It's hard to prevail in any war in a post-nuclear age. Profiting from a war with China is a total fantasy, it would be the end of both countries, even if we had as little trade with them as with the Soviet Union.
The reason we are not manufacturing everything ourselves is that our incumbents refuse to allow anything to replace them, whether that is a more efficient company or a more able manager. They have the sway within the US to get what they want, and so things like patents and approval processes (which China does not have to the same degree, because for all of their flaws the government is more powerful there than the established manufacturers), will stop anyone from improving on GM within Michigan. The competition comes from within a country they can't determine the policy of.
Germany is suffering from a similar ailment. They are stagnating because for fifty years successive administrations have equated success with success of their majors.
>It's hard to prevail in any war in a post-nuclear age.
Another cold war is possible, and someone could prevail eventually.
>The reason we are not manufacturing everything ourselves is that our incumbents refuse to allow anything to replace them, whether that is a more efficient company or a more able manager.
That is not true in general. We have laws specifically to promote competition. I'm not aware of anything like that in China, although I haven't looked. I can tell you that it's common knowledge in China that doing certain kinds of business requires a bribe or connections.
>They have the sway within the US to get what they want, and so things like patents and approval processes (which China does not have to the same degree, because for all of their flaws the government is more powerful there than the established manufacturers), will stop anyone from improving on GM within Michigan.
First, the Chinese government owns or has a stake in many companies there. I think you're even required to have certain CCP officials inside your company if it's big enough. Second, China does have patents and IP laws. They also have pervasive state surveillance, so your ideas can be stolen by the government. I often wonder if WE have that too, but at least total privacy is legal here. Americans can stop the state from spying on them in most cases, at least as far as we know.
>The competition comes from within a country they can't determine the policy of.
I think you're mistaken about this too, because many party members are rich and involved in business. They CAN determine policies. There was a huge crash in the Chinese stock market a couple of years ago as one party faction fought with another one. That was totally anti-competitive, yet it happened, and Western investors got screwed. I heard it was the result of a fight between Hu Jintao (the previous president of China) and Xi Jinping. I think the campaign against Hu was touted as a way to fight corruption. By the way, Mr. Hu has only been seen in public like once since he was dragged out of a national party meeting in 2022.
>Germany is suffering from a similar ailment. They are stagnating because for fifty years successive administrations have equated success with success of their majors.
Germany is currently stagnating because of the toll the Ukraine war is taking on them, along with other commitments they've made such as shutting down all their nuclear power plants. They too have high labor costs and so on, like the rest of the West, but they were doing relatively well until recently.
>Germany is currently stagnating because of the toll the Ukraine war is taking on them,
The war is not inflicting any tolls on Germany. It was all self inflicted. It was pure stupidity not to be prepared to Russian aggression in Ukraine, and it was pure stupidity to respond while unprepared instead of brokering some Realpolitik peace.
Their fuel costs are skyrocketing, which is affecting everything there.
>It was pure stupidity not to be prepared to Russian aggression in Ukraine, and it was pure stupidity to respond while unprepared instead of brokering some Realpolitik peace.
I agree about this. They should have never been unprepared, and they should have settled it by now with a reasonable deal. The war started because of NATO screwing around in Ukraine's politics and trying to set up NATO on Russia's border. Of course Russia also did political things in Ukraine, but it makes more sense for them to be involved with their neighbor than for countries much farther away to do it.
Russia has shown no issue settling it in a rational way, ie getting the F*%# out of Ukraine in exchange for dropping sanctions. Its not like capturing a few parts of Ukraine does them any good.
Russia were the ones who started this whole ridiculous way. Neither NATO nor the US nor the EU was as you claim screwing around in Ukrainian politics the way you claim. The one doing the screwing around was Russia much of this was illegal (bribes, corruption, etc) and was generally malicous. NATO was already on Russia's borders and its not like they were building huge bases or putting nukes there much less making diabolical plans to invade Russia. Instead they were banding over backwards to appease Russia.
Hell neither the EU nor NATO cared that much about Ukraine, not nearly as much as they should have.
Poland Finland and the Baltics are right in the neighborhood and have a much more rational interest in making sure Russia doesn't conquer Ukraine, cause they might be next. And NATO and the EU have an interest in making sure Russia gives up on its aggression otherwise its eastern members won't be safe. Ukraine is also a future member of both. Also crucially Ukraine has a bigger interest in Ukraine then Russia does
> The war started because of NATO screwing around in Ukraine's politics and trying to set up NATO on Russia's border.
That sounds like an attempt to rewrite history. Ukraine's prospect of becoming a member of NATO was completely buried since 2008, and the intention to join NATO was resurrected only after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. To this day, the interest of other members to accept Ukraine into NATO remains lukewarm and no meaningful progress has been made in this direction.
The war started because Russia couldn't stomach that Ukraine was on the verge of signing a major trade deal with the EU that would've opened up the EU market for Ukraine, and Russia, facing its vaning influence over Ukraine, decided to invade and subjugate Ukrainians through violence, as it had nothing else to offer.
> The Minsk Accords were not a good-faith effort to avoid war, but a stalling tactic.
Merkel was trying to mke her past actions sound more noble. The truth is that it was far closer to appeasement. The Minsk agreements were not in good faith not just because Russia repeatedly broke both of them (while pretending not to be a party to them of that the so called republics were not Russian puppets) but also because they also broke earlier agreements to respect Ukraine's independence and borders by invading in 2014.
> You can even go back to the 90s and promises that NATO made that it would not expand to eastern Europe if you really want to get deep on the causes of this war.
The story about broken NATO promises was invented as an excuse for the war, the same way Hitler had no shortage of excuses for invading Poland. Many top officials of the USSR were still alive when Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014. Gorbachev, the minister of foreign affairs Shevardnadze, and the minister of defense Yazov all denied the story. In an interview to German ZDF channel, Gorbachev directly called it a myth: https://x.com/Jesuitchild/status/1749887239226617873 Their successors, like Kozyrev, the first post-USSR minister of foreign affairs of Russian Federation, have also called this story a total fabrication. Gorbachev summed it up with: "Had we had an agreement, we would've written it down."
> At least some NATO members (and Zelenskyy himself) want Ukraine to join NATO to this day. This is hardly lukewarm.
This is exactly what I call lukewarm. Even more than 10 years after Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine has still not received even an official invitation to begin ascension negotiations, let alone reached any key milestones of the process. Despite Ukrainians openly begging for it, NATO membership remains a distant dream.
> They want influence over their neighbor, it is true. Why does the EU want to influence Russia's neighbor?
It doesn't. The initiative for more open trade with the EU comes from Ukraine, because judging by the way rest of Eastern Europe opened up trade with the EU, Ukrainians could expect to see their standard of living rise very sharply in a very short time. In a decade, open trade with the EU could easily double or triple the income for most people in Ukraine. How would you feel about getting paid three times as much for the same job?
> How would you feel about Russia making trade deals with Mexico, sponsoring pro-Russia politicians, and selling advanced military gear to them? How would you feel if Mexico was attacking us with cruise missiles supplied and operated by Russia?
If this was preceded by the US treating Mexico the same way Russia has treated Ukraine, then I'd passionately support the Mexican-Russian alliance. If the US poisoned Mexican politicians, claimed that the Mexican people are a made up ethnicity, demanded Mexico to give up Baja California and Sonora, brainwashed Americans every day with genocidal propaganda directed against Mexicans calling for their extermination, and eventually invaded Mexico, razed entire cities from the earth, killed hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, forced millions of them to become refugees, kidnapped children, stole cultural artifacts, and polluted vast areas of Mexico for centuries with unexploded munitions, could you blame Mexico for seeking closer relations with whoever offers them support in withstanding the onslaught?
This is Ukraine's president. The photos were taken a few months apart, before and after Russians poisoned him. The US treats Mexico better than this and that's why the Mexican-Russian alliance remains a far-fetched fiction and not anything remotely plausible.
You can even go back to the 90s and promises that NATO made that it would not expand to eastern Europe
And I encourage you to do so, because if you look at the actual event protocol it simply doesn't support what you're saying.
The bottom line is that whatever was said verbally at the time was understood by all participants to be part of the brainstorming process in the course of negotiations of what would eventually become the 2+4 Agreement. And simply put, this particular proposal did not make it into the agreement. As one notable observer put it: "It was tough, everyone knew that only what is written in black and white in the contract counts."
That's why Gorbachev insists (in an interview you can easily find) that even though he felt that NATO expansion was against the "spirit" of the negotiations, there were no statements about NATO expansion that rose to the level of a "promise". We also have Shevardnadze's equally stringent denial (per the sibling commenter), and strong counterweighing factors, such as Russia's greenlighting of the first round of ascensions (PL, CZ, HU) in the 1997 CFE Treaty, which by itself renders the "broken promise" theory unequivocally moot. And some notable language in the NATO-Russia Founding Act signed in the same year as well.
The war was at least partly instigated by our refusal to promise to keep Ukraine neutral and out of NATO.
That's a severe misreading of the article you cite in association with this statement. Simply put, that's not the language of the article, and that's not an implication it makes.
How would you feel about Russia making trade deals with Mexico, sponsoring pro-Russia politicians,
So far so good. Whatever one may feel about Mexico taking that direction -- it is after all a sovereign state. And while such circumstances would certainly be a matter of concern to the US, the idea that they amount to something in response to which the US would need to launch a full-scale invasion of Mexico (or that such a move could possibly be beneficial the US in any way) would, of course, be seen as batshit insane.
... and selling advanced military gear to them?, ... How would you feel if Mexico was attacking us with cruise missiles supplied and operated by Russia?
If this happened only after the US launched an invasion of Mexico as plainly stupid and unprovoked as Putin's invasion of Ukraine -- all rational observers would agree that Mexico would of course have a perfect right to defend itself -- indeed, "by any means necessary".
Including the procurement of advanced military gear of virtually any conventional description, from whichever source it could find.
How are so many people finding these stale comments to mess with me?
>I recommend you stop.
I consider this brigading as well. I am within my rights to call it like I see it. If some anonymous internet guy is actually offended that another anonymous internet guy is accusing him of a relatively minor thing deep in the bowels of a stale comment section, so be it. Grow up.
If we go into it saying we're only pretending to annihilate civilization they won't match our military spending, and if we don't, we're still being insane.
The reason we are not manufacturing everything ourselves is that our incumbents refuse to allow anything to replace them, whether that is a more efficient company or a more able manager. They have the sway within the US to get what they want, and so things like patents and approval processes (which China does not have to the same degree, because for all of their flaws the government is more powerful there than the established manufacturers), will stop anyone from improving on GM within Michigan. The competition comes from within a country they can't determine the policy of.
Germany is suffering from a similar ailment. They are stagnating because for fifty years successive administrations have equated success with success of their majors.