this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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The problem is that practically what this means is opening multiple hot fronts to bleed the empire and that means a lot of death and suffering for many many years
Unfortunately, this is an entirely plausible scenario the way things are going. I get the impression that most people in the west don't realize what that's going to mean for them personally.
Well, North Africa and West Asia are the epicenter of new fronts right now. But Venezuela did buy some carrier-killer missiles from Iran recently, so I think we may see South America heat up in the not too distant future.
The tin foil hat in me says the earthquake in Taiwan is too uncanny to be a coincidence, and then the earthquake this morning in NJ made the tin foil sparkle and sizzle with "retaliatory warning??" vibes.
The Pacific kill chain progress feels like nuking China just got a little bit more realistic as a scenario. The mutual life strategy wherein the West needs China's factories can't be solved by reindustrializing the West, but brownshirts plus open-air prison camps, plus militarized domestic police, plus fascist irregulars playing the role of nu-enemy, plus total media control of friend/for narratives - I think the West could nuke China from a pure population control vantage point and make a go at maintaining world order through activating the entire spectrum of fascist groups to bring about a decades long terror campaign in Europe and the Americas.
Revolutionary optimism must abide, but damn it's looking like we're headed for a very long dark night.
You have very good points, but I think China has some of the best anti-nuclear and plain anti-missile defense, hacking, subterfuge and redirection technology on Earth, I wouldn't overly worry about China getting nuked.
This is why MAD is so important. If the west wants to "population control" (read: genocide, the slaughter of hundreds of millions) China, they best expect to be nuked to oblivion, perhaps even with biological weapons coming to the forefront considering that IMO- anything is fair game when it comes to MAD, when it comes to this sort of genocide.
They're not going to get away with another genocide of the indigenous Amerindians. They're not gonna get away with another imposition of the Opium wars, or great famines the likes of what were inflicted on Bangladesh or Ireland. If they want to play that game, all of the west better expect oblivion in return, and that (deterrence, with the full intent of acting upon said deterrents if necessary) is- IMO- the only moral answer, the only pragmatic answer; to do otherwise would be a betrayal of humanity, a betrayal of the Chinese people (or Russian, or Indian, etc) who had built up such weapons in the sake of defence of their nation, of their dignity and self-determination. In the face of nuclear holocaust, someone who is in a position to retaliate, who has been entrusted in such a position, and refuses to do so is betraying all the blood, sweat, tears, and hopes that went into creating such deterrence systems, betraying their entire nation and the concept of their own equal humanity if you ask me.
I certainly hope that China, Russia, North Korea, and whichever other nuclear-armed nations that might face such genocidal aggression from the west, are resolute in MAD. And I doubt that they aren't- to be otherwise is suicide, is treason- not merely to the state but to the very notions of humanity IMO. The west can never be allowed to genocide away another large portion of the world akin to what they did in the Americas and Australia.
Solid perspective on MAD. Thanks for that.
I do think it's entirely possible for the USA to get away with another genocide in this hemisphere, though. I do think they are getting away with neocolonialism in India. I do think the famines engineered by the West will slam into Africa, as they've been sliding into it for years. I don't think oblivion will be the response to these things. I think you're right about nukes for nukes, but I don't see oblivion being doled out for anything less than Western nukes being launched.
My view is that the west simply lacks social cohesion and self reliance to engage in any serious military conflict at this point. Western regimes are hanging by a thread right now, and it seems far more likely that the west descends into social unrest than rallies itself to war footing.
I think that social unrest is the war footing. You only need the rabidity of the neofascists in the streets to be allied with the police to be allied with the military and the intelligence community and all be tied together with surveillance capitalism, and then basically everyone not rabidly fascist will atomize and deactivate while the eschatological leadership directs the industrial genocide of new communities every 6 months. We are getting dangerously close to automated weapons platforms with the revelation of Lavender. We're already beyond the pale with near-real-time social surveillance. Anyone not in the most disciplined and isolated resistance militias is by default living in a kettle, and sharing intel with lynch mobs is all the social control you really need.
I don't think the Gladios militias got smaller or fewer. The openly fascist parties are growing in power in Europe. I think consolidation is plausible, but it will require a lot of blood letting. If consolidation happens, the resistance will mount and surely be disruptive, but not before a pan-Western force is amassed and starts its killing spree. I was looking for signs of this Gaza conflict accelerating the USA's hard power decline, but I think we're going to start seeing the opposite. We underestimate our enemies at our own peril.
Fascism is becoming increasingly open in the west, there's no doubt about that. However, that doesn't translate into a war footing. Western right wing parties aren't united in any sense, and they're all at odds with each other. What we're seeing in Europe right now is that all the countries are at odds with one another. Meanwhile, US right is advocating for isolationaism and will likely leave Europe to hang once Trump gets in power. This will only cause the tensions in Europe to rise further.
There is no path to any sort of consolidation here, and what's far more likely is that we'll see NATO and EU fall apart with countries trying to join BRICS to save their economies.
I dunno. I don't buy the great man theory of Trump isolationism. The US military is running the show, the politicians just need to package it. I think it's entirely possible for the USA to squeeze Europe but they can't abandon them because their interests align with China too strongly. If the Trump admin squeezes Europe, it will only be enough to justify the next phase in 4 years when the USA "returns to its former glory" and Europe falls in line under the threat of a Euromaidan from whatever Gladios operators are active in that country.
I really hope you're right that NATO is out of gas, but I have doubts.
I don't buy into the great man theory either, but Trump doesn't exist in a vacuum- I'd call him the manifestation of mass disenfranchisement, disillusionment, and disaffectedness by white, working class America, its petty bourgeoisie, and those true and halfways sensible (ie. not seeking WW3/forever wars) nationalists- in other words, he is the representation of AmeriKKKa's traditional power base, its reactionary, predominantly white settler foundations.
And these groups are indeed angry, and in many ways understandably so (other ways less so). Neoliberalism and the natural progress of capitalist, imperialst society towards a monopolistic, rentier-based economy has done a number even on the imperial cores, and they see the empire no longer truly working for their interests (ill-gotten as said interests often may have been), but slowly eroding their livelihoods instead. They see the imperial plunder declining, but also their share of said plunder declining (and their in-group of white settlers increasingly joining the rest of the world as part of the menu instead).
I'd also have to correct you here- the US military is not exactly the ones running the show- rather, the military-industrial complex, and a host of countless other corporations, in an unholy marriage with the political class and financiers, are running the show. The military is simply the mangy dog of the empire- the tool which they use to terrorize goatherders in oil-rich regions of the world, and also their primary means of cannibalizing the wealth of the empire as-is (that of the imperial cores)- of effectively waging a class war, against the working classes, but even against the petty bourgeoisie, to the benefit of corporate/financier America and the actors in its political theater.
I'd argue, in this environment, there is only one way to "package" a war, particularly a great war, to the western populations- they have to grant them a slice of the imperial spoils, and improved welfare/concessions. Yet this is not on the table- regardless of how the Biden admin or various Eurocrats have hyped it up- the political-financier class has a chokehold on said ill-gotten profits, as well as all levers of power within the west- and by all appearances it seems that they'll fight to the death to keep things that way. What benefit have average Americans, or- worse yet, Europeans, seen from their middle eastern misadventures? Or from the outpouring of billions (of their own taxpayer dollars, or those of their childrens' futures) into the MIC in the name of Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan?
This isn't saying that the west will fall into isolationism- frankly, I think the blob (the financiers/politicians/intelligence agencies/MIC/what-have-you) would sooner kill off Trump or any other politician who would dare actually, feasibly start moving the country in that direction. What we're seeing now, and what I suspect is likely to continue, is that the increasingly hollow shells of empire will move onwards, with their political/financier classes having to whip it forwards every step of the way. Personally I don't think that's a recipe for consolidation- hell, if anything, western society is tearing apart from within, with each crack of the whip, and with each step forward into an ever-worsening neoliberal hell.
I don't think great man theory has anything to do with this. US is becoming isolationist because the material conditions are declining, and a large chunk of the populace is now seeing the empire as a drain on them. That's what's making the isolationist rhetoric popular. Meanwhile, nationalist governments get in power in Europe will almost certainly start doing trade with Russia and China again. We already seeing this with Hungary right now. It's basically the only way to stabilize their economies, and US has absolutely nothing to offer there.
Aside from radlibs, most Europeans don't actually see Russia as their main problem. They might not like Russians, but they're not interested in a war with Russia, and they don't want to make further sacrifices in their standard of living. At the end of the day, it all comes down to material conditions.