Are they going to fall like dominoes? (Political)

[walterpthefirst]

It looks like Russia is going to push NATO, the UN and the West as far as it can over the Ukraine.

 

I'm no politico, but as far as I can see the West has never been weaker and more divided at any time in my life.  Which suggests to me that Russia and China have seen their chance to establish a new world order, with themselves at the top of the food chain.

 

https://www.ft.com/content/d307ab6e-57b3-4007-9188-ec9717c60023

 

Evidence that the West is divided and weak?  As I said, I'm no political expert, but from where I am, I see plenty of evidence of weakness and division.

 

Can I see Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova falling like dominoes, after the Ukraine?

 

France and the EU will begin withdrawing their forces from Mali, leaving that country in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists and ripe for Russia and China to 'assist' with expertise, funding and armaments.  This echoes the recent withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan, where the Bear and the Dragon are stepping in to 'assist' that country.  The Arab Spring, when we hoped that liberal, tolerant democracies would arise in North Africa and the Middle East has turned into a nightmare.  Libya and Syria are deeply involved with Moscow and it now looks like Turkey's president Erdogan is shifting his country from a secular, pro-Western stance to a pro-Islamic Fundamentalist, pro-Russian stance.

 

China has been tireless in it's efforts to 'turn' smaller Asian nations into it's partners, with Pakistan being the jewel in their crown.  Oh and let's not forget the funding certain African countries are receiving from Beijing.  With the acceptance of these funds comes an obligation to do something in return.  A deep water harbour here, a mining monopoly there.  And so on.  If anything, the perfect time for China to launch some kind of invasion of Taiwan would be when the West's attention and forces are committed to the Ukraine problem.  Putin and Xi know full well that the West cannot handle both crises at the same time.  So, why not throw the dice and see how they fall?

 

The EU is currently weakened by the UK's departure and what of the United States?  That country had never been so polarised and divided against itself.  It's current leadership looks indecisive and unpopular.  

 

I had hoped that I would see out the autumn years of my life in a world where democracy was safe and secure and strong.  Now I'm not so sure.  If the 18th and 19th centuries were the apex of the British Empire's power and the 20th was the apex of American power, who will be the dominant player in the 21st?  Perhaps the best I can hope for, in my remaining decades is to keep my head down and hope for a quiet life, turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to what's coming.

 

What do you think?

 

 

Walter.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

See, @Fuego?

[♦ Fuego ♦]

With the perceived weakness and distraction internally in the US, the other big boys are going to flex their muscles and see what they can get away with. The personality difference in the last two presidents plays into that, though Biden seems to have a LOT more going on behind the scenes in proper intelligence processing. He doesn't seem to play his cards publicly. The question for all of them is, is there a lot of gain (finance, power, resources, positive fervor from people) to be had by starting a fight, or are we better off continuing to pretend to be nice? If they decide that they can profit from aggression and not be countered in a significant way, they will likely proceed because they like demonstrating their own power. What's the point of having armies if you don't bother to use them now and then? It's boring for hawks. 

 

Profit is also a primary driver. Cost-plus Iraq was extremely profitable for several defense contractors, though I don't know that our country's interests profited. In my view, the shift in the 80s away from infrastructure investment to making corporations more rich (trickle down) didn't serve the country at all, and we are seeing crumbling bridges and roads because of it. I lost my job when manufacturing went overseas (NAFTA). Taking out those middle-income jobs hasn't helped the country at all, except certain stockholders. Homelessness is becoming more rampant, rents skyrocketing, homes and apartments owned by corporations only interested in profit, and few checks in place to protect decent affordable housing. 

 

I don't know what the outcome will be for our lifetimes. I know humans have survived far worse times in history, and the power players and nations shift and fall while others take their places. I do know that we are not ready for economic collapse, and that would bring out a lot more ugly in our culture. The interruptions we've seen in supply chain just-in-time manufacturing show that the system is not very robust and resilient. Then the increase of blustering "I've done my own research" testoster-truck driving and well-armed idiots doesn't bode well for our long run as a country. Here's hoping for better. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

1 hour ago, Fuego said:

Then the increase of blustering "I've done my own research" testoster-truck driving and well-armed idiots doesn't bode well for our long run as a country. Here's hoping for better. 

Hey!  I drive a truck and own guns and watch YouTube videos! 

[alreadyGone]

48 minutes ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

Hey!  I ....own guns.... 

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

 

Otherwise, there's always prayer.

 

[alreadyGone]

On 2/19/2022 at 1:05 PM, walterpthefirst said:

....

 

What do you think?

 

 

Walter.

 

I think the American epoch is nearing an end.

Economic deterioration will determine the direction of all else.

The US dollar has been raped and left for dead. People all around the globe understand this, while most Americans have a blind faith that somehow everything will continue as before.

 

Christians will pray about it.

 

 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

1 hour ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

I drive a truck and own guns and watch YouTube videos!

Me too!  

[walterpthefirst]

2 hours ago, Fuego said:

 

 

 

 

I don't know what the outcome will be for our lifetimes. I know humans have survived far worse times in history, and the power players and nations shift and fall while others take their places. I do know that we are not ready for economic collapse, and that would bring out a lot more ugly in our culture. The interruptions we've seen in supply chain just-in-time manufacturing show that the system is not very robust and resilient. Then the increase of blustering "I've done my own research" testoster-truck driving and well-armed idiots doesn't bode well for our long run as a country. Here's hoping for better. 

 

I hear what you are saying Fuego and like you I hope for better.

 

But I'd like to share with you a disturbing line of thought I sometimes have when it comes to the power plays we see between nations.  In the distant past a popular and charismatic leader could wage war on a neighbouring nation and the resulting chaos, economic upheaval and sheer human suffering would be pretty much limited to just that region.  For example, even though Rome and Carthage were the superpowers of their time, the wars they fought had little real impact on the world, much beyond the Mediterranean. 

 

Move forward to the Napoleonic wars and the effects become more far reaching, extending beyond Europe and affecting the overseas colonies established by the European powers.  Fast forward to the early 20th century and wars become global in their effects.  What happens in Sarajevo (the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand) or the Atlantic (the sinking of the Lusitania) or in Russia (the Communist Revolution) now reverberates across all of the industrialized nations, their colonies and other nations.  

 

In an increasingly interconnected and interdependent global civilization, what happens in one continent can have radical effects in another.  Oil prices are one example.  Another is the dependence of European nations on the US for their defence and upon Russia for their gas supplies.  Think of the internet too.  Or the global banking system. All of these things create a vast and interconnected web of interdependencies that can be thrown out of order by events halfway around the world.

 

Back in the olden days, if a tyrant or dictatorial ruler gambled on the outcome of a war, when things went bad the fallout usually affected only the nations directly involved in the conflict.  But no longer.  Now, the stakes are so high that if a world leader's gamble goes wrong, billions will suffer as a consequence.  Yes, I'm talking about Putin and Xi again.  About Russia and China.  

 

Ruthless men like Hitler and Stalin who possessed no moral qualms about sacrificing millions of people to realize their own ends didn't have access to the technologies that we possess today.  But imagine if both of these egomaniacal dictators had the option to use nuclear, biological, space-borne or electronic warfare to achieve what they wanted?  That's the kind of power Putin and Xi both possess and both seem willing to use.  

 

When mere men have such god-like power and they make mistakes, as all men do, who pays the price for their folly?  As I said, in the past, such mistakes only affected certain nations.  But now, the mistakes of powerful, but fallible men have global consequences.  I can't help but think that as technology advances the magnitude of our mistakes will one day become so great that we will all pay for them.

 

In the face of such thoughts I try to hope for the best or try to bury my head in the sand and hope that I'm gone before things get out of control and we can find no way to stop them.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

 

 

 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

It ain't lookin good!  My wife and I may have 10 more years to live, and I'm not too concerned for us, but am fearful for our kids, grand, and great grand kids.

Do you think Russia and China are compatible enough to work together?  Or are both too greedy to share?

 

It took a war to pull us out of the great depression.  I hope it doesn't take one to stop the division now and unite us in an effort.  

 

 

[walterpthefirst]

Oh well, it's started.

 

On the back of a false flag operation Russian tanks have started rolling in to the Ukraine.

 

[walterpthefirst]

5 hours ago, Weezer said:

It ain't lookin good!  My wife and I may have 10 more years to live, and I'm not too concerned for us, but am fearful for our kids, grand, and great grand kids.

Do you think Russia and China are compatible enough to work together?  Or are both too greedy to share?

 

It took a war to pull us out of the great depression.  I hope it doesn't take one to stop the division now and unite us in an effort.  

 

 

 

Weezer,

 

We are no longer living in times where we have the luxury of enough time to collectively pull together to solve a major crisis.  Things move too fast these days and nowadays there's a new factor to consider.  Back then, pretty much everyone accepted what they heard and saw in the news.  But Russia and China have been chipping away at his for decades, eroding the confidence that the general public used to have in what Western governments were telling.  By the time the West can get it's shit together Putin will have gobbled up more territory and will be impossible to remove.

 

This is the New World order that China and Russia are trying to bring about.  One where the West is too fractured and too slow in it it's reactions to stop them in their tracks.

 

Not good.  Not good.

 

 

[alreadyGone]

6 hours ago, Weezer said:

...It took a war to pull us out of the great depression.  I hope it doesn't take one to stop the division now and unite us in an effort.  

 

 

 

This is a common line of thought.

 

I wonder though..

During "The Depression", the problem was a lack of currency.

There was no lack of need for products, goods, and services. There was no lack of available labor.

The problem was that available capital dried up.

Ask anyone who lived during that time and they will tell you that almost no one had any cash.

 

Then comes WWII and suddenly there were billions of dollars (here in the U.S.) available for building (or converting) factories to make war materiel.

There was all the cash needed to employ people to build tanks, ships, aircraft, and guns. There was almost unlimited money to make bombs.

Where was all that cash before the war began???

 

 

 

[alreadyGone]

1 hour ago, walterpthefirst said:

...

This is the New World order that China and Russia are trying to bring about.  One where the West is too fractured and too slow in it it's reactions to stop them in their tracks.

...

 

 

 

 

Too fractured indeed.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Redneck Jr has a set of grandparents and an aunt who live in Odessa, which is a major port city on the Black Sea.  Putin is sure to take it,  since he's in Ukraine anyway.  I hope they'll be safe.

 

From my own perspective, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.  Granted, it's been nearly 10 years since my last visit; but, honestly Russia taking over and ruling Ukraine with an iron fist might be the best thing that ever happened.  Because, right now, Ukrainians are hardly capable of governing themselves. 

[TABA]

1 hour ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

Granted, it's been nearly 10 years since my last visit; but, honestly Russia taking over and ruling Ukraine with an iron fist might be the best thing that ever happened.  Because, right now, Ukrainians are hardly capable of governing themselves. 

Putin’s Russia, on the other hand, is like a huge cuddly Switzerland!  

[walterpthefirst]

Redneck Jr has a set of grandparents and an aunt who live in Odessa, which is a major port city on the Black Sea.  Putin is sure to take it,  since he's in Ukraine anyway.  I hope they'll be safe.

 

From my own perspective, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.  Granted, it's been nearly 10 years since my last visit; but, honestly Russia taking over and ruling Ukraine with an iron fist might be the best thing that ever happened.  Because, right now, Ukrainians are hardly capable of governing themselves. 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

You have direct experience and knowledge of the Ukraine prof, which I don't.  So, I can't really comment about what you've written.

 

But please take note of the image I used in the title of this thread.  If the Ukraine does come under Russian power and the West does little or nothing about it, what then?

 

Then, in line with Russia and China's wish to establish a New World order, a new precedent will have been set.  The Bear will feel emboldened to move again.  And Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Moldova will fall like dominoes?  Followed next by Finland, which was once under Imperial Russian power?  What then, given that there's an enclave of Russian territory sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland?  Another false flag operation, this time claiming Polish aggression? 

 

Where does it end?

 

 

[walterpthefirst]

2 hours ago, alreadyGone said:

 

Too fractured indeed.

 

There's a common belief, here in the UK that Russian-sponsored agencies stoked up anti-EU feeling on social media, persuading enough people that they would be better off leaving the EU.  And so a referendum was called, Brexit happened and we left the Union.

 

Not a bad result for Putin, given that he has complete deniability.  And seeing that it cost him nothing (no expenditure of armaments or manpower or political commitments) to throw Europe into chaos.

 

Which is part of my point to Weezer.  These days things move too quickly for liberal, representative democracies to spend time assembling to debate the crisis, spend time debating a plan of action and then spend more time implementing it.  But authoritarian dictatorships don't bother about resolving issues by polite debate.  Orders are given quickly and acted upon quickly.  

 

Putin and Xi can see their chance and they now have the power and reach and will to remake the world the way they want.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

1 hour ago, TABA said:

Putin’s Russia, on the other hand, is like a huge cuddly Switzerland!  

I'm not saying the man in the street is likely to enjoy it.  Bit those who can't govern themselves end up being governed by somebody else.  That's a cold fact of history.  And what scares me is that Americans seem to be having difficulty governing ourselves here of late.

[walterpthefirst]

3 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

Redneck Jr has a set of grandparents and an aunt who live in Odessa, which is a major port city on the Black Sea.  Putin is sure to take it,  since he's in Ukraine anyway.  I hope they'll be safe.

 

From my own perspective, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.  Granted, it's been nearly 10 years since my last visit; but, honestly Russia taking over and ruling Ukraine with an iron fist might be the best thing that ever happened.  Because, right now, Ukrainians are hardly capable of governing themselves. 

 

Look, I don't want to fall out with you over this Prof, but please consider this point.

 

When Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait I backed the coalition of Western and Middle Eastern forces that booted him out.  That was because his move was a naked act of military aggression against another sovereign state.  But when the US and the UK went into Iraq itself to force a regime change by military might, I protested against it. 

 

The pretext used was that Hussein was behind 9/11 and that he was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.  Both of these turned out to be false.  So, your country and mine effectively engaged in the same kind of military aggression against a sovereign state that Hussein used against Kuwait.  The fact that we in the West consider ourselves to be the upholders of the rule of law and of human rights won't stop other powers from using our example as a precedent.

 

It goes something like this...

 

'If the Western powers can invade a sovereign nation and justify their actions on the basis of a necessary regime change, then so can we.  All we have do to is find a pretext for doing so.  Because their pretext wasn't even true, neither does ours have to be.  It can be anything we want and once stated, we'll stick to that line no matter how much contrary evidence emerges.'

 

(Hmm... I see that the Prof has just posted about the cold facts of history.)

 

So here's a question.

 

If a nation is seen to be unable to govern itself, is that sufficient justification (pretext) for it's borders to be violated by invading forces?

 

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

 

 

 

[walterpthefirst]

9 minutes ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

I'm not saying the man in the street is likely to enjoy it.  Bit those who can't govern themselves end up being governed by somebody else.  That's a cold fact of history.  And what scares me is that Americans seem to be having difficulty governing ourselves here of late.

 

 

Beijing believes that Hong Kong cannot govern itself properly.

 

Hence the new draconian laws, the massive surge in government surveillance and the loss of personal freedoms in that once-British colony.

 

I suppose those native to Hong Kong who could see the cold facts of history had enough sense to get out while they could.

 

Those who couldn't will just have to 'enjoy' staying there.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

1 hour ago, walterpthefirst said:

Putin and Xi can see their chance and they now have the power and reach and will to remake the world the way they want.

I expect China will wait to see how things play out.  It's no secret China has historically had eyes on Tibet, Mongolia, and Southeast Asia.  If Russia is seen to be given a free hand in Europe, we may well see Chinese boots on the ground not long after.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

47 minutes ago, walterpthefirst said:

Look, I don't want to fall out with you over this Prof, but please consider this point.

I disagreed with the first Iraq war (Desert Storm) because, at the time, Yugoslavia was falling apart and the US did nothing.  The justification of "protecting small countries such as Kuwait" was clearly belied as a thin veneer when Serbia invaded Bosnia.  

 

When the "war on terror" was declared, the first thing I said was, "this is going to be another Vietnamese quagmire."  Twenty years later, we gave control back to the very same people we were supposed to be deposing.

 

In short, to me, there is always something else lurking behind the propaganda and jingoism when a country declares a war.  I'm against most wars as a result.  So, I don't want to give the wrong impression.  There is no justification for one country to invade another; but it happens.  It is a hard fact of history and human nature.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

2 hours ago, walterpthefirst said:

But please take note of the image I used in the title of this thread.  If the Ukraine does come under Russian power and the West does little or nothing about it, what then?

When Putin first took power, I said, "that boy is going to put the Soviet Union back together.  Everybody said I was crazy; but I believed he was capable of playing the long game.  He finally has his chance; and he could not have hoped for a more perfect opportunity.  I doubt he'll waste it.

[TABA]

34 minutes ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

I disagreed with the first Iraq war (Desert Storm) because, at the time, Yugoslavia was falling apart and the US did nothing.

I was never a fan of Bill Clinton but in fairness to him, it was his administration that finally acted and secured the Dayton Agreement ending the Bosnian war, after the Europeans had spent five years wringing their hands (and on at least one occasion, having their peacekeeping troops stand by while genocide was committed in Srebrenica).  I served in the NATO peacekeeping mission there in 1997, when there was finally an actual peace to keep. 

 

Also worth noting that Desert Storm hostilities began in January and had ended by March 1991, and the first conflict of the Yugoslav breakup was the Croatian War of Independence which broke out at the end of March 1991. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Perhaps, "Russia taking over and ruling Ukraine with an iron fist might be the best thing that ever happened" was a poor choice of words.  Again, any country invading another on the pretext that they can't govern themselves is abhorrent to me.  But, I have also seen how the common Ukrainian suffers as a result of the corruption that runs rampant through the entire country.  Infrastructure, business, communications: it all runs on a system of bribes and theft.

 

I was once considering investing in a restaurant in Odessa for my former sister-in-law, so that she would have a steady income for herself and her parents.  Once I started getting legal documents, licenses, and certifications put together, I found out that I would wind up paying more in bribes to local bureaucrats, policemen, and "protection" racketeers than I would on buying and renovating the business itself.  And if I cleared that hurdle, I'd need to make sure the business turned enough profit to keep all those bribes constantly paid off.   Otherwise, they'd shut the business down, give it to somebody else, or worse...

 

Joining the EU might have been the best thing for Ukraine; but that ship has sailed.  Russian control might, at least, rid the country of parasitism, cronyism, and corruption. All of this qualified with the words, "might, maybe, perhaps..."