America will not defend Ukraine, for fear of China

[313ghazi]

Let's not forget the Russians conventional capability. You go to war with Russia and you lose tens of thousands of fighting men very quickly. You lose hundreds of planes, ships, thousands of vehicles. Bombs land in your country, destroying your infrastructure and killing your citizens.

Yes all that will happen to Russia too - but thus time its a fair fight between heavyweights. Nobody is willing to pay that price for Ukraine.

Ultimately the nuclear deterrent means even after conventional victory - Russian territory would remain safe.

What would be gained? The liberation of East Ukraine.

What would be lost? Trillions of dollars in the cost of war, equipment, men, infrastructure - global recession.

In a war between the US and Russia - China is the winner.

 

[khansaheeb]

America will not defend Ukraine, for fear of China​

Peter Hartcher​

Political and international editor
February 22, 2022 — 5.00am

The US President, Joe Biden, has made it clear. If Russia launches a new military attack on Ukraine, America will not defend it.

Why not? Why will the US not defend a newish democracy of some 40 million people on the edge of Europe against an aggressive dictator and traditional US rival?

There’s the obvious political reason. America is war-weary. After two decades of wasting blood and treasure on a faked war against Iraq and a failed war in Afghanistan, Americans are disillusioned and exhausted.

Fifty-five per cent of Americans oppose the idea of sending US troops to stop Russia, according to a YouGov poll last week. Only 13 per cent of Americans agree that it’d be a good idea.

But there’s a bigger, harder reason of national strategy. Even if war against Russia were wildly popular, grand strategy would stay a president’s hand.

For all Russia’s power, it’s a sideshow. “We need to husband our resources for the primary fight,” says the lead author of the US National Defence Strategy of 2018, Elbridge Colby.

“At this point, we really can’t afford” war against Russia, Colby tells me. “It would be like, for example, obsessing over the Boer War when World War I is looming.”

The primary fight? Only one country has the potential to dominate the US, says Colby, and it’s not Russia. Only one country is amassing the power to be able to coerce the US economically, in turn positioning itself to be able to undermine its freedom and prosperity, he says:

“The only plausible way that could happen is China and Asia. Asia is about half of global GDP, in fact, probably more than that pretty soon, and China is by far the most powerful other state in the international system. So, by deduction, our most important interest is denying China hegemony over Asia,” says Colby, author of The Strategy of Denial: American Defence in an Age of Great Power Conflict, published last year.

China’s treatment of Australia today illuminates Beijing’s plans for other countries including the US, says Colby: “Australia is the perfect example of what the future could hold. I use Australia as an example all the time. They’re demanding you change your free speech law, your internal political system, and that’s the future if we let it happen.

“But Australia has America as a backstop. But if we let China get to the point where China can subordinate America then we and those who are allied with us are finished – we have no America.”
But Colby wrote the 2018 National Defence Strategy as a Pentagon official in the Trump administration. How does the Biden administration see it?

One clue. Joe Biden says that America is “competing with China to win the 21st century”.

Another clue. While US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was engaged in intensive negotiations to avert war in Ukraine, he made the long flight to Melbourne two weeks ago for the meeting of foreign ministers of the four Indo-Pacific Quad nations – Australia, India, Japan and the US.

His visit to Australia in the midst of the Ukraine crisis “only reinforces the point that, for us, as a Pacific nation ourselves, we see the future, we see it here, and you have got to keep focus on the core thing even as you deal with the challenge of the moment,” Blinken told me. So, for Blinken, Russia is the moment. China is the future.

A third clue. The Biden administration’s interim national security strategic guidance says that China “is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system”.

OK, so China is uniquely dangerous to the US, the Trump and Biden people agree. But isn’t Russia a scary big power? China might be the long-term danger, but isn’t Russia the immediate threat?

Russia’s economy is ranked number 11 by GDP at about $US1.65 trillion, using market prices. This is smaller than South Korea’s or Canada’s and only a smidgin bigger than Australia’s $US1.61 trillion. China’s, on the other hand, is three-quarters the size of America’s and 10 times the size of Russia’s. Moscow has a formidable nuclear and conventional military, but it’s ageing and cannot keep up with the cutting-edge powers of the US and China.

Colby says that China, once again, is unique, “the largest economy to emerge in the international system since the US itself. There’s an implicit tendency to dismiss China, to say that it’s not as real as the numbers suggest. But if China gets to the same per capita income level of Japan, they will be something like three times the size of our economy. And many Chinese are well below middle-income level at the moment, so they have plenty of catch-up growth opportunity.”

America is preoccupied by Xi Jinping’s China, not Putin’s Russia.

As for the short-term threat versus the long-term: “People say, China is a long-term problem,” Colby says. “My response is: It’s a long-term problem like acute heart disease. Sure, it’s long-term and you need to change what you eat and your workout regimen but, if you don’t address the blockage now, you’ll still get killed before you’re able to worry about the long term.”

By comparison, Russia is but “a pale shadow of China, given the size of their economy”.

But doesn’t the US have the capacity to deal with both Russia and China? The days of overweening American power are gone. The main China adviser to the Biden White House, the National Security Council’s Rush Doshi, wrote this before he was called to government service: “Sheer size suggests it is likely that Beijing – unlike the Soviets – could eventually generate and spend more [his emphasis] resources on competition than the US.”

In his 2021 book The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order, Doshi made clear that the US is now on the defensive: “The US cannot compete with China symmetrically – that is, dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan – in part because of China’s sheer relative size.”

In other words, America won’t defend Ukraine because it’s seized with the all-consuming urgency of defending itself.

America will not defend Ukraine, for fear of China

America won’t defend Ukraine against a Russian invasion because it is seized with the all-consuming urgency of defending itself, against China.

www.smh.com.au

Seems like Europe has been abandoned to it's fate by the US and that US prefers confrontation to war. Cold war is about posturing on a grand and global scale and building an ever growing counters to counters defense weapons manufacturing; creating an environment where war is not an option and the MAD doctrine prevails. The defense manufacturers are happy as they make record money, the military is happy as they don't have to actually fight a war and the politicians are happy as they can feed fear and win perceived wars and boast they are the world's most dominant force.

 

[Beast]

yes meanwhile China has made no public statement since its too scared to talk

its like China doesnt even exist

Hahaha... Enjoy your ban vacation while we watch Russia humiliate NATO.

NO ACTION NO TALK.

 

[Abid123]

Russia also has a home advantage.
As you said NATO cannot do anything as long as Russia has nuclear weapon parity. In addition it has a potent Army with decent equipment. Missile tech is the only thing Russia is on par or slightly ahead of NATO. Thats enough to do the job.

Er du Pakistaner?

 

[Beast]

Seems like Europe has been abandoned to it's fate by the US and that US prefers confrontation to war. Cold war is about posturing on a grand and global scale and building an ever growing counters to counters defense weapons manufacturing; creating an environment where war is not an option and the MAD doctrine prevails. The defense manufacturers are happy as they make record money, the military is happy as they don't have to actually fight a war and the politicians are happy as they can feed fear and win perceived wars and boast they are the world's most dominant force.

It's a cold war US bold to lose. China has the world manufacturing that the globe needs, even their EU can't do much to China.

 

[khansaheeb]

It's a cold war US bold to lose. China has the world manufacturing that the globe needs, even their EU can't do much to China.

All sides have to play safe and plan properly. The structure of the Federal system in the US and the control of the communist party in China are at risk and dependent on the outcome.

 

[Wergeland]

Er du Pakistaner?

Nei. Ethnic bangaldeshi.
Are there other Norwegians here too? Now thats the coolest thing.

You live in Oslo?

 

[Wergeland]

It's a cold war US bold to lose. China has the world manufacturing that the globe needs, even their EU can't do much to China.

Americas biggest mistake is the idea that capitalism is a exclusively American invention and that somehow it can only thrive under the US governance model.

Capitalism is just a tool to create efficient and competitive market, not a virtue on itself. Something China discovered and used to its own gain.

 

[khansaheeb]

Americas biggest mistake is the idea that capitalism is a exclusively American invention and that somehow it can only thrive under the US governance model.

Capitalism is just a tool to create efficient and competitive market, not a virtue on itself. Something China discovered and used to its own gain.

Capitalism was invented by the Babylonians thousands of years ago:-

Capitalism and the Zero

John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation, a state policy think tank in North Carolina, and author of The Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common

fee.org

"Our story begins in the cradle of human civilization, Mesopotamia. Historians are learning more and more about the inhabitants of this land (modern-day Iraq). Civilization began in the region not only because of farming opportunities that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers created, but because the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Akkadians were an industrious and inventive lot. They came up with a variety of agricultural, military, and cultural innovations. New archaeological discoveries suggest that their success was also due to the growth of trade and commerce, which were in many cases surprisingly sophisticated.

Primitive people had, of course, engaged in trade far back into prehistory. But merchants in Mesopotamian towns such as Uruk and Urappear to have pioneered such crucial tools as business partnerships and interest-bearing loans in the centuries before 2000 B.C. The lending of breeding stock was most likely the origin of the latter innovation. Indeed, the intimate connection between lending and livestock is easily seen in language. The ancient Sumerian word mash, which archaeologists identify as “interest,” was also the word for “calf.” The ancient Greek word for “interest,” tokos, had the original meaning “calf” too. The Latin root of the modern “pecuniary” is pecus, meaning “flock.” And the ancient Egyptian word for “interest” doubled as “to give birth.” Perhaps the rate of interest in early contracts referred to the number of calves or lambs owed the owner of a stud. Later the concept of rate of return in breeding contracts came to be applied to other business arrangements.

Certainly by the time of Hammurabi’s reign in Babylonia, in the 1700s B.C., lending must have been commonplace. Historians know this because surviving tables chronicle government regulations on the interest rate; a cap of 20 percent was frequently specified but just as frequently evaded by manipulating loan length and terms. Other records dating to the same period from Ur, the Biblical Abraham’s hometown, reveal the existence of a financial district, a sort of ancient Wall Street, where lenders congregated to make deals, compete, and finance long-range trade. These early financiers apparently experimented not only with lending at interest but also with business forms distinct from the traditional family proprietorship.[1]

One tablet tells the story of Ea-Nasir, a merchant from Ur who assembled a group of 51 investors who provided either silver or trade goods, particularly baskets. Ea-Nasir conducted trade missions southward to Persian Gulf ports, where he traded for copper, precious stones, and spices. Ea-Nasir’s business appears to be a rudimentary form of the limited-liability partnership. Investors were liable only for the money or goods they contributed up front. Losses beyond the capital investment were apparently swallowed by Ea-Nasir, as were the bulk of the profits to compensate him for this risk. In addition, the investors were compensated not strictly with interest but with a share of profits earned from Ea-Nasir’s trips south. In other words, they were equity investors—and not all large ones. Records show that ordinary citizens, investing a bracelet or two, could participate, anticipating the idea of mutual funds of small investors. “The effect of this business structure upon personal fortunes was profound,” writes Yale University historian William Goetzmann. “People were able to ‘insure’ themselves against personal failure—if their own venture collapsed, then the investment in Ea-Nasir’s might carry them through hard times.”

Still another tablet chronicles the use of interest rates to teach mathematics to young scholars, illustrating the close connection between business and numbers. The Babylonian system of counting was based on 60, rather than the decimal system we use today, and was expressed in a form of writing called cuneiform that is clumsy by today’s standards. Yet the system was sufficient to allow the Babylonians to chart the heavens, survey their property, conduct their businesses, and collect their taxes. It is likely that difficulties in charting the increasing amount of trade led the Babylonians around the third century B.C. to invent a “placeholder” number so they could calculate large quantities. But they didn’t actually come up with the concept of zero as a mathematical quantity. Nor did other ancient mathematicians.

For all its intriguing innovations, the Mesopotamian economic system lacked theconcept of economic independence that fully free markets require. Most of the lending, for example, was for “emergency needs” rather than profitable investment, and the emergencies almost always involved taxes or temple requisitions, which were really the same things. More generally, Mesopotamian society simply did not allow for much large-scale economic activity outside of government, which officially owned large segments of the arable land and lorded over tenant farmers in ways more despotic than Europe’s feudal barons ever dreamed."

 

[Wergeland]

Capitalism was invented by the Babylonians thousands of years ago:-

Capitalism and the Zero

John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation, a state policy think tank in North Carolina, and author of The Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common

fee.org

"Our story begins in the cradle of human civilization, Mesopotamia. Historians are learning more and more about the inhabitants of this land (modern-day Iraq). Civilization began in the region not only because of farming opportunities that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers created, but because the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Akkadians were an industrious and inventive lot. They came up with a variety of agricultural, military, and cultural innovations. New archaeological discoveries suggest that their success was also due to the growth of trade and commerce, which were in many cases surprisingly sophisticated.

Primitive people had, of course, engaged in trade far back into prehistory. But merchants in Mesopotamian towns such as Uruk and Urappear to have pioneered such crucial tools as business partnerships and interest-bearing loans in the centuries before 2000 B.C. The lending of breeding stock was most likely the origin of the latter innovation. Indeed, the intimate connection between lending and livestock is easily seen in language. The ancient Sumerian word mash, which archaeologists identify as “interest,” was also the word for “calf.” The ancient Greek word for “interest,” tokos, had the original meaning “calf” too. The Latin root of the modern “pecuniary” is pecus, meaning “flock.” And the ancient Egyptian word for “interest” doubled as “to give birth.” Perhaps the rate of interest in early contracts referred to the number of calves or lambs owed the owner of a stud. Later the concept of rate of return in breeding contracts came to be applied to other business arrangements.

Certainly by the time of Hammurabi’s reign in Babylonia, in the 1700s B.C., lending must have been commonplace. Historians know this because surviving tables chronicle government regulations on the interest rate; a cap of 20 percent was frequently specified but just as frequently evaded by manipulating loan length and terms. Other records dating to the same period from Ur, the Biblical Abraham’s hometown, reveal the existence of a financial district, a sort of ancient Wall Street, where lenders congregated to make deals, compete, and finance long-range trade. These early financiers apparently experimented not only with lending at interest but also with business forms distinct from the traditional family proprietorship.[1]

One tablet tells the story of Ea-Nasir, a merchant from Ur who assembled a group of 51 investors who provided either silver or trade goods, particularly baskets. Ea-Nasir conducted trade missions southward to Persian Gulf ports, where he traded for copper, precious stones, and spices. Ea-Nasir’s business appears to be a rudimentary form of the limited-liability partnership. Investors were liable only for the money or goods they contributed up front. Losses beyond the capital investment were apparently swallowed by Ea-Nasir, as were the bulk of the profits to compensate him for this risk. In addition, the investors were compensated not strictly with interest but with a share of profits earned from Ea-Nasir’s trips south. In other words, they were equity investors—and not all large ones. Records show that ordinary citizens, investing a bracelet or two, could participate, anticipating the idea of mutual funds of small investors. “The effect of this business structure upon personal fortunes was profound,” writes Yale University historian William Goetzmann. “People were able to ‘insure’ themselves against personal failure—if their own venture collapsed, then the investment in Ea-Nasir’s might carry them through hard times.”

Still another tablet chronicles the use of interest rates to teach mathematics to young scholars, illustrating the close connection between business and numbers. The Babylonian system of counting was based on 60, rather than the decimal system we use today, and was expressed in a form of writing called cuneiform that is clumsy by today’s standards. Yet the system was sufficient to allow the Babylonians to chart the heavens, survey their property, conduct their businesses, and collect their taxes. It is likely that difficulties in charting the increasing amount of trade led the Babylonians around the third century B.C. to invent a “placeholder” number so they could calculate large quantities. But they didn’t actually come up with the concept of zero as a mathematical quantity. Nor did other ancient mathematicians.

For all its intriguing innovations, the Mesopotamian economic system lacked theconcept of economic independence that fully free markets require. Most of the lending, for example, was for “emergency needs” rather than profitable investment, and the emergencies almost always involved taxes or temple requisitions, which were really the same things. More generally, Mesopotamian society simply did not allow for much large-scale economic activity outside of government, which officially owned large segments of the arable land and lorded over tenant farmers in ways more despotic than Europe’s feudal barons ever dreamed."

Humanity truly owe a lot to Ancient Iraq. No doubt.

 

[kingQamaR]

He had already sent Russian soldiers inside east Ukraine disguised as local militia , this is not an invasion as such Russians had seized control of this east Ukraine since 2014. This show of force was not needed. And now he has annexed it publicly his ramblings on the media last night. with his ridiculous numerous demands on Eastern Europe from the Baltics to Europe means this maniac is heading for a. European war.

 

[SaadH]

from a western perspective it is germany that has let the west down. It is the old prussia vs other's thinking.
The germans ceded the solar industry to china, in addition to this they did a lot of valuable tech transfer.
They re-built the russian oil/gas industry
They have no need for naval protection for their energy due to nord stream and have a really cheap source
They have a huge market in China for their goods, a market they can access via land and sea through the northern sea route.

Why should they give a dam about the US/UK?

You'd think they would act in their best interest after having WW1 imposed on them by the western Europeans and the highly oppressive reparations post WW1, which wrecked their economy and led to the rise of Nazis. Germans vary of Anglos and French is not without merit.

 

[Han Patriot]

yes meanwhile China has made no public statement since its too scared to talk

its like China doesnt even exist

Exactly mate, we are just a cowardice and meek country poor and making plastics toys onlee. What do you expect us to do since we are so weak and cowardice. The only thing we could do was buy Russian oil and gas and gave them some moral support on Nato expansion. No no no it's not a warning to Nato, just a lil squek. We also didn't indirectly created a new alliance, no no no, we are friends with everyone, Ukraine is our good friend who just accidentally confiscated our legally procured company in Ukraine. They also accidently left BRI. We forgave them as we are meek and cowardice, we will always support Ukrainian peace and territory. Lol.

Ooo Putin didn't come begging for our support without which their economy would collapse. He was there for the Olympics since he loves winter sports so much. We help Russia because we are cowards, they threaten us with a gun on our heads to force us to buy their oil at discounted prices. I am so oooo sad for China.

 

[zectech]

lol at the title

This is the exact reason why stay away from Qanon sites, it destroys any logic and reasoning.

So the US released a bioweapon, framed Wuhan with sending the same type of virUS research to China to start a cold war with China during trump, then trump unexpectedly was defeated by the good side, the cia tries to stage a trump/Qanon color revolution on January 6th to have trump have a conflict with China. And after US tries repeatedly to destroy the global economy to get at China, to perhaps have some war with China... the US is "afraid of China" because China support a puppet regime in the Kremlin.

 

[Leishangthem]

“The only plausible way that could happen is China and Asia.

Crusty white imperialist obsessing about China and asia,I wish to live for the day where crusty white imperialist has no place in asia .

Rush Doshi, wrote this before he was called to government service: “Sheer size suggests it is likely that Beijing – unlike the Soviets – could eventually generate and spend more [his emphasis] resources on competition than the US.”

Of course an Indian advising against CHina lol.