What stuns me is that the US is winning the Second Cold War so easily.
Edit: All of China's allies are bad or getting destroyed on the battlefield.
Conflict between Palestine and Israel escalates
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Edit: All of China's allies are bad or getting destroyed on the battlefield.
Really? It looks like China is winning to me. Probably because they aren't getting involved in dick waving contests alongside Russia or helping legitimize Israel. What does China care about Russia, and to a lesser extent Iran? They're in Africa and South America winning for later.
Tell me you don't actually know anything about the Cold War, without saying you dont't actually know anything about the Cold War. Otherwise, articles like this one (from a right-wing source, by the way) would have you telling a far, far different tale.
(Hint: US global reserve currency status did it, not any individual plane, tank, boat, or small arm, or for that matter thebsum total of US military might.)
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www.cnbc.com
We never had a second cold war. The US and China competing a bit economically while the rest of the world is doing its best to not be caught in that is a far cry from the Cold War.
There was never a coalition wiling to go to War with NATO or even the US alone.
US power is more than the US dollar or the US military; it's the innovative culture and even the English language. It's free trade, it's consumption, good colleges, and good R&D.
If China doesn't defend its friends, it will have no friends. The US is still shipping arms to Ukraine, having extracted concessions from Ukraine regarding rare earth consumption, which the US would likely help extract and consume ,versus China monopolizing the worldwide supply. It's still shipping arms to Taiwan, and even supplying engines to allies' 5th gen fighter jets like South Korea's 5th gen fighter.
What allies of the US, like the EU and Asia, want from the US is likely just a fairer deal, more sharing of economic propensity from the international order.
How is Russia their friend? Right now they probably look like a friend the way Israel is our friend, an unstable and bloodthirsty weirdo starting fights for no good reason
Pff...
Innovativeness ? China has more patents than the US year after year. And if you go on a per person basis, Much of the EUU is in front of the US.
English Language ? Sure. That is useful. Because half the world can speak English.
Free trade ? That is past. Even with reduced/postponed tariffs, the US has the highest tariffs and trade barriers of the whole developed word.
Consumption ? ... well, yes
Good colleges ? Nah. There are a couple of prestigeous elite institutions, but most US colleges are average at best. And overpriced. And have to adjust to students coming from a subpar school system.
Fearmongerong and sensationalist nonsense to sell some books. Actual academics regularly state that this is not a cold-war-like situation.
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lol
Cold War-era "free" trade was never free. It was peg your currency to the US dollar, hold dollars as your reserve currency, trade exclusively with NATO countries, and (neo)liberalize your economy or suffer sanctions in the best case, US-backed coups to install friendly regimes in the worst. "Free" trade as you're certainly referring to was a product of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.
Hell, the first multilateral US free trade agreement was actually with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and it was ratified in '85 as a continuation of the Arab-Israeli Peace Process as established by the Camp David Accords. The second was '89, and that was CUSFTA, the predecessor to NAFTA as the US was still busy bringing Mexico to heel through economic warfare at the time.
Consumption? sure, insofar as that freaking McDonald's and Coca-Cola -- that is to say, exportation of US capitalist hegemony, and boy howdy would I have a lot to say about the country that hired death squads to murder Latin-American labor union organizers and leaders -- played a bigger role in the end of the Cold War than the US military. In fact, the military was a vehicle for "cultural" exportation, not a cause for it. Those billions' of dollars spent in international aid rebuilding Europe -- and keeping Latin-America and Africa under heel -- had to come right back to the US somehow.
Which is rather the point you miss dovetailing nicely with my first one, here -- like I said in the other thread, US dollar exportation is the sole buoy to the US economy, and Trump just declared the US is in a state of war against itself to end it.
Good colleges and R&D? you mean the Cold War-era brain drain? Oh, sure, there's a point to be made there -- in the form of even more billions' in federal funding for scientific and technological development...and sure, a whole heap of that was defense spending. Then it was promptly privatized for the exclusive economic benefit of the ruling class, particularly the military-industrial complex.
Of course the major scientific and technological advancements that ushered in the information age came after the end of the Cold War, but let's not let things like "time" stand in the way of a good chauvinistic narrative. Least of all when, as stated by others, China is currently eating the US's lunch on scientific and technological development at a time when Trump is vanguarding a war against US scientific and technological development.
It's funny you want to talk about soft power now, once and only once confronted directly with the notion the US military may not be the end-all, be-all of US military power, let alone the cause of US "victory" in the Cold War (which wasn't even a victory as such, but rather the USSR simply collapsing left to its own devices). When the reality is, the US dollar and global reserve currency status isn't just the linchpin of US hegemony, it is in fact the US's primary vehicle for hard power -- and Trump is so singularly incompetent in its use, he's gone so far as to actively aid in its destruction.
And, as a postscript...the English language? are you actually serious right now? You're actually trying to credit the US with the global proliferation of the English language? And not, I dunno...this?
You know, the thing that was getting going a full century before the establishment of the USSR in the first place, and at its peak a century before the start of the Cold War? Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's right there in the name: "English".
On the patients...
As for the English language, since US allies are the countries that use the English language, it benefits the US the most.
The good colleges are some of the best in the world, minus the STEM ones. But China can't weaponize that because few people outside of China have the want, ability, and economic pull to get people to learn simplified Chinese and Mandarin and work in Chinese R&D. It's the opposite for the US, and English.
As for the schools, yes, most schools are bad, but the US tries to avoid much elite overproduction so that they don't have constant angst about a lack of white collar jobs like in China and India. My public school, for example, was a top 5% school that gave me the ability to learn math up to AP Calc BC. And that was before the combination of community college courses and even more AP courses. Plus, it's not the school, but the trained population that comes after the population that counts. China's youth unemployment, for example > US's.
The reason I stated that J-20s and HQ-19Bs could win is that they MAY be able to shoot down IDF F-16 and F-15s, but there is a snowball's chance in hell they are touching any F-35s, let alone USAF F-22s, and future NGADs. And the UK is not the main beneficiary of the English language; it's the US.
Israel is whining about a hospital being hit and Western media is laundering this claim by leaving out relevant information. The hypocrisy is not surprising at this point, but it is gross; the hospital is directly adjacent to various military targets and appears to have suffered damage from shock waves rather than direct hits.
there was no such attempt. they approached and then withdrew as a part of ongoing negotiations (which Boris Johnson then disrupted). it's amusing that you can't even get the history right.
I mean, they have both stated it...
China's Xi Lands in Moscow to Beef Up 'No-Limits' Putin Partnership - The Moscow Times
Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Moscow on Wednesday for a key three-day visit including a grand Victory Day parade and a show of support for Vladimir Putin.
www.themoscowtimes.com
'Some Asian economies have the greatest potential to repatriate their foreign earnings or assets back to their local currencies.'
Oh no, the US is failing. Whatever shall we do since Thailand isn't using the US dollar, and uses its currency. Call me when they are using the Chinese Yuan Renminbi.
Meanwhile, one USD buys 7 CNYs.
Sure, but why would they seriously help Russia against Ukraine? There's no reason for it. As much as you want to see military equipment smash together to play out NATO fantasies, the Iran-Israel fight is probably far more representative of modern warfare. Missile spam mixed with hundred dollar drones carrying sticks of dynamite.I mean, they have both stated it...
China's Xi Lands in Moscow to Beef Up 'No-Limits' Putin Partnership - The Moscow Times
Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Moscow on Wednesday for a key three-day visit including a grand Victory Day parade and a show of support for Vladimir Putin.
Why would China step in at all? They get to look clean on the stage, build up plenty of allies so they don't have to rely on weirdos and people with targets on their backs, and watch western nations and proxies wear themselves out. If Putin gives up? Who cares, it doesn't hurt China at all. If Iran loses? Who cares, China already has half the global south on their side.
I mean, if I were China, I'd be sweating bullets right now. My friends/allied countries are all incompetent, my currency is low value, my government has to subsidize EV production to complete with fucking Tesla, the passport isn't as good as the US one, my local government led debt is skyrocketing. No one is buying my military equipment vs the US, The Indians were able to hit airfields and achieve mission objectives due to... having a bigger air force. There is government turmoil with Xi vs Hu's faction.
www.fidelityinternational.com
How China keeps its debt in order |
What is the fiscal firepower of the Chinese government? Depends on how much debt you think China really has. Our analysis is revealing.
www.fidelityinternational.com
Belt and Road Initiative - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
You're sitting here saying they suck at chess while they're playing go. They don't care about near peer warfare. They have enough military to keep the US off their mainland, and threaten Taiwan (possibly even take it), that's all they need and they're doing fine. But because they're not playing the game you want them to play, you say they're losing. The rest of the world meanwhile, sees this.
You're looking at a puddle of piss and claiming it's the ocean. Not only is there unlikely to be another global conventional military conflict, a nation-state must first be economically capable of waging it in the first place. Straight up, the US ain't it.
You do not understand the severity of this situation, and you refuse to listen. Taken altogether, China holds about four trillion dollars in USD. Just over two trillion in reserve currency, just under a billion in Treasury securities and sovereign debt. There are only two trillion dollars currently in circulation, globally, and that's over ten percent of US GDP. China can destroy the US without a single plane, tank, missile of any type, or so little as a single AK knockoff -- all it would take is for Xi to pick up the phone and order his government to liquidate its dollar reserves for rubles, rupees, euros, real, precious metals, and RMB buybacks.
If he did that, we're done. Period. The USD hyperinflates, and we can't import from any country, even that one penguin island Trump tariffed to hell and gone. The US does not have the production capacity for economic self-sufficiency, nor will it in the short or medium term. There'd be one hell of a global economic shock as other countries would rush to liquidate their own USD reserves, but China already has the groundwork laid especially among the other BRIC countries to fill the economic vacuum.
China's already been offloading dollar reserves and Treasury securities onto the global market for years. It's part and parcel of why the dollar's steadily lost value since Covid -- over supply, under demand.
You're talking about which pretty little plane can shoot down another pretty little plane. Those pretty little planes have to have bullets, missiles, and fuel in them first, otherwise they're pretty little expensive targets for the planes that have bullets, missiles, and fuel in them. We don't have an infinite supply of bullets, missiles, and fuel, and where do you think we get what we have? If not components for assembly, then certainly the raw materials for refinement, production, and assembly. It sure as shit ain't here, and good luck sourcing it from abroad for a war with China if they decide their first shot fired is to dump their reserve dollars on the global currency market.
This is why I say you're looking at a puddle of piss and claiming it's the ocean. You're talking about an hypothetical war against China we've already categorically lost.
You do realize pipelines can be destroyed like the Nordstream one, trains are not as efficient as ships, and ships have to traverse various checkpoints guarded by the US navy.Belt and Road Initiative - Wikipedia
You're sitting here saying they suck at chess while they're playing go. They don't care about near peer warfare. They have enough military to keep the US off their mainland, and threaten Taiwan (possibly even take it), that's all they need and they're doing fine. But because they're not playing the game you want them to play, you say they're losing. The rest of the world meanwhile, sees this.
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ticdata.treasury.gov
Ah, yes, the debt, I guess we're going to war against senior citizens in the US and Japan again.
The Federal Government Has Borrowed Trillions. Who Owns All that Debt?
Most federal debt is owed to domestic holders, but foreign ownership is much higher now than it was about 50 years ago.
www.pgpf.org
Better kill grandmom than that geopolitical enemy of ours with her baked cookies.