The New International Order
On May 22nd President Obama’s West Point speech described the new “international order” he was trying to build; one founded on multilateral action in contrast to the unilateralism of the past. He described security in unusually broad terms. No longer did it simply consist of the mere prevention of war. It now included managing nature, feeding the sick and helping the distressed. Obama set forth the goals of “countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing wounds” as the objects of security. To achieve these goals he would use cooperation and diplomacy. The Chicago Sun Times had a full transcript of the speech in which Obama laid out his vision:
The burdens of this century cannot fall on our soldiers alone. It also cannot fall on American shoulders alone. Our adversaries would like to see America sap its strength by overextending our power. And in the past, we’ve always had the foresight to avoid acting alone. We were part of the most powerful wartime coalition in human history through World War II. We stitched together a community of free nations and institutions to endure and ultimately prevail during a Cold War.
Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation — we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities and face consequences when they don’t.
So we have to shape an international order that can meet the challenges of our generation. We will be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well, including those who will serve by your side in Afghanistan and around the globe. As influence extends to more countries and capitals, we also have to build new partnerships, and shape stronger international standards and institutions.
This engagement is not an end in itself. The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times — countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing wounds. If we are successful in these tasks, that will lessen conflicts around the world. It will be supportive of our efforts by our military to secure our country.
In the days immediately succeeding the West Point speech those soaring principles got a practical workout on the Korean peninsula. Gone was the suggestive movement of naval forces or the deniable tit-for tat response. Instead, responding to the North Korean sinking of a South Korean warship, Clinton sought China’s help in reprimanding North Korea. “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a sharp warning to North Korea upon her arrival in Northeast Asia, saying the Obama administration will work with regional powers to punish Pyongyang for sinking a South Korean warship.”
Here was the New International Order on full display. Instead of acting in the traditional role as South Korea’s patron, the US was asking North Korea’s patron — China — to protect America’s erstwhile client by punishing its own. The obvious danger to this approach was it tended to make China the de facto patron of South Korea. All the US was doing was passing along a message to the real power who would act. But the greater danger was that China might not go along.
China may have other ideas:But the U.S. strategy could face stiff resistance from Beijing, said senior U.S. officials Friday as Mrs. Clinton arrived in the country for talks.
Beijing has so far displayed little interest in reprimanding its longstanding ally in Pyongyang. South Korea on Thursday revealed the results of an international investigation into the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan and formally blamed the North for torpedoing the patrol boat. China has tried to stay neutral so far and said it will conduct its own assessment about the cause of the sinking.
What then? Why of course, nothing then but to retreat to Foggy Bottom and eat crow while working on yet another soaring speech. Beneath the diplomatese, Clinton was acknowledging that not a mouse could stir — or that she could not stir a mouse — without China’s go ahead. But the President may have no choice but to go cap in hand to China, which according to Wikipedia holds 23.4% of the US Treasury Securities the government sells in order to fund its deficit. The transaction on the Korean Peninsula was very suggestive and not all the demarches in the world can completely conceal the naked groveling at its center. Obama is not oblivious to the fact that China has him over a barrel, for in his West Point speech the President almost said as much:
Simply put, American innovation must be the foundation of American power — because at no time in human history has a nation of diminished economic vitality maintained its military and political primacy. … And to do so, we must first recognize that our strength and influence abroad begins with steps we take at home. We must educate our children to compete in an age where knowledge is capital, and the marketplace is global. We must develop clean energy that can power new industry and unbound us from foreign oil and preserve our planet. We have to pursue science and research that unlocks wonders as unforeseen to us today as the microchip and the surface of the moon were a century ago.
Obama understood that power must ultimately be undergirded by economic strength. That is fair enough. But if the steps the federal government have been undertaking at “home,” both in the form of unprecedented deficits and its deference to the Green Lobby and the teachers’ unions, sap the strength of the American economy and saddle it with mega-programs, then Obama’s new “international order” simply becomes a statement of intention to beg abroad after he has blown his wad on the new domestic order. After propping up a number of politically sacrosanct interest groups that are “too big to fail” the Administration may be frankly telling the West Pointers that there will simply be no money left for anything else. In a way the West Point speech can be restated in this way: after we have finished doling out the tax dollar for entitlements, entitlements which we cannot sustain anyway; and after having raised taxes to the level where business growth tapers off to zero, then that’s all she wrote. Therefore we are going to deal with all future international crises — and by that I include global warming and nation building — through multilateralism and diplomacy.’
The risk inherent in this approach is that it will pay in weakness abroad for political pork at home. Can this new multilateral world order work? Probably not without a core of hard power. Because Europe has been underinvesting in security for decades and ploughing their money into welfare states the hard power is not going to come from there. And now, facing huge deficits arising from the gap between their burgeoning entitlements and declining populations, Europe will cut back even more. It is little wonder Hillary is asking China to rein in North Korea. She could hardly ask for help from anyone else. The New York Times describes the problem that now faces Europe. Not even free-riding on American defense spending could gain it enough room to pay for its entitlements.
Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella. They have also translated higher taxes into a cradle-to-grave safety net. “The Europe that protects” is a slogan of the European Union.
But all over Europe governments with big budgets, falling tax revenues and aging populations are experiencing rising deficits, with more bad news ahead.
With low growth, low birthrates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle, at least not without a period of austerity and significant changes. The countries are trying to reassure investors by cutting salaries, raising legal retirement ages, increasing work hours and reducing health benefits and pensions.
“We’re now in rescue mode,” said Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister. “But we need to transition to the reform mode very soon. The ‘reform deficit’ is the real problem,” he said, pointing to the need for structural change.
The reaction so far to government efforts to cut spending has been pessimism and anger, with an understanding that the current system is unsustainable.
It is precisely this bankrupt system that Obama has set out to emulate with his giant public health care, cap and trade and immigration “reform” programs. Having imitated Europe at home, his new international order appears to emulate it abroad. The ends of his security policy — environmentalism, development and humanitarian assistance — as well as the means — diplomacy and multilateralism — are strikingly European. What the President left out of the speech was a description of how the West, once it has collectively purged itself of hard power, can wield soft power effectively. It is like one of those scenes in a movie where two men in a shack, watching the bandidos approach with murderous intent, prepare their defense.
“Slim,” said one, “hand me the gun.”
“Curtis, I thought you brought the gun.”
“Now what did you forget a thing like that for?”
If the welfare state was predicated on Other People’s Money (OPM), internationally it depended on Other People’s Security (OPS) for its existence. Now that it has finally run out of OPM it might want to notice that it may also run out of OPS.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
I think Obama’s final objective is for the U.S. to merge with Europe and become One Big Softpower. Then we can all emulate Rod Steiger’s character in “Mars Attacks” whose rebukes of the alien grow higher and shriller as he shrinks smaller and smaller until the alien just steps on him.
I can’t help but wonder what Obama actually meant to convey.
I remember being shocked when I read about the commencement speech after my West Point graduation in the papers the next day. Sitting through it, it sounded like a string of boring platitudes, but in the news it was a shift of policy position. It apparently didn’t mean what I heard. Maybe I was just distracted…it was ‘only’ the SecDef.
The same thing here. You’re interpretation might be correct.
It might also mean a significant shift in Obama’s policies…for example, maybe he realized the errors of his ways and an end to throwing our allies under his bus. After all, “We will be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well…” That would be a significant policy shift for the better.
Or maybe it means Obama will acknowledge and recommit to following Bush’s policies (for good or ill) With “And in the past, we’ve always had the foresight to avoid acting alone” Obama is clearly getting off the ‘unilateral’ leftist accusation bandwagon. Maybe he was acknowledging the previous administrations foresight, and announcing that he has come to appreciate it. Or maybe not.
Or maybe Obama is prepping the political battlespace for a withdrawl from both Iraq and Afpak…after all “Our adversaries would like to see America sap its strength by overextending our power.” Can’t be giving the adversaries what they want.
Or maybe it means the long overdue removal of our forces (other than transit/support facilities like Ramstein and Landstuhl) out of Europe in order to focus on the current fight. Not much point of a Stryker brigade in Germany…they aren’t going anywhere they can drive to from there.
Or maybe he was announcing his policy toward shaping the conspiracist New World Order. “The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times” He is seeking a new international order.
Or maybe it didn’t mean anything. Presidents give a speech at one of the Academies (rotating) every year. So he got up and gave a speech, said some words, and it didn’t mean a thing, didn’t mean anything more than the nightclub he set up for Calderon. He was supposed to talk, so he decided to sound deep and high minded and said a whole lotta nuthin’.
Or maybe he was just providing a blank screen upon which everyone could project what they wanted to hear him say.
I can’t help but wonder what Obama actually meant to convey, if anything.
W
America that looks like Europe; [on] which will rely on reams of treaties and human rights officials to achieve what they cannot achieve by power…
because faux concern for ‘the other’ (aka as socialism) has destroyed the human spirit to such an extent that America cannot rely on a people who can think for themselves or take self-preservation initiative where their heritage is routinely denigrated.
Where you are constantly asked to apologise for yourself, there are only two outcomes – the incredibly shrinking man (and I mean male, Whiskey), or revolution.
Hopefully through the balot box.
I am not an American. But I know that America is an idea that the world needs. The thought of a Van Rumpey (now there’s a shrinking man) for America is too hard to bear.
ADE
When WW2 ended the Western Europeans won the lottery, Uncle Sam came along passing out cash and forgiving debts so that they could rebuild. They, like a lottery winner, had never had that kind of money before. They decided to spend on all of the things that they had always dreamed about having. The US was complicit in this spendthift behavior by underwiting the Euro’s defense costs for four decades.
Now, like that lottery winner, the Europeans are wondering where the cash went and desperately trying to put together a life-style that fits within their means.
Altogether too soon the US will be in the same basket and unable to help them stave-off the financial/demographic collapse that is coming over the horizon.
The Russian Bear may be old but is still capable of mischief, the Chinese Dragon is young and rising and nobody is sure of what direction it will take, and Uncle Sam is madly trying to emulate Old Europe’s rapidly collapsing social experiment.
Interesting times indeed.
Obama well illustrates Friedrich Hayek’s observation that “in government, the scum rises to the top.” My late father-in-law, Henrique Gustavo Buhrnheim, said it more metaphorically, “The flies change, but the shit is the same.” He was too optimistic. In today’s America, what the flies come for is getting much worse.
we … have to build new partnerships, and shape stronger international standards and institutions.
This engagement is not an end in itself…
The last quoted statement is not true. The frightening thing about “progressives” is that their vision of what society and the world should be like is an article of faith rather than a product of reason. No amount of evidence or analysis will convince them otherwise.
To them it is indeed an end in itself. They continue to build the social equivalent of a perpetual motion machine while ignoring all evidence that says it cannot be done. They have ceased to ask why we should build such a society and whether it would be desirable for the people who have to live in it. Like instincts in animals their behavior is set even when the environment in which that behavior made sense is gone.
A humble reply to one world order, or new world order and those who would Coronate themselves without consent. The conceit of the governed does not exist.
To a number of us, this is a first and hence a solemn and momentous occasion, and yet, on the broad page of state and national history, what is taking place here is almost commonplace routine. We are participating in the orderly transfer of administrative authority by the direction of the people. And this is the simple magic which makes a commonplace routine a near miracle to many of the world’s inhabitants: the continuing fact that the people, by democratic process, can delegate this power, yet retain custody of it.
Perhaps you and I have lived with this miracle too long to be properly appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.
Knowing this, it is hard to explain those who even today would question the people’s capacity for self rule. Will they answer this: If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? Using the temporary authority granted by the people, an increasing number lately have sought to control the means of production as if this could be done without eventually controlling those who produce. Always this is explained as necessary to the people’s welfare. But, “The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principle upon which it was founded.” This is true today as it was when it was written in 1748.
Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address
January 5, 1967.
Obama is not interested in “soft power”; he is interested in “has no power.” The Ayers/Wright form of radical leftism is not interested in the “United States of the KKK” becoming a soft power: they interested in a “world without America.”
Obama is simply looking for China to give him an exit, an excuse to do nothing. A toothless rebuke from China toward the Norks is all that it will take. The media machine will do the rest. If China is smart they will oblige Obama’s pleas. The target is still South Korea. What South Korea will learn from this is that America cannot be counted on even when the evidence is overwhelming and the provocation brazen and that China is the only hard power in the region. South Korea slowly but surely will realign its policies. The Cheonan incident may become a watershed event to South Korea by proving to them without a doubt that America cannot be relied upon for support against the endless predatory actions taken against them by a state whose vile nature is not contested by virtually anyone in world including China.
Another ally has been thrown under the bus. Who will ally themselves with us now? The US elites are destroying American power as fast as they can. Wait until Iran gets the bomb.
I think what we are seeing in the Obama Admin is a generalized flight from competency.
There are two extremes, one in which the Federal Government is in possession of all of the required resources and expertise to do anything it wishes, and the other, in which the government can simply hire people to do any job – or take someone to court to force them to do it.
During the Clinton Administration the focus was on less competency. Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government Initiative” was designed to shrink the size of the Federal Government by simply mandating a 30% across the board reduction in civilian positions. And in space transportation Clinton set the stage for Obama’s cancellation of manned spaceflight capabilities by the widespread adoption of the “commercial launch” concept, which emphasized buying the capability rather than developing it.
Lawyers and politicians don’t actually do anything. They look for people they can force, cajole, buy, or threaten with legal action to do something. This is Obama’s approach to everything. He thinks he only has to be competent in being a government.
Others have already commented on our president’s attempt to stop the tide by asking the Chinese to intervene; here’s a good comment on how powerless we as humans are to change the direction of Gaia’s supposed demise by recycling aluminum cans: F
If you try to be all things to all people you end up being nothing to nobody. Socialism comes with an inability to set boundaries and order priorities. As reality intrudes and forces some allocation of resources that function gets taken up, not by the market for goods and services but instead by the less efficient political market.
Well that URL did not embed. I’ll try again, because it really is a good column.
http://www.ghostofaflea.com/archives/014246.html
F
Very nice, contrasting the wistful, hallucinatory vision of a perfect world, with the actuality of the day, the developing Korean situation. But then, outside of bowing to our enemies and insulting our friends, what else has Obambus done since taking office?
As far as hat in hand to China, well, yes and no. Of course, if you borrow a thousand bucks from a bank and can’t pay that’s your problem, if you borrow a trillion dollars from the bank and can’t pay, that’s their problem. If, consciously or unconsciously, Obambus is really trying to do a Cloward-Piven, why not do it in our time by pissing off China, collapsing the US and world debt systems? Make the Gulf oil spill look like a dribble down your chin, that would.
LifeofMind # 11
“Socialism comes with an inability to set boundaries and order priorities.”
Yes, but these people are not simply Socialist; they are Progressives.
Socialists have to keep tinkering with the mix because what they are trying to achieve inevitably produces failures by its very nature. They are trying to operate an engine on water instead of gasoline and when that does not work they try a mixture of water, alcohol and gasoline, sure that they will one day find the right mix. So you have an endless succession of New Programs that will Get It Right This Time For Certain.
Progressives are not only sure that they will one day find the right mix but that the mix will be 100% water. And they figure that when they get that, they will start on getting an engine that will run on air.
They are “Progressive” because they don’t ever stop.
If there were ANY doubts left, that speech removed them. LLMD (Long Legged Mack Daddy) is about 2 upgrades short of incompetent.
I just wonder if he will end up going down the same path as one of America’s previous black Presidents, A. Lincoln who said; “The best thing to do with an enemy is make them your friend”. President Lincoln then proceeded to kill more Americans then any President in history.
I wonder what will happen when LLMD finally realizes that the terrs hate us and nothing he can say or do will change that. Keep in mind that the USA is only half a dozen nukes away from solving ALL it’s immediate foreign problems. Of course, a nuclear solution will create more problems, most of them worse then what we have now. Nuking Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Mecca, Islamabad and Brussels would certainly shuffle the deck, so to speak.
Before anyone saddles up their high horse and gallops over to my place with fire in their eye, I am by no means advocating the use of nuclear weapons. I’m observing that the use of said weapons on the targets named would tend to shake up the ‘world order’ thereby creating a ‘new world order’.
Richard wrote: “What then? Why of course, nothing then but to retreat to Foggy Bottom and eat crow while working on yet another soaring speech.”
Depressing, but true: this has been the pattern from day one of the Obama presidency.
#2, Daedalus Muged: excellent post. Thank you.
We have dealt with the “New World Order” before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZlFBSRrSR0qw
The Korean peninsula presents a crucible for Obama if the Chinese decide to not restrain the North Koreans and L’il Kim decides to go out with a bang not a whimper. What does Obama do if the North sends a full blown invasion force over the DMZ and kills 20000 GIs in the process?
If Obama does nothing , he will be impeached. With the military over extended and worn out in the Middle East, where does he find a reaction force to counter attack? What options are left; a nuclear strike on Pyongyang, an outcome the Chinese would be forced to respond to?
All speculative, but no good outcomes but the uneasy status quo. This is what happens when stupid, naive voters put deluded cowards and weaklings in charge of our national security.
It seems obvious to me that Barack Obama is not another Jimmy Carter. Rather he is another Woodrow Wilson.
An airheaded social engineer utopian with a racist streak in him.
Pull leather. This ain’t no rodeo ride.
I hope it is recognized that our enemies are simply following the “terrorist” tactic everywhere: provocative violence too bold and damaging to resist reaction, then during the reaction the former victim becomes the aggressor through subsequent attack, propaganda, fifth column useful idiots. It’s the same pattern everywhere. It’s invincible if we do not crush the Brain that is organizing this. If I believed in Obama’s sincerity, I would guess that his counseling retreat and conciliation is just his way of acknowledging that, for example, North Korea is and always has been simply an arm of Beijing and/or the Kremlin, and we cannot touch those places. So what we it gain us to provide North Korea an excuse, however irrational, to go out in a blaze of glory? Because no matter what happens and for what reason, the destruction and misery following the collapse or conquest of North Korea will absolutely blot out any average sentiment-idiotic voter’s memory of the reason why this occurred. Peter Jennings’ successor will just run endless weeping hallmark stories about the poor poor North Koreans and completely forget about Communism & etc. instead it’ll be “Why aren’t we fixing the dykes – I mean Koreans – faster!?!?!?!?”
You’ll see. They’ve got us in the noose now folks. It actually doesn’t have much to do with economics. It has more to do with national will and hard power. As usual, unless 25% of the country is unemployed or something economics is just a red herring.
It always amuses me to see political historians like our President praise FDR for his far-sighted multilateral coalition building, particularly in WWII.
In reality, the U.S. was damn lucky the Appeasers didn’t win and keep Britain out of WWII, or since Churchill did prevail, that Hitler was stuck on stupid in invading the USSR rather than smartly overrunning the Middle Eastern oil fields first, then attacking Russia from Turkey and the Crimea to the south (no General Winter except in the Mountains to slow the panzers down).
Of course it was easier for FDR to look like a genius with his Germany first strategy when 80% of all German casulties/captured were on the Eastern Front. Without our Soviet allies (plus the Poles and Yugoslavs) doing the lion’s share of the bleeding and dying, WWII likely would have ended with American mushroom clouds over Europe, or the SS (who had an inside man for the July 1944 bomb plot) knocking off Hitler and seizing the reins of the Nazi Empire and cutting a separate peace with an exhausted West.
My point is, the accidental multilateralism, and one where someone else does most of the bleeding for you because they had no other choice, is a historic aberration and no basis for a foreign policy going forward.
The golden window of opportunity was probably in G.W.’s first term, when we had an administration that might have been willing to push for an East Germany-style solution to the Korean problem and still had enough to offer the Chinese to make it happen. It seems like there were some feelers in that direction in 2003-2004 with people like Norbert Vollertsen but then it slipped away.
Now as Wretchard observes we basically have nothing to trade with China in exchange for them hosting 2-3 million refugees on their soil. Nor is Russia’s slim rugged border with North Korea enough to facilitate a mass exodus, and that exodus would only be possible if the border guards guns were directed elsewhere or dumped in the Yalu as they too swam away with the other refugees. So what we’re left with is an endgame that is going to be dictated solely by Beijing with Seoul as the captive player, terrified both of a sudden reunification and of war.
I’m not sure what scares S. Korea more. The possibility of the Norks
flattening Seoul before they get annihilated (presuming that we had
leadership, will and capability to do that) or falling into the Chinese
sphere of influence. What keeps China from then lifting the border
later and sending the refugess south later anyway? I imagine that most
Norks would rather head south than west if given the choice, but what
do I know?
RWE @ 9 said:
“I think what we are seeing in the Obama Admin is a generalized flight from competency.”
We live in very “interesting” times. There is so much that requires immediate attention, some examples:
1) The world economy is in a major mess due to decades of mismanagement and corruption.
2) The United States is in both public and private debt up to its eyeballs.
3) Cheap petroleum is nearing depletion. We need to be shifting over to nuclear energy and synthetic petroleum as crash programs.
4) Major demographic problems loom (the baby boomers are getting old).
5) The Iranians probably need to be nuked.
6) The Norks probably need to be nuked.
7) The Saudis have probably been secretly funding al Qaeda and need to have their hands slapped.
8) …
As far as I can tell Obama is not making significant progress with these above problems. However Obama has made significant progress instituting Obamacare (digging us deeper into the socialist hole).
When we eventually get a competent guy in the White House, his attention will initially be diverted in undoing the damage caused by Obama while addressing the real problems that the nation currently faces.
“Cheap petroleum is nearing depletion. We need to be shifting over to nuclear energy and synthetic petroleum as crash programs.”
None of which will happen until the AGW meme is dead and buried. Too many vested interests will fight any and all attempts to go nuclear and develop synthetic petroleum programs (evil CO2 you know). The real black swan is what I have posted several times on the BC: the sun going quiet (as predicted by Theodor Landscheidt and others) and the earth climate going into a decades long cooling period with all the misery that would bring (crop failures, mass starvation, disease, etc). But it is going to take that happening before this country and the world realizes it has been stuck on stupid listening to Al Gore and his cohorts; making some very stupid economic decisions (i.e. placing too much faith in alternative energy schemes) in the process.
Time is ether our friend or our enemy, at this time we do not know which, the players which will decide times fate have not yet gott’n their act together and the players are not America’s friend! November can not come fast enough and maybe 2012 really will be a very bad year…
Tarnsman @ 25 said:
“None of which will happen until the AGW meme is dead and buried.”
Actually the AGW crowd (if they were honest and rational) should be very pro-nuclear power. James Lovelock who I believe to be honest and rational is very pro-nuclear. However much of AGW crowd is very anti-nuclear.
That’s actually a “tell”.
Their anti-nuclear stance in essence “tips their hand” and reveals them to be “water melon greens” using AGW to pursue their hidden left wing agendas.
Tarnsman @ 25 also said:
“The real black swan is what I have posted several times on the BC: the sun going quiet (as predicted by Theodor Landscheidt and others) and the earth climate going into a decades long cooling period with all the misery that would bring (crop failures, mass starvation, disease, etc).”
Talk about getting caught with their pants down! Truth-to-tell, no one really understands how the Sun works (that was a genuine black swan). The quiet Sun has turned all of the phoney-baloney climate modeling upside down and made fools out of the AGW crowd. The wisest thing those idiots could do would be to quietly abandon AGW and shift focus over to deforestation and wildlife habitat loss. Those are legitimate environmental issues. Unfortunately for the watermelon greens, these other issues don’t have much traction towards wealth transfer from the developed to the developing world and all the other hidden agenda items.
p.s. The “smiley” on post #24 was an accident. No clue how that happened (network noise?).
p.s.s. Theodor Landscheidt is an astrologer and has almost no scientific credibility. He got lucky with his quiet Sun models. Again, no one really understands how the Sun works.
Alberta’s Oil Sands:
““The fact that oil sands by themselves—were they a country—are set to become the largest single source of U.S. crude oil imports this year, emphasizes the importance they have attained as a supply source for the United States,” said IHS CERA chairman Daniel Yergin, author of the groundbreaking history of oil, The Prize.”
…-
“Canada’s Oil Sands Set to Become Biggest Source of U.S. Oil Imports, Report Says’
Canadian oil sands will probably become the No. 1 source of U.S. crude oil imports this year, and could make up more than a third of the nation’s oil and refined product imports by 2030, according to a new study.
The Role of Canadian Oil Sands in U.S. Oil Supply, a report from Cambridge, Mass.-based IHS CERA, says that in a fast-growth scenario, oil sands could represent 36% of oil imports by 2030, or 20% in a more moderate growth scenario, compared with 8% in 2009. Production of 1.35 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2009 could rise to between 3.1 mbd and 5.7 mbd by then.”
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Canadas-Oil-Sands-Set-to-Become-Biggest-Source-of-U.S.-Oil-Imports-Report-Says.html
Tarnsman…
If the northern latitudes cool off then Russia, Ukraine and Canada would be greatly affected — more so than most.
Natural gas is the critical resource for food production: ammonium nitrate based fertilizers.
Peak cheap oil means Peak Arabian oil. KSA is in no position to extend field life by way of water flood, yet.
It is easy to foresee KSA fading back while Russia and Iraq step-up.
It seems inevitable that CNG and NGL will come to dominate the motor fuels market. The transition is being held up by a super-tariff against after-market installers, courtesy of the EPA and K Street Lobbyists. ( $20,000 per year, per location, per engine type ! )
Palin’s Pipeline and others is capable of replacing millions of barrels of oil energy per day — when it is completed.
The hydro-potential of the Amazonian watershed is fantastic. It is not being pursued.
A tariff against non-hemispheric oil imports would be wise policy. We should make the OPEC the swing producer — not us.
—–
As has been discussed here in the Club, the Emperor has no drive or stamina to execute a successful campaign in AfPak. Hence, it is most wise to get NATO out entirely. Further we should scale back our goals to just bleeding and containing the Taliban/AQ partnership. Emigration from that area should be shut down entirely. British passports (carried by jihadis) should no longer be allowed ready access to America.
Advanced education for islamists in the West should cease entirely. Effectively ALL of the most damaging jihadis have been given Western schooling/degrees. This is the pipeline that needs to be shut down. The madrassas in AfPak are far less important — their graduates do not wing their way west.
Yemen is ground zero for AQ. This pirate kingdom needs to be addressed. Their Somali contract navy needs to be utterly shut down. All fishing in those waters BY ANY NATION needs to stop: a Free Fire Zone policy must be adopted by the transiting nations. Only oceanic transport is to be permitted in those waters. Tourism, fishing, etc. are to be banned until the pirates are crushed.
Gulf of Aden fishing stocks will recover, they are not globally vital. The locals can still be permitted to drop lines out to three miles from shore.
Without piracy AQ and its dependencies will flame out.
The AfPak Taliban have money issues, too. Interdict from afar their biggest funders: the Golden Chain, Opium and ISI largesse.
Stop worrying about corruption in Kabul. The locals there — under ANY administration — would operate completely corruptly by our standards. It’s the ONLY way things get done over there.
One should forget about any top-down solution path. Instead, AfPak politics should be totally locally driven. No attempt should be made to bring Kabul to the mountains. Instead, a crazy-quilt of tribal boundaries with non-stop feuds is what we are looking for.
Resolving ancient disputes is totally impossible. Instead, hand out the ‘butter’ directly by the ISAF and spread it around. You can’t draft the locals, but they are willing to play as signed free agents.
If our men pencil out to $1,000,000 per man-year at the tip of the spear then it makes great sense to ‘Gurkha’ them. ( Bringing in REAL Gurkhas would be most wise — talk to India.) These formations would be stationed FOR THE LONG TERM with American Green Berets as leadership and select locals paid for by the ISAF. No attempt would be made to make these units a part of the Afghan Army. They would be our foreign legion for Afghanistan. They would operate in a limited territory. ( Beau Geste style)
As the years went by talented troops would be advanced up the ranks so that ISAF would have native officers in its ranks directing territorial troops.
The Afghan Army should be primarily tasked with Kabul and protecting major national assets. Buddy formations for ISAF mobile operations should be the elite of the Afghan Army.
Because of the terrible history of AfPak IQs are low and drug use is super high. Hence, it will prove impossible to ramp up the Afghan Army. There are not enough suitable recruits. Because of this one fact the Emperor’s scheme for departure will be frustrated.
When Lyndon said that all the world
Was now one happy family
The disagreement that unfurled
Was sort of Vietnamily
When Bonaparte said Europe’s mine
A Continental order
A chorus rose to shout that’s fine
Just don’t you cross our border
When Adolf lit the world war spark
And danced a jig in Paris
He thought he’d broken Babe Ruth’s mark
He was no Roger Maris
And so it goes with our Hussein
The world is of his making
He’ll lower seas and stop the rain
His voice will leave foes shaking
With finger shakes and wagging tongue
He’ll curb the world’s new Hitlers
The New York Times his praises sung
In spite of his belittlers
Who say that power is not speech
Sometimes it’s force that’s needed
But Obie smiles it’s in his reach
And history unheeded
That cooling of the sun thing just goes to prove that God has a sense of irony and humor, doesn’t it? Anyone who’s watched the weather man try to predict the weather 10 days out has to have known the whole Global Warming thing was a scam. But another Maunder Minimum, on top of Copenhagen? That’s almost delicious enough to compensate for the devastation it would entail.
And looking at the overall landscape of cultural, economic, and geopolitical problems we face, I’m also beginning to see some poetic justice coming into view regarding the ascendancy of Obama, Soros, and the whole leftist gaggle of goons at this particular moment in time.
It’s clear that we’re going to be like the Venetians of old: we’ll act only when the shit hits the carpet in the front hall. And watching the progressives, cultural Marxists, and Democrat machine hacks slipping and sliding while trying to sweep it back out the door is getting more and more entertaining. But it’s not like anybody else on the scene would have done any better given the astronomical high tides that are on the horizon.
So we have the luxury of preparing for a future without those jokers, without that nice oriental rug we bought from those two Arab guys selling them on the street in 1988, and with a much clearer view of reality because the progressive detritus that’s accumulated over the past century will no longer be dirtying up the lens. So in a few years, we should be able to start the clean-up in earnest. Maybe sooner, who knows?
But up here in Maine, the cold is a two-edged sword. It tends to keep a lot of the less hardy and more obnoxious folks out, but, well, lets just say global warming was nice while it lasted.
blert @ 29 said:
“Advanced education for islamists in the West should cease entirely. Effectively ALL of the most damaging jihadis have been given Western schooling/degrees. This is the pipeline that needs to be shut down. The madrassas in AfPak are far less important — their graduates do not wing their way west.”
I don’t disagree that the most damaging jihadiis have been given Western schooling/degrees. I personally have known some engineering graduate students from the Middle East who were savage Islamists (one Iranian we called the “smiling executioner”). However I would counter-argue that the greatest forces for change in the Islamic world have also been given Western schooling/degrees. I suspect your proposal is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Perhaps a better solution would require all Middle Eastern foreign nationals wishing to pursue advance degrees in the United States to go through an interview process where the interviewers are skilled at smelling out jihadiis, e.g. ask probing questions and understand the techniques for spotting lies. The regulations should be carefully written to allow prohibition for granting student entry visas without cause, i.e. the visa can be denied simply because the examiner didn’t like the look of the requester.
Concerning madrassas: They provide a convienent venue where jihadiis can concentrate in one location allowing a single Hellfire missile to take them all out with one hit.
I wouldn’t worry about Korea. Th South is more then capable of taking the north apart. In a week to 10 days with casualties in the double digit range.
The thingie with Seoul being flattened is propaganda. It just isn’t physically possible. Do the calculations on tons of shells it would require. The Nork army is a joke. They won’t get past the first grocery store.
Notice how those that claim the US Army is wore out and broken then ask for money to make it better? That should clue you in to what is happening.
Eggplant #24:
Spend 25 years in the USAF with over 4 years in the Pentagon – hell, spend HALF that – and you will recognize a cherished DC mythology: the All Competent Generalist.
GAO, House Committees, Senate Committees, Congressional staffers, the various IG’s, OSD analysts, Defense Science Board, etc, all are thought of as people who can come into any situation, no matter how technical or complex, and understand it better than the people who actually do it. And then make recommendations on how things should be changed. None of this is ever of any value. I know of one DC study that actually yielded something useful: that which produced the X-33 and EELV recommendations – and for that they simply hired people who did know something rather than the usual suspects. And they managed to get about 40% toward the objective they were trying to attain.
I finally got to kind of enjoy feeding these guys back their illogic, asking them questions about what their questions meant, and pointing out their recommendations had nothing whatsoever to do with the problem they were addressing. But what this all showed was a kind of Inside The Beltway self isolation that goes way beyond arrogance.
Obama and crowd are simply The Very Best Around at that old, failed game. They may even be the Best There Ever Was. They are not Doubling Down in their own view but simply asserting the DC Way in a more firm manner than has been done before.
Hillary asks China to spank North Korea? Pretty, pretty please! Do it for Obama!!
There is at least a 40% chance that the biggest danger to the Chinese was they might split a gut laughing at that. The torpedo (not) heard around the world may have been fired by the Chinese navy.
Think about it. China has been investing in super-quiet submarines. We know that, because of at least one embarassing incident where a Chines sub surfaced inside the defensive perimeter around a US aircraft carrier. North Korea is desperate for money, and undoubtedly sells torpedoes on the black market.
So the Chinese buy some North Korean torpedoes through deniable channels, pop them in a stealthy submarine, and take a gentle motor across the Yellow Sea. Then they wait off the west coast of North Korea until a suitable target comes along.
The Chinese get to answer a very important question — Is Obama really the spineless incompetent he appears to be, or is he playing a deep game? And by pretending to be North Koreans attacking South Koreans, the Chinese answer this question at very low risk to themselves.
Expected worst case scenario in the Chinese planning of the operation — Obama nukes North Korea. Some in China might see that as a reasonable consolation prize. And if Obama reacts by proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a coward as well as an incompetent, other Chinese plans can move ahead with a signficant reduction in uncertainty about what the potential US response might be. Some day soon, we may find out what those other plans entail.
RWE @ 34: Obama and crowd are simply The Very Best Around at that old, failed game. They may even be the Best There Ever Was. They are not Doubling Down in their own view but simply asserting the DC Way in a more firm manner than has been done before.
Disagree. Obama doesn’t know shit about DC, nor care. He’s not the best around at anything but holding his chin up, nor is any of his crew.
Obama comes from the liberal/progressive/empiricist tradition, is I think what you’re seeing. Some bearded loon frothing in the back room about how things oughta be, and the young impressionable Obama soaking it all in. It’s just a song, a story, a poem, a line, a con, a sting. And that’s enough, that is all.
Now, there *is* just that tiny grain of truth to the matter, that a president’s job *is* to talk, to lead, to delegate, and not to do. BUT, he needs to talk and lead and delegate in such a way that stuff does get done – and that’s the aspect on which Obama has completely missed the boat, and doesn’t even know he missed the boat.
Eggplant…
I’ll trade you ‘fixing’ the islamic world for NOT having jihadis crippling our society and economy.
Islam is impossible to improve or tolerate.
Worse than Hitlerism or Stalinism, Mohammadism has long out lasted its progenitor.
The poorer the islamists are the less harmful they are to others or themselves.
Since the REAL factories of hate are muslim student unions and wahhabist ‘charities’ funded by the KSA and the Golden Chain it is essential that they be shut down.
We should have stipulated immediately after 911 that wahhabist international ‘charity’ must be shut down entirely or we would seize their money machine.
Instead, both parties have permitted KSA funding to pimp them out.
As it stands, KSA is getting away with asymmetric political corruption: parasitic cultural jujitsu upon its host.
This corruption reaches to Hollywood with bizarre propaganda as skewed as Davies’ Misson to Moscow set loose upon untutored millions.
The Mindless Stupid Media have been led around by the pols into fawning follies: portraying islam as being just another mono-theistic religion.
The fact that islam is violently anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-schismatic, anti…
It most resembles Shintoism as expressed in the expansionist phase of Imperial Japan. And like Japan, its leadership found natural affinity to the Nazis. The islamic link to the shoah goes at least as far back as the Wannsee Conference.
The MSM never mentions that islam’s 2nd coming features Jesus Christ revisited — who proceeds to destroy all then living Jews and Christians — and then offer the world up to allah.
Islam, like the other anti-religions, places a man above God. Mohammad’s oral legend and his mythic habits are of a MAN of whom all are to emulate. In the last century, this was the template of idolatry for all of the anti-religions.
For Shintoism, a classic anti-religion, the emperor becomes deified upon the first anniversary of his succession. ( The first 365 days he’s a mortal in transition/ on probation. )
ANY cult that places a man above God or as God is by definition an anti-religion. Anti-religions ALWAYS have their tenets in a ‘three-ring’ binder because the ‘living god’ and or shaman crew is always on-the-pulse and able to tweak ‘interpretations’ or ‘The Way’ to suit today’s convenience.
I have another take on this, Wretchard. Obama knows perfectly well (I assume) that his social spending programs are unsustainable. I believe he wants to drastically cut military spending to buy the 2012 election (the 2010 election will be paid for by the previously passed stimulus bill – expect the democrats to comfortably hold both houses of congress.)
Where is the money going to come from? By drastically cuttinng defence spending, to the tune of say, getting rid of the F-35, 2-4 carrier groups and 4 divisions or some such. After all, if the UN is stepping up then the US can afford to step down, and a weaker USA will be less of a warmonger, there will be more money for unions, more money for amnesty, and so on.
Hillary may not be going to China to ask for sanctions on North Korea. She may be going to tell the Chinese that the pacific region is theirs in exchange for continued economic support for the duration of Obamas terms in office.
And note Obamas priorities: Helping countries feed themselves, care for the sick, combat climate change, sustain foreign growth – those are all arguements for more foreign aid, not more military spending.
I think we are going to see drastic cuts in defense spending, and soon. The result will be catastrophic in the long term, but in the long term Obama will be out of office and will not care.
“The wisest thing those idiots could do would be to quietly abandon AGW and shift focus over to deforestation and wildlife habitat loss. Those are legitimate environmental issues. Unfortunately for the watermelon greens, these other issues don’t have much traction towards wealth transfer from the developed to the developing world and all the other hidden agenda items.” –Eggplant, #27
While I don’t entirely agree with Eggplant as to the facts–I think these issues are somewhat less legitimate than he supposes–he makes a very good point. Actually, I saw a link from Drudge over the week-end about the UN making the case for just such a switch:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/21/un-biodiversity-economic-report
My thought was, well these wizards know the air is coming out of their AGW bubble, so they’re going to have to find something else. Humans must still be the culprit, and their strict control must still be the remedy. The threat must still be monstrous, and the consequences of inaction, fatal to the Earth. Voila! Habitat destruction and attendant evils, resulting in a new mass extinction. They’re trying to change the subject.
My nephew, a committed “priest” in the AGW movement (PhD laureate in ecology from a top university, tenure-track faculty position at a small but well-regarded private New England university), believes that humans are the Earth’s enemy, and further believes that AGW has not been discredited. He believes only that the cause must be enlarged–not to read AGW out of it, but to include many other things as well. This is because the more human-caused problems there are, the less difference discrediting any few of them will make to the whole.
The thing they’re all looking for is the MacGuffin. It doesn’t really matter what it is, it only matters that it be compelling and that it drive the plot. The plot is that evil humanity is destroying the purity and beauties of nature, and must be brought to heel (never mind that humanity is, in fact, PART of nature–which they will never acknowledge). Hitchcock understood it, and used it often and with wonderful success. These guys thought they had their MacGuffin when they were pushing AGW. But the East Anglia Hadley CRU frauds, the problems with the IPCC-AR4 (Himalayan glaciers, etc.), and the current decade-long lack of warming (observed cooling, even) ripped that rug right the hell out from under them.
They HAD to come up with a new plot-driver, they HAD to devise a new MacGuffin.
Get ready for it.
america is a page in history.
long term, obama is a weak creature leading a weak nation.
weak nations will be replaced with strong nations.
i hate trash.
if america is trash, then so be it.
i do not care.
i will survive.
There’s really no point in analyzing a foreign policy or defense-related speech of Obama or any senior person in his Administration. They are all content-free. All they do is string some high-sounding but empty syllables together, to make themselves and similar sheltered children feel better about their own moral superiority.
To try to glean anything like strategic intent from Obama’s saying something about clean energy, for example, is just completely beside the point. It made him feel good to say it, it made his speechwriter feel good to write it, it’ll make some leftish academics feel good to read it. That is all.
Except it also makes everyone else in the world even more sure our govt lacks will. Our enemies are emboldened; our friends are scared, and everyyone in the middle sees the direction of the wind and considers how to accommodate to it.
We are SO screwed.
Jerry,Why I’m even responding to your tripe is beyond me, but maybe it’s because brave and true men died to give you the right to post your crap here. Your a selfish, nihilistic little punk. You won’t survive, because you’re already dead,homeboy. My wonderful land isn’t trash but you are. Loser.
The New International Order
Peace and falafel delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less, or we put our boot on the delivery man’s neck until morale improves.
Kinuachdrach,
You present an interesting theory. How the hell did that torpedo get launched from an undetected sub? It is doubtful the Norks have that capability.
I wonder what Kim and his mafia will receive from the Chicoms in return for being the fallguys? From NKs view, it would have been easy to figure out what was going on, especially if nobody from Prongyang ordered the attack- if China kept them in the dark.
They would have had to keep Prongyang in the loop. North Korea doesn’t play well with others. They would have blackmailed China if they found out after the fact, no?
imho both North Korea and Burma are wholy owned subsidiaries of the PLA.
The problem with the four party talks is that likely the Chinese representatives are figureheads from the CPC. that is they wield no authority in North Korea.
I don’t think the Chinese CPC is interested in any kind of escalation. But the PLA does not have a political bone except some picture of ugly and beautiful as far as greater China. The PLA has absolutely zero economic bone and that’s why both Burma and North Korea are basket cases. So that all Asia knows its better to be China’s enemy that China’s friend.
(To understand this consider Taiwan which is likely a CPC responsibility–that is where the PLA is a subordinate to the CPC.)
The south koreans have gone public with their finding but they have laid out very clear boundaries to their escalation
Right now the shape of things is for some very fancy kabuki theater.
But that kabuki depends on the Norks not being over impressed with south korean shadows.
Over the decades the north koreans have done many many provocations up to and including blowing up planes with much of the korean leadership on them. all these were unanswered.
The Japanese too have had to ignore numerous North Korean provocations. Their anger is so great that they would shrug if the South Koreans decided to just flatten all of North Korea.
The North Koreans have always abided by the chant “yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for I am the baddest mf in the valley.”
So its not unlikely that the Norks will cross the lines the South Koreans have drawn.
The trouble is this time something has changed in North West Asia. You can say that an invisible disconnect has opened up between the CPC and the PLA. And this disconnect is matched by the disengagement of Americans from the Korean Peninsula.
The result is that North Korea and South Korea have more leeway to carry out war.
If Obama and Hilary can’t get China to “reign in” North Korea, there’s always plan B:
Getting the South Koreans to apologize to the North for putting that warship in the path of their torpoedo.
(It’s always good to have a backup plan.)
Meanwhile, you can bet that in Taiwan in Japan, they’re working overtime thinking of pro-active apologies….
29. blert
While producing biodiesel and other biofuels from algae has some drawbacks, it is widely regarded as the most promising feedstock for large-scale biofuel production due to its resilient and fast-growing nature. In February, the Department of Defense’s DARPA agency announced that it would soon produce bio-jet fuel from algae at the cost of just $3 per gallon. The synthetic cell advancement could lead to the synthesis of algae cells that produce more plant oils than nature-made algae, boosting the per-acre biofuel yield of the feedstock.
http://www.heatingoil.com/blog/first-synthetic-cell-holds-promise-for-biodiesel-and-green-heating-oil0523/
There is one prospective leader that doesn’t shy away from putting it bluntly: “We win, you loose.”
Help her to take over and she won’t let you down…
Senior O’s nutty ideas on international relations reminds me of that 1942 Donald Duck cartoon (In Der Fuerher’s Face) where he is stuck in a dream in Naziland. “Heil Hitler’s world New Order…”
Sure wish that we could stick O in that cartoon so he would be stuck there in time.
Bulgaricus,
That was the long version Disney made from the same song I linked to above. Here you go, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA6HHgJC5BE
Good analysis of Obama and the future. I been reading Thomas Barnett since 2004. His first book “The Pentagon New Map” has predicted what has come to be in changes in the military and our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recommend reading for those who have a long view about world peace. The process will not be easy but his book points the way. Barnett has a big ego, but I thinks it comes with anyone who dares to lay out a plan for the world’s future.
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/5582/the-new-rules-for-u-s-and-world-obama-spells-relief-not-cure
Did they elect Barrack Obama or Bob Geldoff?
Don’t kid yourself. A one size fits all attempt will not work !
As the Big Zero maxes out our welfare state, strangulating defense spending, and going hat in had to China, Gold will rise. It will probably rise is a zigzag fashion. Sure, the will be bouts of running to the dollar as a safe haven but, once that “safe haven” is gone the only thing left will be gold.
To give some of you a realistic alternative to watching your 401k and other paper assets go down the toilet I recommend moving into gold. Buy it on the dips.
If the Big Zero keeps eroding our currency and increasing inflation – which he will – buy gold. I say buy gold – as in physical thing, gold coins like as Krugerrands and similar coins (possible gold bars). It’s a good hedge against inflation (or O-flation).
Sure, the Big Zero might out law the owner ship of gold in America but it’s slim (he will probably be in jail by that time). Further, there are plenty of off-shore banks who will hold it for you. Here is more on the subject:
[Miles Franklin, March 2010]
“Gold is much more than an inflation hedge; it’s a financial insurance policy. Today many experts recommend gold ownership because it has one characteristic no paper currency, bond or money market account can ever have intrinsic value. Gold is the only form of money that is not at the same time someone else’s I.O.U. The yellow metal never declares bankruptcy on its owners, be they nations or individuals.”
“Today with governmental corporate and personal debt levels eclipsing all historical records, gold and the protection it offers for your life savings takes on renewed importance. Gold can help offset any “surprise” losses in the purchasing power of your dollar denominated assets.”
http://tinyurl.com/2658kbk
Although, Miles Franklin also recommends gold mining stocks, I prefer physical gold in the form of coins. Gold coins are easily spendable, easy to count and are easy to hide. But, it is your personal preference.
Jarring reality is this world, yet ugly as it is, it is there, visible and undeniable – and it is still incomprehensible how so many, otherwise rational people, who would spend some time pondering things before buys a new TV set, stampeded into voting for a grandilocvent man with a completely unknown past, who kept offering empty, so obviously untenable promises and absurd assessments of the world WAS VOTED IN THE OFFICE IN 2008.
Had this happened in Sierra Leone, on Tobriand Island or other places like that, this would have been acceptable – yet, since it happened in America, that fact shows that this country’s decline is less a matter of external, implacable pressures and forces, but it is caused in much larger degree by an inner, cultural decadence and superficiality, a sort of abdication.
So, sad as it is, it is deserved -
I am unpleasantly reminded of the Suez Crisis in the ’50s when the US picked up the phone and told Britain and France to pack up their tanks and armies and go home. Today it’s China’s turn to make phone calls. Perhaps it already has. Either way, we can be pretty sure that no matter what happens on the Korea peninsula, we won’t go beyond bleating.
Elroy Jetson @ 44: “I wonder what Kim and his mafia will receive from the Chicoms in return for being the fallguys? …. They would have blackmailed China if they found out after the fact, no?”
Recognizing that we are deep into speculation here (albeit reasonable speculation), why would the Chinese care about having set up the North Koreans? To whom are the North Koreans going to complain about being set up for the sinking of the South Korean warship?
North Korea has denied responsibility for the sinking. But who believes them? North Korea has apparently not celebrated the sinking internally, and has kept its people largely in the dark. Sounds like the Nork leadership is discombobulated. Another plus from the Chinese perspective.
The rational thing for China to do now would be to slide some real spy data to North Korea, showing that both South Korea and the hated US have acquired North Korean torpedoes on the black market (which they both undoubtedly have). All the North Korean leadrship knows is that it has been set up — maybe by the US or South Korea, seeking a causus belli. Maybe by a renegade commander in the North Korean forces planning a coup. Worry! Worry!
No, the Chinese would not have to be in the least concerned that North Korea (who had been kept in the dark) would point the finger of blame at them.
55. alceste
see 42. trangbang68
Welcome MrX nice to see a sensible head talking instead of these “Jingoistic the USA won the war morons.” No one is belittling America’s ‘CONTRIBUTION’ to the winning of WW11 but thats all it was a CONTRIBUTION but please stop the ‘it was all US ‘ BS and of course WW1 victory had virtually NOTHING to do with the USA at all apart from making you RICH on the money you got from selling to BOTH sides.
BTW that ‘selling to BOTH sides scam’ was something the USA brought to WW11 when the USA finally superceded the UK as the dominant FINANCIAL World Power due to it sucking all the money from the British Empire who stood ALONE against NAZI Germany for for THREE YEARS 1939-41. In WW1 as in 1945 the USA was STILL exporting OIL to Germany via its American OWNED subsidiaries in VENEZUELA and FORD(Germany) made trucks for the Wehrmacht until 1945 and IBM made ACCOUNTING and PERSONAL tracking data available to the NAZI SS to log JEWS into the concentration camps .
Jerry:
if america is trash, then so be it.
i do not care.
i will survive.
Not smarming that crap around me, you won’t. I’m afraid you’ll have to be salted along with the rest of the leeches.
60 Pragmatist…
How exactly were those Ford trucks being shipped to Germany in 1945? Oh, you mean in plants that Germany nationalized. Sort of like saying that the Czechs and Belgians built weapons for the Nazis until 1944. At FN and Skoda. Obviously a pack of dammnable collaboraters, all of them.
Since we’re on the subject, why was it exactly that Hess flew to England? Was it the royals, seeking a big comeback?
Are you that STUPID LFMayor of course they were produced by Germany’s FORD plants but IBM did not have any German plants did it nor ESSO if so perhaps you might enlighten us on Henry FORDS Political views and ESSO’s and Lindberg’s and the USA’s UK Ambassador Joseph Kennedy’s for that matter. Keep going you jingoistic USA apologist
“The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges (conflicts) of our times — countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing wounds. If we are successful in these tasks, that will lessen conflicts around the world.” BHO
“His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of Doublethink; to know and not to know; to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies; to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them… The official ideology abounds with contradictions (conflicts), even when there is no practical reason for them… Even the names of the four ministries by which we are governed exhibits a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts; the ministry of peace concerns its self with war; the ministry of truth with lies; the ministry of love with torture: and the ministry of plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink; for it is only by reconciling contradictions (conflicts) that power can be retained indefinitely.” George Orwell – 1984
As Orwell shrewdly noted, Oligarchic power can be retained indefinitely by first generating or falsely portraying myriad conflicts, and then swooping in to save the day.
So why bring up Ford then, are you actually ceding the point you tried to make with the FORD plant in Germany? “BUT IBM….” Weak. When you go to other nations, for a holiday, or to manufacture, one must play by the house rules.
Still no answer about the wringer that the royals got their tit into.
I also understand that Germany used BOXER primers in their munitions! As in Edward M. Boxer, Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, England. That filthy quisling was blatantly supporting Hitler 20 years before the tyrant was even born!
Habu, wherever you are, I apologize, here I am feeding trolls again.
Obamas 2nd vacation since the oil spill.
Our family can’t go to the Gulf Coast so we will visit the beaches at Lake Michigan.
This may seem a little trite, but the officer who introduced Obama, patted Obama on the back as Obama moved to the podium.
WTF? Was this payback for Michelle cuddling up to Queen Elizabeth?
Eggplant;
Cheap oil is hundreds of years away from depletion.
Entire religions have been formed around prophets whose aims were more modest than what Obama proposes. He seems to think that the power of governments is unlimited and that all that is needed for a thing to be is for him to proclaim it so. He thinks more like a comic book super hero than a president.
At a time when the world needed a firm and steady hand at the helm we elected a fool. Of that there can be no doubt.
He says “jingoistic” as if that were a bad thing.
“We don’t want to fight but by jingo if we do…
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and got the money too!”
Maybe not the last these days…
I’ve got to respond to Josh’s comment above:
if you borrow a trillion dollars from the bank and can’t pay, that’s their problem
This saying, reflecting a thinking, is exactly what is and will destroy USA finanically. Big money has breed this thought in USA minds; articles, bought by that same money have drummed it into action.
The debt, owed to foreign countries is not a mirage. It reflects actual wealth transfer, huge amounts of it, to nations with laws and purposes, alien to our own. If USA continues to borrow money, to replace lost wealth, without the lender having _control_ of USAs destiny and actions, our future is subservient.
LF Mayor: Be informed that the Third Reich had ample quaqntities of Berdan-primed as well. Berdan. I just knew that damnyankee had to get involved somehow or other.
Pragmatist: I say unto you what Rooster said unto Lucky Ned.
Mr X: Just because Joe Stalin neither knew about nor cared for Economy of Force does not mean that all those dead Russians did Uncle Sam one lick of good. Especially not when you consider that more of them died
at the hands of the Organs of State Security than at the hands of Germans.
In preserving civilization throughout the course of World War II, (and thereafter) there was but one completely indispensable nation.
Dave, Berdan. Yes sir, I knew this… Berdans are better in belt feds, they don’t vibrate loose since they’ve crimped into place better. It just didn’t serve my tail-twisting purposes, you see.
And now you’re trying to re-instigate the war between the states… or didn’t Papa Ray finish that (again) a half dozen threads back or so?
Yes Pragmatist, the US is bad and everyone else is good. We recognize the theme. It still stinks like old fish.
In WW I America came in late to a fight we had no particular need to be in. The US paid a relatively small cost but we came in at a most opportune time when England and France were exhausted. Without filling the trenches with American lives so that the rest of the allies could concentrate their soldiers the German 1918 offensive would most likely have succeeded and won WW I for the Germans. (The Germans damn near won anyway)
In WW II England would have fallen early without the supplies from and the hope of US involvement. Without the supplies and particularly the trucks sent to Russia by the US and without the second front that England and America provided, the Russian front would likely have stalemated. Germany triumphant from the Atlantic to the Dnepr.
I’m sorry America replaced the British Empire, well no, not really. The British Empire was pretty odious and was in no way superior to America’s age.
Don’t let your bile back up and chock you. It’s very painful.
46. Barry Meislin: “Meanwhile, you can bet that in Taiwan in Japan, they’re working overtime thinking of pro-active apologies….”
Hopefully they’ll be thinking about a changing world where the US will be but one of several rival powers, not the big dog it’s been for the previous several decades.
The die is cast, and our presence on the world stage will continue to shrink, even after O leaves office. Japan, Taiwan, etc. better start thinking of contingency plans, because they’re going to need them. Kinda hard to plan, I admit, because so much of the world is in flux nowadays. Who knows what China will look like in 10 years, for instance? But I think it’s a safe bet that our influence will wane, if for no other reason than the lack of resources to keep up the fight.
We’ll be busy trying to pay our bills, so there won’t be much left to project power. Nations that have depended on a US backstop had better start facing reality. We’re about to enter a very scary phase in World History, and the outcomes are pretty unpredictable.
#76 Michael – I really can’t let that insult to the UK lie. Starting from quite early: Magna Carta, the first check on unlimited executive power. The war with the Spanish – without which the whole of Europe would be under the iron fist of the Inquisition. Leading the fight against a dictator – Napoleon – in which fight you Americans were on the other side. Ending the slave trade by the power of its Navy – while America was fighting a civil war in which one side wanted to preserve slavery. And of course turning a subcontinent full of warring mediaeval princes into the world’s biggest democracy.
Odious, maybe, but a hell of a lot less so than the other European empires.
Oh, and just one more good thing that the UK created. America. Together with its system of laws that you are so proud of.
Fletcher, I actually have affection for Great Britain. It has done many great things that have benefited the world. The empire however is a stain equal to America’s dealing with our indigenous population.
The UK and America were and are not perfect. We were and are just more fortunate and more responsible and were a bulwark against the Bourbons, Bonapartes, Kaisers, Nazis, Stalinists…well you get the idea.
I am sorry it came out otherwise. Pragmatist’s boneheaded post brought out a bit more “enthusiasm” to my post.
“The empire however is a stain equal to America’s dealing with our indigenous population.”
Please stop with the small minded view of what the British Empire was. A Stain – compared to what.
Compared to its’ own highest principles. I doubt many of its conquests see it as a glorious thing else it would still be an empire.
Even so I don’t condemn the people of those times since people must be judged also by the times in which they live, just as I don’t condemn the American expansion in N America because of the times in which they occurred. It just sucks to be on the other side and doesn’t make the actions a “good thing” in retrospect.
On the flip side both counties did very well considering the milieu they occupied. History is very rarely a clean and tidy study and never as simple as many people think it is.
Comment 39
If humans are so bad, then why doesn’t your benighted nefew and his ilk lead way by offing themselves. They talk a big game but the execution (pun intended) is always for someone else.
Objectively, as Old Leftists would couch an argument, most of the former “pink bits” on the map would be better off if the Empire was resurrected. The problem is that would it take at least 30 years to convince the British they were capable of it again, the believing being the essential part, but it would be at least equally hard to convince them that it would be worth the effort. They did not give up the assorted colonies, protectorates, princely states, subordinate allies and Dominions out of altruism but because they were convinced that it was a bad deal for the Home Islands.