Guest Post by Andrei Martyanov via Paul Craig Roberts
If Martyanov makes a mistake, it is assuming facts matter to deluded, exceptional, indispensable, hegemonic American policymakers—PCR
Here are few numbers, we’ll start with two: 447 million and 4.67 billion. These two numbers speak volumes, and are in the foundation of the America’s decline and increasingly irrational behavior which may, quoting Bachman Turner Overdrive’s famous hit, get us to the point of a proverbial ain’t seen nothing yet. The first number is a population of European Union, while the second one is a population of Asia. Asia’s population constitutes around 60% of all the world’s population. Second place in this count is taken by Africa, around 1.37 billion, and the third–by Latin America and Caribbean with respectable 659 million which is considerably larger still than the population of the European Union. The Northern America’s population is around 371 million, which in the larger scheme of things doesn’t look that impressive. In fact, it isn’t.
The history of colonialism—I deliberately omit here this qualifier “Western”, there were all kinds of colonialisms—as related to classic capitalism was more than just about exploitation of colonies for the benefit of metropole. While images of extraction of natural resources from colonies and shipping those to metropoles are correct, they do not form a complete picture. In the end, colonies were viewed as markets where metropole would sell its products. The larger the colony, the more numerous its population was, the larger was the market for products manufactured in metropole. This all made a complete, however often bloody, economic sense in the times of a good ol’ industrial capitalism when metropole would get resources from colony and turn them into finished product and then will ship this finished product, with a huge value added, to be sold in colony. For Native Americans who sold Manhattan to Dutch in 1626 for allegedly, and hotly contested by historians, $24 worth in finished goods, whatever was offered was a huge value for them because they could not produce those items, be that, as mythology states, shiny glass beads or whatever else much more technologically advanced Dutch would offer them. That is how it worked more or less for centuries. The more and better items one produced the richer one would become. That is until FIRE economy and simulacrum of the post-industrialism were revealed to the world by people most of who would have difficulty passing a general contractor exam, not to speak of getting industrial engineering degree.
Fast forward to May 2000 to the passage of House Resolution 4444 China Trade Bill. In one of the most profoundly mindless and ignorant statements of America’s foreign and economic policy, Bill Clinton proclaimed that:
“Today the House of Representatives has taken an historic step toward continued prosperity in America, reform in China and peace in the world. If the Senate votes as the House has just done, to extend permanent normal trade relations with China, it will open new doors of trade for America and new hope for change in China. Seven years ago, when I became president, I charted a new course for a new economy—a course of fiscal discipline, investment in our people and open trade. I have always believed that by opening markets abroad we open opportunities at home. We’ve worked hard to advance that goal of more open and more fair trade since 1993, all the way up to the landmark legislation I signed just a few days ago to expand trade with Africa and the Caribbean Basin.”
Cringeworthy in its sheer falsity and insufferable pathos—the economic equivalent of Chamberlain’s “Peace in Our Time” 1938 proclamation, after signing the Munich capitulation to Hitler—Clinton’s declaration rattled even those who otherwise wouldn’t even pay much attention to the economic affairs of the United States. China, wasn’t upset; why would it be? Both NAFTA and China’s accession to the WTO served as a massive vacuum cleaner sucking the life from American industries and, to be sure, these weren’t banking or financial consulting “industries” which were being shipped abroad. American manufacturing started to leave its own shores. America started to lose its only tool which was and even today remains the only valid mean to an end of economic prosperity—manufacturing capacity. A concept which is beyond the grasp of most American economists and political pseudo-scientists most of who today wear Chinese tailored suits, carry iPhones manufactured in China and use laptops and PCs assembled there as well.
To be sure, America still produces some things—civilian aircraft, as an example. But since the whole Boeing 737 Max affair, which can only be described in strongest profanity, the shining from the polished outward façade of Boeing is largely gone and the stalwart of the American commercial aviation has de facto lost competition to its EU rival Airbus. Cars? Sure. America still remains competitive at manufacturing trucks. The rest? America’s sedans are not competitive and lose out to Japanese and Korean car makers both domestically and internationally, enough to take a look at Ford losing Russian market to Asian, Russian and EU automakers, with the last Ford Focus plant closed in Russia recently. In other, rather startling development, America’s main soft power export, Hollywood is losing its piercing power in China and in Russia. In fact, it is not just losing it, it already lost it. If such a proposition would have been laughed at 20 years ago, the fact that Russian-made movies dominate today Russia’s box office is accepted as absolutely normal. Same is true for Chinese movie market, so much so, that Hollywood is forced to pander to China to have a shot at gigantic Chinese movie audience. Even before the pandemic, Hollywood performance was not impressive and was on decline. Hollywood’s “values” of a radical feminism, anti-male misogyny and promotion of the sexual deviancy are hardly in demand in largely conservative Chinese and Russian societies.
Sure, there are some items which the United States manufactures today which are in demand, or, if one gets to the reality of it all, forcefully imposed on customers—America’s hugely overpriced and dubiously effective weapon systems. This is what remains of once America’s mighty industrial plant which could produce anything from socks and kitchen combines to good combat and excellent commercial aircraft. Today this capacity is no more, since it is China who is the world’s consumer goods main manufacturer, and the only way the United States is capable to secure any market for its weapons is to retain Europe, NATO that is, as its main customer and vassal. NATO will gladly (if not, color revolutions are a good tool for convincing those who have doubts) “buy” America’s weapons and “defense” of Europe, but America needs Europeans to believe that hordes of democracy-hating, only two-gender accepting, backward bearded Russian Ivans are ready to pounce to deny Europe her favorite values of a complete sexual depravity, her cities, also known as dirty multicultural cloacae and declining economy for the reasons only Americans know, while Russians overwhelmingly, especially Russian youth do not want to identify themselves as Europeans.
So, to convince those 447 million EU’s residents that they need America’s protection and weapons, America needs Russia to get into the war in Ukraine and if it will end up with utter destruction, and it will if Russia really decides so, of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and, likely, Ukrainian statehood, so be it. Americans never really cared how many aborigines die, as long as it works for the US bottom line. Or, if one may, a condition of American condition, which is deteriorating steadily because not only the United States increasingly has very little of substance, that is of high value added, to sell to the world, but forming economic and military monster of Eurasia removes the United States from its, grossly exaggerated to start with, self-proclaimed status of global hegemon to the status of, at best, one of the few big shots on the planet. At worst, the United States is removed from Eurasia as a viable competitor and is relegated to a status of a regional power—still powerful relative to its continental neighbors but not having a shot at this second number of 4.67 billion. This is a big chunk of population and customers. Now imagine if the United States loses EU. Suddenly 4.67 billion become 4.67 billion + 447 million = 5.117 billion, it is 65% of Earth’s population. It is a huge majority of world’s population and, most importantly, population much of which can pay for goods, unlike it is the case with gigantic population of Africa. Moreover, this population is concentrated within a single continental mass which is insulated from the United States by two oceans. The United States cannot allow this consolidation of the market to happen and the loss of Europe, Washington’s thinking goes, is tantamount to capitulation. So, the United States must hold on to EU, or whatever it will become once EU inevitably collapses, and NATO remains the only tool to drive European weaklings into submission. Making Russia obliterate Ukrainian Armed Forces is a perfect way to scare Europeans into abandoning any attempts to economically compete with the United States and deny them access to Russia’s energy.
Considering an extremely low level of Western scholarship in the field of practical geopolitics and its pseudo-scientific offspring—geoeconomics—which failed for the last 30 years to come up with even the fuzziest description of the emerging world, it doesn’t matter if the United States “retains” Europe or not anymore. The reasons for the utter failure of those “academic” predictions and resulting policies are numerous but few of them are worth focusing on.
1 — Europe is not anymore a crucial trade partner for Russia and mutual trade plummeted in the last few years. The trend will continue and it is not only due to America’s pressure, albeit that too, on EU but is a result of Russia steady change of both economic model and her reorientation towards Asia which is now largely complete. Russia simply doesn’t need anymore many goods she used to buy in the EU. The policy of import substitution on average is a success and Russia economically insulating herself from the West will continue.
2 — A much-discussed pipeline of Nord Stream 2 is, actually, not a crucial economic project for Russia anymore. Russia can absorb losses if the project eventually sabotaged by the United States and its European poodles such as Poland, but for Germany, and EU in general, this sabotage will result in catastrophe, due to European greens’ suicidal energy policies which make European goods costs extremely energy-dependent. In realty, America’s attempts to sabotage Nord Stream 2 are primarily directed against EU in general, and Germany in particular, not against Russia per se.
3 — The United States lost the arms race. America’s weapons acquisition process and military doctrine-mongering cannot be viewed anymore as a normal, that is logical and justified, process. While still being able to produce some state-of-the-art platforms and enablers, such as signal processing, combat computer and communications networks, recon assets, in terms of actual weapons the United States begins to lag behind Russia not just in years but in generations. As recent, February 2021, Congressional Budget Office report on missile defense admitted, the United States is defenseless against salvo of combination of new Russia’s cruise missiles and that there is nothing to stop them. There isn’t. US air defense systems lag behind Russian ones dramatically and the gap only grows with Russia’s S-500 getting into serial production and the latest S-350 already being deployed into the first line units.
4 — The United States simply cannot develop modern supersonic anti-shipping missile and the US Navy is forced, incomprehensibly, to buy Norwegian Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile—an underwhelming subsonic missile which is no match for modern high supersonic and hypersonic strike weapons Russia deploys, and is not survivable in modern air defense and ECM environment.
5 — Lastly, the intellectual level and the level of awareness of modern American elites is in a precipitous decline, which inevitably resulted in the embarrassment of America’s last elections, especially scandalous debate between two geriatric candidates in 2020, which paraded the US as Springeresque tawdry TV show. Resultant loss of a legitimacy and yet another confirmation of the America’s position as a non-agreement capable entity hardly serve as boosters for America’s already tarnished reputation as a big-mouth bully and its elites being uncultured and uneducated.
The United States already fails to meet a number criteria imperative for the status of superpower, among which a military one is crucial. If some American military “strategists” still exercised a suicidal idea of fighting Russia conventionally in Ukraine in 2014, today in 2021 such an idea is downright mad, because the United States cannot win conventional war in Russia’s vicinity and any US force will be annihilated. This leaves the United States only two options:
1 — Indeed, believing its own propaganda, try to unleash mayhem in Ukraine, provoke Russia into a direct military operation and then introduce whatever the force US and NATO will muster into the theater of operations. Any such plan is bound to fail miserably because not only such a force will be annihilated but participating NATO nations will face the possibility of their military installations destroyed by stand-off weapons. That raises the possibility of US escalating to nuclear threshold which means that the United States may cease to exists as a country. This is an undesirable plan and majority of US policy makers, bar some severe cases of psychological Russophobic disorders which are numerous in the current Administration and America’s elites, understand what it means. So, while not completely impossible, a probability for such a plan being implemented is fairly low. Not to mention the fact that for the US to fight conventionally around Russia will require assembly of the force which will dwarf whatever was assembled for the First Gulf War. There, the United States had almost 6 months to do so.
2 — So, what’s left realistically is to push Ukraine into the suicidal campaign with Russia being designated aggressor before even the first shots are fired. What the United States does not recognize is the fact that this unties Russia’s hands who already has an overwhelming escalation dominance not only over Ukraine, but whatever might be attempted in terms of “support” for irrational regime in Kiev. Russia has many options, the United States has one—it needs war in Donbass, which, Washington’s thinking goes, will allow to drive Europeans into submission, which allegedly should allow the United States to save her hegemonic status. It will not even if Europe is driven into submission.
United States today has the only one resource left which allows it to stay relevant—virtual reality of both money “printing” press and of the media propaganda which is increasingly ineffective. One could hide America’s decrepit cities, mass riots, destruction of the education system, incompetence of political and military top echelons, suicidal social practices and breakdown of law and order, aggravated by huge lines to food banks for only so long. Now it is in the open and even subjugation of Europe and, allegedly, opening Europe’s markets to those few items the United States can still provide for its clients there, does not change the fact that the United States as it exists today has no future with or without Europe and that it still has to recon with China’s immense manufacturing capacity and Russia’s advanced military might which drive unification of the Eurasian market whether the United States unleashes war in Ukraine or not. Even without EU this market dwarfs whatever the United States will be able to “salvage” in order to avoid relegation to a lower league. It cannot stop a process which was ongoing for years now, once Russia, after, the bloody coup in Ukraine, understood that there is nobody to talk too in the combined West which apart from losing its military and economic power, started to disintegrate from the inside due to Western societies becoming increasingly totalitarian and unable to face the reality that we still live in the highly industrialized world which needs energy, industrial plant and weapons which will defend them. Both China and Russia seem to accumulate all that and with it the fate of the United States is sealed. Bill Clinton may have thought that he “charted the new course for a new economy” in 2000, too bad for him, and the US, the “new economy” turned out to be an old one. What? You didn’t think that jeans, smartphones and rocket engines grow on the trees, did you?
https://www.unz.com/article/the-dictatorship-of-numbers/
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Our national labs, weapons companies, and Wash DC “oversight” have become completely incompetent. The older engineers that can actually engineer products are no longer in control, and they have retired or are retiring. The young engineers have no experience and their hands are tied with “safety” nets. The bean counters and project managers are running things into the ground. It won’t matter how many projects they can allegedly manage or juggle the dollars to make sure they are all spent if there are no projects. The management of these complexes are more interested in diversity, inclusion, minority and women promotions, equality, critical race theory, etc., than running the actual business. They are bloated and survive on the printed money also, without which they will be gone as fast as a fart in a windstorm. Maybe that’s just what we need as a country, so we can get back to simple basics that really produce results.
Yes.
I’ve been lucky to meet a lot of interesting people. I’m friends with some researchers in the national lab system. They tell me the exact same thing you just wrote. All the labs care about is PC equality bullcrap. They hire tons of useless diversity cons, admin types, useless managers, and waste tons on bureaucracy.
Just recently, a physicist explained to me his lab was dying from red tape. Their lab has created so many hoops for him to jump through, he can’t publish or do research or even move nuclear samples so small, you can’t see them, without months of regulatory hurdles. The universities are finding other partners, because they can not and will not wait 6-12 months to do what they can do in 1 month elsewhere.
Research papers stagnate in an extensive and unnecessary editing process with multiple stops for declassification review (I can understand that part, but not the rest), editing for grammar, and editing for scientific accuracy, and further admin review. For those not in the know- researchers who value their name don’t publish without extensive editing and re-re-rechecking their data. The journals they submit to then do their own editing, as well. Waiting months for unnecessary editing and red tape only allows other researchers time to scoop you and render all your work irrelevant. Publishing original research is how researchers show their value and a big metric for their success. By making it hard to publish, that lab is killing its own talent.
The same bean counters and bureaucrats have also made it impossible for him to work with even the smallest, most minute radioactive samples. The levels of radiation he’s working with are so small, your average banana is more radioactive. The post office’s limits on what you can mail are hundreds of times higher than what that lab’s regulations allow you to handle without extensive safety measures and red tape. Again, these restrictions make it so hard to do research, they’re driving universities and other potential partners elsewhere.
Also, he said their newest method of accounting for the kinds of minute samples he deals with are so silly, his nearly invisible samples are technically accounted for as entire grams. Thinking about it, I realized an error in recording might have them trying to figure out the location of what on paper is listed as entire kilos of missing material. I like to joke with him his workplace is where science goes to die.
All this bureaucracy is killing innovation. They do it in the name of safety and accountability, but the end result is the death of innovation and, eventually, will lead to a brain drain. I saw the same issue when I was talking to aerospace researchers and engineers. They were lamenting the death of NASA and had fled to private aerospace and universities because all NASA was doing was putting up cell phone satellites.
I know there’s still a lot of high-tech innovative work being done out there, but more and more of it is being done by foreigners who come to study at our schools, get work in our labs, and take their expertise and knowledge of our programs home with them to Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, and elsewhere. It’s insane, because our govt knows they can’t trust China, and they keep catching them stealing shit, and the Chinese even admit doing it at the national level, but they refuse to deny Chinese access, because we don’t want to look racist. I quizzed one guy I met on why he hired Chinese nationals over US engineers, but he stated he couldn’t get the mix of talent and specialties from American candidates, so it was easier to just hire Chinese foreigners.
When this nation collapses, it won’t be a surprise. It won’t be an accident. And we’re going to completely deserve it.
The US was once the world leader in “making things”, both intellectual and material. Due to moral, ethical and intellectual decline over the last several decades, the US has devolved to the point that all we are capable of now is “making things up”.
We have truly become the world leader in self-absorbed fantasy.
Whether the US ever “led the world” in things intellectual is debatable. We were certainly the leader in applied sciences, and in “pure-science” research papers published, but much of the research was done by Europeans who had fled here (Fermi, Bohr, Einstein et al.), and in labs with abundant non-US support personnel.
In the softer world of the mind – social sciences, literature, philosophy – the US has had its heavy hitters, but most of our intellectual class have also been naive-cum-stupid enough to swallow such irrational destructive excreta as the Frankfurt School and Deconstructionism.
The USA can hold its collective head high re its past performance, but the decline and fall of the USA-as-it-is will not greatly detract from human progress in either intellectual or material endeavors.
Consider, if you will, a world without Wall Street, Hollywood, the Pentagon or the Ivy League….
Wow that was great! Thank you
we are fucked……..
.
Not a fan of what is going on in the Ukraine (which was the USSR’s bread basket), nor many other of our overseas influences and adventures.
But there are some VERY basic things to consider that will affect global politics in the upcoming years:
China has a ginormous demographic problem. Huge aging population, and the youngsters are mostly all male. Aged populations straining resources, and no wifeys to make new citizens. This can rapidly whittle down their billions.
The U.S. is a large nation that is very conveniently isolated. Sure, we could get nuked (I’d even have some suggestions for targets…), but to be invaded and taken over is not likely. We also have some great natural resources. And many of them are hidden under Nat’l Monuments. The Grand Escalante has some of the world’s cleanest coal. Death Valley has a huge amount of rare earth metals. Various unexploited oil and gas reserves. It is almost like someone has been hiding our resources while we can buy those of others on the cheap.
And the European Union will spend most of its existence on the edge of fracturing apart. It is already happening, and if it lets loose, it will make our RED/BLUE disputes look like a joke. Heck, our RED/BLUE divide is probably nothing that could not be cleaned up by a responsible media. Europe on the other hand, is separated by multiple languages and has a long history of continued warfare.
Were I to guess, I’d say Russia is in a pretty good position for the future, though I admit I don’t know too much about the country.
“but to be invaded and taken over is not likely” I suppose that would be worse, but am no longer sure.
We are being taken over from within. Our adversaries are our elites who have divided us. By the time the general public really figures this out, game over. Just listen to Charles Barkley, even he understands this when he spoke the truth, probably caught his corp TBS handlers off guard.
“But to be invaded and taken over is not likely”. Our leaders have already been taken over through Payola and if you just look south you will see an endless stream of worker ants interspersed with red army ants moving inexorably north and east. We cannot outwork them and they don’t need what’s left of our brains. Did you think these vaxxes are to keep us fit and healthy so we can supervise adults who already know how to work long hard hours with very limited supervision?
I suggest you look at the fields just outside of Yuma Az. They have outhouses in the fields and meals are brought to them in the field.
Why would they want to keep us around?
We sold our birthright and grandchildren to Walmart and Facebook.
All your “pro” points don’t matter if the [US] society splinters into a million pieces, as it is doing.
I didn’t mean to suggest that nothing would change nor get worse. The ending of the US empire will be painful in certain ways, in others, perhaps it will be better.
I was just suggesting that China is gonna have big problems very quickly. Their economy is just about in the same shape as ours, with mountains of debt, inefficiencies, corruption, and inflation. So the Chinese Dragon that is so scary may indeed be a paper tiger. After all, they still have to steal our technology, and they have not yet been able to make widespread improvements of quality in their manufacturing.
I also wanted to point out that America is in better shape than many countries, due to our location and resources. We also are pretty much all Americans (no extreme tribal or culture divisions – most of our divisions are political/sexual, which will be remedied by a touch of tough times.) Most of our immigrants are actually coming from a Christian/European based culture, and they are mostly coming here to work. Not like the African Muslims that are entering into Europe.
Europe, on the other hand, has never been united, except under the Catholic Church. And they have distinct language, culture, custom, and historical differences. The EU is not unifying as much as it is coordinating oppression, corruption, and resource extraction on the behalf of the elites. And their immigrants are of a truly primitive culture, a foreign religion, and who see it as a point of both pride and justice to be a parasite upon their host, rather than seeking work.
So I still think we have it less bad than the article suggests.
bug,
i agree w/you about china being screwed up,we would hold the high cards if we weren’t so mentally screwed up–
america’s problems are spiritual,china’s are physical–
It’s funny how you completely ignore my point in your answer, while at the same time drop a nugget -unintended I guess- that very much is confirmation of my point: “except under the Catholic Church”
– So what good are our resources going to do us, if society is split into a million warring, tiny camps?
– How much is Chinese society currently beset by the same problems?
– How do we find ‘commonly-agreed-upon, shared highest values’ again? It can be done without religion, but at some point one also has to concede original Christianity intended to do exactly that…
– What sources does the US currently have which might lead to a revitalization of a ‘shared highest value’, which obviously cannot be bullschiff such as globull warming nor equity nor divörsity? I see zero.
So I think not just the US, but the whole lot of ‘Western’ countries cannot be saved anymore from a complete collapse of their societies (and everything that builds on top of that), and in the best case it will take a generation (=30 years) to turn the “ship” around.
Hail Eurasia!
Just terrible
The US still produces two things:
1. Dollars. In fact the US produces trillions and trillions and trillions of them, thanks of course to the First Amendment and freedom of the press. No one can match the US when it comes to this feat.
2. False Flags. No one can do false flags like the US. No nation can commit atrocities on itself like the US. We are number one!
So, Assy Guy?
If you were an illegitimate government put in place by a fraudulent election and you wanted an excuse to grab guns, would letting enough illegal immigrants into Texas to activate the many militia men there be your big play at creating a false flag environment to grab the guns?
Just asking since you seem to understand the use of FF in US foreign policy.
Also? How do you think we will start the Russia-Ukraine fight? US CapitolCritters (Have collectivized the term to include the other two branches with CongressCritters) certainly need Europe to stop cozying up to Putin if they are going to maintain their hegemony from inside their big fence in DC.
Not understanding the purpose to respond to something non-existent.
1. Dollars, and 2. False Flags are, according to you, the Alpha and Omega of America’s raison d’être.
The purpose of of responding to a question about HOW those two essential American attributes provide a nexus for internal (FF re: illegal immigrants in ‘militia’ Texas) and international (Russia -Ukraine war to keep EU a $$$ vassal)…
… is to invite you to explain that you know WTF you’re talking about with your purported 1. & 2. hegemonic ‘strategies’.
In kinder words, please elaborate.
I understood the Ghost question. I referred to the Ghost as a non-existent being and therefore not worth the time to respond because of the way he addressed me. He can call me whatever he wants, makes no difference to me, but at the same time I don’t need to respond and in fact can tell him to go fuck himself; assuming that a ghost is capable of a human act that is.
Fair enough. Being called Assy Guy caused some butthurt.
However, these days ghost is also a verb.
We be owned.
Tell me- if Russia invades Ukraine tomorrow, what changes for you?
Do you care?
Will anything about it matter here?
Will the price of borscht explode?
Will the value of your nesting dolls drop?
Will you bleed red as your investments in pelmeni and kvass tank?
Would you fight and die for the Ukraine?
Will changes to the outlines of Russia and Novo Rossia matter to you?
I don’t care.
I like the Ukrainians and I still don’t care.
Their corrupt govt is not important to me.
Our billions invested in toppling their govt are not important to me, either.
If The Saker is right, the Russians don’t even want The Ukraine and wouldn’t take it for anything.
The Ukraine is like Europe’s Mexico. They’re good for cheap non-VAT taxed manufacturing and a well-educated cheap workforce, but not good enough for EU entry and, I assume, not worth dying over.
If Russia seized Mexico, I wouldn’t fight and die for them, either.
Again, I like the Ukrainians, but I would never die for them.
I don’t think the US is really willing to get into a fight over there. Just look how much we did for our “allies” in Georgia in 2008. We left them hanging in the wind. The Russians trounced them over a weekend and didn’t even bother to take all the US-made weapons they captured.
If they try to mobilize America to fight and die in the Ukraine against Russia, I’m going to laugh. Nobody cares. Nobody is going to sign up for this. Would you join the military to fight in the Ukraine? I bet most kids can’t find it on a map. Even with all the Hate Russia propaganda they’ve pumped out over the last few years, I don’t see anyone interested in that fight. Worse, an expanded conflict with Russia can only mean disaster for us and our friends. How long do you think the lights will stay on if we go hot with Russia? I bet they hack/EMP us into the stone age before the first shot. Between them and China, I bet they turn us off to the point there is no conflict, because we’re too busy suddenly figuring out power, water, healthcare, and food for millions of angry city dwellers at home.
No blood for sunflower oil!
You’re not seeing the forest for the trees.
The whole exercise by the US is to disable/block/break trading between Europe and Russia. That obviously includes NordStream 2, but also much more.
It’s basically the same script as the “Cypriot Banking Crisis” in 2012, which was let run wild (i.e. no bailouts) because the Cypriot banks had too close financial ties with Russia.
Merkel is supposedly retiring in September with the federal election looming. It will be interesting to see what happens to NS2 before or after then. Germany needs NS2 because their greenies destroyed their nuclear power generating capacity. If it’s a toss up between energy versus supporting NATO in Ukraine any German leader cancelling NS2 will not survive in Govt for long.
Only in a sane world.
I stick with my prognosis that Merkel will have NS2 get finished,
but then, after the federal elections in September, Laschet or whoever becomes chancellor will soon after have NS2 shut down under some pretense.
I don’t know if it will work. The EU has already signaled to us we’re not going to be a going concern much longer. Note how they ignored our demands over the New Silk Road and Chinese 5G. The US has made itself irrelevant in a lot of ways. I don’t know if Europe will really be scared about a limited war in the Ukraine. I wouldn’t care. The old satellites might be worried, but I don’t believe Russia is looking to recreate the Cold War; we are. The only real tension between them is the tension we caused putting our tanks on their borders and pretending it’s a defensive exercise.
The bureaucratic, mostly unelected EU is, and always has been, a transatlanticist organization.
No matter what a few voices “signal” with their daily utterances, in reality there will be no parting of European ways from the US without a dissolution of EU, and NATO.
It is because anywhere the Federal Workers Union protects Local Union jobs, those contracts are as good as votes from all the union members. It was once called “bundling votes” and was made illegal. Now, it will be enshrined in Pelosi’s communist revision of our right to cast our votes privately. Now, unions will probably be allowed to collect and deliver the ballots.
Anyway… military operations were a lot better when the military actually trained and operated their own people. Contractors like to build empires that pay them residual profits.
When I was a contractor, hired to write some technical manual procedures, I was stunned to discover Boeing and Raytheon and Northrup and others claimed to have proprietary rights over some of the equipment they’d sold the government, causing me to have to ask their permission to write procedures using their operating instructions. It was insane to me, having spent ten years active duty USAF, that the USAF actually honored their claim in many cases. It gave Boeing tremendous political clout over military leadership, thus over political leadership as well.
“It was insane to me…”
Whatareya buckin’ for?
The Capt. John Yossarian Award for Catch 22’s””?