Plankton

4y

Demographics is a huge factor. Russia already has a demographic crisis on par with East Asia's and worse than the US. They will likely come to rely on China for labor, as well as relying on China's geopolitical heft as they are now a pariah state. China will have them by the balls essentially. Additionally, Russia now no longer has an industrial base for advanced defense manufacturing. Even pre-war they failed by a wide margin to meet the Russian military's order for Su-57. The T-90 seems to have been under produced as well. The T-14 was a non-starter. Due to sanctions they can no longer manufacture tanks at all. China has to gain from it as well as the Russians, while lacking the capability to manufacture, still have more advanced technology and designs than the Chinese.

krishna bound

4y

okay but you realize china's ambitions are just growing and globalizing its economy right? of course they are going to try to suck the GDP out of Russia to bolster their own by taking advantage of Russia's economic situation and lack of competition for capitalizing its market. that doesn't mean anything otherwise because (minus Taiwan and South China Sea) China legitimately has no geopolitical ambitions that aren't just about growing its economy. There is a reason Russia is in the middle east and the caucasus but China isn't. If anything the opposite will happen that Russia's dependence on China will force Russia to recall its geopolitical ambitions abroad

krishna bound

4y

okay but you realize china's ambitions are just growing and globalizing its economy right? of course they are going to try to suck the GDP out of Russia to bolster their own by taking advantage of Russia's economic situation and lack of competition for capitalizing its market. that doesn't mean anything otherwise because (minus Taiwan and South China Sea) China legitimately has no geopolitical ambitions that aren't just about growing its economy. There is a reason Russia is in the middle east and the caucasus but China isn't. If anything the opposite will happen that Russia's dependence on China will force Russia to recall its geopolitical ambitions abroad

krishna bound

4y

okay but you realize china's ambitions are just growing and globalizing its economy right? of course they are going to try to suck the GDP out of Russia to bolster their own by taking advantage of Russia's economic situation and lack of competition for capitalizing its market. that doesn't mean anything otherwise because (minus Taiwan and South China Sea) China legitimately has no geopolitical ambitions that aren't just about growing its economy. There is a reason Russia is in the middle east and the caucasus but China isn't. If anything the opposite will happen that Russia's dependence on China will force Russia to recall its geopolitical ambitions abroad

Plankton

4y

Saying minus Taiwan is a pretty big minus lol

Plankton

4y

Russia is more belligerent than China yes, but they both are interested in opposing US hegemony. Your last sentence agrees with me, like I said Russian ambitions will give way to Chinese ones.

Plankton

4y

Russia is making incremental gains in Donetsk. It is clear they will not take Kiev or Eastern Ukraine. The strategic aim of both sides now is to eliminate the other sides armed forces. As long as Western aid continues Russia will not be able to achieve that aim.

krishna bound

4y

but what ambitions does China have, you still haven't answered that

YANDHI

4y

They now control nearly the entire Luhansk Oblast (one of the two regions they stated as their aims to "liberate") and week after week grab new cities and settlements that they already have begun linking to Russia and Crimea. Like sure lets call it incremental if you want but those gains have piled up and seemingly mark off their own stated objectives

I feel like this narrative ran out of steam awhile ago and is dangerous to run at this point with the realities that are going on on the front lines.

SEGA GOON

4y

Seems Russia is doing pretty good without global mobilization tho

Scratchin Mamba

4y

Off topic but tbh that can change tho, the US wasn't always this interventionist either, if China gains more power I would expect to see them pursue their economic goals more aggressively, right now it's just not a smart move because they can already get so much done off the mere strength of not being as bad as western countries

Not in the short term tho

krishna bound

4y

Taiwan is not comparable at all to Russia's geopolitical ambitions and the fact the EU & US on paper recognizes the one china policy is proof of this

krishna bound

4y

While I don't fully disagree you here I wouldn't make precursor assumptions like that only because much of the US's modern interventionism has a direct historical root and chronology. As much as I think many people may disagree with, the US didn't just hit a level of economic growth and then be like "you know what? why aren't we just making more money by bombing brown kids.". There were non-economic counterparts of which economics were opportunistically seized on after. Even American Imperialism was essentially rooted in ideological ambitions of which the economic aspect was a kind of latent specter rather than the overt motive. The economic goals of the US being fundamentally tied to interventionism abroad is a somewhat new phenomenon as you say, but imo it's a reaction to the era ending where the ambition was not economic, and then the business class realizing what economic sanctity those actions actually brought them. Like reconstruction post-WW2 is a good (maybe the best) example of this, that wasn't just economic opportunism but it inevitably led to the current economic-tied hegemony. Hell, you could even argue this about the manifest destiny

Scratchin Mamba

4y

I think it's the other way around and that the US being a settler colony in its context of European settlers had a certain ideological justification that came with its material goals. The economic objectives came before the ideology and China's ideology can change as well over time.

Plankton

4y

How is it not comparable? Seems pretty similar to me. It’s basically revanchism with extra steps.

Scratchin Mamba

4y

I think it's the other way around and that the US being a settler colony in its context of European settlers had a certain ideological justification that came with its material goals. The economic objectives came before the ideology and China's ideology can change as well over time.

krishna bound

4y

without getting into history or anything of the sort here, i'll just talk about modern policy - the EU & US recognizing taiwan as being part of china on paper is enough proof it's not comparable but even if we leave that sphere, everyone and their mother knows that the US only cares about taiwan to the degree of its economic power, not as a political cudgel against china. the US does not care about ukraine's economy, it cares about it as a political cudgel against russia and its geopolitical position. the US does not (officially) have military bases in taiwan nor has tried to establish them. it does want to establish them in russia - namely since the US does not view china as a military competitor (only an economic one), but views Russia as the inverse. if the semi-conductor industry in taiwan vanished overnight, the US is gonna be outta there tomorrow.
the US and Chinese economies are so intertwined it's impossible to differentiate them if you break it down dollar by dollar. this is not the case with Russia. the US pseudo-protectorate of taiwan is simply about the preservation of taiwan's capital-friendly economy (similar to Hong Kong - hence why the US cared so much about the HK movement stuff; it was worried its economic autonomy would be overturned). However, China itself benefits from these capital-friendly economies though, hence why even after literally setting up elections in HK it still hasn't relinquished its economic autonomy. China's interest in Taiwan is historical, which yes may somewhat be comparable to Russia on a surface level w/o getting into the history itself (which is more murky and opinionated), but China's relationship with the US is not the same as Russia's

krishna bound

4y

While I'm not saying the economic objectives didn't exist on a practical level, I think its biggest proponents were not economic proprietors until later on in history. Whether or not the US was originally solely an economic project is debatable (esp. since a lot of it was about taxes), but not everything in the US's history has been tied to a parallel of the invisible hand of the market. there have been ideological goals which may have been borne out of economic components one way or another, but with that you're going to get into a chicken or the egg

basically what i'm saying is this

Plankton

4y

Your missing the fact that America’s economic hegemony relies on its ability to uphold a rules based order. We let the Ukraine thing slide because we never established a reasonable expectation that we would defend it. With Taiwan, on the other hand, it has been made clear to the world that the US will defend it barring a Trumpist President. It isn’t entirely about semi conductors, it is about maintaining the image of the US military as the defender of the rules based international order. If that goes, there are severe economic ramifications. Though US leadership is so useless these days, even a non Trumper might give up the house without a fight, like Biden did in SA.

Plankton

4y

Your missing the fact that America’s economic hegemony relies on its ability to uphold a rules based order. We let the Ukraine thing slide because we never established a reasonable expectation that we would defend it. With Taiwan, on the other hand, it has been made clear to the world that the US will defend it barring a Trumpist President. It isn’t entirely about semi conductors, it is about maintaining the image of the US military as the defender of the rules based international order. If that goes, there are severe economic ramifications. Though US leadership is so useless these days, even a non Trumper might give up the house without a fight, like Biden did in SA.

Scratchin Mamba

4y

Every action of the US not having a direct tie to an economic incentive doesn't negate that its broader ideology is the result of their material goals. Of course that ideology takes on a life of its own and can lead to actions that don't necessarily have any direct link to an economic objective.

krishna bound

4y

While I actually do not disagree with you on the first sentence in theory, this isn't necessarily true in practicality. The US reneges rules and shows its volatility all the time; lying about NATO continuously is one of them, or us leaving Afghanistan is another. The rules which outline US economic hegemony are less about the literal rule-based order of international policy and more about the order imposed by the rules of economics and associated cultural power/values. Most of the US's economic hegemony is literally born from its economy and how it chooses to use it. Hence why I'm saying if Taiwan stopped being useful economically, it would be gone tomorrow. It's the reason the US kept its position vague by supporting it while also recognizing the One China Policy - Taiwan was never supposed to be something within a "rule based order", it was meant to be purposefully vague since it was never about anything other opportunism.

Scratchin Mamba

4y

Nobody believes in that rules based international order bs anyway outside of the west lmao

krishna bound

4y

All I'm saying is the two are inter-linked dialectically (as you say yourself), but it's primarily because they're inter-linked it's not fair to say it's all about the material ends singularly

Plankton

4y

Your missing the fact that America’s economic hegemony relies on its ability to uphold a rules based order. We let the Ukraine thing slide because we never established a reasonable expectation that we would defend it. With Taiwan, on the other hand, it has been made clear to the world that the US will defend it barring a Trumpist President. It isn’t entirely about semi conductors, it is about maintaining the image of the US military as the defender of the rules based international order. If that goes, there are severe economic ramifications. Though US leadership is so useless these days, even a non Trumper might give up the house without a fight, like Biden did in SA.