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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29141 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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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.

Ramaswamy's policy on Ukraine is to essentially freeze the conflict. Russia would keep whatever territory it has occupied. Ukraine will not be part of NATO, but presumably it would continue to receive arms and economic aid from the West. And though Ramasamy does not mention it, presumably the sanctions against Russia would have to be dropped as well.

I don't think the Russians will take this deal. Because the war is on Ukraine's soil, and because Ukraine has a smaller economy, they are being attrited faster. Pausing hostilities thus benefits Ukraine more than Russia. And while Ramaswamy proposes keeping Ukraine out of NATO, it is inevitable that Ukraine will drift closer to the West. There is too much hatred towards the Russians for reconciliation.

Even dropping the sanctions isn't all that enticing. Trade relations that have been halted by the sanctions won't be restored overnight because of the fear that the war will resume. It would take decades.

Thus, for the conflict to be frozen, Ukraine will have to make greater concessions, which they are not willing to make. The only way for the United States to get the Ukrainians to make such concessions would be to threaten to abandon them. This is not only dishonorable, it would erase America's reputation for reliability and hamper its ability to form alliances for decades to come. (This would not be the case had the United States not intervened on Ukraine's behalf in the first place. But given that we offered them NATO admission 15 years ago, and that we have been giving them military aid since 2014, there is an expectation that we should continue to support them for longer.)

What conflicts since WWII would lead someone to believe that America is a reliable ally?

It’s almost conventional wisdom at this point that America will ride in with guns blazing, then fight a war of attrition until they don’t want to fight it anymore, and on top of that will forsake the indigenous that put their lives and families at risk to work with America.

I mean, they spent 20 years in Afghanistan for no reason. I reckon Ukraine can get at least 30 years of US support, and if the war can't be won in that time, it can't be won at all.

I want to say the Balkans are better off now than they would have been without NATO intervention. Don’t get me wrong, Kosovo is still a shitshow, but we headed off some ethnic cleansing.

Ask South Korea and Kuwait.

Korea? South Koreans seem to be doing pretty decently. Also, Japan. Also, to some measure, all of Western Europe, which has been relying on US military coverage for decades. Also, Israel (not without caveats, but there has been sustained support).

I'd love if we could get their health coverage in exchange for our military coverage.

What conflicts since WWII would lead someone to believe that America is a reliable ally?

The first Gulf War was pretty cool.

But, arguably, this is the wrong question: what conflicts haven't happened because the US is a reliable ally? Territorial conflicts in East Asia, for example, have probably been suppressed by the US. Would people like Mao take such a genteel approach to Taiwan without needing to come to terms with America?

And I'm sure people took a lesson from Saddam's first spanking.

What conflicts since WWII would lead someone to believe that America is a reliable ally?

The Korean War would qualify, I’d argue. South Korea is likely our most significant and closest partner in the region after Japan, and we absolutely still have major, ongoing security commitments there that we’ve held to for the better part of a century now.

Good point, we haven't abandoned the South Koreans.

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