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Vivek Ramaswamy has written an article on his foreign policy doctrine, focusing on China.
He is squarely taking aim at the "neocons and liberal internationalists", in other words the two main constituents of what Obama referred to as "the Blob" dominating foreign policy in D.C. He is predictably being called an isolationist and WaPo columnists are freaking out.
WaPo columnists themselves are not relevant but they are often mouthpieces for more powerful interests. Trump was hated for many things but one underappreciated aspect of why the Blob hated him was his instinct not to start new wars. In fact, he is one of the few presidents in recent memory who did not start a new war and he tried to get out of Syria - twice - but was undermined by his own bureaucracy.
Vivek is a much smarter guy than Trump, so I wonder if the Blob would be able to run circles around him the way they did around Trump. I doubt it and I suspect they doubt it too, which is why I think a campaign to destroy Vivek is likely to ramp up before too long. Trump couldn't be controlled outright but at least he could be misled.
You don’t have to be a professor of international relations to see why this idea is retarded. So you accept Russian control of Eastern Ukraine and lift all sanctions on Russia, and then Russia has to ‘exit’ (ambiguous) its ‘military alliance’ (something that only partially exists on paper anyway) with China….or else…what? Vivek restores sanctions on Russia for not sufficiently breaking ties with China (pointless, even a temporary break in sanctions will allow for large scale repatriation or transfer of Russian capital in anticipation of future sanctions)? Are you going to trust Putin? How will that be measured? Why wouldn’t cooperation continue in an underhanded way? Once you force a Ukrainian defeat and unilaterally lift sanctions you’re not in a position of strength toward Russia, you’re in one of total weakness. And Vivek can’t threaten Putin with Ukrainian NATO membership because, as Putin knows, there are other member states that would be amenable to vetoing it regardless of what the US says.
And most importantly, Russia can never be a ‘strategic check’ on China’s designs in East Asia. What does Vivek think he can do, get Putin to invade Manchuria in case Gyna threatens to bomb Taiwan? Send Russia’s three remaining seaworthy warships to the South China Sea? And Vivek is an isolationist who only cares about Taiwan until 2028 or whatever anyway (when he believes TSMC will no longer be critical) so why care about a long-term ‘check on China’ at all?
Still, Vivek is a high verbal IQ arch-grifter who has never created a substantial, profitable business, bilked investors out of $400m to buy a $5m failed drug from GSK (and burned through that entire capital in a doomed pivot) and then himself pivoted into politics when the cheap money dried up. He has never accomplished anything that is both impressive and good for society in his entire life. Even Trump is a better businessman, so perhaps this is what America deserves.
What would you offer Putin? Other than "nothing, the trap is shut and it's not coming open until you die and whoever replaces you crawls back to grovel".
The PLA is small for a country the size of China, because China, like the USSR before it, is afraid of its own army even with commissars and the CMC.
If Russia ends up in the American sphere of influence, China will have a 4000 km long border it will have to adequately man, drawing both funds and manpower away from its other military endeavors. It will also end up locked out of Central Asia. Outbidding Russian interests is one thing, outbidding Russian interests backed by American interests is another.
Direct, immediate, quid pro quo total sanctions relief (codified, in a treaty) in exchange for a withdrawal from all occupied territory (except Crimea), with the withdrawal happening first. Once a withdrawal occurs, sanctions are lifted and the US helps build a fortified defensive line in Eastern Ukraine, the risk of future invasion is minimal.
This might work with his replacement, but I doubt Putin cares about sanctions this much. He wanted to be "the Great", so he'll either succeed (and it's the definition of success that is negotiable) or die trying.
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Putin's not going to go for that. It's defeat.
It's a better deal than the one the West is offering him now. If he doesn't want to take it, the flow of arms to Ukraine can continue indefinitely at only a tiny percentage of US/Western European GDP.
Europe doesn't even have the weapons production capacity of 1935.
It could after three more years barely provide artillery shells Ukraine needs at their modest expenditure rates.
As I understand, anti-aircraft missile situation is very bad, ditto for tanks (Leo-1 now supposed to be mainstay lol).
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GDP is irrelevant, production is everything. US officials are openly declaring that they can't sustain the flow of supplies that's going to Ukraine. It will take at least 5 years just to have a chance of refilling reserves of key munitions like Javelins and Stingers.
The US might have a high GDP, based on financial trickery and service sector shenanigans but its actual military production capacity is pathetic. It's a bare shadow of what it was in 1994. 100 Stingers per year!
https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/230109_Military_Inventories_Graphic.jpg?V07Bh5IFz5cOgg9qXyu.wrwD7BYakT7C
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Actually, it is a substantially worse deal. He's currently winning in Ukraine - why does he want to withdraw? If he accepts the deal he ends up in a worse situation than he is now. Russia and China have both been working on a replacement to the USD as global reserve currency for some time, and the sanctions have directly contributed to the growth of their alternative to western financial systems. They no longer trust the dollar or western financial bodies because they understand that the sanctions can just get turned on and their assets stolen. They'd obviously enjoy being able to get back all the wealth that just got confiscated and stolen, but there's no level of compromise that would get them to stop building and using their alternative systems. What does he have to gain from giving up territory in this deal? The trust relationship between the BRICS and the Western Financial system has been completely broken, and de-dollarisation is picking up pace around the globe because everyone else is correctly realising that the dollar is now a weapon.
Furthermore, what sort of assurances would the US be able to provide that he could actually trust? I don't think there's any deal which both the US and Russia would accept. Do you remember the Minsk accords? Because Russia sure does, and they also remember the following prank call to Francois Hollande.
https://tass.com/world/1600325 (I know this is a Russian news source, but you can just go listen to the phonecall if you want)
For core structural reasons related to the underlying nature of China’s economy, this is impossible. To become a true reserve currency, they’d have to reverse the balance of trade, which is the one thing they’re desperate not to do.
My understanding was that they wouldn't be using the Yuan as a reserve currency but creating something new (or bringing back an old barbarous relic). I totally agree that the Yuan is deeply unsuitable for use as a reserve currency, but that doesn't mean the BRICS nations can't work on a replacement to the USD.
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I’ve heard a lot about the dangers of a non-western reserve currency but you’re saying it’s not viable? For China at least.
Would you mind explaining in a bit more detail? I don’t have a good grounding in macro finance.
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You think the Russians are a credible threat to the Chinese short of nuking them? Hell no, if Ukraine wasn't sufficient evidence already.
I don't think the level of US support, both financial, military and logistical, needed to get Russia to be a credible threat to China is anywhere near the Overton Window, then I have a bridge crossing the Strait of Malacca to sell to you.
I just want to remind everyone that China might be a bit less corrupt than Russia, but it has the same problems with a top-down army at well below paper strength- and almost no recent combat experience, to boot.
Counterpoint: Russia didn't fully unleash its cyberpower against Ukraine because it expected to occupy Ukraine afterward and didn't feel the need to. However, in a hypothetical US-China conflict, China has a high chance of going pretty high-stakes to win (shooting down GPS and other satellites, unleashing their tried-and-tested cyberpower troops who might even be more experienced than US ones, etc). Their primary opponents would be the US Navy (which while relatively battle-tested has also shown signs of rot and corruption) and the Taiwanese military (which is even more dysfunctional and abandoned than China's). I think Western theorists strongly underestimate the threat China poses in such a conflict. They also have a ridiculous supply-line advantage (literally their entire coast right there), so they don't need to project air or naval power very far at all.
I agree that ‘China is militarily irrelevant’ is not true, but ‘Russia’s army is too dysfunctional for China to have to worry about under any circumstances’ is also not true, because China’s army has many of the same structural issues. Russia probably has lower force quality generally, sure, but it’s a difference in degree, not in kind.
Is that even true? Russia was actually deploying armed troops/PMCs to theatres such as Syria and parts of Africa before Ukraine and there they engaged in combat operations. The PLA combat experience of the last several decades has been non-firearms close combat with India along the border and ADIZ missions while Chinese PMC/PSCs supporting Belt and Road efforts has been entirely unarmed non-combat support, focusing instead on equipment delivery, training and unarmed advisor roles. The error bars around the PLA seems much larger than the ones around Russian forces.
That’s exactly my point. China seems less corrupt and to have better maintenance standards, but 1) Russia doesn’t have a 3rd world military and 2) China has some of the same systems that limit Russia’s military capabilities at maneuver warfare.
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Alone? No. With Ukraine-style lend-lease? Definitely. The Ukrainian army is not the only one that is gaining valuable combat experience first-hand.
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Many in Russia also, rightly or wrongly*, blame the US for the last round of "development" that led to a ton of corruption and cronyism.
* Wrongly imo
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Nothing, you don't reward people for doing things to which you are opposed, especially when you don't have to.
"Do not call this a grave, it is the future you chose". Putin has been given off-ramp after off-ramp, chance after chance and he has refused every single one. He is not interested in any resolution of this conflict other than near-total victory and is apparently willing to stake everything on a war he lost months ago.
Firstly, Putin would rather burn Russia to the ground than even consider thinking about imagining the possibility of "Russia in the American sphere of influence". Secondly, Russia is a spent force for at least a generation, having burned through more men and materiel than the modern Russian state can credibly replace. Thirdly, the war in Ukraine has revealed that the armed forces of Russia are incompetent, hollowed out by an institutional culture of lying. Of course, China is probably in a similar state, but they also have substantial advantages in both manpower and materiel. Additionally, the forces that would be used to fight a war with Russia (a land campaign) are not the same as the forces that would be used to fight the US (air and naval) and China already has both.
Chinese ships don't accidentally crash into civilian shipping, nor do their light carriers burn down in port, nor is their fleet actually shrinking year-on-year. When it comes to quality and naval professionalism, China seems to be well ahead of the US navy.
As for an institutional culture of lying... the Afghanistan War? The defeat against the Taliban with about 1/100th the funding of the US/NATO force, supported by no foreign power at all? Staying on ten years despite it being clear that the US was not going to achieve its objectives, while the Taliban was? Constantly lying to the public and saying things were going fine? Junior officers being ignored when they pointed out the entire thing was a massive farce with zero chance of success, that the 'allies' they were trying to train were drug addicts and pedophiles?
/images/1693360022033126.webp
No, the ports themselves burn.
Or, maybe yes
Case in point:
https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/chinas-first-type-075-amphibious-assault-ship-begins-sea-trials/
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