This is true. Neocon hawks in DC keep on getting what they want because US enemies like Russia keep showing how weak they are, emboldening those DC hawks.
If Russia had won quickly, Gulf War style, DC hawks would not have nearly as much power as they do now.
Gerasimov’s pre-war boast that he controlled the world’s second strongest army looks like a miscalculation of absolutely macrohistorical proportions. Just utter Russian delusion, so common throughout its history, thus strongly suggesting that it’s a cultural characteristic.
Oct 12, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Fascinating thread asserting that the reason for China's weaknesses in the biological sciences is due to the industrial sector attracting so many top chemistry geniuses.
Pharmaceutical innovation, which is important for both human life as well as food/agricultural production (via using pharma medicines and techniques to help in plant and animal health), is US dominated, but has comparatively low barriers to entry compared to semis or aerospace.
Aug 30, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I tend to not like RW tradposting, but reading this stuff makes me feel sympathetic to it. If your society is just based on materialism and a hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, then you will be empty and mentally broken.
nytimes.com/2022/08/27/hea…
Humans are meant to live with loved family members, but a lot of the powerful Left and Right critiques of capitalist society (which I’m generally not sympathetic towards), are correct in pointing out that it leads to libertine behavior and manic depressiveness.
Aug 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Sort of.
The British Empire was worse than Nazi Germany in terms of pure mortality accounting terms, though Churchill's kill count < Hitler's.
The reason why Nazis are seen as worse is because they victimized Westerners.
This also explains why: 1) Victims of Imperial Japan (like victims of the Nanjing Massacre) are not valued in Western consciousness 2) Why Soviet contribution to defeating Nazism is ignored or downplayed the West (Soviets are non-Western, and thus aren't "real" victims).
Aug 11, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Quote from Professor Rao Yi, President of Capital Medical University in Beijing: "The most interesting thing is that Donald Trump in the U.S. did good things with bad intentions."
Based anti-Chinese pogroms in the US helping stop brain drain from China. All hail Trump!
IR scholar Michael Beckley seem to struggle with basic cost accounting, concepts of GDP and national accounting, and passing off questionable sources as reliable, in his extremely wrongheaded analysis of the Chinese military and economy. And he’s considered reputable, too.
His writing is quite ideological and seems more geared towards telling Blob policymakers what they want to hear-exaggerated stories of US strength/Chinese weakness-than reality.
Something he shares with Hal Brands and Matthew kroenig: political ambition.
Mar 13, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The era of prioritizing consumer welfare and efficiency over national economic sovereignty is over. It began with Trump's racist hegemonic spite against China. But has just exploded with this removal by the West of Russia from the (US/Western) dominated global economy.
The future is pretty clear: autarky, sanctions, and nonstop geopolitical tension between the West vs the Sino-Russian bloc, occasionally, if not frequently, erupting into crisis and war.
Blackpill.
Mar 1, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Remarkable. This is now the fourth major crisis where China is the winner of the crisis and basically comes out ahead in GDP growth or totally unscathed, while others get the wind knocked out
1) 1997 Asian Financial Crisis 2) 2007-08 GFC 3) Covid shocks 4) Russia/Ukraine shocks
This is not going to be a good year for Europe.
The US benefits, but for Europe, this conflict is a big L. Sanctioning and antagonizing Russia is not cost-free.
Feb 27, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
One not so adventurous prediction is that when the dust in Ukraine settles, which it eventually will, as in every war, China will become the main entry point with which the West interacts with the Russian economy.
Eventually, the anti-Russian opprobrium will melt away. Maybe as soon as the the summer of the end of this year. Passions will die down. And Western companies will want to re-initiate contact with Russia, but they'll need to go through China, due to anti-RUS sanctions.
Feb 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
First part is definitely true: NATO is now the focal point of Euro politics.
But the second is not, as the West’s share of global GDP continues to decline. Counterintuitively, the negative economic hit taken by W Europe due to this situation may mean even faster Western decline.
This is the problem with conceptually equating “NATO strength” with “Western strength”. They’re not the same. NATO now assumes new importance.
Yet the West’s underlying strength, economic dominance, continues to shrink.
Feb 27, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Despite 30y of post-Cold War growth and recovery from the ravages of the colonialism, decolonization, and the Cold War, its pretty clear that "the World" still means "the West", on account of the fact that the West still accounts for a disproportionate amount of global GDP.
This thought was prompted by all these Western intellectuals saying "the World" has isolated Russia. What they mean is "the West".
The reality is, if you are from a Global South country, sorry you just don't matter. Indonesia, Ghana, Even the UAE, which is developed? Nope!
Feb 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
So many people believe Baghdad Bobs that are stationed in Kiev right now, and unable to accept the fact that the Ukrainians are getting utterly routed just because of some unsourced journalist claims.
Let's take a look at the evidence supporting the Russian advance: 1) Heavy concentration of videos taken in Kiev proper of fighting and bombing 2) Google Maps data showing fighting right to the West of the Dnieper that bisects the city 3) Nonstop reports of explosions in Kiev
Feb 25, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I think one reason Blob think tankers are quietly raging and demanding China right now is the obvious spectacle that China is benefiting as Russia tears apart Western influence in Ukraine, and bogging down the US back into Euro security issues.
The US itself greatly benefitted by sideline sitting from 1914-1917 and then again from 1937-1941, allowing the other combatants to attrite each other, while comfortably living behind its two ocean shield.
Feb 25, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It’s 2025.
The US, Russia, and China hold a trilat summit in Kiev between presidents Trump, Putin, and Kiev, to sign a diplomatic agreement on the world.
1) NATO gets dissolved. 2) The US recognized lifts sanctions on Russia. Even proposes to diplomatically recognized seized Ukranian territory as part of Russian sovereignty. 3) Declare that the US won’t militarily come to Taiwan’s aid.
Make the world great again!
Feb 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
One major second order effect of this Ukraine dismemberment operations is that China’s energy and food security future are now secured.
China will be hard to blockade and starve, considering all the hydrocarbons, and with the addition of Ukraine, various grains imports that can be sent overland in the event of a USN distant blockade of China.
Jan 25, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The US has turned the USAF, US Naval Air Forces, and Marine Corps Aviation (fixed wing component), into the preferred, casualty free, commitment free, tool of bombing and shooting various countries.
Air superiority operations may be one of the few areas where China is actually ahead of Russia, considering the PLA posses the J-20, PL-15, and a big wing AWACS plane with an AESA radar, the KJ-2000.
Jan 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Reading the excellent Rising Sun by John Toland after I saw it recommended by @RichardHanania.
One thing that strikes me is the utter weakness and inability of Japanese liberals (we would call them pro-restraint types today), to stop the growth of Japanese megalomaniac ambition.
I won’t compare the US as a whole to Imperial Japan, but there is at least some parallel in the US with the growth of this desire in DC for this violent, unyielding, suffocating, global US hegemony, and the total irrelevance, in policy terms, of restrainers.
Jan 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
ICYMI: Thread regarding the US' preferred mode of combat in the 21C: sanctions.
It'll be a turbulent decade, as the US takes on its traditional enemies of RUS+PRC.
The US is singularly to blame for the normalization of "peacetime" economic combat, with its abuse of sanctions.
If I were Russia or China, I would do everything possible to economically divide the transatlantic economic relationship, as the EU is the other half of the West.
Jan 13, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Russia is weak compared to the West, so this threat is toothless, but shows how frustrated it is that the West won't concede anything of value, above all, a formal treaty promise that NATO will no longer expand.
South Korea has the worst gender relations of any major economy.
The extreme sexism and hierarchy of Korean society and Korean men has produced an equal and opposite fanatical, ultra-feminism, that is unmatched anywhere else in the world.
The net result is to make Korean men hate Korean women even more, which is why you have these rancorous culture war controversies over "feminism" in Korean society.
Jan 10, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Linkedin posts extolling the virtue of "grinding" and working all the time is a manifestation of the ethics of capitalist Stakhanovite-ism, which I totally detest.
It just promotes de facto wage theft, aka uncompensated or forced overtime.
I'm not anti-work. But it's not the early Industrial Revolution anymore.
The interests of Labor and Capital need to be balanced against each other, rather than be tilted to an absurd degree towards Capital.
