WW3 around the corner or a new world order?
It looks like Putin might be about to fall, which means Russia could fall apart and essentially be integrated into the West or a give up its nuclear arms in exchange for better trade or help with rebuilding Ukraine.
If that happens the only two nuclear powers left are the US and China, right now the US has at least 10-20 times more nukes than China but China is rapidly expanding. If Russia is no longer a threat the next 1-3 years could be the best chance the US has of defeating China in a war. We either tell China to disarm or we go to WW3 and they lose. Either way the US wins, if we do nothing China will continue to grow and at some point we will have another stalemate in the world order for another 80 years.
I always said the whole push to defeat Russia in Ukraine was always about China.
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My recollection is that the Mongols did conquer much of Asia about 700 years ago, and there were large invasions of Russia by Napoleon and later Hitler, both of which were unsuccessful. China and the Soviets fought a war over Xinjiang in the 1930's also China captured Tibet, and so forth, while much of China was destroyed by the Japanese in WWII following which the communists assumed control of the mainland in a Civil War. India, and parts of Southeast Asia were colonized by Western powers, and later gained independence, and there was some sort of similar story in the Middle East, FDR met with the Saudi's in fact, to make sure we later got their oil, and so forth.
It would seem that at the present time conquest might require superior armaments and an occupation might require robotics which would be produced by countries with a large industrial base. It is problematic though, that the security council is a bit of a cartel, which enables Russia and China to have the same nuclear deterrents to fall back on as we do -- this is something we and the rest of the world agreed to. Our industrial base for constructing an occupation army of terminator robots, to give one example, is also weaker than that of China, and so forth.
My guess is that rather than encouraging an arms race with the hope of eventually having a world government under our control, it could be better to have a means to limit some of the dangerous technologies that are now on the horizon such as AI and advanced forms of WMD (including in particular work on biological agents and other dangerous biotechnologies), I would point out that such control might be as many of these things are a possible threat to the entire world as illustrated by the COVID pandemic -- which may or may not have come from a lab, but it should be a wake up call that certain types of research should not be conducted, and certain technologies should not be developed.
Weakening Russia and China, as I believed you've pointed out, means that development of dangerous technologies and profileration thereof, within those weakened countries, will continue with less regulation and so forth.
Arms control requires a certain degree of openness and trust, but as you know there are many problems worldwide, and a peaceful atmosphere where trade thrives, is one way to address that -- we can blame Xi for that breaking down, but he is facing a middle-income trap where China needs to develop technology to raise GDP, and be able to handle the debt in his debt-ridden economy.
So possibly, peace or a sort of detente could be an option for the coming years, despite the trends we are seeing now that go against that.
I agree with you. I do not mean that we occupy China, we just make sure they gave government that plays nice with the world, does not want to take over the world and recognize the US dollar and US rule.
China does have some very serious economic issues right now, following COVID and the debt bubbles, their currency is being devalued, so there is a chance that gives us an opening for better relations as well.
As you know during detente in the 70's we sold large quantities of wheat to the Soviet Union as well as consumer goods, there was Apollo-Soyuz and at least a superficial easing of tensions, at the same time Nixon improved relations with China.
Having peace with China would buy time, as their demographics are getting worse due to the 1-child policy, and the current situation or status-quo with Taiwan benefits the US also.
We don't have much control over what these governments do or don't do, but we should try to steer things towards a situation that is favorable to us.
6/25/2023 10:23 PM
Agreed, part of the steering would also be for China to understand that it would have no chance in a ww3 scenario with the US so it is in its best interests to start playing nice with the rest of the world, give up on any imperial ambitions, not steal industrial secrets, make its own society more free.
Yet another Trump story utterly falls apart, so much for Trump having secrete Iran documents. Why does this keep happening?
6/29/2023 7:48 PM
So I guess world politics where nuclear weapons could come into play is utterly irrelevant to the LLNL and LANL? Are you for real? Do you have any idea what is done at the labs or how the course of the labs has always been dependent on world politics.
I don't get it, do you work the labs, have you ever worked at the labs?
This blog has apparently been taken over by teenagers living in their Mom's basement. So juvenile and ignorant. Is this what Scooby wants? No responses knowledgeable of the labs or of DOE/NNSA policies and actions? What is the point?
6/29/2023 7:48 PM
To be honest over the years it seems that you are the one that has no knowledge of the labs, DOE/NNSA, policies, actions or how the role of the labs in terms of culture, national and world politics. You also seem to lack knowledge of world history, military history, treaties, and world culture. All you have to do is go look up LLNL/LANL and wikepdia and that will improve your knowledge by several orders of magnitude about its current state. I guess you think LLNL does benefits, pension, parking, and dental benefits. Sure these are relevant to this blog but labs have a real for a purpose and that purpose is tied into the wider world.