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GWB's great sin is he gave China, and Russia time. The 15 years USA spent running after imaginary boogeymen sowed the seeds of what we are dealing with today.

GWB's great sin is he gave China, and Russia time. The 15 years USA spent running after imaginary boogeymen sowed the seeds of what we are dealing with today. There are many aspects to this folly, but most bad were: 1. Okaying what Russia, and China were doing 2. Wasting trillions on completely pointless war 3. Squandered overnight the enormous goodwill USA carried from successful 199X 4. Stalled the wheel of democratisation around the world

octopoc 5y ago
Yeah it seems like the globalist mindset that much of the west adopted blinded it to the geopolitical realities that still govern international relations. Remember the "Russian reset"[1]? It was a big red button that was supposed to reset Russian relations. Remember when Obama criticized Romney for saying the biggest threat in the future would be Russia? Obama laughed it off because "this isn't the cold war anymore." Remember when Clinton gave China the NAFTA deal? GWB was cut from the same cloth as these other globalist-minded presidents. The western globalist attitude involves giving power to our rivals in the hopes they will become our friends. Guess what...they're still our rivals. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset
- toyg 5y ago
  That's a confrontational mindset. In reality, there was a window post-1990 in which we (the US, Europe, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and the most stable African countries) could have created the means to resolve global conflicts peacefully, or at least in a shared manner. The real victory of Desert Storm wasn't the military annihilation of a regional power in a matter of months, but the fact that it was achieved under a UN mandate. That practice should have become the norm. The major crisis right after (Yugoslavia, the first post-WW2 war in Europe which we try so hard to forget every day) still had some UN legitimacy - NATO acted somewhat unilaterally but it was arguably as protection for a UN peacekeeping operation. The Russians had to follow suit - begrudgingly, but on shared terms. Then 2001 happened and all that strenuous effort to keep powers together was just thrown out of the window, in pursue of simple and pure vengeance - the oldest and most tribalistic instinct for violence, the biblical an-eye-for-an-eye. Even then, there was still a chance to forgive it as a temporary aberration of a young country that had never been seriously attacked on its mainland before. Instead, the US literally decided to conquer Iraq on a whim in 2002/2003. At that point, anybody who had ever seriously considered cooperation had to change course, or lost massive amounts of political capital. Areas that were slowly moving towards softer stances (Iran, China, Russia, etc) predictably reacted by rushing back to the safety of oppositional competition. And now it's what it is. Escalating competition further and further is not the answer, and will lead the world to darker and darker places.
  - octopoc 5y ago
    > That's a confrontational mindset We need to confront the problem of blind globalism. > Escalating competition further and further is not the answer Blind globalism is not the answer either, but that is what we've had for decades. It has resulted in a wide variety of terrible things for the countries advocating globalism. For example: a global pandemic, a decrease in biodiversity due to invasive species, slave-like conditions in countries like China, and IP theft on a staggering scale. I'm sure there are more consequences of blind globalism. My point is, we need to have a serious conversation about whether we should be traded with certain nations, whether we should be trading in certain essential items, etc. Edit: just thought of a couple more problems with our current global trade setup: China can manufacture outside of the west's regulations designed to protect people's health and the environment, and the west has lost so many strategic skillsets and manufacturing capacity to China.
keybored 5y ago
> Squandered overnight the enormous goodwill USA carried from successful 199X What X? Bombing Serbia in 1999?

octopoc 5y ago

Yeah it seems like the globalist mindset that much of the west adopted blinded it to the geopolitical realities that still govern international relations. Remember the "Russian reset"[1]? It was a big red button that was supposed to reset Russian relations. Remember when Obama criticized Romney for saying the biggest threat in the future would be Russia? Obama laughed it off because "this isn't the cold war anymore." Remember when Clinton gave China the NAFTA deal? GWB was cut from the same cloth as these other globalist-minded presidents. The western globalist attitude involves giving power to our rivals in the hopes they will become our friends. Guess what...they're still our rivals. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset

toyg 5y ago
That's a confrontational mindset. In reality, there was a window post-1990 in which we (the US, Europe, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and the most stable African countries) could have created the means to resolve global conflicts peacefully, or at least in a shared manner. The real victory of Desert Storm wasn't the military annihilation of a regional power in a matter of months, but the fact that it was achieved under a UN mandate. That practice should have become the norm. The major crisis right after (Yugoslavia, the first post-WW2 war in Europe which we try so hard to forget every day) still had some UN legitimacy - NATO acted somewhat unilaterally but it was arguably as protection for a UN peacekeeping operation. The Russians had to follow suit - begrudgingly, but on shared terms. Then 2001 happened and all that strenuous effort to keep powers together was just thrown out of the window, in pursue of simple and pure vengeance - the oldest and most tribalistic instinct for violence, the biblical an-eye-for-an-eye. Even then, there was still a chance to forgive it as a temporary aberration of a young country that had never been seriously attacked on its mainland before. Instead, the US literally decided to conquer Iraq on a whim in 2002/2003. At that point, anybody who had ever seriously considered cooperation had to change course, or lost massive amounts of political capital. Areas that were slowly moving towards softer stances (Iran, China, Russia, etc) predictably reacted by rushing back to the safety of oppositional competition. And now it's what it is. Escalating competition further and further is not the answer, and will lead the world to darker and darker places.
- octopoc 5y ago
  > That's a confrontational mindset We need to confront the problem of blind globalism. > Escalating competition further and further is not the answer Blind globalism is not the answer either, but that is what we've had for decades. It has resulted in a wide variety of terrible things for the countries advocating globalism. For example: a global pandemic, a decrease in biodiversity due to invasive species, slave-like conditions in countries like China, and IP theft on a staggering scale. I'm sure there are more consequences of blind globalism. My point is, we need to have a serious conversation about whether we should be traded with certain nations, whether we should be trading in certain essential items, etc. Edit: just thought of a couple more problems with our current global trade setup: China can manufacture outside of the west's regulations designed to protect people's health and the environment, and the west has lost so many strategic skillsets and manufacturing capacity to China.

keybored 5y ago

> Squandered overnight the enormous goodwill USA carried from successful 199X What X? Bombing Serbia in 1999?