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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.
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.
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.
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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