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Well to really achieve this, you need true world hegemony where one power is so strong that it can rule the world and prevent any shift in the balance of power. China's plan is to become so strong that they can trounce the US and allies directly. No amount of credibility or 'resolve' can compensate for outright weakness.
Alternately, widescale nuclear proliferation. The non-proliferation treaty is another example where the natural defensive tendencies of various powers have been suppressed by a world of vibes and theory. As the balance of power shifts, states are inevitably going to nuclearize and probably in a more dangerous and chaotic way than if the natural course of affairs developed.
I think people are too fixated on the status quo of the past 20 or 30 years, where the US could wreck weak countries at will while the strong countries were mostly independent inside their borders. It's not natural for only America to have a foreign policy, for American wars to be 'counter-terrorism' or 'police action' or 'pre-emptive strikes' while other people's wars are 'illegal invasions'. All great powers will have their own foreign policies, that's how it works. There is nothing that can be done to persuade China to accept an international system where they can't invade or install friendly govts where they like but the US can. China has armies and fleets, nukes and tech, they are made to be used.
I'm sympathetic to Russia taking Russian-majority parts of Ukraine in abstract but I also think this war is net-negative for Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the Western bloc. We in the West could've and should've resolved it before it happened by making credible promises about our intentions for Russia and Ukraine, by doing nothing with Ukraine, pretending it didn't exist rather than waving a red flag to a bull. In RAND reports from before the war they talk about ways to put pressure on Russia by arming and getting closer with Ukraine, you can sense that it's about point-scoring in Syria and Libya, imposing costs on Russia like they're a naughty schoolboy. We're not in school, there is no police to call and routinely attacking an
I don't think putting pressure on Russia is a good idea, it just pushes them closer to China. Russia can do all kinds of things to impose costs on us if they want.
We should've been wooing Russia away from China. What ought to have happened is that our statesmen should've displayed elementary diplomacy and grand strategy, stopped huffing vibes about Euro-Atlantic integration and the open-door policy, learnt to prioritize and delay gratification.
I don't see any good ending now, only bad and worse endings. The key lesson is to break out of the stultifying prison of vibes that we're still immersed in.
WW2 was as bad as it was due to a conflict between vibes-based and realist strategic thought. The UK and France decided to declare war on Germany in 1939 for the sake of Poland, who they had no plan or hope of defending but guaranteed anyway. It makes zero sense to do this. Hitler, quite reasonably, did not expect this insane behaviour. If Chaimberlain understood what he was doing, was prepared to prioritize and strategize, WW2 would've been a quick and easy victory. He could've made an alliance with Germany against Russia, then perhaps betrayed Germany. He could've allied with Russia against Germany, at the cost of Poland. He could've just done nothing, rearmed at home and waited for a better opportunity. He could've worked with Italy if it weren't for some idiot journalists revealing the partition plan for Ethiopia and wrecking the Stresa front (this was before Chaimberlain got into office tbf).
Anything would've been better than 'diplomacy so shit that Russia and Germany (who deeply hate eachother) ally against us' and 'military so weak we can't attack while Germany is conquering Poland' and 'declare war on Germany anyway.'
But Chaimberlain was entranced by vibes and bungled so badly the world's greatest empire was destroyed. And Poland was absolutely wrecked. Another massive failure for the vibes-based school of international relations, which they somehow repackage as proof that you need 'resolve' and not to 'appease'. No, countries need to think strategically and pick between a range of options based on the situation and their capabilities.
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