That guy Ganesh (and most FT journos) is biggest cheerleader for new Cold war for a while.
This article essentially makes the same points that I did a few months ago: QUAD does not add much incremental value to US's China containment strategy. India is the key to QUAD but also its weakest link.
The author provides more detailed arguments though, suggesting that "The Quad’s problem is it doesn’t have much else to run on and hence will ultimately amount to U.S. power with a multilateral veneer."
Here is the .
The concluding paragraph:
The author provides more detailed arguments though, suggesting that "The Quad’s problem is it doesn’t have much else to run on and hence will ultimately amount to U.S. power with a multilateral veneer."
Here is the .
The concluding paragraph:
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
For the US, the simplest answer may not be the most likely correct one. So the West thinks countries go to China for loans either because they have few options or China is forcing them. This journalist dares to entertain the idea that countries go to China because China gives them more control in what they do with that money loaned by China unlike money they get from the West. OMG! A country might want to make their own decisions on what they can do than the fantasy of the West thinking the world wants to be mothered and fathered by them like they were children. And lets not forget Western criticism of Chinese doing business with developing counties versus Westerners handing out aid such as pouring a bowl full of porridge so Westerners can get a picture taken of themselves at how wonderful they are for caring for these poor hapless individuals living in sh*thole countries. It doesn't have quite the same immediately messaging when China builds a road or a school. Where is the instant propaganda opportunity where you can have them handing over a bowl of porridge to a poor emaciated child all in one photo like what a Westerner can get? Give a man a fish and he can feed himself for day. Teach a man to fish, he can feed his family for the rest of his life. The West only gives a man a fish. It shouldn't be surprising since the man will keep begging after he's done eating the fish and that's the point because they can make demands if the man wants another fish to survive. And they're suspicious of Chinese motives...
NATO is high maintenance solution looking for a problem to solve. If none exist, create an imaginary problem where none exist to self-justify itself and maintain (preferably expand) the western hegemony and entitlements.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Interesting conversation with "China desk intelligence expert" I guess people in the know respect China prowess in governance more so than the press
CBSNews
Wed, June 30, 2021, 5:00 AM
The Chinese don't buy into that. And what their narrative for the future is kind of runs like this: 'It's going to get harder. We've seen with pandemics can do to international trade and stability. Technology brings a lot of benefits to mankind, but it also is dislocating societies. We live in an information explosion that makes government harder and that may require new tools of censorship to prevent bad actors from disrupting or committing acts of terrorism or other forms of kind of political vandalism.'
And what China is offering countries in the world is what seems to be a set of answers to those problems, that they're going to give you, the means for governance, the means for control. And at a time when the world is threatened by global warming, climate change, the threat of new pandemics, of mass human migration because of technological disruption or environmental damage, that China is going to offer governments, regimes, the means to survive. So it's kind of a dark promise in that way, that's based on the idea that things are going to get more challenging collectively around the world and for individual governments, and that through technological censorship and monitoring, through artificial intelligence and big data tools, that they're going to be able to deliver a capacity for governance that has a heavy measure of compulsion. And I think that's a huge threat not only to the United States, but to kind of democracy writ large on the world stage.
MICHAEL MORELL: So the really hard question, particularly for an intelligence officer, since you never had to do this in the time you at the agency, is what should our policy be? Right. What should the United States do about this challenge that it faces with China? How do you think about that?
JOHN CULVER: Well, I don't know, I don't know about you. But as an analyst and even a senior NIO I was always neuralgic about policy statements.
MICHAEL MORELL:We were trained to be neuralgic.
JOHN CULVER: Yes. We pride ourselves on being politically neutral and non-partisan. And so I'll try to deliver my answer in that spirit. What I think, first of all, that no threat that China poses to the United States is as great to the threat of failing to deal with our own challenges, both in terms of defending democracy - If we're going to stand up for the system globally, it has to be viable and vibrant here.
And then I think the similarly, we have to show that we should govern, that the US system of governance after I would call real problems if not failure during the most the pandemic - which is still going on, I'm trying to be careful not to talk about it only in the past tense - that it's not a great brand right now. We need to give the Chinese Communist Party, you know, give them credit for a lot of things, but especially for vociferously defending their brand.
And, you know, they make no bones about being fuzzy or huggable or cute. They're about delivering governance, about lifting, by their count, eight hundred million people out of poverty in and this year, just announced that they had eradicated extreme poverty in China - there are problems with all these claims, but take them at face value because they do.
And so we've got to do all the things that Republicans and Democrats say we need to do, which is rebuild our infrastructure, strengthen our democracy, knit this country together again in a more fundamental and profound way so that we can continue to play the kind of role that I think the world expects in most cases needs the U.S. to play to continue to be that shining city on the hill.
MICHAEL MORELL: John, thank you very much for joining us today. Very insightful. I hope we can do this again.
JOHN CULVER: Well, thanks, Michael. It was a pleasure. And it's great hearing your voice again.
CBSNews
Wed, June 30, 2021, 5:00 AM
The Chinese don't buy into that. And what their narrative for the future is kind of runs like this: 'It's going to get harder. We've seen with pandemics can do to international trade and stability. Technology brings a lot of benefits to mankind, but it also is dislocating societies. We live in an information explosion that makes government harder and that may require new tools of censorship to prevent bad actors from disrupting or committing acts of terrorism or other forms of kind of political vandalism.'
And what China is offering countries in the world is what seems to be a set of answers to those problems, that they're going to give you, the means for governance, the means for control. And at a time when the world is threatened by global warming, climate change, the threat of new pandemics, of mass human migration because of technological disruption or environmental damage, that China is going to offer governments, regimes, the means to survive. So it's kind of a dark promise in that way, that's based on the idea that things are going to get more challenging collectively around the world and for individual governments, and that through technological censorship and monitoring, through artificial intelligence and big data tools, that they're going to be able to deliver a capacity for governance that has a heavy measure of compulsion. And I think that's a huge threat not only to the United States, but to kind of democracy writ large on the world stage.
MICHAEL MORELL: So the really hard question, particularly for an intelligence officer, since you never had to do this in the time you at the agency, is what should our policy be? Right. What should the United States do about this challenge that it faces with China? How do you think about that?
JOHN CULVER: Well, I don't know, I don't know about you. But as an analyst and even a senior NIO I was always neuralgic about policy statements.
MICHAEL MORELL:We were trained to be neuralgic.
JOHN CULVER: Yes. We pride ourselves on being politically neutral and non-partisan. And so I'll try to deliver my answer in that spirit. What I think, first of all, that no threat that China poses to the United States is as great to the threat of failing to deal with our own challenges, both in terms of defending democracy - If we're going to stand up for the system globally, it has to be viable and vibrant here.
And then I think the similarly, we have to show that we should govern, that the US system of governance after I would call real problems if not failure during the most the pandemic - which is still going on, I'm trying to be careful not to talk about it only in the past tense - that it's not a great brand right now. We need to give the Chinese Communist Party, you know, give them credit for a lot of things, but especially for vociferously defending their brand.
And, you know, they make no bones about being fuzzy or huggable or cute. They're about delivering governance, about lifting, by their count, eight hundred million people out of poverty in and this year, just announced that they had eradicated extreme poverty in China - there are problems with all these claims, but take them at face value because they do.
And so we've got to do all the things that Republicans and Democrats say we need to do, which is rebuild our infrastructure, strengthen our democracy, knit this country together again in a more fundamental and profound way so that we can continue to play the kind of role that I think the world expects in most cases needs the U.S. to play to continue to be that shining city on the hill.
MICHAEL MORELL: John, thank you very much for joining us today. Very insightful. I hope we can do this again.
JOHN CULVER: Well, thanks, Michael. It was a pleasure. And it's great hearing your voice again.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
The law of thermodynamics states that matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed from one form to another. In Biden's European tour, he is basically trying to rally all the countries against China by offering nothing. It is a violation of a fundamental law of physics and of course it does not work.
p.s. Actually what Biden offered was worse than nothing. Should Trump become president again all of his empty promises will turn into a net loss of energy for the Europeans.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Ever since the moment of the so called big bang the universe has been moving forward in the 'arrow of time' going from low entropy to ever higher entropy... Life may seem at first glance to go around that rule since it appears that biological life and civilization are more 'organized' but that is only because it is able to export even more entropy into the rest of the system as a whole...
From a thermodynamic standpoint life, and especially intelligent life, evolved as a catalyst to accelerate the process of entropy maximization since nature abhors both vacuums and gradients and thereby life is to dispense energy flows as part of the larger scheme of energy equilibriumization....
While there is no free lunch as a whole, people who are good at milking others to buy them free lunches... whilsts hegemons that are keen to extort and coerce their vassal hostages can continue to extract more and more tax/rent/usury from the rest of the world be it in the form of quantitative easing to infinity or straight up tech and economic sanctions and trade wars etc etc...
As the world as a whole continues to slide down the slope of Global Peak Energy curve as we run out of both the quantity and quality (EROEI) of available energy sources, the leading hegemon will continue to put the squeeze on the smaller nations in order to sustain itself... the world is now not only a zero sum game but an every shrinking one where the pie gets smaller and smaller even if the angular proportions stay the same... its like the Eagle at the top of the energy food chain pyramid if you will... the big fish are now eating the smaller fish and cannibalizing the ecosystem to stay afloat...