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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34083 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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I've said before that I had stopped posting here because it's a purely American Affairs Discussion community and, for a non-American, those affairs are only instrumentally interesting due to their effects elsewhere, and they become less interesting as America recedes from the world stage. The silence on the ongoing global events reinforces my impressions both of the US and of this forum. It's a pity because in terms of the culture war, it's very significant. The Red Tribe basically won politically. Nowhere has this been made more obvious than at the yesterday's session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, that hive of globalists Alex Jones warned us all about. For decades, the narrative around these parts has been that Europe has lost its way, is Communist, is being demographically replaced etc, and only the Serious Big Brother across the Atlantic can steer the ship. Lately there's even talk that Europe is basically «over», and America is what remains of the West, and so the US must take direct stewardship over the imperiled land. For example, one of the justifications for the seizure of Greenland from a MAGA loyalist Scott Greer:

Thanks to the power of anti-colonialist rhetoric over the actions of European leaders and international bodies, China gained a win in the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese could do something similar with Greenland. It’s easy to see an international uproar arising over Denmark’s “colonial” rule over the Greenlanders and the Danes face serious pressure to give up the territory. If the Chinese find a foothold in Greenland, they could manipulate independence to benefit themselves. They can make it harder for Americans to maintain a military presence and gain control over the Northwest Passage. The Danes, even more than the Brits, would be completely helpless to stop this scenario from playing it out.

(Needless to say, every accusation is a confession; very soon, Scott Bessent EXPOSED Denmark's treatment of Greenland in front of millions! – according to some Floridian patriot. This propaganda is gaining steam in conservative sources that belong to the American influence network).

I've seen that the rumors of European death are very much exaggerated. Europe very much still exists. But the sensibility of the United States of America on the world stage is now one of openly admitted exceptionalism and essentialist superiority. We've seen the birth of an assertive Judeo-Christian civilization-state with Latin American characteristics, and it's clearly separate from what can be called «Western Civilization». The focal point of the rupture was of course Greenland again.

I mainly want to get the conversaton going so I'll just share some quotes without commentary.

Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce:

HL: [Long passionate tirade against globalism] When America shines, the world shines. Close your eyes and imagine the world without America in it. It goes dark pretty darn quickly.
the moderator: Can I bring you back to Greenland?
HL: No. It's unnecessary. The Western Hemisphere is vital for the United states of America. Our national security people are on it, and they care about it, and I'll leave it to them to address with our allies, with our friends, and with everyone have it worked out. But the Western Hemisphere matters to the US of A, and the US of A as I've just articulated REALLY REALLY MATTERS to the world. When America shines, the world shines. Because they all need to make sure America is strong and powerful to take care of them, G-d forbid.

This is of course not so much Monroe/Donroe doctrine as invoking Light Unto the nations/Shining city upon a hill with some geopolitical dressing, only cruder, with more stick and less carrot than ever. The reactions are understandable.

Mark Carney, a long-term advisor to Justin Trudeau with all his disastrous policies, was projected to soundly lose the elections to Pierre Poilievre, a very US-style conservative self-identifying as a «simple goy from the prairies». What reversed their odds was Trump's tariff war on Canada plus endorsement of Pierre as his agent to make Canada the 51st state (Poilievre, being a simple goy but not insane, obviously denied any such intention).

Yesterday, Carney delivered a speech that I think ends the North American fraternal relationship and likely the entire post -WWII order. Some excerpts:

It’s a pleasure — and a duty — to be with you at this turning point for Canada and the world.

I’ll speak today about the rupture in the world order, the end of the pleasant fiction and the dawn of a brutal reality in which great-power geopolitics is unconstrained. But I submit to you all the same that other countries, in particular middle powers like Canada, aren’t powerless. They have the power to build a new order that integrates our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states. The power of the less powerful begins with honesty. […] It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down. For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. We could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP—the architecture of collective problem solving — are greatly diminished.
We are engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait for the world as we wish it to be. Canada is calibrating our relationships, so their depth reflects our values. We are prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given the fluidity of the world, the risks that this poses, and the stakes for what comes next. We are no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength. … We are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union, including joining SAFE, Europe’s defence procurement arrangements. We have signed twelve other trade and security deals on four continents in the last six months. In the past few days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We are negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines, Mercosur.
[…] Which brings me back to Havel. What would it mean for middle powers to “live in truth”?
It means naming reality. Stop invoking the “rules-based international order” as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.
It means acting consistently. Apply the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.
It means building what we claim to believe in. Rather than waiting for the hegemon to restore an order it is dismantling, create institutions and agreements that function as described. And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion.

We are taking the sign out of the window. The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just. This is the task of the middle powers, who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.
The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together. That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently. And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.

Others are saying similar stuff, have been for a while. Merz on the end of the Pax Americana, Macron obviously.

The engagement with China is a common theme, spearheaded by Carney. His partnership with China in particular is prompting Americans to fantasize of seizing Alberta. Maybe that'll happen too.

You really should follow the WEF content on your own to form an opinion though.

The other day @TiltingGambit said:

Cultural export from China is crazily uncharismatic. And this is why, in my view, the US would end up with all the allies in WWIII and china would end up with the dregs of the international community. Nobody likes china, nobody outside of china knows what's going on in china, and nobody in china knows what's going on inside china either.

I am not sure who's going to be American ally in WWIII now. It's my impression that @TiltingGambit has been projecting, because he, as a true American, felt that there is nothing worth learning about affairs of barbarians in China, Europe or anywhere else. This is a very Qing-like attitude. Yes, there's significant consumption of MCU capeshit, we all write in English, Americans are the top content creators on Tiktok, I'm just not seeing how this translates into political loyalty.

So. The costs of winning the Culture War. Any takes on this?

Edit. I explain my focus on this topic, since many are very disappointed.

The US needs to realize that if it wants to act like the global hegemon it needs to pay the cost for doing so. That includes sending largesse and payments to smaller allies at a higher level than what you do to your own people per capita to ensure they stick with you rather than go over to the other side (see Scotland in the UK, or Greenland in Denmark). You can't both want subordination from your "allies" while also getting them to pay and spend more.

At this point for the rest of the world the question we ask the US is simple: Are you willing to pay us more than China etc. is for our loyalty and support? How much more are you willing to spend to avoid getting globally humiliated as your allies desert you en masse? The door is that way if we don't like your answer.

At this point for the rest of the world the question we ask the US is simple: Are you willing to pay us more than China etc. is for our loyalty and support? How much more are you willing to spend to avoid getting globally humiliated as your allies desert you en masse? The door is that way if we don't like your answer.

Listen man, we all know you really mean Europe here, which means you probably ought to rephrase this as a plea for the US to reconsider what good economic sense it makes to not be so mean to you. You aren't marching off the field with your spears, you threw your spears away and will implode into street fights over welfare before you can ever raise a real army from a domestic youth made up of Muslim immigrants and disaffected whites.

But support from China comes with strings too. Pakistan and a lot of African countries are quietly grinding their teeth at having to make significant economic reorganizations for China’s benefit. It may still be worth it, but it’s certainly not a free lunch.

that I had stopped posting here because it's a purely American Affairs Discussion community

That's not really how I see it, I see it as a place to discuss anything with interesting people, most of the posts I like the most have nothing to do with American politics directly. But I also don't find the 100th post about police shootings interesting.

ends the North American fraternal relationship and likely the entire post -WWII order

How long will that end last, though? Trump only has three more years in office. If a dem wins in 2028 and Europe elects a few more populist right leaders itself, European unity against the US might stop being appealing. And the fundamental fact of US military and economic power relative to Europe isn't going to disappear, unless Trump does something even worse than what he's done so far and doesn't TACO for once. I don't think "free trade pacts" and "strategic partnerships" are going to be what mark the real end of the post-WWII international order.

The costs of winning the Culture War

It's interesting, and irritating if one has right-wing sympathies, how contingent this all is on Trump's particular combination of talent as an entertainer and lack of desire to be at all serious about government. The thing Trump's projecting to the world is comedic incompetence, and other countries are responding to that as they should. The story isn't really about ideology or the cost of winning, it's just that Trump wasn't really a win at all.

Sorry if you addressed this elsewhere in the thread, but I’m curious your thoughts on birth rates and its long term impact.

If you tried to reduce a whole country into a single metric of greatness, I think you can argue over whether China or the US is higher, but I’m sympathetic to the argument that the derivative of this metric is clearly greater for China. What about the second or third derivative though? The biggest thing that makes me think the US’s might be higher is birth rates. According to the UN as summarized by Wikipedia, the US is substantially below replacement at 1.6, but China is at 1.0, which seems catastrophic to me. Indeed, there’s news article from this week saying China now has more deaths than births (a cursory search shows this is not the case for the US after a bit of die-off of elderly people during the peak of the pandemic). If these numbers continue to hold (or decline at the same rate) then 2 generations from now the American cohort will be larger than the Chinese one. My sense, though this could be Western propaganda, is that the US is also more attractive to and welcoming of immigrants than China (averaged over a few presidential administrations anyway) and the US has relatively high fertility religious subgroups that are still compatible with modernity like Mormons and some Jewish sects (does China have any equivalents? I honestly don’t know. I suppose the Uyghurs might have been).

The result is that I could see China overtaking the US on a number of metrics in the next couple decades, but then slinking into economic and cultural decline as the younger Chinese generations become smaller in relative and absolute terms compared to the US. Some on this board may believe that will be irrelevant due to AI and robotics, but I’m skeptical of that and certainly wouldn’t bet the farm on it if I were in the Politburo.

But I also grant I have a very siloed information diet on the topic - is there something I’m missing? Maybe population size doesn’t matter that much? After all, during the US’s period of unquestioned dominance it had a much smaller population than China. Still, I think the birth rates point at something important, and China is definitely doing worse in that regard at least.

USA 1.6 TFR is not evenly distributed. It is, as with Europe now and world history ad a whole massively overrepresented by 1st and 2nd gen minorities, which are potentially but not necessarily economically acretive to the USA. Maybe by downstream effects the productive get to perform better by reaping some economy of scale but putting money on that premise is risky. More importantly the western solution to TFR reductions seems to be mass immigration, first by opening the floodgates then having the cream of individual societies migrate to better pastures as a result of debasement of home. USA brags of receiving the best of the globe, but its gain is New Zealands loss.

Quiverful and haredi are not offsetting the growth of value negative populations. Japan, China, Korea will hollow out their rurals before their urban cores disappear, the west is experiencing urban birfurcation that limits growth headroom.

Hoping that China will fall relies on the west preserving itself through immigration. A bold move cotton, lets see how it plays out.

USA 1.6 TFR is not evenly distributed. It is, as with Europe now and world history ad a whole massively overrepresented by 1st and 2nd gen minorities, which are potentially but not necessarily economically acretive to the USA.

First and second generation minorities is an odd phrase. First generation immigrant makes sense, but minority and immigrant are not synonyms.

As it happens, among US-born people (including second gens immigrants), all racial groups have roughly the same TFR, except Asians, who are consistently lower. African Americans have recently fallen below Euro-Americans and are falling fast, which suggests that they may end up with Asian-level TFR soon enough, since their low numbers are already artificially inflated due to higher birth rates among African and Caribbean immigrants.* First gen Asian immigrants have extremely low fertility.

Hispanic TFR is higher among immigrants, but it is overstated due to how it is measured. Since the numerator is babies born, while the denominator is young women legally in the country, illegal immigrants having anchor babies makes the hispanic immigrant TFR look higher than it really is.

With Trump's immigration crackdown reducing illegal immigration from Latin America, it wouldn't shock me if we start seeing white births increasing as a share of all US births in the next couple of years.

*African American wages are actually increasing significantly between generations due to the relatively elite nature of African and Caribbean immigration. Apparently the Great Replacement also involves replacing low-IQ 'native' African Americans with high-IQ Nigerians and Jamaicans!

IIRC we’ve already seen white births increase as a fraction of all births in the USA.

China is on a roughly South Korean demographic trajectory. I think their population will fall even faster than pessimistic UN predictions. To what extent that matters, I am not sure. They'll probably have an advantage in workforce with tertiary education over the entirety of the "developed world" for the next two-three decades, by which point labor may become irrelevant. If the problem were the lack of labor in the shorter term, we wouldn't be seeing increasing youth unemployment while productivity keeps ballooning. (The absence of it in eg Japan is not so much about better economy or more advanced stage of demographic transition as about cultural mandate for low productivity of service employment; China isn't willing to subsidize that many bullshit jobs and Chinese graduates are not willing to take full-time low status menial jobs, they'd rather live on parents' savings and do gigs). At this rate of automation, I expect nations will become more preoccupied with reducing population, and China will be one of the most automated and the fastest-shrinking societies, so optimistically it'll cancel out. Then there is the political issue of aging; I am pessimistic about the culture and politics of old societies. Homogeneity and lack of politically significant subgroups with markedly different productivity (as in the US with its racial spoils system) at least reduce the tension.

As of now though, Chinese government is the most vigorous of all I know in trying to boost fertility, they're running policy experiments across provinces and have some results. If all goes well, they may pull back to 1.1-1.2 TFR, and I expect the productive subgroups of the West to naturally stabilize around the same point.

I'm answering tersely because I'm expecting a permaban, as requested.

I'm answering tersely because I'm expecting a permaban, as requested.

What the hell is wrong with you?

You swoop in with a sideswipe about how we're not cool enough for your attention anymore, drop your signature huge block quotes, add your own commentary which is soaking wet with the disdain dripping from your fangs, and when anyone returns serve, you escalate the hostility another notch ad nauseum!

Now you're trying to leave forever out of what seems like pure spite? Why? Did we not respond adequately to your provocations? What kind of discussion would have made you happy? "Oh yes, Ilforte, every country is incompetent and arrogant except for China. Russia is poetic and sad and bad. The US is productive and cocky and bad. Glad you brought this to our attention." @2rafa hasn't even earned a response from you, when she clearly respects you and would like to hear from you more often. You were a respected user of this forum! Alas, I can't remember what originally made me so fond of you. Like, I literally can't remember the things you would talk about before February 2022.

I hope you find a nice girl in Argentina man.

Since @Amadan had apparently deemed me not deserving of a ban yet (a bold strategy), I'll take this as an opportunity to explain myself, hopefully for the last time, in plain language.

What the hell is wrong with you? You were a respected user of this forum! Alas, I can't remember what originally made me so fond of you. Like, I literally can't remember the things you would talk about before February 2022.

It's tempting to answer «See? Nothing of value will be lost». More specifically: what made people fond of me was, I think, merely the style of my writing. I'm a talented polemicist, if I do say so myself. My prose at its best has a poetic dimension, my ESL idiosyncrasies add some cute novelty and charm, my arguments are emotionally charged and my metaphors evocative. It's as satisfying for me to write as for the reader to watch me rip into his tribal enemies. Less charitably put, I'm a content creator, a journalist, appreciated for entertaining commentary on current events. My pulpit was akin to some American comedian's show, Stewart or Colbert's, or a podcast in this era, where Fuentes runs his mouth off on the hot topic of the day, with a dash of Russian perspective that, for the reader, was a market-differentiating gimmick. But journalists aren't human beings, are they? Much less respected thinkers. Nobody needs the opinion of a journalist; his job is to affirm the opinion of the consumer. So when I deviate from the prevailing sentiment, I get insults, mockery, I'm called a naive shmuck or an enemy propagandist, and receive condescending personal advice. Ah well! Journalists come and go. It's really not worth remembering their transient blather, you're doing it right.

The thing is, for all the pride I have in my writing ability, I look down on journalists too. It's my thoughts that I am trying to share. Mainly thoughts about the evolution of civilization and communities under effects of technology, and large-scale cultural dynamics seen through the prism of archetypal events and artifacts; and the style is supposed to be a simple appetizer (which in fact often gets in the way – it's not a cultivated skill but just how I write, how I talk naturally… See – another overlong too-Russian sentence, a digression that flows well phonetically but makes the reader's eyes glaze over).
I think about this stuff because that's what had always been interesting to me, everything else being only instrumentally significant. I came here from SlateStarCodex, which – no idea if you're aware, it's been long ago – is part of the LessWrong sphere; and LessWrong, with all its rational thinking and ratfic and general discussion and weird autist sex things ephemera, had always been a wrapper for the community obsessed with problem of artificial general intelligence. Under pretty sensible and obvious assumptions, this is the most important facet of the causal backbone of reality. Now LessWrong readers had graduated into employees and CEOs of megacorps whose projects the United States Government is treating as the Hail Mary in a geopolitical competition at the end of history. So am I coming back to the core issue.

So, what would I want to be remembered for, if it were a choice? This piece about DeepSeek, from July 2024. I did some honest work. Observed the market, inspected the models, read the tech reports, and highlighted a thing that will significantly redefine the US-PRC AI race. Long before it caused the panic at Meta and imposion of their LLaMA project (and rendered the entire Western LLM open source scene obsolete). Long before R1 set fire to Nvidia's stock, and the founder going on to meet with Xi Jinping and Trump name-dropping DeepSeek as a wake-up call for the US a week after inauguration. Over a year prior to the entire Chinese tech pivoting on a dime and starting to spawn DeepSeeks, so that now even Meituan (yes the food delivery company) is contesting OpenAI at the frontier and open sourcing their work. Back then, in the summer of 2024, I said: «…confident vision, bearing fruit months later. I would like to know who's charting their course, because they're single-handedly redeeming my opinion of the Chinese AI ecosystem and frankly Chinese culture.» That someone was Liang Wenfeng. In 2025 he was on Nature 10, and the vibe was as follows: «DeepSeek has also become a symbol of a transition in the country’s reputation — from master imitators to true innovators, according to Liang and other Chinese researchers. “The shift is real, and it’s accelerating,” says Yu Wu, a researcher at DeepSeek. Now the world is eagerly awaiting the firm’s next reasoning model, R2, which is rumoured to have been delayed by issues with hardware and training data. One good bet is that Liang’s company plans to give R2 to the world for free. “We’re committed to open source forever,” says Wu.» This is representative, you can doubt me but I say quite confidently that the self-perception had already changed. Roughly a year ago I submitted a post on the deeper cultural priors and possible outcomes of this transition event, too, cheekily written in tandem with R1 to illustrate the point of its genuinely unusual cognition compared to Western LLMs of the time; it got downvoted to hell for «AI slop», earned me some warnings, so it's deleted now. A pity, I'd like to link it to show how my/R1's predictions were prescient. Instead we still have the endless rehashing of boomer takes about Chyna stealing-copying-faking, no soft power, bad media exports, counterproductive propaganda, nobody likes them etc – missing the point entirely.

Subjectively, I believe it's about as interesting as if someone in the 1970 discovered that the Soviet Union had quietly opened a Special Economic Zone in the Khabarovsk Krai and they're speedrunning to a Japan-style Neon Cyberpunk there. What does this say about the ideological competition between the Free World and the Warsaw Pact? About the assumptions we're reliant on for predicting the Communist Party's strategy and future outcomes? In the 1970, such a report would be a bombshell in the USA, I'd wager. Today, in this forum, people will create megathreads (actually fail to create a megathread, so it's just dozens of threads cluttering the main one) about some ICE dude shooting some protestor woman. Charitably that's the same logic as mine – an outlier event that may be the herald of a bigger trend or at least can serve as a focal point for a big picture discussion. That's fine, I'm simply saying the big picture is bigger than the intra-American culture war and deserves at least a fraction of attention. In fact, I believe that the current form of the culture war, with the empowerment of Trump as a Caesarist figure, the growing influence of the Tech Right, progressives losing all their cancel power, even these land grab attempts and bizarrely high American belligerence and contempt towards allied nations — is driven not just by the endogenous trend of woke fatique, but by the undercurrent of existential anxiety about the Chinese rise, not dissimilar to the Sputnik shock. The failure of the fast AGI gambit, the resilience of their economy, the authority in international organizations flowing their way, are gnawing at the roots of American confidence, some left unarticulated in the polite society – national, political, cultural, civilizational, even racial. And DeepSeek was what had put it into focus for me.

But enough about DeepSeek. The point is, I wanted to share my surprising finding about the contemporary Chinese culture in a consequential domain, seen through the keyhole of this specific open source research program.

And I don't want to claim prescience. It's not like I've always been so China-pilled. On the contrary, my predictions had been lousy and highly biased in the opposite direction, if anything; they were worse than that of our resident, less prolific China bulls like @RandomRanger. As late as in 2020, I had leaned towards modeling them as a large, superficially significant, but non-live player compared to the US, doomed specifically by cultural rigidity and myopia of the elites, a paper tiger/dragon – a theory that's still finding quite some purchase here. In my 2020 Viewpoint Focus, I've said

China is no Iraq, it has WMDs, but its position and threat (and the intent to do harm) are also vastly overstated by our local hawks. […]. It does not have a domestic semiconductor industry, and the recent sanctions on SMIC show that its position is precarious. Without semiconductors for Huawei chips, not even Great Firewall can be maintained for long (iirc they're not even fully independent on 40nm); they will come up with something, but by that point the US can, probably, male double-digit GDP increases thanks to AI – and the CCP will not have the necessary compute.

July 2022, about their first mass produced 7nm chip:

I've evaluated this as a swan song of Chinese industry. Very laudable, might prove to be a big deal, but my model of those «Chinese triumphs» is that they're on their last legs, sinking hundreds of billions into desperate attempts at getting out of the deadlock, and will end in a whimper as the US crushes them without even paying much attention and bickering over some asinine culture war topic of the week that barely parses as meaningful statements to people outside the bubble of American religion/ideology…

By September 2023, I've updated to this–

History is still likely to repeat – that is, like the Qing China during the Industrial Revolution, like the Soviet Union in the transistor era, the nation playing catch-up will once again run into trade restrictions, fail at the domestic fundamental innovation and miss out on the new technological stage; but it is not set in stone.… It leaves us in the uncomfortable situation where China as a rival superpower will plausibly have to be defeated for real, rather then just sanctioned away or allowed to bog itself down in imperialist adventurism and incompetence.

– but I still held to the idea that odds are stacked in the West's favor. Tech is one thing, culture is another. And even my knowledge of the tech progress was lacking, nevermind the culture, to say nothing of its changes. In my defense, one had to have direct exposure to intra-Chinese discourse (and then, very specific circles) to get that part right then.

To my embarrassment, even in the DeepSeek post, I've been hedging:

This might not change much. Western closed AI compute moat continues to deepen, DeepSeek/High-Flyer don't have any apparent privileged access to domestic chips, and other Chinese groups have friends in the Standing Committee and in the industry, so realistically this will be a blip on the radar of history.

My «realistically» amounted to saying they're strategically dumb and myopic and unable to capitalize on their advantages the way Americans can on their own. I've been extremely, catastrophically overrating Western exceptionalism and profoundly incurious about China, partially due to the influence of this America First community. Not blaming anyone here; mea culpa.

So for over a year I've been trying to steer the discussion so that my errors and my negative contributions were negated. All I've got is steady erosion of my reputation and, by 2026, accusations of working for the Ministry of State Security from some Canadian who, family lore aside, might know less about China than I now do.

And now this shit:

I hope you find a nice girl in Argentina man.

Thanks. Now how about you stop condescending and try to actually fucking read? How much more must I chew it for you to make it digestible?

I hope this clarifies my position somewhat.

I hope you don't leave, Dase! I've always found your posts unique and kept track of you since the Reddit days. Someone has to counter the American front and post interesting posts about geopolitics and such. I've increasingly skimmed past intra-US politics and as a European, with Trump's anti-EU turn, I've felt quite an estrangement with the American Right. Where before I had felt a sense of oneness, cheering on Trump 2 and Elon Twitter takeover, no longer having to feel like a persecuted minority, finally being able to speak my mind on the Internet.

I've also been deeply interested in DeepSeek after R1 published around last January. It tends to give me better results than Grok does when I run my questions through both chat bots, and not go unavailable due to high load like Grok sometimes does. I'm not quite as bullish on China as you appear to be, but I'm sure starting to root for them to do something while our US-led economy appears to bungle everything up, with DRAM and GPUs becoming unavailable to consumers, where it seems only Chinese manufacturing can save us from this situation where it seems that computation is going to be exclusively limited for corporations. I have faith in Western free market economies outcompeting the Chinese command economy with abundant malinvestments, like manufacturing a bunch of electric cars that now they have to find somewhere to dump to, or imposing such a strict trade surplus that you have to give countries loans to buy your goods, which it's dubious if they can ultimately repay.

My faith in Western society is kind of crumbling, though. Or more precisely our collective economies. With a k-shaped economy for haves and have-nots, we appear to have forgotten the part about the markets where we were supposed to produce goods for and employ each other? We have home ownership unavailable for new families as boomers have decided to make construction of new housing effectively illegal. Here in Finland we've managed an atrocious unemployment rate of 10,6% and 20,5%, and if you do manage to land a job, you get to enjoy the wonders of having 25% of your wage go to taxes and another 25% to fund Boomers' pensions in a giant Ponzi scheme! The left here is shrieking, blaming the right-wing government, while I think rising unemployment is a current global phenomenon. Somehow, the Western investment seems to have become oriented full-tilt into AI, apparently replacing both consumers and workers before any sign of the fabled productivity gains or even a profitable product in sight.

It makes me regret getting so excited about AI or even getting educated in CS, where I appeared to go from a hot commodity to unemployable in an instant.

I at least find your content more interesting than your style!

Nobody needs the opinion of a journalist; his job is to affirm the opinion of the consumer

Journalists are over-hated. They provide a valuable service of collecting, verifying, and disseminating raw facts like "white house staffer told me this EO is coming" or "this company is merging with that company". It's not as noble a profession as they think it is, and they are of course not perfect at it, but merely being passable at it while making frequent mistakes with significant bias is still very valuable.

...

This is also just false as factual matter. Most normal journalists, including at the NYT, are writing articles like "Major US Public Transit Systems Brace For Storm With Detours And Warnings", and even the politics ones are mostly writing articles that are accurate.

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This should have been your top level post. Your China optimism is more convincing when you first trace your previous assessments and explain how you've changed your mind about China's prospects over time.

Your other post was bad, this one is better. The problem appears to be that you were trying to say the problem isn't chinese culture, it was that other people just aren't paying attention. You might not agree with that interpretation but that is definitely the message you seemed to be putting out there.

I'm of the view that nobody can get to know China when the CCP so seriously restricts organic engagement from the bottom up with top down censorship and control. The CCP does not know how to generate meaningful alliances or relationships, which implies that they are not going to be able to guide Chinese society more broadly towards cultural exchange. They just don't have the skillset.

It seems like some contrast between "our product is great! Why aren't these idiot consumers buying our microwaves?" Vs "maybe they aren't what people want."

When I responded to you I had no idea you had all this baggage as some Big Deal VIP poster. And I took the post at face value, not that you were trying to claw back previous dismissals of China (or something?).

I stand by my previous comments. But I also think you should keep posting about China if you want. I'll read your takes and be interested in your opinion. I don't really get the meltdown-coded follow up comments, and think you were happy to mock me and then got pissy when I did it back to you. Otherwise I don't think you did anything wrong and you shouldn't be looking to terminate all your engagement with the forum over a minor tiff.

You consistently conflate «culture» in the broad sense and something like «soft power/media exports/arts/presentation/aesthetics/charisma». For all the rhetorical zeal, I am trying to use the words precisely. There is a culture of business and management, a culture of warfare and diplomacy, a culture of innovation and policymaking and so on. There arguably is a certain holistic quality to the «Chinese culture» as a general style or attitude behind various Chinese ideologies, practices and behaviors. But we can sidestep the debate about essentialism and focus on specific domains. Such as the large domain of industrial productivity, or the subdomain of AI research, where we've seen an establishment of a clear template post-DeepSeek. I of course have another post in this series, on MoonshotAI that's become a paradigmatic example of a Chinese company that adopted DeepSeek's philosophy, approximated their culture. This, in turn, is embedded in the traditional Chinese culture and is not so much about competitive mimicry – DeepSeek has no credible business plan to steal and copy, Moonshot has some but had even more of it before the pivot – as about shame and virtue; the commandment to recognize your inferiority in the face of a superior man, learn and then try to measure up.

The dimensions of culture that I find interesting are consequential even if literally nobody outside of China except me pays attention. I'd go so far as to say that this idea you stubbornly return to, that Chinese culture needs to earn anyone's attention by means of virality and appeal, is characteristic of a consumerist culture where facts are only as worthy as they're entertaining, even if they can kill you or render you irrelevant.

You consistently conflate «culture» in the broad sense and something like «soft power/media exports/arts/presentation/aesthetics/charisma».

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture

"a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitudes, and habits of the individuals in these groups"

It's not conflation. It's just what culture is. When I say French culture is baguettes, being snooty, smoking, and design agencies nobody is arguing. When I say Chinese culture is being shit at diplomacy, making high speed trains and doing propaganda stuff (and, especially, failing to communicate much of anything else about their culture) it's directly comparable.

But we can sidestep the debate about essentialism and focus on specific domains

I'm frankly not interested in that. And never was. You had an issue with me saying Chinese culture is uncharismatic. I was speaking broadly for a reason. You can go through and pick all these examples e.g. EVs, and tell me that proves I'm wrong. But I already took the trick. On the aggregate, on the whole, you know I'm right. We get Japanese culture. We get Singaporean culture. We get Russian culture. We get indian culture. Even when we don't get force fed their media every day, I can genuinely imagine the day to day of an Indian businessman. I don't love their cultural outputs, but I do feel like India has transferred their culture to the wider international audience in a way that makes me feel, to an extent, a sense of Indian culture. Same goes for the Turks, Persians, Danes or Germans. Most people will not have this sense for China or Chinese people.

A normie on the street isn't going to be talking at length about DeepSeek. I have no idea why you keep bringing this up as the critical point in all of this. It's such a bizarre line to take as a holistic defence of China.

The best summary a person on the street will give, even a well informed one, is that China makes iPhones and has a pretty evil, or something, government.

The dimensions of culture that I find interesting are consequential even if literally nobody outside of China except me pays attention.

That's my fucking point! You might be interested in it, but as I said from the start, nobody else is. This is interesting because China is an economic super power, and has 1.7bn people who nobody knows anything about. I just cannot understand what you're not getting here. How many different ways can I say it. I'm not saying China has no culture, obviously. I'm saying the fact that nobody knows about it demonstrates a serious lack of appeal.

I'd go so far as to say that this idea you stubbornly return to, that Chinese culture needs to earn anyone's attention by means of virality and appeal

No buddy. You don't get to do that. This is a terrible conversation tactic that only stupid readers will be fooled by. I am not stubbornly returning to some irrelevant point. That is my point, and you are the one who continually tries to divert the conversation away from it. You responded to me. You don't get to say I'm ponderously returning to some side point when you directly engaged with it, lost the argument immediately, and have since been trying to obfuscate everything with a mental boom laced series of posts that mostly come back to "well that doesn't prove anything!"

So olive branch recinded, I don't like this no progress back and forth, or the completely unearned air of dismissal. You should have called it when you got caught out on me not being American, because it's been downhill since then.

"a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitudes, and habits of the individuals in these groups"

It's not conflation. It's just what culture is.

See? You even quote it and think it supports your position. We can read the same lines and come to the opposite conclusions. I think a culture is interesting for what outcomes it produces. You think a culture is interesting for how much interest it generates. As I've told you already:

I suppose what is going on here is that, at least for the purposes of this debate, you're incapable of communicating in plain language, and it's obnoxious of you to pretend to, so I won't cooperate.

I'll charitably amend this to "we have an irreconcilable difference in understanding of words".

That is my point,

Well then all I can say is that your point is not interesting to me and has zero consequence. Enjoy imagining the daily life of an Indian businessman or something.

I'm of the view that nobody can get to know China when the CCP so seriously restricts organic engagement from the bottom up with top down censorship and control

Perhaps try talking to Chinese people? The great firewall is one way restricting Chinese from accessing google or facebook, they've got wechat and bilibili and xiaohongshu. Nothing stopping you from shitposting on XHS to see whats up there, mainlander degeneracy is pretty top tier brainrot that doesn't need translation to understand.

Its not that Japanese are any less inscrutable than Chinese, whatever caricature of the Japanese or Korean people that has been internalizes as a representative modality is almost purely inference. Talking to westerners makes it sound like Japanese offices are filled with dead overworked corporate lifers and panty vending machines while Korea is the end boss of narcissistic consumerism.

Seriously, its like none of you guys here whining about China or Chinese people actually met anyone based in the mainland. No one is obligated to talk to someone for the sake of it, but assigning population level mystique is a category error. Talk to chinese people online, they're much more retardedly normal than you think. Less nefarious intent on dominating westoids, more shitposting on shopping livestreams.

The great firewall is one way restricting Chinese from accessing google or facebook, they've got wechat and bilibili and xiaohongshu. Nothing stopping you from shitposting on XHS to see whats up there, mainlander degeneracy is pretty top tier brainrot that doesn't need translation to understand.

Can you make a basic effort to understand what I'm saying?

To put it more succinctly, China has very little cultural impact on the world. And in the few mediums that they try to, it comes off poorly.

If your answer is to log into billbill or xiaohongshu to experience chinese culture, you're making my point for me. Nobody is doing this. Normies have no idea what you're even talking about.

"Just go talk to them". I don't "just go talk to" Americans. American culture is so pervasive that I organically experience their culture daily, passively.

assigning population level mystique is a category error

I can't scroll on this forum without being blasted with "Europeans are pussies lol". I have no issue saying "chinese culture is uncharismatic" when it's a model that describes why Chinese politics, diplomacy and cultural engagement largely fails. I can say it when nobody outside of the Chinese political elite actually really know whats going on in china.

Seriously, its like none of you guys here whining about China or Chinese people actually met anyone based in the mainland.

Every one of these responses that says "actually China is good at engaging with the world, you're just too ignorant to know it" has made some incredibly poor assumptions about me. I'm not saying this because I'm not looking. I'm saying this because I'm looking and noticing.

You specifically state that the CCP restricts bottom up engagement. China may be invisible at engaging the world, in which case their shit just sucks too hard for people outside to care about (a valid take indicative of preference shaping) or the Chinese propaganda effort is just not working - which is a less valid take since it assigns intent where none reasonably exists. Chinese media isn't interested in getting money from foreigners, when theres 1.4 billion people domestically.

granted, the Chinese state DID make an attempt at engaging the world directly for awhile, and those efforts sucked shit. Confucius institutes, hypernationalist movies with weird foreign tokenism (The Great Wall, Wolf Warrior 2, probably some other crap not worth remembering) and the brief time Zhang Ziyi was let out her cage were all probably attempts to directly showcase CHINA AWESOME, to manifest failure.

Right now many China boosters are mainly antiwokes holding up the proximate enemies greatest threat as proof of the failure of their foe, not necessarily admiration for Chinese products or media. Chinese vidya and donghua has escaped the parties notice for now and is baller as fuck, but thats the domain of weebs, so obviously beyond cultured intellectuals such as ourselves.

I swear to all of you guys though on the bottom of my overweight ass, if you want to experience true China domination, go eat their supermarket sandwiches. Chinese supermarket chains on the mainland must have kidnapped the best Japanese food scientists and forced them to make unfairly good food, and it is shockingly price to quality effective. Something about supermarkets just seems indicative of Real Quality Of Life to my animal brain, and cracking the supermarket quick food aisle is what made me convinced Japan was a real country just like how the costco chicken is proof of US dominance.

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I really appreciate how you keep tediously yelling into the void, getting mostly dismissals and accusations in return, and yet still choose to engage with people even if losing your temper at times. Not unlike most of my experiences engaging with non-Chinese (or Chinese, frustratingly) online, it’s incredibly frustrating and infuriating to never be taken seriously, but I’m naively optimistic about everything, so here we are. I hope this isn’t the last time I see you posting here. It’s of course interesting to see the progression of your takes too.

In my defense, one had to have direct exposure to intra-Chinese discourse (and then, very specific circles) to get that part right then.

On the off chance that you disappear from this forum forever, I’d really like to ask where exactly you got any exposure at all to intra-Chinese discourse even if indirect. There are discussions on Zhihu (which I’ve seen you cite before, though the platform is now nowhere near its peak), as well as on Weibo, Bilibili, etc. But those spaces are mostly surprisingly barren, especially on sensitive topics, where people have to communicate in something close to Morse code. There are very few places on Chinese social media to hear anyone with enough intellectual curiosity talking about sensitive topics. You also can’t really find good takes from overseas Chinese, or from Hong Kongers or Taiwanese, for reasons I’m sure you understand. I’ve found that frustrating as well, which is partly why I’m here. I want to see what a few gems of non-Chinese takes on China look like, even if they’re buried in a sea of noise.

It would be great if you could at least leave your methods here, in case anyone manages to overcome the activation energy and actually wants to know what’s happening in the country. Or just to satisfy my curiosity.

So when I deviate from the prevailing sentiment, I get insults, mockery, I'm called a naive shmuck or an enemy propagandist, and receive condescending personal advice.

Right. So here's the thing: expressing an unpopular opinion is not unique here, nor is getting a lot of flack for it. You started this thread by saying everyone here is too dumb and American to be worth talking to, and telling people who disagreed with you that they don't know what they're talking about. Now you're throwing an undignified tantrum because people returned the sentiment.

I'm not going to ban you unless I have to, because you are acting like a jackass here but you do have a long record of AAQCs as well. Your statement that you do not intend to change your behavior is duly noted: if you continue being a condescending jackass to everyone who disagrees with you, you will continue to accrue warnings and eventually a ban. We would prefer you didn't.

You're constantly lying and twisting my words, even in this case –

You started this thread by saying everyone here is too dumb and American to be worth talking to,

– which seriously undermines your judgement of what is or isn't undignified in my eyes.

To be precise, my words were:

I've said before that I had stopped posting here because it's a purely American Affairs Discussion community and, for a non-American, those affairs are only instrumentally interesting due to their effects elsewhere, and they become less interesting as America recedes from the world stage. The silence on the ongoing global events reinforces my impressions both of the US and of this forum. It's a pity because in terms of the culture war, it's very significant.

Do you believe you're following the spirit or at least the letter of the rules by construing this as «everyone here is too dumb and American to be worth talking to»? How's this doing on charity?

You posture as a neutral arbiter, but at the very least you are «returning the sentiment» like the rest of us.

Did you delete your post agreeing with this faggot, by the way?

You are following the pattern of every poster on here that gets a reputation as some sort of big shot, you have become a jackass that believes you're better than everyone else here because of a posting reputation from years back. Amadan is willing to give you leeway because of "a long record of AAQCs" which you feel entitles you to just be an ass and sneer at everyone. It's always amusing to see this process happen and inevitably lead to flameouts and permabans, I enjoy it immensely every single time :)

We don't appreciate the goading either. Knock it off.

I don't give a rat's ass about my reputation on this forum or any other, and this account (as well as its predecessor) is a tiny part of my online presence. For the purpose of the discussion, I'm better than my opponents for the specific reason that I've thought of more important things and thought better before making my top post 1 day ago, and can defend my position candidly, whereas they need to move goalposts, change topics and fall back on fallacies.

I am extremely tired of @Amadan's regular appeals to AAQCs and have equally regularly stated that I do not want any special treatment, indeed I consider these passages a way to undermine my current (obviously correct and fair) arguments, because it invites the assumption of some DEI quality, and this dumb sneering and psychologizing from petty status-conscious anklebiters giddy to see a «big shot» fall below their level. The whole ethos of kid gloves for the «AAQC caste» and high standards for The Rest never sat right with me, same as any other casteism and nepotism, and it's in violation of Good Governance 101:

No well-organized republic ever cancels the demerits of its citizens with their merits, but after having instituted rewards for a good deed and punishments for an evil one, and after rewarding a man for having acted well, if that same individual later acts badly it punishes him without any regard whatsoever for his good deeds. …if a citizen who has rendered some distinguished service to his city also gains the confidence that he will be able to undertake without fear of punishment some bad action, he will become in a brief time so insolent that every element of civic life will disappear.

So if my behavior merits punishment on general grounds, I publicly ask for the rules to be upheld without any unfairness and bias at least in my case. I'm just not going to petition the mods for special treatment in the other direction, in some bizarre act of performative masochism.

P.S. Personally I don't even understand the theory behind special treatment. Presumably the idea is that Quality Posters are exactly divas of the sort you think me to be, narcissists who might feel slighted by having rules applied to them fairly, and would leave, taking their Quality Contributions with them. Inasmuch as that's the case, I believe it's long term preferable to filter such Quality out, because Actually Quality Posters have both confidence and self-control to behave prosocially and accept the law with equanimity.

But I have no ambition of litigating for rule amendment this late into the game.

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I am actually Chinese and China is nowhere as great as you think it is. 99% of what is written about China in English is narrative and lies, and about 85% of Chinese-language content about China is the same. So if you are a foreigner making your opinion on China's tightly controlled PR vs the open media of the West that has its laundry hanged out to dry, and siding with China, you're just as foolish as the pro-Soviet boosters in the NYT who didn't see the Holodomor.

I seem to recall one of our own being unfairly profiled as Israeli agent, but at this point, I have to ask. Are you an agent of the People's Republic of China, or have any relation to a corporation that does extensive business with them? Or are you some variant of Maoist Third Worldist?

Note that there's nothing wrong with being any of those things, but the pretense of being a neutral observer chuffing about American degeneracy is wearing thin. Please explain why you believe the communists in China are more trustworthy partners that the Americans.

Is it really that weird why there's now a certain amount of speculation about whether it would be wise for EU (or Canada) to move at least a bit towards China?

What is prized in global politics is consistency and predictability. China is extremely predictable. The outlines of its foreign policy have been the same at least since the end of Cold War. When Xi took over, nobody seriously entertained the possibility that he'd do something different in this sphere than his predecessors, which he indeed hasn't done. When he relinquishes his position, his successor will do the same. His rhetoric matches what his country does. What China does may be annoying (going bonkers if someone caters to Dalai Lama or Taiwan) or hostile (espionage, support to Russia), but these can be priced in and accounted for.

Trump is inconsistent and unpredictable, both regarding his own previous actions and the policy lines of the previous presidents. While America's foreign policy largely the same, there are now new elements (who could have guessed that the idea of military intervention to seize another NATO member's territory would have even been on the table?) to account for. These wild scenarios probably won't take place, but they might - Trump's rhetoric doesn't match what his country does, expect when it does. What's more, there's a general feeling that Trumpists seriously believe in Trump Year Zero, that Trump is so special and so different that his election means America can just junk all of its previous commitments (made by worse cucked presidents who are not Trump and thus are not as legitimate as he is), which just increases the unpredictability. What will Trump do with, say, Russia? In the end, who knows? He probably doesn't even know himself right now what he will do in the end.

I think that one of the reasons for the TACO narrative is less that it's a burn on Trump (though it plays a part) and more that it's a narrative that attempts to assert at least some normalcy and consistency to this maelstorm. However, a problem is that now that the narrative itself is at play, there's a risk that it bugs Trump enough that he stops chickening out.

What is prized in global politics is consistency and predictability. China is extremely predictable. The outlines of its foreign policy have been the same at least since the end of Cold War.

I am not sure what you mean. I can say that you have two sides: democrats want a globohomo foreign policy, trumpians want America first policy. These two sides changed who is in charge last 20 years. It is relatively predictable.

I do not buy this supposed dichotomy. Putin's foreign policy was supposedly predictable to the extent that Germans leveled their nuclear power, invested into multibillion dollar gas pipeline and schmoozed with him up until 2022 when everything went to shit. Xi Jinping shows similar trajectory as Putin, however he is in charge only since 2013 so Putin has 13 years on him. Xi is much more jingoistic, nationalistic, he revived the old Maoism and he axed many aspects of collective leadership that was in place since late 70s and Deng Xiaoping. Xi triggered massive capital flight and elite exodus including capital flight from many western companies. Foreign investment is the worst since 2008.

I'd argue that some realignment of Cold War era foreign policy is needed. Ascendancy of China and India and concurrent decline of EU on global scale from 30% to to 15% of global GDP is definitely going to rebalance things, especially given also technological and innovation decline. Especially paired with some stupid ambition of EU to regulate world economy - that definitely was not there after Cold War.

I can understand it, but there is a considerable risk from switching from a flawed democracy as a master to an autocratic communist state. If the Europeans or Canada are complaining about human rights and authoritarianism, then taking China as a master is not an improvement.

Might be helpful to articulate your major concerns with our glorious motherland. Autocratic? Yeah sure. Backward and broke? Depending on who you compare us to. Culturally barren? Pretty much but I think it could get better. Constantly sitting in the cuck chair? Couldn't agree more. Communist? Unless you're specific types of deranged people (by that I mean both the 粉红 and the 反贼), it's feels unserious.

You could write a book about it, but let me condense my concerns into three points.

A) Gross materialism and an obsession with wealth. If you think Americans are disgusting in greed and consumerism, they have nothing on the Chinese. You would think that a communist state would have a more egalitarian ethos, but mainlanders judge very sharply on money and class. When you obliterate traditional mores and religion, what you are left with is a class of hustlers who have no shame or dignity.

B) Placing face over truth. Nearly all Eastern cultures have this to some extent, but China will never foster an intellectual or artistic scene that is worth a damn if the powers that be only allow critique for the purpose of internal power struggle. When you embrace lying to preserve the reputation of your superiors, you move away from the Enlightenment and sink into oriental despotism.

C) Destroying the environment. I'm not a green, but poisoning the water table, scouring the oceans clean of life, and pumping unfiltered toxins into the air is not a sign of a rational or scientific government. This casual disregard for their own stewardship extends to the people as well (baby formula being the most significant, but SARS and COVID are there, too.)

All of these things are bad, and will destroy China if allowed to continue unabated, but the party has shown no signs of even recognizing that these are problems.

Agree with A anc C. Doubtful with B because it's a choice between truly believing a horse is a deer (them) or pretending to believe a horse is a deer (us). You're also seeing the outcome of their philosophy and how much damage it does to their own society. Assuming that truthfulness and untruthfulness being 50/50, our societies have roughly equal chance of being right.

All of these things are bad, and will destroy China if allowed to continue unabated, but the party has shown no signs of even recognizing that these are problems.

The biggest fault of our collective mind I guess is to always default to the rulers to solve our societal illnesses. The party absolutely does care about your point A (and point C for the sake of practicality). There is little that they can do about it. They wish they are the all powerful leviathan but they're simply not. Never stopped them from trying though.

Edit: for what it's worth I think you're mainland Chinese. The fact that you called the party "the party" is pretty telling. No need to tell me if my detective work is solid or not.

I wouldn't be so opposed to the Communist party if they demonstrated technocratic chops to govern. But even if you look at the official figures, the birth rate and the demographic pyramid scream mismanagement. I don't know how people can sell Chinese technocrats as wise and farsighted luminaries when it's obvious they have the same short-term incentives that all politicians share. At least the West has the excuse that democracies elect feckless and shortsighted leaders. What's China's excuse for half a billion pensioners in 2100?

And so far, the solution it seems is to pretend it doesn't exist: to become South Korea with nukes with a quarter of the GDP per capita.

All sinic cultures have abysmal birthrates. Female empowerment both economically and standards wise is causal for birth rate fall, not govt policy. Then theres the insane academic environment that makes parents reluctant to have kids. Asian society overweights property and education to a crippling degree, and mass empowerment just means village peasants internalize the incentive structure of their more educated brethren. Maybe if we want to really bring birth rates up we need to let the upper class have multiple wives for dynastic purposes, and the womens clans receive shares of the wealth based on number of offspring, as is traditionally the case. Isnt that basically what happened with the milk tycoon.

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Isn't China actually trying harder with the birthrate crisis than most of its neighbors? I mean in a stupid way that won't work at best and might be counterproductive at worst, sure, but they're discouraging condom use and offering giant subsidies. This stuff probably won't raise the birthrate(for what its worth, free childcare doesn't either) but they are at least trying something.

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It’s farcical to claim that they’re pretending the demographic and pension crisis doesn’t exist. This is literally the central policy push right now. Increasing fertility through nationwide subsidies (there’s a 100B yuan subsidy rolled out by the ministry of finance), plus additional subsidies rolled out by provincial governments (from the dating hellscape Jiangxi of all places). And delaying the retirement age. You can argue these measures won’t work, but pretending the issue is being ignored is simply false.

Also, something I forgot to mention in response to your previous post: one of Xi’s personal pet projects is the whole “green water, turquoise skies” environmental campaign. To the point that this stupid slogan has made its way into fucking Arknights. You can say the policies will fail (maybe), or that they’re lying (I don’t think so, given how many peasants in Hebei are literally freezing in winter due to restrictions on coal). But saying they didn’t even try is just wrong.

You might need to get some news feed from the old country a bit. Overseas Chinese (whether you’re actually Canadian or not, I’m not confident either way) tend to get stuck in some pretty warped social media ecosystems, partly as an overcorrection for censorship back home. I get that people need to vent sometimes but still. Otherwise you end up with Russians challenging your Chineseness, which might be hilarious if you’re indeed one of us, but not entirely baseless either.

And Chinese gdp per capita is already more tha 1/4 of SK. Come on.

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I'm not really even talking about choosing masters, just that the current chaos in DC makes China look at least a bit more appealing than previously.

One of the huge risks involved in China is, of course, that if it decided to fundamentally and decisively to alter its tack (restore doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism and go for global revolution, say), it would be that much more fateful for everyone else. Nevertheless, insofar it is in America's interests to prevent this for happening, it's currently dropping the ball.

Any third country can expect far less demands from China than they would from America.

How quickly they forget. This also has implications for AI*; if we're going to put all our eggs in one basket, then any problems with the basket will be very severe indeed.

"Hello, you buy all your stuff off us and are trying to sell us as much of your stuff as possible. Better keep us sweet!"

*And in 2024, 39% of supply chain executives anticipate their organization’s supply chain will be mostly autonomous by 2030 with automated or exception-based planning and procurement decision-making, dynamic production scheduling against refined demands and constraints and autonomous vehicles such as trucks, forklifts, drones playing a heavy role in logistics and inventory control.

China's recent rare earth policy suggests strongly otherwise.

I am glad you are able to reassure us that it's only external shocks and will never ever be weaponised trade. How very civilised of the Chinese to refrain from exercising power!

Well, if you're European, there's zero chance of being invaded by China, while there's a non zero chance of being invaded by the US.

There's a nonzero chance of being invaded by Russia with participation of Chinese troops.

No. You admit being Canadian, perhaps of Chinese ethnicity. Maybe a Taiwanese or a Hong Konger at that, given how you specify not getting into fights with «Mainland» Chinese here. And I do not know when you've last been to Mainland China and how long you've lived in Canada, but you write like an Indian, with the over-the-top emotive rhetorical flourish and confident pride in your eloquence that I have never seen a Mainland-educated person display in English (then again I could be accused of much the same). You might even believe this alone makes you better than them, you assimilated so well after all, and the Chinese are known for strong internal racism. However, I'll allow that you're probably a first-generation immigrant, seeing as how you attack fellow immigrants and give them this boomerish no-nonsense advice on fitting in. You are also not particularly informed about the conditions of either American or Chinese economy, given that we've seen a spectacular refutation of your June thesis («The American economy is not dependent on imports from China») here with the October MOFCOM Surprise that forced the US into a humiliating climbdown. I'd say >5 years since last stay in China. Right? The idea I'm seeing among people routinely doing business with China, the knowledge of Chinese way of life is completely obsolete within about 5 years.

More generally, I put extremely little faith in «I'm from X and here's the ugly truth» type takes, ironic as that is, given that I'm sometimes providing such opinions on Russia. Many people are dissatisfied in the condition of their nation; those are the Russians saying they're inept orcs and the frontline will crumble in two weeks, the Americans complaining of their intolerable wage slavery to the middle-class Shanghainese on Rednote, and of course the Chinese who've internalized the more charismatic white narrative about their inferiority, or just grew dismayed of the grift and striverism. But many Chinese including my friends in various walks of life and in different countries hold views opposite to yours; and many Chinese outside China are straightforwardly coping, starting with their patron saint Gordon Chang and the COVID refugee cohort that had accepted a permanent QoL hit in emigration and thus sustains itself with news of the coming Chinese collapse. Whereas most Chinese dissidents, in my experience, are straight up mentally ill (excluding eg. Ai Weiwei), and there's no talking to them. I've visited a local Falun Dafa branch, the food was okay, but my takeaway was «wow, if the MSS ran this thing, they'd find little to improve for the purposes of lulling the US into complacency». That's the nervous system of the overseas anti-CCP Chinese and much of the Western conservative media, their newspapers informing Republican policymaking – a hive of loudly insane religious freaks who couldn't cut it in China. It had put some things into perspective for me.

It's also quite condescending to assume that a foreigner, one from a former Communist country at that, is naively engaging with «tightly controlled PR». Your homeland's PR is hilariously tone-deaf and transparent; if the MSS or whatever were employing people like me, they'd get much further, but they treat propaganda as a sinecure for officials' failsons. My opinion is based on primary sources, not on «PR». I can literally see who's doing what, with what dependencies, with what labor, and the Chinese are doing about 50% of the interesting stuff in the world, delivering us the world that's moving forward twice as fast.

Please explain why you believe the communists in China are more trustworthy partners that the Americans.

Mainly because the average quality of Americans and the Chinese doesn't matter so much – institutions that serve as the bottlenecks do. The CCP imposes some standards of competence and prosociality, as opposed to the American beauty pageant, and Xi in particular is like 3 standard deviations above Trump in personal integrity, which has effects downstream. Xi's ministers are humans, Trump's are weird hypebeasts; Xi's policies are motivated by long-term rational self-interests, Trump's by petty cruelty and delusions, therefore the Chinese in aggregate become more predictable and more reliable partners. This is trivially obvious to a neutral observer from going through their biographies and watching their actions, and actions of both countries, for several years.

If I were a Maoist Third Worldist, I would not be saying that China is not really Communist.

Ya know, it's really obnoxious to keep telling people what their ethno-nationalist origins are, and when corrected, double down and tell them "Well technically you may not be American/you may be Chinese but actually --"

Followed by a long-winded diatribe about how they're actually American or not-Chinese according to your abstruse rationalizations.

You've done this several times, which should have led to some degree of embarrassment and self-updating on your part, but instead has led you to dig in, become increasingly argumentative and stubborn, and predictably, led other people to respond to you in undesirable ways (such as the "ball-snipping" comment which, while I agree with the sentiment, isn't really the kind of discourse we want to encourage).

You have already reached KulakRevolt-levels of not-to-be-taken-seriously in your arguments, but that's fine, the Motte has always welcomed the most out-there posters with wild hot takes. It's kind of its purpose! You are not wrong that the community is heavily American in perspective and preoccupations (though it's hard to avoid since, you know, it is mostly Americans here) and getting your, ah, unique perspective is valuable. I say that without irony.

That said, you've also reached the Kulak stage of "I despise all you nerds and your worthless ignorant opinions so I'm going to dump my diatribes on you and get belligerent with people who argue with me."

So congratulations, you've temporarily achieved Main Character status in that most of the reports in the queue are of you or in response to you.

Choose one: you want to participate here and be civil, or you are too disgusted to be engage civilly here and you aren't going to waste time here anymore.

Not that Dase's comment was perfect, but given it was prompted by crushed accusing him of being an "agent of the People's Republic of China" in a post that didn't otherwise have much interesting content, I hope it doesn't lead to a ban

Ya know, it's really obnoxious to keep telling people what their ethno-nationalist origins are, and when corrected, double down

No. This is gaslighting plain and simple, so I won't read the rest of your screed. I'm tired of this nonsense. Ban me at least for a month, better permaban.

On the object level.

We have many Chinese and non-Chinese people here who have relevant fresh experience and diverse takes, eg here. He apparently doesn't have Chinese nationality, and it's not clear he's ever had it; more importantly not clear whether he's been there in any recent past, or indeed even once – I asked and he avoided the issue. That is obnoxious. He's opportunistically claiming to be "Chinese" in this chain to legitimize sweeping dismissive statements on what China is like addressed to a "foreigner", but ordinarily he says he's "Canadian", showing he's a foreigner himself. This is hypocrisy. He shares some psychodrama about [white] Canadian treatment of ethnic Chinese, which is irrelevant to the issue at hand – I have zero interest in his ethnic background or identity, we're talking about knowledge, not HBD and legacy. Han Chinese people do not have any essentialist property that allows them to be more insightful about China than any other "foreigner", that's my assertion. And you're trying to frame me as… well, whatever.

No. This is gaslighting plain and simple, so I won't read the rest of your screed. I'm tired of this nonsense. Ban me at least for a month, better permaban.

If you want a self-ban, request it by modmail, not in this petty fit.

And you're trying to frame me as… well, whatever.

Obnoxious. The word is obnoxious.

You are throwing a public tantrum. If you really want a ban, you can request it, but you will have to make it clear you are in fact formally requesting to be banned, not just by throwing a toddler-fit so you can exit claiming to be the wounded party. Your behavior so far got you a warning to chill out. You can of course also choose to be a more egregious jerk and force us to ban you, but that won't make you feel so self-righteous, now will it?

How would a formal request for a ban not be a toddler-fit in this framing? I am simply saying that I do not intend to change my behavior. You are offered to price it in and act accordingly.

I'm not a wounded party, I am simply correct and you are wrong, particularly in this case.

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As an actual Chinese I can tell you for sure that my Chinese-ness is not dependant on the papers I have or the country I live in, and having an outsider tell me I'm not is hilarious. I'm not a Changstan or a weird cultist, either, but having a foreigner lecture me on my own ethnic homeland is rich. You think you know things but you really don't. Sinophillic russian you may be, you want to believe the best of China to grind an axe against the west. You will be disappointed, in the end.

No, you are a Canadian, you self-identify as one except for the purposes of making this «as a Chinese» take, and it appears we'd both be foreigners in the PRC.

I've given you a vast attack surface, but you're turtling up because you have no comeback. From your post here it's clear you don't have any extra insider knowledge, it's just old memes any white guy with yellow fever could come up with. I

What the fuck are you talking about?

I am Chinese. I have Canadian citizenship, but that makes me no more a Canadian than a dog born in a stable a horse. And my countrymen see me in this way, as well.

You can't trick me out of my ethnic identification or nationality with your wordcel ramblings. If you want to tell me that I'm not a real Chinese because I don't share your Fifty Cent army opinions, you can jump off a cliff.

I am Chinese. I have Canadian citizenship, but that makes me no more a Canadian than a dog born in a stable a horse. And my countrymen see me in this way, as well.

My condolences. Racism is horrible.

On the object level, if you're born "in a stable", if your countrymen are Canadians, if you're a Canadian of Chinese ancestry – I repeat, it's not clear what your claim to knowing anything about China of 2026 is. You are a foreigner for the PRC, as am I.

I read him as saying he is an immigrant to Canada of red Chinese origin. This does, in the Chinese way of seeing things, make him Chinese and not Canadian.

I mean I would count him as Canadian given his demonstrated opinions. But that is not how the Chinese see things.

This does, in the Chinese way of seeing things, make him Chinese and not Canadian.

That’s your imagination. People in China don't view Chinese-Canadians as solely Chinese and not Canadian. They’re both, obviously. Or solely Canadians, for the hardcore nationalists. Their opinions on the Chineseness of the Canadian Chinese also do not matter. They live among Canadians after all.

He's very reluctant to clarify that, so I think he's either second gen or a Hong Konger.

I was pleasantly surprised to read a post from you that was not just more long-winded China-boosting, but you had to go and spoil it there at the end. I used to find your posts much more interesting before you developed this fixation, tbh. Do you live in China? If you do not, I strongly recommend you move there and work there. As your Carney quote points out, it's important to "name reality." The most famous Chinese sage even has a term for this, 正名. You'll love it.

Anyway, to address your main point, I don't see any rebuttal from you about why TiltingGambit is wrong, just more of your typical sneering about how Americans are arrogant and dumb. It almost seems personal. Chinese cultural output has made great strides in the last 15 or so years (when I was in college studying Chinese, China would come out with a martial arts movie that did decently in the US and the world maybe once every few years -- usually by Hong Kong directors) but it is anemic compared to that of the U.S. Now they produce web novels that are read by gray tribe weirdos (I say this with fondness) but nearly zero normal or high status people in the west consume Chinese content. An improvement but hardly a threat to American culture hegemony.

The way I see the Euro/Canadian threats to cozy up to China is that if they are still truly Western countries, they are probably bluffing. What European nation would willingly submit to Ottoman or Mongol hegemony just to spite the Pope? Overtures, sure, symbolic gestures and treaties maybe, but never submission. If the enlightenment "globohomo" religion has mutated and innovated to such a degree that it is no longer recognizably a strain of Christianity (the soil of western civilization) but some new thing that sees both the Western Christian nation state and the Chinese civilization state as equally alien and thus roughly equivalent, then, well, the threats are probably genuine and there is probably no way to stop the break up of what was once called "western civilization."

I'm seeing two types of responses from "our American friends" on Greenland. One is just the ugliest bullying, the joy in humiliating us for no reason, who they equate, in their mind, to the hated blue tribe.

And the other is total complacency; as if ignoring trump's constant threats, insults, and outrageous declarations that one or both allies will not defend the other, was the only option for america's (at this point, nominal) allies, indefinitely. Just pretend it's not happening, quietly absorb any pain that comes your way, and hope that things will go back to the way they were; "Nostalgia as a strategy", as Carney put it. I'm questioning whether war for Greenland or Canada would even wake these people up, or if they'd just act like the Japanese government over manchuria initially: "disregard that, it's just our army, we have nothing to do with that". "Shoot back? C'mon, we're both of christian culture, where's your loyalty to western civ?".

You have to understand the average American's experience of Europeans, aside from visiting them as open-air museums, is

  1. Dogpiling American Red Tribers alongside the Blue Tribe online, especially Reddit
  2. Suing our most successful companies for obscene amounts of money for not complying with a growing mountain of regulations or even, in the case of Musk, simply allowing right-wing opinions to exist on a platform
  3. Being behind those infernal cookie banners that block all website content until you click an acknowledgement. Hard to believe that's been inflicted on us for over a decade now

Red Tribers and even libertarians resent the example Europe provides the Blue Tribe, with the decadent welfare regimes and hate speech laws. Europe further has the audacity to provide the illusion that these are sustainable ways to run nations, which just increases the volume of the voices shouting down sensible domestic policy in the US.

If you're really confused about the Americans here becoming vitriolic about Europe seemingly out of nowhere, it's because these resentments among the right have been present for a long time but the Motte has selected for Europeans who have grown weary of the way things have been run there.

Being behind those infernal cookie banners that block all website content until you click an acknowledgement. Hard to believe that's been inflicted on us for over a decade now

As a privacy advocate and a fervent hater of advertising, I will say that the problem isn't the banners, it's the cookies. The EU showed rare common sense by mandating that...

...if you are going to stalk someone on their private machine doing their private stuff...

...until you know enough about them to manipulate them into making decisions they wouldn't otherwise make...

...so you can sell that information to anyone who wants to manipulate them...

...then you have to at least tell the person you're stalking.

The entire tech industry collectively responded by saying 'but if we bug them until they agree to being stalked, then it's okay, right?'

You can just like, block cookies. In truth no one who doesn't care enough to block them cares enough about being tracked to where the cookie banner is doing any positive work.

But it's not "seemingly out of nowhere"! If you're an European who's been using the Internet for decades then that entire time has meant encountering American conservatives and libertarians shitting on Europe and pouring scorn on it! And it is assuredly just as annoying to see European rightwingers (and, of course, liberals and left-wingers too) adopting and trying to ram through simplified American slop ideologies that they haven't bothered to even try to localize.

And the other is total complacency; as if ignoring trump's constant threats, insults, and outrageous declarations that one or both allies will not defend the other, was the only option for america's (at this point, nominal) allies, indefinitely.

You only have to wait out Trump. The sneering at America from the general direction of Europe isn't going to stop, ever. Yeah, you have to put up with Trump doing his Sam Kinneson act in your general direction for a while. In the overall scheme of things, it really is no big deal.

There's talk, and there's what trump is doing. Those aren't jokes, or some trash-talk at the ballgame. When he says he doubts we will come to america's aid, insult aside, that means america possibly won't come to ours. So our alliance is worthless, and we need to make new arrangements immediately.

If he attacks greenland or canada like he threatens, it's even simpler: we'll just shoot, and people will die - maybe even a real war like russia-ukraine. It's not like Ukraine's weakness stopped ukraine from shooting back, like many thought. Or the fundamental stupidity of the operation stopped Putin from attacking.

When he says he doubts we will come to america's aid, insult aside, that means america possibly won't come to ours.

No, that is not what that means. In fact what he is quoted as saying was

"I know we'll come to [Nato's] rescue, but I just really do question whether or not they'll come to ours," he told reporters.

Which contradicts your interpretation quite explicitly.

If he attacks greenland or canada like he threatens, it's even simpler: we'll just shoot, and people will die - maybe even a real war like russia-ukraine.

Did he threaten? Or did he merely "not rule out" things. These are very different; the US has a long tradition of not ruling out things just because someone asks, and Trump knows that. He actually threatened tariffs.

The man is a raging narcissist, if you take him at his word that "he'll come to our rescue 100%", when he started all this by writing "[he] no longer thinks only of peace" because "we" denied him the nobel peace prize, you are far gone. I am not delegating my security to this child with a gun.

He lies so much that people have to invent new categories beyond "liar" for what he is, like "post-truth communicator", but you expect us to trust him, when he shows us only contempt?

Take him seriously, not literally. Suddenly what he says is to be interpreted literally? I'll tell you what he means seriously : "since we are better than them, we will do as we please."

I am not delegating my security to this child with a gun.

Europe was more than happy to do so for decades, and frankly still is given the pitiful increases in military size and weapons production since Russia invaded Ukraine.

My favorites are when, roughly a decade ago, Germany had less than 10 fully armed and operational fighter jets and ZERO operational submarines.

This seemed so implausible to me that I went and hunted for accurate sources ... and found references for both claims. So... wow.

I'm also not usually a fan of the "child with a gun", but even stopped clocks get to be right twice a day. "I just really do question whether or not they'll come to [our rescue]" seems to be a reasonable concern, if not about intentions (Germany did stick it out in Afghanistan for decades), then at least about recent capabilities vs peer adversaries. They're in an at least an order of magnitude better shape now, and still improving, but is that because they've fixed the root problems or just because they got tired of being repeatedly embarrassed by leaks to the press?

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The man is a raging narcissist, if you take him at his word that "he'll come to our rescue 100%", when he started all this by writing "[he] no longer thinks only of peace" because "we" denied him the nobel peace prize, you are far gone.

You're complaining about what he says, and then when he says the opposite of the bad thing you're complaining about, you're substituting your own headcanon instead. This is not a valid complaint.

Clown nose on, clown nose off, shtick. If he's a clown, I don't want him in charge of our defense. If he's not a clown, he hates us, fuck him.

I'll tell you what he means seriously : "since we are better than them, we will do as we please."

So basically, you hate him because he's telling you the truth.

I am not delegating my security to this child with a gun.

Your local elites are, and honestly, they have to. Imagine giving you a gun- if they started rewarding people who did that, then they'd get political power and try to compete, and why would you want subjects to do that?

But if they let the US do that- if they simply pay them as mercenaries with the odd disruption to your economy and perform/impose American religious rites on the population- your local power brokers can be as corrupt as they like. And the powerful in your nation that don't want to do that will be out-competed by those that do, so it wouldn't matter how virtuous your population at large is anyway.

but you expect us to trust him, when he shows us only contempt?

Indeed.

When he says he doubts we will come to america's aid, insult aside, that means america possibly won't come to ours.

This is reality. Trump is dispensing with some of the polite fictions because they are distorting peoples' perception of actual reality. In reality, there are not many scenarios where Europe can possibly come to America's aid in any substantive way other than moral support, regardless of treaty obligations. That's Europe's choice, and for better or worse it makes them a much less valuable ally.

So I interpreted it correctly. Let's just wind this thing down. I am honestly tired of explaining the value of an alliance with a bloc with a huge economy and population and very similar interests. I can't do it anymore, despite being an Americanophile through and through. We are too far apart on what we think the other brings to the table. Or maybe we hate each other like an old couple.

I want merz and everyone to tell trump to fuck off in no uncertain terms and stop giving him face-saving exits. Full tariffs, leave ramstein, etc. It's headed towards it anyway. They are slowly learning to deal with Trump's trick of defect defect defect until he finds resistance.

Let's just wind this thing down. I am honestly tired of explaining the value of an alliance with a bloc with a huge economy and population and very similar interests.

Why would you suppose we have very similar interests?

despite being an Americanophile through and through.

What sort of American?

I want merz and everyone to tell trump to fuck off in no uncertain terms and stop giving him face-saving exits.

There's a considerable number of Americans who would welcome this, I'd imagine.

I don't want to live in Europe. I don't want to live anywhere like Europe. I don't want where I live to become more like Europe, even marginally. I would prefer actual war against the authorities to this happening. Your entire social consensus is inimical to what I view as fundamental human rights and basic principles of liberty. We are not friends in any meaningful sense; you are allied with my tribal enemies, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Again, Carney says it best:

You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

I perceive integration with Europe one of the major sources of my subordination.

I perceive integration with Europe one of the major sources of my subordination.

No matter which way net subordination actually flows, maybe it's time for a peaceful divorce then.

We are not friends in any meaningful sense; you are allied with my tribal enemies, and will be for the foreseeable future.

You are vastly oversimplifying. There are twice as many people in Europe as in the USA - we are not 750 million clones of Angela Merkel or Schultz.

What makes a friend? Personally, I read much of what you write with interest and appreciation. Whatever you may believe, there is some level of sympathy between many Europeans and Americans like you. It's nosediving lately because so many Red Tribers are grinning and making teabagging gestures as Trump threatens to come over and take our stuff because he feels like it and we can't stop him, but it's there.

Sure, Europe and America are too integrated. That's partly because integration has been pursued vigorously by America over the last 50 years for obvious reasons, but it's likely harmful now. But there are levels of integration between 'you are allied with my enemies and I despise you' and 'Europe? never heard of it'.

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oh generally, if you can like people in general. It's ideological convergence mostly: individualism, freedom (especially speech), plus a certain "moral affinity for the strong". I think american hegemony was largely beneficial.

You: have a pathological hatred of the blue tribe, which you transfer onto europeans. One day, frustrated in your attempts to provoke a civil war at home, you'll charge naked at Greenland or Vancouver. Decoupling from such volatile and extreme polarization makes sense, of course.

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Just pretend it's not happening, quietly absorb any pain that comes your way, and hope that things will go back to the way they were

This is a bigger issue than most non-Americans think it is, though. Or at least their elites. Turns out that when you treat your country as an economic zone people won't go to war, and when you treat your young like that they will hang the old out to dry. It's not 1900 any more.

We already know how much disruption modern citizens will tolerate to their daily lives without picking up a rifle themselves because 2020. The people can care a lot less about who runs their country.

How do you explain how hard ukraine and russia have been going at it?

People in 1900 didn't think it was 1900, either. They thought they "were over" war, too. Then they partook in it with gusto, partly because of that evergreen illusion.

How do you explain how hard ukraine and russia have been going at it?

The one-word (and the 20th century) answer is "nationalism", the one-sentence answer is "because being under the Russian empire is still in living memory and they would prefer the American one, also conscription" on the Ukrainian side and "because the Army is paying quite a bit, also conscription" on the Russian side.

People in 1900 didn't think it was 1900, either. They thought they "were over" war, too.

The world was a lot more multi-polar back then and the subjects living under those empires actually felt common cause with that empire. Hence colony willingness to participate in the Great European Mass Suicide of 1914. No, I think the only war your average first-world citizen would fight (ignoring the US, because they're the only Western country for which the above applies) is civil, let alone its average military-aged male.

Jingoism is still mostly the domain of the old, though.

Any nation can do conscription and pay. Pacifists are always disappointed. People of all ages love war initially, it's cool.

What European nation would willingly submit to Ottoman or Mongol hegemony just to spite the Pope?

Byzantine Egypt before the Arabs, 18th and 19th century Hungarian and Polish leadership and national heroes constantly worked with and fought for the Ottomans...

Many thousands of examples, the Hungarian ones are mostly in Hungarian only though:

Hungarian and Polish leadership and national heroes constantly worked with and fought for the Ottomans..

Most of these examples were from Crimean War. At this time, religious passions and crusading spirit were things of the past and these Polish heroes were fighting on Turkish side together with Western allies. If they were traitors of Christendom, so were Viscount Palmerston and Napoleon the Third.

I don't think the analogy holds. Aren't those examples of people either collaborating with a fargroup or cooperating with a hegemon who already ruled them? The analogy would be the Poles or Hungarians opening the gates of their capitals to allow the Ottomans to install a new government, not a few adventurers or bold dhimmis acting independently in service of a foreign adversary.

Anyway, to address your main point, I don't see any rebuttal from you about why TiltingGambit is wrong, just more of your typical sneering about how Americans are arrogant and dumb.

Just to reiterate, I am definitely not American. But I think it does demonstrate the OP's mindset that he's still suspicious that I am, in fact, lying about my nationality in his response to you.

It's like somebody on twitter voicing complaints about BLM, to then be accused of being a white supremacist, and then posting proof that they're actually black. It really jiggles the narrative in an awkward way.

I do not care what you find interesting or not, nor do I find your attempts at psychologizing insightful. China is roughly half of effective humanity on most important metrics, so it is more rational – even for Americans, or perhaps especially for Americans – to be «obsessed» with them than with petty dramas of American social decay, like a low-IQ enforcer killing a twitchy activist or the other way around, some state-level DEI/anti-DEI regulation imbroglio, a slapfight, a shooting, a bill, a parochial religious disagreement, or any other of our usual topics. Thinking about this from first principles, American prestige is insanely inflated. At this point it's only solidly backed by the hypothetical returns on AGI.

I do not really want to debate the relative Chinese «soft power». They've made some progress; in the end, they're profoundly inferior in messaging to the US and even Japan and will continue to be inferior. I simply think it doesn't matter much, most of the goodwill America gets from other countries is based not on media exports or high-quality propaganda but on actual strategic interests and demonstrable benefits of cooperation. And American media as of now has become repetitive slop with questionable ideological payload, nobody gets inspired to defend Democracy Human Rights by Captain America, it's just (at best) neutral entertaining content, like Labubus or Funko Pops in the physical realm. Holding Funko Pop IP is not really a source of political loyalty, it's a source of Funko Pop revenue. If the ROI on continued cooperation nosedives, you still get reaction like Carney's. So my objection to TiltingGambit is just that: the US won't have «all the allies» specifically on merit of its «charismatic cultural export». It's a cute way of expressing pride in your nation's strengths but it's basically a joke, like a German saying foreigners would die for German beer and autos, or an Italian claiming there are Pasta Nationalists all over the world. (That said, he claims to not even be American, so I guess we can conclude this pride narrative also gets exported).

To have All The Allies, the US will need to continue being the version of itself that's profitable to be allied with – security guarantees, reasonable economic relations. In peacetime, this is realistic and not that expensive. For the profits to outweigh the costs of opposing Chinese industrial machine in the hypothetical WWIII, either the machine needs to be somewhat less impressive than it's shaping up to be, or America will have to be more generous than it's being under Trump. Charisma is overrated, mostly due to motivated reasoning about comparative advantages.

The way I see the Euro/Canadian threats to cozy up to China is that if they are still truly Western countries, they are probably bluffing. What European nation would willingly submit to Ottoman or Mongol hegemony just to spite the Pope? Overtures, sure, symbolic gestures and treaties maybe, but never submission.

See, ironically, this is a pretty non-Western worldview. The whole premise of the Rules-Based International Liberal Order was that you don't have to kowtow to the strong. This is the idea China espouses, too – they constantly drone on about the UN Charter and the equality of nations. It's easy to dismiss as insincere, but how exactly is it insincere? Sure, they can punish a country for crossing their «red line» with a tariff. But weaponization of tariffs is routine now. In contrast, Trump not only tariffs at will, sometimes very pettily, making up red lines on the go, but he demands precisely submission, ritual humiliations, he will even flex it by publicly leaking private conversations where he's asked not to do just this. (Or making up the whole thing to flex before his sadistic fans, which is pathetic in its own way. But he's doubling down.)

At this stage, your argument amounts to a purely racial one. Profitably working with China in a context that gives them leverage is automatically «submission» and so «unacceptable to Western countries». Working with the US is honorable alliance between Free White Peoples, reasonable submission to the primus inter pares, even as the hegemon explicitly frames it as a hierarchy where he's the lion and you're the small dog (thus getting raped). …I guess I don't know, I'm not a Western person, maybe this whole story of the Hajnal Line anti-racism was a lie, and y'all are invested in White Supremacy enough to accept such blatant gaslighting indefinitely. Maybe that's the Soft Power, the Charisma. But I'm getting the impression that this is not the case.

If the enlightenment "globohomo" religion has mutated and innovated to such a degree that it is no longer recognizably a strain of Christianity (the soil of western civilization) but some new thing that sees both the Western Christian nation state and the Chinese civilization state as equally alien and thus roughly equivalent

You've probably missed that I propose another thesis: Americans do not belong to the Western Civilization proper. They self-identify as «Judeo-Christians», they're heavily Latin American, they have unique rites and beliefs, strengths and weaknesses, they treat «the West» as adversarially and extractively as the East, and in fact Trump thinks much better of Xi than of any European leader. It's about as distant from Europe as Islam is. The «globohomo» didn't have to mutate all that far, and this year's WEF demonstrates that Americans have been making up bizarre headcanon bullshit about the «globohomo». It can judge this wholly new civilization as alien, but Christianity would concur.

I simply think it doesn't matter much, most of the goodwill America gets from other countries is based not on media exports or high-quality propaganda but on actual strategic interests and demonstrable benefits of cooperation

It's not exactly media or propaganda, but much of the goodwill depends on both elite and popular moral/ideological alignment - freedom, progress, democracy, rule of law, capitalism, not being evil totalitarians, racism sexism bad, etc. People genuinely believe in the stuff, in a softer but still significant version of the way people used to be religious. And also care about them as symbols for less pure but no less powerful social animal reasons. And I think that effect explains as much of the turnaround we're seeing now as material interests do.

I guess I don't know, I'm not a Western person, maybe this whole story of the Hajnal Line anti-racism was a lie, and y'all are invested in White Supremacy enough to accept such blatant gaslighting indefinitely. Maybe that's the Soft Power, the Charisma. But I'm getting the impression that this is not the case.

Ilforte-Kendi going woke was not on my 2026 bingo card. But then again, Ritchie Hanania leading the anti-Trump vanguard wasn't either. I guess I'm just bad at these things. An anti-forecaster.

Replying to some of your other comments here, why the obsession with Marvel and funko pops? American cultural exports and soft power extend way beyond that, and you know it.

Look at the top grossing movies of 2025. Ne Zha 2 tops the list with an impressive 2.2 billion, of which 50 million was from outside China. Second highest grossing Chinese movie, the battle at lake Changjin made just over 900 million and 890 million of that was domestic sales. Zootopia 2 grossed 1.7 billion with 1.3 billion of that from international markets. 8 of the top 10 grossing films are American.

Next - some significant fraction of Chinese can talk intelligently about the lakers or European football. How many Americans have heard of Lin Dan or Shi Yuqi? What about famous American musicians? Half of Tay-tay's death march was sold out international venues. Globally, do you think more people can describe the gist of the declaration of independence or Xi Jinping thought?

You can sneer at Marvel and other lowbrow entertainment exports, but I would bet the pattern replicates among 'elite' media as well if you could slice the data properly. Canada is so steeped in American culture they have to force Canadian TV/radio stations to play a certain amount of Canadian content.

Seriously, though. You should go back to making fun of teenage girls from San Francisco tweeting 'defund the police.' The crowd loves it. Make a patreon and gofundme, some Thiel acolyte with deep pockets will buy you a Trump Gold Card and you can come home to the motherland. It's gotta be better than inflation-land, unless you're really into dancing tango or something.

Replying to some of your other comments here, why the obsession with Marvel and funko pops?

I think that's representative of the level of American cultural development. Ne Zha 2 is also representative of China (it's high production value slop).

Next - some significant fraction of Chinese can talk intelligently about the lakers or European football. How many Americans have heard of Lin Dan or Shi Yuqi?

Again. What of it? Are you saying that the Canadian pivot is because they've become fans of Lin Dan? My thesis is not that the Chinese soft power is very deep (though in some segments it's growing, and it'll help product sales etc.), it's that the popularity of your national media does not translate into political allegiance. That's not how the causality flows. America did not become the Shining City Upon a Hill and the leader of the strongest military alliance in history by producing popular media slop, it's just one of the many facets of their current eminence. Great Britain's greatest media days were after the British Empire collapsed. Hong Kong out-soft-powered all of China, their content was popular in the Mainland, they still got crushed and now they pitifully complain in the UK to stop the construction of the Mega-Embassy. It's all a very big attention sink, but a very minor factor, at the end of the day.

And indeed, an overwhelming superiority in cultural exports can even undermine you. What good did BLM protests in Chelyabinsk do for the USA? Brainrotten Russian teenagers may hunt for signs of racism at home, but they know where Saint Floyd perished, and won't buy into the more carefully curated myth of Jeans, Bubblegum and Freedom like their parents did. It's actually pretty hard to have both a vibrant and a propagandistically coherent cultural scene. The dividends on having everyone just use your memes, your frameworks, your critiques, live in your world, are… unclear to me. Something something master's tool master's house? Sorry, I'm not that Kendi yet.

What was your point again?

Seriously, though. You should go back to making fun of teenage girls from San Francisco tweeting 'defund the police.' The crowd loves it. Make a patreon and gofundme, some Thiel acolyte with deep pockets will buy you a Trump Gold Card

You have no idea how little this pitiful anklebiting attempt (or whatever it was) stings. I have no need to seek or beg or whore myself out, and I could come to the US any time I wanted, welcomed and accommodated, within the last 2 years.

Pleasuring the North American crowd is beneath me. I only talk of what I find interesting. Sometimes I get carried away.

What was your point again?

  1. You're underestimating both the value and breadth of American cultural power.
  2. The rest was meant to be a joke, not a snipe. I thought you'd find it funny, but I apologize if you were offended.

the popularity of your national media does not translate into political allegiance. That's not how the causality flows. America did not become the Shining City Upon a Hill and the leader of the strongest military alliance in history by producing popular media slop, it's just one of the many facets of their current eminence.

Then how did we get there? Military power alone isn't sufficient; we never conquered Europe. US GDP wasn't orders of magnitude greater that Europe's in the late 20th century. America became the Shining City Upon a Hill by producing film, TV, literature etc proclaiming itself to be so. No, cultural output isn't a geopolitical 'I WIN' button, but it's a piece of the puzzle.

Great Britain's greatest media days were after the British Empire collapsed.

I imagine it was a bit harder to spread propaganda in the age of sail, but who knows? Maybe you're right. I admit I'm ignorant as to what soft power the empire could wield in her day.

Hong Kong out-soft-powered all of China, their content was popular in the Mainland, they still got crushed and now they pitifully complain in the UK to stop the construction of the Mega-Embassy.

Yes, if we were playing a game of risk and you offered me a choice of a 7.5 million person city state that makes kung fu movies versus a 1.3 billion person police state I'd also choose the police state. Life isn't a Foundation novel.

But America is not HK, and...well...I guess China actually is China, but my point stands. I'd take America's soft power stat over China's any day.

Brainrotten Russian teenagers may hunt for signs of racism at home, but they know where Saint Floyd perished, and won't buy into the more carefully curated myth of Jeans, Bubblegum and Freedom like their parents did.

Because if there's one great and terrible thing about the USA, it's that it's optimized for giving you what you want. You can have a big house in the suburbs with your own yard, you can have a giant car, you can do drugs, you can play video games for 16 hours a day, you can hire a tutor for your kid, you can get rich playing arcane financial games or spend your life moving bits around instead of manufacturing hard goods. Broadcasting that to the world makes people want to come here. People who explicitly do not want anyone else to come here are tarnishing that image because it furthers their goals.

You have no idea how little this pitiful anklebiting attempt (or whatever it was) stings. I have no need to seek or beg or whore myself out, and I could come to the US any time I wanted, welcomed and accommodated, within the last 2 years.

I resent the accusation of podophilia. Feet are gross.

Regardless, it was just a joke that I thought you would find funny. You had a line 6 or 7 years ago about the tweet about BLM by some San Francisco teen thundering? trumpeting? across the Atlantic or something along those lines. I thought you'd also find it funny how quickly the child prodigy becomes the prodigal child (less the repentance) when a fickle crowd stops liking what you have to say.

As for the rest, why Argentina man? Aside from the aforementioned tango, what is there? A woman? Your other line that stuck with me was 'women demand, men provide.' Provide her the white picket fence and large backyard.

Look at the top grossing movies of 2025. Ne Zha 2 tops the list with an impressive 2.2 billion, of which 50 million was from outside China.

Not sure what you're trying to imply here. 50 million outside of China is quite impressive. Not as impressive as the Japanese or the Koreans, of course, but still. Even if that 50 million consist of 20 million overseas Chinese primarily in SEA, still.

Next - some significant fraction of Chinese can talk intelligently about the lakers or European football. How many Americans have heard of Lin Dan or Shi Yuqi? What about famous American musicians? Half of Tay-tay's death march was sold out international venues. Globally, do you think more people can describe the gist of the declaration of independence or Xi Jinping thought?

The fact that you have heard of Lin Dan and Shi Yuqi (I have no idea who this is) is a win. I'm celebrating every win whenever I can. It's getting better, that's all I know.

And, I know Americans here care less about "jungle Asians" than us even, but they do like our cultural exports. It might be true that any good upright western nation do not like us or consume our cultural exports. But I consider dominating the SEA novel/drama/whatever slop that's getting created in the millions by uninspiring Chinese youth a major win. Not a historical anomaly either.

Not sure what you're trying to imply here. 50 million outside of China is quite impressive. Not as impressive as the Japanese or the Koreans, of course, but still. Even if that 50 million consist of 20 million overseas Chinese primarily in SEA, still.

Whichever way you slice it, it just had minimal impact outside of China. 50 million USD for Ne Zha 2 versus 1.3 billion for Zootopia 2. Add up the international earnings for all the American offerings and it's more than 2 OOMs higher. Expressed as a fraction of earnings, 50 million of 2.2 billion is 2% of earnings, whereas the majority of the American films profit was overseas.

The fact that you have heard of Lin Dan and Shi Yuqi (I have no idea who this is) is a win. I'm celebrating every win whenever I can. It's getting better, that's all I know.

Yes, it is. I'm not out to trash Chinese culture or people, but I want to push back against American cultural exports being 'capeshit and funko pops.'

I played and watched a lot of badminton in the era when Lin Dan was a beast. Apparently Shi Yuqi is world #1 since Viktor Axelsen is aging out, but I've never watched him play. Growing up, most of my closest friends just happened to be Chinese.

Whichever way you slice it, it just had minimal impact outside of China. 50 million USD for Ne Zha 2 versus 1.3 billion for Zootopia 2. Add up the international earnings for all the American offerings and it's more than 2 OOMs higher. Expressed as a fraction of earnings, 50 million of 2.2 billion is 2% of earnings, whereas the majority of the American films profit was overseas.

Yes sure comparing ourselves to American it’s not that impressive. But consider this: I grew up in a time where your average Chinese laughs at you if you compare us to the Americans. What you listed here sounds pathetic to your people maybe, but sounds impressive enough to me.

But looks like we do have an agreement here that it’s getting better.

I played and watched a lot of badminton in the era when Lin Dan was a beast. Apparently Shi Yuqi is world #1 since Viktor Axelsen is aging out, but I've never watched him play. Growing up, most of my closest friends just happened to be Chinese.

Sounds like you’ve had a very Chinese social circle and probably still do, given you play badminton. My wife tried to get me into it, but I just can’t handle the smell of the courts around me, that disgusting mix of rubber and BO. Hope you don’t have to suffer that.

8 of the top 10 grossing films are American.

It interests me that Japanese and Korean cultural exports are very popular globally while Bollywood seems not to have quite made it. I would be interested in any theories why.

Possibly American occupation of a relatively small country led to more cultural meeting and greater feelings of familiarity. (India occupied by UK yes but India is much bigger and maybe less cultural impact long term especially after decolonisation.) But China buys American/Japanese stuff too.

Bollywood has a western fan club- the same people who really like fifties blockbuster productions. In other words, the feature length singing and dancing is just genuinely a lot less popular than Japanese exports or mass produced slop music and soap operas.

So my objection to TiltingGambit is just that: the US won't have «all the allies» specifically on merit of its «charismatic cultural export». It's a cute way of expressing pride in your nation's strengths.

It's an indictment on Chinese culture that we can have an international community that is absolutely aghast at the US diplomatic and cultural engagement right now. But exactly zero rich, first world nations, are seriously discussing swapping alliances to China.

We have countries that are dominated by left wing groups that would rather cut off the left pinky of their first born child than build a tank instead of a solar panel. But instead of broaching the Chinese alliance conversation, they're pumping billions into their own military industrial complex.

The USA is literally in the process of threatening war with EU members and destroying NATO. This is a geopolitical conflict, ostensibly to keep China out of the sphere of influence. You cannot argue that the prevalence of alliances with the USA are all just geopolitical and divorced from cultural influence or politics when the US is positioning itself as a geopolitical threat. Chain smoking Danish politicians are sitting in the war room as I type this, very definitely not considering a formal alliance with China.

When I say nobody likes China, I'm not saying people like the USA. I'm horrified by Trump, I'm horrified by US liberals, I'm horrified by the cultural exports of the US that divide society. In an alternate timeline where Europe had not chosen managed decline, I could see the EU as a viable alternative for leadership in the international community.

But in the current timeline, we have a belligerent USA that is still the preferable ally when one looks at China. If you're unwilling to entertain why people aren't voting with their feet in a very straight forward geopolitical conversation, I don't consider you a person who is seriously interested in the questions you're asking.

(That said, he claims to not even be American, so I guess we can conclude this pride narrative also gets exported)

The US pride narrative? Mate, I'm on record calling the American geopolitical strategy "retarded".

And their geopolitical engagement is still somehow more alluring than whatever Beijing is trying to do. If WWIII happens, the worst possible outcome, in any rational person's mind, is China winning. The boomers in Brussels know this. The China experts in Australia know this. The Indians, the Iranians, the Turks know this. If a ship gets sunk in the SCS tomorrow, the free world holds their nose and rallies under the freedom eagle in 5 minutes flat. Are you disputing that, or is your complaint that they should get to know China and swap sides?

It's an indictment on Chinese culture that we can have an international community that is absolutely aghast at the US diplomatic and cultural engagement right now. But exactly zero rich, first world nations, are seriously discussing swapping alliances to China.

Have you considered that the major cultural «defect» here is simply that China is not offering alliances to anyone? That they have strictly one ally, and that ally is Pakistan, which they use solely to keep India distracted? That they believe, and perhaps reasonably, that they do not need any allies or supplicants to achieve what they want? They don't even try to arm Iran. They are watching Russia and Ukraine bleed, and calmly sell weapons to both sides, and lobby for more EVs in the EU. They did not bother to loudly condemn American aggression towards Greenland, just reiterated the commitment to the UN Charter and asked to not be used as a pretext. They don't care.

NATO was not formed at the behest of smaller nations; it was a deliberate American project of expanding the US-UK alliance network in the face of the very credible and loudly proclaimed Soviet expansionism. You are talking as if China is proposing a counter-NATO security bloc a la the Warsaw Pact, and is being rejected because Wukong is an inadequate counter to Spiderman. Tell me, had the Soviets wooed the world with their high culture? Was it Rachmaninoff or Tarkovski that kept Czhechoslovakia tethered, or perhaps the Strugatsky brothers? No, it was a crude ideology and the threat of violence. During Mao's era, Chinese culture was incomparably more ghoulish and impoverished than it is now, and yet they had a far greater global reach. Maoism still finds some purchase among American intellectuals – with no input from Beijing.

What you confirm to me is that for a Westerner it's largely pointless to study China. All that expertise, just to play a glass bead game with your starting priors.

Not sure if you've studied this, but the official Chinese position on the matter of great power politics is:

Deng noted in this speech that China should state clearly to the world that "China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one. If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it." These words were endorsed by Chairman Mao Zedong and put into the speech in their entirety.

[…] On December 1, 2017, at the opening ceremony of the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-level Meeting, President Xi Jinping reiterated China's commitment of never seeking hegemony or expansion no matter what stage of development it reaches. China will neither "import" models from other countries nor "export" the Chinese model or ask other countries to copy the Chinese practice.

This is a pledge China made to the international community and the code of conduct for international relations that it has always followed. Despite changes in the international landscape, China's commitment to "never seek hegemony" has never changed, and its original aspiration to "uphold peace" has never wavered. China has honored its words, as a major country is expected to do. China has not and will never betray the solemn commitment it made to the world at the United Nations.

Obviously the lofty rhetoric about never bullying smaller states may sound very quaint now. But the philosophy, I think, is straightforwardly upheld. They do not intend to act as a superpower no matter how strong they get. They consider it a distraction.

If a ship gets sunk in the SCS tomorrow, the free world holds their nose and rallies under the freedom eagle in 5 minutes flat. Are you disputing that

Yes, I am. I think the «free world» makes concerned noises, cancels some trade deals, and politely offers Trump to sort it out or whatever. The French are not going to lose their entire fleet (which they may need to defend from American aggression, as they have known for a while) in the South China Sea. Had the «free world» truly cared about preventing Chynese domination, it wouldn't have traded the recognition of Taiwanese sovereignty for the privilege of investing into the Mainland economy.

In any case, when those 49K Chinese EVs arrive to Canada, we'll see what soft power with Chinese characteristics looks like in a rich first world nation.

That they believe, and perhaps reasonably, that they do not need any allies or supplicants to achieve what they want?

Okay, and that's what Trump is doing because he believes (rightly or wrongly) America doesn't need allies and supplicants, and you're bitching about that? It's okay when Our Guy does it but not when Their Guy does it?

You should be worried about Chinese isolationism because they rolled over Mongolia and Tibet and if ever they really feel like it they'll roll over India as well like a Katarmari ball, because fundamentally China thinks everyone else is shit, and that includes so-called Asian compatriots. They hate the Japanese, what do you imagine they think of India?

I fucking believe Xi on "China will never ever" the day I see him handing back national sovereignty to Tibet. The only reason "China is not behaving like a superpower" is that they consider these territories as already belonging to them. Can't be a superpower if you're just taking back your own property.

Okay, and that's what Trump is doing because he believes (rightly or wrongly) America doesn't need allies and supplicants, and you're bitching about that?

What is this, just face-saving? The conceptual difference is that the US already has an alliance network, so it makes no sense to just dismantle it, even at cost. But, like, I'm not really "bitching", I'm okay with it, go on. I'm not sure what's better for me in the end, because one important variable is how the desperation dynamics affects the severity of American chimpouts, and I don't have a model for it.

The practical difference is that without allies, within 3-5 years you cease being anything remotely like a peer power to China. It's just unserious to talk about. It's not only a matter of industrial scale, brainpower and state capacity (China outclassing the US in each), it's that they are a near-autarky, and half of your advanced economy including the MIC is dependent on allied supply chains (a fact obscured by relative share of trade in GDP, but a true one). Obviously this means that even Trump's USA is unlikely to torpedo the current system, but it's worth keeping in mind the alternative.

They hate the Japanese, what do you imagine they think of India?

They think vastly better of India, Russia, America and cockroaches than of the Japanese. You have no clue what you're talking about if that's your argument.

is that they consider these territories as already belonging to them. Can't be a superpower if you're just taking back your own property.

And indeed Tibet is internationally recognized Chinese clay. The territorial claims of the PRC are consistent since before the formation of the PRC and only were scaled down over time. CIA-supported governments in exile do not inherently override governments of nation states. "Free Tibet" is some vintage psyop, I'm sort of confused to still see it. Maybe we'll feel this way about Gaza in a few decades.

I can see you will enjoy your future as Philby in Moscow, Chinese version.

Have you considered that the major cultural «defect» here is simply that China is not offering alliances to anyone? That they have strictly one ally, and that ally is Pakistan, which they use solely to keep India distracted? That they believe, and perhaps reasonably, that they do not need any allies or supplicants to achieve what they want? They don't even try to arm Iran. They are watching Russia and Ukraine bleed, and calmly sell weapons to both sides, and lobby for more EVs in the EU. They did not bother to loudly condemn American aggression towards Greenland, just reiterated the commitment to the UN Charter and asked to not be used as a pretext. They don't care.

What's next? She didn't break up with me, I broke up with her?

China has been desperately chasing allies for decades. When the Sino-Soviet split happened, China was left in the Cold. Since then they've been wildly pursuing allies like a realestate agent at a local barbecue. Either Blunderous demands of allegiance or paying off weak nations with checkbook diplomacy that lasts about as long as the infrastructure project takes.

It just doesn't work. China tried to bully a third world Pacific nation by screaming at a foreign affairs minister in his own office:

The latest tensions — part of a heated trade war — boiled over Saturday when four Chinese officials barged into the office of the foreign minister of Papua New Guinea, Rimbink Pato, according to a diplomat in the region and a U.S. official involved in the drafting of the communiqué.

Security officials were summoned, and the Chinese left voluntarily

Fast forward and:

Australia and Papua New Guinea sign Mutual Defence Treaty

As the first step, eligible permanent residents living in Australia who are also PNG citizens will be able to apply to join the ADF from 1 January 2026 – with a view to welcoming the first applicants next year. Ministers agreed to continue supporting the growth and development of the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) as an independent sovereign military. Australia and PNG will upgrade vital facilities at the Goldie River Training Depot outside Port Moresby.

China literally cannot work out how to make friends. They sign projects worth billions of dollars with desperate pacific nations who pocket the money and then swap back to the US as soon as a new Blackhawk variant is released. When China tries to bully instead, countries just form new defensive blocks against them.

Portraying a total inability to do diplomacy on any level as a conscious choice by the CCP is absolute cope. They are desperate for allies, they want allies, they're paying big money for allies, and they cannot get them.

Not sure if you've studied this, but the official Chinese position on the matter of great power politics is...

Obviously the lofty rhetoric about never bullying smaller states may sound very quaint now. But the philosophy, I think, is straightforwardly upheld. They do not intend to act as a superpower no matter how strong they get. They consider it a distraction.

If you are posting CCP propaganda with a straight face, I don't think I have anything else to say. It goes without saying that CCP members saying "We come in peace" can be regarded with some skepticism. I have never met a China analyst, either Western or Chinese raised, who doesn't quote the CCP position and then instantly translate it into what it actually means: usually domestic virtue signaling. Sometimes a balancing act against perceived criticism. Never the words that were said.

Yes, I am. I think the «free world» makes concerned noises, cancels some trade deals, and politely offers Trump to sort it out or whatever. The French are not going to lose their entire fleet (which they may need to defend from American aggression, as they have known for a while) in the South China Sea.

Yeah so let me reiterate: even in your most motivated, pro-China reasoning, you cannot envision a world that doesn't immediately freeze trade with China and pray to god that Trump fixes it. We both conclude that chortling Frenchmen would rather the despicable Trump sends a hundred thousand marines to machine gun down the CCP headquarters than live in a world with a victorious China.

So... what's your actual criticism of my previous post? You made a whole new post to attack my previous one, but when it comes down to it, you agree I'm right. What's going on here? Because right now I would suggest that your post is exactly the type of bizarre and inconsistent messaging from Chinese media/political/cultural exports that the rest of the world finds so uncharismatic and unconvincing.

I think it's distinctly un-scary. I know I have a lot in common with a pair of guys in Milwaukee. Because I listen to them sit around and review movies inbetween jokes about alcoholism.

Full-scale cultural compatibility, e.g. New Zealand and Australia, is one of the most powerful forces of peace going.

I know nothing of the Mike and Jay of China because the CCP won't let me.

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Notably, none of this has any relation to «cultural exports» which you started with in your argument about WWIII alliances, so I assume you've quietly conceded the point.

Still, I think this is cope and embarrassing narrative peddling.

They have terrible diplomacy, sure. Just like they have terrible propaganda. But you're desperately trying to shoehorn trade deals into the form of alliance building. I believe they genuinely expected that dysfunctional African or Oceanian states can be a good investment and grow even at a fraction of their speed. You're imagining that all those BRI projects are some very long, awkward, failed foreplay to a military alliance. I'd need to see actual Chinese proposals to this effect to believe it. Papua New Guinea signs defense treaty with Australia. Is this really a big deal? China has a profitable bilateral relationship with Australia as such.

Wolf warrior diplomacy is commonly understood to have been an appeal to domestic audience in the age of social media, like bizarre American behaviors are.

It goes without saying that CCP members saying "We come in peace" can be regarded with some skepticism.

And yet your only scenario for the war is «South China Sea». They are openly saying they intend to take Taiwan, «easy way or the hard way», in Trumpspeak. This is what that navy is primarily for, as well as other assets in the theater – overmatch against any conceivable allied fleet. Is it common among «analysts» to interpret it as the first step to world domination?

Your analysts must be trying too hard. People usually mean what they say.

I guess your kind of jaded analysts who don't believe propaganda, all these think tank morons with Chinese characters in Twitter handles, who have lived in China long enough to infer menacing signals from how many cups are before Xi, also analyzed Chinese Miscalculation last October, when they Showed Their Hand and Revealed Being A Bad Actor Before the World, Inviting American Retaliation. Do you remember that phase? I do, the entire Analyst Community, people like Greer, Doshi, they were unanimous that China just can't into diplomacy and blundered to save face again, or it was a rogue MOFCOM or MSS agent, or that the Analysts (and Bessent) need to publicly insist on this to give Xi «face» when he rolls export controls back, etc. etc, all this condescending and ignorant garbage from a position of control. How has that worked out? The US was the one miscalculating, Xi never had to save face, Trump fumed a bit and went to Busan to ask for a ceasefire, and that was that. And then Korea signed on to the currency swap with China. In general, for all that they're failing in diplomacy, the decoupling from them is going very poorly indeed.

Yeah so let me reiterate: even in your most motivated, pro-China reasoning, you cannot envision a world that doesn't immediately freeze trade with China and pray to god that Trump fixes it. We both conclude

No, I do not permit you to «reiterate». No, we do not both conclude. I didn't say that, your rephrasing is a retarded American fantasy. Why do you need to do this? Just directly mock what I actually say, if you would be so kind.

I meant more like «Macron freezes those optically significant FDI projects he's been begging China for in Davos». Not even trade with Russia is totally frozen. You're delusional if you believe Europe reacts stronger to Taiwan because «China cannot into diplomacy» and ultimately «China bad media exports». All those lurid images are completely detached from the scenario I mentioned.

So... what's your actual criticism of my previous post? You made a whole new post to attack my previous one, but when it comes down to it, you agree I'm right. What's going on here?

I suppose what is going on here is that, at least for the purposes of this debate, you're incapable of communicating in plain language, and it's obnoxious of you to pretend to, so I won't cooperate.

Yeah sorry mate, this is too tiresome for me. Nothing you've said changes that in practice, on the ground, Chinese cultural exports, political engagement and geopolitics don't work. I use the phrase "uncharismatic" but sub in "ineffective" or whatever you need. China has no allies, nobody likes what they produce, and nobody likes what they say. China got rich building things that were invented by westerners. Not by producing novel goods that everybody loves. Yes yes, you can say "that doesn’t prove anything" all you want. But it does.

Your whole assessment of my statement was that I must be a dumb American with no sense of China. You were wrong on both points.

I have no secret agenda of pro-American sentiment. My last post was attacking a guy who said the US policy re: Greenland made sense.

Your analysts must be trying too hard. People usually mean what they say.

You need to do better than this to be taken seriously while talking about the CCP. Obvioisly stated intentions matter. Obviously stated intentions aren't the full story when said by a notoriously propaganda driven political party.

No, we do not both conclude. I didn't say that, your rephrasing is a retarded American fantasy. Why do you need to do this? Just directly mock what I actually say, if you would be so kind.

You can hardly accuse me of being unfair after making a whole post which concludes that I am "projecting" as a "true American" who knows nothing and doesn't want to know anything about China. You agreed the world would cut ties with China and back the USA. Don't get pissy about me mixing in a joke.

you're incapable of communicating in plain language, and it's obnoxious of you to pretend to, so I won't cooperate.

I can only roll my eyes so much.

You made a post and used me as an example to prove your point. You got embarrassed because your foundational premise was wrong. Next time, just say "lol my bad. I still think Americans exhibit this behaviour" and I wouldn't even have engaged. But you're tripling down into CCP fantasy land where no failed project is actually a failure, no diplomatic incident means anything, and no allies was actually the plan all along!

That'll be all from me. I'm fine for some interesting China shilling, which can be genuinely good to read. China is an interesting place that we don't talk about enough. But no, Chinese culture is brittle, and the CCP knows this. Hence the top down protectionism.

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Nothing you've said changes that in practice, on the ground, Chinese cultural exports, political engagement and geopolitics don't work. I use the phrase "uncharismatic" but sub in "ineffective" or whatever you need. China has no allies, nobody likes what they produce, and nobody likes what they say. China got rich building things that were invented by westerners. Not by producing novel goods that everybody loves.

This is just kanging that gets produced in a terminally ill society that's running out of a things to boast of and so points to legacy and accumulated prestige. Nobody cares anymore for what the ingenious whites claim to have invented, sorry to say, that's a very boomer-coded thing in a very non-white and industrial world. This is the kind of thing that «everybody loves» in 2026.

Concretely, China gets from the EU, for starters:

  • 300 billion euro a year in pure trade surplus
  • technologies like Nexperia (the Dutch tried to take it back on, apparently, American orders, found out they have no leverage, folded, then there were very interesting hearings on Karremans), KUKA and Idra
  • engineers educated in top Western schools and companies, like Lin Nan, to accelerate their research.
  • growing FDI, one German plant closes in Germany – one opens in the Inner Mongolia
  • non-recognition of Taiwanese sovereignty, absence of any coordination to act against them if they mode
  • some amount of intelligence gathering
  • Macron and others shilling for JVs and more cooperation, up to breaking the semiconductor blockade, which means betraying an existential interest of their very scary and important suzerain.
  • Unwillingness/inability of Europe to do anything against them, even as they supply advanced military technology like laser point defense systems to Russia, for testing and geopolitical hijinks.

What China does not get: military bases in Europe, even though the US (still has bases in Europe) has been rude lately while they're nice and only formally Communists, anything about "alliance".

I think they're fine with this trade.

You agreed the world would cut ties with China and back the USA.

I guess I need to make it clearer for you. I said that the world will do nothing substantial, nothing beyond symbolic handwringing, unless China actually loses the war. It'll be treated by Europe (nevermind Russia, Africa, India, LatAm, Middle East…) about as seriously as the Israeli war/genocide, or less than that: condemnations + weapons contracts.

Mind you, it's if there is any war, which there likely won't be as the US will retreat and Taiwan just fold.

You got embarrassed because your foundational premise was wrong. Next time, just say "lol my bad. I still think Americans exhibit this behaviour"

It's not my foundational premise that you're an American. My "foundational premise" is that your beliefs are representative of Americans and I think they're wrong.

and I wouldn't even have engaged

I didn't mind you engaging initially, I thought you might go beyond "uncreative bugmen low EQ" cope mixed with geopolitical concern trolling.

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Americans do not belong to the Western Civilization proper.

America is a lot like Russia. It sees itself as the defender of Europe and the bulwark of European values. Meanwhile actual Europeans see them as a bunch of borderline-savages, and as much of a threat as the are a protector.

or America will have to be more generous than it's being under Trump

Part of why America is being so miserly today though is that it genuinely doesn’t have much to give. It’s heavy industry is gone, and other countries have caught up enough on its technological edge that it can’t cruise by on fancy widgets. And the people are too pissed off and distrustful of their government and economy to eat the half a million deaths that a major war requires.

Old Scranton Joe was more generous with the aid to Ukraine than the Don, but he was being a lot more miserly than Europe and the American deep state wanted. He was a bit out to lunch, but his one real red-line policy position that he was cogent of and involved in was no American ground troops in Ukraine. And the delusional deep state flacks (who mostly happen to be Butthurt Belt exiles) hated him for it. That’s why they turfed him out in favor of Kamala, an out-of-her depth human hamburger that would do whatever the CIA told her to.

Old Scranton Joe was more generous with the aid to Ukraine than the Don, but he was being a lot more miserly than Europe and the American deep state wanted. He was a bit out to lunch, but his one real red-line policy position that he was cogent of and involved about was no American ground troops in Ukraine.

The Biden administration's limits went a lot further than that - as a matter of vibes it was "nothing that could be considered as a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia because of the risk of nuclear armageddon" and more specifically it included

  • No US troops in Ukraine
  • No NATO troops in Ukraine without plausible deniability
  • No NATO flights over Ukraine and no missiles launched into Ukraine from NATO countries
  • No direct deliveries of US-made warplanes to Ukraine
  • No use of NATO-provided materiel for strikes inside the internationally recognised borders of Russia (it was the Biden administration who blocked the use of British-made Storm Shadow to strike Russia, not the British).
  • Target-by-target approval of strikes in Crimea with NATO-provided materiel

The restrictions on Ukraine using British kit to attack into Crimea or Russia proper were relaxed by the lame-duck Biden administration, and never reimposed by Trump.

America is a lot like Russia. It sees itself as the defender of Europe and the bulwark of European values.

Well Russia is also clearly divergent from the «Western Civilization» the central example of which is obviously Western Europe, eg France. In the most divergent dimensions, Russians are just living the way Europeans did 200 years ago, and that's enough to be seen as basically a species of non-human vermin and infinitely more distant than the Japanese or Koreans. People are massively sensitive to morally coded deviations, but big structural differences don't necessarily register. Dealing with an «alien civilization», so long as it's at all functional, is not psychologically harder than dealing with a «wayward cousin».

Russians are just living the way Europeans did 200 years ago, and that's enough to be seen as basically a species of non-human vermin

But I don't think so. Like, 200 years ago was 1820s. That's the time just after French revolution and Napoleonic wars. Britain in the meantime held regular parliamentary elections (though not with universal vote yet). I don't think anybody would look on European culture of late pre-Victorian era and regard it as "species of non-human vermin". Yes, there would be some things there that we may consider outdated, but "infinitely distant"? Russia, however, never embraced the values that Europeans held at that time - like the concept of personal authonomy, limited participatory government, pursuit of rational knowledge for the betterment of humanity, etc. Not that these values by itself don't have problems, and surely European implementation of them had plenty of flaws, but the point is it was something they valued, and Russia didn't value it then and doesn't now.

I don't think anybody would look on European culture of late pre-Victorian era and regard it as "species of non-human vermin"

Yet I think Brits looked at Kaiser's Germany and saw exactly that, even a century later. Was Germany not European? Of course, the entire «Evropa» concept is retconned, Europeans didn't think of themselves as a unified culture. They could talk a good game about shared White superiority compared to other races, but they easily dehumanized each other too. Russia was at the margins of Europe, but it's a matter of timing and degree, not kind. Prussia was another outlier. When did their absolute monarchy end, 1848?

Russia, however, never embraced the values that Europeans held at that time - like the concept of personal authonomy, limited participatory government, pursuit of rational knowledge for the betterment of humanity, etc.

Chutzpah. Soviets bought the rational knowledge stuff hook line and sinker, 80s-90s were a time of genuine enthusiasm about democracy human rights, and even today Putin pretends to be an elected representative with all the dressings of a parliamentary system. You know this, of course.

but they easily dehumanized each other too

Yes, but this is war propaganda. You can not judge war propaganda on the same footing as genuine cultural standards. In the absence of war, nobody in Britain though Goethe, Schiller, Wagner, Bach, Beethoven, Strauss, (insert 9000 names here) were brute apelike savages. Nobody thought Euler, Gauss, Cantor, Bayer, Daimler, Zeiss, (insert another 9000 names here) were illiterate idiots. Yes, English, French, Germans (when they finally appeared, and every flavor of them before) and so on squabbled constantly and dissed on each other constantly. But there's no doubt they were closer culturally to each other - and they knew it - then, say, to Japanese, or Chinese, or Russians, or Mongolians, or Zimbabweans. Yes, that did not prevent them from killing each other, nothing ever does. But they never genuinely considered each other's cultures subhuman vermin.

Soviets bought the rational knowledge stuff hook line and sinker

It is true, the communists were modernist rationalists. But they also were internationalists - which meant, they wanted nothing to do with the old Russia (they tried to do away with everything traditional, including alphabet, calendar, holidays, names, etc. - with varied degrees of success, modernism has its limits, as they soon learned). And as soon as communists were overthrown - actually, as soon as their revolutionary fervor weakened - modernist rationalism went away. All kinds of esoteric new-age mysticism became popular already in 1970s, and in late 1980s-90s had absolutely bizarre things going on (read about Alan Chumak and Anatoly Kashpirovsky, for example). So, as Russia were returning to its traditional national values (Orthodox Christianity started its resurgence about the same time) rationalism's popularity faded.

even today Putin pretends to be an elected representative

I'm sure Chinese and North Koreans pretend even harder, but nobody - including themselves - believes in this pretense. And, what is very important, nobody cares, especially in Russia - Russians are completely fine with fake elections, because they don't really value free elections - they are completely ok with fake-electing the same Tzar for life, if he doesn't treat them too badly (in this case, they'd kill him and put on a new Tzar for life). Everybody in Russia knows elections are fake and the parliament is a dressing for what Putin wants, with less power than medieval nobles' assemblies under absolute monarchs. They are absolutely fine with it.

All this is special pleading.

Yes, but this is war propaganda

Is the current perception of Russians not war propaganda? In times of peace, or even during the Cold War, our high culture was considered continuous with the European one in a manner that high Japanese or Zimbabwean culture obviously wasn't, and the Russian thinking class was deeply integrated into the European network, worked and studied in Europe. I don't feel the need to namedrop. Now, of course, irate Ukrainians get a platform to claim that Pushkin was a mediocre imperialist savage or demand reassignment of historically recognized national identities of scientists. But that's noise. Rhetoric about a small sliver of «basically Aryan» elite and the mass of subhuman orc peasants underneath is likewise motivated and unchanged since Nazi rationalizations of their losses. Sure, Russia is relatively less productive than the highest tier of Western European states, and was later to the party. A difference in degree, not kind.

But they never genuinely considered each other's cultures subhuman vermin.

I believe this is retconning, the cancerous nature of German culture was a legitimate topic of debate. But the point is not so much how they regarded each other at the time as how a modern day enlightened Brit or a French would view a normal 19th century European, with his belligerence and his backwards views on various social matters.

And as soon as communists were overthrown - actually, as soon as their revolutionary fervor weakened - modernist rationalism went away

I get that you emigrated around that time and will never refuse to dunk on the Slav goyim. But by this standard, how is the US part of the rational knowledge tradition? 100+ million Evangelicals, megachurches, charismatic pastors, absurd sects, widespread science skepticism and conspiracy theorizing, Psi as a legitimate military research field, open appeals to theology in policymaking. On the other hand, the US happens to have the world's premier scientific institutions and technical companies. Russia can't boast of the same, it merely has better IT sphere than all of Europe and some universities supplying talent to American megacorps. Rationalism has never and nowhere been default mass culture.

So, as Russia were returning to its traditional national values (Orthodox Christianity started its resurgence

There's no Orthodox resurgence as of 2025, Russia is a transparently secular state, despite government's awkward efforts to astroturf belief.

I'm sure Chinese and North Koreans pretend even harder, but nobody - including themselves - believes in this pretense

And I'm sure this is poorly thought-out rhetoric because no, neither Kim nor Xi pretend to be elected, as there is no institution of general elections of leaders in those nations. «Representing the people» from @Eetan is absurd goalpost movement – is L'État, c'est moi a claim to have democratic mandate as well?

You're shoehorning it.

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I'm sure Chinese and North Koreans pretend even harder, but nobody - including themselves - believes in this pretense. And, what is very important, nobody cares, especially in Russia - Russians are completely fine with fake elections, because they don't really value free elections - they are completely ok with fake-electing the same Tzar for life, if he doesn't treat them too badly (in this case, they'd kill him and put on a new Tzar for life). Everybody in Russia knows elections are fake and the parliament is a dressing for what Putin wants, with less power than medieval nobles' assemblies under absolute monarchs. They are absolutely fine with it.

This is the case all over the world. Every regime except Taliban and Gulf monarchies claim to represent "the people" and rule in their name, every colonel who just gained power by coup says he is really defending democracy. Last man who failed to conform to this unwritten rule was late Emperor Bokassa the First.

Looks like total Western cultural victory. When you start seeing various strongmen repudiating this charade and crowning themselves as kings, sultans and maharajahs, you will know that Western supremacy is fading and multipolar, multicultural world arrived for real.

The French are a dying cucked people. Why should anyone care what they say? They are to be pitied and an object lesson of what not to do; not a group to be modeled.

France is likely to be the last euro country standing.

Meanwhile actual Europeans see them as a bunch of borderline-savages

I think this applied to both Americans and Russians.

'Lieber Turk als Papst'.

Yes, and also the Franco-Ottoman alliance. But neither the Dutch nor the French actually wished to dominated by Turks. It was a classic outgroup vs fargroup dynamic.

Factually there were plenty of Greeks who preferred the Turks to cooperating with the west in the waning days of the Byzantine empire, of course.

The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together. That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently. And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.

And how many brigades is Carney raising, 'to build our strength at home'? What about H-bombs, is he making any of those? Long range missiles? Attack drones? The Canadians are buying some... from the US.

Canadian leadership is basically unserious, they're pussies and losers I think. Same with Australian leadership or European leadership with the possible exception of Poland. They talk and talk and talk about rearming but do very little. Germany raised one new brigade, Poland raised 5, France is raising 1, the British army is still shrinking. A brigade is not a very large force, roughly 3-5000 men.

Australia is buying imaginary AUKUS-class and likely-imagined Virginia class submarines from America (they probably can't be made since the US is too slack to build enough for their own needs). The Australian surface fleet is in complete shambles. There are many more pressing needs than national defence apparently, like giving enormous amounts of taxpayer money to NDIS disability scammers or propping up house prices.

These people talk about partnerships and free trade agreements (and EU integration for Ukraine) but sign no alliances. They talk about reform but do nothing substantial or make things worse in dull, boring ways. They fundamentally have no concept of what they're actually supposed to be doing as leaders, their notion of leadership is some combination of 'make people-pleasing sounds' and 'follow legalistic/moralist codes without regard for the outcome'. At no point does leadership enter the equation for them. It doesn't matter if they have to spend a fortune on welfare for tax-leeching rapey migrants, if they have to build a fish disco for a nuclear plant or wreck their energy market. They'll do all this and find some way to defend it when it's unpopular.

They have no real concept that those are bad things and should be stopped. Some of them (Denmark) have cottoned on that voters don't like the rapey migrants and moved against that particular policy. But they still aren't real leaders, real leaders would foresee this issue from a base-level understanding of reality and their national interests and never even consider it. It's the difference between retracting your hand from the stove after being burnt and not being so stupid to touch the stove in the first place. Real leaders write new laws, establish new principles and adapt their policies to the times proactively. Trump may be wrong and foolish in many respects but he is at least a real leader.

So Carney can 'stop pretending' and 'name reality' but what strength is he building? Canada has three understrength brigades and only one deployable overseas + some training/reserve forces, the whole Canadian army might easily disappear in a single battle. And acting together, what is that? More conferences and blathering? What is he going to do with one deployable brigade? Pretending is all he can do.

And how many brigades is Carney raising, 'to build our strength at home'? What about H-bombs, is he making any of those? Long range missiles? Attack drones?

I think there are two or three countries in the world which might invade Canada or parts of it. Obviously the US, China and perhaps Russia.

Oversea invasions are hard logistics-wise, and oversea invasions into the backyard of another superpower who has a self-interest to not let rivals gain a foothold are harder still. (Though relying that the US would follow its strategic interests might be foolish. There is probably a world in which China allies itself with Trump by marrying a kid of some CCP functionary to one of his kids. Still unlikely.)

Before Trump, the US invading Canada or parts of it were not much of a concern for political reasons. Now with Trump openly contemplating actions which might utterly wreck NATO, that has changed, because wrecking NATO would also be a major downside of taking a piece of Canada.

If the US wants to take one of the big Canadian cities near the border, I think an extra brigade or ten will not help Canada much. I like your idea about hydrogen bombs, though. As a bonus, Canada would not even need long range missiles, there are plenty of targets in convenient reach of SRBMs. Hypersonic tech might be useful though. Or just lots of decoys.

The strategy could be: If you invade one of our cities, we will nuke a single city of similar size, thus turning the net outcome negative for you. If you retaliate proportionally, that will be the end of that round of aggression, otherwise we will respond proportionally (up to our stockpile size, naturally).

Of course, having more countries with nuclear weapons makes the world more dangerous. Which is doubtlessly a reason why previous US presidents embraced defensive pacts like NATO, where most members have no need to develop nukes.

And at the current stage, Canada does not need nuclear deterrence. But if you extrapolate between MAGA from a decade ago over MAGA today to estimate MAGA in a decade, you might find that you want to have figured out the Teller-Ulam design and built a stockpile by then. Not that I think Canada is trying at the moment, but optimistically that might change if Trump invades Greenland (or Iceland, by mistake).

The strategy could be: If you invade one of our cities, we will nuke a single city of similar size, thus turning the net outcome negative for you. If you retaliate proportionally, that will be the end of that round of aggression, otherwise we will respond proportionally (up to our stockpile size, naturally).

The whole idea of Canada engaging in nuclear deterrence against the United States is so absurd it must derive from some extremely advanced form of TDS/MAGA-derangement syndrome. But could it happen, you've put your finger on the fatal flaw: A US that deranged could win, because both the country and the stockpiles are larger. Take out Toronto and Ottawa, make a separate peace with Quebec, and annex the rest. The US could survive the losses of part of NY and DC.

The point would not be to win, it generally rarely is with nuclear war. The point would be to make the victory unappealing to the aggressor.

For example, Putin thought he could enact a quick regime change, install a Russia-friendly oligarch and turn Ukraine in another Belarus. If that had worked, it would have been a big win for him. Today, even if Ukraine surrenders unconditionally tomorrow, it would be a Pyrrhic victory for him, given the stockpiles, lives and funds he has sunk into his war, and the fact that it would take two generations to persuade Ukrainians to see Russians as their countrymen rather than their occupiers.

Again, this does not help you against a madman who does not care about grand strategy, and is willing to lose against China just to show Canada how to behave. But you should generally treat your opponents as sane, even if they provide evidence to the contrary, because it is in their interests to be seen as vindictive madmen.

The point would not be to win, it generally rarely is with nuclear war.

The US won the first one.

And yes, MAD is supposed to work as you say. But a sane US leader isn't going to attempt to take over Canada, and a deranged one isn't going to care.

But a sane US leader isn't going to attempt to take over Canada

That is very contingent on political factors. Two years ago, I would have said that no sane US leader would try to take Greenland from Denmark, either. These days, the question boils down to how serious one should take Trump's threats and what one thinks of his mental health.

Get rid of NATO, and Canada:US is not totally dissimilar to Ukraine:Russia. In both cases, the smaller country is culturally similar to its bigger neighbor, and most of the people speak the language of their neighbor. A shared land border makes an invasion logistically feasible. The big neighbor outspends the little one by a huge factor (6.5x for RU:UA pre-open-war, 30x for US:CA). Both are non-fundamentalist, industrial nations with low TFRs whose populations are unlikely to engage in asymmetrical warfare against occupiers at a similar rate as the Taliban did, especially if the takeover was done quickly without a lot of bloodshed.

Of course, Canada is much larger than Ukraine, but also more urban. The military advantage of the US is much larger than Russia's, most of their cities are close to the US border (Ottawa is less than 100km from the US, while the distance between Russia and Kiev is about 300km) and I do not see vastly outnumbered Canadian forces turning their cities into Gaza by trying to defend them one block at a time. Nor do I think that their rural population, cut off from critical resources like gasoline and maple syrup would be very willing to forgo their creature comforts to fight a Talibanesque insurgency for a few decades.

Like Greenland, Canada has a lot of lands in the arctic whose resource exploitation will become more feasible due to global warming. Also like Greenland, its northern parts cover relevant ICBM paths towards the US. It also has lots of fresh water which might be crucial for regions of the US due to climate change.

I do not think that Putin was insane to try to enact a regime change in Ukraine (though opting for a long war when his surprise attack failed was obviously a bad call), merely evil. Likewise, if Canada and the US drift apart politically as RU and UA did, I would think it evil but not insane of a US president (or emperor) to try to annex Canada.

That is very contingent on political factors. Two years ago, I would have said that no sane US leader would try to take Greenland from Denmark, either. These days, the question boils down to how serious one should take Trump's threats and what one thinks of his mental health.

No US leader (sane or otherwise) has attempted to take Greenland from Denmark by military force. Trump actually threatened nothing but tariffs. Not ruling out something is not the same as threatening it, and not ruling things out when asked is something that is both characteristic of Trump AND characteristic of the US (which, e.g., has never ruled out first use of nuclear weapons).

Certainly the US could take Canada, militarily. It's not going to happen under a sane leader. An insane leader could take Canada, militarily, even in the presence of a nuclear deterrent.

Certainly the US could take Canada, militarily.

Now, yes. Canada now is just like Ukraine in 2014.

This could change fast. Ukraine in 2014 was hopeless wreck, Ukraine in 2022 was something else.

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so absurd it must derive from some extremely advanced form of TDS/MAGA-derangement syndrome

It derives from being spat on.

Take out Toronto and Ottawa, make a separate peace with Quebec, and annex the rest. The US could survive the losses of part of NY and DC.

OK, but what's the downside?

It's my impression that @TiltingGambit has been projecting, because he, as a true American, felt that there is nothing worth learning about affairs of barbarians in China, Europe or anywhere else

I hate embarrassing you like this, but I'm not American.

And I've been professionally and personally involved in analysing China in some capacity for 15 years.

Trump appears to have now given up on getting Greenland altogether and dropped any threats of tariffs. At this point I resent him more for his pointless unpredictability and obsession with sucking up all the oxygen in every room in the world, than for the consequences of his actual policies. What have we even been talking about?

I'll be very impressed if this gets sold to the allies as «miscommunication». It looks like he just bluffed, then took stock of the actual ROI on the attempted attack and got cold feet, as during the rare earths spat with China earlier.

No way that's gonna happen. Even the MAGA faithful are unimpressed. The Greenland thing was a big mistake even by Trump-presidency standards.

Edit: Well, now I'm seeing more celebration from the MAGA side. I guess it still works on the base.

Any update on your opinion of this forum not following geopolitics?

That I, a non-American, had to make the top level post was evidence enough that it's of secondary interest at best.

That I, a non-American, had to make the top level post was evidence enough that it's of secondary interest at best.

You effort's laudable. I've begun a few times, but stop as soon as I consider the audience. Others have tried. I'll disengage with most of the internet/noosphere again, as I did some years back.

Yeah, what I meant is, isn't there some wisdom to it, given how abruptly this particular drama has come to a close? I can understand the point of your other chinaposts, and find them quite interesting myself, but I don't think much will come out of analyzing the screetching of western elites in response to the latest thing Trump said will take us to any interesting conclusions.

In my opinion it has not come to a close at all. If you think Trump just gets to TACO, pretend he's always wanted a "deal" and go back to the status quo with no repercussions, you're very… optimistic. These trade arrangements with China or security ones with India are not a bluff, the entire American worldview on this is completely delusional and self-serving. The EU, just like China, isn't doing deals to posture or to impress or intimidate Americans, it's trying to improve its currently grim long-term trajectory, and American nonsense is telling them what to avoid. We have learned a useful thing, too – that Trump can be deterred with economic consequences even in the absence of any military capability.

Trump appears to have now given up on getting Greenland altogether and dropped any threats of tariffs.

"The art of the deal"

Best case, some agreement that no matter what happens to Greenland (including "independence"), the Russians and Chinese don't get in.

It's certainly opened up the whole idea for consideration. Maybe whatever he later proposes will be taken as "well at least this is more reasonable than making Greenland part of the USA, okay". I have no idea, though.

UPDATE: We have concepts of a deal. No tariffs.

I hope you all enjoyed this year's first production from Orange Man Theater. Personally I'm glad I mostly sat it out.

Or is this the 2nd production with Maduro's capture being the first?

He probably need to clear the news cycle for his Disclosure speech.

That one was just a trailer for another production in the works.

The only way out is through, as they say. I think Carney and co. are likely correct as a factual matter. As the United States becomes a less reliable partner countries are going to look at diversifying away from their dependence on it. Whether that is part of a process of becoming more self sufficient, making friends with other great powers, or coalitions of "middle powers" countries are going to aim to reduce their reliance on America as a friend and ally. A couple paragraphs from Carney's speech you didn't quote but that I think highlight this:

As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains. This impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable. And there is another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretence of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from ‘transactionalism’ become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. Buy insurance. Increase options. This rebuilds sovereignty— sovereignty which was once grounded in rules—but which will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure. This classic risk management comes at a price. But that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortress. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.

I, personally, think America's close integration with our allies operated to our benefit. Both economically and in terms of our ability to order the world more to our liking. A more isolationist America is going to be poorer and facing a more hostile world. Even in the event Democrats take back control of Congress and the presidency over the next several elections I expect the damage done by Trump would be generations in undoing. Other countries are not going to forget it takes one demented madman winning an election to blow up any agreements we might have.

making friends with other great powers

Who are the other great powers, though? Russia? China? the EU? Who do the EU make friends with?

China is the obvious one but, like, the EU is itself about the size of the US. A GDP almost as high and 50% more people. Sure, no individual country in Europe is a match for the US but collectively may be a different story.

The OP doesn't quote the section but there's a part in Carney's speech where he talks about middle powers like Canada making alliances on limited issues based on interest alignment. They'll work with China on issues where they're aligned with China. The EU on issues where they're aligned with the EU. The overarching point is that the era of "whatever the US says, goes" is over. Unless we intend to enforce that at the end of a gun.

“Less reliable partner”

Argentinians voted the right way and then they got unlimited dollar swaps basically. America had regime change. If your politics still back the old regime then you are not in the new system. If Canada elected the conservative then they would get better terms. It’s normal politics. Friends rewarded.

It is not normal politics. It is bad for America's long term ability to negotiate agreements if other countries come to believe that every President is going to tear up every agreement of their predecessor. Why make any deal that will last longer than the current administration? The reason other presidents have honored agreements previous presidents made, even when they disagreed with them, is because there is value in being a country that honors it's agreements.

Regime not administration. Bush and Clintons were both neoliberals who had different views on tax rates. Regimes rarely change.

The thing about being a vassal state is you are a vassal state and need to do what your master tells you to do. Otherwise you are not a useful vassal.

I do not think either we or our allies have conceived of our relationship as vassalage and attempts at converting our relationship to vassalage will be harmful to those relationships.

Are you joking or you actually believe this?

I feel like this is one of those things we dress up in nice words “you are not a vassal” and avoiding saying the quiet part out loud, but everyone knows the real truth - you are a vassal.

Sometimes I feel like leftists forgot the real truth and start to think the lie we tell ourselves is the real truth to disastrous consequences.

No, they should just never elect commies in the first place. That will do better for them regardless of who the American president is.

Argentine governance has been very very bad historically, although ‘communist’ is probably not a good word.

Notably the Western European leaders actively picked a side in the internal American political contest. You can’t do that and then be shocked when your opponent disrespects you.

Generally trying to censor social media largely but not exclusively thru NGO. There was the time Theirry (sp?) threatened Elon for interviewing Trump on X while Trump was running for president.

...

Specifically? Christopher Steele was MI6 though a few year out of official titles when he created his Russia Hoax dossier.

Really hope the US doesn’t have people in the CIA who will going rogue the second they lose official titles and work against our interests.

I have takes alright. I know someone at WEF and was getting minute by minute updates on leaders storming out and heated water cooler discussions. Stayed up the whole night watching this mess. Worth it.

High level : I am upgrading "Don't put the devil on the wall" to a tier 1 quote. Trump's anxieties and reckless tantrums are creating the very conditions that the US is trying to delay.

I don't have one takeaway, but a few unconnected thoughts.

  1. Trump's cabinet doesn't have a ounce of Trump's charisma. Even at his most nasty, Trump is funny, likeable and selectively cruel. Trump's cabinet wields the same sledgehammer but reeks of resentment. I believe more than Trump, Europe is uniquely disgusted by his cabinet. The list of likeable cabinet members starts and ends with Rubio. Trump can see this, and Rubio has clearly been elevated to his 2nd in command in public appearances. I believe JD's absence was not a coincidence.

  2. Going into 2025, MAGA kneecapped ascendant right-wing movements in Canada, UK and France. As a result, Trump is now negotiating with maximally adversarial partners in Carney, Starmer and Macron. US-Canada relations appear to have taken the largest hit. In trying to secure trade-routes in the distant North, Trump may have opened the salient opening across its entire Northern frontier.

  3. Western globalists spoke with clarity. First time for everything. To collectively articulate the end of Pax-Americana is a big deal. Words need to be backed with actions, but these are words we haven't heard spoken before. Discussions around Europe's lack of NATO funding, existing as a vassal state, disinvestment from the US & reverse technology transfer were anomalously candid.

  4. India finally gets a break. Trump 2 and Ukraine-sanctions left India on a weird island by itself. Turns out, when Europe was looking for an uncontroversial partner, being unhyphenated was a perk. To match US and China, it makes sense for Europe to strike a deal with India. Back-channel oil deals have been active for a while. But the the public and enthusiastic association with India will feel new to India, especially Modi's India.

  5. I don't buy the China partnership narrative. EU's remaining industry is under grave threat from China. Canada can't onshore Chinese technology this close to the US border. The US will intervene. Appeals to China felt like boogeyman narratives meant to spook the US. That being said, if Donroe stays entangled in the Atlantic, then China may pounce on Taiwan and the conflict may end with a whimper.

  6. I am bullish on France. In the absence of NATO, it will become the de-facto leader of the EU. They have healthy fertility rates, nukes, state capacity for large infrastructure (HSR, nuclear plants), native entertainment industry and independent full-spectrum military. Macron may get kicked out soon, but ngl, the sunglasses were cool.

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I visit France often. It is much safer than the US.

Marseille - France's stabbiest city has a lower homicide rate than SF or Austin. About the same as NYC and 17x better St louis.

Street protests and setting things on fire is how French people connect with their heritage. It's a performative French revolution. It's fiery, but they never destroy infrastructure like riots in the US. (Whether that be due to protests or a super bowl win)

Some suburbs are no go zones, but that's better than inner city no-go zones that a stranger can innocently walk into.

There is an issue with Parisian gangs and Mediterranean gangs. The later are a pan European problem. The former looks like a form of torture French people love inflicting on tourists to avoid over tourism. (Only partly sarcastic here)

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Trump's anxieties and reckless tantrums are creating the very conditions that the US is trying to delay.

Verily! As with his 1st term, I remain convinced Trump is a Chinese agent. His every single action but strengthens China and weakens the US (while of course grandstanding otherwise.)

The Chinese, ever so respectful of American competence, would never pick an overt saboteur as an agent.

Chinese CIA, to maintain cover, picks a competent administrator as agent.

Goal is to only do the bare minimum and occasionally sidetrack projects as sabotage.

Agent becomes president and starts doing the basic stuff with only occasional sabotage.

still more than any president has done.

America start flourishing even more.

Americans love him and elect him another time.

I'd watch that film.

If Europe wanted Americans to feel a sense of extrapolitical obligation toward European interests, then it should have allocated $__,000,000,000 toward the funding of European-ancestry cultural and religious social movements. Israel is a testament to the efficacy of this strategy. As is India with its strong lobbyists in Canada and America. It failed to do this, and while it’s not too late it is running out of time to catch up.

There are many possibilities here. Your record when it comes to geopolitical forecasting is poor, after all. (So is mine.)

Europe can’t unite against America because European unity is impossible after a millennium of conflict with no resolution (the Napoleonic Wars and WW1 would have each led to a - different - resolution absent British involvement, but alas, Perfidious Albion).

Europe was never united by force. Italy is still mostly run by Italians, Spain mostly by Spaniard, Poland (newly again) mostly by Poles. The French and Germans, the two pillars, can’t even build a fighter plane together because despite each’s economic and security situation deteriorating rapidly they would rather fight over who gets to make the engines or the wings or the control panel than just agree to whatever is fastest. The Spanish and Italians too will not die over Ukraine or Greenland.

Europe cannot unite because it has no master. Everybody and their mother has a veto. It was only able to impose itself on Greece because everybody else united against it and because even Varoufakis realized the alternative was absolute ruin and anarchy. But to unite against France? No, it can’t happen.

You can humiliate them as much as they want, they cannot agree enough to do anything. Europe is not a political entity, it can’t be negotiated with, it has no agency. America can take what it wants. Maybe it should.

Italy is still mostly run by Italians, Spain mostly by Spaniard

It's insightful to analyze Europe(an countries) by individual provinces; the nation states are mostly rather modern of course. Bavaria, Catalonia, Ile de France, Rhone-Alpes, Baden-Württemberg, Lombardy (cf. blue banana, four motors of Europe etc. and Europe of 100 Flags)

Sure, but it’s also ahistorical to suggest that these identities were fully invented recently, when they weren’t. Italy and Germany are only 150 years old (France is already 250, anyway), but bonds of language and culture are older in many cases. Even centuries ago, the gap between an Occitan and a Catalonian was obviously less than between either of them and a Pole or a Swede.

the gap between an Occitan and a Catalonian

A perfect example of my point, they are the same language but were not unified etc. rather colonized and converted by other areas - and very recently. By 1860, 40% of Frenchmen still spoke Occitan with a literary history older than French and a Nobel prize in literature in 1904. Catalonia recently had an independence referendum. In 1792, 10% of modern France spoke French and it took 150 years to eliminate/kill off minority languages.

Not just Austria, but even Bavaria and the rest of Southern Germany had their own standard until the late 18th century. Some of the Northern dialects until today have maintained their own standard: Dutch, which Germany had to explicitly erradicate in its own areas.

Even today, no one speaks standard Italian without an accent. The "dialects" remain very strong and heavily color speech in colloquial use.

These are standards imposed over various dialects and often larger speakerships, but there's inherent cultural and linguistic bonds leading to the current clustering. The regional identities are far older (often the regions aren't conncted to current administrative boundaries). In a different world, a lattice of sovereign regions where people spoke e.g. a panromance or panslavic standard readily comprehensible to all speakers (indeed often easier to comprehend than many existing neighboring varieties) could have been possible.

The silence on the ongoing global events reinforces my impressions both of the US and of this forum.

I would like to echo this sentiment. I always wait a few days after a major event to see what people in this forum would bring up for discussion and put a focus on. Admittedly, there are lots of news I would never see like the church storming in Minnesota, but the example of the Trump letter to the Norwegian prime minister was something I was itching to see a deep discussion of. But what we got was not that, just discussions around the letter, not about the letter. These events say something, they're not "thought-terminating" because I don't think these events shutdown discussions, they're more akin to "the missing missing", where the event is just so seizure-inducing, so much logic-acrobatics required, that the discussion just subconsciously avoid it.

I do have to say though that because I am not an active participant but only lurk this forum, maybe I've missed discussions before. Maybe people here are so bored of discussing Trump idiosyncrasies that there are things that are taken as a given about what a person in this forum should know.

Posting the Trumpian Letter to the Norwegian PM by itself doesn't qualify for a top-level alone. That would be no different than a Twitter repost which means you have to attach something to it. There may be other interesting things about the letter -- brevity, audacity, grammar -- but the wider context of threatening to invade Greenland does seem the most obvious place to go with a discussion.

I don't think you're expected to take anything as a given, but frequent contributors likely work through permutations and move on. Trump is one of the following: expert negotiator deal-maker, intentionally trolls for attention, or he candidly finds himself writing impromptu letters with no self-awareness of what they mean. Possibly one or all of these apply to the Trumpian antics on offer any given day. A Trumpian Letter to the Norwegian PM that opens with a mention of the Nobel prize in the midst of a peak Trump cycle is barely unexpected. I can only throw up my hands, yet again humbled by my own mundanity, and accept this force of nature for what it is. Just as I would accept a failed harvest, a bird pooping on my head, or any other act of God. The context of his actions is almost aways more novel and interesting than the routine.

You probably already know the one and only solution. More people should present their perspectives on stuff they are interested in. I sometimes notice the lack of perspectives or a topic and, if it looks like a slow week, I might do something about it. Top-levels have to meet a threshold, they do not need to beat the next guy or be long-winded. Consider this an endorsement from the common man.

Yes, change starts with oneself. And you're right that I was really hoping for some deep analysis of why Greenland, is it possible, are these the right moves, how does it fit in the context of Venezuela and beyond, what are the psychological, political, historical, sociological, emotional, cultural implications etc. It is exactly the feeling that the Trump modeling is so calcified in the discussion that as @gattsuru mentioned that "there's not much to discuss" anymore and I'm like sitting here wondering "what am I missing that everyone else seems to get".

some deep analysis of why Greenland

Currently the president is repeatedly confusing Greenland with Iceland while the White House press secretary blatantly lies about it.

The lying actually bothers me a lot more than the word mixup; smart people who are surrounded with such levels of sycophancy are basically detaching from reality. If this kind of mistake can't even be admitted, how can more serious mistakes be corrected? The answer to "why Greenland" may be as simple as the answer to "why does the speaker start shrieking when you point its own microphone at it": because in a systems analysis sense, excessive positive feedback can lead to insane outputs.

the Trump modeling is so calcified

Yes, I fear that's a likely explanation.

in the discussion

Oh. Well, yeah, that too, but with better reason and less-adverse consequences.

He didn't confuse Iceland and Greenland. Why do you hate America?

I think it cuts both ways, as someone with a foot in both continents. Americans will pay very little attention to anything that doesn't push their personal, parochial buttons, but Europeans will instantly go to DEFCON: CHIMP over anything that mentions them as relevant to global discourse. There aren't that many discussions to be had in the inbetween space in the immediate time, because the likelihood is that this will be a nothingburger. It'll move some invisible ratchets in some directions that we can speculate about, but Trump is already announcing a big, beautiful deal that will likely end with all this passing out of the news cycle as smoothly as it entered.

Yes and I suppose this perfectly illustrates that people cares more about the things that affect them. I do understand that there is an American Main Character Energy and I suppose the Europeans rightfully (or pathetically) bristles at that.

Yeah, I think it's one part a reaction to American Main Character Energy, and one part that Europe is starting to feel the hard edges of objective decline and is figuring out how to respond psychologically to that. This is truer of the UK and Germany than of France, and not true of the former Eastern Bloc, but national decline is a very painful thing and people come up with a lot of different copes for it (I always liked James Burnham's argument that much of progressive liberalism is one big cope for the loss of the West's global hegemony). The Yookay is a sad place these days, so getting excitable about a good war is a lovely distraction for media and political classes there.

Some of the problem's like the reason I didn't discuss Wolford's oral arguments, yesterday. They exist, they have meaning, they don't need any sort of logical acrobatics, and it's pretty easy to understand what their meanings are (Justice Jackson's embarrassments included despite her best efforts), but there's not much to discuss. They're just anti-scissors: even when people disagree, there's nothing to argue about.

Yeah I get you. It’s precisely what I mention about people get bored of discussing something. I suppose I’ll have to think deeper about whether silence or lack of a discussion signals “anti-scissor/nothing to argue” vs “because of some emotional/logic avoidance”. In a sense, I suppose if I want to get thinking and perspective contrary to mine, I have to put mine up to test and draw out those thinking and perspective as @wemptronics mentioned.

Maybe Europe and Canada should just not resist and be on the MAGA side as it is in their best interests?

This is one of the issues with population replacement. I am fairly sure you are Indian and not native. A semi-shittified formerly western nations subservient to China is just not that bad to you. To native Canadian this should be awful. Canada subservient to China is still going to be better than India as an escape route.

Honestly a very big reason why I do not believe in Democracy. Once you’ve imported different tribes with fundamentally different desires it’s mistake theory. Compromise does not work. And only one side can win. You will always have different political aims than myself. I want to basically protect the shire for myself. You want access to the shire.

  • Joined December 2025.
  • 118 comments
  • dislikes Indians
  • doesn't believe in democracy
  • is fascist

Dude slow down. TheMotte is already in a MAGA spiral. It isn't intentional, the forum is well moderated. But, the median individual is a right-wing American and left leaning non-Americans are forced to have thicker skin. We've lost enough intellectual diversity through splinter events. There's no need to make this place more hostile.

Also welcome to the forum. I am one of the Indians here. Please get better at profiling. I await a moderate amount of hate, phrased in a civic manner.

It's not a "MAGA spiral" it's more of a Hanania/Fuentes spiral. The median individual here is an Affluent White Liberal who is starting to feel anxious about the decline of their tribe in both population and relative status.

Hanania/Fuentes

What do these two people have in common?

I think he’s pointing to two different kinds of users.

They are both edge-lords from affluent liberal backgrounds who spend most of their time posting on social media about how populism is fucking up the world, and how it is people like them who represent the "true right".

I'm also pretty sure that they are both closeted homosexuals, which is neither here nor there, but it would help explain a lot of otherwise incongruous behavior.

They both claim to be on the right, and they're both idiots.

I don't like you, not because you're Indian, but because you're literally the meme that goes 'Hello, let me explain to you what being an Westerner is and how this definition includes me'. No, you don't get to be spiritually western until you've abandoned your parochial ideas and pagan beliefs back in the old country. You are a outsider trying to rules lawyer creeds and legalities but no matter how many pieces of paper you show me, your behavior and attitude will permanently make you an outsider - even if you lived here for a thousand years.

Just drop it. Accept that you'll be seen as a foreigner for a generation or two. Then no one will care. No one cares about Koreans or the Vietnamese or the Hmong. Just stop whining about it. But if you believe you are owed apologies for being Indian, then you'll be waiting until the second coming of Christ.

I think different political systems work for different cultures/populations. Pre-2000 USA I am 100% pro-Democracy. Saudi Arabia is an example of a country that Democracy probably would not have been successful in and the Monarchy has been a better form of government. Latam is a region where Democracy has often not been the best form of government. The US demographics have more in common today with Latam demographics than historical American demographics.

I mean, I’m in favor of the U.S. military overthrowing any left wing elected officials, Latin America style. Don’t think it would make much difference in governance though.

Fair. I too have concluded that democracy needs some base conditions to work.

Tribal clan systems (Arabs, Afghans) are incompatible with democracy. Pre-industrial states struggle to balance democracy and essential growth. Democracy and violent societies don't work.

Tribal clan systems (Arabs, Afghans) are incompatible with democracy.

You don't think they're more similar to the original American representative yeoman democracy pre-1840 or so? In form they seem similar, just without the high literacy and civic engagement the American colonies always enjoyed.

…No? Early America was not a clan based society in any way.

Not even close. The high literacy and civic engagement are a civilizational inheritance. It took hundreds, if not thousands of years to build.

The clan systems are embedded in Arab and Afghan societies in a manner that isn't comparable to anything in the west. Even during peak colonialism, Britain gave up on trying to control Afghanistan. Can't control a group that has no institutions what so ever. Arabs are a bit different. They had it, but after the mongols burned down Baghdad, middle-eastern Arabs did not have a unifying civilization for a very long time.

He's Russian, and any idiot can see that if Canada goes through an economic crisis it will stop being a country, so Carney might talk about the Chinese, but he's not going to pivot. Alberta would leave if Trump actually for real takes the gloves all the way off in an economic war with Canada, and then Quebec, and then a country with some giant holes in it would start to shrink.

I am fairly sure you are Indian and not native.

«You are Indian» sure is a new one. I'm 100% sure you must be new here.

Maybe Europe and Canada should just not resist and be on the MAGA side

Is it the winning side though?

«You are Indian» sure is a new one. I'm 100% sure you must be new here.

You either die a Russian emigre, or live long enough to be a villain Indian. I'll get a bindi ready.

"Actually Indian" can be your new tag.

There is, famously, an European country that has gone gung-ho for anti-immigrant measures, not only in their country but trying to push them Europe-wide, in the recent decades. The said country is currently at the center of global politics due to being specifically targetted for Trump in this entire Greenland debacle. Clearly the whole idea that these things are somehow connected is just as much a figleaf for Trump's monkey impulses as anything else than MAGA talking heads have attempted to present in an effort of sanewashing.

Moreover, it's obvious that there's a fraction of the American right (a powerful fraction? Who knows, but it tends to become evident in times like this) that just plain hates [Western] Europe. This issue cannot be even discussed, as Euros pointing it out immediately leads to the said rightists going "you're imagining it, you're gaslighting us, nobody here even THINKS of Europe at all [post le epic Mad Men meme here], we just hate cucked European governments, Europeans have always hated us so we're only reacting now" etc etc.

If one was online 20 years ago, the same fraction was hating on [many countries of Western] Europe back then, too, for not joining the Great Freedom Crusade for Freedom, with somewhat different arguments (the word "cuck" hadn't been invented back then, after all), but clearly still similar impulses. Indeed, it seems likely that many of the warblogger readers and Bush diehards of those days are now Trump diehards, doing the same stuff as back then but believing it to be somehow different because Trump is so so different from all the preceeding libs and cucks that it's completely different when the same things happen over and over again.

The European right, or parts of it, shares a part of the blame too - there's been a veritable cottage industry of European RW grifters painting a hysterical and exaggerated image of the situation in Europe regarding immigration, specifically posting in English and not their native languages for an American audience (often since they've already tried their hand in local politics and failed to gain any traction) to get Substack subs and, if particularly successful, even appearances in popular American podcasts or pivots to the American RW think tank / media ecosystem or whatever. It's almost certain that these types and their arguments have also affected the American RW ecosphere, including it's social-media-addicted leadership, creating room for the mindset that leads to the current events happening. Some seem to now be going "C-come on, you guys... it wasn't THAT bad, we don't need all this..."

I'd argue that those Bush diehards, being neocons, are more likely to be Nevertrumpers.

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Without further statistics or anything my gut feeling is that actual Nevertrumpers are a very small section of people who supported GOP in 2005, that yoru standard hard Republican base type went just as bigly for Bush in 2005 as they are doing for Trump in 2025, and "neocon" is largely a meaningless label at this point, considering that the supposedly totally non-neocon Trump is doing or threatening to do the sort of interventions neocons only dreamed about in 2005.

The European right, or parts of it, shares a part of the blame too - there's been a veritable cottage industry of European RW grifters painting a hysterical and exaggerated image of the situation in Europe regarding immigration, specifically posting in English and not their native languages for an American audience (often since they've already tried their hand in local politics and failed to gain any traction) to get Substack subs and, if particularly successful, even appearances in popular American podcasts or pivots to the American RW think tank / media ecosystem or whatever. It's almost certain that these types and their arguments have also affected the American RW ecosphere, including it's social-media-addicted leadership, creating room for the mindset that leads to the current events happening. Some seem to now be going "C-come on, you guys... it wasn't THAT bad, we don't need all this..."

On this note, the current episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast has a bit about Youtubers coming to London and trying to find scenes of Muslim no-go areas, only to end up having to complain about too many curry houses on Brick Lane.

The UK is in quite a bad state, but the picture of it one would form from right-wing social media has become a cartoon based only on fringe events which, while important, play little part in ordinary life for the vast majority of people.

QAnon Anonymous isn't a podcast I listen to or even know about. Did any participant suggest that those Youtubers kindly visit the rust belt towns of the Midlands region instead?

Moreover, it's obvious that there's a fraction of the American right (a powerful fraction? Who knows, but it tends to become evident in times like this) that just plain hates [Western] Europe.

Happy to be corrected, but IME this is mostly just Twitter ragebaiting and flaming. Same for the "we don't think about you at all" people. The average American likes (white) Europeans and mostly would be pleasantly surprised to meet one in America.

But there are a small but growing number of Americans who have negative of opinions of Europeans after coming into being treated rudely by European acquaintances for frankly nasty and discriminatory reasons. I count myself among this group -- I've switched from unguarded friendliness to cautious optimism when meeting a European. I'm always on guard for some unsolicited jab about "Murka," or obesity , or guns, or something the current president did. I never feel the need to comment negatively on their country, so this always feels a bit uncalled for and tasteless to me. It sometimes seems almost therapeutic, like they're finally getting some long-held grievances off their chest by being nasty to one particular person -- finally, they can settle the score by really giving it to this dumb American, who is more of a living caricature than an actual human being. Charitably, I think this sort of person sometimes just wants to signal that they are aligned with the high-status Americans (blue tribe) who they think enjoy making and hearing such remarks. But it is IMO quite tasteless nonetheless.

I lived in Europe for several years as a young child and really felt at home. I was welcomed and treated like any other local kid after I had mastered the language. And there is no denying that Europe is our spiritual and cultural parent and to this day still exerts significant cultural influence on us. I sometimes wonder if a lot of the "hate" from Americans towards Europeans is less like skin to that felt towards a rival or a foreign enemy and more akin to that felt towards a wayward family member who just can't seem to help himself. Why won't dad sober up? Why won't big brother lay off the pills? It's a sort of wounded love for the Europe they grew up reading and dreaming about as children, the cradle of the Western civilization that produced our great nation, a Europe they wanted to visit and admire, but that increasingly appears to be gone forever.

(I am fully aware of the irony. Physician, heal thyself, etc. Just trying to paint a picture of what might be going on in the Twitter Euro-hater's head.)

When OUR guys do it, it's just Twitter ragebaiting and flaming. When THEIR guys do it, it's some unsolicited jab about "Murka," or obesity , or guns, or something the current president did.

I also wonder how much of this is just Europeans trying to do to the Americans the same sort of international bants that Europeans tend to do to each other when meeting in international settings, and those bants failing to land.

I also wonder how much of this is just Europeans trying to do to the Americans the same sort of international bants that Europeans tend to do to each other when meeting in international settings, and those bants failing to land.

Sure, but this goes both ways; international criticism of Trump (both plebian and patrician) centers around this exact thing.

Well, yes, but he's also in a different position from just some ordinary Joe Sixpack shooting his mouth. He is supposed to be a statesman of some sort. There are (unstated but still existing) rules and codes for statesmanly behavior, especially in international contexts.

Moreover, it's obvious that there's a fraction of the American right (a powerful fraction? Who knows, but it tends to become evident in times like this) that just plain hates [Western] Europe. This issue cannot be even discussed, as Euros pointing it out immediately leads to the said rightists going "you're imagining it, you're gaslighting us, nobody here even THINKS of Europe at all [post le epic Mad Men meme here], we just hate cucked European governments, Europeans have always hated us so we're only reacting now" etc etc.

If one was online 20 years ago, the same fraction was hating on [many countries of Western] Europe back then, too, for not joining the Great Freedom Crusade for Freedom, with somewhat different arguments (the word "cuck" hadn't been invented back then, after all), but clearly still similar impulses. Indeed, it seems likely that many of the warblogger readers and Bush diehards of those days are now Trump diehards, doing the same stuff as back then but believing it to be somehow different because Trump is so so different from all the preceeding libs and cucks that it's completely different when the same things happen over and over again.

Are these the same groups of people? The sense I get of the type of American who really hates Europe is that they're mostly highly online Gen-Z types. Most of them weren't alive when the GWOT started.

The Twitter MAGAboomer extraordinaire CatTurd2 has been beating the anti-Europe drum heavy, at least.

There’s always been a few boomercons who hate Europe for not actually being free, for being effeminate and lazy, or for their arrogance. It’s usually been a cautionary tale and most normiecons are shocked to learn about Europe’s employment laws, homeschooling bans, etc.

There are many more Europeans that hate America than the inverse. Americans rightists generally feel bad for Europe.

I am fairly ambivalent on Greenland. I do think strategically it makes sense to be American since the European military has been highly degraded. With some impulse to rebuild now.

I do like yelling at Europe. And they do seem to be on the path to being a conquered people. I feel like the Ukraine War highlights this. Europe of 20 years ago the war would have been a turkey shoot for them.

I am fairly fine with the US going it alone. We can rebuild Argentina. It’s a fabulous country and Americans probably should be rerouting our vacations in that direction. Our allies should be the people who want to actually reform their countries and have the IQ to do it. If we can get rid of the ADL and political influence makes Israel a great ally too.

It’s not like MAGA doesn’t treat America the same way. Witness Minneapolis.

I am fairly fine with the US going it alone. We can rebuild Argentina

How about you rebuild the US first?

I am in Argentina now. What I see imported from the US is mainly the style of squalor. The material, artistic and civic culture of the modern US is plainly disgusting. Gigantic soda bottles, barely humanoid blobs waddling around, homelessness, trash, funko pops, capeshit comics, old gas-guzzling cars. No sense of propriety and harmony. It's Latin America, after all, but that's also America, how low-functioning America works. More money won't fix it, and it's not like you have money anyway.

Isn't all that just generic late-stage capitalism in practice?

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Not even the cities? OP appears to be describing the slums of Buenos Aires.

Not in Japan it's not. Culture interacts with this, as do policing styles and various other factors.

Bringing up Japan is pretty much moving the goalposts in this case.

More money won't fix it, and it's not like you have money anyway.

You know America has ten times the GDP per capita of Argentina and six times the GDP per capita of Russia, yes? Like there are reasoned and informed criticisms you can make of the USA. 'Doesn't have money' is not one.

There seems to be such a huge split between the left and right on this!

From the left, I hear that Americans are broke. Living with their parents, no healthcare, no job (or a really crappy job), struggling to survive. The official statistics are either made up, or highly misleading (like, a handful of billionares have all the money while the rest of us have nothing).

From the right, I hear that America is the wealthiest country that has ever existed. Way more money than China or Europe. The economy has boomed thanks to Reagonomics, the Bush tax cuts, and Trumps... tweets. We can easily spend a trillion for Greenland, or missile defense, or battleships, or whatever, because we have essentially infinite money.

I think the libertarians are the most correct on this. Whichever party is currently in power will say we have plenty of money to pursue their goals. Whichever party is out of power will say that we're broke, we can't afford it, we need to pay down the debt, etc...

The left believes the US is broke because they pursue PPP minimizing lifestyles(living in NYC, grad school, etc).

Yep, the advice I'd give a teen who wants a comfortable life now is about 180 opposed to what was the default when I was teen; move as far as you can stomach to large cities and go into trades instead of higher education. Or if you want to set yourself up, work in a trade in the city while living a frugal lifestyle for 5 years and get yourself a sizeable downpayment for a house in a rural area.

That's precisely the issue. America has GDP and tries to have more GDP. It doesn't have money. It is a country with a chronically negative current account balance, literally $40T in debt, it has less money than anyone. On top of that it consistently has horrible financial discipline and vulnerability to scams and corruption at home. It can't afford to invest into shitholes with dubious ROI, so it does not invest in them and instead robs allies blind, raises tariffs, extorts investment, tries to monetize everything (eg Golden Visa, Board of Peace). Why do you think there exists BRI, but all American attempts to Build Back Better World or whatever have withered on the vine? China has money. America is broke. The main way it can share prosperity around is to deficit-spend buying Argentinian goods. And unfortunately, it already has enough beef and soy.

The deficit isn’t a negative. It’s been a necessity for the US to run large deficits to finance global trade since everyone else needs dollars to trade with since it’s essentially the only “real” global currency.

In many ways it’s been a negative for the US because it’s made domestic manufacturing too expensive.

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The American market will swallow up beef at reasonable prices. Even a mild discount vs the very high US cost of production will enable functionally infinite sales. Soy and wine(the most visible Argentine product to the US market is, far and away, malbec), maybe not, but the limitation on Americans buying steak and brisket is budgetary, not consumption ability.

Even a mild discount vs the very high US cost of production will enable functionally infinite sales.

US has been a small beef market for Argentina. 70% goes to China. I'm sure it's not because Argentinian beef is too expensive for Americans right now.

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No sense of propriety and harmony.

Are there any well-functioning places left that have those?

Argentina (at least Buenos Aires) isn't cold enough for vodka and starvation. US-style squalor seems superior anyway.

Superior to certain death? For those homeless, I guess.

But hot places aren't doomed to have so much homelessness. It's mostly economic dysfunction.

Superior to certain death?

Superior to Russian-style squalor.

But hot places aren't doomed to have so much homelessness. It's mostly economic dysfunction.

Sure. When I went to Buenos Aires I stayed in Puerto Madero. The government borrowed shitloads of money to basically make a nice area of hotels and restaurants for tourists, and I doubt they're charging nearly enough to make that make any sense (though I imagine the incoming hard currency is enriching someone). I was in Argentina when they elected Milei, and the prices were still written in dry-erase marker in many places. Crazy stuff... but not surprising from a socialist (Peronist) government.

Moreover, it's obvious that there's a fraction of the American right (a powerful fraction? Who knows, but it tends to become evident in times like this) that just plain hates [Western] Europe.

Not Europe -- European Blue Tribe, which absolutely dominates European governments.

The "European blue tribe" invariably tends to mean ca 80 % of (voting) Europeans here, though. The share will most likely remain similar in the future, considering that Trump just played, among others, all the rw Euro parties that had been praising him and assuring that the transatlantic alliance will continue without problems in the future.

The "European blue tribe" invariably tends to mean ca 80 % of (voting) Europeans here, though

Tribes are not about party allegience, so no. Even if the right-wing parties end up with egg on their face, that won't make people magically support infinity immigrants, gender self-ID, and all the other stuff pushed by the Blues in Europe.

Euros are about as good at understanding how and why Americans see them through the prism of US partisan politics as Americans are at understanding the nuances of why the Christian-Socialist-Democratic-Party/Liberal-Unionist-Secession-Party/Green coalition in [Euro country] is breaking down over the question of whether state pensions should cover ceiling fans.

the Christian-Socialist-Democratic-Party/Liberal-Unionist-Secession-Party/Green coalition in [Euro country] is breaking down over the question of whether state pensions should cover ceiling fans.

I would love a full comment explaining this one.

It's just a joke about how a) for historical reasons, European political parties often have unusual names that don't tell an outsider all that much about their politics and b) European political systems often lead to unstable governing coalitions with strange bedfellows involved.

I am British, a Reform voter, and fairly pro MAGA (you can read my other comments on here). Trust me when I say nobody wants to be on the MAGA side if it means being Trump's little bitch and giving him any territory he wants at any time in exchange for him not destroying our economies or taking it by force. People were just about okay putting up with Bush-era 'you do what we say and you buy your military stuff from us and we keep bases on your sovereign territory and you go along with our sanctions, and in exchange you get protection + access to our economy + we won't actually come over and fart on your face'.

Removing the last and a good chunk of the second-last part scraps the deal and you will need to enforce it with full coercion and foil all attempts at getting out from under the boot. Which, yes, you have the capacity to do, but it is symptomatic of Trump's foreign policy that he complains about the lack of local populism and cultural protection then immediately makes the parties that agree with him look like cucks.

(Dase is Russian btw)

Have you ever considered that you are a little bitch?

At this point in the American mind you are a semi conquered people. Besides the culture war stuff you just haven’t done anything lately. Your economy sucks. Non-culture war stuff like electricity prices from what I’ve read are double or more than American prices. It’s like being California without having the super productive regions of California that somehow work.

Poland is expected to be wealthier than the UK in 2030:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/07/poland-europe-superpower-communism-putin-military/

When I was a younger man Polish were maids in the UK and sometimes the cute 20 year old wife a balding accountant imported as a wife. UK once a wealthy nation is falling behind countries that were extremely poor in my lifetime.

I think the issue with the Uk is the country has not done anything to earn respect for a very long time. If you want a seat at the table you need to do something.

You need a leader like Thatcher who will just say the Americans are right and we need significant change instead of crying about hurt feelings.

Poland is expected to be wealthier than the UK in 2030:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/07/poland-europe-superpower-communism-putin-military/

Eh, I don't put much faith in such ad hoc projections. However, markets are forward looking and take into account participants' expectations. The global stock market has long priced in that the UK and EU will likely be small contributors to the worldwide economy in the future, at least by way of their publicly traded companies. And the expected UK and EU contribution has only gone down in recent years:

  • In 2014: US 37.8%, EU 11.3%, China 8.6%, Japan 6.3%, UK 5.8%, HK 4.6%
  • In 2024: US 49.1%, China 9.3%, EU 8.7%, Japan 5.0%, HK 3.6%, UK 3.5%

So not only did the US increase its financial hegemony (in what can be characterized as an inability to stop winning), China overtook the EU and Hong Kong overtook the UK in those 10 years. While these relative differences may be small in terms of the movements from 2014 to 2024 (and can change given market volatility), it does reinforce the notion that the whole city may be center when it comes to "the sick man of Europe" and has been for a while now.

Have you ever considered that you are a little bitch?

This is not acceptable. The rest of your post is fine, but you are being deliberately inflammatory.

You have no notes either way on your moderation log. I get that you are using the insult for dramatic effect, and so I am giving you a warning. Do not post like this in the future, or you will receive a ban.

Fair. Though I really liked that phrase and the flair it brought. Though I would say it’s a fair description of what the right thinks of Europe and Europe probably feels like we treat them like that.

I am making the point, which should be obvious to anybody, that even a little bitch can stab their 'benefactors' in the back and will at the first opportunity. Even dictators realise that you can't keep the boot down all the time and you have to induce some loyalty in the captured populace. Save those whose penis and need to waggle it about is larger than their brain, and they usually meet sticky ends.

You need a leader like Thatcher who will just say the Americans are right and we need significant change instead of crying about hurt feelings.

And Trump is doing his best to ruin any such person's chances of getting elected. This is why politics requires more than just "HA! AMERICA SMASH!"

I think we are past the point where being “nice” to Europe has any value. Asshole bosses often are successful by increasing pressure. I am fine with having Europe go its own way, but if they want to maintain the alliance they need rapid reform.

I think the issue with the Uk is the country has not done anything to earn respect for a very long time. If you want a seat at the table you need to do something.

America is a continent sized country bordered by two oceans, a sparsely populated tundra and a third- (although rapidly approaching second-) world country. It has the world's largest patch of arable land, mountains of natural resources, the best river network in the world, and is populated mostly by high-IQ Europeans. You (assuming you are American) are playing with cheats on.

If we're going to assign moral failings to individuals based on the countries they live in, then you are a failson being constantly bailed out by daddy's trust fund.

There's a great quote from a Tom Wolfe book along these lines...

“Like more than one Englishman in New York, he looked upon Americans as hopeless children whom Providence had perversely provided with this great swollen fat fowl of a continent. Any way one chose to relieve them of their riches, short of violence, was sporting, if not morally justifiable, since they would only squander it in some tasteless and useless fashion, in any event.”

As an American, I'm a little defensive but... there is some truth in that. I admit that we were very, very lucky with our geographically- some might say supernaturally blessed. And our foreign policy has often been naive to the point of stupidity (sending factory equipment to the USSR, or granting China trade advantages come to mind). Our intelligence operations often result in embarassing failures, and Hollywood routinely portrays ourselves as evil.

Nonetheless, we do have some strengths that aren't just luck. I won't bother to list them here, I think anyone can think of a few. The 21st century will be interesting though...

American wealth explosion hasn’t come from those advantages. Poland, Israel, Australia, Taiwan, S Korea, Japan do not have those advantages.

UK is falling behind a lot of places that lack those resources. You can’t blame the fall of say Jaguar on natural resources. Or the very high electricity prices in Uk on natural resources. The last business plan I knew of for UK was basically to run ME and some Russian wealth but then that got moved to Dubai.

Mexico is not a third world country approaching second world. It's a solid second world country with pockets of both third world conditions and modern, albeit relatively poor, first world societies. The latter are mostly the ones actually bordering the United States; the former are very far away. This isn't way back when; Mexico is a normal middle income country which has its fair share of problems but is not, like, an actual third world shithole.

Do you have any thoughts on the best ways to fix Mexico's problems?

There probably isn’t an easy way to do it. I doubt bukelism would work well there, because the cartels are too sophisticated and too entrenched in local power structures(there’s also lots of eg corrupt unions and normal nominally legal companies and the like). It’ll probably get better over time just due to inertia; non-cartel economic opportunities(and the cartels operate a huge grey market economy- everything from pirated movies to groceries) are much more common and much better than they used to be, thanks to US investment, and cartels are starting to realize that random directionless terror violence doesn’t actually benefit them. But they still operate under a logic(often insane troll logic, with stuff like human sacrifices and witchcraft) that rewards violence and terror, thé Mexican army has a 50% desertion rate and corrupt officers who sell equipment to them, and public appetite for a sustained counter insurgency campaign is pretty low due to the casualties involved.

It’s possible that if the U.S. decided to kill every hard drug user in our borders, thé cartels would see a permanent decline in revenue and thus influence. But the cartels also operate like standard organized crime syndicates and control 40% of the country(thats leaving out the parts controlled by auto defensas or folk socialist movements- thé Mexican government prefers the cartels to either but lacks the ability to really stop any of the three). They’re not totally dependent on US drug revenue, and the Mexican police are shitty, incompetent, and corrupt so they aren’t really a replacement for cartel rule.

Interesting take; I know you're in Texas. The last time I was in Mexico was in the 70s.

I still have unpleasant stereotypes of early 2000s drug cartel victims hung from overpasses in my mind just based on readings and media exposure.

Edit: Second sentence is worded sloppily.

Very high crime rates and an ongoing insurgency driven by organized crime using terror tactics are one of its many problems, yes. It's still far preferred to other parts of Latin America, going by revealed preferences.

Mexico is not in any way a "second world" country. Those descriptors are pretty much obsolete, but the Second World was the Communist Bloc. Mexico is an upper-middle-income country by modern classifications, same as China.

In conventional use, second world country refers to an industrialized middle income country.

Reality doesn't grade on a curve. It doesn't matter why the US is great and powerful, or whether it is fair. What matters is that it is, and the UK is not. The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must.

The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must.

It's a shame that series of books ends its coverage in 411BC. Dramatic irony like that deserves its payoff.

I think you misunderstand my (and I think Corvos') point. I wasn't arguing that the US wasn't playing fair. No country has ever played fair, but right now the US is playing stupidly by alienating its allies and neighbours.

Trump will never get Greenland, but he has managed to piss off an entire continent by acting like a petulant toddler because it hasn't simply been handed to him. And as far as I can tell, he only wants Greenland because he didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize and because it looks big on the Mercator projection.

Whatever the US' strategic aims are in the future once the Mad King dies, the country's ability to achieve those aims has been, potentially, permanently damaged.

And as far as I can tell, he only wants Greenland because he didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize and because it looks big on the Mercator projection.

The Nobel prize thing is probably the most farcical part of this whole circus. If Trump thought that the Nobel Peace prize committee of all groups was going to elevate him with that sort of honour, he's a lot less bright than I thought.

If Trump thought that the Nobel Peace prize committee of all groups was going to elevate him with that sort of honour, he's a lot less bright than I thought.

I mean, they've given it for literally nothing before. Trump is smart enough to understand the work rules, but so narcissistic he seethes about the pettiness instead of moving on.

More comments

Removing the last and a good chunk of the second-last part scraps the deal and you will need to enforce it with full coercion and foil all attempts at getting out from under the boot. It is symptomatic of Trump's foreign policy that he complains about the lack of local populism and cultural protection, then immediately makes the parties that agree with him look like cucks.

The UK doesn't have great alternatives just now. Any attempt to build bridges with Europe seems to run into Macron trying to cuck Britain even further. Maybe this sort of thinking is why the current government is being relatively accommodating to China's new embassy?

I would imagine so, yes. Juggling multiple 'allies' is a difficult job and I fully expect the UK to beclown ourselves trying, but we've got to.

I am fairly sure you are Indian and not native

He's Russian, with pretty strong opinions on India.

Yet another time where location flags would be helpful here.

My location flag would display 🇦🇷 (assuming no VPNs, which I often use) and I'd be accused of being a brown third worldist anyway.

tfw when you're a Russian living in one of the whitest countries in the world, but still get accused of being a brown third worldist

Yes, a Russian in Argentina, an Indian in the U.S., or a Chinese in Canada all render such a system unworkable.

🇯🇵

A user who wants to put biographical information on his profile page or in his flair can do so in his account settings.

Don't encourage me, I'd probably get myself kicked off for good and all for infringing the canons of taste as to what is good, beautiful, and seemly.

You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

This is straightforwardly true. The problem is that it runs the other way also. The political problem facing Red Tribe has been obvious for some time:

  • We have to win a conflict against Blue Tribe, or we will be ruled for the foreseeable future by people who hate us.
  • We have to fund our side of this conflict out of our own pockets.
  • Blue Tribe funds themselves out of our tax money.
  • Blue Tribe is allied with the Blue-Tribe analogues in pretty much every Euro country, most of which are also funded to a considerable degree out of our tax money.
  • Those allied Blue-Tribe-analogues have already won their tribal fight in their home countries, so completely that their operations are effectively uncontested
  • Those Blue-Tribe-analogues interfere directly in our domestic politics in ways that give our Blue Tribe additional considerable advantages.
  • Those Blue-Tribe analogues have repeatedly and obviously broken some of the rules we care about the most, and have been openly and quite effectively coordinating to help Blue Tribe break those same rules.

As the man says, Integration became the source of our subordination. European governments have been actively cooperating with Blue Tribe to close the door on us and our values for at least the last decade. We have already been fighting them for at least the last decade. There is very little hope that this will change, and there is very little observable value in maintaining a situationship that will never, ever break to our advantage.

The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP—the architecture of collective problem solving — are greatly diminished.

Yeah, that's sort of the point, isn't it? Why do I want this "architecture of collective problem solving" stronger, when in fact a lot of the "collective problems" it "solves" appear to involve my tribe's continued existence?

I am not sure who's going to be American ally in WWIII now.

How about we sit WWIII out? I for one am not particularly interested in seeing the sons of my friends and family fed into a droneswarm Armageddon.

Five years ago, even two years ago, it was taken as obvious that we (meaning primarily the US) were going to fight a major war with China and/or Russia. How does the above shift the probabilities, in your estimation? Do you think the crackup of the previous Rules-Based order makes an imminent fight with China less likely or more?

The obvious problem is economics. Does this end the Dollar as reserve currency? Does this crash the global economy? Are we Americans going to get super poor forever? ...I've been thinking about writing a post, collecting some of the economic predictions made here in the runup to the 2024 election, and comparing them to what's happened since, with comparison and contrast to the economic predictions about Brexit. To boil it down, I note that the economic predictions and even current assessments seem fundamentally unreliable, that the previous order seemed obviously unsustainable, and that the risk is worth it given the current trajectory.

I do not want America to rule the world, especially not if the version of "America" that rules is a Blue Tribe that has secured itself permanent unaccountable power. Even if it were my tribe ascendent, the value seems quite limited. I do not want to be subjugated by the Chinese, but I do not want to fight a major war with them either, and my assessment is that as of a year ago, pretty much everyone in this forum considered such a war to be an obvious inevitability. And for what? I do not want my country to be poorer, but I note that our previous economic model seemed to have very obvious problems that only ever got worse, and the only solution anyone could even begin to imagine was to keep doing the same things even harder, as pressure built toward an inevitable blowout.

I wanted change. This is change. It is scary and somewhat horrifying change... but it's not obvious what the alternative was supposed to be, and what seem to me to be plausible guesses seem worse.

...

Here you go. Or perhaps that's not a "serious manner"? Do you disagree that the BBC and the social consensus it represents is deeply hostile to America's Red Tribe?

...

Another example of was the concerted push of 2024 to enact the EU Digital Safety Act and bring the EU regulatory machine to bear on US social medial platform. With the implicit, if not explicit goal of shutting down and Red Tribe speech and hurt electoral prospects. The only reason this didn’t happen was Trump getting elected and having leverage over them. I have no doubt they will try again as soon as they are able. It would not surprise me in the least bit if deep state cutouts like the National Endowment for Democracy actively and publicly were involved.

...

US blue tribe is something like 75% of your 'intelligent' people.

I think that the fact that you feel comfortable expressing this is further evidence that @FCfromSSC is correct to view this conflict as an existential one.

Intelligent or not, they're still actively hostile towards the founding principles of this nation and must be fought if the Republic is to endure.

I agree with your points. And I think it supports FC’s well articulated post. Europe is a leverage point for US blue tribe. Red Tribe should not let them have that uncontested.

And while I might like to see NED go, it’s fairly remarkable things like NED and USAID are even getting news articles. There is at least one person in the administration that is clued in.

Edit:I don’t agree with the intelligent people jab, honestly. I’m born and raised in a blue area but spent a decent amount of time doing business with industry in red tribe areas. It’s actually a trope to see the junior people on my team act shocked when they realize the engineer, who they can barely understand through the southern/rural accent, is a a brilliant engineer or some other SME.

...

That chart shows something, but one of those things is that conservative families put making donations as the wife’s responsibility.

There was this story about members of the UK labour party volunteering for Harris. It probably doesn't amount to an example of the British Government getting directly involved but I'd say it's pretty poor form nevertheless.

I've said before that I had stopped posting here because it's a purely American Affairs Discussion community

That's just not true. American concerns are the super-majority of content and discussion here, but that's a consequence of local demographics. On a site that's probably >70% American, what else would you expect? That doesn't mean that other nations don't get their due, China, the Yookay and miscellaneous contenders for the lightcone show up with regularity.

At any rate, it's unfortunate that Trump's term (has it only been a year?) overlaps with modal estimates for AGI, but I doubt his cantankerous attitude towards international diplomacy will persist afterwards. I have no idea who the Democrats will dig up, but Vance, while flawed, seems more sensible. This isn't mutually exclusive with tensions with China continuing to ratchet up, but less frank retardation would be nice to see, and I do expect to see it.

Vance is being discarded in favor of Rubio. There is a reason he was absent (and it isn't the pregnancy announcement) today.

Rubio is likeable, clearly smart, kinda white and kinda hispanic. He is one of the few pre-Trump Republicans who survived the purge and doesn't have a brown wife.

doesn't have a brown wife

JD and Usha are going to have their fourth child (like a good Catholic boy). What are you doing about "not enough babies being born"? 😁

Rubio is the one with a real job and specific powers. It just happens that his job is particularly in focus right now.

Vance has a very vaguely defined job and nothing much to do right now. It doesn't change the fact that he's still a very important person and the most likely next Republican candidate for president.

Rubio publicly supported Vance as Trump's successor a while ago on Fox News. Vance isn't being discarded for anything (he just isn't welcome at a European meetup.)

I do not think Vance is being discarded so much as he is serving a very specific role. He is the Sargent Major of Trump's officer corps. IE the "top-kick", the guy who's job it is to get in people's faces and say the things you can't say for reasons of diplomacy.

His altercations with Zelensky and Scholz, along with his statements in the wake of Charlie Kirk's killing were all representative of this.

Yeah, one of complaints about how difficult it was to run the Harris campaign is that the VP isn't supposed to do much of anything on their own (and she complained a lot about being kept out of things by Biden/Biden's side of the White House) so there weren't any Big Achievements they could point to as "elect her for more like this" (and so in part why she couldn't cut herself completely free of what Biden had done, because then it would be "so what did you do?" "uh, nothing, I was never Border Czar, that's a dirty falsehood!"). Then in her own book she was making it very clear that a VP was supposed to stay in the background and be supportive, hence why Shapiro's ambition disqualified him.

It's a bit like being the heir to the throne, as we saw with the decades Charles was waiting; you can't really do anything of your own since your job is "take over if something happens to the main person" and if you do try anything it reflects on the main person, so you have to stand around twiddling your thumbs and trying to find for yourself something small-scale enough that it won't be seen as infringing on the main job but interesting/useful enough that it's worth doing it.

Hasn't this been the primary role of the VP historically? To be the president's attack dog and to commit "gaffes" that are actually trial balloons in disguise? He's supposed to be the bad cop in the duo.

It's varied for different President and VP pairs this is absolutely the dynamic for Trump and Vance. @DirtyWaterHotDog sees that Vance isn't going to Davos and assumes that he must be getting shunned for having a brown wife. It doesn't occur to him to ask where Vance is going because he already has a conclusion that flatters his sensibilities.

Meanwhile Vance is off to Minnesota to shake hands with Law-Enforcement officers, wave the flag for the red team, and serve a subpoena to Mayor Frey. Simple fact is that the World Economic Forum is a side show as far as most Americans are concerned.

The bettors think otherwise, giving odds of 50 percent for Vance versus just 16 percent for Rubio—though Rubio's odds have doubled recently.

With Trump out of the picture there's going to be a brutal factional fight and such factional fights are unpredictable.

Vance has no native support base, but that might be an asset if it helps him present himself as a compromise candidate between different factions. The establishment state level GOP's are mostly lined up behind Abbott, not Rubio. And Rubio himself has the benefit of being able to run as the sane man in the Trump admin- either 'it would go better with me in charge of the same agenda' or 'I did that, brought all those victories'.

So Canada wants to become economically reliant on China instead of being economically reliant on the USA. Yes, I'm sure that will work out splendidly.

I say this as someone from a country that is so economically dependent on US multinationals that if they decide to leave, or even just scale back a lot, we're hosed.

I don't think cosying up to China is going to protect anyone; give them influence over your internal politics and you will be dancing to their tune. Remembering the fears of Japanese world domination in the 80s which didn't come true, China is a different matter. They use the West as a dumping ground for goods (Temu, Shein, every darn thing I order off UK Amazon is Made in China, Made in China, Made in China), they're expanding into Western markets with things like electric vehicles, and they haven't been shy about setting up their own darn police stations in countries around the world.

Running away from the USA to the arms of China is running from the frying pan into the fire.

Canada's position as a middling power is self-inflicted.

Post-melt, Canada's geographic position is as strong as the US. It too is a blessed land, that can sustain any level of ambition.

They can pump more oil. They can build arctic ports. They can mine rare earths. They can be agriculturally self-sufficient. They have some many options. They even have a sufficient number of elite engineering institutions to sustain local excellence. European and Asian middling-powers are constrained by what their land can support. Canada has no such limitation.

Post-melt, Canada's geographic position is as strong as the US. It too is a blessed land, that can sustain any level of ambition.

Yes, when all the ice melts and frees up the land. Until then, some places are paying through the nose for a head of lettuce. That's not really the same as "The USA has reshaped its farming economy so you, the consumer, can eat any damn thing you want all year round at an acceptable price".

Lettuce explain
Lettuce, really? But yes, the leafy green salad filler shot up in November straight into the No. 2 spot for annual increases on grocery items.

The price of lettuce increased 26.8 per cent compared to November last year, and 25.5 per cent compared to October alone. It's reminiscent of 2022, when lettuce prices jumped so high that some restaurants had to take greens off the menu.

So, what happened?

Southern California, which produces most of the lettuce for North America in November, had a tough season, according to Michael von Massow, a food agriculture professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario.

Producers had problems with disease and weather, which affected quality and yield, he says.

"When there is an issue in Southern California, prices get dramatically affected because there's not a good place to substitute it from," von Massow told CBC News.

But he says he expects to see a price correction soon, because production moved farther east into Arizona in December, will keep shifting into Florida in January, then continue up the Eastern Seaboard.

Talk to me again about "as strong as the USA" when we're not reading news stories about "lettuce is so expensive restaurants are taking it off the menu".

Canada does not, however, have the people for that, nor does it have the wise and reasoned management to grow their population to such a point.

Stephen Harper and his immigration system are weeping.

Running away from the USA to the arms of China is running from the frying pan into the fire.

What other options would you suggest? If you're a middle power, the only thing you can do is play the great powers off each other and hope you don't get mulched

Europe neutered itself after the war, and it turns out Fukuyama was wrong (or rather, everyone ignored his hedging at the end). They get mulched either way because they gave up any semblance of civilizational power; now, do they want to be burgers or mapo tofu?

Europe neutered itself after the war,

Well, the US had a part to play in that neutering.

Fair enough; how much role did the US play in influencing the EU's structuring?

Oh, we're all between the Devil and the deep blue sea, but being a little too enthusiastic about the arranged marriage (before you've even locked in the intended groom) is not a good look. "Yes, I am totally happy to be traded off with no say! Look at my wide smile, ignore my desperate eyes!"

This is either concern trolling or depressing lack of confidence.
It's fine if you accept your own subjugation, but it's not a healthy human condition. Maybe your country shouldn't exist as a nation if it's non-viable on its own, and you should apply to become a state. Would be more dignified.

Canada likely is viable. Resisting Chinese influence is significantly easier than American one – no shared language, no blood ties, no border, for starters. As can be seen, even Russia, which is constantly mocked as «Chinese resource colony», in fact is anything but and conducts whatever loony policy it wants. Canadian goal, in any case, is not «become economically reliant on China instead of being economically reliant on the USA» but to increase the share of non-US trade, principally with China, import Chinese industrial technology, become more competitive in the world that's coming, and build military deterrence and alliances. The alternative is to let the US fully dismantle your economy, complete its demoralization campaign, and then absorb your territory.

If you cannot even conceive of a nation executing this and only offer false dichotomies between patrons, then I repeat, again, you don't have what it takes to have a nation.

You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

laughs in equalization payments and election results

Projecting much, Carney?

Canadian goal, in any case, is

"try for a few years, figure out it's much harder than we thought, succeed anyway, but just as soon as we've figured it out drop the project and just let the Empire do it instead". This is the historical pattern for Canadian development- I think it's an HBD thing given it's been a near-constant over 150 years of the nation's existence.

So no, I don't think Canada (in its current form) has what it takes to have a nation, apart from perhaps a strategic location that made it quite difficult for a pre-industrial US to invade and the differing culture that grew up around that. The West might, because/but the West is not Canada.

The alternative is to let the US fully dismantle your economy, complete its demoralization campaign, and then absorb your territory.

I don't think the people of Ontario have any other realistic option considering how much of their economy depends on manufacturing for American firms. They won't be manufacturing anything for China, obviously; they might get away with it for Europe since energy is 1/10th the cost here, but that's more "competes favorably with Germany" than anything else.

Remember, Canadian politics are unique in that the nation has always been a protectorate of the dominant world empire. When that was Britain, we were a British protectorate; once they were defeated, we became an American protectorate instead. Our politics are still a mix of the two.

Maybe your country shouldn't exist as a nation if it's non-viable on its own, and you should apply to become a state. Would be more dignified.

laughs in jingoistic Boomer And to think the US thinks it has problems with this- but in the US, these guys are on the Red side, while everywhere else has them on the Blue side.

increase the share of non-US trade, principally with China, import Chinese industrial technology, become more competitive in the world that's coming, and build military deterrence and alliances

Congratulations on being absorbed like Tibet, which is now "it was always Chinese territory and has always been Chinese, apart from the time the barbarian tribes over-ran things, but then we fixed it again". The Chinese Province of Canada will excellently be part of cultural showpieces of ethnic minorities folk dance for tourism trade!

Brother/sister/sibling in Christ, it's precisely because we're a small nation with a dominant larger neighbour that I know about being eaten culturally and economically. Yes, looking for support from a larger ally (as we have done with the EU) is very good for survival, but that only works because we can cobble together common interests and heritage with the EU. If we ran off to the Chinese, I'd expect us to be not even a morsel on their plate.

Congratulations on being absorbed like Tibet

Really now? Canada, being absorbed like Tibet, by China? Because of trade? Even while the Secretary of the Treasury of the US openly wants to take Alberta?

That's the threat model?

This gibberish gets +10?

Can you clarify something, so I'm not making assumptions that are incorrect?

In one of your comments, you said you are non-Western. What do you mean by that?

(1) I'm a Slav, baby, we're not you effete Westerners (2) I'm not European (3) I'm Indian/Chinese/Martian

I'm a Russian. It's not about being effete or not. While Russia is a «European» country in most ways that matter taxonomically, it's obviously not part of the Western cultural and political space.

Now what does this have to do with the profound absurdity of your threat model?

Okay, so the next time you write in the persona of "I'm a non-white non-Westerner and this is why China is so groovy ooh do you think Xi-laoshi will be my boyfriend?" I'll know how seriously to take you.

Okay, so the next time you write in the persona of "I'm a non-white non-Westerner

What are you talking about?

More comments

What are the chances that the Canadians, Europeans, etc., actually do anything to decouple from the Americans? Zilch, I think. They’re all pretending to #resist. After all, that’s what their people demanded, no more, no less. At best, they’re hoping Trumpism will be gone in three years and they can go back to business as usual. Maybe the French actually do have a spine, idk. I guess if this trend outlasts this presidency, then we might see some actual, substantive changes in transatlantic relationships. But nothing that’s happened so far is very reassuring.

Kinda hard to blame them, honestly. What do they have against American might? Sending a platoon to Greenland is pathetic. Cozying up to China won’t help either. The Chinese didn’t care about the Syrians, Venezuelans, Iranians, or random Central American countries we’re allegedly courting. We certainly won’t care about Europe just for Europe’s sake. Then there are the Russians in the picture, and it’s pretty unclear if the Russians or the Europeans are more reliable or competent as partners for China. Unclear what benefit we might get from ditching the Russians.

Judging Europe by the last 80 years is like judging the France by its WWII performance. It's the subcontinent that started and fought in both officially recognized world wars, regularly fought each other in other world-spanning wars throughout the nineteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Oh, and they were world-spanning because in the seventeenth and the sixteenth centuries it colonized the rest of the world, genociding whatever local resistance it encountered.

You think Europeans are too weak to fight their wars, but they are pliable. They have incredible trust in their governments. A year of propaganda and they will be marching in lockstep.

I'm not European so I'm genuinely asking -- is this still true? Will all the migrants also march lockstep to government propaganda? Is there even any possible messaging that could work on both natives and migrants? Will the native populations still march in lockstep when they notice a suspicious lack of Pakistani, Afghan, Turkish or Nigerian faces the conscription office?

The natives likely will, the migrants…might, and will find it hard not to. The government is quite capable of exerting its will on migrants and immigrant communities when it wants to, it’s only that it usually doesn’t want to or thinks it isn't worth it. I think many migrants would leave but I don’t think they’d be able to get out of going to war if they stayed.

The whole thing might collapse after a few years like America in Vietnam as the tensions within the nation come back to the surface. Depends on the exact war.

The government is quite capable of exerting its will on migrants and immigrant communities when it wants to

Any examples?

The UK at least seems much more eager to throw natives in jail over tweets than risk letting the migrants think they're disfavored for more than a few minutes.

The UK

The UK has a different legal tradition to Continental Europe and of course rather notably isn't part of EU. They are in general not representative of the rest of Europe in anything when it comes to laws (anyone using UK as an example of European laws almost certainly has an agenda to grind and isn't participating in good faith).

Here in Finland there was a notable case involving a blog post (written as and literally titled "a bait to the chief prosecutor") which in the end lead to a trivial fine and the author getting voted into the parliament and eventually becoming the leader of the then second largest party in the parliament (because of the resulting large publicity). A rather different outcome from "throwing natives in jail over tweets".

The UK has a different legal tradition to Continental Europe and of course rather notably isn't part of EU

Still beholden, though, to the ECHR, and I'm not sure the degree to which the stuff like "we have to protect rapists because his home country will treat him badly" is homegrown UK idiocy or downstream of ECHR idiocy. That was the other thing I had in mind.

There's also Germany's interesting relationship to speech and democracy, but I hear there's some historic reasons there that don't necessarily apply to the rest of Western Europe.

Ireland is still part of the EU and has had some... issues... but I suppose is closer to the UK's legal tradition than Continental, though occasionally they try to do whatever the opposite of the UK is out of spite.

Here in Finland there was a notable case involving a blog post

I'm not sure the Nordics count very well for generalized European purposes either, given Denmark's... Denmarkness. Then again Sweden is at the opposite end of that spectrum. But I don't think it's bad faith to cite them even so.

To be fair, I was talking about the UK.

No, this is my prediction based on the fact that the government are literally, physically, perfectly capable of applying the same treatment to migrants. They just haven't. There might be pushback, riots etc. but most riots get put down with water cannons eventually. I do not think we lack actual state capacity if we ever decide to us it. The level of migrants in the UK is maybe 10% and if we are talking about conscription then that is a lot of force that can be applied to the task.

...

At best, they’re hoping Trumpism will be gone in three years and they can go back to business as usual.

Pretty safe bet imo, good choice on civilizational time scales.

The fact that there's so little noise about Trump's external political decisions coming from the Blue tribe should be a clear sign to Europeans, Canadians, and others that they can't just weather the storm

Safe bet that trump will be gone. The bet that the next democratic administration will care about what europeans think about them like Obama is anything but safe. Whether MAGA wins or loses - Europe has lost USA respect. And it will show no matter who is in the white house.

Indeed, Newsom has almost gone full Trump on this issue.

Everyone enormously underestimates Europe. In reality American advantage is mostly psychological, just like the European disadvantage. We presume they cannot act rationally, or will only act rationally for a while, unwillingly, to snap back at the first opportunity. I think this centrist-Atlanticist regime was already pretty strained, what with the rise of right-wingers, deportation frenzy in Denmark (hilariously, a far more Aryan and National Socialist nation than the US will ever be, and yet accused by 56 percenters of demographic suicide), general Euroskepticism. If they do not course-correct and accept further open humiliation – and never before has it been more open – the whole political project of the EU just implodes, all the way to dissolution, at least we'll see unironic neonazis polling at >10%, and the center moves to the right.
And if they course-correct, then career trajectories for apparatchiks change robustly. They've already been course-correcting thanks to Russian threat, militarizing (Americans may not understand that they're both paying for the war now and ramping up production), changing attitude.

Trump isn't going anywhere within the next 3 years, most likely. Plenty of time to fix Europe.

What do they have against American might?

Trillions in treasuries and stocks, the largest American export market for high-margin goods (and good luck peddling American garbage to poorer countries who aren't ideologically opposed to China), ASML, Zeiss and a lot of other frontier technological nodes. They are militarily weak but they (well, France) have nuclear deterrence, unlike everyone the US likes to bully. They could reroute supply chains (rein in Ukrainians, accept Russian exports again, more EU-side JVs with China as Macron proposes) and kick the legs out from under the fraudulent American world-system. They are not actually obligated to just take this shit. It's a habit. So if Americans know what's good for them, they should shut Trump up and try to reinforce the habit again.

...

Everyone enormously underestimates Europe.

Importing masses of net-negative people with no interest in assimilation, no interest from above on assimilating or otherwise dealing with them (Denmark excluded, sure), and seemingly no sufficiently strong sense of a cultural mythos willing to accept the tragic mode of politics looks like a fair set of reasons to underestimate Europe. Managed decline and moral signaling was a choice, and so they can make a new choice, but is it too late?

Maybe Macron or some other French leader could step up with an iron fist and pave a new path for Europe and European identity, but it would require a lot more sacrifice and suffering than the average European has any guts for (says the American, of course).

What's the actual path from here to there that isn't just exchanged the US for China as the new boss? How do they regain a cultural attitude that actually justifies the smugness instead of running off century-old fumes?

The last time the Germans unified Europe, the Americans invaded and crushed them.

That's also part of why the Fourth Reich can't do this like the Third did, by the way- the Fourth is mostly just controlled opposition. And the Eurocrats know that, which is why they make efforts to [quite literally] cry about how unfair that is while changing nothing domestically (they're holding out hope for a Blue win in the US so things can go back to normal).

And the problem with European "progress" is just like Canadian progress- it defines itself by opposition to [things that would create competition for elites, but would make the rest of the country prosper], and their people clamor for this approach. So other than going full Nazi again- which is unlikely (migrants are HBD selected for their relative unwilling to fight for principles) there's very little hope for them.

The last time the Germans unified Europe, the Americans invaded and crushed them.

...and there are those that would say that the greatest tragedy of mid-20th century is that we (the West) didn't finish the job. We not only allowed half of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact to survive, we allowed them to profit handsomely from their war of conquest, and continue to wage war against us for an additional half-century.

And if they course-correct, then career trajectories for apparatchiks change robustly. They've already been course-correcting thanks to Russian threat, militarizing (Americans may not understand that they're both paying for the war now and ramping up production), changing attitude.

Trump isn't going anywhere within the next 3 years, most likely. Plenty of time to fix Europe.

If things go as well as you say, ironically I think we'd be obligated to build a statue to Trump for waking us the hell up.

I guess I should have given the Europeans more credit. Yes, they are technologically competent, and yes, they do hold trillions of dollars in assets which, if leveraged well, could seriously challenge the Americans. But I don’t have any trust in their will. The EU is as fragmented as ever, headed by incompetent, out-of-touch bureaucrats (I’m thinking of the likes of Kaja Kallas or von der Leyen) who care more about pretending more than anything. There is a serious coordination problem in the EU, and from my limited understanding, there is no obvious solution or resolve to fix it. Maybe the European countries that are not a joke, i.e., France and Germany, plus a few more like the Netherlands (and absolutely excluding the Baltics, if they want to maintain any solidarity. Imagine letting bureaucrats from Ningxia to turn China into an Islamic state), could come together to actually reassert themselves as credible powers alongside the US, China, and (to a lesser extent) Russia. I’m not well-informed enough to see if that’s actually possible, or if anyone is pushing for it.

Also, what percentage of Europeans think of themselves as Europeans or as nationals of their own country first and foremost, as opposed to some flavor of “world citizen”? All my limited interactions with actual Europeans, inside or outside of work (heavily biased, of course; I live in a blue bubble) give off this “Civis Romanum sum” feel, even if they will occasionally say “… in GERMANY”. Do they care about their own country, let alone Europe, more than the “rules-based international order”?

Reply

What is this dumb take on the Baltics? Probably the whitest countries in the block and are actually policy wise one of the harshest on non-white immigration (Estonia caps non-EU immigration at 0.1%, and that is from the same parties that the librul Kallas for example represents). If you are butthurt about foreign policy approach regarding Russia, then it is no different from Poland.

I’m not talking about how white a country is, nor do I care. You can have your nice white ethnostate, good for you (and good for us in an abstract “ethnostates are not intrinsically evil” sense) but I mostly don’t give a shit. I’m also not butthurt about its foreign policy toward Russia. That doesn’t concern me. What I care about is my own country, China (and the US since I have vested interest in it).

What I dislike is a puny, joke of a country playing with fire, pretending to stand up to a big bully, while conveniently hiding behind others.

What I’m really talking about is a major multinational organization being hijacked by narrow special interests. The Baltics have their own axes to grind with Russia, and that’s completely understandable. But appointing their incompetent politicians to run EU diplomacy is just sad.

What is the basis of believing that the multinational organization has been hijacked by narrow special interests? Just because EU has taken a stronger stance against Russia doesn't mean it is the result of Baltic hijacking. I'm not personally biggest fan of Kallas either, but he isn't doing really anything out of lockstep with major EU powers. If there is any conflict, it is probably a convenient conflict (as in organizations it is sometimes good to have a good/bad cop combination).

The EU is fine to take a "stronger" stance against Russian. Russian launched invasion on European land on a massive scale at the expense of their own people and their cultural and genetic siblings (and for some who cares, white people), and it's incredibly sad to see given what these people could have achieved, artistic or scientific. Utter tragedy, like how I would hate to see missiles hitting Taipei. I have my own grievances against the Russians, especially on how they changed the ethnic makeup of Outer Manchuria, and by extension I sympathize with people who want to resist the Russian imposing their brutal approach on other people. But the question is not if the EU should take a stronger stance. It is how strong these stances are, and how effective they are. I don't believe the like of Kallas, who is fanatically against approaching the Russians at any cost, to have the EU best interest in mind.

"“What is it for?” repeated Kallas, who could count on the support of several other Eastern European countries. "

"Kaja Kallas criticises Europe’s reliance on Russian energy and says gas pipeline to Germany should be scrapped"

But also this, which I consider unserious: EU top diplomat: We don’t need a European army. “We need 27 European armies that are capable and can effectively work together to deter our rivals and defend Europe,” says Kaja Kallas.

Are the German concerns wrt energy not legitimate, or not important for the EU when they are one of the major economical driver in the union? The German lost that debate anyways, because of the pressure exerted by said Eastern European Countries. You mentioned Poland that I have not listed in the joke countries list, that's because I don't know Poland, aside from their equally rabid hatred towards the Russians (again, no problem with that given what the Russians did together with the Germans to them, just that they also need to think of the Germans and the French who are likely going to suffer from their hostility towards Russians beyond what their people ask for). I could put them on the list if you want, again I simply don't care as much.

My biggest issue with them is again with how they deal with China. The Chinese did "support" the Russians in the sense that we export more crap in exchange for more of their fuel at better price when they are bleeding dry on a fight with (in my opinion) their own people. The Chinese however did not explicitly support the Russians with drones, weapons, etc. that is beyond what I would consider normal business. Russian drone production capability is a joke, Russian drone supply, a joke, compared to China. If we have indeed supported them with any seriousness but not the usual indifference, the Ukrainians will have much more serious trouble. That doesn't seem to concern people like Kallas, who see any trade with Russian as provocative, and thus we're becoming a collateral damage between her and her archnemesis. Again feel free to do that in the Baltics. But pretending it does not hijack the German or the French interest in the EU is wrong.

They could reroute supply chains (rein in Ukrainians, accept Russian exports again, more EU-side JVs with China as Macron proposes)

Besides any fiscal issues, there's the problem of coordinating "Europeans" to do this. France may want to cool down the Ukraine thing and welcome Russia back but is it what Poland thinks is wise?

but is it what Poland thinks is wise?

Even those among us rabid enough to talk of Russians, literally and casually, as subhuman asiatic menace, see that the window of opportunity for the final solution to the Russian problem is gone.

Our situation deteriorated badly. To be an American client in a war with Russia is to be locked in a doomed meat grinder for years. Patron transactional, disinterested in direct involvement, hungry for bargaining chips; compromised weapons, compromised procurement, empty guarantees that welcome testing. We only really have the professional army and nothing else, we are not like the Fins, and not getting there either.

Also the goal of "keeping Russia outside of the European system", a staple of our strategic thought, such that it is, looks a little retarded and suicidal when it dawns on you what the trajectory of China is.

That we can only rely on regional allies is already common in our discourse. That reintegration of Russia is better than becoming hosts for the European Zone of Armed Hostilities in the eternal struggle between Greater Eastasia and United Atlantic States, I think is an easy case to make. Jokes aside, reintegration is a better shot at long term stability.

If Poland wants to sabotage strategic security of major Western European nations, they can do well without the European market. But I think it's not so hard to satisfy Poles. France should give them security guarantees, and generally expand their influence. Anyway American backing is already non-credible, and Europe is paying for its own defense. Poles will be fine with it, I think. They are not constitutional American slaves, it's always been transactional. The real problem is Baltics and American agents like Kallas.

Russia is also unnecessary in the long run, Canada can satisfy much of the European energy demand and Carney offers this openly.

People assume there will be no political will to implement reforms to resist open subjugation. I recommend you listen to how Trump is talking – if you swallow this, you might as well just apply for being a State. But they don't want that. Policies are already changing, and very rapidly. Merz talks of Russia being a «European country».

France should give Poland security guarantees

Historically that has worked out so well for Poland in deterring invasion. And for France, for that matter.

But I think it's not so hard to satisfy Poles. France should give them security guarantees

American security guarantees =/= French security guarantees, especially since you admit that European hard power is, as it stands, underbuilt. That may change faster than I imagine but it isn't the case now and that colors things.

With Americans, that sort of problem is obviously lessened which is what made their guarantees so credible. You can't necessarily crib from their notes right now

Merz talks of Russia being a «European country».

I mean, he's German. Germans have not, within my lifetime, been the Russophobic country. They're the country Russophobic countries tell not to build pipelines to Russia.

If anything Russia's forays into Ukraine are just interrupting what was a seemingly mutually beneficial relationship.

The engagement with China is a common theme, spearheaded by Carney. His partnership with China in particular is prompting Americans to fantasize of seizing Alberta. Maybe that'll happen too.

If the American-led, rules-based liberal international order is collapsing, why would Canada be allowed to sidle up to China? The assumption that that is something it can do is the ALRBLIO.

What would the US do to stop them? Mass seizure of financial assets? A blockade? Decapitation strike? Invasion?

There is still an order, which is the order of reality. And although the US is very powerful, it's not infinitely powerful. All of those would rapidly result in the whole world looking for a better deal with a new protector.

Beijing is far away. Washington is right next door, and will always be right next door. That was a lesson Caracas should have internalized prior to January 3rd, and if Ottawa doesn't realize that, they'll be in for a rough time. There's a lot of things that a sufficiently spiteful and motivated Washington can do to immiserate Canada short of an actual invasion, and the degradation of American hegemony across the planet will be very meager consolation.

Vietnam is also right next door to a regional hegemon (which has invaded it, in living memory) which also has the ability to immiserate it and militarily dominate it. And although it avoids poking the dragon when it can, it still is able to maintain real and significant independence.

I don't doubt that the US could turn Canada into a frozen hellscape if it were sufficiently motivated. But that threat isn't enough to get infinite pliability from Canadians, just as the Chinese threat of the same isn't enough to get infinite pliability from the Vietnamese. Both middle powers perceive that their respective hegemons are balancing multiple objectives and believe (correctly, in the Viet case) that the costs to other objectives prevent the maximal response.

Vietnam has a cultural identity. They have been actually resisting us, usually violently, for millennia. That resistance is part of their cultural identity too, as an antibody against being absorbed by China. Do Canadians have a cultural identity as strong as the Vietnamese, other than being Americans that also have Canadian passports?

Fun fact: the Vietnamese and the Koreans have to do this “emperor at home, king abroad” thing to avoid the Chinese messing with their country. The modern equivalent would be “the 51th state but with Canadian characteristics”. Kinda similar to what Trump wanted.

Do Canadians have a cultural identity as strong as the Vietnamese, other than being Americans that also have Canadian passports?

It's mostly that Canadians are poisonous, rather than venomous. The Son of Heaven could reasonably want the Vietnamese as his subjects, but nobody outside of DNC electoral strategists could actually want Canadians to become Americans, not without some way of restricting their franchise, their rights to speech and association, some kind of punitive regime around deodorant, and possibly executing Margaret Atwood. Alberta and Quebec are alright, though.

tbf not being American does seem to be the primary Canadian identity marker, followed by being suicidally 'nice' and saying "eh" a lot as you bathe in maple syrup.

But not nearly as long-term as the Vietnamese identity.

Even more punitive and damaging tariffs, fucking around with the upcoming USMCA negotiations, fucking with Canadians crossing the border, kicking out of Five Eyes, maybe sanctions for Canadian officials as individuals. Hell, even attempted retaliations would hurt Canada: pipelines to Eastern Canada pass through the US too .

All of those would rapidly result in the whole world looking for a better deal with a new protector.

I think it's one thing for France to try to be independent. Canada will find it hard to find anyone that could protect it from the US. Especially when there are existing issues with Chinese influence and espionage (not that China did Venezuela much good). It's a bit of a rock and hard place.

There's an irony in an American saying "just give up bro you can't do shit" when the nation was literally founded on the principle "fuck you, don't tell me what to do"

Liberty is important! And it's worth it when if it hurts

Liberty is important!

Anglo Canada's founding stock is specifically selected for people who don't think so.

due to the fact you weren't sufficiently liberty seeking in the 1700/1800s

More like "from the he 1700/1800s onwards"...

you don't get to be now

They can start any time they want, but actually being for liberty would involve repealing several laws they've passed, and probably prosecuting anyone who voted for them.

I'm neither American nor Canadian (though I have lived in the latter for a significant chunk of my life and my siblings were born and live in the US till now). Maybe that explains it.

America's jilted bitches still have a handful of trump cards up their sleeves too, like e.g. repealing the DMCA-equivalent legislation that they were treaty-compelled to pass, or, as was suggested elsewhere in the thread, giving China access to ASML's crown jewels. If the rest of the world stops honouring American copyright, what can they do? Build a great firewall of their own to stop the jailbreaks and pirate sites from washing back in, thus actually surrendering the soft power playing field to China?

Especially when there are existing issues with Chinese influence and espionage (not that China did Venezuela much good). It's a bit of a rock and hard place.

Does anyone outside of their Asian periphery actually have a problem with Chinese influence and espionage other than that it makes the Americans really unhappy?

It sounds like the US might be kicking themselves out of the Five Eyes in that scenario. Canada would have big problems, but if the remainder of our allies opt out in defiance, it's just One Eye.

Five Eyes has functionally just been Three Eyes for a long time. Canada and New Zealand's contributions are negligible relative to the contributions of the US, UK and Australia.

All of those would rapidly result in the whole world looking for a better deal with a new protector.

By their own admission, they are already doing this. American forbearance is so implicitly assumed that this is not anticipated to have any further negative consequences, I guess.

The Red Tribe basically won politically.

Oh, please. Even on the domestic front they're not really getting what was promised to them, and the international front is neither here nor there for them. They're giving Trump a permission slip to do whatever he wants as long as he doesn't fuck up, but that's not the same as him implementing their agenda(plus, he's kinda fucking up).

The thing that stands out for me in the UK is how we do not hear about anyone in America either opposing or really supporting Trump in this course of action. It seems it's up to him to turn a nation of 350 million people into a territorial aggressor, and few others can or will make themselves heard above his incredible attentional monopoly.

From afar it reads as Americans not caring either way, though I know this isn't actually the case. It makes me question why the US system doesn't feature an official leader of the opposition. There is a voice missing in this conversation that such a role would help to fill.

I think it’s useful to model the average American voter as not caring about foreign policy. The stances of the two major political parties are best read as coalition management tactics to keep specific demographic groups aligned. There is no pro or anti rules-based international order constituency.

Reuters/Ipsos poll:

QuestionYes (%)Not sure or skipped (%)No (%)
Do you think Greenland is territory that is strategically important to US interests?333532
Overall, do you approve of US efforts to acquire Greenland?173647
Do you think it would be a good idea for the US to use military force to take possession of Greenland from Denmark?42571
Do you think it would be a good idea or a bad idea for the US to build additional military bases on Greenland under an existing agreement?333729

I don't know whether that supports your claim.

It's funny because anyone who answered not sure or no to the first one should be disqualified in having an opinion about the whole thing to begin with; it's a question with an answer about as close to an objective factual answer in military and geopolitical terms (which of course is yes), as it's one of the boundaries of the crucial GIUK gap, control of which limits Russian access to the Atlantic. If someone doesn't think it's strategically important to deny Russian warships access to the Atlantic, then I really wonder WHAT they consider strategically important!

3rd question is missing important context (instead of purchasing it? if purchasing it fails? if Russia or China gain influence or control of part of the island?)

4th question is doing the opposite, it's typical media bullshit of using the poll as diffusion of information rather than measurement, the pollster is more interested in telling people that the US is allowed to build military bases on Greenland by an existing agreement than taking proper measure of public sentiment.

I'm also baffled by the 3% who don't think it's strategically important, but aren't sure the US shouldn't build more bases there.

Not that, as the majority of people failing on the first question shows, public sentiment on it can be expected to be very sophisticated.

If Trump said, “we have too many McDonald’s restaurants in this country. We should close some down and replace them with Burger King,” and then a poll came out that said only 4% of Americans support decreasing the number of McDonald’ss and increasing the number of Burger Kings, this would not indicate that Americans care deeply about fast food policy.

Before Trump started going off about Greenland, I'd be very surprised if a significant share of those respondents even knew that there was such a place, let alone finding it on a map.

The first game in the US remake of Squid Game could just be "Name three countries".

why the US system doesn't feature an official leader of the opposition

Notionally, this would be the House and Senate minority leaders (or majority if they held the houses). It's less-clear who "opposition" is than the UK system in some cases, though not at the moment since the House, Senate, and President are all red.

I don't have a good answer as for why they are being so quiet, though. Obvious candidates are recent leadership turnovers, ongoing great political realignments and internal party schisms (who are the base we're representing anyway?), and letting the Republicans make a mess of things that's clearly their own fault.

On the opposition side, I think the big problem is that they've realized Trump is a much better politician than anyone on their team. And much as when I roll in BJJ with an upper belt and he starts to do something I don't understand, my first instinct is to stop him from doing it because I'm sure it will be bad for me, the Democrats don't want to fight Trump on ground that Trump has chosen. They don't want to fight over Greenland because they can't even tell if he is serious about Greenland, and he might have abandoned the idea this morning and then where are they? A lot of anti-Trumpers think it's a distraction, though with Trump it is impossible to figure out what the distraction is and what we are being distracted from exactly.

I think there's a transition from the old guard that means a huge lack of leadership. There's no presidential nominee to act as party head and people like Pelosi who were, if nothing else, competent are gone.

Seriously, who is the boogeyman for right wingers right now?

Seriously, who is the boogeyman for right wingers right now?

Gavin Newsom and Tim Walz get a lot of air-time as the presumptive democratic nominees for 2028 but internally most of the concern is focused on liberal AGs like Letitia James, Keith Ellison, and Jay Jones, along with the various PAC, NGOs and non-profits that back them. The lawfare against Trump during his four years in the wilderness was something of wake-up call/radicalizing moment for a lot of mid level Republicans, and I don't think that anyone in the Democratic party has really grasped just how bad a look the liberal reaction to the Charlie Kirk and Annunciation Catholic Church shootings was for them.

Tim Walz.

Seriously, who is the boogeyman for right wingers right now?

Depends on which set of "right wingers" you're talking about. But in the context of my more "normal Republican voter" acquaintances, with respect to Democratic Party politicians, I'd say Gavin Newsom.

AOC and Zohran are the current guys getting the Terrible Photograph treatment in my parents mailboxes.

Which kinda proves your point. A Housemember and a Mayor from NYC.

But it's not so much the old guard transition as that Trump is just really good at politics. Whether he is really good at policy is a separate point, he is a world-historically talented politician. Look at all his knockouts on the way to belt, he's the Ali of POTUSes: ended the Bush dynasty, knocked out Rubio, Christie, Cruz, Kasich to get the nomination, then Clinton to get the belt, a close loss to Biden with weird circumstances around it (COVID), then wins the R nom so easily in 2024 that it never really got off the ground, DeSanctimonious was bodychecked and Rubio never even started his engines, and murders Biden and Kamala on his way to another title.

At this point Dems don't want to play his game. If they respond on Greenland, then they are letting Trump set the terms and pick the battle.

Trump's approval ratings are relatively low. Democrats' are apparently even lower.

I don't think it's just that Trump is good at politics, though he is. Democrats need to decide where to hold on and where to give ground policywise. And no one has the authority or charisma to do so right now (especially because I suspect part of the cope is "he's unpopular and will lose midterms and then be term-limited so I don't want to fuck anything up and stand out")

Not just because of Trump. Because their own party will rip them apart for picking wrong. Dean Phillips and Seth Moulton faced serious criticism for breaking early on certain matters. Ezra Klein was basically put in a struggle session with the anointed black prophet for daring to suggest Charlie Kirk wasn't the devil. Why is this even seen as a "black" thing? Because Kirk said some things about affirmative action? It seems to be the least interesting or dangerous thing about him. Imagine trying to take any position when dealing with this sort of thing.

I think when there's a nominee there will be someone with both an interest and ability to decide, to pick targets.

When democrats lost big in 2024, the head of the Texas Democrat party tweeted out something to the effect of 'we should be more willing to accept that most Americans do not agree with us on trans issues'. He was pressured into resigning within 24 hours. Gino Hinojosa is somebody that insider dems know about, even if the man on the street does not. Democrats are structurally incapable of moderating their ultra-unpopular positions, and they're structurally incapable of attempting to present them in more delicate ways.

On the American side, I just see everyone is dumbfounded. There's plenty of people who are just attacking Trump as being Trump, saying he's going after Greenland to make a name for himself, because Denmark slighted him, idk. The right is mostly in shock, with everyone scrambling to figure out how this makes the least bit of sense. There are plenty of people who trust Trump enough to wait for a higher strategy to emerge. But I've seen plenty on the right just confused, upset, weirded out.

As an American I can't help but feel Greenland is the biggest blunder of the Trump admin. We already have access to the Arctic via Alaska.

If shipping is going to go through those waters, it would be with the countries we are alienating with the Greenland takeover shit. Russia can already trade with Europe. I suppose Canada and Russia could start trading through that zone, but they are both Arctic north countries that export the same kinds of things, fuels raw resources, etc. they have little to offer each other.

We already have access to Russia via Alaska. Same trade issue as Canada though.

The Alaska to Europe trade route will be new, but again that is who we are pissing off. I suppose Europe has demonstrated a willingness to trade oil with countries they hate (like Russia). But we could likely do the trade without taking Greenland.

This seems so weird and out of left field. My main hypothesis:

  1. Trump is losing it. Old age caught up and this dumb idea of territorial expansion got stuck in his head. Canada expansion failed so now he is going after Greenland. If this failed to would he start suggesting conquering Mexico to end the drug cartels?
  2. Deep state shenanigans. They decided to cut Europe off as allies and figured out a way to get in Trump's ear to do something that would end Europe alliance.
  3. Something truly weird. There is some strategic resource in Greenland. And America wants it. Information is being kept classified in the hopes no one fights too hard for Greenland. Maybe alien base.

Those are in order of what I think is most likely. Still I have "aliens" on my list for why a geopolitical event is happening. I'm truly confused.

#3: Trump knows about the Geophysical Event, where the Earth does a Dzhanibekov flip and Greenland ends up on the Equator until it flips back.

Yeah, I have no idea what he wants with Greenland. But I'm hesitant to say it's dementia. He clearly has some reason, because this isn't something he just pulled out of thin air yesterday, and though I hate to sound like the fevered mania of the Yellow Peril, maybe it's not totally nuts to wonder if China would try to sneak in influence there somehow.

There's room for a new global superpower. Russia has slipped from that position, and if the USA is also slipping, China wants to take over. Imagine for one moment the huge influence the USA has on the rest of the world - economically, culturally, every other way. The fact that non-Americans are on here talking about it demonstrates such reach. Now imagine China in that role. And I don't think "oh well they're not really Communists, Xi is a different type of guy, they're just as interested in capitalism when it comes to trade and economics as anyone" is going to work as "business as usual, guys, they'll fall in line with Western Liberal Values and we'll all just go along as before" shield. China will want to be a cultural influence as much as anything else, and that includes having the rest of us aligning with Chinese values (and what those are, we can argue about).

The land has pretty significant military relevance in a situation where the United States and Russia (or the United States and China) get any more unfriendly, military analysis looking at demographics expects any such efforts to happen in <20 years if it can happen, and there's a lot of benefits to making a war expensive even if you never intend to fight one for Schelling Reasons. Trying to work within Danish rule has caused friction points dating back to the 1960s, Euro and NATO unwillingness to shit or get off the pot in Ukraine has lead to much greater skepticism that this would change in response to external military force, and all the relevant countries are actively flirting with China even well before COVID.

It's not, say, Panama. But it's still pretty important.

Meanwhile, the dollar cost of the entire country's subsidies from Denmark, and a sizable incentive for every single person in the country, is dwarfed by a single (smaller!) state's hilarious set of fraud scandals, and is significantly dwarfed by what California has used to not build a train.

The goofy part's the military threats and not modeling why the entire process is pissing off the Danes. Maybe there's some 5D Chess, or anti-Trump groups (and Trump's natural inability to post in any way but the most Boomerish possible) are highlighting military options that aren't being seriously considered, or maybe it's just trying to Good Cop Insane Cop the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, the dollar cost of the entire country's subsidies from Denmark, and a sizable incentive for every single person in the country, is dwarfed by a single (smaller!) state's hilarious set of fraud scandals

Kill two birds with one stone: get Minnesota to take over administering Greenland! 🤣

This seems so weird and out of left field. My main hypothesis:

  1. Trump is losing it. Old age caught up and this dumb idea of territorial expansion got stuck in his head. Canada expansion failed so now he is going after Greenland. If this failed to would he start suggesting conquering Mexico to end the drug cartels?
  2. Deep state shenanigans. They decided to cut Europe off as allies and figured out a way to get in Trump's ear to do something that would end Europe alliance.
  3. Something truly weird. There is some strategic resource in Greenland. And America wants it. Information is being kept classified in the hopes no one fights too hard for Greenland. Maybe alien base.

It's probably some combination of all of the above. Asserting dominance over the Western Hemisphere is one thing, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with the posturing and aggression if this leads the world into a US vs. everybody dynamic. The US can't win that. There will be no bullying in that scenario, and if that plays out I envision some version of true isolation and sanctions out the ass that will make things very difficult. I don't think that is politically survivable, even with an all hands on deck propaganda campaign. Canada and South America would be caught between a rock in a hard place, and it sounds like the Canadians, with their openly voiced displeasure at US aggression, would not make things easy even if they don't stand a chance militarily. All of this sounds like a very expensive price to pay for taking Greenland, unless of course the infinity gauntlet is there in which case I say go for it.

A theory I played with was that it was intended as a distraction from Venezuela. Greenland is far more ridiculous than Venezuela, so you make a bunch of noise about it and then later walk it back, and everyone's forgotten about Venezuela.

The issue with that theory is that... Venezuela seems like a success? Why would you want to distract from it? It can be a feather in your cap, not something to bury with the next noise cycle.

My theory was that it was a distraction from Iran, but it looks like the other shoe is not going to drop there.

Something truly weird. There is some strategic resource in Greenland. And America wants it. Information is being kept classified in the hopes no one fights too hard for Greenland. Maybe alien base.

Maybe the USG has proprietary information on natural resources? Public knowledge is that 25 of the EU’s 34 “critical raw materials” have been found in Greenland. Maybe that's already enough? Maybe someone found some more deposits closer to the coast, under thinner ice?

The know deposits are extremely expensive to develop and mine, especially if you care as much about the ecosystem and indigenous opposition as most EU states do, but that might change. Maybe making sure the EU (and/or China) can't ever access those has long term benefits for the US?

Still I have "aliens" on my list for why a geopolitical event is happening. I'm truly confused.

Total aside, but assuming there are no aliens, I'm having a hard time explaining the behavior of certain elements of the American defense establishment on this subject, and I think other people are too. When you see discussion of why they might want us to think there are aliens, you hear a lot of what amounts to "CIA doing drugs again? IDFK" which... sure, but you can say that about any weird happening, and the effort involved here is more than casual.

It's extremely straightforward: UFOs have been a cover for classified military technology since Roswell. Roswell was a spy balloon, the 2004 nimitz incident was laser-shaped plasma, etc etc. Some of it is the US keeping its tech secret, some of it is keeping US adversaries tech from freaking out the US population.

If there is not something big that we don't know then their behavior often looks outright stupid. I am pretty sure these people aren't stupid. Therefore...

If we do find out there is something big later I hope we also find out who didn't know and still supported the seemingly dumb thing.

The Bank of England also recently made some weird comment about how the government needs to prepare to take actions to prevent economic collapse if the US government disclosed the existence of ayylmaos.

This plus some random literal who leaker saying that Trump has written his disclosure speech and is just trying to time it right - and avoid China or Russia beating him to the punch.

And the classified congressional briefing last year after which half of congress was openly shitting bricks.

I will grant Mark Carney that his assessment of the IRBO is correct. The US was always the one animal which was more equal than other animals. The difference of international reaction when W did with Iraq what Saddam had tried with Kuwait is pretty obvious.

However, US hegemony in North America, Europe and Asia was heavily reliant on soft power, so that the IRBO was at least a plausible fiction there. Compare and contrast with Empires before. Nobody could say with a straight face that the Roman, British, or Soviet empire was based on respecting the autonomy of nations and the right of self-determination of peoples.

All abstract ideals, like the IRBO or human rights, are what our caps-heavy Pratchett character would label BIG LIES. They never describe exactly what it, but are essential to coordinate on what ought to be for anyone interested in crawling out of 'inadequate' equilibria. Presumably after WW2, what preserved the borders in Western Europe (say between Belgium and the Netherlands) was less a deep respect of the IRBO learned overnight and more the fact that everyone knew that if they tried to make war the US would come down on them like a million pound hammer. Today, the specter of US retribution is not required any more to keep Western Europe in line, the IRBO is firmly alive in our heads. Anyone who proposes that perhaps we should move a border by a few dozen kilometers by just sending a conquering army (a behavior which was totally normal for almost all of the time since humans first settled down) will be treated like they had gone fucking insane. "You want to wreck European trade which has made us more prosperous than we were ever before and instead go back to the old days when significant fractions of whole generations died in ditches just because you don't like the way the border runs? Have you lost your mind?"

Presumably after WW2, what preserved the borders in Western Europe (say between Belgium and the Netherlands) was less a deep respect of the IRBO learned overnight and more the fact that everyone knew that if they tried to make war the US would come down on them like a million pound hammer.

What about Eastern Europe? The notion that the US was truly interested in the principle of national self determination is difficult to credit in light of the enormous support they offered the Soviets in conquering half the continent. America was the world's sole nuclear power for years after the war; didn't do Poland or Czechoslovakia or Karelia any good. They said they'd keep the borders right where they were... while simultaneously allowing Stalin to redraw them as he pleased in the areas he controlled. Why would anyone take those commitments seriously?

I would argue that the IRBO only really emerged during the cold war.

America was the world's sole nuclear power for years after the war

Contrary to common belief, nukes are not the "I win" button. Japan's war had gone very badly and they were facing an invasion, getting nuked was simply the last straw. "The killed 100k Russians when they nuked Leningrad, better make peace before they kill another 100k of my poor countrymen" would not have persuaded Stalin out of all people.

If the US could have defeated the USSR by prolonging WW2 for a year or so, I think they would have done so, not for the right of self-determination of anyone but because any fool could see that the USSR would become their rival superpower. But they had just spent a lot of lives and productivity on winning a big war. Telling the Americans "change of plans, you already freed France from the Nazis, no you get to free Poland from the Soviets" would not have been popular, especially if you consider that plenty of intellectuals were leaning communist.

I would argue that the IRBO only really emerged during the cold war.

The Atlantic Charter, signed 1941, called for:

[N]o territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned

(It called for several things that didn't happen, actually, but if we're looking for the emergence of the principle, I think this counts.)

Now, the USSR didn't sign it (not that version, anyway), but America did (before actually entering the war, even). Most of the involved parties decided they didn't really mean it within the next few years (it didn't go over terribly well in Britain's colonies, for one), but that kind of makes my point that such promises were hard to take seriously. The UN Charter, 1945, expressed the same sentiment, but of course was careful to grandfather in the allies' recent conquests, and in fact would compel the signatories to condemn e.g. Finland trying to take back the territory the USSR stole in the unprovoked Winter War.

Contrary to common belief, nukes are not the "I win" button. Japan's war had gone very badly and they were facing an invasion, getting nuked was simply the last straw. "The killed 100k Russians when they nuked Leningrad, better make peace before they kill another 100k of my poor countrymen" would not have persuaded Stalin out of all people.

This is true, especially for fission bombs, especially given the very tight production bottlenecks they had at the time. It would still have been a huge advantage -- less so for bombing cities than for discouraging any concentration of force, I would think. MacArthur was general then, too. It'd have certainly been expensive in blood and treasure, but it's hard to imagine it's a fight the US actually loses, provided they had the will to see it through. It certainly didn't get any cheaper for the next 40 years.

(The USSR did ultimately dissolve without a fight, but not before doing an enormous amount of damage around the world. Their efforts to undermine Western dominance were quite successful in tying anti-imperialism to socialism in the public imaginations of much of Africa and South America, arguably immiserating those nations to this day and for who knows how long to come. You could fairly blame that on the Western Imperialism too, but the British and French colonial empires would have dissolved regardless; there's no USSR making Britain pay Mauritius a fortune to rent islands Mauritius never actually occupied today.)

If the US could have defeated the USSR by prolonging WW2 for a year or so, I think they would have done so, not for the right of self-determination of anyone but because any fool could see that the USSR would become their rival superpower. But they had just spent a lot of lives and productivity on winning a big war. Telling the Americans "change of plans, you already freed France from the Nazis, no you get to free Poland from the Soviets" would not have been popular, especially if you consider that plenty of intellectuals were leaning communist.

My point is not that it would have been easy or even smart (though I not-very-confidently believe it would have been), just that it casts a lot of doubt as to just how committed the US (or anyone else) really was to the principle.

Could some American enlighten me about this obsession with Europe's demographic replacement when US white population is dropping off the cliff even faster? VP with pajeet wife? Not to mention the diversity and multicultural shit has always been product of US intellectuals first and foremost.

So we don't taboo words, but if you are going to drop slurs there should be a point to them, not just "I really despise Indians." If you want to say nigger, kike, pajeet, spic, whatever, you are allowed to, you know, type the word. You can even use it in a meaningful way. But not just because you want to namecall.

The name-calling should precisely be seen in the context. JD Vance is not coy about signaling to white nationalists and making strong claims about heritage Americans, yet fails to uphold those talking points in something that is completely up to him. Which, of course, is not surprising.

I think big reason is that majority of US immigration is of hispanic origin. They are mostly catholic and traditional, which makes them assimilate rather quick. Look at American politicians and their last names - Rubio, DeSantis, Cruz, Padilla. 1-2 generations and grandkid of Juan Carlos from Mexico works for ICE, deporting illegals without second thought. Now look at Europe, it's a complete 180. Americans see immigrants in Europe the same way they see Somalis in Minnesota.

Europe is way further on this road than US, and Americans who worry about it are worrying that what already happened to Europe will happen to America too. It's not even about demographic replacement per se - as a genetic makeup - people who worry that Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio are not "white" are deep fringe - but a cultural shift. In Europe, being a national patriot, relating in any way to traditional European culture and values is passé and very suspect. In the US it is the case too, but in much narrower context, not society wide. Basically, in the US there's still red tribe and blue tribe, the Europe is mostly just various shades of blue tribe. Of course red tribers are worried it will happen to them too, since their cultural values are the same values that used to exist in Europe and are now mostly extinguished.

Europe totally has a red tribe, it's just far more marginalized than the US one.

This is the problem with discussing large-scale trends - whatever statement you make, there's always "well, akshually" about it. Yes, there are red-tribers in Europe, technically speaking. But they are mostly powerless, feckless and nowhere nearly at the level of influence that red tribers in the US have.

Could some American enlighten me about this obsession with Europe's demographic replacement

As is often the case, I find myself pointing to Noah Smith's read on the situation:

The U.S. as a whole was never racially homogeneous. Black people were always there, and they never dipped below 10% of the population. Americans in the North had frequent contact with Native American populations. California and Texas had Hispanics before they had Anglos. But in the American mind, Europe stood across the sea as a place of timeless homogeneity, where the native white population had always been and would always remain. In the 20th century, as American consciousness of ethnic differences between Poles, Italians, Germans etc. faded, perceptions of Europe as homogeneously “white” grew stronger.

In the mind of many Americans, Europe thus stood as both a refuge and a reservoir. America itself was a rough, contested frontier, but Europe would always be white and Christian. If you ever felt the need to live around a bunch of white people of Christian heritage, you could always go “back”, but for most that wasn’t necessary — just knowing that the Old World was somewhere out there was enough.

...

Anyway, in the 2010s, it dawned on those Americans that this hallowed image of Europe was no longer accurate. With their working population dwindling, European countries took in millions of Muslim refugees and other immigrants from the Middle East and Central and South Asia — many of whom didn’t assimilate nearly as well as their peers in the U.S. You’d hear people say things like “Paris isn’t Paris anymore.”

California and Texas had Hispanics before they had Anglos.

This is one of those oft-repeated claims that is really tenuous at best: the number of Mexicans living in all of Texas (with drastically larger borders than the current state) in 1824 was under 8000, and likely much smaller than the number of Native Americans in the region at the time. The Spanish (and then Mexican) claims on the region were pretty sparse to begin with, which is part of why they were so interested in importing settlers under their flag. That the Anglos would eventually push for independence is a more complicated story (yes slavery, but also yes Mexican imperialism) for another post.

We don't talk about how Nebraska and Oklahoma were French before they were Anglo because despite being ceded in the Louisiana Purchase, actual French influence on the ground there was quite limited, unlike, say, New Orleans.

To be even more fair, Mexican-Texans who trace their ancestry to pre-Texas independence settlement are a recognizable social group in current day Texas which is politically important and regionally predominant enough to be visible far in proportion to their actual numbers. That's what 'tejano' actually means.

It's a Noah Smith quote, you should assume he's making up the history (and most of the other factoids) as he goes along.

Additionally, the entire Mexican population of the territories ceded to the US after the Mexican-American War (i.e. California and most of the modern Southwest and Mountain West) was only about 100,000. They were offered US Citizenship under the terms of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and roughly 80,000 of them took the opportunity.

Latin American America will resemble America a lot more than Muslim Europe will resemble Europe. Like, a fucking lot more.

So basically a shithole vs an even worse shithole? I guess I can understand.

Yeah I'll take a beer-and-titties loving Hispanic shithole over whatever the fuck Europe is turning itself into, no question.

beer-and-titties loving Hispanic shithole

A little blunt for a resort name, but at least you know what you're getting.

That's the capsule description; I believe the name is "Mar a Lago".

I'll enjoy my 98%+ white country, cheers.

No doubt. Good luck keeping the rest of it out, unironically.

Not to mention the diversity and multicultural shit has always been product of US intellectuals first and foremost.

That makes it less mysterious? MAGA loathes those sorts of people.

It's an extension of the culture war, Europe is focused on because they function as a proxy for America (well, the white Americans) and is seen to be suffering from being ruled by the same sorts of people MAGA considers its foremost enemies in the US.

"I'm so enlightened I don't even care about my people's extinction" is what the kids would call "a weird flex". Also, it's not just an American phenomenon, or else there wouldn't be so much gnashing of teeth over "misinformation", the rise of the far right, etc.

I think I care a lot more about my people's extinction than you think, but I don't consider current foreign policy approach from US towards Europe being anyhow helpful towards any sort of solution regarding it and as I said, it becomes laughable when it is so vocally espoused by people in the administration who in real life procreate in polar opposite fashion.

But I think another comment was helpful in illuminating that it could be a proxy way to communicate something about US itself, but doesn't make the likes of JD less hilarious.

Your confusion comes from taking propaganda caricature at face value. When you're told red tribers "hate brown people" and then you see them actually being friends with ones, marrying ones, etc. you say "oh, they are hypocrites!" But the actual case is what you have been told is a lie. They don't hate brown people. Yes, a number of people they hate could be classified as "brown" but that's not why they hate them ("hate" isn't even a correct term here but let's pretend for simplicity it is). They look for cultural alignment, acceptance of Western values and integration into Western society. And they have absolutely no problem with a person of Indian or African or any other origin that shares their values and is part of their culture. Of course, groypers exist, but they are not who Vance is.

As for US policy towards Europe being "helpful", I don't think there's any way of "helping" them now - not until they would want to help themselves. If Europe wants to commit suicide (or at least transform itself into something that has nothing to do with Europe as we knew it) there's no policy that would be "helpful towards any sort of solution" - they don't want any help or any solution!

Whites are "indigenous" to Europe, so one of the biggest social checks on expressing concern about demographic replacement in the US doesn't apply there, making it simultaneously safer for people so inclined to express and a convenient retort to those who would criticize them.

I am not sure who's going to be American ally in WWIII now.

Well it was going to be a bunch of dying welfare states with no militaries where like 51% of the babies born are foreign, but now I don't know what we'll do.

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