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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.
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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