America’s Pacific pivot is sinking

[breadisfunny]

While opinion pieces are just that, the FT is a well respected news source.

US Philippine relations are on the rocks over how PI is conducting its current war on drugs, not over China though.

i think the philippines are doing an excellent job. the drug dealers and criminals need to be made examples of.

[Deleted]

It's kind of sad, isn't it Skroe?

All these different people so full of resentment and humiliation against the guarantor of the last 71 years of the most peaceful, prosperous, and technologically advancing time ever in human history. Seems like so many places you go on the internet now are full of shills for the Strongman idea vs Western Liberal Democracy.

It's almost starting to shape up into the sort of WW3 in the Star Trek universe: the final and bloody victory of Western Liberalism over Eurasian despotism.

I really, really hope to God that doesn't become necessary, but as my dad used to tell me: Hope in one hand, sh-t in the other, and see which one fills up first.

Well in all fairness your "Western Liberal Democracy" is handing victory to "Eurasian despotism" with its SJWism, diversity, multiculturalism and all other sorts of cancer. If the West doesn't change its way, the Chinese deserve to win.

Hell, I'd rather sell myself to Asians than be stucked with dindus or goatlovers and lose.

infracted - Forbidden Topics

[Kellhound]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...trols-with-u-s



It already happened. The Pivot is over.

It is easy to send people to look, not easy to rearm on a budget. They have just taken delivery of South Korean jets, which use NATO compliant weapons. The propeller driven attack aircraft will likely be the Super Tucanos. This is nothing new.

They do not fly anything that isnt NATO compatible, to change would be logistically stupid.

Their primary naval vessels are US built, and they are in the process of getting another one from the US.

Their Army is almost elusively made up of NATO standard compatible equipment, the RPG-7 being the major exception.

Again, this is about the US getting mad at them for how they are conducting their war on drugs.

[Berengil]

Well in all fairness your "Western Liberal Democracy" is handing victory to "Eurasian despotism" with its SJWism, diversity, multiculturalism and all other sorts of cancer. If the West doesn't change its way, the Chinese deserve to win.

Hell, I'd rather sell myself to Asians than be stucked with dindus or goatlovers and lose.

You'd better pray that it doesn't come to that. I didn't make reference to Star Trek's version of WW3 just for sh-ts and giggles. If strongmen and despots ever think its time to try to push the US over, the destruction from that war will end the present epoch of human civilization.

[Skroe]

It's kind of sad, isn't it Skroe?

All these different people so full of resentment and humiliation against the guarantor of the last 71 years of the most peaceful, prosperous, and technologically advancing time ever in human history. Seems like so many places you go on the internet now are full of shills for the Strongman idea vs Western Liberal Democracy.

It's almost starting to shape up into the sort of WW3 in the Star Trek universe: the final and bloody victory of Western Liberalism over Eurasian despotism.

I really, really hope to God that doesn't become necessary, but as my dad used to tell me: Hope in one hand, sh-t in the other, and see which one fills up first.

It's always been this way, particularly over the last 30 years. The "problem" such as it is, is that the United States' power is so enormous that there is legitimately nothing that can threaten it or dictate to it the way it can do that to others.

Granted, some posters here and elsehwere are paid Russian shills. But plenty of others have a very, how do I put it... grade school... concept of fairness. And they have an even more infantile perspective on how international relations works. Double standards rankle some people to such an extent you'd think they havent yet accepted that they are an intrinisc part of, you know, the world.

People can ultimately think what they want. The Pacific Pivot has and will have it's ups and downs, but it is happening. The US reinforcement of Europe, rallying of NATO and pushback against Russia is happening. The US getting a President far less a "global citizen" than Barry Obama is happening. These things are facts. Just like building that space rocket up there is a fact. Facts America's detractors will take any and every oppotunity to throw a rock at, but that doesn't make them any less facts.

In the past 20 years we've seen this twice before and it's ended in tears every time.

The first time we saw it was before 9/11, when there was a perception the US was extremely risk adverse internationally. The past 15 years of uninterrupted warfare on the other side of the planet has largely, but not entirely, doused that notion. You'd think after sustaining something like 5000 deaths in two, decade-decad and a half long wars, that the fake rep of America the reluctant would be a joke. But it continues to shock people, as it did in Libya, for example, that the US is willing to fight. Maybe not under Barry O in the twilight of his tenure, but he'll be gone soon.

The other time we saw it was just before the Financial Crisis crested in 2008. Around 2006-2007 a lot of supposedly very smart Davos-men started saying that the world had "decoubled" from the American economy and that if the American economy fell into recession in 2008, the BRICS and the EU would be fine. In retrospect, could there be a bigger joke of a theory? If anything the rest of the world broke America's fall so to speak. And here we are in 2016. The American economy is pretty much the only engine in the world. China is in economic decline. The EU is a mess. The BRICS as a concept are defunct and the "BRIS" in "BRICS" all have severe economic problems. This should not have been shocking to people, that yes, when the world's largest economy suffers as crisis, the rest of the inderlinked worled will feel it. But it was.

The moral of the story is that people will believe whatever they want to believe and things will happen regardless of them, and when they do, more often than not, they won't even agree they are happening (or why). Take Russia's Sectorial Sanctions over Ukraine. Put in place in July 2014. It is now in their fifth extension (and expanded upon), and they are expected to be uncontroversially extended in December for another 6 months. Something that was never supposed to happened, happened.

This article and certain people's reaction to it illustrates how that comes to be the case. The Pacific Pivot will have ups and downs, just as the US alliance with Europe. Just as US Mid-East policy. Just as anything else. There are times where they all have looked bleak. And there are times when they've looked as strong as diamond. There is no such thing as a permanent failure, a lasting defeat, or a unassailible victory, for any of these. There is only the status of conditions, and the status of the situation that the US has to work with. To put it simply, when Policy X goes sour, the US has to work harder to get it back on to it's goal. Every country ever, the US included, will spend it's time trying to find a way to turn that around, and they often succeed. It's a ongoing tug of war.

This is certainly on a level beyond the miscreants who use every time some national leader says something stupid, or every time two countries we don't like talk to each other, as a smear against US policy. They see every action, every shift as epochal... not just another move in an ongoing, never ending series of moves.

- - - Updated - - -

Well in all fairness your "Western Liberal Democracy" is handing victory to "Eurasian despotism" with its SJWism, diversity, multiculturalism and all other sorts of cancer. If the West doesn't change its way, the Chinese deserve to win.

Hell, I'd rather sell myself to Asians than be stucked with dindus or goatlovers and lose.

This is pathological to the extreme.

[Dreknar20]

well herp derp

Power dsnt come out of nowhere.
For one nation to gain it, another has to lose it

[sarahtasher]

I did not knew there was no middle ground between ''migrants and some EU laws that triggers people'' and ''Sino-Soviet rule''.

[Deleted]

It's kind of sad, isn't it Skroe?

All these different people so full of resentment and humiliation against the guarantor of the last 71 years of the most peaceful, prosperous, and technologically advancing time ever in human history. Seems like so many places you go on the internet now are full of shills for the Strongman idea vs Western Liberal Democracy.

It's almost starting to shape up into the sort of WW3 in the Star Trek universe: the final and bloody victory of Western Liberalism over Eurasian despotism.

I really, really hope to God that doesn't become necessary, but as my dad used to tell me: Hope in one hand, sh-t in the other, and see which one fills up first.

You go on ahead and fight the good fight Patriot!

[sarahtasher]

BTW, the insult about goatkeepers....the recurring one....I would like to know why keeping goats (a fairly common occupation in Europe in rural areas well into the twentieth century-goats, sheep, swine...) is a sign of stupidity over keeping, for instance, cattle (especially when coming from a country that idealize the said cattle keepers...)

[Calfredd]

BTW, the insult about goatkeepers....the recurring one....I would like to know why keeping goats (a fairly common occupation in Europe in rural areas well into the twentieth century-goats, sheep, swine...) is a sign of stupidity over keeping, for instance, cattle (especially when coming from a country that idealize the said cattle keepers...)

They said goatlover which means they have sex with goats. A common insult towards Muslims of Middle Eastern descent and the Welsh for some reason. Would be nice if you actually read the threads you participate in for once.

[Macaquerie]

The whole idea of the Asia pivot was to use all of these smaller countries like the Phillipines as proxies to cause legal and economic trouble for China, while we conveniently stood back and acted like we had nothing to do with any of it and were only interested in peace and prosperity in the region or some other line that nobody would ever believe. The problem is that, unlike in Europe, the countries we're propping up aren't really treasured long term allies but just expendable pawns, and it's understandable that some people in those countries might resent playing that role even though they certainly won't get any better treatment from China. At the end of the day, nobody really gives a shit about the Phillipines unless their president is doing something ridiculous and/or despotic, so he has an incentive to keep doing that just to keep the eyes of the world focused on him.

[Stop Pretending]

i think the philippines are doing an excellent job. the drug dealers and criminals need to be made examples of.

So you think a death sentence without a fair trial, or actual evidence, is doing an excellent job? Mm k.

[Deleted]

It's always been this way, particularly over the last 30 years. The "problem" such as it is, is that the United States' power is so enormous that there is legitimately nothing that can threaten it or dictate to it the way it can do that to others.

This, is not true.
Almost, but not quite.

People can ultimately think what they want. The Pacific Pivot has and will have it's ups and downs, but it is happening. The US reinforcement of Europe, rallying of NATO and pushback against Russia is happening.

There is some slight issues here though - The pivot is the US moving it's focus from the EU to the pacific.
Then you are reinforcing the EU.
And shrinking the armed forced.
There is something here that don't math.

The US getting a President far less a "global citizen" than Barry Obama is happening. These things are facts. Just like building that space rocket up there is a fact. Facts America's detractors will take any and every oppotunity to throw a rock at, but that doesn't make them any less facts.

While Hillary would be a global american, Trump is looking more keen on being an american american.

The first time we saw it was before 9/11, when there was a perception the US was extremely risk adverse internationally. The past 15 years of uninterrupted warfare on the other side of the planet has largely, but not entirely, doused that notion. You'd think after sustaining something like 5000 deaths in two, decade-decad and a half long wars, that the fake rep of America the reluctant would be a joke. But it continues to shock people, as it did in Libya, for example, that the US is willing to fight. Maybe not under Barry O in the twilight of his tenure, but he'll be gone soon.

Some people questioned the wisdom of the ongoing operations.

The other time we saw it was just before the Financial Crisis crested in 2008. Around 2006-2007 a lot of supposedly very smart Davos-men started saying that the world had "decoubled" from the American economy and that if the American economy fell into recession in 2008, the BRICS and the EU would be fine. In retrospect, could there be a bigger joke of a theory?

A bit of this had to do with it being a US housing crisis, its not entirely unreasonable to assume the effects would be local.

If anything the rest of the world broke America's fall so to speak. And here we are in 2016. The American economy is pretty much the only engine in the world.

This says more of the lousy state of the world economy right now, including the US one, several economic indicators are essentially refuting all the 'recovery' since the crash.

[Berengil]

You go on ahead and fight the good fight Patriot!

Djalil, I am hardly the typical "MURICA" citizen of the US. I hesitate at the thought of using force. And unlike most people where I live, I am in full support of causes most would consider quite liberal: LGBT equality, abortion rights, gun control, and so forth.

However, on defense, I am as hawkish as they come. Just because I hesitate at the use of force, doesn't mean I think it must never be used. And to uphold liberal democracy against the typical strongman despots that seem to endlessly recur throughout history, any amount of blood is acceptable.

" The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."

" The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

----- Thomas Jefferson

Yes, I know he was a slaveholder. Nonetheless, he was considered quite liberal for his time, and struggled to think of a way to peacefully end slavery. He failed, as did many others. That does not prevent him from having wisdom on other subjects.

[NED funded]

This, is not true.
Almost, but not quite.



There is some slight issues here though - The pivot is the US moving it's focus from the EU to the pacific.
Then you are reinforcing the EU.
And shrinking the armed forced.
There is something here that don't math.

While Hillary would be a global american, Trump is looking more keen on being an american american.


Some people questioned the wisdom of the ongoing operations.

A bit of this had to do with it being a US housing crisis, its not entirely unreasonable to assume the effects would be local.

This says more of the lousy state of the world economy right now, including the US one, several economic indicators are essentially refuting all the 'recovery' since the crash.

- First graphs shows the obvious. More people are studying and baby boomers are retiring.
- Second graph shows that yes when women start being part of the labour pool, men are now not the only ones to be employable thus their chances of being employed are reduced.
- The fourth graph is flat out false:


In fact leftists have been arguing that increase in productivity should lead to increase in wages.

-The fith graph is accurate but ignores context. The main reason household income saw a decline is because the size of households have been in a steady decline. This minneapolis fed paper goes into more detail
- 6th graph: SEE ABOVE
- The seventh graph shows the obvious, people do not trust in politicians.

Also stop using zero hedge as a source of anything. It's a trash website, instead you could have linked the original source.

[Judgedredd]

So you think a death sentence without a fair trial, or actual evidence, is doing an excellent job? Mm k.

to prevent 1 out of every 140 people becoming criminals then yes.

after all china has an even more draconian system (they execute more people per year than the whole world combined) and they seem to be going from strength to strength while Uncle Sam is stumbling over his indolent lardy ass.

- - - Updated - - -

An opinion piece on ft.com? What if the guy who writes the editorial is wrong?

ft stands for "financial times".

and it is idiots like you that allowed Nelson Mandela to be very well informed during his 3 decades in prison just because the guards thought The Economist was some boring magazine about hard facts and figures when in reality it is one of the most well known newsmagazines on the planet.

after all this time people still judge books (and in this case newspapers) by their front covers?

- - - Updated - - -

"Unfortunately, long-term strategic thinking is almost impossible in the current maelstrom of American politics. As a result, President Obama faces the sad prospect of leaving office with his signature foreign-policy initiative — the pivot to Asia — sinking beneath the Pacific waves."

The article used Obama and long term thinking in the same sentence?

[ringpriest]

It's always been this way, particularly over the last 30 years. The "problem" such as it is, is that the United States' power is so enormous that there is legitimately nothing that can threaten it or dictate to it the way it can do that to others.

Granted, some posters here and elsehwere are paid Russian shills. But plenty of others have a very, how do I put it... grade school... concept of fairness. And they have an even more infantile perspective on how international relations works. Double standards rankle some people to such an extent you'd think they havent yet accepted that they are an intrinisc part of, you know, the world.

People can ultimately think what they want. The Pacific Pivot has and will have it's ups and downs, but it is happening. The US reinforcement of Europe, rallying of NATO and pushback against Russia is happening. The US getting a President far less a "global citizen" than Barry Obama is happening. These things are facts. Just like building that space rocket up there is a fact. Facts America's detractors will take any and every oppotunity to throw a rock at, but that doesn't make them any less facts.

In the past 20 years we've seen this twice before and it's ended in tears every time.

The first time we saw it was before 9/11, when there was a perception the US was extremely risk adverse internationally. The past 15 years of uninterrupted warfare on the other side of the planet has largely, but not entirely, doused that notion. You'd think after sustaining something like 5000 deaths in two, decade-decad and a half long wars, that the fake rep of America the reluctant would be a joke. But it continues to shock people, as it did in Libya, for example, that the US is willing to fight. Maybe not under Barry O in the twilight of his tenure, but he'll be gone soon.

The other time we saw it was just before the Financial Crisis crested in 2008. Around 2006-2007 a lot of supposedly very smart Davos-men started saying that the world had "decoubled" from the American economy and that if the American economy fell into recession in 2008, the BRICS and the EU would be fine. In retrospect, could there be a bigger joke of a theory? If anything the rest of the world broke America's fall so to speak. And here we are in 2016. The American economy is pretty much the only engine in the world. China is in economic decline. The EU is a mess. The BRICS as a concept are defunct and the "BRIS" in "BRICS" all have severe economic problems. This should not have been shocking to people, that yes, when the world's largest economy suffers as crisis, the rest of the inderlinked worled will feel it. But it was.

The moral of the story is that people will believe whatever they want to believe and things will happen regardless of them, and when they do, more often than not, they won't even agree they are happening (or why). Take Russia's Sectorial Sanctions over Ukraine. Put in place in July 2014. It is now in their fifth extension (and expanded upon), and they are expected to be uncontroversially extended in December for another 6 months. Something that was never supposed to happened, happened.

This article and certain people's reaction to it illustrates how that comes to be the case. The Pacific Pivot will have ups and downs, just as the US alliance with Europe. Just as US Mid-East policy. Just as anything else. There are times where they all have looked bleak. And there are times when they've looked as strong as diamond. There is no such thing as a permanent failure, a lasting defeat, or a unassailible victory, for any of these. There is only the status of conditions, and the status of the situation that the US has to work with. To put it simply, when Policy X goes sour, the US has to work harder to get it back on to it's goal. Every country ever, the US included, will spend it's time trying to find a way to turn that around, and they often succeed. It's a ongoing tug of war.

This is certainly on a level beyond the miscreants who use every time some national leader says something stupid, or every time two countries we don't like talk to each other, as a smear against US policy. They see every action, every shift as epochal... not just another move in an ongoing, never ending series of moves.

The United States' greatest threat is, like other empires (feel free to substitute "globally dominant power" or "hegemon of the known world" if you prefer ) before it, itself and its own success. Yes, the "power" (economic, military, cultural, technological, what have you) of the United States is massive beyond comprehension - literally. America's underlying systems, humanity's underlying structures, both biologically evolved and created by the exercise of our intellectual faculties are grossly inadequate to rationally "steering" the byzantine juggernaut that is America, or even it's state apparatus. Instead one can only hope for a sort of emergent (hopefully beneficial) intelligence to arise from the many conflicting influences (although I don't hold out much hope of that happening: instead too much of America seems to feed off fear, idiocy and base impulses).

I think the reason many folks like to, as you put it, "throw rocks" at America or American exceptionalism is that while there is certainly a strong element of truth/power in the US, there is also a strong element of delusion, especially self-delusion - and people like seeing illusions shattered, especially when they belong to bullies; and the US government does act like a bully - it is no random chance that an ignorant, delusional bully is one of the two leading candidates for President of the Untied States.

People and nations think the US is risk-averse for good reasons (whether that judgement is ultimately correct or not is another matter): the Farsi Island debacle, Obama's exceptionally feeble saber-chiming in the South China Sea, Trump's isolationist rhetoric, the unwillingness or inability to actually mobilize the nation and throw the forces required to flat out win into any of its conflicts... 5000 deaths (and countless more wounded, mentally and physically) is a pinprick to a titan like the United States (and a pinprick that is hidden away and covered up, at that - if the US as an entity actually cared about the real cost of the Terror Wars the endless debacle of the Veterans' Administration would have gotten far, far more attention, for example). The US does appear unwilling - had it been truly motivated, Afghanistan (and Iraq) would be US states, swarmed under with hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands more contractors and allies - instead, the US has chosen to let Afghanistan and Iraq rot, to the great detriment of its own reputation (or even worse, it tried and failed at the morale/logistical level). There is zero support for any degree of sacrifice from the population at home - if a war requires more domestic effort that putting colored ribbons on things, the mob mind isn't interested.

As for the sanctions... I certainly was wrong when I expected them to end earlier, but...
EU should end economic bans against Russia: French president

"French President Francois Hollande has called for an end to European Union sanctions against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine amid growing dissent in the 28-nation bloc on the restrictive measures.

During his annual address to the French ambassadors at the Elysée Palace in Paris on Tuesday, Holande, whose country was previously a staunch supporter of the anti-Moscow bans, described them as “an obstacle to many economic projects.”

...
Hollande made the comments a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had “the very greatest interest in stopping sanctions” against the Kremlin."

The US establishment makes moves on the board of the Great Game confident that it has mastery, or at least an understanding, of all relevant elements of the situation - but as events in places like Libya and Yemen show, that isn't necessarily true; nor is it true back in the "Homeland" - despicable and wretched as he is, Trump's rise is not being fueled by empty air (even if he himself full of it). There are very real, and potentially dangerous instabilities in the US, in terms of race, economics, wealth, education, law, visions of the future and social mores, health metrics, and on and on - and it is all capped off by a ruling class that, while possessing a degree of meritocracy (even if far less than it likes to pretend, and is really more of a kakistostratic one) is increasingly living in a bubble disconnected from its own (already massively privileged by global standards) citizenry and so far removed from reality that American leadership does not even realize that they've approached levels of disconnected ignorance not seen since the end of the Soviet Politburo (and finding that out is going to come as a shock - one that I very much hope the US can survive and even ultimately prosper from).

I know that American certainly appears strong... but I look at it, and cannot help but think of the bird Franklin suggested as its symbol: the turkey, who knows that every day the farmer will bring him food, and that he has a warm and sheltered place to sleep, and that the fence and farmer protect him from all dangers, and who has never even conceived of the idea of "Thanksgiving". The United States has enjoyed a blessed reign in history that is truly unparallelled - generations of Americans have grown to adulthood with a worldview that doesn't even acknowledge the possibility that the world they know is only metastable, that upheavals happen, and change can be sudden and often violent; that appears to leave the US ill-prepared to actually deal with change or upheaval.

[breadisfunny]

So you think a death sentence without a fair trial, or actual evidence, is doing an excellent job? Mm k.

they are criminals and criminals especially violent ones need to be made examples of. and yes they are doing an excellent job. mass executions of cartel members is an excellent idea. i am a big supporter of extrajudical killings for that reason. cartels must know that if they continue their violent ways they will be executed and buried in a shallow grave where their kind belongs. they must be hunted like the animals they are.

[Cybran]

As predicted. pictures of grounded rockets and a world view based on a shitty sci fi television series from the 1970s.

America is dying and every day we see more of its death throws.

Pathetic.

[Marcellus1986]

As predicted. pictures of grounded rockets and a world view based on a shitty sci fi television series from the 1970s.

America is dying and every day we see more of its death throws.

Pathetic.

That's rich coming from the guy who doesn't read his own articles and bases his world view off of anime. You've been huffing too much paint in your mom's basement, Cryban.