2018 American Political Scene

[Oracle]

China is smart, and potentially by far more powerfull than USSR was. And they learnt many lessons from the USSR, first: money is more important than ideology.

They have an extremely favourable trade treaty with the west so they keep a low profile, they don't want any change. They are getting fatter and richer and they increase their global influence by trade and loans (including spreading their nationals all over the world as trade nexus, buying many foreign business with cheap loans from their public banks).

For example, the country with more growth in space exploration at the moment is China. But chinese goverment don't want by any means a "space race" with the USA (probably NASA want it to increase their budget). They don't want the USA to put energy and resolve against them even in space exploration. They keep a low profile. They don't want to be seen as USA #1 competitor. This is why i see the anti russian paranoia very stupid and useless for the USA, just focus on your ONLY rival.

A chinese nightmare would be US sanctions, like Russia now. With the US influence, EU, India and Japan might join the sanctions. They don't want financial and trade problems with those regions, so they keep a low profile. They don't want to be like Russia now, they want just to grow more and more. IMO in 2 or 3 decades we will see the real China in the global scene.

Agree more or less. Could you please expand your points with sources? Like say newspaper links etc, as it would be helpful in clarifying things. And we're seeing China as it is with a military that is no match for the US, asserting itself. One doesn't have to wait for 2-3 decades, 15 years down the line from today is enough. Also, anti-Russian paranoia is not because of unnecessary things. Russia does stupid things from time to time, and US responds, which they should.

I think Astralis posted a link or someone else, or I read somewhere, which stated that US/NATO waited for the Soviets for 20 years to march through the Fulda Gap, but they never came (good article, some other examples of US paranoia about the Russians). The point is not why the Soviets never came, the point right now is that the Russians are taking up much of US' time and energy. Russia is broke, and apart from interfering in US elections and doing silly things, they aren't much of a threat militarily or economically. This has been the case for 2 decades now. Russia is a threat alright, China is a big challenger. China got the money and building up on its military.

President Trump probably knows, or he probably have been advised by his core team, or he is financially compromised in his business dealings, that it is better to have good relations with Russia in order to counter China. I think that is the way forward, although I am not a fanboy of communist countries. I might be wrong, so corrections are welcome.

[astralis]

oracle,

President Trump probably knows, or he probably have been advised by his core team, or he is financially compromised in his business dealings, that it is better to have good relations with Russia in order to counter China.

1. good relations with the Russians aren't -needed- to counter China. Putin is not stupid, he's well aware that there's a significantly stronger power to the south that will dominate Russia economically one day if he's not careful.

2. we would like to have good relations with the Russians but not at the cost of the items that Russia demands for such good relations. of course POTUS does not agree with this because he frankly doesn't -care- if the Russians end up dominating eastern Europe.

3. Russia just interfered with the US elections and by all accounts is gearing up to interfere in the next. his core team knows that this is not acceptable, but Trump himself rejects this advice because the Russians helped -him- and he views that the point of the exercise is not national security but to de-legitimize his electoral victory. so you get this dual-headed foreign policy that -trends- to the conventional with respect to Russia because the foreign-policy/national security bureaucracy exerts a more constant presence than the President does.

4. thus existing US policy is to treat both Russia and China as competitors, but with a focus on China. the bulk of US military power is now concentrated in the Pacific, and the bulk of the incoming tariffs are also going against China as well.

5. the intelligent thing to do would be to bulk up Western Europe to deter the Russians while funneling still more resources against the China problem.

[Mihais]

5.Good luck with that.They aren’t really in the game.Putin would like EE,but is not WE saying NO.It’s E E with some quite limited US backup.
You keep assuming US is doing something terribly wrong because Trump.WE at best did the minimum required .Trump the Fascist is just a pretext for more vaccilation.
But that of course serves your own bias of Trump the Evil.Lookie there,allies are estranged!
Of course,what W Europe needs to detter anybody is just a bit more efficiency wrt spending.German army is a monument of waste.They have 44 bln budget,yet limited readiness.
Trump’s 2% help only a little,since waste is a bureaucratic way of life.But it helps separating wheat from chaff.

[astralis]

mihais,

You keep assuming US is doing something terribly wrong because Trump.WE at best did the minimum required .Trump the Fascist is just a pretext for more vaccilation.
But that of course serves your own bias of Trump the Evil.Lookie there,allies are estranged!

these are two separate issues. i am fully aware that most of Western Europe is shirking their defense spending and have been doing so for decades-- and i am also fully aware that Trump is not interested in defending Europe and wants the Euros to do so more so the US can withdraw.

regarding the first, though, the European defense spending issue is something that was built into NATO from the beginning anyways-- because the original idea was to have the Americans lead the Alliance and hold the true reins of power. "keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down", right?

[Mihais]

2% was agreed recently,firmly promised by all ,then promptly ignored by most.

Trump does not want to completely withdraw.If there is mistrust wrt US leaders,it comes from a similar perception in EE.That somehow Trump might make a deal with Russia in exchange for Russian cooperation elsewhere.That won’t happen or won’t happen to a large degree.

What I see on the ground is just limited US commitment.And I agree with that,even if we are on the frontline.It is better to have a strong US and that comes from keeping China down.
EE is secondary AO because the Russian threat is a secondary one for US.It is of course the main threat for us,but keeping a firm but limited American backup is enough both for keeping the Russians out and the local politicians on their toes.

[snapper]

2% was agreed at Wales in 2014. "Russian President Vladimir Putin says U.S. President Donald Trump willingly gave up Crimea and other parts of Ukraine during their private closed-door meeting at the Trump-Putin summit." https://hillreporter.com/putin-says-...te-summit-4097

[Oracle]

oracle,



1. good relations with the Russians aren't -needed- to counter China. Putin is not stupid, he's well aware that there's a significantly stronger power to the south that will dominate Russia economically one day if he's not careful.

2. we would like to have good relations with the Russians but not at the cost of the items that Russia demands for such good relations. of course POTUS does not agree with this because he frankly doesn't -care- if the Russians end up dominating eastern Europe.

3. Russia just interfered with the US elections and by all accounts is gearing up to interfere in the next. his core team knows that this is not acceptable, but Trump himself rejects this advice because the Russians helped -him- and he views that the point of the exercise is not national security but to de-legitimize his electoral victory. so you get this dual-headed foreign policy that -trends- to the conventional with respect to Russia because the foreign-policy/national security bureaucracy exerts a more constant presence than the President does.

4. thus existing US policy is to treat both Russia and China as competitors, but with a focus on China. the bulk of US military power is now concentrated in the Pacific, and the bulk of the incoming tariffs are also going against China as well.

5. the intelligent thing to do would be to bulk up Western Europe to deter the Russians while funneling still more resources against the China problem.

3. Agree. Russian hackers are getting ready to hack into the mid-term as well, if news are to be believed. But I can't seem to believe that Trump thinks the Russians helped him, and so he has to be nice with them. He is a businessman. De-legitimizing his electoral victory might be the thing, but there is something else to it.

4. That's a start. But, how do you stem the flow of information and knowledge from US to China? I am not talking about hacking.

5. And let EE get under Putin's influence? How does that work? If US gives Putin another chance to devour an EE country, then Putin doesn't stop. This is the nature of dictators.

[Double Edge]

What do you think OBOR/BRI is? The method is different that is all. Anyway, we're getting OT perhaps.

Reply here

[snapper]

I told you Yanks long ago that you were at war and that we never 'won' the Cold War. Now Lavrov asks for Butina's release - which the compromised Trumpkin is likely to help in any way of course.

“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”

Alexandrovich Bezmenov

https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/34-...-america-today

Know your enemy.

[rj1]

annexation of part of a very recently former puppet state was not something any US President was going to realistically deter. for that matter Ukraine was not in a position to do anything about it when Crimea happened, but was in a rather better position by the time of the Donbass crisis.

Allright then. That signifies the world has left the post-World War II world and we're in an incredibly new one. In this world, China can annex Taiwan, Russia can annex the Baltics and eastern Ukraine, a dozen random border-changing events can occur in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, etc., and no outside actor is going to do anything to overturn it.

[rj1]

This is why i see the anti russian paranoia very stupid and useless for the USA, just focus on your ONLY rival.

I wonder if the Russians got themselves involved in the Catalonia referendum.

Just throwing it out there, idle thought. You did say everyone does this after all.

[astralis]

rj1,

Allright then. That signifies the world has left the post-World War II world and we're in an incredibly new one. In this world, China can annex Taiwan, Russia can annex the Baltics and eastern Ukraine, a dozen random border-changing events can occur in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, etc., and no outside actor is going to do anything to overturn it.

it's not an incredibly new world, it's a return from the post-Cold War world of the 1990s (where the US could intervene anywhere) to the "post-WWII world"...aka the Cold War. generally speaking we're not going to intervene if the place in question is not under our sphere of influence/allied/has some sort of US security guarantee. none of which applied to Ukraine in 2014-2015, nor Georgia in 2008.

however, under the US/NATO security umbrella, it's a different story. without the implicit US security guarantee to Taiwan, and the Baltic states entry into NATO, do you really think either China or Russia would hesitate to change things even if it violates "international law"?

[Albany Rifles]

Allright then. That signifies the world has left the post-World War II world and we're in an incredibly new one. In this world, China can annex Taiwan, Russia can annex the Baltics and eastern Ukraine, a dozen random border-changing events can occur in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, etc., and no outside actor is going to do anything to overturn it.

The US was not going to war with Russia over a non-NATO member. However unless things change dramatically the US will defend Taiwan, South Korea and our Allies in the region. And The Baltics are NATO countries so we will defend them...unless the Feckless Cheeto orders EUCOM not to do so.

As for the borders in Africa and the Mideast...well those at largely artificial constructs as a result of the post colonial breakup. Iraq is a perfect example of that. I mean look at all the straight lines which totally ignore tribal lines.

Heck, the nice straight northern border for the US/Canada was almost fought over several times (54-40 Or Fight!) before it was negotiated to todays border.

[snapper]

I wonder if the Russians got themselves involved in the Catalonia referendum.

Just throwing it out there, idle thought. You did say everyone does this after all.

Yes they did via Vor v Zakone 'mafia/GRU', 137 of whom are in prison.

[Double Edge]

Allright then. That signifies the world has left the post-World War II world and we're in an incredibly new one. In this world, China can annex Taiwan, Russia can annex the Baltics and eastern Ukraine, a dozen random border-changing events can occur in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, etc., and no outside actor is going to do anything to overturn it.

Show me withdrawal of american troops from Germany & Korea first. Until such time its same old regardless of what your president says.