Miscellaneous News

Temstar said:

INDOPACOM estimate of 2025 Chinese forces in the Western Pacific:
View attachment 73852
Obviously the US considers this a problem which is why they're arguing over Pacific Deterrence Initiative. The politicians want to increase amount of forces forward deployed inside 1st island chain but Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation and Office of Net Assessment over in DoD argue that PLA forces are so overwhelming now that in event of conflict US troops forward deployed in 1st Island Chain and even within 2nd Island Chain would become target practice for the PLA. So they are actually calling for pulling back of forward deployed troops back to the west of the international date line, then in times of war the troops can move forward as needed.

I think the "then" part is laughable, but you can see the actual military experts who run sims and calculate stuff are rational. It's the politicians that don't want to back down.

I can understand the politican's point of view. If US pulls back to west of international date line then there's high probably of Japan and South Korea jumping ship which will shake the entire global hegemony. But if you don't pull back then what? Concentrate all US forces around the globe into the Western Pacific? Then everywhere else on the globe the hegemony would be at risk. It's a catch-22

Click to expand...

Not really seeing the catch22 part of the equation... China is the only viable threat to US hegemony... so by "everywhere else" where exactly is that?

Other than China which other major nation poses a credible threat to US economy, preminence, hegemony? India 2020?? Its only China... and so they will asymettric focus on Tiawan as thats killing three birds with one stone...

1) Semiconductor chokehold as Chips become the new oil and the US controlled IC supply chain the new digital OPEC... after fort knox lost all the gold they cooked up coupling dollar to oil, now oil running out, they will reassociate dollar to computer chips

2) Nuclear blackmail of China by strategic ambiguity... just like DF26 can be nuke tipped or conventional, US can play same trick with missiles it installs in TW.. how will China know?

3) Prevent China navy from getting out of first island chain... if US controls TW then China will not be true blue water navy if it cannot get to pacific and then all thats left is US take over SCS islands and total economic blockade of China... This is probably how they will solve peak oil mitigation by artifical "demand destruction" via implosion of Chinese economy etc

quantumlight said:

Colition of the willing, Partners of Choice, etc its all just terminology, in truth it boils down to US sanction power backed by threat of military force and/or CIA coup...

But its been effective so far, and US will milk it to the last drop and then some...

Click to expand...

If the us continues to force its allies to sacrifice their national interests without any apparent benefits/compensation, sooner or later those "allies" will become hostages, and hostages usually plotting to escape

quantumlight said:

Not really seeing the catch22 part of the equation... China is the only viable threat to US hegemony... so by "everywhere else" where exactly is that?

Other than China which other major nation poses a credible threat to US economy, preminence, hegemony? Its only China... and so they will asymettric focus on Tiawan as thats killing three birds with one stone...

1) Semiconductor chokehold as Chips become the new oil and the US controlled IC supply chain the new digital OPEC

2) Nuclear blackmail of China by strategic ambiguity... just like DF26 can be nuke tipped or conventional, US can play same trick with missiles it installs in TW

3) Prevent China navy from getting out of first island chain... if US controls TW then China will not be true blue water navy if it cannot get to pacific and then all thats left is US take over SCS islands and total economic blockade of China... This is probably how they will solve peak oil mitigate by artifical demand destruction via implosion of Chinese economy etc

Click to expand...

US removing their presence in other theatres will mean China will move in. You are already starting to see this with that 25 year deal with Iran and vaccine diplomacy with South America and so on. Now that's not immediate win for China because all these investments take a while before you start to see return, but nevertheless all these global economic offensive by China is keeping US pinned down across all theatres.

Ultimately it's a competition between two systems, in the US system they always believe in zero sum game and cultivate relationship between countries like that, while in the Chinese system the goal is win-win (and not in the "I win twice" sense). One system is much more advanced than the other.

Diplomacy as practised by the US is similar to Horizontal and Vertical alliance system (Chinese Diplomacy 1.0) practiced during Warring State, it's all about zero sum game and winner take all. Since that time China has at the minimum come up with two new versions: the Tribute System (Chinese Diplomacy 2.0) and this current Common Fate of Mankind (Chinese Diplomacy 3.0). It's winning despite coming from a inferior starting point for a reason.

Temstar said:

US removing their presence in other theatres will mean China will move in. You are already starting to see this with that 25 year deal with Iran and vaccine diplomacy with South America and so on. Now that's not immediate win for China because all these investments take a while before you start to see return, but nevertheless all these global economic offensive by China is keeping US pinned down across all theatres.

Ultimately it's a competition between two systems, in the US system they always believe in zero sum game and cultivate relationship between countries like that, while in the Chinese system the goal is win-win (and not in the "I win twice" sense). One system is much more advanced than the other.

Diplomacy as practised by the US is similar to Horizontal and Vertical alliance system (Chinese Diplomacy 1.0) practiced during Warring State, it's all about zero sum game and winner take all. Since that time China has at the minimum come up with two new versions: the Tribute System (Chinese Diplomacy 2.0) and this current Common Fate of Mankind (Chinese Diplomacy 3.0). It's winning despite coming from a inferior starting point for a reason.

Click to expand...

1) AI and AGI are game changers, the nation that invents the first Time Machine will by definition stay on top forever... Of course Time Machine may be physically impossible and true AGI may be further away than we project, but suffice it to say the nation to first master and become dominant in advanced AI will get almost insurmountable lead, here US is chokeholding China because all AI needs the lower stack of advanced semiconductor processes.. Tiawan is the key

2) In all of history there has never been a declining hegemon that got surpassed by an ascending hegemon in which the hegemons both had nuclear weapons, or for that matter the declining hegemon had orders of magnitude more nuclear warheads than the challenger... So history is no guidance on how this plays out but I believe US will very soon nuclear blackmail China and before China can fully scale and ramp up

3) Global energy production has peaked.... I talked about this at length in my Peak Oil post... This potentially changes everything... the entire calculation. Again, in the history of mankind this is the very first time this has happened and while a global peak of energy is good for no one (at least not from net perspective) it does tend to favor the established hegemon that is already on top, in this case America

Temstar said:

The politicians want to increase amount of forces forward deployed inside 1st island chain

Click to expand...

Lmao delusional people over there. At this point everything inside the 1st island chain will be a sitting duck against the PLA
Maybe even inside the 2nd island chain as well.

But yes I agree, that the US military faces difficult choices to make on how many of their forces to allocate on the China front.

quantumlight said:

But its been effective so far, and US will milk it to the last drop and then some...

Click to expand...

I cannot see much of any effectiveness of current American policy towards China.

China is still about development, inside of the mainland and outside in countries that came into a win-win agreements with China.

The most obvious examples are the RCEP, BRI, Iran deal, Russian relations, and vaccine diplomacy, to name a few major ones.

Nothing the Americans have done was able to stop or slow down any of this.

Even with Huawei, not many countries listened. We still can both on only both hands the number of countries that banned Huawei.

The Americans are setting themselves up for failure.

That is the current game the Chinese playing. The CCP really wants to see how far can this go, and who is still with the Americans in the next couple of years.

If allies abandon the Americans in their efforts to confront China, what will the Americans do?

The CCP expects a full retreat when that happens.

It goes back to President Trump. He played all the cards, and it did not really work. So the Biden people needs a bigger team. If that new American team does not materialize, we are back to Trump's failed China policies.

Temstar said:

Diplomacy as practised by the US is similar to Horizontal and Vertical alliance system (Chinese Diplomacy 1.0) practiced during Warring State, it's all about zero sum game and winner take all. Since that time China has at the minimum come up with two new versions: the Tribute System (Chinese Diplomacy 2.0) and this current Common Fate of Mankind (Chinese Diplomacy 3.0). It's winning despite coming from a inferior starting point for a reason.

Click to expand...

Seems to me what the CCP doing, in trying to extend influence across the world, is classical Marxism, of a shared global humanity.

However, the twist is that to achieve this classical Marxist ideals of brotherhood and sisterhood and gayhood, it will employ the win-win, which is a term straight out of MBA school.

That's right. The Chinese Communist Party is using bourgeois teachings to advance Marxism worldwide.

But ... that does show there is a different way. There once was the Washington Consensus.

Now here is China, presenting an open ended ideological debate, of what is development, and what is proper for a country at a certain stage of their development. Sounds like classical Marxism to me, lol.

That is why the Americans are freaking out!



(That's why I really liked President Trump. His American style freak-outs were the best! The Biden people, he don't even know what day it is.)

Temstar said:

US removing their presence in other theatres will mean China will move in. You are already starting to see this with that 25 year deal with Iran and vaccine diplomacy with South America and so on. Now that's not immediate win for China because all these investments take a while before you start to see return, but nevertheless all these global economic offensive by China is keeping US pinned down across all theatres.

Ultimately it's a competition between two systems, in the US system they always believe in zero sum game and cultivate relationship between countries like that, while in the Chinese system the goal is win-win (and not in the "I win twice" sense). One system is much more advanced than the other.

Diplomacy as practised by the US is similar to Horizontal and Vertical alliance system (Chinese Diplomacy 1.0) practiced during Warring State, it's all about zero sum game and winner take all. Since that time China has at the minimum come up with two new versions: the Tribute System (Chinese Diplomacy 2.0) and this current Common Fate of Mankind (Chinese Diplomacy 3.0). It's winning despite coming from a inferior starting point for a reason.

Click to expand...

@Temstar bro and here the Strategic understanding between the three countries comes to play. The US with its vassal system need to be there not only as a back up but to restrain its allies, the recent UK episode in the black sea is one of them the other is Israel and Ukraine. Its straining more US resources instead of focusing it in the Pacific to face China making them weak by comprising their principle. The Russian and Iranians had never have such powerful leverage in dealing with Washington before. And also within Asia there is a change of heart, JP and the Aussies may be a visible cheer leader in the Anti China effort but is having its regret, their security interest may align but their economy is not. I think they need to study what America First was meant for them before joining such crusade.

Remember when the US was accusing China of secretly making superhuman soldiers by altering DNA?

Well projection again!

quantumlight said:

Remember when the US was accusing China of secretly making superhuman soldiers by altering DNA?

Well projection again!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

It feels like they’re trying to justify doing it by accusing China. “If they’re doing it, why can’t we?”