“The U.S. was a positive 10 for many, many years. It’s no longer a positive 10. And then it has this middle zone between positive 5 and negative 5, which was you had features of both” washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/…
“After January 6th of last year, people were asking me, “Aren’t you horrified?” “Isn’t this terrible?” “What do you think?” And, first of all, I wasn’t surprised, right? People who study this, we’ve been seeing these groups have been around now for over 10 years. “
2017 was the last time that the Virginia called the Center for Systemic Peace threw down but a good primer on state building and destruction. Autocracy: Red. Democratic: Blue. Anochratic or mixed state rule: Black systemicpeace.org/vlibrary/Globa… 
In 2019 Pew took a shot at analyzing trends towards or away from democratic rule. Same data set provider. Center for Systemic Peace's Polity IV Project. Things looked pretty good. The world appeared to march towards stable popular leadership. What could possibly go wrong?
In 2019 after being rebuffed by Biden, San Diego boy, Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's head of security laid out his strategic vision on how the UAE can survive various external and internal threats. The memo was formalized in 2019 as the #1922Memo bjjee.com/articles/the-b…
The UAE had been aggressively involved in overthrowing Arab Spring nations, beginning with Egypt in 2013. Libya was next on their list. By the end of Trump there had been at least a dozen attempts at ending rule. Some successful. The US included. chathamhouse.org/2020/04/egypt-…
Russia is part of this "hybrid" plan. Soft and hard power, influence, fuckery, violence and bribery to shift regimes towards supporting tribal, autocratic and military dictatorships. Running a country is just too messy for normal people to get involved. freedomhouse.org/explore-the-ma…
Revolutions and civil wars are made to look "organic" but they are not. It takes funding, planning, coordination, arming and more importantly approval of a new regime once the dirty deed is done. This is why you sense a "new world order" after Ukraine. scholar.harvard.edu/files/armitage…
A number of experts sense this shift to an autocratic, Gulf-Centric, Eurasian power model with a little whiff of Abraham as the old lady democracies of US and Europe are repeatedly kicked in the gas pump and breadbasket. This is planned, not coincidental. cnbc.com/2022/04/03/a-n…
Should family petro businesses like the UAE and Russia be blamed for self preservation if we don't maintain a stable relationship? Should China wait around until their business is eroded by US and EU ventures? We are in a world that looks a lot like the old mercantile era.
Trader and petro rich nations are busy doing exactly what Europe and later America did to reshape global politics to their advantage. If we are too dim to realize we are being turned into a squabbling tribal backwater to timid to fight the threat then we deserve the outcome
Back to the boring academic stuff vs real world action: In 2020 Democracy Report of the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-DEM) warned that "autocratization" was on the rise. For a guy inside or on the ground for some of those coups it was like. Duh. sipri.org/commentary/top…
The UN and other groups have been painstakingly recording the arms buildup and conflict data by region or topic. Think tanks like V-DEM are getting sweaty. It's like global warming but with dictators. v-dem.net/media/publicat…
At some point the frog will jump out of the pot, people will realize that what is happening in this country is no different than Venezuela or Libya or Egypt. The trick is to keep us distracted with our woes while undermining democracy. Sort of like being Arab Springed in reverse.
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