America Isn't Remotely Prepared For The Coming Storm

[Skroe]

The Post-Cold War era is over and dead and it isn't coming back anytime soon. And we're going to be lucky to get out of this new era we're in at anything less than a high cost.

We have a thread labeled "Do you think Mueller's findings will be conclusive". Over the past few days, on and off I was writing a response, but in writing it I realized my response was widly off topic, and much bigger in scope, because big picture, Trump barely matters. Seriously. Taking a step back and looking at the broader causes, implications and environment of Trump's election and the investigation, nobody on either side has any cause to be optimistic about anything when it comes to the US foreign situation right now. We're in a lot of trouble... long term, structural, dangerous trouble, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. People are going to die before it does. A lot of people. Because, like the Soviet Union before us, our internal contradictions have caught up with us. To right the ship and get through this storm, we need to fix them. Or we'll sink. It's as simple as that. We are far from the first country to find ourselves here - turning a victory into a stagnation into a disaster, largely by our own hand.

Echoing what many national security professionals and foreign policy experts believe, that the period of American Hegemony that followed its victory at the end of the Cold War in 1992 is over. It probably ended with the Financial Crisis in 2008 and the past 10 years have been largely a transitional period to a renewed era of Great Power Competition. The United States is still, by far, the most powerful country on earth and will remain so, likely indefinitely due to it's structural advantages. But it's relative position has sharply eroded and will continue to erode over the next decade because of things that have already happened.

This Great Power Competition is currently focused on the US, China and Russia, with Russia not really a great power but more of an assertive revanchist one. Is it Cold War II? No. Not yet. That is coming, between the US and China. This is the warm up to it. The current multi-directional competition will, in time, give way two a dual-superpower era of competition, probably around 2030. But that is in the future. In the now, the United States has to spend the next decade running a gauntlet, and because of things we've largely done to ourselves, successfully navigating it will be more difficult than ever. Do not expect for the US to win all these fights.

When did this period of Great Power Competition start once the end of the unipolar era occurred? Like many historical shifts, a hard date or event is difficult to pick out. It could be Chinese Island building that began in 2011. It could have been Obama's failure to enforce the red line in late 2013. It could have been Vladmir Putin's New York Times op-ed around that time. It could have been the illegal invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in early 2014.

Russia's attack on the United States in 2016, which many foreign policy and security experts regard as the third direct attack on the United States in the last 100 years (after Pearl Harbor and 9/11) was not the first event of this dark new era. Rather, it is the most recent event in a situation that Americans have been agonizingly slow in reacting to because we have, of everybody on earth, the most to lose by shifting our national posture to react to the new reality.


Why do I believe this? To properly explain I must offer some historical context. History does not repeat, but it does rhyme, and we're rhyming so loudly that the fact we're not nationally reacting with suitable alarm is terrifying in itself. Later on, I'll explain how I think we can mitigate the damage. But make no mistake, we're not getting off the hook. The bill always comes due, and America is about to pay it, big time.

Part I. Understanding US Grand Strategy
The United States position in the world is broadly defined by our national security and foreign policy community as leveraging our geographical isolation to forestall and undermine the rise of a hegemonic great power somewhere in Eurasia. Most of the human race and most of America's foreign interests (especially economic interests, and America is an economic power first and foremost) live in Eurasia. Were a hegemonic power to arise there and dominate its region, it would come at the expense of Eurasian security, interest of American friends, and inevitably, directly impact American interests and security. This can be taken broadly as the lesson of World War I and World II, when the German Empire, and then the Axis Powers rose to try and dominate their near abroad. That act enviably drew the world's leading economy in, despite its geographic isolation. The Cold War itself is also acting through this policy, the feeling being, if we did not stop the Soviets in Eurasia, they would eventually threaten us in North America (which proved to be exactly the case).

However this American Grand Strategy Predates World War I. It goes back to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, and you can even see a prototype version of it in the Spanish-American War. Before that, the Monroe Doctrine forms an even more fundamental foundation.

It is fundamentally based on the concept of a kind of critical mass. The United States, being populous, wealthy and geographically large, exceeds a critical mass where its interests could be narrow (that is, isolated strictly to say, North America, or just North/South America). As America grew richer and bigger in every way, where our interests rubbed against the interests of other countries would geographically move outwards as well. More recently, we are seeing this exact thing happen, at a faster rate, with China. As it grows richer and more sophisticated, it's interests are moving geographically outward.

The Monroe doctrine moved American interests into the entirety of the Western Hemisphere. Decades later, it became Eurasia, and then the whole world. As a result, controlling and eliminating the potential of a rival power to threaten our interests, and draw us into a larger conflict (namely a major military engagement, or an economic war) became our enduring grand strategy.

Of all the countries int he World, the United States is the only one able to operate like this, because unlike the USSR/Russia, China, the EU, Nazi Germany, the German Empire, the Japanese Empire or the British Empire, the US does not border a great power. Even today it is far more difficult to strike us, than it is, for say, China to strike Russia or vice versa. This reality directly enables the potential of this grand strategy. It allows the US to engage in what is termed "forward defense" (or "expeditionary policy") as opposed to "territorial defense". China, as we are seeing today, operates a territorial defense strategy that is trying (and having a very hard time doing), converting to a forward defense strategy that its geographic location makes difficult. The USSR tried that as well, to limited success.

The takeaway from this though is that the US has defined its interests as chiefly residing not in our neck of the woods, for over a hundred years, and because of our critical mass, will continue to do so indefinitely. This is not the 1810s and we are not an agrarian nation.

Part II. The United States Spent Most of the Cold War losing it, and mostly through blind luck won it.
Everyday Americans have a very poor understanding of the history of the early Cold War, and take our victory in it, and the resultant American military, economic and political hegemony that arose in its awake for granted. The success of all were accidents, and not by design.

The single most destructive "decade" for US foreign policy in American history can broadly be defined as "the 1950s", stretching from the detonation of the first Soviet Nuclear bomb test in late 1946 until the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis in late 1961. Relative to the US position and responsibilities to the world, no other single stretch of time saw such erosion of the American position in the world or such existential risk to the United States. America ended World War II in 1945 by far the most powerful country on Earth. When 1962 dawned, it was easily the second most.

At the end of 1945 the United States had a military, political and economic presence in almost every region on Earth and had by far the most powerful military in Eurasia. It also had a nuclear weapons monopoly. Obviously, because that is just a technology, that would not endure forever, but that aside, American influence was at it's historical zenith at that point, due to America's geographical isolation leading it to being relatively unscathed by World War II. It could bring resources and manpower to bear that the USSR or the bankrupt British Empire (the other superpower of the time) could not. This gave the United States tremendous influence over what the post war order would look like, and from the outset, the United States planned for most of the world in which it was present to be democratic in nature. Forget for a moment, what actually happened. Consider the view from late 1945.

The United States spend late 1945 and 1946 rapidly withdrawing from the world. The United States military was rapidly demobilized and downsized. Part of this was a revision to pre-War isolationism and suspicion over foreign entanglements. Part of it was a consensus that the United States did not need a presence in these regions day-to-day to press the agenda. The Cold War was, to contemporary Americans, a possibility, and not an inevitable one. And one, due to the expense that would be incurred, likely to be avoided.

Soviet actions in 1946 and 1947 rapidly changed this assessment and lead directly to the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall plan, and a reversal of US military demobilization. Soviet invasions and standing up puppet regimes in Eastern Europe's in succeeding years went largely unopposed, as did the implications of the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War (the US backing the Nationalists). Over the course of the "1950s", the United States went from having a deep presence in Eurasia to being pushed to its very periphery - Western Europe, the Korean peninsula and Japan. Even the Korean War was basically a desperation act, by the US, to maintain a foothold on the Eastern Eurasian landmass. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of American losses in this time. It was an utter collapse. The United States experienced almost no geopolitical victories from the end of World War II until the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, unless you count "not losing South Korea, Japan, Western Germany and France to the Soviets" as a victory. It would be historically difficult to replicate a loss of this magnitude ever again due to the sheer geographic nature of it. Within this decade, the world went from having dozens of nascent democracies to having nearly a billion people under Soviet thralldom.

The international situation in the 1960s and 1970s stabilized for a number of reasons. One was the introduction in 1960 and 1961 of the first true Submarine Launch Ballistic Missile. This replaced bombers and intermediate ranged ICBMs as the primary nuclear deterrent, and their near invincible nature also significantly altered US-Soviet balance of power to be more equitable. It was more difficult for one to annihilate the other, after their introduction, than before. The powers also channeled their energies into other affairs, like the Space Race or Vietnam. Even the "domino theory" that lead to Vietnam was an expression of this concept that the US was on the verge of losing what little a foothold it still had on Eurasia.

The Arab Oil Embargo, the Detente of the 1970s, hyperinflation, and Soviet stagnation, stabilized, by around 1977, a situation that 15 years prior looked like was leading head long into World War III. The US withdrawal from Vietnam certainly forestalled further large scale American military adventurism for the next 15 years (the 1991 Gulf War). It is also worth noting that during this period, up to around 1975, from a military and technological standpoint, the US and USSR were at a near parity. Each was ahead in some areas than others, but decisive edges were few.

The invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 threatened to explode in a new era of American-Soviet open aggression after years of stability, but events conspired to put a lid on that, namely the Soviet Economic depression due to the fall in Oil prices, rapid changes in Soviet leadership, US activities in Afghanistan, the Camp David Accords pulling Egypt out of the Soviet sphere into the US one (long a US objective), and Chernobyl. It is also worth mentioning that the comparatively strong US economy of the 1980s facilitated introduction of a large number of "late Cold War" systems (many of which entered service mostly in the 1990s), such as the Ohio Class SSBN, improved F-15s and F-16s, the F-117, the F-22, the B-2, the Abrams tank, the Bradley, GPS, the Los Angeles Class submarines, the Nimitz class carrier, precision weapons, the B-1B, and the Space Shuttle. This is important to point out because up to this point in time, the US and Soviet Union had been doing generational upgrades to their armed forces pretty much in lock step, 1:1. The Soviet Union had plans, and prototypes, for a "Soviet" one of each of these, but few entered production ever (and some entered production only in the last decade) because of financial issues at the time. If oil prices had not collapsed, the USSR likely would have introduced these systems in comparable number to the US.

Or to put it another way, US military supremacy post 1992 is built on the fact that, in the 1980s, the other major competitor stopped being able to afford to compete for a time, even though he had the platforms planned, even ready, that would have made that possible.

Finally political and economic contradictions within the Soviet sphere led to its collapse, the fall of the Soviet Empire being timed at really the first point in its entire history it would have been the LEAST able to respond, something that the United States had very little hand in bringing about other than existing as a democratic alternative to autocracies. The US likes to pat itself on the back and say our military build up in the 1980s collapsed the USSR. It certainly didn't help it, but the collapse was not caused by it by a long shot.

So to summarize the Cold War, we spent the period 1946-late 1961 losing badly, then 1961-1979 stabilizing, and then 1980-1992 winning, largely because of things that happened that we had only tangential involvement in.

But that is not the American mythology. The American mythology has it as some kind of closer fight, that we were wracking up wins the entire time. It's nonsense. We got lucky. The free world got lucky. "Liberty" spent much of the 90 years prior to 1992 losing quite badly. It took a historic confluence of conditions to bring down a hegemon in Eurasia that America largely failed to contain. Soviet expansion stopped, largely because the Soviets decided to stop it where the cost would be high. As evidenced by Afghanistan, or Latin America or Africa, they never stopped where they thought the cost would be low.

So how is this relevant in relation to today, now that I've taken you on a guided tour of the Cold War? It has to do with American psychology. If you think our victory in the Cold War was due to, lets call them mythological factor, then there is no reason to believe the rising threat today is significant and demands an immediate response because "things will work out", just like they did last time. This is what I like to call the American Superman Myth. We think that because we dodged a bullet, we can deflect and dodge any amount of bullets. This complacency leads directly to something that DID NOT happen during the Cold War, which is, when it comes to our national priorities, placing our wants over our needs. We will return to this.


Part III. The United States As A Status Quo Superpower
Of every country in the world, the United States has the most to lose from any disruption in the international system and as it stands today, this singularly explains how slow the US is to react to countless situations.

America not only won the Cold War, it also got to define the shape of the post-Cold War global order (namely an expansion of the liberal democratic order it built after 1945), with itself as the nexus. This has brought unprecedented power and unprecedented wealth to America, mostly at the expense of would be regional and global rivals, ranging from Russia and China to North Korea and Iran. This allowed us to define conditions and reality in regions where they lived, and we were just visitors.

But as country's have found out, particularly after 2004 (when the Iraq War went south), and more so under the Obama Administration, America has come to calculate the cost of reacting and potentially disrupting any status quo to be so high, it is extraordinarily reluctant, even paralyzed, to take actions that might do that and create a new condition for the country that is less favorable.

The most notable (in my book) example of this is China's behavior in the WTO. The EU and US basically involved China into the WTO in the early 2000s on the promise of reform that the Chinese government never delivered upon (and likely never intended to). This contrasts against Russia, which was basically mercy Rules into the WTO in 2012. Russia had to illustrate reform and THEN join (and then at the end, only joined because it threatened to walk after 20 years of talks). China on the other hand, was allowed in on promises, largely because its large potential market was so enticing to Western businesses.

In subsequent years Chinese mercantilist policies decimated Western manufacturing, and more recently has lead to a historic pillaging of our IP and technologies. The US and EU have been extraordinarily slow to engage in their treaty-allowed, legitimate avenues for confronting China's practices, for fear of igniting a trade war. China, calculating this behavior, continues to engage in it. In the other words, they have our number. They know that because we calculate the risk of retaliation to be so high, they have far more room to maneuver than our threats allow for.

We've seen this in other domains as well, from the slowness of the US response in Ukraine, to the 25 year saga of the North Korean nuclear program, to the Obama Administration at times acting like Iran's lawyer vis a vis the United States government over the Iran deal. Our enemies have come to calculate -rightly - that US red lines are not red lines, and they can go far, far past them before they truly provoke action on our part. In some domains, how far isn't even clear. For example, the question of "how many American should die for Estonia?" has come up periodically since 2014. The fact that is being asked indicates the depth of the problem. Our enemies don't think that even mutual defense treaties necessarily imply a firm US commitment.

It should be self evident why this is extraordinarily imporant. The US and USSR despite being adversaries in the Cold War, managed it surprisingly responsibly because the leaders of both sides, being largely composed of Veterans of World War II (and some World War I in the early days) came to understand the importance of transparency and clarity in signals. The US and USSR snarled at each other, but they were exceedingly clear over what constituted "too far", and the incidents where "too far" was breached led to most of the major crisis-es, such as in Cuba or Afghanistan.

By contrast, one of the biggest risks today is that the Armed Forces and political leaders of Russia and China have zero experience with conventional war, great power conflict, and the United States has had a single minded focus on counter-terrorism for so many years, that this World War II lesson - the clarity of intent - has been completely lost. This could lead to, for example China doing something to the United States that they assess will not provoke a major response... but does anyway because they didn't understand what that would be.

This is why for the past 10 years the United States has been working hard, largely unsuccessfully, to forge a working relationship with the Chinese military, general to general, admiral to admiral; so that the sides can come to understand the professional of each other and how the other-side thinks, to reduce the risk of a miscalculation. US-Russian relations, in this regard, are far better for historic reasons, however the Putin Regime's subversion of the once independent Russian Armed Forces into basically an armed wing of United Russia over the last decade has undermined this.

America's status quo "conservatism in action", in other words, is made worse by this profound lack of understanding of what the red lines are. This is creating a series of extremely dangerous situations around the world, and led directly to things like Russia's aggression against the US in the 2016 elections. They calculated that the worst response the US would offer would be economic and political, not military, even to something that profound, and that Russia could endure it. This will invite future adventurism.


Part IV. So where does this leave us.

Something I've been trying to get across to my friends in Anti-Trump for the better part of a year is that it is wrong to think of Trump's election and "President Trump" as a political affair. It is a national security incident. An unprecedented one for America, but not unprecedented in history. We are not the first country in history to have a leader whose ties to a rival power are deeply suspect, and we are not the first country in history whose leader's legitimacy is tainted by the potentiality of those ties. Trump's election is incidental, and I believe his eventual removal and prosecution also incidental, to the fact that, some time in early 2016, the Russian government at the highest levels decided to do this thing to us.

Something will happen to Trump. Maybe he'll be impeached. Maybe he'll be indicted. Maybe he'll serve a full 4 or 8 years. But that, and indeed the entire Mueller investigation, is actually less important, big picture than the road that Russia's 2016 election actions leads us down, especially if it not retaliated against sufficiently. Mueller, in other words, is a clean up job to something that has already happened. And make no mistake, Russia's attack on us next year was one of the most successful intelligence operations in human history. It is a legitimate, historic achievement and the United States lost that phase of our conflict with Russia, badly.

But let's put this in a historical context. If this is an early attack on us in a new era of Russia-American conflict, it is analogous to say, the Berlin Blockade or the propping up of Soviet puppet states in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. This attack will lead to another thing, and another thing, and another thing, regardless if Trump stays or goes. Regardless if the next President is Democratic or Republican, liberal or conservative.

This is why I am not at all optimistic about Trump's removal. Because removing him doesn't address the most pressing issue of our time, which is America, drunk on success from other people's victory in the Cold War with an imaginary Superman Complex, continues to place its wants over its needs.

The fact is, the Cold War was tremendously expensive (both in money and non-material sacrifice), and there is a good argument to be made that the explosion of global wealth that began in the mid 1990s is a direct result of an elimination artificial barriers (of many types) that was intrinsic to the Cold War. But that the US and the world engaged in these expenses was due to necessity - either the free world or the unfree would eventually prevail, either as it happened, or through a military outcome.

And this is why I am not optimistic: I do not know if America specifically, or the Western World in general, is capable or educated, or even cares enough, to shift gears from wants, to needs.

I don't mean this purely, or even mostly, as some kind of vield call to go balls deep on military defense spending and get in a shooting war with China. As I wrote in many other places, we can do a military build up for $100-$150 billion more a year, which we can finance largely by moving some money around. That is not remotely of the scale I'm talking about.

I'm talking more about things like confronting Russia in an aggressive (diplomatic/political/economic/strategic) manner in year one of its violation of the INF Treaty, not kinda-sorta in year ten. I mean confronting China immediately on its trade practices. I mean (in a different world, it's too late for this now), not kicking the North Korea Can down the road, literally, for a generation, because every President finds something else they rather deal with. I mean Republican politicians taking the Russian interference last year seriously, and not trying to discredit law enforcement because they know its going to give them an answer they don't like to hear.

America as a status quo superpower, and it's reluctance to take risk and rock the boat, borne of it's mythology in how it won World War II and the Cold War, I believe, is not something abstract, but something that infects the minds of our leaders, and has for years.

These Republican politicians today, for example, if they thought there was an actual major security threat to this country - one that threatened their and their children's welfare, I believe they would act. But I believe they don't because they have reckoned privately as American leaders have for 20 years, that "Russia (in this case) did this, it is too late or too dangerous to undo it or retaliate, so the best option is for it to go away, because they can't REALLY hurt us. We'll come out on top and be safe no matter what."

As I said, the Superman Myth.

Republicans on Trump-Russia aren't alone in doing this. Every administration going back to Clinton has engaged in that with North Korea. Every provocation, rationalized away that their attack on our security was not big enough to warrant a response, so it should go away as to not distract from a political agenda that is more important to whatever President.

Another way of saying this, is they think the the threat is not big enough to seriously care, so they don't. They think Russia (or whoever, in other affairs) can get its pound of flesh, but America, as the unassailable, nigh-invincible status quo superpower, will win the day, and the boat won't need to be rocked at all.

I think this is nonsense, and I think our eroding global security situation speaks to that. We've engaged in this behavior so many times, in so many ways big and small, that the attacks are starting to impose serious, tangible consequences. Trump may be the most in-our-face consequence, in this regard, but it is not the first. China is closer than ever to establishing a regional dominance over the South China Sea... something that could have been prevented in 2012, but President Obama forbade the Navy from taking action (and Susan Rice instituted a gag order against Admirals talking about China) until he was nearly out of office. China went unopposed in the region, for nearly 5 years.

Why? Because Obama, like many in our time, put his wants (the Paris treaty mostly, but also Iran and economic reasons) ahead of his needs (protecting the abstract norm that China was directly undermining).

We don't need to "recover" from Trump and Mueller won't do that. We need to recover from this mindset that we're destined... entitled to win, and that our position is so far ahead of our adversaries, that we can let them engage in mischief against us (or we can engage in games among ourselves, like Republicans are over Trump-Russia. It is most certainly not. If we want to win, we can take nothing for granted. We'll have to work at it.

Here is the future, as I see it.

North Korea will continue to improve its nuclear arsenal. It will grow likely into the low hundreds (nuclear weapons are expensive and difficult to sustain, so there is a numerical limit to how big their arsenal will grow). They will eventually succeed in putting a solid fueled ballistic missile inside a submarine, and have a primitive, but serious at sea deterrent. US conflict with North Korea, while unlikely, is more likely than its been in decades.

Russia will continue to try and create conditions for this. A major US conflict in the Korean peninsula would be an enormous boon for Russia. Why?
(1) the US would have redeploy a huge number of forces out of Europe and the Middle East for years to come, both regions more important to Russia's interests than the Far East. This will allow Russian interests and security expansion into both reasons.
(2) a conflict will be tremendously destructive and expensive to the US and US military. They are well aware of the cost of the Iraq War to the US. They'd absolutely like a sequel. If they got one, Russia could obtain a military parity to the US in about a decade.
(3) a devastated South Korea and damaged Japan would deprive the US of it's two richest and most powerful allies in East Asia, and would likely force, post War, the US to withdraw entirely from the region. The US would likely be blamed for the conflict by the locals. Few people want Kim Jong Un to live a long and happy life more than South Koreans.
(4) It would create a humanitarian catastrophe and completely upend the security situation in the North-West Pacific, which principally would distract and consume China in the region. This would allow Russia to weaken China too.

Independent of the above Russia will continue it's asymmetric warfare in Europe, the Middle East, and with election and cyberattacks in Latin America.

The Iran deal has an expiration date that is 6 or 7 years away. This will need to be renewed or renegotiated, but regardless, the day is coming that Iran will exist with no deal, and will be a threshold nuclear power. This will invite regional security competition with the Saudi-Arab alliance. The US will need to either lead a conflict on their behalf as their security guarantor, or negotiate another avoidance one. Either way will consume substantial American political and military bandwidth, which is finite. Russia and China will seek to make sure this is as expensive to the US as possible, for this very reason.

There is Russia, which despite it's adventurism is getting poorer and weaker (ironically). Russia's actions are the thrashing of a country in a violent terminal decline, trying to set a new normal that its reduced status can still thrive in. In 1991 the USSR was still the second most powerful country on Earth. In 2002, Russia was still the second most powerful. Today, it's probably the fifth most powerful, after the US, China, Germany and Japan in that order. And it will continue it's absolute decline.

Russia is currently in an severe and sustained economic hole despite years of promises from its leaders that recovery is just around the corner. It's GDP has shrunk in half from around 2012. Whispers of Post-Putin era are growing. In that era, which will arrive next decade, it is projected to face severe political disruption as his successors jockey for power, at the time it's industry arrives at it's permanent and final break down and population shrinks. Russia's metrics, in other words, are so bad that it could break up and/or undergo a major political reorganization in the next 20 years.

At the end of it all, on one side or another of everything above, will be China. Rested and rich... on the other side of 2030 it's military and economy should be comparable to the United States in size and capability. By the end of next year it will have two foreign bases (Djibouti and Pakistan). Don't be surprised when bases start popping up in places like Tunisia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Egypt, South Africa, and potentially Iran (politically complicated there) in coming years.

In other words, after we 'deal" with North Korea, Iran, Russia... plus Trump, Islamic Radicalism, and whatever else comes our way, on the far side of that is waiting the real main event of the 21st Century, the US-Chinese Cold War.


That is why I say, I am not optimistic. Because the thought that we get through the above... what I call "the Gauntlet", unscathed, with no more than some ugly tweets and gross politics under Trump to show for it, is farcical. This is going to go very, very badly, and it is not going to end the way that those Republicans in Congress will don't like to talk seriously about Russia interference in 2016, think.

We're in store for something that is a less-worse version of the "1950s". We will lose allies. We will suffer geopolitical setback after geopolitical setback. We will find our position eroded compared to our rivals. And it will happen because we, when we had every advantage since 1992, squandered them in the name of political convenience at the time. For a long time, we were threatened and didn't care, and now our rivals have made us care.

Part V: So how do we get through this?

First we separate our needs from our wants and focused on the things that matter.

Let me give you an example, because defining what a "need" and what a "want" is, is something that will have to be via a reformulated bipartisan consensus in community years. The centers of both parties will have to broadly agree, like they did after World War II, to keep a large degree of domestic politics sandboxed, so the wants don't drown the needs.

Democrats are thinking of shutting down the government over DACA. I'm deeply sympathetic to this. In another world, I'd say "shut the bitch down". This country needs immigrants. It thrives on them. It is also a moral matter. The wall as well, is an abomination and symptomatic of Republicans putting wants over needs. But shutting the US Government... let's be clear the US Government, and billions of dollars that go to structuring the modern free world down every day, because of DACA, is the kind of thing was would have been alright in 1998, but is very much not all right give the global situation in 2018. Even a few weeks, without "the man on the wall", even the perception that "there goes Americans and their ridiculous internal political games" in allied countries, will undermine our position. But so will amorally throwing out all the Dreamers.

Now this is the part where certain folks usually say things about "defending our values". Very sympathetic. But our values don't protect us. That's happy talk. Our security apparatus, our alliances, our discrete actions and long term plans do. Moral superiority didn't win the last Cold War, and it won't win the next one either. But they did define the character of the victory.

Does that mean Democrats cave over DACA? Not at all. They bargain. They accept less than what they maximally want, and enough not to please anybody. They drive a hard bargain, but do bargain. They avoid the moral compromise as much as possible, while not pretending that DACA extension is cost-less to larger essential government priorities. Everything is connected and everything matters. And for the record, again, this is just one example. That ridiculous Republican Tax Cut was another case of wants overriding needs in the American fantasy land, because now America has to finance this new geopolitical nightmare world we're in, with an aging population, with less revenue... somehow (more borrowing). Reckless and stupid behavior, like that Tax Cut, must be rolled back as soon as possible.

Secondly we need to purge ourselves of corrupting influences at all levels. I've said before I believe the Mueller investigation will go on for many, many years, and will in time, be headed by someone not-Mueller, and go after other individuals, and be expanded into foreign interference from countries other than Russia.

The globalized era since 1992 also brought about unprecedented interference in our country. America declared itself open for business, and like every other time in history a great power has done that, rivals have rightly figured where the best places to advance their interests would be.

The "Super-Mueller" investigation, let's call it, would be a repeat of what the US did in the 1950s through 1970s to great success. We need to see purge our government, our industries, our corporations of corrupted individuals and influences. We've become dirty and compromised top to bottom, and we need to get clean and honest. Why do you think for example, China hacked credit agencies and banks? Because they want to find which Americans have outstanding financial liabilities and could be used as a source of intelligence gathering.

Nationally, we need to renormalize our personal, economic and political behaviors. Individually we must reduce our liabilities. We must live within our means. We must plan for tomorrow and not just live in the now as a people. We must be altruistic and selfless. The age of "me" is over. We must seek out and make sure people who could be compromised for their perversions (child predators or rapists for example) aren't in positions of influence. #MeToo, for instance, serves a really positive role in this regard. We need to regulate out of existence Americans going to bat for foreign governments. We need fundamental campaign (and campaign finance) and electoral reform. We need to make sure we are living up to our ideals when it comes to social justice. We need to re-institute and expand ethical norms at every level of public and private life.

Our national behavior, to put it simply, right now, is an enormous liability that our adversaries have already and will continue to exploit. We have seen this with Trump for example. While the financial aspects of the FusionGPS dossier are almost certainly true, it's likely that the more salacious bits (the urinating prostitutes) are plated disinformation. But the fact that we're in a a time where some excuse, and some don't, that behavior, shows how compromised in our ethical and moral behavior we have become. We need to, societally, get ourselves to a point where that tactic would not work.

This goes in both directions, by the way: explicit condemnation AND explicit condoning. During the Cold War, for example, homosexuality was considered a security risk in most Western countries because it was thought that such relations, almost always private at the time, would lead to something that the Soviets could use as leverage (i.e. spy for us, or we'll tell everyone your gay). That would be plainly morally and ethnically an abomination in today's times (for good reason), which is why something like gay marriage and open acceptance of healthy homosexual relationships should be normalized across all spheres of society, so that is not a viable tactic for our adversaries (in addition to it being the right thing to do of course). If we are nationally unable to perceive a homosexual President as something that is politically possible and acceptable, then we're not there yet. Such a "historic first" has to be fine, no different than our first Black President, if we're doing this right and true. If we look for excuses as to why we can't, why it is impossible or unacceptable, we're slinking back into the contradictions that got us into this mess in the first place.

America's greatest strategic weakness right now, in other-words, is its inability to look at itself honestly in the mirror and see how gross, contradicted and compromised it has become. We need to look, hard, and rededicate ourselves, nationally and individually, to becoming exemplars of ethical behavior. If we do this alone, we'll be hardened against the most damaging ways to weaken our country.

To put this simply, we need to put the every day functioning of the world's leading democracy in tip-top shape to make it a viable and function bulwark against authoritarian alternative, particularly that ridiculous "Chinese Dream" nonsense. Democracy has had its reputation suffer so badly the last 20 years... really starting with Bush v. Gore, continuing with the Iraq War and its aftermath, then the Financial Crisis, and then the 2016 election. We MUST turn this around, and it starts not by making some grand statement, by by reforming our system and our selves to service the cause of it more honestly and faithfully. Deeds, not words.

American Democracy used to be an example to the world, largely because Americans led by example in our institutions and our behaviors. We haven't been that way in a very, very long time. We've instead, to put it bluntly, have become decadent and depraved. But why do we have to stay like that? We don't It is a choice, like anything else.

Thirdly, America must define its core interests carefully and realize how fragile its power has become. Our power, still light years ahead of our competitors, is at the edge of a precipice because we've spend the past 20 years using it so recklessly and doing little to replenish it. To be fair, many did this with either the best of intentions, or because immediate agendas clouded larger global realities. For example, I supported the Iraq War for many years. I've done my mea culpa on that many times, but the list of such reckless and stupid expenditures of US power is long.

We need to get our national finances in order. I don't mean a conservative plan, or a liberal plan. But a plan that balances the books.

We need to get a grip on the ongoing contractor shakedown of US taxpayers.

We need to break up these goddamn monopolies we've let grow, particularly the big 5 in tech (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft) and the Media conglomerates, that have put a stranglehold on the chance for new American companies to flourish. I would like to see an Avengers vs X-Men movie as much as anybody, but Fox being bought by Disney is exactly the wrong direction.

We need to push back against the expansion of Chinese soft-power and Russian asymmetric power wherever it is, and counter it with our own. Why is a Chinese firm with ties to the government allowed to own AMC Theaters for example (Dalian Wanda Group)? Why are Americans allowed to lobby for Russian firms?

We need to recognize the role of education in winning the last Cold War and dedicate ourselves to becoming a world leader in that at all levels, before we find ourselves hopelessly behind in innovation and expertise... not just in technology but in finance, governance... ideas in general. For own own people, this will lead to a higher standard of living. In terms of broader "power", today for example, leaders from around the World come to America to learn how to govern and send their Children here. Big soft power plus-up for us. China is trying to change that.

There are countless more avenues to replenishing our national power, a deep but FINITE national resource we've done so little to replenish. But once we do that, we must be judicious in its expenditure. That means no more stupid wars. That means more diplomacy, foreign aid and global trade. That means using the multinational institutions we built and have an advantage in, to their maximum extent.

It also means national service. I think the time has come for that. Not necessarily military at all, but a unifying experience for all Americans so that the country can harness the skills of our people to make it and the world a better place.



Part VI: Conclusion
I just want to say thank you for reading. I know this could seem all over the place at some points, but the global reality we're facing today is so much more complex than anything in our or our parents lifetime, and has far deeper implications than Trump, the wall, a recession, or a something "political".

Basically America, the jig is up. We had a good siesta from 1992 until the last few years, but history is not over. Not by a long shot. History took a bit of break, and now it is back with a vengeance. It doesn't care what you want. We either play the game or get brutalized by those who are. Not playing is not an option. Not playing is national suicide.

We need to decide how to win in this world, and the key to it is to address the world as it is, and not as we'd like it to be. Barack Obama, foolishly, chastised Vladmir Putin for operating a 19th century foreign policy because Obama would never, on his own, operate a zero-sum foreign policy like Putin did. A man leading a life built around win-wins in every domain, foreign and domestic, had no frame of reference for a Putin's pirate-raider mentality.

My fellow Americans, we have to very much not be like Obama in this regard, and be more like Lyndon Johnson, JFK or Ronald Reagan. All wanted things for this country and the world. All managed that carefully with respect to the essentials, and never saw the world through an idealized lens, but through the harsh reality they lived. World War II did that for them. Contemporary Americans do not know that experience. We have to somehow, nationally, find that wisdom, without the pain and death of a total war to teach it to us.

We have a very long time to go before Trump is behind us, and even if he is in handcuffs in the next 18 months, all that means is that an attack that began over three years prior will have been partially rectified here. It does not mean "we win" anything. It means we slightly stopped losing on one thing that already happened and could potentially turn a modest corner. That is it. Russia, by helping Trump win, won this round. Period. I congratulate them in their historic success that will be talked about for a century. Now we have to figure out how to win the next rounds to make them pay for it and get back on track for ourselves.

How will this end? Who can say for sure. Trump... Russia.... North Korea... Iran. In the end it's all the short ahead of the main feature that is the coming US-Chinese great power competition. But if we, to put it bluntly, fix our shit, and start taking things seriously, we'll have at the very least a fighting chance.

If not, the 21st Century really will be the Asian Century. Whether that is the case or not is far from being decided and is largely in our hands to decide in coming years.

[Realitytrembles]

Interesting read. You know very well that you and I disagree on lots of points concerning foreign policy. Your position is pretty much much what you have outlined here.

Mine is this: Fortress America aggressively countering any foreign interference in the Americas (new Monroe Doctrine) and bristling with the best and most nuclear weapons money can buy.

We do agree (I think) on the need for the US to dominate in space going forward. I do like the vision you've put forward elsewhere.

The first expedition to Mars should be in the name of all mankind, the second in the name of Article 4 of the US Constitution. F the Outer Space Treaty, indeed.



How likely is a full-scale WW3 (China and satellite states vs US and allies) sometime this century?

[Kiri]

Interesting read. You know very well that you and I disagree on lots of points concerning foreign policy. Your position is pretty much much what you have outlined here.

Mine is this: Fortress America aggressively countering any foreign interference in the Americas (new Monroe Doctrine) and bristling with the best and most nuclear weapons money can buy.

We do agree (I think) on the need for the US to dominate in space going forward. I do like the vision you've put forward elsewhere.

The first expedition to Mars should be in the name of all mankind, the second in the name of Article 4 of the US Constitution. F the Outer Space Treaty, indeed.



How likely is a full-scale WW3 (China and satellite states vs US and allies) sometime this century?

Isn't the outer space treaty pretty much the premier thing keeping America's geographical advantage? The moment you cancel that, you might as well declare war right away, otherwise your security situation is fucked. It is either space dominated by the US or no one.

[Deletedaccount1]

If not, the 21st Century really will be the Asian Century. Whether that is the case or not is far from being decided and is largely in our hands to decide in coming years.

What is the inherent problem with that? My main issue with this essay is that you are operating under the assumption that unless the United States has hegemony over the entire world, it is facing some sort of catastrophe. There is another assumption that Russia, China, the US and whoever else are competing economic powers. This comes off as economic ignorance. People who think countries compete through trade the way they compete militarily are looking at trade through the wrong lens. Mainly, they are looking at it the way a political science undergraduate would and not an economist who actually studies the effects of trade.

The implications you are making in these two paragraphs, are largely incorrect. The first being that western manufacturing has been decimated by China and the second that they have pillaged intellectual property and that these are both bad things if true.

The most notable (in my book) example of this is China's behavior in the WTO. The EU and US basically involved China into the WTO in the early 2000s on the promise of reform that the Chinese government never delivered upon (and likely never intended to). This contrasts against Russia, which was basically mercy Rules into the WTO in 2012. Russia had to illustrate reform and THEN join (and then at the end, only joined because it threatened to walk after 20 years of talks). China on the other hand, was allowed in on promises, largely because its large potential market was so enticing to Western businesses.

In subsequent years Chinese mercantilist policies decimated Western manufacturing, and more recently has lead to a historic pillaging of our IP and technologies. The US and EU have been extraordinarily slow to engage in their treaty-allowed, legitimate avenues for confronting China's practices, for fear of igniting a trade war. China, calculating this behavior, continues to engage in it. In the other words, they have our number. They know that because we calculate the risk of retaliation to be so high, they have far more room to maneuver than our threats allow for.

I can't reconcile what you are implying throughout your post and what you end with in your conclusion. When you say things like this:

American Democracy used to be an example to the world, largely because Americans led by example in our institutions and our behaviors. We haven't been that way in a very, very long time. We've instead, to put it bluntly, have become decadent and depraved. But why do we have to stay like that? We don't It is a choice, like anything else.

But then end up saying "If not, the 21st Century really will be the Asian Century". That doesn't follow. Maybe you can write a better conclusion but if not that is a very weak argument because ultimately the hegemony of the United States and the prosperity of China, Russia or anyone else does not seem to be linked to the day-to-day well-being of American citizens. If they are linked, you haven't given empirical evidence of it here.

[Deletedaccount1]

You are ignoring what Chinese hegemony would mean. No freedom, no democracy, no right to express dissent. Complete and violent suppression of all minorities, be they ethnic or religious. Any advancement tied to your relationship with the party; no hope of individual success through personal excellence.

Every hegemony is equal parts economic, military and CULTURAL.

Is this in response to my post? There is no prima facie reason to assume that Chinese hegemony would replace American hegemony and unless China successfully invades the US or wherever, those things you mention remain domestic problems within China.

[Skroe]

What is the inherent problem with that? My main issue with this essay is that you are operating under the assumption that unless the United States has hegemony over the entire world, it is facing some sort of catastrophe.

It will be a catastrophe. Every time in the last two centuries a hegemonic power arose in Eurasia, a rival or rival(s) rose to contest it in time, and it lead to a hugely destructive war. At first this was relatively regional due to the limits of technology. The 20th century took it continental, then global. And three times last century - both World Wars and the Cold War - America was drawn into it,

Eurasia right now has China in the East, Russia in the Middle, India in the South, and the EU in the West. You think they'll come to some kind of pan-contintal accord that sustains indefinitely. It's never happened in history. Even if for a little bit, an arrangement is forged, governments and policies changed, and the status quo is upended.

We're already seeing this. Russia and India engage in happy talk about China's new silk road, and yet are taking responses ranging from, on the high side, trying to have de facto veto power over it, to on the more long term side, try to kill or offset the entire thing.

A rise of China as a hegenomic power in the continent, or Russia, or India, or Europe for that matter, will invite challenge by its neighbors. It's the consequence of all living bordering each other and why the United States, isolated by an ocean and not bordering anybody, is alone in being able to, via an expeditionary global strategy, act as an effective hegemony. We are not enging in territority defense by our very location, but any response that, lets say China takes, to a Russia counter-move, is. And these responses are far more dangerous because, unlike when the USSR and the US tangled, it is actually national territory that is threatened, and not mere "presence". This creates a far greater risk for a major conflict.

A hegemonic China in other words, will be challenged by its neighbors who will not want to live under it. The same goes for anybody else in Euriasa, which is why a Eurasian-based hegemon is undesirable. No one country can be a hegemon without inviting its neighbors to challenge it.

More over, this piece is written from an American, not a globalized perspective. It is certainly within Chinese interests to try to become a hegemon. History says it'll be a disaster for them, but it is in their interests to make the attempt, from their perspective. Similarly, it is in our interests, because of where US interests lie (trade mostly, it's system of alliance, it';s privileged international position), to see them fail.

The Status Quo for America, is pretty fucking good. In fact it is so good, we as a people think it is inassailible, or worse, everybody (including China and Russia) want to be "positive stakeholders" in it. That is dead wrong. Alternative regional would-be powers will ALWAYS be revisionist powers. Even the European Union. The US should make no mistake... while Europe is our closest friend and ally, where some things a little bit different, they would be a revisionist power too, seeking to undermine what the US has for their benefit. That is the nature of international power in general. It is interest driven and while the US and EU align on most issues, it is certainly not on all. And it is less so for the US and China, or the US and Russia.

So yes, it would be a catastrophe. A large scale conflict that would draw in the US in time would develop, as happened the last three times. And moreover even if that didn't happen, the mere ability for a regional hegemon to set the terms of the geopolitical reality in the region would undercut the US position there, and its interests. It is a boon, and a problem that the US is literally on the other side of the planet.

There is another assumption that Russia, China, the US and whoever else are competing economic powers. This comes off as economic ignorance. People who think countries compete through trade the way they compete militarily are looking at trade through the wrong lens. Mainly, they are looking at it the way a political science undergraduate would and not an economist who actually studies the effects of trade.

No. They aren't competing principally economically. Economics is a domain. The prize is far grander - the ability to shape events and outcomes in the international system.

The great mistake of Americans is to think everything is economic in nature. In fact that drives the "win-win" mentality that got us in this hole in part. China and Russia have both shown in recent years that they are willing to suffer economically in order to advance their broader geopolitical agenda. We WANT for them to play by our rules, and make economics their driving motivation, but they've displayed clearly that it remains second fiddle to security objectives.

Contemporary Americans have had a difficult time digesting that because we're not used to that. We need to be.

The implications you are making in these two paragraphs, are largely incorrect. The first being that [/URL].

No I'm afraid they aren't:
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insigh...a-trade-policy
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-mercantilism/
https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/inte...ina-trade-war/

I can't reconcile what you are implying throughout your post and what you end with in your conclusion. When you say things like this:

But then end up saying "If not, the 21st Century really will be the Asian Century". That doesn't follow. Maybe you can write a better conclusion but if not that is a very weak argument because ultimately the hegemony of the United States and the prosperity of China, Russia or anyone else do not seem to be linked to the day-to-day well-being of American citizens. If they are linked, you haven't given empirical evidence of it here.

I'm not sure what is difficult to reconcile:
-> We got lucky in the Cold War.
-> Winning the Cold was very good for us, and the world, for a lot of reasons. But it was also largely good timing and luck that brought it about.
-> Americans took that victory and all that came for it it for granted. Our political class and most Americans in general have let "wants" drown out "needs".
-> In general we've slipped on a great many things, particularly since 2000. Our house is a mess. Yet we act like it is in great order.
-> We are now being challenged on multiple fronts
-> We're not remotely in shape to confront those challenges and we need to right ourselves to do so.
-> Getting rid of Trump, while good and necessary, patches a past defeat and is no victory.
-> Our problems are going to get a lot worse, so we need to do this now.

Pretty straight forward. We're in trouble. A lot of it.

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Is this in response to my post? There is no prima facie reason to assume that Chinese hegemony would replace American hegemony and unless China successfully invades the US or wherever, those things you mention remain domestic problems within China.

That is an extremely obtuse (and dead wrong) understanding of how hegemony comes about. The US did not establish the post-1992 unipolar world that died in 2008 by invading the Soviet Union. It did it by being properly positioned across many domains when the USSR, and with it the USSR's rival global institutions collapsed, forcing the successor states to operate within an system of rules the US constructed since 1945 that had itself in the middle.

Sound familiar? China is doing exactly that now. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is nothing less than a Chinese Alternative World Bank parallel institution. It's not the first and not the last.

China is beginning to line slowly line up alternatives, so if and when we don't right our ship, it becomes Chinese-centric institutions, where China has a privileged position, that is situated to catch the pieces. Why would countries do that? The same reason they let American hegemony into their lives in the first place: most countries in the world are far too small and far too poor (even European countries) to finance and operate such international infrastructure. Most do not have the tax bases or international reach to engage in such high-level global policy.

The United States did and does as the richest and largest country in the West.

China is rapidly getting there.

Were the safe harbor that the US built to suddenly not look so safe, they will find an alternative, and China will have one ready.

If Americans have to win, we have to be, most of all, an impressive in execution and ethical people, in every regard, so we can maintain our international position that comes largely by assent of the global community, and not by entitlement by something we did or are.

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You are ignoring what Chinese hegemony would mean. No freedom, no democracy, no right to express dissent. Complete and violent suppression of all minorities, be they ethnic or religious. Any advancement tied to your relationship with the party; no hope of individual success through personal excellence.

Every hegemony is equal parts economic, military and CULTURAL.

Yep. When Chinese leader say nonsense about a "harmonious society", all it is is authoritarianism with a happy face.

As I was saying, for all the criticism of the unreality and faltering of the 'American Dream', the 'Chinese Dream' of Xi Jinping is little more than a sick joke with Chinese Characteristics. It's the same authoritarian-dominating crap as always.

[GennGreymane]

Skroe/Greymane 2020!

[Paranoid Android]

First, too much reading this early in the morning @Skroe. Here is my take and I actually hate when people use this argument; The Slippery Slope.

Your Republican party right now is very complicit in ignoring and interfering with this investigation. More importantly giving a President with strong tendencies to authoritarianism a wide birth in letting him get away with shit that should never would have happened with no matter what party was President. Was not around for Nixon, maybe.

So yeah the slippery slope is when the other party comes to power and says; "Why not do the same shit or more". Honestly sometimes I'm so pissed I'm hoping the Dems do the "Eff U" attitude to our democracy just to get shit done.

My easy argument is always the Bizarro World analogy. If the Democrats had this unhinged President and complicit Congress, it would be fine?

[Milchshake]

Dang I was expecting a post by Tom Brady. Well Patriots fans gonna be Patriot fans.

[Skroe]

First, too much reading this early in the morning @Skroe. Here is my take and I actually hate when people use this argument; The Slippery Slope.

Your Republican party right now is very complicit in ignoring and interfering with this investigation. More importantly giving a President with strong tendencies to authoritarianism a wide birth in letting him get away with shit that should never would have happened with no matter what party was President. Was not around for Nixon, maybe.

So yeah the slippery slope is when the other party comes to power and says; "Why not do the same shit or more". Honestly sometimes I'm so pissed I'm hoping the Dems do the "Eff U" attitude to our democracy just to get shit done.

My easy argument is always the Bizarro World analogy. If the Democrats had this unhinged President and complicit Congress, it would be fine?

I mean, I agree with you. Which is why I'm (again) thinking of sending in my "fuck you people, I'm out" letter to the Massachusetts Republican Party. It in fact, partially prompted this.

As you may recall, I almost left last month over Roy Moore. I got so close to pulling the trigger. I had the letter in its envelope with a stamp on it, ready to go. The only reason I didn't is because once I'm gone, I'm gone. And once out I'll do everything I can to kill it, rather than save it.

But what's really got me was the ridiculous games the Grassley and Graham played with the Fusion GPS transcript, that Feinstein then released. Once out, they both, looking like complete and utter dopes, shut the hell up. Shocking, I know.

All they had to do was do the ETHICAL thing... the patriotic thing, the entire time. But they could not do it. Because their wants (Republican agenda) is superceding their needs because they reckon, despite particularly Graham's cheap talk on Russia, that we're unassailable as a nation.

So I've about had it with these guys. It's clearer than ever that they wouldn't care if America is a pile of burning garbage so long as they're kings of it. They really are just laying down our national security for a small time political agenda, that isn't even being really advanced, with a President with a 32% approval rating, because they want small time things and think we're nigh invincible.

Hopefully you didn't get from this I think we should forget about Trump. Quite the contrary, as I stated, I want him to die in prison and having lost everything. But we shouldn't be under the illusion there is any "winning" here for everybody. The only winner here is Russia. The only thing America can do right now is stop losing, and then stop doing the things that made us vulnerable to this type of attack by Russia, because this is the beginning, not the end, of a new era of geopolitical challenges to the US last seen, really, by our grandparents and great grandparents..

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Dang I was expecting a post by Tom Brady. Well Patriots fans gonna be Patriot fans.

I don't blame you. I wouldn't put it past Belichick to build a weather controlling device to screw with the other team either.

How about some hurricane force winds whenever the other team has the ball? Nothing in the NFL rules against that.

They are, after all, completely and totally evil.

[Paranoid Android]

I mean, I agree with you. Which is why I'm (again) thinking of sending in my "fuck you people, I'm out" letter to the Massachusetts Republican Party. It in fact, partially prompted this.

As you may recall, I almost left last month over Roy Moore. I got so close to pulling the trigger. I had the letter in its envelope with a stamp on it, ready to go. The only reason I didn't is because once I'm gone, I'm gone. And once out I'll do everything I can to kill it, rather than save it.

But what's really got me was the ridiculous games the Grassley and Graham played with the Fusion GPS transcript, that Feinstein then released. Once out, they both, looking like complete and utter dopes, shut the hell up. Shocking, I know.

All they had to do was do the ETHICAL thing... the patriotic thing, the entire time. But they could not do it. Because their wants (Republican agenda) is superceding their needs because they reckon, despite particularly Graham's cheap talk on Russia, that we're unassailable as a nation.

So I've about had it with these guys. It's clearer than ever that they wouldn't care if America is a pile of burning garbage so long as they're kings of it. They really are just laying down our national security for a small time political agenda, that isn't even being really advanced, with a President with a 32% approval rating, because they want small time things and think we're nigh invincible.

Hopefully you didn't get from this I think we should forget about Trump. Quite the contrary, as I stated, I want him to die in prison and having lost everything. But we shouldn't be under the illusion there is any "winning" here for everybody. The only winner here is Russia. The only thing America can do right now is stop losing, and then stop doing the things that made us vulnerable to this type of attack by Russia, because this is the beginning, not the end, of a new era of geopolitical challenges to the US last seen, really, by our grandparents and great grandparents..

The Trumpkins will this believe I hate Trump. Well they are right I hate Trump, but for the main reason at what he is doing to our democracy and that one party is consensual in this process. So in our current two party system, which I'm not a fan, this can become very dangerous.

My thoughts about power and government is you never go back and people do not give up power. So next time it could be a Democrat or another Republican.

[Milchshake]

I don't blame you. I wouldn't put it past Belichick to build a weather controlling device to screw with the other team either.

How about some hurricane force winds whenever the other team has the ball? Nothing in the NFL rules against that.

They are, after all, completely and totally evil.

Well keeping on with the football parallels. Cause the NFL as an allegory for American; Exceptionalism, Militarism, Delusions of Hegemony is just too deep a well to pass up.

Tom Brady is under the delusion he will be playing at a high level until he's 45. He was also tweeting about the "coming storm". Though historically the drop-off for elite quarterbacks is sudden. I wonder if he imagines the NFL operates "of me and from me". Which is the tone I'm getting from the original post.

Also the Pats traded away their future for the sake of appeasing Brady.


America... don't be Tom Brady!

[Deleted]

You guys really need to get over Russia. She is not coming back, guys.

[Skroe]

I'll reiterate what I said in the conclusions thread. This investigation should not be about Trump. It should be about money laundering. An investigator has been given the authority and means to go after everything reasonably relative. Sure it should go after Trump and other people trying to exercise influence in US politics illegally (say, Turkey). But going after money laundering is going after corruption. It is a way to remove politically powerful and very vulnerable individuals in multiple countries that are either allied or within the sphere of influence of the West. This is a boon to democracy and anathema to Chinese business practice.

I think this is very accurate.

I'm remdined of a particular Russia thread from a few years back (I have a good memory). We were all slagging Russia with its corruption index score from Transparency International, and comparing that to Western Countries. Problem is, that index is based on Perceptions, and American, I'd say even Western in general, perceptions about corruption in our own countries, is wildly naive.

I am relative new to this position. Back in those threads, I specifically mentioned how the FBI as all over corruption and gave examples about how specific elected officials had gone on trial or to prison over the last 15 years for corruption-related offenes. And it's true, in those cases, the FBI certainly brings wrong doers to justice, which is more than what happens in Russia.

But there are so many other forms of hard and soft corruption that are either entirely legal, or, due to some kind of deeply unethical norm, is tolerated without much fuss. It's lack of punishment is more about the criminal code not having caught up (or being intentionally prevented) to malfesenece, than there not being mafleasence.

The more i've educated myself, the more I've come to understand how dirty we are. It's bad. It's really bad. And it's everywhere. One topic, for example, that there hasn't been a thread on I think, is the Navy's Fat Leonard corruption scandal that pretty much decapitated the US Navy. It'll be 15 years before it fully recovers the experience that some bribes and some hookers enabled.

Trump is trampling on norms, but he's the latest in a long line of norm tramplers, and this goes hand in hand with corruption. As a society we've let our politicians cross lines without penalty, and ourselves, crossed other lines. I'll say once again the ISIS War is deeply illegal, because Obama never got a AUMF. Nancy Pelosi becoming minority leader again after losing her speakership was norm breaking. Citizens United... good lord Citizens United. Mitch McConnell taking a Supreme Court seat hostage. These are corrupting, which leads to further more explicit corruption.

We got here because we all compromised. Maybe some of us liked George W. Bush, so we downplayed how many billions went into the contractor black hole in the Iraq War. Maybe we liked Barack Obama, so we looked the other way when he waged an illegal war against ISIS well past the 60 day deadline of the War Powers Act.

We need to stop being a society of exceptions and start being a society of rigid rules/laws and high ethical practices. We'll find that, I think, "draining the swamp" will be more than a slogan, when we actually start doing that.

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You guys really need to get over Russia. She is not coming back, guys.

Who? You mean Hillary? If you even bothered to read my post, particularly the ethical behavior part, you'd recognize the Clintons are part of the problem!

You think this is some kind of ridiculous Hillary restoration? We don't get better by making Hillary President. Hillary and the Clinton Foundation's behavior would more of the same that got us into this mess.

I do believe that Hillary and Bill Clinton, unlike Donald Trump, are not actually malicious, sick people who would openly betray their country. But they also like money a lot. A real lot, and they like enriching or enabling those who give them money. And that is the problem.

This country can do a lot better than Donald Trump, or Bill and Hillary Clinton. And if it is going to have a chance in the coming era of geopolitical competition, it must.

[Mad_Murdock]

We do agree (I think) on the need for the US to dominate in space going forward. I do like the vision you've put forward elsewhere.

The first expedition to Mars should be in the name of all mankind, the second in the name of Article 4 of the US Constitution. F the Outer Space Treaty, indeed.

Space is pointless. The AI race is what is going to determine the winners and losers. Write that down, you heard it here first!

[Deletedaccount1]

It will be a catastrophe. Every time in the last two centuries a hegemonic power arose in Eurasia, a rival or rival(s) rose to contest it in time, and it lead to a hugely destructive war. At first this was relatively regional due to the limits of technology. The 20th century took it continental, then global. And three times last century - both World Wars and the Cold War - America was drawn into it,

Eurasia right now has China in the East, Russia in the Middle, India in the South, and the EU in the West. You think they'll come to some kind of pan-contintal accord that sustains indefinitely. It's never happened in history. Even if for a little bit, an arrangement is forged, governments and policies changed, and the status quo is upended.

We're already seeing this. Russia and India engage in happy talk about China's new silk road, and yet are taking responses ranging from, on the high side, trying to have de facto veto power over it, to on the more long term side, try to kill or offset the entire thing.

Your tendency to make geopolitical predictions based off of the past is precarious. The geopolitical layout of the world is very different than it was only 30 year ago and almost entirely different to anytime previous to that in the last 200 years. The primary factor for that change is globalization which has significantly decreased the likelihood of another major war.

A rise of China as a hegenomic power in the continent, or Russia, or India, or Europe for that matter, will invite challenge by its neighbors. It's the consequence of all living bordering each other and why the United States, isolated by an ocean and not bordering anybody, is alone in being able to, via an expeditionary global strategy, act as an effective hegemony. We are not enging in territority defense by our very location, but any response that, lets say China takes, to a Russia counter-move, is. And these responses are far more dangerous because, unlike when the USSR and the US tangled, it is actually national territory that is threatened, and not mere "presence". This creates a far greater risk for a major conflict.

This is pure speculation. National territory being threatened gives these countries even less reason to actually fight because there is so much more to lose.

A hegemonic China in other words, will be challenged by its neighbors who will not want to live under it. The same goes for anybody else in Euriasa, which is why a Eurasian-based hegemon is undesirable. No one country can be a hegemon without inviting its neighbors to challenge it.

More over, this piece is written from an American, not a globalized perspective. It is certainly within Chinese interests to try to become a hegemon. History says it'll be a disaster for them, but it is in their interests to make the attempt, from their perspective. Similarly, it is in our interests, because of where US interests lie (trade mostly, it's system of alliance, it';s privileged international position), to see them fail.

I still see no reason to assume that China will want to become a hegemon. As you point out, it is probably not likely to be successful. America's "privileged international position" is not a good argument from a global perspective which is what you admit yourself. You also say trade is the major reason to ensure China fails to become hegemonic but maintaining trade is the primary reason to not antagonize China in the first place.

The Status Quo for America, is pretty fucking good. In fact it is so good, we as a people think it is inassailible, or worse, everybody (including China and Russia) want to be "positive stakeholders" in it. That is dead wrong. Alternative regional would-be powers will ALWAYS be revisionist powers. Even the European Union. The US should make no mistake... while Europe is our closest friend and ally, where some things a little bit different, they would be a revisionist power too, seeking to undermine what the US has for their benefit. That is the nature of international power in general. It is interest driven and while the US and EU align on most issues, it is certainly not on all. And it is less so for the US and China, or the US and Russia.

So yes, it would be a catastrophe. A large scale conflict that would draw in the US in time would develop, as happened the last three times. And moreover even if that didn't happen, the mere ability for a regional hegemon to set the terms of the geopolitical reality in the region would undercut the US position there, and its interests. It is a boon, and a problem that the US is literally on the other side of the planet.

I see little (none?) empirical evidence that a conflict would emerge in the region without the presence of the US. It is not in anyone's interest for that to happen when this wasn't the case in previous major wars. Trade is a major factor, the fact that the citizens of most countries are complacent consumers and not die-hard nationalists is another. Undercutting the position of the US is not a reason in and of itself to maintain a military presence, the consequences of that must be worse than the consequences of maintaining a presence and there is little reason to assume a chain of events will occur where:

1. China becomes a global superpower (despite domestic discontent, a looming debt crisis, major environmental problems and major demographic problems worse than ones which have crippled other Asian countries).
2. It antagonizes its neighbors enough to start a war (despite how something like this would be hugely unpopular on all sides and impose enormous costs on everyone involved).

No. They aren't competing principally economically. Economics is a domain. The prize is far grander - the ability to shape events and outcomes in the international system.

The great mistake of Americans is to think everything is economic in nature. In fact that drives the "win-win" mentality that got us in this hole in part. China and Russia have both shown in recent years that they are willing to suffer economically in order to advance their broader geopolitical agenda. We WANT for them to play by our rules, and make economics their driving motivation, but they've displayed clearly that it remains second fiddle to security objectives.

Contemporary Americans have had a difficult time digesting that because we're not used to that. We need to be.

But there is a "win-win". If China and the United States both succeed without being military rivals, that is a win-win. The oligarchs who control these countries have shown they are willing to let their economies suffer to advance their geopolitical goals and the results have been catastrophic. Sanctions on Russia in particular have been extremely costly and that was only the result of "invading" one small neighbor, not an entire war to determine the next global superpower.

Americans are completely used to not thinking in economic terms. If they did, there would not be large scale support for restrictions on trade or immigration. It takes an economic misunderstanding of both of those issue to get the Overton window on those issues to where it is today. Your general foreign policy outlook is the default view of the average American where it is important the US remain the dominant global power.

No I'm afraid they aren't:
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insigh...a-trade-policy
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-mercantilism/
https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/inte...ina-trade-war/

I'm not sure how your first link supports trade restrictions when the author concludes with:

Schott notes that while the change in U.S. policy is painful for the workers who lost their jobs, the U.S. as a whole benefits from countries trading according to their comparative advantage. He points out that while U.S. manufacturing employment fell substantially in the years after 2001, manufacturing value added continued to rise. “This large implied increase in labor productivity reflects changes both in the types of goods U.S. manufacturers produce as well as in the techniques they use to make them,” says Schott.

I fail to see how that Krugman article relates to either of my points. The last article states that the Trump Administration's position on Chinese theft of American IP but it doesn't state the costs of this or how to prevent it. It is hard to see how a trade war or military pressure would solve such a situation regardless or if the costs are even high in the first place.

I'm not sure what is difficult to reconcile:
-> We got lucky in the Cold War.
-> Winning the Cold was very good for us, and the world, for a lot of reasons. But it was also largely good timing and luck that brought it about.
-> Americans took that victory and all that came for it it for granted. Our political class and most Americans in general have let "wants" drown out "needs".
-> In general we've slipped on a great many things, particularly since 2000. Our house is a mess. Yet we act like it is in great order.
-> We are now being challenged on multiple fronts
-> We're not remotely in shape to confront those challenges and we need to right ourselves to do so.
-> Getting rid of Trump, while good and necessary, patches a past defeat and is no victory.
-> Our problems are going to get a lot worse, so we need to do this now.

Pretty straight forward. We're in trouble. A lot of it.

You don't support these points empirically. They are pronouncements like you would see in a political speech and you still don't tie them into your conclusion in your OP when you end it by calling the 21st century potentially the "Asian century" because that does not speak to the trouble the US might be in.

That is an extremely obtuse (and dead wrong) understanding of how hegemony comes about. The US did not establish the post-1992 unipolar world that died in 2008 by invading the Soviet Union. It did it by being properly positioned across many domains when the USSR, and with it the USSR's rival global institutions collapsed, forcing the successor states to operate within an system of rules the US constructed since 1945 that had itself in the middle.

Sound familiar? China is doing exactly that now. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is nothing less than a Chinese Alternative World Bank parallel institution. It's not the first and not the last.

China is beginning to line slowly line up alternatives, so if and when we don't right our ship, it becomes Chinese-centric institutions, where China has a privileged position, that is situated to catch the pieces. Why would countries do that? The same reason they let American hegemony into their lives in the first place: most countries in the world are far too small and far too poor (even European countries) to finance and operate such international infrastructure. Most do not have the tax bases or international reach to engage in such high-level global policy.

The United States did and does as the richest and largest country in the West.

China is rapidly getting there.

Were the safe harbor that the US built to suddenly not look so safe, they will find an alternative, and China will have one ready.

If Americans have to win, we have to be, most of all, an impressive in execution and ethical people, in every regard, so we can maintain our international position that comes largely by assent of the global community, and not by entitlement by something we did or are.

I don't see how you expect this to convince me. The AIIB is a parallel to the World Bank. Why is that bad exactly? That last sentence is confusing to say the least. What does the US need to win or lose exactly and what does "we have to be, most of all, an impressive in execution and ethical people, in every regard" mean? If the US got to where it is today by being impressive in execution and ethical in every regard, why does that count as assent from the global community but not "not by entitlement by something we did or are." That sentence does not make sense. It also doesn't make sense that you think China could become hegemonic if the world/its neighbors opposed it when the US did the opposite. And assuming China's neighbors didn't oppose it then what is the problem?

[rda]

This is an interesting read, I am half-way through it, but in the meantime:

And make no mistake, Russia's attack on us next year was one of the most successful intelligence operations in human history. It is a legitimate, historic achievement and the United States lost that phase of our conflict with Russia, badly.

...may I ask what do you mean here? What specifically happened? What was that one of the most successful intelligence operations in human history? I am asking sincerely and not as a lead. Are you talking about Trump getting some intel on Clinton and some promotion / trolling in favor of him on the web? If so, that seems quite minor to me, as in, it can be done easily by anyone, it doesn't take much. And if you mean something else (which is why I ask), what is it?

[Cthulhu 2020]

I agree with operation Super-Mueller, weed out every corrupted official and business venture that we can that has gross foreign influence painted all over it, on both sides.

Then I think Americans need a good hard slap with reality. We haven't had a clear and defined common enemy for awhile. At least not one that was a serious threat to us. The Muslim terrorists were a distraction from real global struggles. That much I can agree here on, and have mostly thought for awhile. When the twin towers fell, that was like a mosquito bite. And a mosquito bite that the American immune defense system (which has grown too large and too blood thirsty to NOT respond in force) responded in extreme force to what was nothing more than an itch. Our strike on the Taliban should have been quick and not taken as long as it did.

But the Taliban wasn't our main problem out of all of that. Muslim terrorists became the new boogeyman under everyone's bed. Yes, it was worse with one side of politics than the other, but it still pervaded the left to some extent.

And you're right, just look at the Muslim terrorist situation on the whole. With the superman complex, Americans were terrified at the idea of even a single bomber getting through. That their family could be "next". My grandmother and grandfather's generation won world war 2, in fact one grandparent fought in the war directly, and another worked on the Manhattan project as a pretty high ranking scientist. They basically lived with the reality that someday, they could die... and for the most part, it sounded like they accepted that fact. The same was true for my parents' generation. With the cold war, it was pretty much a reality that they could die someday.

It wasn't until the late boomers and gen X that I think this superman complex really started to arise. That these people became completely and utterly terrified of a single muslim terrorist attacking us. I don't think that we believe we should die, or that we deserve to, but I think this idea that a single muslim terrorist can get our people into such a national frenzy of fear and screaming hysteria and arguing over the term "radical islamic terrorism" is a symptom of the real disease. That many Americans simply lose their heads and hyper react to any small threat with hysteria.

Muslim terrorism is for the most part, a joke to our national security. And let me be clear on one thing that I thought I might see in your post that I thought you'd bring up. Our opulent life styles with high median and mean income has been a result of hegemony. Not the other way around. Many think we can adopt an isolationist policy and still maintain our way of life, when that is simply not possible. Some of our most ignorant posters here in this regard are also some of the wealthiest, coming from rich families they simply believe they can declare that we need to withdraw from the rest of the world, when in fact their very cozy way of life entirely hinges on the US existing as the world's super power. I believe you know one in particular I am talking about, the one who is the worst history major in the history of history majors, who thinks your idea on America existing as super power is more akin to Roman imperialism. But there are more than just her.

We have an entire slew of people who want free college and free healthcare at the expense of so many other policies. And while I think that free healthcare and college can be a reality in America (one of the things you and I disagree on), I acknowledge it is something that will have to be adopted slowly and carefully molded into our government and economy, rather than crashing into their sides like a meteor impact that will leave a giant crater.

[rda]

OK, I read to the end and it was interesting, but I think it went downhill in part 5 which deals with what to do. For example, you say that you need to get finances under control, but then you don't provide any specifics and without specifics this is just a generic point which everyone would insert into their vision. Half of your points are like that and the other half contain pretty strange things (eg, apparently gay marriage is vital... didn't expect to see a point like that for sure, this is at best a very minor question wrt the globality of the analysis).

I also find the overall analysis too heavy on the strange thought that the superpowers of the world must be warring on some level - you make a lot of conclusions from that thing and I think it is much more complex.

What I liked and found most agreeable was material about the indecisiveness and having no real red lines. I think that was spot on.

[PC2]

I'm optimistic about the USA. I think the US can still prosper with a more active Asia.

But if China surpasses us it will be because they worked harder and didn't sell out their culture and policies to appease cosmopolitan world citizens.