"If we're really being honest here, Russia poses no threat to the United States at all."
"Too many careers depend upon keeping our assumptions exactly where they were in the fall of 1977, when fighting the Soviet Menace consumed the lion's share of our federal budget," Carlson said.
"So here in Washington that's what we're doing. Our real fear is that the rest of America will at some point discover that the Soviet Union no longer exists," he continued.
Carlson went on to list things about Russia intended to minimize their power: an economy the size of Italy's, a military budget that is one-tenth of ours and an aircraft carrier "that needs to be towed around the ocean because it's broken." Newsweek
————
Yup. It is true, pilgrims. The USSR no longer exists.
For years after the fall of that communist monstrosity, Soviet specialist analysts in the IC used to sing at office Christmas parties in Washington that they were dreaming of "A Red Christmas Just Like The Ones They used to Know." These characters had lived "high on the hog" since WW2. They got the lion's share of everything, funds, attention, you name it. Poor sods like me who specialized in regions where people actually fought each other with rusty rifles and machine guns were definitely the poor relatives come to town hat in hand.
And then, all of a sudden, the Soviet specialist people were essentially out of a job. Or, at least, they were a hell of a lot less important. The same thing happened to all the Iranian specialists when the Pahlavis went down. Fortunately for me, my good old Arabs and other assorted ME scoundrels kept right on bashing and backstabbing each other while most of them sat on a great big puddle of oil. That and the Zionist thing kept me well employed.
The Soviet guys needed a few years to rebound, but as Tucker says, they have done so by merchandising the notion that Russia = the USSR. The two pomposities (Taylor and Kent) from the Foreign Service who testified yesterday made it very clear that their real bitch against Trump is that 1. He thinks he can do business overseas without their bureaucratic intervention and 2. He doesn't really accept the assumption that Russia is an indispensable and inevitable enemy. Kent rather sadly said that it has been a basic assumption of his entire career that Russia is THE ENEMY. The whole swamp is infected with group think to that effect. In the case of the Foreign Service it is remarkable that such a group of soi-disant intellectuals and sophisticated veterans of the FOREIGN SERVICE EXAM should in truth be just another bunch of conformists seeking the approval of their colleagues. But, then, that is how one gets promoted.
No, pilgrims, China is THE REAL ENEMY. pl
Bingo..Pat. Neocon kabuki is back for a run. Rats. Can the US budget support the realities of Belt to World China? Or have we already been sucked in?
For the life of me, I can’t understand why we push Russia towards China and away from us. If we really think China a problem, then it seems a strategic imperative to get Russia on board.
I taped the Schiff hearings and watched a few bits and pieces. I agree, this seems very much to be about continuing the anti-Russia narrative, defending the foreign aid money (with accompanying commissions and host nation graft) and sinecures for neocons. Did we really spend $billionss on the NED to orchestrate the “orange revolution” that replaced a “pro-Russian” leaning government with a “pro-Western” one? What did the USA gain by that? An obligation to sepnd billions for years to come? Thank goodness career non-bureaucrat Taylor got all those years of employment. Imagine if he and fellow witness Mr. Kent had been obligated to work in the private sector.
I believe Trump announced a reduction in NSC staff at the White House. He should reduce that down to about ten people. Then he should reduce the foreign service staff by similar numbers.
China isn’t our enemy, they are our competitor.
“China is THE REAL ENEMY.“
Sir,
I couldn’t agree with you more.
Colonel
‘When’ Putin decides to take Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomolsky urging and create a new Warsaw Pact 2, and the Ukraine slides back to the peaceful existence between the two before the Obama Clinton regime installed their Nazi puppets. Obama Clinton regime will have given the new Warsaw Pact 2 a lot of lethal military weapons.
U.S. made Javilin anti-tank missiles sitting in warehouses in the Ukraine, with at least a 150 more readying to be shipped by State to the Ukraine. There were 210 shipped to the Ukraine last year just ripe for the picking.
Meanwhile the Russians now have in their possession a fully in tact Israeli Stunner that was handed over to them by Syria.
Anticipate the Ukraine withdrawal from the Minsk agreement.
The Ukraine history lessons I heard from the 2 impeachment witnesses yesterday grew tiresome, and yet it was obvious that to suggest Russia isn’t the threat it used to be is considered a heresy that no one of either party dare speak. The dogged and determined Cold Warriors seem to have done a good job of controlling the narrative.
Colonel
I am not sure that China needs to be an enemy – but China is certainly America’s number one geopolitical rival. Unfortunately for those Chinese who would like to see China become the worlds #1 hegemon, the Chinese leadership doesn’t understand that the biggest chimp can’t complete with a smaller chimp who is better at forming alliances. China is nowhere close to as effective as the US at building alliances and coalitions. Those nitwit neocons may however force China and Russia into an alliance.
I agree with you that China is the one to worry about. Even Russia sees what you’re referring to and has decided not to seek a military alliance with China.
I remember during my brief 1992 stint at INR watching the old Soviet hands turned into what they called “hall walkers.” Just spending the day wandering down the corridors at Main State with nothing to do nowhere to go. Like ghosts. Little did we know that they (or their progeny) would so soon be back on top! Yippee!
In what sense is China an enemy?
Even at the peak of the cold war -the first an hopefully the only one- there was cooperation between the rivals, maybe not as romantic as the Elba encounter or the allied days of WWII, but quite effective anyway, joint fishing developed the american fishing industry that made Dutch Harbor the biggest US port by fishing volume. Small example, there is space as well and surely a lot of areas could be explored, as partners Russia and the USA have more in common than with other cultures, Russians are europeans after all. But it seems there is a lot of people in the USA interested in not burying once and for all the Soviet Union.
A++++!!!!!!!!!!!
as a junior varsity USAID FSO, this is 12,847% on the mark!!!
In the case of the Foreign Service it is remarkable that such a group of soi-disant intellectuals and sophisticated veterans of the FOREIGN SERVICE EXAM should in truth be just another bunch of conformists seeking the approval of their colleagues. But, then, that is how one gets promoted.
Yes; and while Americans remain focused on Russia, the Chinese are quietly buying their way into Africa and the Pacific.
I fully agree with Pat’s analysis on this.
Let me add that these folks are anti-democratic and act against the constitution.
Trump got elected after campaigning for better relations with Russia.
It is the elected president of the U.S. who is entitled to define the “national interest” and foreign policy goals, not the “steady state”.
I disagree with many of Trump’s foreign policy views. But he is entitled to pursue those.
The prosecutor in Ukraine who was investigating Burisma and Biden dossier gets dismissed because he did not take a newly required test while on sick leave.
The report about that states in its last paragraph:
“This dossier states that Ukrainian prosecutors have evidence of corruption aimed at personally enriching Joe Biden.” (machine translation)
Prosecutor Kulik, leading the Burisma case, will be dismissed from the Prosecutor General
https://zn.ua/UKRAINE/veduschego-delo-burisma-prokurora-kulika-uvolyat-iz-genprokuratury-336088_.html
The insidious danger of China seems to go right over people’s heads, compared to the nonexistent one of Russia. An example, Russia embraces its minorities, notably even the most historically recalcitrant ones occupy the higher echelons of the Russian military and security system. I’m looking at you Chechens, and that was only in the 90s. China wipes them off the face of the earth. Go to any right-leaning news website and look at stories about the Xinjiang concentration camps, the lemmings will be cheering China on. Muslims=Bad. Well, you could be next. The Chinese colonies of anglo Canada aren’t that far away. But hey, the plastic crap is worth it I guess. It should be seen as a patriotic duty for Americans to avoid buying Chinese products, no tariffs needed.
“China is THE REAL ENEMY.”
What puzzles me even more than our continuing obsession with Russia is their continuing obsession with us. If China is our real enemy, it is vastly more the enemy of the Russians. The Russians are paranoid about defensible borders on their west, where there is no perceptible will for military adventure and consistently declining strength. Meanwhile they face real threats to much less defensible borders on their east with declining resources. It feels as though they have their priorities backwards.
“In direct contravention of U.S. interests” says the NBC and quotes a member of the permanent state who declares “it is clearly in our national interest” to give weapons to Ukraine.
If that is the premise, then the Democrats will have elected Donald Trump… just like they did the last time with a similarly premise-based strategy to nominate Hillary Clinton. No one to blame but themselves.
Daniel Good
A self-consciously focused geo-political rival that intends to dominate the western Pacific Ocean area at the expense of US trade and military presence.
Our real enemies can be found at 50 Constitution Ave NE and 45 Independence Ave SW Washington, DC.
re silc
As a USAID FSO you must have been subjected to many snubs and condescensions from the main state types.
all
I agree with the point made here that China is at present a cometitor but one who seem destined to be an enemy. Trump is IMO trying to head that off by bliunting China’s ambitions by demonstrating strength of purpose.
Serge, some 10 years ago, an American couple tried just that, to avoid Chinese products. It’s possible if you are willing to sacrifice the time and energy to research. It takes more than just avoiding WalMart. Clothing was easy thanks to Vietnam and Sri lanka, but Christmas presents, blades for your blender, etc were more difficult. Hardest thing was children’s shoes. Here’s the link:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12056295
The Ukraine thing is much bigger than that and why the Dems wont let the Repubs call Alexandra Chalups for the hearings.
If they did we would all find out that the Dems colluded with the Ukraine to get dirt on Trump and have the Ukraine officals publically say Manafort was working with the Russians.
Whatever Trump did isn’t worse than turning the US congress into a Kangaroo Court.
Read all about DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa , Ukraine American activist for Ukraine.
Ukrainian Embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/441892-ukrainian-embassy-confirms-dnc-contractor-solicited-trump-dirt-in-2016
All those nuclear weapons and missiles pose no threat at all?
China operates as a sovereign nation in its own interest.
The US operates as a International Shopping Bizarre where 30 pieces of silver buys economic, domestic and foreign policy.
China uses business deals to expand, the US use coups and war.
Change or lose is not hard to figure out.
Herbert Ely
Possession does not equal intent. The possession of these legacy weapons from the USSR is the biggest reason why we should try to have reasonable relations with Russia.
catherine
OK I will put you down as believing that China is a peaceful, benevolent country that is no threat to the US.
But, but…some Demming said they are heroic heroes, these brave back-stabbing, careerist turds that do the hard work of sending other’s sons and daughters to unnecessary, evil wars. While they climb the bureaucratic ladder. The pinnacle being considered #1 Russia Hater in all the IC land. Wreaths and Garlands for these brave psychopaths!
I don’t think China is peaceful or benevolent.
I do think it is a threat as a ‘competitor’
But….who is to blame for that?…who de-industrized the US, who turned US companies into multi nationals allowed to offshore and import back into the US with no penalty…who did away with protective quotas …..look right across the river from you, there they are.
So what is the solution? How does the Us get its mo jo back?
There are now around 5 million Chinese immigrants in the United States..Legal and Illegal..Most came in During the Bill and Hillary Clinton Years..and During the Barack Obama/Clinton Administration when they took Soft Noodle Foreign Policys to “Asia”that made Mao Do a Happy Dance…So..Mostof these Chinese Immigrants came to California ..San Francisco.and…..Silicon Valley for a Steath Coup of The Tech Industry…and The Other Majority of Chinese “Immigrants..are In and Around New York..for about 50% of total Chinese Immigration…According to Wiki..”Chinese Americans.” most have No religion…and Most Vote DEMOCRAT..From British Columbia..(Cartels) Washington (Cartels) and California..They have Quite the “Import/Export” Business going..including enough Drugs across the Mexican Border..to KILL everyone in the United States…Yes…So Peaceful..They Love the United States..$$$$
Raise tariffs across the board. A reversal of the international Free Trade regime that brought us to this point. US allies, partners etc would need to be “encouraged” to do the same.
This would force China (and Asia) to focus more strongly on developing their internal markets.
This would be done by raising local wages (in order that the populace could afford the higher prices) Increase Governmental transfers to the general populace via Medical and Welfare benefits, and by reducing systemic subsidies to Exporters.
We are still the clear and present danger to Russia. If the President triumphs over the establishment–as seems likely–he’ll have room to begin normalizing relations with Russia as he’s promised, but that’s still an if. If you feel as I do that the establishment’s rhetoric against Russia belies deadly intent you must realize that if it succeeds in ousting Trump we will quickly find ourselves overlooking the chasm of war–in fact we are only two steps from hell as it is.
As for China, I’m willing to believe that V. Putin understands that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” is conditional upon knowing well your enemy’s enemy (something that some commentators don’t seem to grasp), and fostering anti-communism as he does has no illusions about the CCP. Unless China casts an envious eye northwards, however, I would be willing to leave tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow too. Perhaps Patrick Armstrong will shed some light on Russian thinking here.
Oops, “belies” ought to be “accurately conveys”. My excuse for my poor English is that I’m an American.
I believe Catherine’s point is that US elites are to blame. And only US elites can fix our problems.
So true!
Why does the US believe it has the right to dominate the western Pacific Ocean at the expense of China’s trade and military presence? World War II has been over for a long time.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” —Upton Sinclair
Kids in the Hall — Communism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83tnWFojtcY
Whose? Ours?
The military industrial complex needs a Big Enemy in order to justify its lavish budgets.
The spooks need a Big Enemy in order to justify Big Brother keeping an eye on you, interfering in elections, and so forth.
The 1% need a Big Enemy because otherwise the citizens might start clamoring for reform or asking why they can’t have nice things, and paying for those nice things might take money out of rich people’s pockets. “We don’t have time for that now! Don’t you know there’s a war on? We have to fight Saddam/Milosevic/Bin Laden/ISIS/Assad/Putin/Xi whatever and then maybe we can talk about education or something…”
China doesn’t make a good Big Enemy, because there are too many critical trade ties that might otherwise be disrupted and that would cause all kinds of chaos in rich people’s accounts and corporate supply chains and not only. So Russia it is.
Kolomoiskii was making a threat, but he has no intention of carrying it out.
If he were to do so, expect western prosecutors to take a sudden interest in his activities and start freezing his assets, expect the IMF to hold up the latest aid tranche as a result of its dissatisfaction with Ukraine’s anticorruption efforts, expect a Maidan 3.0 or a coup.
Kolomoiskii is simply trying to get come concessions.
I have just been watching Steve Bannon on this. He points out that a “Free Trade” USA up against a Mercantilist China is no contest. He asserts that Trump is attempting to redress the balance, strongly opposed by American interest groups whose business model depends on cheap labour.
All this was implicit in that supremely important 2016 American Presidential election campaign. It was then and there that this question was articulated and fought over. The similar “populist” movements we see in Europe – Brexit or the dissident Continental “populist” movements – largely failed to articulate these problems or even to develop the terms in which these problems can be discussed in the political arena.
That was unfortunate because this is obviously not solely an American problem. It is the central problem the West faces. Western countries, if they are to be governed in the interests of their peoples rather than in the interests of their elites, cannot compete with cheap labour, whether that cheap labour is obtained by unrestricted immigration or by outsourcing.
Setting aside the ideological stuff (a big ask!) any government is the sum of the pressures exerted on it by interest groups. A German asparagus farmer will go out of business if he insists on using German labour. He must use cheap imported labour to survive because his competitors do. An entire sector thus becomes dependent for its survival on cheap labour.
That sector has far more political clout than the scattered individual German workers – who may not even know why they are priced out of that labour market, or who believe it’s an inevitable and therefore unstoppable process.
The same mechanism operates for, say, the fruit industry in the southern USA. Scaled up, it operates for the steel industry – for just about any industry or sector that is not protected. And there are few of those.
Automation tightens the screws on the process. A paint shop that used to employ three hundred now runs on robots and a dozen or so workers. Trouble is, once home industry has been gutted that paint shop itself is more likely to be located abroad – and, naturally, its equipment and maintenance supply chain.
Our get out from this destructive process used to be comparative advantage. Western countries could produce goods – and services – that were well beyond the ability of other countries to produce. But the areas of high tech and IT and even financial services that used to be almost exclusively a Western preserve are no longer so. Ricardo is dead. His model depends on each individual country being able to do something better and cheaper than any other. When we tend to no Western country being able to do that – we’re obviously not there yet but it’s going that way – then comparative advantage fails to act as a mechanism leading to increased prosperity for all.
It needs no political conspiracy therefore, no behind the scenes machinations of the elites, to set a Western country to auto self destruct. It happens of itself once the framework is established. Once the various sectors and therefore interest groups require decay for their survival then that decay is as inevitable as water flowing downhill.
If China is a problem (for a multiplicity of reasons I believe it could become one, to itself as well as to us) then simply by holding to a destructive economic model we are furnishing it with the materials to make it a more severe problem.
I’ve also been watching the inimitable Ann Coulter. Her scathing criticisms of President Trump and his administration are no doubt well aimed and justified. Tell me of any politician or administration that is not similarly open to criticism. But those criticisms are beside the point. Unless Trump, alone of all major Western statesmen, manages to hold to the points he articulated so powerfully in that key election in 2016, we can forget about this or that country posing a danger to stability. The Western countries will be too rotted out themselves to have any say in the matter.
Note that Carlson has the ONLY program in the MSM American media that hosts genuine [and most contrarian] Russia scholar Stephen Cohen. Check out his book that goes through the Russia or dangerous enemy theory and debunks it thoroughly. He speaks the language fluently and spent years of his life over yonder.
Carlson also has the ONLY show that provides a respectful forum for Tulsi Gabbard to explain her ideas and defends her against the Clintonistas shameful charges against her.
Russia is the enemy in the sense they can destroy us before we can destroy them. This state of affairs is unacceptable because it calls into question our status as the world’s only Super Power. It also makes them impervious to our desire to overthrow their current regime, freezing in place the current stalemate. Our only alternative is to plunge into proxy wars on their border, regardless of the risk or the cost, not only for the sake of our security, but for the international corporations that drive our market-driven foreign policy. Until the world greatest land mass (Russia) and the world’s largest population (China) submit to our complete domination of their markets and their resources, we have no alternative but to pursue a policy of their utter destruction. There’s a reason self-help books sit at the top of the non-fiction charts. Everyone needs a dogma, and this is ours.
” what Putin came to power to do was to modernize Russia, and that does not involve a cold war with the West. Period. End of story. That’s his mission. He wants to go down in history as the man who did this. Cold war, not to mention hot war, is spoiling what he sees as his mission.”
Stephen F Cohen
more here:
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/13/ukrainegate-impeachment-saga-worsens-us-russia-cold-war/
Guest,
If the meme “China is right about Islam” ever gets traction perhaps the free press would do some investigating and you’ll have an opportunity to develop a different perspective.
catherine,
The American consumers, which buys the cheapest whenever possible. There is now, I believe, no turning back. Industry has been off-shored, the horse has left the barn. Unless the American consumers are willing to pay several times the prices they now see on the shelves at WalMart and like-such stores due to taxes. The myth that China is paying the tariffs is not going to hold for long.
The globalists believed this process, the process of the rest of the world “catching up” inevitable, and they also believed that in time the workers in China, Mexico, SE Asia, et al would demand a higher standard of living which would someday make the US competitive again. They even believed that the US would be intrinsically better structured than most to compete on this hoped-for level playing field. It’s not utterly void of logic. Better hope not, anyway.
Mark,
The offshoring did not produce price reductions that would need offsetting by “several times” the current prices. The “myth” is that Americans “need” a new version of a durable good just because it is advertised as bigger or better. Individual Americans aren’t going to suffer by using last year’s tv, washing machine or phone.
I agree with Quartered Safe Out Here. “Avoid China” can be very hard to do. Enough American industry has been exterminated that there is no made-in-America version of many items to find anymore.
Even things that were made in other First World countries are made in China now. When I wanted garden clippers of various kinds, I could still find good not-China clippers made by Fiskars of Finland. Just lately every Fiskars anything I look at says in tiny letters “made in China”.
I remember reading 10 or more years ago about how some high-powered Yuppie Investors had bought Stanley Thermos to shut down their plants in Tennessee and have them made in China instead. To get rich by working the differential-costs-and-conditions arbitrage rackets as per Free Trade. So I bought some Tennessee Stanleys from a couple of stores for the future, knowing that they would eventually all be gone.
Sometimes, made-in-China is the only thing there is now. One would pay more for the made-in-America version, but it doesn’t exist.
Exactly. America should . . . withdraw from the WTO, cancel MFN for China, work with Mexico and Canada on at least a partial repeal of NAFTA allowing for each country to re-protectionise its industry and agriculture, look at how many of the GATT Rounds we should withdraw from in order to seal off our national economy against undercutting by lower costs-and-standards areas.
A re-protectonised America would be able to use the next few decades to restore those basic survival industries we used to have and keep eachother employed with. Americans used to make our own tableware and pickle jars and etc. for example. And we are still smart enough to make a spoon or a knife or a fork or a pickle jar at living wages and tolerably low pollution levels IF we restore to ourselves the legal permission to exclude such things made at slave wages in all the worst pollution-havens of the world.
We could still permit trade with countries which have standards as high and costly as we have, or even higher and costlier. The only way countries like THAT could outcompete us is on quality, and such competition might press us to raise our quality-level to meet theirs.
I don’t believe the economic globalists ever personally believed this themselves. I believe their intention was always to work the differential-conditions arbitrage rackets and make personal money as they drove American wealth and conditions all the way down to the lowest possible level.
Please inform Russia, Philippines, NK, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Djibouti, Iran, Iraq, Syria … of the Chinese lack of diplomatic talent and inability to create a new Chinese Diplomatic Wall. Then go one explaining the Chinese lack of convertible capabilities to the rest of Europe, East Afrika or for that natter the rest of it. It is true that the US attempts to block the Chinese has deprived the latter of the allies but doing so has created a wasteland that will produce Che Guevara, Allende and Castro 2.0 versions; this time not ideologically but existentially motivated.
Please visit Moscow & Petrograd before stating that Russians are Europeans. Russians are Russians.
It really is ironic if US government accuses China of “Muslim Bashing”: where you hibernating the last two & half decade?
Xinjiang rebels are being cultivated by US’ proxy The Bone Saw Bandit MBS, as Ukinazis are & Al Nusra in Syria still is.
Maybe the problem is that US goes everywhere with guns & missiles & the Chinese arrive with silk & cellphones. The former paradigm needs to change but the questions is whether we have anything else than hammers because as the cliche goes we then will only see nails.
No war if Tulsi2020 makes it through the rigged DNC primary traffic jam, intended to allow the owners of this country to choose their candidate in the second round.
Indeed change back to the future, US as a trading nation as opposed to “color revolution painting artist”. When an Iranian carpentry shop has to choose between competing with cheaper Chinese products or getting bombed by US, he inexplicably chooses the former and avoid collaborating with the latter (an real case study)
It is not all Potomac’s making. The entire population went with it. It is easier to play with toys than make them. I said it before, in VT, the group that was working on “advanced materials” (later used to make the UAV frames had only ONE American ingenieur; admittedly that Jewish Full Professor was the head of the department. Hard work is… well hard. ALL my Chinese colleagues are EXTREMELY hard working, one logarithmic scale difference.
I think you have NEVER seen a Chinese molecular biology professor, UAV making engineer, physician, pathologist,,,
The mindset of blaming someone else instead of introspection will not bring about any change. IMHO the change of mindset needed to allow for US to compete with China will require a MASSIVE mobilization, improvement of UNIVERSAL education, investment in research (no US is not putting the money down for research), willingness to do the “undesirable” work,… without sounding arrogant, I think most of the people are not willing to sweat for this, so they blame others for their success; explaining the xenophobia.
And he is on route to be known as Vlad Velikiy (don’t know Russian, paraphrased)
Alliance are formed because of common enemies. Beijing and Moscow have a common enemy.
Some sort of Washington-Moscow arrangement might have been possible once upon a time but that time has passed.
Why or how could Moscow ever trust Washington?
All curves in Russia and China are up; what do we see in the USA (or Europe)? So, even if it could trust Washington, what’s the benefit to Moscow of attaching itself to it?
So you believe that foreign policy should be conducted by the military?
So, in USA, the Elites want to ship jobs to China, and the Plebs wish to fight Muslims all the while totting guns and smoking dope?
That does not make China an enemy, only an opportunist.
Babak
What % of Americans “smoke dope?”
fredw,
What you are articulating is precisely the delusion that has caused the United States and its allies to push Russia into the arms of China.
Consider how the situation looks, if you are a Chinese strategist, trying to work out the implications of the fact that the very success of your country’s economic strategy has massively increased its dependence on sources of raw materials and markets, which are potentially vulnerable to interdiction by American naval power.
Looking at Russia’s weakness, do you then say – this is a wonderful opportunity to take back the territories lost to that country when we were weak?
Or do you say: What we need is what might be termed a ‘Mackinderite consolidation’, providing us with access to raw materials and markets which cannot be interdicted by American naval power?
If you draw that conclusion, then rather obviously you are going to want to exploit Russia’s weakness to build a lasting ‘entente.’
Meanwhile, a prudent Chinese strategist could also be expected to look for means of combatting American naval power.
As it happens, working out how to sink American carrier battle groups, and neutralise the threat from American submarines, was something to which the Soviet Navy devoted a vast amount of effort throughout the Cold War.
Since the ‘honeymoon’ with the West broke down, it has again been a central focus.
Getting access to relevant technologies – and perhaps also learning from Russian strategic arguments – might perhaps be considered a sensible thing to do by Chinese naval planners.
In addition, for both countries, there are obvious advantages in a situation where a substantial proportion of U.S. naval assets is directed at the other, and therefore not at them.
Awareness of this does not mean that the Russians are unconcerned about the possibilities of become an appendage of the economically far more successful Chinese, far from it.
However, precisely this fact gives them every incentive to dilute Chinese preponderance by incorporating as many countries as possible in the ‘Mackinderite consolidation.’
When this project started – after the late Yevgeny Primakov became Foreign Minister in January 1996 – the accent was on developing a tripartite relationship with China and India.
As or more important now appear to be the hope that the leading continental European powers – in particular France and Germany – will, as it were, come to their senses and realise that, they too, have no interest in becoming involved in a conflict with China, but can best carve out a ‘niche’ for themselves by ‘balancing it’ in collaboration with Russia.
The argument, obviously, will be that it is not in the interest of the Germans or the French to have their policies hostage to a combination of ‘Russophobia’ which a long history among ‘Anglos’, and the ‘revanchism’ of the ‘insulted and injured’ of Eastern Europe, above all the Balts and the Poles.
There is nothing particularly concealed about Russian thinking on these matters.
A useful recent report from the annual Valdai Group meeting by Anatol Lieven was posted on the Russia Matters’, run out of Harvard University, under the title ‘Valdai 2019 Shows Russia’s Disappointment with West Amid Hopes for New Kind of Link With Europe.’
(See https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/valdai-2019-shows-russias-disappointment-west-amid-hopes-new-kind-link-europe .)
For a very helpful discussion by a leading Russian ‘policy intellectual’ directly concerned with these matters, see a September 2018 article entitled ‘China and Russia: new BFFs thanks to an insecure US’ by Alexander Lukin, who among other positions is Director, Center for East Asian and SCO Studies, Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
(See https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/book/China-and-Russia-new-BFFs-thanks-to-an-insecure-US-19765 .)
For a rather vivid musical representation of the change, one can perhaps usefully look at a performance of the classic Russian song of wartime commemoration, ‘Zhuravli’, by the late Joseph Kobzon, at the concert at the 70th anniversary ‘Victory Day’ celebrations, boycotted by the West because of Ukraine.
The performance is staged, rather spectacularly, in front of a mock-up of the path leading up to the statue ‘The Motherland Calls’ at Stalingrad.
(See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu8x9sbPQcU .)
There are no prizes for guessing who the young soldiers are being told they may have to fight, if the worst comes to the worst. Equally revealing, however, is the cutaway in the middle, to Putin and Xi Jinping sitting side by side.
I hope you are correct, but as capable and sincere as Gabbard seems, she’ll need more than fortitude to maintain her independence if she’s elected.
Sir:
the newest data that I found was for 2013, indicating 14M users in US. the data is probably underestimation a usage increased over the years.
NMS
We are talking marijuana, hemp and other smokables, right? What is the % in Canada?
Please look at this:
https://www.verywellmind.com/rates-of-illicit-drug-abuse-in-the-us-67027
In my experience, all social strata are involved.
The usage is defended on the Priciple of Liberty, to which I strenuously object.
This year, Michigan legalized marijuana, the high-way to heroin and such others. That means people who oppose drugs are a minority in Michigan, and likely the rest of the United States.
I was asking more of Moscow’s commitment to work with Beijing. Russia and China have good relations now, and I was suggesting that future problems are not a reason to abandon their alliance–but what’s the limit?
Curves in Russia are up, but my armchair read is that China’s economy is increasingly held together with chewing gum and bits of string; China financialized its economy following the West’s pattern and now it’s paying the piper, just as we have. It’s so clear to me that I think anyone that doesn’t see it must not be really looking at China or is actively ignoring reality. I hope Moscow is looking; how will Russia respond to China’s rising internal pressures?
Linda,
We had a presidential election in 2016, I don’t recall any for LTCs (vindman) or FSOs (Yovanovich, Kent, Taylor) or bureaucrats.
I don’t think Westerners are bloodthirsty, Babak. Merely uninformed. Remember the fuss there was when ISIS got at the Yazidis. When that news got out the public reaction was immediate and it was a reaction of concern rather than satisfaction. Trouble was, no one much asked what ISIS was doing there in the first place, who let them in, where they got the arms and transport from etc.
I still reckon that as far as we average plebs are concerned the problem is an information problem. Mr and Mrs Average are not, to their minds, engaged in some great civilisational clash. Just haven’t the faintest idea of what’s going on. So we swallow Mr Cameron’s seventy thousand moderate rebels, or believe we are combating Russian revanchism in the Ukraine, because that’s about the only message we get.
But on past form I’m not sure I’m going to convince you on that one. And we have a generation brought up on the most violent of video games who therefore won’t find what they might happen to see on a screen that disturbing. Not when it’s several thousand miles away.
China’s very powerful, to my mind dangerously unstable, and has bitter memories of past Western interference. In those circumstances the distinction between enmity and opportunism might perhaps get blurred.
I followed up your reference to what was happening in Sistan and Baluchestan province. Looked like a real witches brew. What is the danger of that spilling over?
In what way is marijuana the high-way to heroin and such others? What per cent of marijuana users took the high-way to heroin? What per cent took the high-way to such others?
And now that marijuana is ” state-legal” in Michigan, and will be carried by non-criminals who are not linked to criminals in the heroin bussiness or in the such others bussiness, how many marijuana users do you think will make the effort and court the danger to go out of their way to seek heroin and such others? Do you offer a prediction about that?
Here is Ambassador (Ret.) Chas Freeman on US-China split:
https://chasfreeman.net/the-sino-american-split-and-its-consequences/
I do not see any utility for anyone to turn China into an enemy.
In regards to Baluchistan, not much can be done beyond what is currently being done. But Armenians in Iran are not murdering other citizens.
Drugs are now a global mental health and social health problem. Rich or poor country, it matters not. The usage of drugs is a threat to the functioning of society, in France or in India, it is not a harmless indulgence.
Babak
Who said there is any “Utility” in US/China enmity?
I agree with you and I have seen many Americans, over the years, who railed, cautioned, or spoke against the policies of last 40 years. They were soundly ignored. Look at the speeches of Pat Buchanan.
All right. So we agree.
I speak of personal experience.
They are Europeans but not Western Europeans, although their leaders have been copying them for centuries. The adoption of Communism of a Mr. Karl Marx of London was supposed to leap frog them ahead of the Western Diocletian civilization.
Colonel the answer to your Q based 2nd half of 2019 stats.:
Males lower limit 19.6% upper Limit 22.9%
Females lower limit 15.8% upper limit 17.9%
Chheerss
Right. Old US products were sturdy and lasted a long time. US empowered finance capital to devour her industries and the population went along with it.
Prices must rise under a protectionist framework. Not by that much – the direct labour input into most manufactured goods is only a small part of the final price the consumer pays and the distribution and marketing costs are home costs. But in services by a lot.
Wages for the lower paid must therefore rise to compensate- else there’s no point in bringing the jobs back home. Since the cake is not infinite that means a sharp drop in the income gap.
That does not mean only the top .01 super rich taking a hit. It means the top ten percent will. Since that top ten per cent is the most influential that is the drawback to protectionism – how to sell it to the better off.
The notion that untrammeled trade across the entire world is needed to get us the cheapest and best is false. Partly because there is no such thing as untrammeled trade today anyway. Mostly because economies of scale and the spur of competition shades off. You have an entire continent to play with! Surely that’s scope enough!
In any case the US (and the UK) cannot carry on safely as they are. As increasing amounts of goods and services are supplied from abroad, those supplying them are going to want goods and services back at some time. If they don’t get them and are unlikely to get them there is no point in them continuing to supply. It’s in the interests of the suppliers to sell into a healthy economy since a derelict economy has nothing to send back.
That is why the talk of trade wars is unnecessary. It is in the interests of the Chinese to arrive at more or less balanced trade since unbalanced trade doesn’t pay.
No, US let finance capital run amok, in my opinion.
Babak,
Ann Arbor’s dynamic duo of legislative brilliance, Jeff Irwin and Yousef Rabhi, are going to cleanse the records of every career criminal who pled down more serious charges to marijuana possession because that wouldn’t be a punishable offense now. Lots of other liberal ideas are on the way from the Hash Bash Republic. I’m reliably informed by the senator that no such plea deals happened and that these newly criminal record free citizens won’t be committing crimes in the future.
I agree, the worked for the financial results of that quarter and its fruits: 10-million dollar place in Manhattan and a similar spread in the Hamptons. In UK it was Mayfair and Surrey and spread in Portugal.
When they get to it that tune’s a haunting tune, Mr Habakkuk. Their equivalent, as far as its effect goes, of our “Last Post”?
Unfortunately we have no current equivalents for their Prokhorenkos and Filipovs. We almost certainly do, in reality, but the figures that are our known current equivalents are the Le Mesuriers and de Bretton-Gordons of that theatre. Those are not adequate equivalents.
Inspired by the paper cranes of Sadako Sasaki.
Amir,
Immigrant good, American lazy. Nice script, you might mix it up a bit with some other imigrant success stories, like Obama’s dad or the police officer in Minneapolis born in Somalia.
” It is not all Potomac’s making. The entire population went with it.”
No they didn’t. First the American small to medium business community strongly protested it and then out of worked manufacturing employees protested it. Unfortunately it made no difference.
“”ALL my Chinese colleagues are EXTREMELY hard working, one logarithmic scale difference”
I somehow doubt you are a unbiased judge of who works harder, Americans or Chinese. All minority immigrants work hard to make it in America, that why they come to the nation built by non Chinese.
Typically once they make it and become comfortable they slack off. The Jews had their spurt and then started declining in academics, now the Asians are having their spurt…eventually they too will rest back on their haunches also…..its a cycle seen in minority immigrants.
What counts is the long haul.
England has become a violent country, awash with drugs. That is the reality. Having said this, most of the dead are black kids killing each other in London (80%), if that’s any comfort, and of course it is not — something the media avoids to mention, of course, hence it continues. Drugs, money, power, violence
the major Improvement in Universal Education and Research on Chinese Global and Strategic Intent…widely available a Hugh Open Source Article..Analysis Materials..Article..Charts..Graphs in a Sincere Open Minded Way is What is Required…Meanwhile…Many Nations including China..sent their people to the United States..For Degrees in Higher Education and the Best R&D technology in the World..All Paid for..and Xenophobia..?? I have never found that world in My Chinese fortune Cookies..Or heard it spoken by My Mexican Family Members..My Viet Nam Nieghbors I Share things from My garden with…My Friend from Thailand..who brings Us home grown Tomatoes all summer..or My Muslim friend who brought me a Koran..that I have in My Library of Books on History..Cultures..Religion..and Copys of the United States Constitution..The United States does not have a Million Muslims in Concentration Camps..Study Nazi Germany for Strategic and Logistic Purpose..
More then the suggested 1000 but 1600 in the end. Thanks I didn’t know.
How strange is it that from 1795 to 1881 Czarist/Imperial Russia was the only consistent “friend” that the USA had in Europe. How strange is it that the USA helped Russia defeat the Mackinder model that the perfidious Albionese had imposed, by helping Russia complete the Trans-Siberian allowing internal lines of control and communication to develop and removing the ocean based means of supply from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.
http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/stsib.Html
( And how ironic that the polar passage from Vladivostok to Rotterdam will allow Chinese goods to reach Europe even faster and with even less chance of interdiction by unfriendly competitors.
Or that other meme “Islam is correct about women.”?
Drug dealers wait around schools for the children to come out even in the most rural parts of England. Once they get the children accustomed to “soft” drugs the supply chain is established for harder drugs.
Here’s how the Dutch deal with the problem of children having access to drugs when drugs are legal for adults –
https://www.mic.com/articles/185944/inside-drugslab-why-the-netherlands-pays-these-hot-20-somethings-to-get-high-on-youtube
I think they’re worsening the problem rather than addressing it. The more vulnerable children won’t take much notice of the warnings but they will take notice of the general attitude of fashionable approval.
Here in England the supply chains are set up and I don’t think the Dutch approach would tackle the problem of children getting access to drugs, whether those drugs are legal for adults or not.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-trafficking-drugs-children/uk-gangs-target-younger-children-to-use-as-drug-mules-idUSKCN1PN2AQ
I suppose the Dutch would install, in the ripeness of time, a series of vending machines in their secondary schools, dispensing beer, cigarettes, condoms, drugs, and abortion pills. And each school would be equipped with a boom-boom room as well.
Babak, different clue,
I don’t include business people within my definition of “globalist”. Business people don’t care about anything but enriching themselves. These days they even tout their primary if not ONLY responsibility to be the interests of their share holders. There is more noblesse-oblige in my Labrador retriever than there is in Walls Street.
I’m referring to the long chain of public leader’s rationalizations. Bill Clinton has articulated this as well as anybody has in his numerous economic forum talks. However I don’t blame it on the Clintons, this has been the de-facto policy of the US political class ever sense Japan started dumping cheap consumer goods on the US market in the 60’s.
I, too, will speak of personal experience then.
I went to school at Great Midwestern University. I was living on an Honors Hall in the Dorm. Lots of the students up and down the hall used marijuana and alcohol. Some used various hallucinogens.
None to our knowledge used any heroin or cocaine or meth or any such.
The ones who at least got drunk every weekend went on to become sales managers and district managers of this or that. Those who used marijuana went on to become various kinds of business and financial and legal professionals. The one who used more marijuana than anyone went on to become the youngest lawyer to make Full Partner in the history of his/her law firm. He/She is now Managing Director of this firm. This firm is a Securities Design Engineering firm, not a litigating or ambulance-chasing firm. The ones who added LSD, psylocibin, mescaline to the diet went on to become various kinds of scientists, engineers, etc.
I just said No. I went on to become a security guard and a dishwasher and a grill cook. That could be the subject of a John Belushi editorial. It could made to sound funnier to an audience than it feels to me in hindsight.
After college, I finally used marijuana some times, enough to know what it does. Some of my experiences were mediocre and some were really good. A couple had an impact so long-lastingly beneficial as to influence me for-the-better even unto this very day. Marijuana never led me to heroin. Some co-worker friends once offered me the opportunity to try powder-cocaine once. So I did. The Thai-stick may have blunted and confused the effect of the cocaine. But not all the way. I found the cocaine to be body-feel interesting but with nothing to teach me in any longer term sense.
Making and keeping marijuana illegal put it into the same illegal supply hands as the hard drugs were in. So the multi-drug dealers would of course try to switch marijuana-users over to addictive hard drugs. That would guarantee captive consumers.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the multi-drug sellers of marijuana and the addictive drugs put traces of addictive drug in with the marijuana to get young users semi-addicted to the hard-drug-added marijuana so as to make them even more switchable-over to the hard drugs and even more quickly addictable once the switchover were made.
If marijuana is fully re-legalized here, a separate production and supply chain will emerge for those who detest the hard-drug business and its products for cultural and political reasons. Unfortunately, in some states at least, as in California so far, the Mexicartels will continue to sell their illegal unregulated marijuana for cheaper than the legal California systems will sell it for, so as to keep part of that market and to be able to keep switching users over to their addictive drugs. So the Mexicartels would still have to be fought, and one hopes, defeated.
It started long before Clinton, under JFK. It began when Jonh Deere started dismissing employees for the first time. It never had done that before.
All you are saying is that you can hold your dope. Many cannot as historical examples of China and Iran. US and England are showing the same pathologies or worse. You are suggesting an experiment that has already been done: China.
You’re right, but there’s more to the story.
Good ol’ honest Ross Perot warned the voters in ’92 and was getting too much [favorable] attention… soo… along came “the Borg”, ending ‘That’ Chapter.
I don’t know if they cut marijuana with other stuff to get children started. Wouldn’t be surprised if so. I agree with the rest of what you say.
There’s a libertarian side to all of us, I think, that would assert that the State has no business interfering in our personal lives. In nineteenth century England, after all, drugs were legally available until quite late and no one thought much of it. You’ll recollect that in one of the most popular of English twentieth century works of fiction Sherlock Holmes smoked some drug or other and that was regarded as nothing out of the way. Not forgetting that in those days the opium den was not generally frequented by the local population. The average man or woman seldom resorted to such exotic stimulants. So could we not return to those easygoing days when what a man did was his own affair and his alone?
I don’t know that they were that brilliant those days, outside a fairly narrow middle class enclave, but that aside I’d still say absolutely not. The argument over drugs is in any case usually conducted as if we lived in some ideal society, in which we could discuss the conflict between personal freedom and social harm on an abstract level. For many the ideal society is the permissive society and for those many they see no particular harm in freely available drugs.
But we live in no ideal society, of any sort, and can permit ourselves the luxury of no such abstract arguments. We live in a barely functional society. We need only appeal to the evidence of our own eyes to see that drug trafficking is barely under control, if that. Even in my rural area I could take you to a city not that far away where the Police can do little more than stand around watching while the runners work the tables in the cafes. We need only open a newspaper to see reported the problem in the schools. We live in a society where drug trafficking, people smuggling, sex trafficking of juveniles, toddlers getting access to hard core porn and theft of all sorts from shoplifting to robbery with violence is for an increasing number of our fellow citizens the accustomed norm.
Babak didn’t like the Dutch educational video above. Nor do I. There’s far worse than that being put out by the authorities. Try Finland. Increasingly, try England. All very progressive, all impeccably politically correct, but the most it does is a little towards discouraging those children in that middle class enclave some can still live in – or must we now call it “old fashioned” – from getting involved in the worst of that dysfunctional world that is all about us.
Maybe some time or other we’ll do better than attempting to protect some children from that world. Maybe we’ll have a go at attempting to protect all children from that world. In the meantime we could at least avoid encouraging worse. I believe that legalisation of drugs, however sensible it might seem to many of us in the abstract, does just that.
I lived my life, you didn’t. My personal experience guides me in this matter, yours doesn’t.
I have used marijuana. You haven’t.
I know what it is and what it does. You don’t.
English Outsider,
To embellish that though, the Chinese know that being utterly dependent on exports is not a safe condition, they are taking steps to develop their own internal consumer market. That means higher wages. I fear the globalists have set us on a course that is now, in the short term, all but irreversible. We must hope the globalists were right, that in time there will be a re-balancing.
Intellectual property? Go for it. It may be all that can be reasonably hoped for…but I don’t see that as significantly improving the lot of the US middle class.
Righto, and a man should, by the same token, refrain from saying anything about pregnancy, childbirth, abortion, miscarriage, rape.
Colonel,
Speaking of China and how eager they are to learn U.S. Army Tactics along with any and all info on our weapons that our Army uses or has for combat, seems that a contingent of 100 Chinese PLA are set ‘exercise’ alongside U.S. Army personnel in an upcoming exercise in Hawaii beginning Monday.
US Army to train alongside Chinese soldiers during Hawaii exercise
https://taskandpurpose.com/china-hawaii-exercise
Now the 64 dollar question, China was NOT allowed to participate last year’s (2018) exercise, but are allowed in this year’s (2019) exercise? Blink, blink.
Don’t you know that Chinese agents will be crawling all over the Big Island like a bunch of roaches looking and monitoring for any scrap of info they can find.
For a vivid example of Carlson’s opposition to declaring Russia, and Putin, an enemy,
see this 10-minute Fox video, from 2019-12-02:
“Tucker: Russian collusion is not a real story”.
For its text, see this.