21–30 of 57 posts
> coastal plain of the Pacific Northwest Where's that?
http://www.united-states-map.com/topo/northwest.htm I don't read topos very well, but it looks like most of the coast on that map is greenish and plainish.
And so the final imperative of the dominant power of North America is to ensure that this never happens - to keep Eurasia divided among as many different (preferably mutually hostile) powers as possible. What a disturbing view of the world.
Surely this isn't the first time you've encountered this idea? Britain explicitly held this policy for hundreds of years with regards to continental Europe (make sure neither France nor Germany could take over the whole continent).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely this isn't the first time you've encountered this idea? Britain explicitly held this policy for hundreds of years with regards to continental Europe (make sure neither France nor Germany could take over the whole continent).
So we should go back to slavery because slavery was thought of as a good idea for a couple thousand years?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Realpolitik 101. Which is the only kind of politik proven to work with a track record.
Considering how many millions of people have suffered due to the enforcement and enlargement of interests of hegemonies through realpolitik, I'd think your assertion at face value is abhorrent. The track is littered with bodies in the wake of imperialists. That's the reality of realpolitik: institutions of power crushing as many people as they need to in order to persist.
The Roman Empire delivered peace and prosperity to most of the Mediterranean basin for hundreds of years. The British Empire had a similar track record for a much larger area.
So now I'm rooting for the American Empire and the Pax Americana. I would most certainly rather be living in the West (or Westernized parts of Asia), under the aegis of the US military, instead of some third world shithole that does not enjoy security treaties with the Americans.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So we should go back to slavery because slavery was thought of as a good idea for a couple thousand years?
Woah! Massive logical jump there!
And so the final imperative of the dominant power of North America is to ensure that this never happens - to keep Eurasia divided among as many different (preferably mutually hostile) powers as possible. What a disturbing view of the world.
Surely this isn't the first time you've encountered this idea? Britain explicitly held this policy for hundreds of years with regards to continental Europe (make sure neither France nor Germany could take over the whole continent).
Imperial China repeatedly followed the same policy of trying to keep the outlying nomadic peoples fractured and prevented from uniting under a single leader. The results for the Chinese state were not good when Turkish, Mongol, or Manchu leaders were able to unite the disparate clans under a single banner, to give another example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering how many millions of people have suffered due to the enforcement and enlargement of interests of hegemonies through realpolitik, I'd think your assertion at face value is abhorrent. The track is littered with bodies in the wake of imperialists. That's the reality of realpolitik: institutions of power crushing as many people as they need to in order to persist.
An alternate view, which is well supported by history, is that while empires are created by war, they are very good at bringing peace and prosperity for long periods of time. The Roman Empire delivered peace and prosperity to most of the Mediterranean basin for hundreds of years. The British Empire had a similar track record for a much larger area. So now I'm rooting for the American Empire and the Pax Americana. I w…
For the people /within that empire/. As the NSA and general US foreign policy have made abundantly clear, the US does not consider anyone outside of their national borders "part of the empire".
Your last paragraph sums it up nicely. Is "enjoying security treaties with the US" really a prerequisite for a prosperous life? Since no treaty with the US is purely military in nature, that sounds a lot like racketeering.
http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/28/anonymous-stratfor-hack-10...
Stratfor is flattering the sensibilities of the military industrial complex that pays its bills.
> The greatest threat to the United States is its own tendency to retreat from international events.
Stratfor would embroil the US in more foreign wars, because the best thing that happened to US foreign policy in the last 15 years was Iraq...
These are the same people pushing for a Syrian intervention now. Peace time doesn't make anyone money, doesn't get any one promoted...
Their reading of China is laughable. While has China has debt issues, it is not analogous to Japan. With 1.3 billion people, it is more than an order of magnitude larger, for one thing.
China is actively colonizing the waters off the coasts of Vietnam and the Philippines, as well as expanding its space program. It is a rising, regional power attempting to revise the international order, much like Germany in the late 19th century. The US will need to strike a new balance of power with them. That rarely happens without war, sadly.
The fetishism of Russia plays to the fears of the Kremlinologists in the old guard. But Russia has a declining population, a declining GDP, and a second-rate military. Hard to imagine them as a challenger on anything more than a regional basis. This is not the Cold War anymore.
Did you notice there is not one mention of climate-driven migrations and disasters, which will hit the US and others with increasing violence? The Arab Spring and Syria were at least partially prompted by a drought-caused disastrous wheat harvest. Stratfor's failure to make valuable predictions about the future has a lot to do with its poor analysis of the present (even in 2011 when this was written.)
Lastly, because this is HN, I'll just say that these arm-chair analyses do not take into account the mutually reinforcing, exponential technological changes that will remake the world as we know it. The costs of solar energy are approaching zero; the capacities of narrow AI are increasingly superhuman; our ability to edit new life forms in to being, old diseases out of it, and generally augment ourselves, will make make these linear, ceteris paribus forecasts seem quaint.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An alternate view, which is well supported by history, is that while empires are created by war, they are very good at bringing peace and prosperity for long periods of time. The Roman Empire delivered peace and prosperity to most of the Mediterranean basin for hundreds of years. The British Empire had a similar track record for a much larger area. So now I'm rooting for the American Empire and the Pax Americana. I w…
> while empires are created by war, they are very good at bringing peace and prosperity for long periods of time. For the people /within that empire/. As the NSA and general US foreign policy have made abundantly clear, the US does not consider anyone outside of their national borders "part of the empire". Your last paragraph sums it up nicely. Is "enjoying security treaties with the US" really a prerequisite for a p…
I'm not sure that treaties with the US is a prerequisite for prosperity. On the other hand, I can't think of any rich country that is not good friends with the US?