I don't think it's in the national interest to expand America's empire into Eastern Europe. China will be the first country since circa 1870 to have an economy bigger than America's in nominal terms, and it's already bigger in PPP. This implies even without changing the percentage of spending on defense it'll surpass America in military spending at some point naturally. On top of that, in PPP-adjusted terms its military budget's already bigger than it appears on paper because each dollar spent goes further for their conscript military than on an all-volunteer force. If America's military resources are strained through imperial overreach all over the globe, there's no way it'll be able to maintain a favorable balance of power against China in the latter's home region where the PLA will be almost entirely concentrated. Thus, America should transfer the burden of European defense to the EU so that the US can throw all its resources into Asia and the western Pacific. With hindsight, it probably would've been better for Washington to have accepted a concert of great powers during the unipolar moment wherein Russia could dominate the former USSR, Europe could run its own continent, and China could be given a free hand in inner Asia. But since this never happened, we're heading towards a G2 world. The weaker Russia gets, the more it becomes a Chinese vassal even when there's public backlash in Russia because they have no alternative source of capital. This secures vast natural resources for Beijing and gives it a tool to distract and drain US military attention and political capital. The only semi-realistic alternative to the dollar is the yuan, and cutting out a country as significant as Russia from the dollar economy has incentivized other countries to look towards the yuan. It's still unrealistic to expect the dollar to lose its status though it's possible for there to be a trend away from it.
Perhaps my ainoco brain's too Asia-centric, but that's my opinion of the Russo-Ukrainian War and foreign policy based on national interests rather than on universal values.
I'd say in the US and Asia. Europe in my opinion is of peripheral interest to America now. The EU's and UK's collective GDP already dwarfs Russia's, so I think they can pick up the tab and carry the burden of their own security. European countries lack power projection capabilities, so I don't think they'll be of consequence in the Asia-Pacific. China's massive population ensures it'll have an advantage in GDP and thus in military modernization over the US over time, so the US and its regional allies need to keep pace. It already looks like the US won't be able to provide the Virginia-class subs it promised Australia through AUKUS. Spending money to deter a land war in Europe seems like an opportunity cost given that Washington should invest massively into naval power and air defense to prevent Chinese hegemony in Asia.
Thank you! My sister drew it of one of our sheep :) Thought it was a nice touch to put a literal sheep profile ;)
Re the geopolitics, I'm not sure what my opinion is on military intervention. I'm also coming at this from the UK perspective. But I do think the West as a bloc is still a thing - and more so for the Anglo countries in particular. I believe our collective strength is relevant. E.g., even as the UK and Australia become less relevant, our positions will still be more Western on the global stage. When so much of geopolitics is about trade, institutions, etc, I think total Western prosperity is relevant. Of course I accept that at the same time it's only part of the story and the US does have a job to keep an eye on the Pacific arena.
1) russia wasn’t our enemy until we made it our enemy
2) ukraine is going to lose and it’s not really hurting Russia (russia got to modernize their entire army and work out supply chains under sanctions. The bill will be less then 1% of population as casualties, many prisoners and other lowlifes)
3) defection bonuses are already offered to Russians but there isn’t much uptake
4) low end immigrants are a net drain. Babysitters collect Medicaid, send their kids to public schools, and vote democrat. It only seems cheap because it’s the cost is externalized to your taxes and cost of living
5) people understand that this was a needless war brought about by nuland and the neocons.
2014 liberals were smart enough to get this but then they convinced themselves that putler elected trumpler by hacking the voting machines or whatever (also he doesn’t like fags enough, which wasn’t yet sacred in 2014 but is now a commandment).
It will end when the Ukrainians are too exhausted to fight. Either because we cut them off or because they run out of people.
I haven't cared about that sort of thing since like 2013 and my Ron Paul days lol. I never pushed back on the NS types during the AR heyday but I always thought they were tards. You need central banking and international credit to run a modern economy and maximize individual prosperity.
I wasn't talking about reserve currency but fiat currency: the funding of governments by consortia of private banks with exclusive and unlimited rights to print money, backed by nothing and out of nothing. Even so I phrased it incorrectly--and to make it worse I used a pseudo-left slogan in doing so.
What I was getting at was really the opposite: the fact that individuals pay taxes--which would naturally be best spent on public utilities--so that governments can pay back (interest on) debts to private banks.
So what I should have said is that I think there are better ways to run things than a system by which the debt of public bodies is passed on to private individuals who make up the body of the public so that the public bodies can pay back their debts to the private bodies.
The implication is that any Russians want to move to the cultural dead zone that is the US. Only the poorest pesants from the outskirts would want to because quality of life for average immigrants in the US sucks.
It doesn't matter for Britain. but the U.S. needs to maintain the dollar as world reserve currency, and anything that undermines Russian power and the strength of the Eurasian Bloc is useful to that end.
I’d argue the opposite. You’re further away from Russia so have less interest in it.
Let’s be blunt, the dollar doesn’t deserve to be the reserve currency given the US’s uncontrollable deficits. If running deficits carried real risk for nations, Covid lockdowns would basically be impossible.
It was a major misstep of the US to expand NATO post-Cold War, it should have been dismantled and something like a nuclear armed Intermarium used to defend the former Warsaw Pact from future Russian aggression whilst being equidistant between Russia and the West. The former USSR should have been declared a ‘Russian Sphere of Influence’ and left alone.
That this didn’t happen was purely because of stupid ‘End of History’ Neocons and internationalists who wanted to ‘spread western liberalism’ and allow the former Warsaw Pact and Baltics into NATO, which would be repurposed into a ‘globalist humanitarian enterprise’ and which, true to form, now flies under the rainbow flag.
Britain, France, and Germany should have picked up the tab as being responsible for European regional affairs.
"Let’s be blunt, the dollar doesn’t deserve to be the reserve currency given the US’s uncontrollable deficits. If running deficits carried real risk for nations, Covid lockdowns would basically be impossible."
A good point well made, but I don’t think 'deaerve' figues in Herr Bismarck's calculations.
You're a very imaginative fellow. I'm assuming this is lé seriousé with a delicate side serving of là trollê.
Have you considered the problem of civilité that the resulting melange would occasion in a society with failing Anglo norms? Russians en masse are considerably coarser and tougher minded than the middle class, Anglo(-coded) American average.
What of the possible effects on middle class wages? In this connection I ask you to recall the effects of H-1B immigrants.
Also, why the overall antagonistic attitude to Russia?
I could go on but others will push back on other points.
I actually think the Russian attitude would benefit America and make our people less soft and effeminate. This would be especially useful in the interior regions. I propose sending the Russkies en masse to Nebraska, Wyoming, and Iowa, as these states are fairly thinly peopled and could accommodate the influx, and are also the regions that most desperately need an injection of transhajnal toughness.
Middle class wages wouldn't fall as much because Eastern Slavs generally speak shitty English and couldn't handle more sophisticated service sector jobs. Realistically they would be competing with teenagers, methheads, and other new arrivals.
It is just geopolitics. America benefits from ensuring the Russia / China / Iran coalition is as weak as possible so they can't displace the dollar as reserve currency. This is what keeps us richer than Europeans and lets the Fed export inflation.
One problem is in the *functionality* of transhajnal norms (there are other problems too).
I gather that your overarching concern is to secure American power and thus prosperity. You also seem residually concerned to keep America as white as possible.
What kind of America will it be if your plan to keep things going involves importing at a stroke tens of millions of non-Americans though?
Seems more like a vampire than a nation to me.
You would simultaneously close the southern border--right??
I mean the Albion's Seed people said the same thing about my mick and wop and kraut ancestors. Ben Franklin thought wogs began at Calais. As far as I'm concerned anything other than black is easily subsumed into white, even if it makes us a bit swarthier on aggregate.
Culturally America will of course be impacted by them, but I think it would mostly make America better, because I kind of resent WASP cultural hegemony lol. IMO a dialectic between transhajnal and cishajnal whites (like you had in America during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era) is much better than one between Puritans and Cavaliers like in Antebellum times or Puritans and Borderers today.
It's much less ideological/intransigent and more about transactional coalition building, which IMO is a lot more functional.
Anyway Russia is itself a vampire nation--they are addressing their own TFR issues by importing massive quantities of Tajiks and other 'stan dwellers. If a country doesn't do this they will inevitably go down the path of Germany or Japan.
I probably would close the southern border if we pulled this off, yes, but it's not as pressing a concern as it used to be. You just can't let the criminal underclass through.
"Anyway Russia is itself a vampire nation--they are addressing their own TFR issues by importing massive quantities of Tajiks and other 'stan dwellers. If a country doesn't do this they will inevitably go down the path of Germany or Japan"
Japan is doing fine; Germany was sort of (very sort of) likewise until...you know when and for whose sake. Of course whether they need indiscriminate biomass to continue is a matter of priorities. I should say they don't.
I don't reckon the 'Russia does so why don't we?' argument is strong. It's true that Russia mass imports central asians. But I don’t think it's
mainly intended as a demographic buttress in 'the national interest'. Rather I think putler is...not putler. On balance I'm a rolo/rurik guy.
One more thing: isn't there a risk Russia would respond to general granting of US citizenship by deploying something like the Lukashenko ruse, using it as an opportunity effectively to deport its (highly valued) central Asian biomass--and others, Africans not excluded? Where Tajiks are concerned, doing so would be especially astute and responsive. Putting out a global call to Africans--in fact *anybody* (do you like Albanians. How about Chechens? Kurds? Turks?)--interested in US citizenship would be a pretty obvious response.
I agree wholeheartedly with the post that there is a demographic opportunity here - but I would focus on brain draining Russia.
Also, I'm with Shade of Achilles on this one - just because people from non-WEIRD (to use Henrich's term) have assimilated before doesn't mean that unlimited numbers will do so. There's more of a risk that you oversaturate the culture with alternatives. Just as we see in Europe, where critical mass levels of immigration can result more in distinct communities forming than assimilation. And whilst visible ethnic differences do lend themselves to the forming of distinct communities, this can happen even in the case of Eastern Europeans who have moved to more affluent Europe. I'm concerned that many millions of Russians at once moving into the US would create a huge shift. But a million? That might be a great idea!
I'm also concerned that indiscriminate acceptance of Russians would prompt Putin to pull a Castro and send his most undesired citizens over. He already piles refugees on the Finnish border. I'd suggest we limit who we accept from Russia to target those who are most likely to be productive members of society. That doesn't necessarily mean that we target skills - after all, this undermines your aim of enriching the upper middle class. But you could look for things like completion of school with reasonable grades as an indicator of having reasonably controlled, hard working and intelligent people taking advantage of the scheme. It would also help to filter the numbers.
We should also do this to Israel. All Jews move into the USA and let the Palestinians have the place. We'd free ourselves from the Middle East completely, stop paying billions and sacrificing our diplomatic credibility for zionism, and gain a few million conservative, low-crime, high-IQ citizens.
I don't think it's in the national interest to expand America's empire into Eastern Europe. China will be the first country since circa 1870 to have an economy bigger than America's in nominal terms, and it's already bigger in PPP. This implies even without changing the percentage of spending on defense it'll surpass America in military spending at some point naturally. On top of that, in PPP-adjusted terms its military budget's already bigger than it appears on paper because each dollar spent goes further for their conscript military than on an all-volunteer force. If America's military resources are strained through imperial overreach all over the globe, there's no way it'll be able to maintain a favorable balance of power against China in the latter's home region where the PLA will be almost entirely concentrated. Thus, America should transfer the burden of European defense to the EU so that the US can throw all its resources into Asia and the western Pacific. With hindsight, it probably would've been better for Washington to have accepted a concert of great powers during the unipolar moment wherein Russia could dominate the former USSR, Europe could run its own continent, and China could be given a free hand in inner Asia. But since this never happened, we're heading towards a G2 world. The weaker Russia gets, the more it becomes a Chinese vassal even when there's public backlash in Russia because they have no alternative source of capital. This secures vast natural resources for Beijing and gives it a tool to distract and drain US military attention and political capital. The only semi-realistic alternative to the dollar is the yuan, and cutting out a country as significant as Russia from the dollar economy has incentivized other countries to look towards the yuan. It's still unrealistic to expect the dollar to lose its status though it's possible for there to be a trend away from it.
Perhaps my ainoco brain's too Asia-centric, but that's my opinion of the Russo-Ukrainian War and foreign policy based on national interests rather than on universal values.
I think the other lesson from your comment is on the importance of prioritising economic growth in the US and the West more generally
I'd say in the US and Asia. Europe in my opinion is of peripheral interest to America now. The EU's and UK's collective GDP already dwarfs Russia's, so I think they can pick up the tab and carry the burden of their own security. European countries lack power projection capabilities, so I don't think they'll be of consequence in the Asia-Pacific. China's massive population ensures it'll have an advantage in GDP and thus in military modernization over the US over time, so the US and its regional allies need to keep pace. It already looks like the US won't be able to provide the Virginia-class subs it promised Australia through AUKUS. Spending money to deter a land war in Europe seems like an opportunity cost given that Washington should invest massively into naval power and air defense to prevent Chinese hegemony in Asia.
Love your profile drawing by the way.
Thank you! My sister drew it of one of our sheep :) Thought it was a nice touch to put a literal sheep profile ;)
Re the geopolitics, I'm not sure what my opinion is on military intervention. I'm also coming at this from the UK perspective. But I do think the West as a bloc is still a thing - and more so for the Anglo countries in particular. I believe our collective strength is relevant. E.g., even as the UK and Australia become less relevant, our positions will still be more Western on the global stage. When so much of geopolitics is about trade, institutions, etc, I think total Western prosperity is relevant. Of course I accept that at the same time it's only part of the story and the US does have a job to keep an eye on the Pacific arena.
Tell me in advance when this is about to happen so I can insider trade some Adidas stock.
Good idea. GOP Is probably too stupid to try it. Worth promoting anyway.
1) russia wasn’t our enemy until we made it our enemy
2) ukraine is going to lose and it’s not really hurting Russia (russia got to modernize their entire army and work out supply chains under sanctions. The bill will be less then 1% of population as casualties, many prisoners and other lowlifes)
3) defection bonuses are already offered to Russians but there isn’t much uptake
4) low end immigrants are a net drain. Babysitters collect Medicaid, send their kids to public schools, and vote democrat. It only seems cheap because it’s the cost is externalized to your taxes and cost of living
5) people understand that this was a needless war brought about by nuland and the neocons.
2014 liberals were smart enough to get this but then they convinced themselves that putler elected trumpler by hacking the voting machines or whatever (also he doesn’t like fags enough, which wasn’t yet sacred in 2014 but is now a commandment).
It will end when the Ukrainians are too exhausted to fight. Either because we cut them off or because they run out of people.
How about Chechens and Dagestanis? And China too maybe.
An even more troll proposal is to only have open borders for WOMEN from Russia and China. Punish them by exporting our incel problem over there.
(lol)
Why hurt Russia? They could be your greatest ally if you’d just stop letting your politicians be horrible to them.
because it hurts America for any power bloc to obtain hegemonic control over the World Island and Russia/China/Iran are making a play to do this
Oh yes I see: you want to maintain dollar hegemony.
Doesn't this imply continued banker control of everything though? What of the fed and Usura? Or do you no longer care about that sort of thing?
I haven't cared about that sort of thing since like 2013 and my Ron Paul days lol. I never pushed back on the NS types during the AR heyday but I always thought they were tards. You need central banking and international credit to run a modern economy and maximize individual prosperity.
Aha I see alright then
"You need central banking and international credit to run a modern economy and maximize individual prosperity."
Indubitably--but I think there ways to secure it.without socialising private debt.
This is where I get off the train I think. Maybe I'm just old, but this doesn't seem to me like a very prosocial strand of thought.
Would u be interested in debating the issue on a podcast?
You flatter me sir
Let me give it some thought
What's the relevance of socialising private debt to the reserve currency question?
I wasn't talking about reserve currency but fiat currency: the funding of governments by consortia of private banks with exclusive and unlimited rights to print money, backed by nothing and out of nothing. Even so I phrased it incorrectly--and to make it worse I used a pseudo-left slogan in doing so.
What I was getting at was really the opposite: the fact that individuals pay taxes--which would naturally be best spent on public utilities--so that governments can pay back (interest on) debts to private banks.
So what I should have said is that I think there are better ways to run things than a system by which the debt of public bodies is passed on to private individuals who make up the body of the public so that the public bodies can pay back their debts to the private bodies.
I trust that this formulation is clear
The implication is that any Russians want to move to the cultural dead zone that is the US. Only the poorest pesants from the outskirts would want to because quality of life for average immigrants in the US sucks.
Third world elites come to America to drive Uber.
Used to. Not anymore.
Why should we care about Russia?
I have nothing against them. Sure, invading Ukraine was not being a good neighbour but it's a regional concern.
It doesn't matter for Britain. but the U.S. needs to maintain the dollar as world reserve currency, and anything that undermines Russian power and the strength of the Eurasian Bloc is useful to that end.
I’d argue the opposite. You’re further away from Russia so have less interest in it.
Let’s be blunt, the dollar doesn’t deserve to be the reserve currency given the US’s uncontrollable deficits. If running deficits carried real risk for nations, Covid lockdowns would basically be impossible.
It was a major misstep of the US to expand NATO post-Cold War, it should have been dismantled and something like a nuclear armed Intermarium used to defend the former Warsaw Pact from future Russian aggression whilst being equidistant between Russia and the West. The former USSR should have been declared a ‘Russian Sphere of Influence’ and left alone.
That this didn’t happen was purely because of stupid ‘End of History’ Neocons and internationalists who wanted to ‘spread western liberalism’ and allow the former Warsaw Pact and Baltics into NATO, which would be repurposed into a ‘globalist humanitarian enterprise’ and which, true to form, now flies under the rainbow flag.
Britain, France, and Germany should have picked up the tab as being responsible for European regional affairs.
"Let’s be blunt, the dollar doesn’t deserve to be the reserve currency given the US’s uncontrollable deficits. If running deficits carried real risk for nations, Covid lockdowns would basically be impossible."
A good point well made, but I don’t think 'deaerve' figues in Herr Bismarck's calculations.
You're a very imaginative fellow. I'm assuming this is lé seriousé with a delicate side serving of là trollê.
Have you considered the problem of civilité that the resulting melange would occasion in a society with failing Anglo norms? Russians en masse are considerably coarser and tougher minded than the middle class, Anglo(-coded) American average.
What of the possible effects on middle class wages? In this connection I ask you to recall the effects of H-1B immigrants.
Also, why the overall antagonistic attitude to Russia?
I could go on but others will push back on other points.
I actually think the Russian attitude would benefit America and make our people less soft and effeminate. This would be especially useful in the interior regions. I propose sending the Russkies en masse to Nebraska, Wyoming, and Iowa, as these states are fairly thinly peopled and could accommodate the influx, and are also the regions that most desperately need an injection of transhajnal toughness.
Middle class wages wouldn't fall as much because Eastern Slavs generally speak shitty English and couldn't handle more sophisticated service sector jobs. Realistically they would be competing with teenagers, methheads, and other new arrivals.
It is just geopolitics. America benefits from ensuring the Russia / China / Iran coalition is as weak as possible so they can't displace the dollar as reserve currency. This is what keeps us richer than Europeans and lets the Fed export inflation.
"transhajnal toughness"
Nicely put
One problem is in the *functionality* of transhajnal norms (there are other problems too).
I gather that your overarching concern is to secure American power and thus prosperity. You also seem residually concerned to keep America as white as possible.
What kind of America will it be if your plan to keep things going involves importing at a stroke tens of millions of non-Americans though?
Seems more like a vampire than a nation to me.
You would simultaneously close the southern border--right??
I mean the Albion's Seed people said the same thing about my mick and wop and kraut ancestors. Ben Franklin thought wogs began at Calais. As far as I'm concerned anything other than black is easily subsumed into white, even if it makes us a bit swarthier on aggregate.
Culturally America will of course be impacted by them, but I think it would mostly make America better, because I kind of resent WASP cultural hegemony lol. IMO a dialectic between transhajnal and cishajnal whites (like you had in America during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era) is much better than one between Puritans and Cavaliers like in Antebellum times or Puritans and Borderers today.
It's much less ideological/intransigent and more about transactional coalition building, which IMO is a lot more functional.
Anyway Russia is itself a vampire nation--they are addressing their own TFR issues by importing massive quantities of Tajiks and other 'stan dwellers. If a country doesn't do this they will inevitably go down the path of Germany or Japan.
I probably would close the southern border if we pulled this off, yes, but it's not as pressing a concern as it used to be. You just can't let the criminal underclass through.
"Anyway Russia is itself a vampire nation--they are addressing their own TFR issues by importing massive quantities of Tajiks and other 'stan dwellers. If a country doesn't do this they will inevitably go down the path of Germany or Japan"
Japan is doing fine; Germany was sort of (very sort of) likewise until...you know when and for whose sake. Of course whether they need indiscriminate biomass to continue is a matter of priorities. I should say they don't.
I don't reckon the 'Russia does so why don't we?' argument is strong. It's true that Russia mass imports central asians. But I don’t think it's
mainly intended as a demographic buttress in 'the national interest'. Rather I think putler is...not putler. On balance I'm a rolo/rurik guy.
One more thing: isn't there a risk Russia would respond to general granting of US citizenship by deploying something like the Lukashenko ruse, using it as an opportunity effectively to deport its (highly valued) central Asian biomass--and others, Africans not excluded? Where Tajiks are concerned, doing so would be especially astute and responsive. Putting out a global call to Africans--in fact *anybody* (do you like Albanians. How about Chechens? Kurds? Turks?)--interested in US citizenship would be a pretty obvious response.
"I mean the Albion's Seed people said the same thing about my mick and wop and kraut ancestors. Ben Franklin thought wogs began at Calais."
Al true--and, no offense to you personally, maybe they were right (not Franklin obv).
"I kind of resent WASP cultural hegemony lol."
Haha ok point taken (in due jest)
I agree wholeheartedly with the post that there is a demographic opportunity here - but I would focus on brain draining Russia.
Also, I'm with Shade of Achilles on this one - just because people from non-WEIRD (to use Henrich's term) have assimilated before doesn't mean that unlimited numbers will do so. There's more of a risk that you oversaturate the culture with alternatives. Just as we see in Europe, where critical mass levels of immigration can result more in distinct communities forming than assimilation. And whilst visible ethnic differences do lend themselves to the forming of distinct communities, this can happen even in the case of Eastern Europeans who have moved to more affluent Europe. I'm concerned that many millions of Russians at once moving into the US would create a huge shift. But a million? That might be a great idea!
I'm also concerned that indiscriminate acceptance of Russians would prompt Putin to pull a Castro and send his most undesired citizens over. He already piles refugees on the Finnish border. I'd suggest we limit who we accept from Russia to target those who are most likely to be productive members of society. That doesn't necessarily mean that we target skills - after all, this undermines your aim of enriching the upper middle class. But you could look for things like completion of school with reasonable grades as an indicator of having reasonably controlled, hard working and intelligent people taking advantage of the scheme. It would also help to filter the numbers.
You definitely have some mutt kid the sombrero fetish is disgusting
We should also do this to Israel. All Jews move into the USA and let the Palestinians have the place. We'd free ourselves from the Middle East completely, stop paying billions and sacrificing our diplomatic credibility for zionism, and gain a few million conservative, low-crime, high-IQ citizens.
Since the GOP is the enemy of its own voters, I don't see why anyone in America would want to create more of them.
This is just more liberal nonsense that one group of people is just the same as any other group of people.
They're not.
This is what happens to one's politics when it ceases to be about ethnic identity and starts being about everything else.
It's like watching a cat chase a laser pointer.