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I'm not sure we are living in a unipolar world anymore. We are, at the very least, heading towards a multipolar world with the US, China, and Russia as the thre
by xwowsersx 3y ago
I'm not sure we are living in a unipolar world anymore. We are, at the very least, heading towards a multipolar world with the US, China, and Russia as the three great powers.
- boeingUH60 3y agoRemove Russia from that list…the Ukraine war has shown that the Russian military are chest-beating clowns tainted by massive corruption and incompetence. I kinda suspect China is the same, but we’re yet to see, and hopefully never see any invasion of Taiwan..
- pharmakom 3y agoUSA is a large closed economy. China is a large open economy. I’m simplifying, but the bottom line is China definitely doesn’t want a Cold War scenario.
- Tommstein 3y ago> USA is a large closed economy. China is a large open economy. I’m simplifying, . . . . Yes, "simplifying" to the point of getting it completely backwards.
- boeingUH60 3y agoI think so too, but we should also understand that authoritarians are not rational. Before February 2022, I would have bet a big sum on Putin never authorizing a full-scale Ukraine invasion. There was just too much to lose and too little to gain theoretically…yet he did it anyways.
- breckenedge 3y agoPutin was lied to about the capabilities of his forces. Now we’re seeing the same thing with Xi, except heads are rolling _before_ the invasion gets underway.
- cpursley 3y ago[flagged]
- dralley 3y agoJust because it's not literally "total war", does not make it limited in scope.
- cpursley 3y agoWell, it is limited in scope and they literally stated their territorial objectives when they set out. Full scale is mobilizing your entire economy towards the war effort and calling up millions. And it’s taking out the opposing sides military and civilian leadership and all of their critical infrastructure. That’s full scale. I really hope we don’t see full scale.
- dralley 3y agoI believe they "started" with claiming that statements that the they were about to invade Ukraine were absurd lies, followed shortly later with claims they would control the entire country in three days along with some maps that included Moldova, followed shortly thereafter with lots of nuclear saber rattling when things started going south. There have also been dozens of assassination attempts against Ukraine's civilian and military leadership, and against Russia's as well, some of which have been successful. The fact that most attempts don't work out doesn't mean it's not happening.
- cpursley 3y ago> entire country in three days > dozens of assassination attempts > lots of nuclear saber rattling Sources, please.
- nerdix 3y agoIt absolutely was a full scale invasion. It just failed.
- omginternets 3y agoBy what measure is China an open economy? That flies in the face of their long history of currency manipulation and explicit protectionist policy.
- spacebanana7 3y agoI believe GP means “open” in the sense of having a high degree of trade with the rest of the world. The US economy has more of a closed loop in that it consumes much of what it produces. China on the other hand imports most essential commodities and pays for them with the proceeds of exports.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoTo be fair… Russia is fighting a proxy war with the US via Ukraine. Without US intelligence, Ukraine may be on a very bad spot.
- madwebness 3y agoWhile any war, as Hemingway wrote "no matter how necessary or justified - is still a crime", without US, even the events in 2008 and 2013 would not take place simply because they would not had been necessary due to Ukraine staying in the Russia's sphere of influence. This is an unwinnable war for Ukraine. It is bad for Russia and certainly puts a dark spot on its history, but if there is at least one large and powerful country without dark spots in its history, please tell me which one it is. Human history is catalogue of crime.
- bilbo0s 3y agoThis is what it is to be in a multipolar world though. I agree with your implication. The military forces of Russia are not paper tigers. Don't believe the hype. But at the same time, you don't want to fight proxy wars? Ok. Great. Then don't screw with other nations. If they hadn't messed with Ukraine, they wouldn't be fighting a proxy war. The system works, again, because each of the major powers are comfortably confident in their ability to destroy the other 3. There is therefore, nothing to stop us from fighting a proxy war with Russia, because Russia will never use hard power to do anything about it. Unless Russia is suicidal, and they aren't, they will not escalate to a direct conflict with us.
- madwebness 3y agoNo one is suicidal, but escalation don't always work according to logic. It's people making decisions, and people are emotional. Another thing to consider is, if you're the one up top, perhaps pressing the red button and living in a nice warm bunker with staff serving you is much better than being ousted, voted out or accused of corruption and facing the probability of going to jail (depending on the country). So I wouldn't be so sure we're immune to the global war just yet.
- Tommstein 3y ago
- mensetmanusman 3y agoChina is purging everyone in the military that doesn't want war at the moment...
- bilbo0s 3y agoI don't know? EU might be a sleeping giant too. But you're right. We definitely don't live in a unipolar world. But that's a good thing. More people around the globe enjoy the benefits of peace when each of the major powers are all comfortably confident in their ability to annihilate the other 3. There used to be coups all the time in Latin America. Not so much anymore. All of Asia is rising and enjoying the benefits of peace. And don't even get me started on how much better off Africans are with the ascendancy of China than they ever were under the US and Russia. The world 70 years ago was a bleak place for the global south. War, famine and disease ruled the day. Today, in any dimension of human development along which a person would care to take a metric, most of the global south are far better off.
- dluan 3y ago> There used to be coups all the time in Latin America. huh, why were there coups?
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThe EU is vastly underrated, sadly by the EU itself. If it were a federation, it would be the largest economy and would wield substantial economic and soft power, and potentially military power too. A strong US and EU in alliance would be dominant combination.
- bilbo0s 3y agoI kind of think so too. If the EU got their act together, and were able to wrest Africa from the US and China, they would be the dominant power on the globe. I don't even think they would need the US.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThe EU needs the US militarily. Maybe one day it will be more independently minded and start spending serious money on its own defense.
- omginternets 3y agoI don't think anyone seriously considers Russia as an emerging superpower. There's a difference between being an international player and being a superpower.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cpursley 3y agoWhy not? Their economy is growing (despite being the most sanctioned nation on earth and cut off from SWIFT) and they are integrating with several other regional players. They are energy and food self-sufficient, have a relatively large and well educated population, launch payloads into space on the regular, export complex things like nuclear reactors. On the military side, they are one of the only that could sink an entire carrier battle group or an entire city in a flash.
- ric2b 3y agoTheir economy is not growing, that's just GDP being boosted on paper by a war economy, as usual. Dragging a bunch of people out of unemployment to go die in trenches or to build IFV's that get blown up 2 weeks later makes your GDP larger but your citizens poorer.
- ric2b 3y agoTheir economy is not growing, they're just dragging people out of unemployment because they're in a war economy. That makes GDP numbers look good but in reality they're getting their citizens killed and using a bunch of production capacity to build vehicles and weapons that get destroyed a few months later, they're getting poorer.
- cpursley 3y agoYes, their economy is growing and it's been widely reported. GDP PPP is now on par with Germany. And that's even after becoming the most sanctioned country on earth and cut off from SWIFT. Regarding "unemployment" - they've got historically low unemployment and an acute labor shortage at the moment. Also very widely reported.
- macspoofing 3y ago>We are, at the very least, heading towards a multipolar world with the US, China, and Russia as the three great powers. US, EU, China, India. Russia is a big country by size and resources, so it will be important, but it is a small (and getting smaller) country by population size and economy.
- cpursley 3y agoTheir economy is actually expanding both in terms of GDP. And GDP PPP (now on par with Germany, which is in major industrial decline). It’s public information and pretty well covered by business and economic publications. Their biggest economic issue right now is an acute labor shortage.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoUnless you are looking narrowly at nuke counts, Russia is not a great power. It's economy is propped up by oil and gas, and that's in question going forward, it is inefficient and outside of primary products it doesn't produce much of anything anyone wants. Its military has been exposed as a paper tiger and even the nukes can't be guaranteed to work these days. China has the economic and manufacturing clout and is building up its military, but outside of the 'Global South' and various needy countries it has little soft power. The US has stumbled somewhat mostly due to the overreaction to 9/11 and Bush's disastrous presidency, followed by the overcorrection of the Obama and Biden presidencies. But it still has the biggest and most powerful military, and NATO has been shocked out of its long complacency. What the US has going for it is the possibility of renewal and reinvention, that is its strength and its enduring power. The US will keep on innovating, hopefully also in the political realm, and will retain global leadership. That's assuming that the Trump led Republican nihilist suicide cult doesn't destroy it first.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoRussia can punch above its weight because it has more people willing to die for the country in physical battle. Might makes right in realpolitik, especially in a multipolar world.
- XorNot 3y agoThe idea that massed infantry accomplishes much of anything is presently on vivid display for the failure of thinking that it is in Ukraine.
- cpursley 3y agoOpposed to metaphysical battle?
- mensetmanusman 3y agoI guess if larping online is a metaphysical battle :)
- 3y ago
- XorNot 3y agoWe really aren't, it's just very hard to convey the scope of US military supremacy. But a short version would be: the US is so militarily supreme that a huge chunk of it's populace regards it's failures in occupation and nation-building (resulting in democratic, western-values states) as military failures. This is both a problem (i.e. the reason that doesn't work is because it's pretty explicitly not a military problem) and kind of amazing.
- labster 3y agoThe US military just spent 20 years in Afghanistan, a landlocked country on the other side of the world with little economic value, and only left because our politicians chose to leave. We could have afforded another 20 years easily with hardly a blemish on our economy or military readiness for other conflicts. Finally accepting the fact that Afghanistan had very little strategic value to the US was hardly a military defeat.
- justinclift 3y agoWell, the US abandoned 100% of the land it had captured, and the enemy it was fighting against then took over that land. Isn't that pretty much the definition of losing the fight?
- labster 3y agoNo that is absolutely not the definition. You win a war when you meet your political goals. The military didn’t lose, the grand strategy changed. This isn’t sophistry, war is just extension of politics by other means. The vast majority of unfixable problems the US faced in Afghanistan were political, you can’t kill your way to a functional multiparty democracy.
- justinclift 3y agoHeh Heh Heh. So you're saying both sides won that war then? ;)