shawn1122

Don't worry it'll for more than a generations. China is already a peer competitor and what America had going for it was incumbency as the global unipolar hegimon. Trump has openly reliquished this position and, regardless of who succeeds him, it's not something that can be easily restablished.

Winning goodwill back is almost certainly not going to happen. Even with assurances, other countries will feel as if they're only one election cycle away from potentially unfair treatment. The only way we go back to American unipolarity is another world war which America somehow gets rich off of like WW2 or achieving artificial general intelligence before anyone else.

I think the leaders of the US understand this which is why they're pushing for higher military spending everywhere and also going hard on AGI, no matter how far fetched it is in the near future at least.

It's actually in some ways refreshing in a sense that the US is embracing its role as imperial villain in many peoples stories. Shocking to people that live in America sure but to anyone that has experience with America's foreign policy as an external entity it seems like America is finally accepting itself for who it really is and embracing its decline in a sort of reverse coming of age manner.

This is solid geopolitical analysis.

The India blunder cannot be understated. This is one of the fastest growing large economies in the world and its struggles in the past half millennia are more a blip in history than the norm. This similarly applies to China and its century of humiliation.

Multiple US administrations were carefully and measurably courting India over the past several decades which Trump undid essentially overnight.

India has a very strong history of trust with Russia which dates back hundreds of years but more recently the USSR directly supported India when the US sent nuclear armed vessels into the Bay of Bengal in support of Pakistan during the '71 Indo Pak war (before either India or Pakistan had nukes). Portugal also tried to keep one of it's Indian colonies (Goa) after the end of WW2 which India took by force. Western nations intended to collude through the UN to force India to give the territory back but the USSR vetoed the vote.

Blunders like this generally come from not knowing history and it feels like Western leaders both in Europe and the US are no longer knowledgeable.

A few months ago Kaja Kallas, the Vice-President of the European Commission said: "I was in ASEAN meeting, and Russia was addressing China, like: 'Russia and China, we fought the Second World War, we won the Second World War, we won the Nazis...' And I was like, 'Okay, that is something new. If you know history, then it raises a lot of question marks in your head... but nowadays, people don't really read and remember history that much.'

Completely diminishing the obvious sacrifice of both countries, having been the two countries with that suffered the most casualities (25 million in the USSR and 20 million in China).

If these are the top minds in the West then we are absolutely cooked.

You're absolutely on point about Ukraine and the Istanbul process also. One can only imagine how many peace processes have been undermined by the idea of the West being an ally and the might of the West being a reason not to compromise.

European attempts to freeze Russian assets in Euroclear and use them towards Ukrainian military efforts also seems like an act of desperation and it's no surprise that Belgium has essentially said they will not comply unless other European powers also take on the liability involved.

At the very least Zelensky has said today that they are no longer going to pursue NATO membership which is a step towards reality based geopolitics.

It's a very optimistic outlook. I hope you're right.

What's uncomfortable for countries in the Western hemisphere is that upon shifting to a multipolar or "spheres of influence" model of the world (which was the norm preglobalization), America will continue its imperialistic tendencies to claim some form of dominion over Canada Mexico and South America. The latest foreign policy strategy document from the Trump administration seems to harken to the Monroe Doctrine (which was a warning that colonization of any further territory in the Western hemisphere by European powers would be viewed as a threat to U.S. security). It seems like Trump sees the Western hemisphere as "belonging" to America on some level.

I also don't see the US competely discarding neoliberalism when it comes to tech / services, where it still dominates. That requires some type of openness to the world otherwise they won't be able to continue to enforce their IP rights. When someone makes a Doordash order in Kathmandu, they want some portion of that transaction flowing through both Silicon Valley and their payment processors (Visa, Mastercard etc). How will the US respond when socialism spreads and those countries make their own versions of these services? Hard to imagine they would respond reasonably, especially since their approach to any resistance up until now has been to stage a coup. Old habits die hard.

The US became a military industrial complex state built upon military keynseianism during WW2. This worked well for them because of their unique advantages in the war, specifically being able to stay relatively disengaged while Europe burned, whilst also making immense profits selling weapons to the allies.

Essentially all of the European spoils of colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade and other economies of dispossession that made Europe rich went to the US as Europe self destructed. It was not unexpected either, the destruction of cultures, societies and peoples with a worldview of white supremacy was bound to bite back at them at some point (all conservative/purity politics eventually do).

There was also a massive brain drain with scientists escaping to the US for safety.

The US has managed to leverage that with 75 years of prominence as the global hegimon (some will argue it only became unipolar with the fall of the USSR) but that was never going to last forever. I wouldn't underestimate China. America, like all empires, has slowly become fat and lazy. China is hungry to reestablish itself.

Now, the US and NATO makes up up 80% of global military expenditure so they aren't going to just fade away but I would look at the US' massive bet on AGI as a negative sign. If they accomplish it then, good for them, that's probably another 50 to 100 years of US dominace but the approach reeks of desperation. China has had a much more measured and pragmatic approach to AI. If the bubble pops and the US takes too long to pick up the pieces, China will race ahead. China is already ahead on AI implementation in robotics which will have important military applications in the future as well.

In an asylum scenario definitely can be considered but for migration in general we need to stabilize the housing and cost of living situation before we start inviting people over in my opinion. The population is also skewing more elderly (with immigration there being the only balancing factor) there and here so need go make sure our healthcare system is ready for such a migration without causing any institutional shocks.

India US relations have gone cold since Trump. Particularly with the +25% tariff for buying Russian oil which they perceive as unfair since

1. India followed the US in sanctioning Iran in 2019 which is why they increased purchases of Russian oil.

2. The West had set a price cap on Russian oil after the Ukraine war as everyone understood that completely banning its purchase would drive oil prices up undesirably.

3. The Biden administration was explicit in acknowledging and accepting that India buy Russian oil. It was seen as necessary to stabilize the market.

4. China buys more oil than India from Russia and faces no specific additional tariff.

5. The EU continues to buy gas and the US buys uranium from Russia (which also allows them to continue to finance the war).

6. The IMF (which is seen as an American/Western institution) continues to bail out Pakistan and the peception in India is that some of those funds will reach non-state actors who will perpetuate violence in India.

There are actually more reasons but India recently hosted Putin for a state visit and rolled out the red carpet for him. India and Russia have historically had good relations (the Soviet Union used its UN security council position to support India against postcolonial Western interference on several occasions) but this was friendlier than many were expecting and it is in large part due to the current US administration being inconsistent on trade policy and incompetent at diplomacy.

India's official stance is 'strategic autonomy' or multialignment but at least right now it seems to have more friends in the East than in the West.

Middle East/Africa would likely become its own sphere just based on geography. I assume Europe would be in Russia's sphere.

I am pro democracy and anti imperialist. I take your point about whataboutism but I'm sure you can see how

Yea and a large portion of the USA is against those wars.

does not make for a good argument in favor of Western liberal democracy.

This is clearly a very Western leaning audience that is passionate about their perspective.

I don't support imperialism in general, regardless of where it comes from. I'm more interested in how empire justifies imperialistic behaviour and how its subjects align themselves with that behavior. This thread has been illuminating in that regard. I imagine there will be quite a few American supporters for war in Venezuela, for example, as there were for the Iraq war.

I agree that nothing the USA or any other party has done justifies Russia's war in Ukraine. But how the state justifies imperialism and how the subjects buy into and hold dearly their state's mistruths is what is of interest to me.

Outside the West, Putin has interestingly suffered no significant reputational damage (particularly in the Global South) which makes one wonder how widely the truths that are presented here as fact are accepted globally.

The reality is the US has started numerous wars on shaky grounds / manufactured consent and we at least try to reflect on their rationale and judge whether there's any way for empire to be held accountable for war on false pretenses. In the US' case it essentially never is.

This is clearly a very Western leaning audience that is entrenched in their perspective which is totally fine. As long as it's understood that they are also perceiving reality through propaganda disemminated by their elites.

I don't support imperialism in general, regardless of where it comes from. I'm more interested in how empire justifies imperialistic behaviour and how its subjects align themselves to that behavior. This thread has been illuminating in that regard. I imagine there will be quite a few American supporters for war in Venezuela, for example.

I agree with you. Nothing the USA or any other party has done justifies Russia's war in Ukraine. But how the state justifies imperialism and how the subjects buy into and hold dearly their state's mistruths is a fascinating sight to behold.