nuclear or large scale chemical use of weapons by RU, or some undeniable RU/CHN concentrated attack on NATO member (especially US), while everything else is just not enough, and that is one of the reasons why RU is going very slowly, and why CHN is avoiding direct conflict, because they want West to break up, and not to give it only thing they really need.
In any case, time for West’s decline will be years, but in case of complete UKR breakdown it will not be many years, because UKR breakdown on the east – 300km away from West is not reason enough to ignite “just war”, and once UKR is broken, other goals like Odessa, Kharkiv and Transnistra could be easily obtained exactly because all combined power of UKR and West will be broken in Donbas.
After that, you will have complete collapse of:
– West’s economy, because after conclusive defeat, any half reputable country, company and individual would ditch dolar and uro – especially after seeing how sanctions and seizing is not just rare, but actually quite probable if you have your own opinion. DE is already getting de-industrialized, and without DE industry, entire Euro block has nothing real to offer to anyone, thus there is no use for their currency anymore other then going there as tourist, and you have a good example in Cuba how only tourist income works.
– West’s military will be so degraded and without wartime economy they will not be able to remake/fix it
– West media sphere would be completely demolished because after all the propaganda, the war is lost, so there would be many inquieries on how that was possible where West and UKR were winning on every turn, but somehow RU won against the whole west, and then UKR and RU casualty reports would get public, after which no one in the West would ever again have a stomach to fight against RU, knowing that they would be loosing in 10:1 ratios and similar.
Ofcourse, this scenario I wrote here is not 100% certain – maybe RU allows the West some face saving exit where all the goals would be achieved but some truths are hidden/masked in order to prevent total collapse, or maybe West manages to provoke RU into “just war” in which case they would again likely loose after dragging this on for years longer or cause MAD which would be the worst scenario for all.
You’re repeating the Keynesian fallacy that wars solve financial crises. It’s absurd! It just replaces one crisis with a bigger crisis. What saved the US from the great depression was the evil FDR (nephew of Joe Stalin) dying.
The main friction point in the world is the fiat currency crisis.
https://internationalman.com/articles/brace-yourself-the-perfect-storm-of-crises-is-converging-in-2023
The USA has defaulted twice… JP Morgan bailed the treasury out once….the second time we defaulted…Nixon took us off the gold standard. Vietnam war bill could not be paid in gold. The US govt financial system depends on ever expanding debt creation or the entire monkey kingdom collapses.
The US govt finance vehicle is a ponzi scheme. Understand.
All fiat printed currency in the history of mankind have defaulted to their intrinsic value: Zero.
When Currencies die…what are the three means of reconcile?
1] Inflation
2] default
3] they take you to war
War will not bring on the Keynesian fallacy of financial solution…. war is going to bring on govt default on debt obligations. The default on social promises…social contracts. The proof to this is the freezing of other soverign countries assets…without a declaration of war. Even during the world wars…banks honored the bonds.
The US is painted in, the FED cannot stop the inflation..or the US govt will not be able to meet the minimum credit card payment on the debt. Then they print, which eventually causes more inflation.
The US currency has lost nearly 10% of it’s purchasing power two years running. Inflation causes social unrest. To stop the inflation…they must raise the rates 1% above the inflation rate. That would put the 10 year T bill over 11%…and the country would not have the resources…to even bring the military troop home.
The war drums with Russia and China… are to do with the US currency. The Ruble and the Yuan must not displaced the reserve status, or the US is bankrupt.
BRICS et all…must bypass the SWIFT system…and that process will take some time.
https://www.bank-codes.com/?q=china
What China knows…is the US cannot finance a world war. Patience.
@Alex,
Full on wars allow you to reorganize your society and clean house (if that is your goal) since emergency powers remove all privileges and stuff that can under regular circumstances prevent you from achieving your goals – when simple and powerful goal unites entire society much can be achieved as there is little understanding for corruption and opposition.
Even Soviet Union got out of WW2 much stronger then it was before the war, since before war it was regional power, and after the war it became undisputed super power.
I am not saying that once they get into full war West would clean house and fix the society, but they would have the best opportunity they might ever get to actually do it – i.e. maybe they would abuse it and make some total dictatorship, but that’s another destroy, and anyway, for any radical societal change they actually need full on war…
Wars bring the scum of society to fore – shysters and similar gangster types
they know this is coming and want a war to cover it up i think
Robert Kiyosaki Just Predicted How the American Economy Will Collapse
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-02-22/robert-kiyosaki-just-predicted-how-american-economy-will-collapse?commentId=63f82e96c8636e001d3aa54c
https://youtu.be/URLzkffy6i4
One thing for me is very clear. If US think that, like in the WWI and WW2 their territory will remain untouched, forget it. US will be destroyed as well as EU.
Of course Russia and China will have serious damage, but will prevail in the end.
In order to continue to dominate the world the US elites are trying to collapse the world faster than they collapse themselves. They are developing their offensives on 3 axes:
– Global for the whole world, global warming, renewable energy, woke ideology that replaces real studies for young people.
– War in Ukraine destruction of the remains of industry in Europe under the guise of war against Russia.
– War in Taiwan to destroy the economic relations between the vassals of the USA and China (NZ, AU, Philippines, Japan, Korea etc….).
This plan assumes 2 things:
1. That the US will not be affected by military operations at home. Not sure. They are losing so dramatically that they may prefer to commit suicide by nuclear war (suicide by cop version).
2. That they will remain a functioning whole capable of rebuilding an industry.
They will fail on 2 to maintain their leadership.
The only purpose of their wars is to destroy their opponents and plunge the world into chaos. We must hope with all our heart that Russia – Iran – China and Brics+ will succeed in making their alliances a functional market very quickly to save the world from the madness of the West.
Isn’t.South Africa a horribly dangerous fragile country with serious division, and grotesque poverty? it does not seem a reliable ally but I al certainly no expert.
Does seem to be a lot of poverty and crime. But they are also the 3rd largest economy in Africa and 2nd or 3rd largest military in Africa. And have a lot of natural resources and vital ports.
The exercises were more about flexing muscle and forging relations then actual combat scenarios. And even a fragile, dysfunctional country can still be useful. Just look at Pakistan.
South Africa is a beautiful country that has dreadful civilian crime. The source of the crime was illegal immigration, reduction of native wages due to the arrival of cheap labor and people turning to crime just to survive….
Kinda like what’s happening in the USA and should be stopped ASAP…
I find it hard to believe that the Chinese are angry about the balloon incident. More likely they are laughing at our stupid response and preparing a flotilla of weather balloons with pie pans attached. It’s a balloon war of attrition!
On the other hand the arrogance and stupidity of the Biden administration is probably very infuriating to China. From speculations about war with China in a few years, to anti-Chinese rhetoric, to the stupid Blinken demand to not supply arms. I’m sure there was also some arm twisting on supporting their stupid sanctions. If Joe doesn’t watch himself, “the big man” might be cut off from Chinese bribes.
Everyone’s laughing at spending millions to shoot down balloons. It also sets the precedent for other nations to do the same when US balloons\etc fly above
Thank you Larry, for continuing to keep us alert to the key movements of the most profound influential forces. Your work shines an illuminating path for us through the dark abyss of false narratives. The world is preparing for global conflict, which means governments around the world will be selling more of their own bonds and will be in less of a position to buy US Treasuries, removing an important part of the “Bid” for US treasuries. As well, the US FED is allowing its balance sheet to shrink, as the FED allows maturing Treasuries in 2023 to simply roll off, without rolling over abut $85 B monthly, removing about a $1 Tr from the US money supply by the end of 2023. These policy changes alone are hostile to asset prices. As western central banks, including the FED, continue to restrict banking system liquidity in response to nasty inflation, policy rates, such as FED Funds, should continue to remain elevated throughout 2023, adding to the weight on asset prices. When you consider the frightening aspects of increased global insecurity, as you have been making clear for us to see, its a mystery as to why an intelligent person would hold any risk asset, other than minerals coming out of the ground, especially the ones we refer to as carbon based energy….
China just has to wait until our DEI takes full effect. C grade minority students matriculating into MIT engineering and such is enough to bury us. To make matters worse, China graduates 20x more engineers than us. Hell so does Russia with 1/2 the population. Won’t be long until they lead in all sectors. Remember they were in rice patties 30 years and already lead in many sectors.
A metaphor for US foriegn policy,
https://youtu.be/6knrgYu8Bgw
It’s ironic that the U.S. establishment by acting like spoiled children dominating every toy and piece of equipment on the playground are actually providing the opportunity for China to come in and act like a rational adult and provide some guidance and demonstrate real leadership.
I’ve posted before about from the Civil War forward the establishment in the US has tried to make every enemy out to be absolute evil and every fight to be for liberty and democracy (whatever that means). It worked well during WW II and the Cold War. The U.S. shouldn’t have gotten into WW II, but Hitler was actually a pretty bad guy. The threat of communism in the Cold War was overblown, but it was an objectively evil ideology. But now? There is no Hitler or Stalin and U.S. posturing just seems stupid. But here we go playing the same damned song over and over.
So, in comes China offering things that sound like they may have been formulated by actual adults trained in diplomacy instead of 30 year old midwit Ivy League graduates who have spent the last 15 years being trained in the ways of diversity and equity.
The U.S. isn’t a serious nation anymore. We’re not even reliably bad or calculating. Our leadership is simply stupid, immature, and greedy. But we have this huge arsenal, so that makes us a problem for the rest of the world. I hope we can kind of be shuffled off the world stage into the corner or banished into the backyard like the crazy drunk uncle who shows up only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mostly ignored, sometimes laughed at, sometimes loved, and mostly tolerated. But I don’t have much faith our leadership will let us get there without there being knockdown drag out fight at the dinner table and the cops getting called.
Regardless of what someone thinks about Hitler, the German people largely stood with him because they were threatened by the same Judeo-world view that is now threatening Russia, China etc.
Neoconservatism is Zionism.
Once one processes politics through that lens its easy to understand the insanity of U.S. foreign policy. It also becomes apparent that most of our history (especially WWII) is a lie to benefit that world view.
JT correct. Zionism is the biggest danger to humanity and has been so for well over a hundred years.
An insidious and mostly cloaked danger that oozes from the swamp and out of all nooks and crannies everywhere, but is always called something else.
Victoria Nuland
https://westernrifleshooters.us/2023/02/24/psa-68/
Don’t go all racist/bigot stone throwing people….all demographics…. all groups..have mafia. This is not the behavior of an entire genetics…an entire religion…. an entire country.
Discernment. People are to be judged on their individual behaviors and choices.
Hear hear!
And Uncanny juxtaposing. What woman is more evil than Nurse Racheted or the Wicked Witch of the West?
Stoltenberg said today that “China does not have much credibility”.
I wonder what conversations between Blinken and global south/BRICS/middle east countries look like these days. Obviously, Tony is not embarrassed to call and threaten and moralize but it must be a blast on the other line, knowing that America has zero credibility and has turned into a desperate terro*ist blowing up pipelines and undermining its own legal and economic system via seizures of assets etc. There must be a chuckle every time he calls, offering a carrot and threatening with a stick.
Now, onto China/USA. Chinese finally dropped the other shoe and publicly picked a side. At this point they and the rest of the world are in the divestiture process from USA economy and politics. The smaller countries of the global south are going to be content to take on more debt and aid from USA, knowing that they probably will not have to return it all the while nodding their head to the Americans (“yeah, yeah, sure….”). In essence, they are all going to bleed the West dry, given that the only thing left for America/EU when going to these countries is to offer money. They’ll take it but they’ll still side with China and Russia.
A debt fueled economy does not equal prosperity. 2-party uni-party system does not equal democracy. 4% of the world’s population having 25% of the world’s prison population does not equal freedom. Most expensive MIC in the world does not equal most powerful military in the world. Being the loudest a*hole in the room shouting insults and threats does not equal anyone caring for what you have to say….
On the subject of Ukraine, where is Ukraine getting its cannon fodder it is sending into battle? A well known source has said that Ukraine has a 700, 000- man army. I don’t know how many combat troops. Combat deaths have to be approaching 200, 000. Is Dima withholding information? However, he does admit that China will be a battle-changer.
Are the Russians using feints to cause Ukraine to respond and re-deploy in areas? Maybe the Russians then will hold off on a large offensive and continue to decimate Ukrainian forces. The US will continue its propaganda and continue to push for more weapons. Attrition is much faster for Ukraine. As Putin says, Russia will not use nuclear weapons unless the US uses them first.
NATO troops are in-Country bigly
Shout out to Larry Johnson from the Moon.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/02/us-hegemony-at-war-with-chinas-global-security-initiative.html#more
Apparently, we are on to China!
Who could have foreseen this coming? :–)
Is Andrei Martyanov right, can the US Navy sneak some attack submarines into the South China Sea and do significant damage to the Chinese surface fleet? Maybe. Although I would suggest it’s about all we can do, conventionally, other than taking out the Three Gorges Dam.
Speaking of which, I’ve been researching the dam from a military perspective for about 20 years now, and found nothing. How hard – or easy! – would it be, to take out this undeclared – but legitimate! – war target using conventional HE?
Does anyone currently residing on this planet have a clue?
Note: Also, do any deep think tank thinkers do proper, reality based war gaming anymore? For instance, I keep reading about how the various combatants will be targeting major cities with their nuclear warheads come the Big One. This is so 1960’s.
A first strike targets the oppenents military capabilities only, and a counterstrike (the Exchange) seeks OVERKILL, which given the limited ammo* of today’s participants, will be all about permanently killing the enemy’s grid, physically, with surface detonations, and spiritually, with high altitude EMP bursts, and the rest of the warheads will descend at Mach 24 with the intention of vaporizing most if not all of the world’s nuclear power plants and waste facilities.
Force multiplicatio is a concept that will never go out of style.
*Limited ammo at the moment, but given recent developments on the rhetorical (and treaty breaking) front, probably only for a few more years. Can anyone say, nuclear arm’s race 2.0? Lmao …
Gee, I guess boomers moving our industrial base to China to get an extra 2 cents on that stonk trade was a bad idea. Gotta condemn their own grandchildren to a dystopic hellworld for that that fishing boat.
On one side we have extremely myopic, proudly immoral clown world that has been “preparing” its military by focusing on pronouns and installing transsexuals at its highest levels of leadership while simultaneously forcing out its most combat effective members (White males) for refusing a dangerous and ineffective medical procedure.
On the other side you have serious countries.
The US neocons stupidly chose to make Russia and China enemies at the same time, ignoring every basic strategic consideration since the late 1960s, which has been made even more critical since China’s rise as an economic power.
China is still a highly centralized, statist/communist, anti-western, power. Xi Jinping looks fondly back on his days as a youth in the Cultural Revolution, and has installed cronies who think as he does. They have always viewed the USA as a top rival, if not enemy, and indeed have targeted the USA for economic espionage and influence. They are not friends of the USA, but they should not be viewed necessarily as an enemy either.
All of this makes the USA/NATO’s war-mongering against a Western, Christian, European, resource-rich Russia even more asinine.
Foreign agent “Levada” published the results of a fresh (January 2023) survey of Russians.
Question: Do you feel confident in the future?
In general, in all age categories (from 18 to 55+), 64% of Russians showed confidence in the future (answers “yes” and “rather yes”).
The share of those confident in the future not only exceeded 50% for the first time in all age groups at the same time, but in all groups at the same time it reached the maximum for each given group over the last 14 years of observation.
The previous survey was six months ago, in September 2022. 46% showed confidence in the future. There was no predominance of confidence in all groups.
https://www.levada.ru/2023/02/21/ekonomicheskie-ozhidaniya-v-nachale-2023-goda/
So we should ask ourselves “does the US have a legitimate national security interest in the Ukraine proxy war and potentially the military defense of Taiwan?” For my part the answer depends on one’s view of US Hegemony.
From the view of US-NATOstan elites (the ones making the policy decisions) the answer is clearly “yes”…their globalist agenda with the US dictating the “international rules-based order” almost entirely depends on US hegemony. Those supporting US hegemony (or a uni-polar world order) will fight fiercely and irrationally to the bitter end–“whatever it takes” says Joe.
China, Russia (and many others) have answered “no…the US has no legitimate national security interest in the Ukraine or Taiwan”…and for the record I agree with that assessment. Rather, a multi-polar world order where sovereignty and mutually beneficial international relations govern is what China and Russia purport to be offering. Xi and Putin have committed to “cooperation without limits” to achieve a multi-polar world order.
Make no mistake, Russia and China are not our friends–they do not have US best interests in mind (and vice versa). What really sucks is that the US government doesn’t have our best interests in mind either. So here we are–a shitty and dangerous historical crossroads where two powerful ideologies are clashing. We’ve been here many times before.
Where does that leave us? Cold War II or World War III–something in between? I wish I knew…the reality is that diplomacy is not going to decide how this ideological clash is decided. A decade of “wars and rumors of wars” appears to be on the horizon…I pray that I am wrong.
VR,
Agree with you re; security concerns n Ukraine. I fail to see that the US has any legitimate interests there.
However, Taiwan….. maybe. Of course that is only because we have become dependent on critical Taiwanese products that we should be producing at home (if we hadn’t descended into greedy clown world). But it is what it is and now we have to deal with that situation.
I still think the outcome of all of this will be a revitalization of US domestic production and the US emerging as truly powerful again. The cloud looming above us has a silver lining.
Glad that you note that neither Russia nor China are our friends. They’re not. Too many here fantasize otherwise.
Eric I hope you are right about the US revitalizing its industrial capacity–long overdue and a strategic mistake to every let it go overseas.
I agree that the US does not has any national security interests in the UKR…however my point was that US decision makers do think we have such an interest or interests…therein lies the conundrum…if you or I were making the decisions things would be different.
Unfortunately war support for the UKR includes both parties and thus far at least 60% or so of the US voting base…of that 60% some are drinking the neo-con Kool-Aid, some don’t care, some are simply uninformed or misinformed.
What to do…what to do?
Eric, you are spot on. Countries do not HAVE friends. People actually don’t either but that’s another topic. I do disagree with you on one thing. If we fell back. Quit spending our money on insane wars. Concentrated on our own country? We could be fabulously successful. We have fuel and food. It is hard to park a T90 on our front yard. But with all those assets, we will not succeed.
We are more of a socialist planned economy than Russia at this point. Our largest employer is the government. The teacher unions are systematically destroying every future generation. Drug use is endemic. And people are lost in the fantasy world of their “smart” devices. Look at the insanity of the 1% LGBTQ crowd dominating and controlling our whole public discourse.
With all our advantages, we are finding ways to fuck this up. And we have no serious political class. I will probably vote for DeSantis. But seriously. He is a joke. He is just the least bizarre alternative.
And our debt overhangs us. Regardless of government statistics, inflation is overwhelming. Half the fucking country is not working. People don’t find 40 Trillion of government debt bad, because they are personally awash in credit card debt themselves. We exist to buy worthless shit, and then go rent a storage unit because we don’t have room for it.
And our fictitious GDP? How much is the ludicrous medical system? The inflated education system? The financial system? All pretend creators of NOTHING.
We doomed brother.
Curt,
No disagreement. If I were to be elected King of The Realm, the day after conducting the Great Washington DC Purge, I would have the US rebuild itself and stay out of ALL foreign entanglements – that includes China/Taiwan. Whatever economic pain the US might experience should China do the worst with Taiwan, a war with China would create even more. If there’s going to be pain, then it would be best experienced as an investment in our own country that would, before long, yield pleasure. Sort of like an athlete working out. Yeah, it can hurt, but it’s a healthy hurt that returns dividends. All of these wars merely represent more money down the tubes and addiction to more war.
As an aside, since politicians seem to require graft, why not get the graft from industry sectors that would help rebuild America – everything from the builders of factories and the roads to them to projects like desalination plants in California. There’s no end to the positive work that could be done and sources of kickbacks. Why is it always the MIC and the stupid green energy sector (to a lessor extent)?
Aren’t you forgetting about the US’s astronomical debt? If ever it’s payback time, the citizens will be dirt poor for a long time, slaving away.
Curt,
Forgot to mention that I too will probably vote for DeSantis, but he’s a neocon. At least he’s not woke and all of that. When it comes to war, they’re all the same. As my grandmother on my middle eastern side used to say, “Left nostril, right nostril – what difference does it make? They’re all snot from the same nose”
I fear your prayers will go unanswered.
Well said and I wholehearedly and enthusiatically endorse your assessment, with one small caveat, I don’t think we have been here “many times before.”
At least not from a species point of view. Once the nuclear genie was let of the bottle at Los Alamos in 1945, the dynamic of a possible permanent human presence in the universe changed forever.
We’ve really had only one great power rivaly since that genie was unleashed, the US vs USSR, until we arrived at whatever it is we have now; nation-state conglomerate Block A vs nation-state conglomerate Block B? The Hegemon vs the Mulipolarity? The Hegemon vs Everybody?
Still unclear, but I will say this, as someone who spent the first 31 years of his existence living under the shadow the old threat, this one seems a lot more frightening.
Not that the old one wasn’t scary. It’s just that I’ve never been able to get past the notion that my country is a suicidal one, and when push comes to shove, we will not go gentle and alone into that good night, or face our end like a lone nut gunman. Instead, we will strap the explosives to the chest and take as many souls with us into the afterlife, as we can.
I dunno Max, believe it or not, I have a mystical side to me that tells me that we’ve been here before – in this case “we” as a species (though individually too for some us). I’m gonna get weird on you now…..Most all cultures have a tradition of a great flood, or some other global cataclysm that wiped out highly advanced civilizations everywhere. Anthropological studies keep moving the dates around as to when our species emerged. It now seems much longer ago that original “scientific” doctrine had it. Hard to tell though because the earth pretty much recycles itself continuously and, over geological time, completely (something the Russians should consider. They may be recycled in geological time before they achieve their great victory at the rate they’re going). Anyhow…We have probably been “nuked”, one way or another, more than once; or if not by our own hand, by nature’s. Someone always survives. Knowledge is lost and civilization takes a giant leap backwards (Mao reels in his unholy grave).
The point not being that nuclear war is ok after all; more that the same demons and angels have been competing over us for eons – and pushed us to the same brink before. Which – demons or angels – we listen to and obey will determine the outcome. We’ll either have another global cataclysm or we’ll finally learn. Sadly, when denies the existence of God, one is opening oneself to the demons. That that is the way we have gone is becoming obvious in the insanity and perversion of our society – which is exactly what the ancient myths say occurs, sometimes even causes, the cataclysm. Good chance cataclysm is most likely is. The devil is walking large these days, cocky bastard.
So nuclear warfare does represent a new critical dimension in our immediate understanding of warfare, it may not really be a new force concept in the human experience (archetypes, spiritual dimensions and that stuff). It’s all psychology and spirituality, you know. Everyone wants to think it’s about reason – even 5D reason in the case of the Russians – but it isn’t. It’s all about passions and non-physical influences. Disregard those at your own peril – and mine 🙁
Maybe sending off the nukes has a real emotional appeal to a lot of people. They know they can’t quite say it out loud, but……
Is the ground frozen yet? Hannibal’s mighty elephant squadrons await their winter offensive on Rome itself, the very center of the perverted empire of lies. Surely they will triumph over such evil. If only that damn ground would hurry up and freeze
“I’m gonna get weird on you now …”
Not so weird, I’ve run into the “Life always finds a way” argument hundreds of times the web. My usual response; this may be true, or this may be false, but either way, wouldn’t it prudent for humans to proceed cautiously, under the assumption that we can’t possibly know?
Really, I just want to see a legitimate study of the effects of a Full Exchange on the ozone layer. I’ve been waiting all my adult life for it, and I am quite sure my life will end before I see one.
re: “Hannibal’s mighty elephant squadrons”
That is Italian propaganda Eric! Lmao … Seriously. A good friend of mine is in Italian ex-pat, and he was taught in school that the only reason Hannibal repeatedly beat the pant off his people is because Hannibal had elephants and the Romans didn’t.
“Brother, there were no elephants involved at the Battle of Canae,” I always tell him, “when the Carthaginians slaughtered to the last man the largest army you ever put in the field, ” but he refuses to believe me.
Aside from his genius, what usually made the difference for Hannibal as he marauded around the Italian Penisula winning battle after battle; he had with him the Numidian cavalry, certainly in argument as the finest mercenary force the world has known.
When he didn’t have them, when they actually switched allegiances and fought with Scipio Africanus and the Romans at the Battle of Zama on the Tunisian plain, Hannibal’s army was easily outflanked by the Numidians and ignominiously routed.
The treachery* of the Numidians make me think of Wagner. One of the Conspiracy Theories that’s been brewing in my head, and I have plenty of time for brewing as I watch this go slow SMO, is Putin and the Russian General Staff are wanting to use up the Wagner Group before they get too big for their britches.
Only whence this task is done, will the great offensive(s) commence.
And if the “Wagner proceedure” causes a delay such that the offensive(s) must be launched during the spring Rasputitsa, so be it, because since when have the Russians ever given a shit about mud? Mud is a Wehrmacht excuse.
Is the ground muddy yet? ;–)
*Of course, in the world of the mercenary, one man’s treachery is another man’s sound business decision.
Was with you until…
“Russia and China are not our friends–they do not have US best interests in mind (and vice versa).”, which seems to confuse your earlier distinction between national and imperial interests.
I would argue that those two have much more of America’s national interests in mind than the supranational “Globalists” who’ve hijacked the state machinery of America’s national power and harnessed it to their Imperial project. Being supranational, the Empire is as anti-American as it is anti-Chinese or anti-Russian.
The Globalists have no regard for the well-being of Americans or creating & managing a healthy nation, and neither has the national government they now control. Examples abound. OTOH, China & Russia recognize that a healthy America has much to offer the world and would welcome its presence at the table of Great Powers.
Chinese, Russians, Globalists, EU, USA….all snots from the same nose. The power hungry always rise to the top and control the honest, decent people, the meek, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. It cannot be any other way. I’m from the US government and I’m here to save you = I ‘m from the Chinese government and I’m here to save you = I’m from the Russian government and I’m here to save you = I’m from the hyper-tech-global wiz bang newest and greatest concept government and I’m here to save you.
There is no government that is going to save you. Save yourself. WE need to Stand up for our rights as individuals and communities. Yes, we will probably get hurt in doing so. There’s the choice.
A new war every year is a bit too much , you’ll end up without countries to “help” quite quickly.
Talking about escalation https://russian.rt.com/ussr/article/1115555-pridnestrove-mid-zayavlenie-ukraina-nato
“The RF Armed Forces will adequately respond to the provocation”: the Russian Foreign Ministry warned Kyiv and NATO against adventurous steps in Transnistria
Any actions that pose a threat to the security of compatriots, peacekeepers and the military in Transnistria will be regarded as an attack on Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. On the evening of February 23, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that Kyiv had stepped up preparations for an invasion of the PMR. The department also announced the accumulation of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near the Ukrainian-Pridnestrovian border. In this regard, on Smolenskaya Square, the United States, NATO member countries and Kyiv were warned against “next adventurous steps.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement in connection with information about the preparation by the Kyiv regime of a military provocation against the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.
Russian diplomats stressed that Moscow consistently stands for resolving any issues through political and diplomatic means.
Also on Smolenskaya Square, they called for no doubt that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation would adequately respond to the provocation of the Kiev regime, if any, and would ensure the protection of compatriots, the Russian peacekeeping contingent, military personnel of the Operational Group of Russian Forces and military depots in the village of Kolbasna in Pridnestrovie.
“Any actions that pose a threat to their security will be considered, in accordance with international law, as an attack on the Russian Federation,” the Russian Foreign Ministry concluded.
On the morning of February 23, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that the Kiev regime was preparing a provocation against Pridnestrovie, fighters of the nationalist battalion “Azov” * would be involved in its implementation. It was noted that a staging of an alleged offensive of the Russian Armed Forces from the territory of Transnistria is planned. This situation will be used by the Ukrainian command as a pretext for an invasion.
On the evening of the same day, the defense department added that Kyiv had stepped up preparations for the invasion of the PMR.
“The implementation of the planned provocation by the Ukrainian authorities poses a direct threat to the Russian peacekeeping contingent deployed legally in Transnistria,” the ministry said in a statement.
Also, the RF Ministry of Defense stated that they are recording a significant accumulation of personnel and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near the Ukrainian-Pridnestrovian border. In addition, the Ukrainian formations deployed artillery in firing positions, and also unprecedentedly increased the number of flights of unmanned aircraft of the Armed Forces of Ukraine over the territory of the PMR.
In turn, the Bureau for Reintegration of the Moldovan government denied the information about the movement of the military in the security zone.
“The Ministry of Defense monitors all events, actions and changes that take place in the region, as well as in the territory controlled by the Tiraspol regime. We note that at present there are no direct threats to the military security of the state, ”the message of the Moldovan military department says.
At the same time, the co-chairman of the Joint Control Commission (JCC) for managing the peacekeeping operation from Pridnestrovie, Oleg Belyakov, noted that the peacekeepers are ready for any development of events.
“US Hegemony and Its Perils” presents a high-level indictment of the US as a whole and concludes with the following:
The United States must conduct serious soul-searching. It must critically examine what it has done, let go of its arrogance and prejudice, and quit its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.
I think while the paper presents a good high-level summary of the list of US crimes, there are a few areas to consider in the next version. “US Hegemony and Its Perils” leaves one wondering “If the US suddenly ceased to exist, would it be such a bad thing?” and ends with a demand that sounds like a mother scolding a small child. It does not specifically mention who should change their behavior except the “US” as whole. I have personally done a lot of sole searching and behavior modification but to demand that society as a whole do the same, is unrealistic.
The US is collapsing before our eyes. How many homeless do you need to see? The US elites are almost totally incompetent, and delusional about the world around them, from too many decades of believing their own bullshit. Rule by the Harvards and Yales has been a catastrophic failure.
American foreign policy consists of dropping turds in everyone’s punch bowl. Nothing positive in any of it. No one has anything to gain from siding with us. To be allied with us doesn’t even protect you from our lunacy and/or color revolution.
Well looks like NATO and Biden blinked. They will throw the Coke Head Mayor of Kiev Zelinsky under the bus after all.
NATO and US calling for negotiations with Russia and partition of Ukraine.
Russia will not do this I do not think. They will go all the way to Poland now and not accept piece meal crumbs.
They have the hammer Ukraine is finished.
Hungary wants Transcarpathia, which was part of Hungary up until WW2, Poland wants Galicia which was part of Poland until ww2 almost all the land as far east as Kiev. Russia will take Transnistria and Odessa all the way to the Donbas, all the coast.
Ukraine will be left a rump. With 500,000 KIA and wounded.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/west-cold-shoulders-chinas-ceasefire-proposal-ukraine
What shocks is the arrogance of the current US Governing Elite, they assume they can take on Russia and China simultaneously and win, this is absurd as the response to the Twin Towers attacks demonstrated, the fighter jets were sent in the wrong directions, the military on the ground were uncertain who’s responsible for what, the police closed Lower Manhattan making it difficult to mobilise the DOH’s there, the hours after the first attack was pure chaos.
To point at the core of what went wrong is hard, but the structure of the military may be partly to blame, it’s structure resembles a mushroom, large at the top, thinner at the bottom, the size may be too large to handle the whole efficiently.
This may explain why the US military, the fighting layers, not the politically appointed top are so adamant that they don’t face the Russians head on in Ukraine.
9/11… “ the hours after the first attack was pure chaos”
That was a feature, not a bug.
If a hot conflict with China starts. I wonder if and how that will affect commerce and trade with China. Since the US depends so heavily on all sorts of products, finished goods, component parts, drugs, etc. from China. They can’t easily outright order their companies to embargo the US as those companies deal directly with their customers in the US, me being one of them for circuit boards. Or can they? Curious, will my suppliers in China stop answering emails and phone calls and taking wire payments, not shipping, putting me out of business? The folks in Wasington dont seem to be worrying about this.
The CSIS war game was interesting. Yes, the US “succeeded” but the cost was far steeper than the US can actually afford. And that cost still left Taiwan essentially destroyed.
I say it’s worth it, as long as we get rid of “slava Ukraine”, and make everyone in The West chant “glory to Taiwan” in Mandarin.
the entire DC premise of a US-China confrontation is wrong.
China does not have to invade Taiwan. Naval blockade (with exemptions for food) + gradual (or instant) destruction of its electrical grid. Taiwan can’t run on diesel generators and no commerical airliner will fly anywhere near Taiwan during a blockade.
Even if the US could magicaĺly send every carrier group (even those under refit), the odds favor the guy fighting on his doorstep
Humans suck! Extinction is the best possible outcome.
CCP…you must mean CPC.
I assume you are from the A.U.S…
Using CCP is a giveaway you are an anti China Troll.
True, and like with Russia (and many other things), all of the (Brave New) Western World has turned into propaganda outlet. Obvious indicator of that is Wikipedia, where the page starts with: “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is …”. It explains that the name is wrong in the first sentence, and then continues using it troughout.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party