njf
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Posts posted by njf
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Nominating Trump may be a good thing for Democrats in the short term, it is a bad thing for the country, and a bad thing for the Democrats in the long term. With a rapidly changing world, we need a lot of serious policy debates. The absence of a functional opposition to Democrats makes them lazy and unrestrained.
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The WP article that I linked was from a book “Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference,” which will be published on June 30, 2020 by Knopf.
There are a lot more of covert electoral interference than that 1996 Russia case.
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52 minutes ago, Marc in Calif said:
Yeltsin? I haven't seen any evidence of heavy financial support paid directly by the US government for Yeltsin's re-election in 1996. Yes, there were both Republican and Democratic operatives who interfered, but they were paid by Yeltsin himself.
Putin? I haven't seen evidence that the Clinton administration provided heavy financial support for Putin's first actual election in March 2000.
It may not be open financial support. But there was certainly election meddling:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/06/26/russian-election-interference-meddling/
BTW, you can get the $1 subscription for WP if you are not already a subscriber lol.
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Here is an interesting article in the Intercept about the Nord Stream saga. The NYT story about a pro-Ukrainian group is silly in so many aspects. It is sad that NYT acted as the mouthpiece of the US intelligence agencies. In the golden days, the Grand Lady published the Pentagon papers.
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/10/nord-stream-pipeline-bombing/
- TMax, stevenkesslar and Marc in Calif
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Here is his article in Foreign Affairs
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/07/america-is-too-scared-of-the-multipolar-world/
- tassojunior and lookin
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A week has passed and the media seems to be going in a different direction now.
Here is one of the excellent analysis of the situation in Ukraine:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/devastating-moment-clarity-ukraine
More troubling are rumors of a huge arms deal between Saudi and China. Saudi is negotiating to buy over a dozen destroyers from China. Of course, the deal will not be done in dollars :-).
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41 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:
You made a lot of good points but, you still have avoided the two most critical questions: a. Will Putin use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if Ukrainians retake Crimea? b. What will be US responses for such a nuclear fist strike? Everything else really depends on your answers to these two questions.
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17 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:
I think the verdict is in. China's diplomatic tightrope walk is not going well.
You ain’t no middleman: EU and NATO slam China’s bid to be a Ukraine peacemaker
Von der Leyen says Beijing ‘has taken sides’ while NATO’s Stoltenberg says ‘China doesn’t have much credibility’.
In fairness, we are talking about two different things. It was completely predictable that just about anyone in the EU (expect Hungary, which MAGA folks love) would say - in blunt terms - that China is not a middleman, and is lacking in credibility. Europeans are circling their wagons against Russia. Arguably even moreso than the US, which more than anything doesn't want to get directly dragged into this war.
That said, those ECFR survey results also document that India and Turkey and China have zero interest in taking sides. And you are right that this fight is forcing China and Russia into a closer embrace - whether that's what they actually want, or not. My own view is that Putin is fine with embracing China. He can hardly portray himself as a Western leader advancing the cause of democracy, or global peace. Xi is in a difficult position. No matter how much his trade with Russia grew, it is a fraction of what trade with the US and EU look like.
And here we have it:
China's GDP unlikely to surpass U.S. in next few decades: JCER
That chart is based on all kinds of assumptions. This year looks worse for China. Maybe next year will look better. And the idea that China simply won't overtake the US has more to do with China's internal policies - like zero-COVID and labor shortages. But it doesn't help China at all if trade with the US keeps going sideways. The perception that China is siding with Russia on a war that Americans and Europeans detest and view as Russia's aggression is not going to help China's economy.
The EU response to the Chinese proposal is expected lol. They are really not the targeted audience for the Chinese side.
The economic prediction is suspect because it is based on the number from 3 covid years. What is missing from this analysis is that all predictions are based on US dollar. The biggest "war" on the economic side is the dollar denominated US debt. This may need to go a different thread as it is very complicated. There are a lot of talks about what will happen in this summer with the debt ceiling approaching. A simple fact is that a devaluation of US dollar by 20% against Chinese currency will make Chinese economy instantly bigger than the US.
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3 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:
Vlad simply doesn't prioritize peace and order. And he is proving it. Despite the complexities of an emerging multipolar world, I just don't think this is going to work out well for him. And Russia. I take it that all the Russians fleeing Russia so as not to become Ukrainian fertilizer agree with me.
Although Putin is a despot, he is still only one piece in this chess match of the global competition. His options and decisions are constrained by others. On the other hand, Biden has the greatest influence and most options to dictate what will happen next.
At the moment, he decided to push for a Russian defeat by escalating the military supports to Ukraine because Ukrainians were clearly willing to pay the price for a total military victory against Russia. The fault in this path of action is really an assumption that this conflict will not escalate to a nuclear Armageddon.
The question that needs to asked and answered is what will be the US reaction if Putin uses a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. Here are possible options: 1. Direct NATO/US involvement in the war and they will try to fight it with only conventional weapons, which US can certainly win; 2. a limited nuclear strike on Russia as a warning; 3. all out strikes against Russia with nuclear strategic weapons. The sad truth is the option 1 and 2 are not really viable options because Russia will not be willing to be constrained to a type of war that they will lose. So it will be a road to Armageddon.
The next question is whether Putin will push the nuclear button when Ukrainians defeat the Russians on the battlefield by reclaiming eastern Donbass and Crimea. Biden's advisers seem to think that Putin will not. Plenty of people think that Putin will. It is interesting that there may be a correlation between the perception of Russian strength and Putin's willingness to use nuclear weapons. It seems that people who perceive Russia as strong believe that Russia will use all means to fight (i.e. 5-6k nuclear warheads) whereas people who think that Russia is militarily weak have taken nuclear weapons out of the equation. This seems to a peculiar mental blind spot for neoliberals in Biden's administration. Is Putin a modern day Hitler or not? If he is, why would he refrain from going nuclear? If he is not, why the war must continue at all costs?
I think that the smarter option for Biden is to declare a victory, which is a real one by the simple fact that Putin failed to topple the Ukraine government. A ceasefire at the existing line of contact with maintaining economic isolation of Russia should be viewed as a great outcome from the US perspective. Pushing for more would mean a real and substantial risk of nuclear Armageddon.
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1 hour ago, forky123 said:
I hope these aren’t the same pollsters who predict elections. Polls depend on how the question is phrased. Where are the neutral options. It’s very hard to think positively about a leader deliberately targeting civilians and infrastructure of a peaceful neighbour. It’s also hard to think positively about a leader who has inflicted acts of war on your home soil.
The exact wording were provided along with the numbers. It is a single poll so it may or may not be accurate. But it is done by the Europeans to gain some understanding to why the rest of the world are not joining them to sanction Russia.
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14 minutes ago, unicorn said:
There's a difference between condemning a country's actions and applying sanctions. Obviously the latter is both hostile and costly to the country applying the sanctions. Turkey is obviously not a wealthy country, and it has a lot of trade with Russia. Only wealthy countries can afford a direct confrontation such as sanctions. Just because a country doesn't apply sanctions doesn't mean it's neutral in the matter.
You should go through the poll:
Which best reflects your view on what Russia is to your country?
In per cent
Anally – that shares our interests and valuesAnecessary partner – with which we must strategically cooperateArival – with which we need to competeAnadversary – with which we are in conflictDon'tknow
United States59161655EU912201254Great Britain7161265India512915China354416Turkiye14555188Source: Datapraxis and YouGov (DK, FR, DE, GB, IT, PL, PT, RO, ES), Datapraxis and Norstat (EE), Gallup International Association (US, CN, TR, RU, IN), December 2022/January 2023. -
46 minutes ago, forky123 said:
Getting personal is a sign your arguments are weak. You know absolutely nothing about me other than from my posts on this board. Perhaps keep your arguments about facts rather than moving to abuse.
There is nothing personal here. Just simply point out the fact the type of argument you made is also used by conservatives against reparations:
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/540812-slavery-reparations-are-a-divisive-waste-of-time/
I will stop here to avoid further derailing the discussion on Ukraine war.
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57 minutes ago, forky123 said:
No, “these people” didn’t colonise the world. People who are no longer alive did that.
As for the rest, many people also aligned with Hitler or were neutral. Others took a stand against tyranny.
As for Russia struggling to conquer it’s neighbour. That’s true, the Ukrainians have done a fantastic job in fighting the Russians which is why Putin has concentrated on destroying infrastructure and the terror bombing of civilians. Putin is a war criminal.
I heard similar argument that "these people didn't enslave the blacks, and people who are no longer alive did that". Is your rainbow flag just a camouflage?
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3 hours ago, forky123 said:
Only read the 2nd article due to a pay wall. Putin can have peace any time he wants, he doesn’t want. He wants his land grab in Ukraine to succeed under his threat of nuclear war. The question that the article doesn’t answer is which bits of land shouldn’t the west give up under this threat? Hitler should show us that appeased dictators don’t stop grabbing land.
As a year of war in Ukraine made it perfectly clear, that Russia is not even capable of conquering its neighbor. How could it pose a serious threat to Europe or US? Do you really believe that a ceasefire in Ukraine will lead to a new war elsewhere nearby in Europe?
Here are some excepts from the WP article about the global divide on the war in Ukraine:
"The conflict has exposed a deep global divide, and the limits of U.S. influence over a rapidly shifting world order. Evidence abounds that the effort to isolate Putin has failed, and not just among Russian allies that could be expected to back Moscow, such as China and Iran.
India announced last week that its trade with Russia has grown by 400 percent since the invasion. In just the past six weeks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been welcomed in nine countries in Africa and the Middle East — including South Africa, whose foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, hailed their meeting as “wonderful” and called South Africa and Russia “friends.”
The Western countries “are hypocritical,” said Bhaskar Dutta, a clerk in Kolkata, India. “These people colonized the entire world. What Russia has done cannot be condoned, but at the same time, you cannot blame them wholly.”
U.S. officials point out that 141 of 193 countries at the United Nations voted to condemn Russia after the invasion and that 143 voted in October to censure the Kremlin’s announced annexation of parts of Ukraine. But only 33 countries have imposed sanctions on Russia, and a similar number are sending lethal aid to Ukraine. An Economist Intelligence Unit survey last year estimated that two-thirds of the world’s population lives in countries that have refrained from condemning Russia.
This is not a battle between freedom and dictatorship, as Biden often suggests, said William Gumede, who founded and heads the Johannesburg-based Democracy Works Foundation, which promotes democracy in Africa. He pointed to the refusal of South Africa, India and Brazil to join Biden’s global coalition.
That reluctance, he said, is the outgrowth of more than a decade of building resentment against the United States and its allies, which have increasingly lost interest in addressing the problems of the Global South, he said. The coronavirus pandemic, when Western countries locked down and locked out other countries, and President Donald Trump’s explicit disdain for Africa, further fueled the resentment."
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6 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:
United West, divided from the rest: Global public opinion one year into Russia’s war on Ukraine
by the European Council On Foreign Relations
That is a fascinating poll. It seems to be driving the news coverage of the war lately. Here is the headline article in WP today:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/22/global-south-russia-war-divided/
And here is an excellent opinion piece:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/22/ukraine-putin-nukes-zelensky/
The bottom line is that if total defeat of Putin is either impossible or even undesirable, the war should be bring to an end as soon as possible.
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3 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:
Ex-Chinese military officer says world is in 'dangerous place'
That's another DW interview with Retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo that I think is even more interesting than the one @njf posted above. It's from the DW show Conflict Zone. And the host pushes back hard on some of what Zhou says.
Unfortunately, we have moved a long way down the road now. The hostility has increased significantly and Chines foreign ministry has criticized Biden by name, breaking with diplomatic protocol. Essentially, they called Biden a double faced scoundrel and cannot be trusted as a partner.
The twitter thread by Arnaud Bertrand offered a pretty accurate analysis of the Chinese position and offered an alternative to Biden's approach.
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3 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:
China is going to have a very hard time walking this diplomatic tightrope about how it wants peace and stability in Ukraine. Even though it is backing the guy who started the war, with whom it has a "friendship without limits."
I happen to disagree on this point. The relationship between Russian and China is complicated, and the current strategic partnership is truly a response to US policy toward Russia and China. In other words, it is an arranged marriage with the US as the matchmaker. Here is a twitter thread that provided a very good analysis of the Chinese positions:
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On 2/21/2023 at 3:31 AM, TotallyOz said:
I agree with @stevenkesslarthat Carter was right and now their plans need to pay off. I said the same thing to my Indian programmers many time. If they build the middle class, India could be one of the next super powers. But, India does not know how to do this. Both countries have enormous potential and lets face it, the US is going slowly down in importance. I would say China is next in line if they play things right.
A lot has happened in the last two days. Chinese side has released a few official documents: 1. a document stating the "crimes" of the US; 2. a framework on international security. Wang was in Moscow when Putin gave that speech to pull out the New Start Treaty, and met with him afterward. He was there to make arrangement for Xi's visit to Moscow later this year.
The document on the US misdeeds or "crimes" was described in Chinese as "檄文". There is really no good translation for this word in English. In Chinese history, it is customary to issue one to state the cause and justification before a war. So this is a highly worrisome sign of the current state of the US-China relationship.
The another important question is what is the goal of Xi's Moscow visit. It will only become clear after the visit.
Finally, an end to the war in Ukraine may be coming. It seems that the Chinese are serious to be a mediator now. It is in their interests to stop it, and they believe that it will be a major victory for them if they can bring an end to it in their competition with the US. It has always been a curious thing that Ukrainians are so quite about Chinese fencing sitting on the war, whereas US and Europe countries are more outraged by it. I can see why Ukrainians are relatively happy with the Chinese position. For all the talks of limitless friendship between Russia and China, Chinese side will not accept the annexation of Crimea and other parts of eastern Ukraine. There are probably also promises of financial supports to Ukrainians for rebuilding after the war. It would be interesting to see if Xi will release his "peace plan" for Ukraine after Wang's Moscow visit as promised.
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28 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:
Is China for peace, or Putin, or somehow both? And how should the US manage the global competition?
I just saw a rare and candid TV interview on German DW News of a former Chinese military strategist. The guy is part of the Chinese delegation to MSC. The interviewer is DW corespondent Richard Walker. You should watch the whole interview and judge the reliability of the Chinese statements yourself. The essence is that the Chinese have no ambition to challenge the US globally, and they are only interested in exerting influence in the western Pacific (i.e. along the Chinese coast). Their military is still far weaker than the US military to be a realistic competitor for the next 30 years. They disapprove of Putin's invasion of Ukraine but they have to keep a normal relationship with Russia because they share a long border and both are facing threats from the US. Finally, he is worried about escalations in Ukraine war and the nuclear threat is real.
Here is the link:
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2 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:
But most Americans are strongly behind helping Ukraine defend themselves from Putin.
It is certainly the right thing to help Ukrainian to defend themselves against Putin's invasion. It is another thing to quiescent to Ukrainian's unrealistic desire for a total victory. Most wars end with negotiations and political settlements. Do you really think that a total defeat of a nuclear power is possible or even desirable?
Ray Dalio's take on China-US relationship
in Politics
Posted
Ray Dalio is making some waves with his post on the current state of China-US relationship:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-i-think-going-1-china-us-relations-2-other-countries-ray-dalio
He is generally quite astute in his assessment of the current state of affairs. However, there is still a bit of head-in-the-sand type of denial-ism. The economic war is already in full steam.