It seems even the staunchest US vassal states can see what’s coming. Yesterday BoJo the Clown admitted that, yeah, Russia could be winning. Ya think? Today the Polish PM belabors the obvious: Apparently the Poles were persuaded by the concept of imposing sanctions on a country that is self sufficient in natural resources, and whose natural resources the sanctioners can’t live without. There’s a problem in that, and it should have been obvious before walking over the cliff edge. The problem for Poland, of course, is that it still lives next door to Russia, and its master, the US, is far, far away from Poland.
Brilliant. Perfectly encapsulates the past, the current state, the future, and why. The West cares nothing for the Ukraine - it is simply a tool to use against Russia. In fact the Ukrainian government cares nothing for the Ukrainian people - neither those many thousands who have already left and now have nothing to return to nor those who remain and have had their lives destroyed.
"But the West's total financial and political break with Russia means they have nothing to lose. And they have a lot to gain: The Donbas is mineral rich, the really productive farmlands of Ukraine are in the east and south, Kharkov is a major industrial city, the Sea of Azov has untold natural gas reserves."
Yes, and why would Russia now take anything the Ukrainian government has to say seriously? Both the West and the Ukrainian government have made conscious decisions and taken actions to lead events right to where they are now. They also have seemingly foreclosed on any peaceful settlement of the conflict. And so who is to blame for this "tragedy"?
Lavrov: "Proxy war is still war." Yeah, I guess that kinda makes sense.
Zerohedge:
Russian state media is reporting that Wednesday's long-range missile attack on foreign supplies targeted an aluminum warehouse which had been converted to a weapons depot.
The day prior Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had warned: "These weapons will be a legitimate target for the Russian Armed Forces" - in a message aimed at both Kiev and its Western backers.
"Warehouses, including in the west of Ukraine, have become such a target more than once. How else could it be? NATO is essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy. War means war," he stressed.
The German MoD recognized the disaster: 60% of the equipment is not combat-ready
“On paper, we have 350 Puma infantry fighting vehicles, 150 can be used. Of the 51 Eurocopter Tiger helicopters, only 9 are combat-ready,” said the head of the Bundeswehr, Lambrecht
Your comment, Mary, is channeling, to a degree, the writings of Paul Kennedy. The current, seemingly accelerating decline, is really well explained by Kennedy.
Paul Kennedy, British historian, wrote a book in 1987 entitled The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. His premise: "Great powers, in order to remain great powers, had a task that was simple to understand but difficult to execute: to balance wealth and their economic base with their military power and strategic commitments. These states therefore faced a constant triple tension between investment, defense and consumption. Failure to get this balance right risked overextension as a large economy vulnerable to predators."
"In its coverage, Kennedy’s book was not primarily about the United States of 1987. It was a comparative analysis of historical polities from Habsburg Spain to Bourbon France to the British Empire. But one 38-page section towards the end of the 698-page argument, added in by Kennedy at the publisher’s request, attracted the most debate. This brief reflection on what it all meant for the United States led to the book getting translated into 23 languages, and got Kennedy invited to testify before Congress. In that section, Kennedy warned that a set of familiar historical pressures, poorly managed, would erode America’s relative power-position in the world. America’s relative power would wane over time — the choice, he argued, was to manage this process prudently, making it as undisruptive and as painless as possible, or to deny it and thereby accelerate it."
Kennedy was branded a "declinist" and attacked by a number of pre-eminent scholars and politicians. Even until just recently, within the last 10 years or so, Kennedy's writings were still considered off the mark. It was assumed that even though the US was in a state of decline, the smart politicians and leaders in this country could bring us in for a soft landing while still maintaining relative predominance.
Today, what you're saying is right on the mark, imho.
From Kennedy's own diagnosis:
"The longevity of U.S. power faces two challenges: preserving a balance between its defense commitments and the means to sustain them, and preserving the economic base of its power against shifting patterns of production."
"America’s aggregation of interests and obligations exceeds the country’s power to defend them all at once. This scale of security obligations was acquired at a time when America’s shares of world gross domestic product, industrial production, and military power were considerably larger, its balance of payments healthier, and its level of indebtedness lower.
Elements of America’s constitutional system of government and political culture impede the reformulation of grand strategy, from domestic lobbies to the electoral system.
No society remains permanently ahead of others, as patterns of growth rates, technological advance or military power do not freeze, but the United States is not destined to shrink to the “relative obscurity” of former leading powers like Spain or the Netherlands, or to disintegrate like the Roman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is too large and too homogenous for that. America’s relative share of wealth and power will ebb away, but it will long remain a very significant power in a multipolar world.
Therefore, the task of American statesmen is to manage these trends so that the erosion takes place “slowly and smoothly.” This decline is relative, not absolute, and the only serious threat will come from failure to adjust sensibly, and America’s problems are less daunting than European powers of the past confronting an array of enemies."
As i recall, didn't this book feature a cartoon of uncle sam leaving a podium and Japan stepping up to take his place? Kennedy believed Japan was the next great power. So he wiffed on that bit at least.
Yep, apparently there were several different covers -- maybe international additions were different and perhaps things changed on the thinking around Pax Japonica when the '92 crisis hit there. Prior to the crisis, the stage seemed to be set for the exchange -- the Dutch really got it all started, then Britain, then the US, and in 1987, it looked by all accounts that Japan was next.
This was required reading for a class I had with Rostow, one of Kennedy's biggest critics. Wish I could remember all that Rostow had to say but that was many moons ago.
It has taken some time but Kennedy may be proven right after all. While it might not be Japan, I think it is becoming increasingly clear that the US is on its way out.
Join NATO and become a US vassal state, also known as acting like lemmings, off the cliff we go!
zerohedge
@zerohedge
Was this part of the plan:
US trade deficit worst on record Russian trade surplus highest on record
The Spectator Index
@spectatorindex
BREAKING: Italian energy giant Eni set to open rubles accounts with Gazprombank
Don't know if you saw Gonzalo's tweet string yesterday, but it's a good summary of where things are imho.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1518899739437187073.html
Brilliant. Perfectly encapsulates the past, the current state, the future, and why. The West cares nothing for the Ukraine - it is simply a tool to use against Russia. In fact the Ukrainian government cares nothing for the Ukrainian people - neither those many thousands who have already left and now have nothing to return to nor those who remain and have had their lives destroyed.
"But the West's total financial and political break with Russia means they have nothing to lose. And they have a lot to gain: The Donbas is mineral rich, the really productive farmlands of Ukraine are in the east and south, Kharkov is a major industrial city, the Sea of Azov has untold natural gas reserves."
Yes, and why would Russia now take anything the Ukrainian government has to say seriously? Both the West and the Ukrainian government have made conscious decisions and taken actions to lead events right to where they are now. They also have seemingly foreclosed on any peaceful settlement of the conflict. And so who is to blame for this "tragedy"?
Well worth reading!
Yes. It was very good. Some people just refuse reality.
Lavrov: "Proxy war is still war." Yeah, I guess that kinda makes sense.
Zerohedge:
Russian state media is reporting that Wednesday's long-range missile attack on foreign supplies targeted an aluminum warehouse which had been converted to a weapons depot.
The day prior Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had warned: "These weapons will be a legitimate target for the Russian Armed Forces" - in a message aimed at both Kiev and its Western backers.
"Warehouses, including in the west of Ukraine, have become such a target more than once. How else could it be? NATO is essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy. War means war," he stressed.
The Ruble/USD is now stronger that it was before invasion.
how long before the dollar is rubble?
Levi
@Levi_godman
The German MoD recognized the disaster: 60% of the equipment is not combat-ready
“On paper, we have 350 Puma infantry fighting vehicles, 150 can be used. Of the 51 Eurocopter Tiger helicopters, only 9 are combat-ready,” said the head of the Bundeswehr, Lambrecht
LMAO
Your comment, Mary, is channeling, to a degree, the writings of Paul Kennedy. The current, seemingly accelerating decline, is really well explained by Kennedy.
Paul Kennedy, British historian, wrote a book in 1987 entitled The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. His premise: "Great powers, in order to remain great powers, had a task that was simple to understand but difficult to execute: to balance wealth and their economic base with their military power and strategic commitments. These states therefore faced a constant triple tension between investment, defense and consumption. Failure to get this balance right risked overextension as a large economy vulnerable to predators."
"In its coverage, Kennedy’s book was not primarily about the United States of 1987. It was a comparative analysis of historical polities from Habsburg Spain to Bourbon France to the British Empire. But one 38-page section towards the end of the 698-page argument, added in by Kennedy at the publisher’s request, attracted the most debate. This brief reflection on what it all meant for the United States led to the book getting translated into 23 languages, and got Kennedy invited to testify before Congress. In that section, Kennedy warned that a set of familiar historical pressures, poorly managed, would erode America’s relative power-position in the world. America’s relative power would wane over time — the choice, he argued, was to manage this process prudently, making it as undisruptive and as painless as possible, or to deny it and thereby accelerate it."
Kennedy was branded a "declinist" and attacked by a number of pre-eminent scholars and politicians. Even until just recently, within the last 10 years or so, Kennedy's writings were still considered off the mark. It was assumed that even though the US was in a state of decline, the smart politicians and leaders in this country could bring us in for a soft landing while still maintaining relative predominance.
Today, what you're saying is right on the mark, imho.
From Kennedy's own diagnosis:
"The longevity of U.S. power faces two challenges: preserving a balance between its defense commitments and the means to sustain them, and preserving the economic base of its power against shifting patterns of production."
"America’s aggregation of interests and obligations exceeds the country’s power to defend them all at once. This scale of security obligations was acquired at a time when America’s shares of world gross domestic product, industrial production, and military power were considerably larger, its balance of payments healthier, and its level of indebtedness lower.
Elements of America’s constitutional system of government and political culture impede the reformulation of grand strategy, from domestic lobbies to the electoral system.
No society remains permanently ahead of others, as patterns of growth rates, technological advance or military power do not freeze, but the United States is not destined to shrink to the “relative obscurity” of former leading powers like Spain or the Netherlands, or to disintegrate like the Roman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is too large and too homogenous for that. America’s relative share of wealth and power will ebb away, but it will long remain a very significant power in a multipolar world.
Therefore, the task of American statesmen is to manage these trends so that the erosion takes place “slowly and smoothly.” This decline is relative, not absolute, and the only serious threat will come from failure to adjust sensibly, and America’s problems are less daunting than European powers of the past confronting an array of enemies."
We are so screwed!
It's been a while since I read Kennedy and have borrowed liberally from this article. https://warontherocks.com/2015/06/was-paul-kennedy-right-american-decline-30-years-on/
@geck
As i recall, didn't this book feature a cartoon of uncle sam leaving a podium and Japan stepping up to take his place? Kennedy believed Japan was the next great power. So he wiffed on that bit at least.
Yep, apparently there were several different covers -- maybe international additions were different and perhaps things changed on the thinking around Pax Japonica when the '92 crisis hit there. Prior to the crisis, the stage seemed to be set for the exchange -- the Dutch really got it all started, then Britain, then the US, and in 1987, it looked by all accounts that Japan was next.
This was required reading for a class I had with Rostow, one of Kennedy's biggest critics. Wish I could remember all that Rostow had to say but that was many moons ago.
It has taken some time but Kennedy may be proven right after all. While it might not be Japan, I think it is becoming increasingly clear that the US is on its way out.
It's clown turtles, all the way down.
I don't know that I blame all of this on Mitch McConnell...😆