Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
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No one spends that much on military. Anything between NATO 2% GDP and USA or Israel high level is very serious.
Completely agreed. History shows us that unipolarity, supremacism (of any kind), hubris, and complacency ALWAYS comes before the fall, without fail. It's basically a universal principle now. The US getting its act together and focusing on building up instead of tearing down would also help keep China sharp and on its toes, but I see absolutely zero evidence that this "political self-reflection" will happen. The country is decaying internally and actively corrupting itself in almost every way, shooting itself in the feet at literally every single given opportunity, and proving completely and absolutely untrustworthy at the diplomatic level. It always plays spoiler and is incapable of being an honest broker or negotiator. We're also just going back to Cold War, but v2.0.
Ideally, the relative decline that has already been happening will continue gently over a generation or two, but all signs point to "little by little, then all at once". In many ways, the decline has even been absolute rather than relative. The tent cities, mass shootings, drug epidemic, fall in life expectancy, almost daily train derailments, seasonal/weather-triggered brownouts/blackouts in some states, fall in public safety, dysfunctional healthcare system, failing education system (mostly but not entirely outside of top tier institutions), inspire no confidence.
My hope is the decline can be managed very gently for another 30 years, but I do not see any evidence that it is likely. The political class seems committed to thrashing and convulsing, violently and repulsively.
On another note, I highly recommend you read work by Dr. Lyle Goldstein. He is also in your field and offered really rational and sober analysis back when he was teaching at the Naval War College. In fact, his rationality is the reason why he felt forced out.
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This is not de-escalation. They're ridiculing the idea. That's fine, but selling it as de-escalation is like selling The.ranos investment options.
solarz
Brigadier
They're basically admitting that Ukraine is getting their clocks cleaned.
Waiting for tanks to crush the crowd. Then BBC and CNN will have some lines about a credit crisis that will lead to the collapse of the authoritarian government of .... America.
Speak for yourself. From PBSC member Wang Huning's book from when he was a visiting professor in the US, no, there's no looking up to lol.
Everything you said is about begging for approval and face from others. Ironically, Americans need this the most, they just call it reputation or clout. China doesn't beg for acceptance, never has (since 1949) and never will.