U.S. Acknowledges The Tri-polar World
Andrei Martyanov has pointed to remarkable remarks the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, has recently made at the Aspen Security Forum 2021.
Milley is, to my knowledge, the first U.S. official who proclaims that we are entering a trilateral world where the U.S. Russia and China are somewhat equal great powers.
Martyanov quotes RT which quotes Milley:
"We're entering into a tri-polar world with the US, Russia and China being all great powers. Just by introducing three vs two you get increased complexity."
After the second world war the cold war saw two superpowers, each leading a block of states, who held each other in balance while engaging in various small proxy conflicts around the world. In the late 1980s the Soviet Union ended the cold war by dissolving itself. The U.S. then had its 'unilateral moment' which it, in contradiction international law, abused to mess up the Balkan and the Middle East. The end of the 'unilateral moment' came into sight when in 2007 the Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would no longer endure the creeping expansion of NATO to its borders.
While the U.S. was bogged down in Middle East conflicts Russia rearmed with new weapons and China silently extended its capabilities. In 2015 Russia reentered the Middle East by coming to the help of the Syrian state which the U.S. was trying to eliminate. The 'unilateral moment' was over. China finally joined the club when it finished off the color revolution nonsense the U.S. was trying in Hong Kong. That rejection of U.S. hegemony on its doorsteps made it, in the eyes of Washington DC, into an 'enemy'.
Milley understanding of all this is still a bit fazed:
China's aspiration is to challenge the United States globally, Milley said. "They've been very clear about that. They have a China dream, and they want to challenge the so-called liberal, rules-based order that went into effect in 1945 at the end of World War II. They want to revise it. So, we have a … country that is becoming extraordinarily powerful that wants to revise the international order to their advantage. That's going to be a real challenge over the coming 10 to 20 years, [and it's] going to be really significant."
The 'the so-called liberal, rules-based order' did not go into effect in 1945 but in the early 1990 when the U.S. used its 'unilateral moment' to reject international law and to replace it with a self defined 'rules-based order' that it made up and unilaterally changed whenever that was convenient. The U.S. defined 'rules-based order' is now becoming irrelevant as Russia and China insist on the rule of international law.
As Milley is the first U.S. official to publicly acknowledge the existence of the tripolar world. It will likely take some time for others, especially in the State Department and in the Senate, to accept that position. Those who see the U.S. as exceptional will continue to have difficulties to adopt to the new world order.
A sign of this can be seen in the Defense Department writeup of Milley's talk in which the above Milley quote from the RT report is misrepresented:
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Calling the Cold War a bipolar war between the Soviet Union and the United States, Milley said the nation is entering into a tripolar war with the United States, Russia and China all as great powers. And adding in all the technologies that are coming at us very quickly, he said, we're entering into a world that is potentially much more strategically unstable than the last 40 to 70 years.
At 14:38 into the video of the talk at the DoD site one can clearly hear that Milley speaks of a "bipolar world" and a "tri-polar world", not of "war".
But that may just have been a bit too much realism and too little warmongering for the DoD's media department.
Posted by b on November 5, 2021 at 17:53 UTC | Permalink
next page »Tripolar, or bipolar? How closely allied are Russia and China?
Posted by: Lysias | Nov 5 2021 18:17 utc | 2
There are elements of truth to the realist fixation on balances of power. Clearly, there are three states with extremely powerful resources for conducting international relations.
But the realist paradigm also misses so much -- in particular, the very different political economies of the great powers and, correspondingly, the different logics of their international engagements.
And from that standpoint, it is just wrong to conflate China with the US as part of some tri-polar dance.
To begin, the US is the most powerful capitalist state, and sits at the apex of world imperialism. The class rule of the US bourgeoisie depends on maintaining the neoliberal structure of world politics: US trade deficits, financial inflows to Wall St and the Treasury, low wage employment domestically, liberalized capital accounts globally for US investors, open access to resources, and US arms sales.
Although China has a larger economy than the US in PPP terms, it suffers from unequal exchange in world trade, is a small player in the exploitation of global labor through FDI, isn't ruled by a capitalist class, and is focused overwhelmingly on domestic development and poverty alleviation. It also envisions win-win outcomes from its aid and development projects.
China, then, is very different from the US. The latter is still focused on maintaining its global supremacy by maintaining the Dollar-Wall Street Regime, commanding the global commons and arms trade, and dominating the international trade and financial institutions, all for the benefit of the US capitalist class.
China has none of this on its radar.
So, with its narrow focus on power balances, the new realist language of tri-polarity fails to capture fundamentally different logics of power.
It thus appears not as a scientific appraisal of structural shifts in the global political economy, but as a last ditch effort by US realists to refound the US empire on new ideological grounds.
They still refuse to fess up to US imperialism. Mearsheimer offers up the same realist garbage in the new issue of Foreign Affairs.
Posted by: Prof | Nov 5 2021 18:20 utc | 3
Thanks for the posting about the latest obfuscation of our civilization war
Tripolar/bipolar/multipolar BS is what it is. Characterizing China and Russia being separate when opposing empire is the exceptional part of the obfuscation...there is no tri polar going on in our geo-politics but there is multi polar centered against the centuries old private finance unipolar world.
Tell me when there are white flags flying over "Wall Street" and the City of London Corp. and I will believe the civilization war is settled. Until then, humanity has a potentially lethal form of cancer that needs to be eliminated from our form of social organization with a jackboot at our throat.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 5 2021 18:21 utc | 4
"By 2016 Zbigniew Brzezinski had updated his views as laid out in The Grand Chessboard which had been followed by Barack Obama (claimed him as a personal mentor) to one degree or another in his foreign policy. In an article titled Toward a Global Realignment he stated that it was time to end the containment policy towards Russia, China, and Iran. Instead he wanted to integrate American (globalist) foreign policy with those nations, creating a new Trilateral based relationship to share in the burden of governance over the Middle East and Central Asia as he hoped would start to happen back in 1997:
'Given all this, a long and painful road toward an initially limited regional accommodation is the only viable option for the United States, Russia, China, and the pertinent Middle Eastern entities. For the United States, that will require patient persistence in forging cooperative relationships with some new partners (particularly Russia and China) as well as joint efforts with more established and historically rooted Muslim states (Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia if it can detach its foreign policy from Wahhabi extremism) in shaping a wider framework of regional stability. Our European allies, previously dominant in the region, can still be helpful in that regard.'
He wasn’t alone. Kissinger also believed the same thing more or less. But Trump and the Cowboy nationalist faction of American elites didn’t get the Brzezinski Memo, nor did the Yankee globalist faction. They are dominated by people who corrupt government for their own profit, others among them are more ideologically driven (neocons, religion based, etc.) at the expense of a realist strategic foreign policy for the good of America and the world. Currently both of them are striving for a unipolar world in the face of too much resistance for that goal to be remotely feasible anymore." From War of the Worlds: The New Class
Posted by: El | Nov 5 2021 18:22 utc | 5
Gen. Milley is right and wrong in using the term "tripolar world".
It is correct in the sense he didn't group Russia and China together.
It is wrong in the sense that that it may induce the alt-right to think Russia represents some kind of (conservative) "Third Way". Russia does not represent a third new system and, if it think it does, it will not last for too long.
A tripolar system is inherently more unstable than a bipolar system and, if it indeed does take place, will last for much less than the bipolar one we had in 1945-1991. The key here is to analyze if Russia will go back to its socialist (Soviet) roots or degenerate definitively to capitalism.
Milley lies bigtime when he said:
"... they want to challenge the so-called liberal, rules-based order that went into effect in 1945 at the end of World War II...."
That's precisely the opposite of what China via Xi has stated as its intentions, which is to enforce the UN Charter against the actions of the Outlaw US Empire, the nation that's been in ongoing violation of the UN Charter since October 1945.
Miley is a general. He sees the world from a military point of view. From that POV, It is tri-polar. Of course there is more to it than that as has been pointed out by our comentators. Algo es algo. At least it is something.
Posted by: c | Nov 5 2021 18:41 utc | 8
Great post Prof, I usually summerize this matter of the differences in logics of power between China and the US as a story between the eagle and the panda. The idea that the one intends to out-do the other at the same game fundamentally misunderstands the difference between how eagles live and how pandas live.
Posted by: Loncal | Nov 5 2021 18:49 utc | 9
Again, those desiring the actual history of the Outlaw US Empire's attempts to control the planet need to refer to Hudson's third edition of his Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, or at minimum watch the interviews/read the transcripts he's done since its publication here; here; and here. There's also the three part lecture series on Global Financial Empire, Part 1; Part 2; and Part 3.
China has issued a rebuttal of sorts as reported here. That report is based on this Chinese MOD statement issued in Chinese yesterday. Here are the opening two machine translated paragraphs:
"beijing time on november 4, the u.s. department of defense released the 2021 china military and security development report, which disregards facts, is full of prejudice, discusses china's defense policy and military strategy, fabricates the so-called "chinese military threat", unfoundedly accuses china of building its power in the nuclear field, interfering in china's internal affairs on issues such as taiwan.
"china firmly adheres to its defensive national defense policy and active defense military strategy, and its military development is solely aimed at safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests, and in order to crush any attempt to endanger regional peace, stability and prosperity, and does not target or pose a threat to any country. in recent years, the chinese army has actively served to build a community of human destiny, actively provided the international community with public security products such as peacekeeping, escort, anti-epidemic and humanitarian relief, demonstrated the responsibility of the armed forces of major powers, and injected strong positive energy into world peace and regional stability. history and reality have proved that the development of china's armed forces has brought security, not threat, opportunity, not challenge to the world."
I'll post the entire translated statement at my VK Space. IMO, it's a very strong rebuttal almost impossible to refute completely that few in the West or the Outlaw US Empire will read.
Milley might wish. It's a bi-polar world; Russia and China have what they themselves call more than an alliance. The US simply cannot match them, in any way.
Posted by: bjd | Nov 5 2021 19:21 utc | 12
good coverage -
Whether Milley/Military uses the word war or not, the USA frames everything as conflict/competition while those who we whip into enemies see cooperation/partnership.
The USA has nothing but weapons and words of war as its currency; 30 trillion in debt, plunder is its only choice.
Posted by: gottlieb | Nov 5 2021 19:25 utc | 13
Military/Geopolitical/Economic Polar Factions and Independents will become more distinct as:
1) More Nation-States utilize the PetroCNY-Au or other Venues for Energy and Commerce when the USA aren't Party to Transactions; and
2) CHN/JPN/DEU don't carry much USTs outside of what's rcvd via Trade Surpluses with the USA.
Can KSA+OPEC stay within the Protective Envelope of USA/GBR/ISR+NATO? IRN Escaped - will VEN succeed? Will there be others? RUS will ensure that CHN+DEU will stay afloat.
Interesting Times - Safe to say that many Abroad didn't like Trump, don't like Biden or Harris, dislike Dubya+Obama even more as Skeletons are dug up from Graveyards and Washington Closets...
Posted by: IronForge | Nov 5 2021 19:43 utc | 14
It is the empire that has a bipolar disorder — to play on the word bipolar. It speaks with a bifurcated tongue, where rules based means the rules that it creates don’t apply to itself.
Posted by: Sakineh Bagoom | Nov 5 2021 19:55 utc | 15
Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, USA is a lying belligerent menace. His pathetic pack of jackals in the middle east might get a rude shock if the fourth player, Iran, kicks his butt.
Milley is a narrow minded propagandist for the oligarch elite and who better than the modern day Persins to give him and his imbecile president a lesson.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 5 2021 20:04 utc | 17
The sooner the US falls off a cliff, enjoys a protracted civil war , burns in hell, the better off 90% of the planet.
Posted by: WTFUD | Nov 5 2021 20:13 utc | 18
More like: Russia acknowledged the existence of weapons developed by the Soviets and the USA, a likely others, in the 1960/70s.
Posted by: Jay | Nov 5 2021 20:16 utc | 19
Here's something that appears to have been overlooked, "Russia’s initiative to lift diplomatic restrictions turned down by US". Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov:
"'Our proposal to lift all the existing restrictions was not supported by either the Department of State or the White House. I raised this issue during my contacts,' he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
"According to the Russian diplomat, it will be impossible to resume normal relations between the two countries without settling these problems.
"'It seems to me that someone here in Washington thinks that we need predictably bad relations in this sphere. Naturally, we cannot accept this point of view,' he stressed, adding that these problems impact adversely everyday life of Russian diplomats."
There appears to be a strategy to cultivate bad relations with just about all nations that would be a continuation of Trump's Global Trade, Sanction and Diplomatic wars. Such is the view of this Strategic-Culture Editorial:
"As with much else about this Biden White House, there is a lot of talk and very little walking. Biden talks about not wanting a Cold War or confrontation with Russia and China, yet his administration is riven with contradictory signals.
"When this U.S. president talks about 'stable and predictable' relations with Russia, the translation appears to be wanting to have stagnant and predictably bad relations.
"Such a negative, non-productive position is contemptible, especially from a nation that claims, risibly, to be the world’s most powerful and most enlightened.
"Of course, the explanation for this conundrum is rather mundane. American corporate capitalism cannot abide peaceful international relations because such a benign state of global affairs is anathema to its hyper-militaristic economy. Under prevailing conditions of dysfunctional U.S. capitalism, relations with Russia (and China, Iran, and so on) are designed to, necessarily, be bad. Hence, the perverse position in Washington this week of destroying any diplomatic opening with Russia." [My Emphasis]
It would appear that the Unilateralists are slowly morphing into genuine Isolationists, not those previously smeared as beholden to that contrived, manufactured, notion.
@ 5 - El - here's a little Brzezinski in his full glory.
ZB with the Mujahideen
I didn't know that Obama considered him a mentor. Or that he would say such a thing out loud.
Here is an interesting article about Obama's mother and her work for USAID - CIA front in Indonesia.
Sorry if this is off topic.
Posted by: lex talionis | Nov 5 2021 20:29 utc | 21
"Milley is, to my knowledge, the first U.S. official who proclaims that we are entering a trilateral world where the U.S. Russia and China are somewhat equal great powers."
Although not an "official" in this administration, the influential Richard N. Haass did float the idea of a Concert of Powers.
Posted by: Maracatu | Nov 5 2021 20:38 utc | 22
good job, b. I'd quibble, though, with your questioning the notion of the imposition of some form of order by the US after WW2. That period is almost always addressed in a very abbreviated way, and the interaction between the Soviets and Anglo-American bloc, an interaction in which the US cut off the possibility of less contentious relations, is completely fuzzed out. If you look at what happened, e.g. the dithering over German reindustrialization and rearmament and how that strongly encouraged the Soviet formation of its own defensive bloc, you can see what happened after the collapse of the SU in a much more discerning light.
Posted by: dadooronron | Nov 5 2021 20:40 utc | 23
One thing that may have woken Milley up, is that the two other powers are now thinking about pushback. Moving into a "pre-active state" of becoming the leaders of the dance.
I have heard it said that Putin is (naturally) fed up with increasing numbers of NATO ships and planes in the Black sea. One suggestion is that he may organise air "patrols" (large bombers) in the Caribbean area to show the US that htey too can be watched closely. Another is a statement from Donbas that they would not be limited to defense in the case of an attack by Kiev. Yet another is a thick red line drawn along the Dnieper to Dnipro and then on to Kharkiv, on map, (separating Ukraine quite neatly.) (*1* below)
The term "sanctions" is being changed to "economic warfare", which is what it really is. So the meeting of minds and talks between Xi and Assad (to help Syria regain an entry into International affairs), were greeted with smiles from ear to ear.
That there are three in the crowd, ALSO means that one cannot hope to dominate the two others as they have done in the past. That a purely military "domination" is no longer an answer. Particularly as it is becoming apparent that without the numerical support of NATO aligned countries ships, the remainder could not hope to take on ALL their potential enemies at the same time. They even have to use the US coastguards around Taiwan.
However, Once the realisation that the US Corporate and Banking Oligarchs and other speculators are not going to get preferential treatment, sinks in, then any silent takeover of commercial interests is not going to go far either. (The IMF and WB are now noticibly absent as creators of countrywide debts).
****
*1* as above; I suspect that the habitual Russian military tactic of leaving a "space" into which the aggresssor will move, leaving his defensive positions behind him - and then cutting them off and destroying the remnants - is quite possibly being done in the Donbas. ie. Let Zelensky make the first move, he may come to regret it.
****
*2* There could be more to come about Liberian (or whoever's flag) tankers (ones from Iran to Syria, then Lebanon). As one has "stopped" in the Med. after being signaled off Oman yesterday. Maybe they have invented flying tankers?
Posted by: Stonebird | Nov 5 2021 20:51 utc | 24
Another error that emanates from Milley's concept of tripolar world order comes from the fact that the general is being overly optimistic on the American side, as it presupposes another long period of stability. That's not what it looks like if we look at the American economy; capitalism is more unstable than ever, in a situation that reminds us of the 1930s.
We may well have a tripolar world order, but it probably won't be nearly as stable (and as long) as the bipolar order of 1945-1991.
It would appear that the Unilateralists are slowly morphing into genuine Isolationists, not those previously smeared as beholden to that contrived, manufactured, notion.
Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 5 2021 20:27 utc | 20
That is what I expect, circling the wagons and trying to hang on to as much as possible, but ineptly done of course. Bad news for Latin America, as the last adminstration showed, but the bad news may prove to be short lived, as somewhere in here pretty soon now we will be pre-occupied with domestic issues.
The very fact that the term "isolationism" is is fashion again is a tell, as there didn't used to be an alternative (TINA), now there is again. They don't call it minding your own business, but that's what it is.
Posted by: Bemildred | Nov 5 2021 21:21 utc | 26
There you go those pseudo progressives.
Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) urge sanctions on China over climate change.
That even though the US has comitted 2 times more cumulative emissions for the last 100 years than China and that it emits far more per capita emissions than China.
One will sanction to "make America great again" and the other will sanction over "climate", but the targets are always the same.
Posted by: Passer by | Nov 5 2021 21:25 utc | 27
Mind you, be very careful if Milley and his ilk start muttering stuff about Eastasia and Eurasia.
Because, obviously, the USA has always been at war with Eastasia. Or was that Eurasia?
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Nov 5 2021 21:35 utc | 28
Bemildred @25--
I await China's demand for the Empire to use Yuan to purchase Chinese made products as dollars will no longer be accepted. Same with Russia and Rubles. As Hudson notes, removing IMF and World Bank from US control so they can do what they were designed to do will be a boon for the developing world and a huge hit taken by Wall Street. Domestically, the donors must be disowned ASAP.
thanks b...
i recommend for sanity that people don't take everything they hear too seriously.. this bipolar to tripolar viewpoint doesn't really get at what is going on here as @ 3 prof articulates so well.. either the usa is going to step down from the ledge, or it isn't... hard to know...
i also share @ 7 karlof1 viewpoint... thanks for your many posts karl.. i don't read them all, but there is a lot to consider and only so much time in the day!
ot - @ lex... i did watch the ukraine documentary last night.. i thought it was very good.. my only quibble is sometimes the subtitles go by too quickly and since they are speaking in a foreign language, i am dependent on them.... a transcription of the documentary would be very helpful in this regard... one could attach it to the youtube link.. either way - great work and more people need to see it! thanks..
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2021 21:42 utc | 30
@psychohistorian #4
FYI, adjectives are not nouns. Hard to follow you when they're used as such.
Posted by: fnord | Nov 5 2021 21:50 utc | 31
Finally a tri-polar world in 2021? They're at least 37 years late.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 5 2021 21:51 utc | 32
He wasn’t alone. Kissinger also believed the same thing more or less. But Trump and the Cowboy nationalist faction of American elites didn’t get the Brzezinski Memo, nor did the Yankee globalist faction. They are dominated by people who corrupt government for their own profit, others among them are more ideologically driven (neocons, religion based, etc.) at the expense of a realist strategic foreign policy for the good of America and the world. Currently both of them are striving for a unipolar world in the face of too much resistance for that goal to be remotely feasible anymore." From War of the Worlds: The New Class
Posted by: El | Nov 5 2021 18:22 utc | 5
Thank you for that link, a very interesting analysis. I recommend others take a look at it.
Posted by: Bemildred | Nov 5 2021 21:56 utc | 33
Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 5 2021 21:37 utc | 28
I don't think China is going to have to do anything. It is we who are going to have to come up with something. China will just keep shipping orders and spending the proceeds on its belt and road until we find another way to get our necessary inputs from China, of which there are quite a few. The "problem" has been there for a long time. The Pentagon, obedient to the corporations, made a big deal of privatizing development as much as possible, so the military equipment, a lot of it, is made from inputs that come from all over.
And that is not even getting into the scarce natural resource issues. The Pentagon is quite profligate in it's use of natural resources, it's not just money.
This is one reason I don't expect war other than by "accident". It can't last long if we have to take much "attrition". We're just in time there too.
Thank for all your posts, much appreciated
Posted by: Bemildred | Nov 5 2021 22:09 utc | 34
Frankly speaking, who'd give a hoot whether Uncle Sam acknowledges it's a tri-polar world or not? Russia and China has never recognize a unipolarity world order, and have both insisted long ago they wanted and acted as if in a multipolar world. It's Empire's vanity to fancy itself as a unipolar boss. And it acted as one too, explaining for the series of bloody noses it has incurred in the last two decades. What a conceit.
And there is no sincerity in Milly's proclamation. If you think the other two are equal poles, you don't do all those petty things to needle them as you have done, at accelerating frequency in the last 5 years. Those petty things are war invites, and only braindead nuts want to start war with equal powers, as often as just about once a week. If you think there are two equals, then you act with respect towards them as equals. The way you have been doing, you look like a clown trying to gain attention. What you have been doing gained you fucking nothing beside yourself thinking you have won some PR skirmish. PATHETIC!!!
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 5 2021 22:24 utc | 35
It's really a sad state of being that in the USA populist sentiment has been degraded to a level that politicians have to act and talk like 600lb gorillas to win voter appreciation and keep their places at the trough. Maturity in thought and demeanor has become poison to ones leadership.
No wonder we have giggly dumbass VP, Sec. State, Sec. Defense. We have dumbasses at every important positions in government, 3, 4 levels deep.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 5 2021 22:33 utc | 36
As vk has indicated, Russia hardly qualifies for "pole-ship," in the same sense that China does. The Chinese people, products of thousands of years of civilization, are vastly different from Westerners in many ways.
It isn't Russia's "differentness" from Westerners that makes them a Western enemy, as China is, it is the political/military needs of the US that dictate the "Russia threat" which by its fictitious nature demands that the US dominate Europe, and also requires a half-million person Army which has no other purpose than to fight a war in Europe against Russia. The US/China military situation has no land component.
So Milley and Austin, both Army, both stupid generals, must continue to demonize Russia.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 5 2021 22:46 utc | 37
Oriental Voice @35--
I highly suggest you invest some time to read Michael Hudson's essay at CounterPunch dealing with domestic Outlaw US Empire politics, its Duopoly and hence the essential uselessness of the D party. Please don't get confused by BigLie Media calling Trump a populist, for in reality he's a charlatan. The proper definition of a Populist is a person from the great mass of people who stands with the people and promotes the people's interests. Ralph Nader is a genuine populist. Bernie Sanders projects himself as a populist but is just another charlatan in reality--despite his grandiose rhetoric, he's completely failed the people by not standing with them and capitulating instead.
Don Bacon @36--
IMO, Russia qualifies as a pole for a variety of reasons. It would be a much grander pole if it hadn't suffered horrendous losses during the 20th Century beginning with WW1, then Russian Revolutions, then Civil War, then WW2, then Cold War, then USSR dissolution, all of which likely resulted in @150 million deaths and those unborn due to those deaths, wars and emigration. Some demographers I've read would say that number is an underestimate. If a nation's human capital were to be evaluated, IMO Russia's would be at the top or directly behind China at #2, followed by Germany at #3. The Outlaw US Empire's wouldn't make the top ten, perhaps not even the top 20 as its laurels wilted and died long ago, hollowed out for a Few Dollars More.
@ Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 5 2021 23:18 utc | 38
Nah, this is a Putinist revisionism. The Russian Empire was going nowhere, the capitalist reforms of the 1860s were an absolute disaster. Two small localized booms in the 1890s and the end of the 1900s are frequently used by the Russian conservatives as "signs" the whole thing would work out eventually if not for those pesky Bolsheviks, but that would be bullshit even by American standards.
However, it is fair to say that this anti-revolutionary wave is not exclusive to Russia. It started in the 1980s, when the socialist block started to dissolve. In an European conference commemorating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution (1989), they bashed the French Revolution like if it was an abortion of History, a completely unnecessary event that only caused death and suffering. By the beginning of the 1990s, it became fashionable for American historians (and, I guess, also Russian historians) to treat the October Revolution as actually a deleterious event in Russian History, as something completely unnecessary (as was the French Revolution) that only wasted two decades of Russian development. The amazing thing about this is that none of those historians even bother to demonstrate such groundbreaking hypothesis - they simply treat it as common sense, and proceed to the main subject of their works (generally, WWII, as most American historians of the USSR are either Holocaust historians or military historians). Such was the anti-revolutionary consensus of the 1980s-1990s (even to the 2000s).
If it wasn't for the October Revolution, Russia would probably still be a poor, agrarian country that would have become a colony - probably of Germany. See the counter-example of India, where it becomes evident high population doesn't matter, and Xi Jinping's July 1st speech on the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China (where he clearly attributes to Marxism-Leninism the credit of China's later extraordinary development), which I recommended the barflies to read in the open thread.
There is a strong anti-revolutionary consensus in today's world. But revolutions, albeit extremely rare in History, can and do happen, as Marx demonstrated in one of his most famous works.
For the weapons wonks, "US Military Aims to Build World’s Most Powerful High-Energy Laser Weapon":
"Through batteries and power grids these laser defense systems could be highly mobile, providing the US with a crucial defense advantage against hypersonic enemy missiles." [My Emphasis]
Supposed to be 300Kw. Mobile yet tied to "power grids"? I thought the headline was a howler until I read the above sentence. The US Military doesn't build anything.
one can clearly hear that Milley speaks of a "bipolar world" and a "tri-polar world", not of "war".
But that may just have been a bit too much realism and too little warmongering for the DoD's media department.
Nah. They're American -- worse, State Department. There is no such thing as "the world" for them and the only word they understand is "war".
Posted by: Piero Colombo | Nov 6 2021 0:18 utc | 42
MoA has become my favorite site. I like the topics, the well-quoted sources, the balanced tone without unnecessary drama or emotion, but with enough irony to make one recall the timeless advice of George Carlin: grab your popcorn folks and enjoy the circus.
Thanks b.
Posted by: Moses | Nov 6 2021 0:41 utc | 43
Milley is OK.
Like him or not, he has to navigate a mess of a political landscape and overll, his work is solid. Not brilliant, but solid.
Anyone who thinks that a General shouldn't he a politician is a jackass. "The extension of policy by other means">
Think about it before you start talking trash and tell me how you would have played it.
I ain't super-excited about the boy, but what I see is a good, solid "B".
Posted by: John Michael Ennis | Nov 6 2021 1:03 utc | 44
@ n JME 43
Anyone who thinks that a General shouldn't he a politician is a jackass.
Count me in. I'll bray for you! Generals got to be generals by 'going along to get along.' The only politics they are capable of, is going all-out to please their superiors. Results don't count, which accounts for their records of never winning the many wars they have 'turned the corner' on.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 6 2021 1:24 utc | 46
@ karlof 38
Russia qualifies as a pole for a variety of reasons.
What are they? War deaths are not qualifiers.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 6 2021 1:28 utc | 47
Since its inception there hasn't been a single day when America hasn't been at war, plain old fashioned genocide included. Those heady days only a few decades ago when the US were able to establish 'no fly zones' before moving in for the slaughter are long gone. Still, the sociopaths that they are means that they will carry on regardless until they receive a very bloody nose. Sinking those destroyers menacingly poncing around the Black Sea or carpet bombing stolen energy assets in NE Syria would hurry their demise.
Posted by: WTFUD | Nov 6 2021 1:33 utc | 48
@ karlof 40
Mobile yet tied to "power grids"?
They hope to do it with mobile microgrids described in "DOD Demonstrates Mobile Microgrid Technology ". . .here
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 6 2021 2:41 utc | 49
karlof1 @ 37; Another thank you for the Hudson/ CP article. My takeaway sentence;
"The Democratic party exists to protect the Republican party from attacks from the Left."
Posted by: vetinLA | Nov 6 2021 2:47 utc | 50
@46 Don Bacon, asking what reasons qualify Russia as a pole?
Answer: weapons.
The weaponry of the Russian Federation is so far ahead of all others that it qualifies as the principal survival pole to pivot around in this world. If you're not including Russian military force in your calculations, you're simply not calculating.
And the Pentagon knows it.
Posted by: Grieved | Nov 6 2021 4:38 utc | 51
@Don Bacon | Nov 6 2021 2:41 utc | 48
They hope to do it with mobile microgrids described in "DOD Demonstrates Mobile Microgrid Technology ". . .here
In other words mobile nuclear power stations.
"The demonstrated prototype reduces [the] DOD's overall energy footprint, minimizing contributions to climate change by coupling a more efficient power generation approach for expeditionary forces with reduced logistical requirements to deploy and sustain it," Bohn said.
The naive ones are supposed to believe this "climate change" rhetoric implies some kind of windmill or solar powered miracle. But "more efficient power generation approach for expeditionary forces" tells a different story.
Posted by: Norwegian | Nov 6 2021 5:07 utc | 52
Posted by: Norwegian | Nov 6 2021 5:07 utc | 51
They are trying to use the Soviet era Topaz reactor, after Soviet collapse , they got hold of few of them, including Topaz-II(Yenisy/Enisy)
Posted by: Grishka | Nov 6 2021 5:52 utc | 53
Milley, what a guy! He tries to save the US "superpower" status which if fading irrevocably.
Posted by: nietzsche1510 | Nov 6 2021 6:51 utc | 54
Prof @ 3
But the realist paradigm also misses so much -- in particular, the very different political economies of the great powers and, correspondingly, the different logics of their international engagements.
<=The very different goals..of these governments <= reflect in who supports who narratives?
When one analyzes The direction benefit produced from an economic system flow, one sees there are two basic direction those system produced benefits can flow. Either the benefits flow to bottom (hence they are reinvesting systems) or the benefits are pumped to the top (hence they are extractive systems).
China echoes and distributes benefits downward<= in response to the needs of the governed at the bottom. Russia and USA pump (redirect) benefits upward and concentrate them in the few. The direction of flow determines who absorbs the losses sustained in economic downturns.
USA and Russia pump benefits upwards to their oligarch. This means not only is the production of benefit from the economy weak but that as the system recovers the governed at the bottom do not recover <=as the production of the economy regains; instead the bottom feeders permanently suffer the losses.
What this means in the case of China, its benefit producing masses will likely continue to improve their capacity without much concern for any short-term negative in benefit produced from its economy at any unit of time.. but with regards both to USA and Russia, the benefit producing masses, will permanently absorb the losses and hence be weakened forever, while the oligarch top will continue to rake in the benefits the recovered economy produces. The direction of flows is related to the degree the governments deny economic monopolies to develop and endure.
This is the difference between an extractive economy and a reinvesting economy.
I agree with psychohistorian @ 4<= white flags waving in the wind over Wall Street and the City of London Corp, might indicate things are getting better.
Posted by: snake | Nov 6 2021 7:29 utc | 55
@karlof1 40
Note that the 300kW laser weapon is still paperware at this point. It is multimillion $ contracts given to the MIC, often resulting in stunning "success" like the Zumwalt or F35.
Generally spoken, a laser cannon could be a response to incoming hypersonic projectiles as it projects at speed of light, so faster than any evasive manoeuvre of the hypersonic warhead. Only, laser beams are extremely vulnerable to dissipation, and I doubt a lot that they are able to pierce through the plasma layer around a hypersonic projectile. Moreover, surfaces can be hardened against laser beams to a considerable extent, ways cheaper than increasing beam energy. 300kW is not that much, but already at the limits of materials atm.
Posted by: aquadraht | Nov 6 2021 8:22 utc | 56
My gut tells me this has more to do with driving a wedge between Russia and China than any actual shift in US policy or mindset.
Posted by: Et Tu | Nov 6 2021 8:26 utc | 57
Posted by: WTFUD | Nov 6 2021 1:33 utc | 47
... Sinking those destroyers menacingly poncing around the Black Sea or carpet bombing stolen energy assets in NE Syria would hurry their demise.
I have a different take on the occupation of Syrian gas and oil fields.
The goal isn't about plunder but denial of access to valuable resources. This extends to other energy sectors and other resources such as water, food and human capital. When compounded to a tight embargo and covert attacks on infrastructure, it should be obvious that carpet bombing energy assets is the last thing the region needs. You can also bet that, should they ever leave, occupation forces would ensure nothing valuable is left standing.
Posted by: robin | Nov 6 2021 8:35 utc | 58
RE: Posted by: snake | Nov 6 2021 7:29 utc | 54
“but with regards both to USA and Russia, the benefit producing masses, will permanently absorb the losses and hence be weakened forever, while the oligarch top will continue to rake in the benefits the recovered economy produces. The direction of flows is related to the degree the governments deny economic monopolies to develop and endure. “
Your comment above, like many “analyses/extrapolations/strategies” of spectators, is predicated upon a misunderstanding of lateral processes, namely that within which some component phenomena change whilst others do not change but remain the same, deemed a plausible belief given that many spectators believe that change being a constant is an oxymoron given their levels of immersion in “binary thinking”.
Given that one of the purposes of coercive social relations is to facilitate their sustainability through reproduction with encouragement through many vectors, including but not limited to “communication”, “education” and other social interactions, this misunderstanding saturates some coercive social relations and their interactions.
This includes but is not limited to most “blogs” in the coercive social relations self-misrepresented as "The United States of America" and is a vector by/through which coercive relations seek to sustain their existence, and partly why those who deem themselves to be “analysts” whilst so immersed resort to belief and evangelism, including but not restricted to the assumption that the opponent/other is as stupid as the “analyst”, “The Saker” merely being one example of many – the illusion of democracy in different form – the perceived death of expertise and opportunities derived therefrom.
Within lateral processes all component phenomena interact/change with varying trajectories and velocities.
Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 8:54 utc | 59
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Nov 5 2021 21:35 utc | 27
Mind you, be very careful if Milley and his ilk start muttering stuff about Eastasia and Eurasia.Because, obviously, the USA has always been at war with Eastasia. Or was that Eurasia?
I understand you say that partly in jest, but this deserves more attention.
That the Empire sees the world through the prism of competing blocs isn't far fetched. It is in fact a constant in most of its history.
My concern is where the Empire draws the Western border of Eurasia and the notion that it is already acting on that prospect.
Posted by: robin | Nov 6 2021 8:55 utc | 60
@55 I am of the opinion that the US military miscalculated a decade or so ago when they convinced themselves that they would be fielding laser weapons and rail guns by 2020.
Both would shoot down hypersonic missiles, hence, forget about hypersonic weapons; they were going to be useless.
The only way forward had to be "stealth", because however fast your rail gun projectile or the Pew! Pew! of your laser beam it isn't going to do you any good if you can't see what you are shooting at.
That was the thinking, and it turned out to be flawed: the US military is nowhere near fielding laser guns of sufficient power, and rail guns have turned out to be a complete dud. Furthermore, it appears that the US planners didn't understand that a hypersonic glide vehicle hides behind the curvature of the Earth, so by the time Aegis sees the missile it is already too late.
As for stealth, well, we'll see. Both the Chinese and the Russians seem very confident that they can detect the F-35.
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Nov 6 2021 9:42 utc | 61
Good report on the ‘Narrative’ panic coursing through the ‘Dominate’ phase Empire.
Hilarious as the little Caesar generals are trotted out to convince their nemesis’s that they could be three EQUAL partners in the continued great crimes against humanIty and the World and ‘share’ the booty!
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - but still thieving exceptional bastard robber baron genocidal cowboys.
The despotic Empire has been here before, throughout history, but being Implacable hasn’t stopped us slaves taking their invented ‘legal contracts’ and shoving them up their arses many times through that history. At great cost of millions of lives - but we are the MANY and they are the so very very FEW.
————-
These forever Slave Owners, who have zero doubt the world is theirs forever and humanity is just their slaves to do with as they please or destroy at will always have need of Slave Masters, they promote from the fields and bring intro becoming their House Slaves, Praetorians and allow some a Seat At Their Table (well a table set up very near). Some they have promised entry to the actual Top Table for their children’s children by generic promotion - arranging marriages with their princesses of the blood - or some such fudge.
Once the current oldest goat finally shuffles off (can’t be long now for the bastard Kissinger no matter how many new borns he sacrifices...) there will be a vacuum.
The praetorians are already abandoning their centuries long promises as they realise that they will always be a slave, master only of their own relatives, never an equal of their Owners. Duterte is a good example of the worm beginning to turn
‘In his speech at the 76th UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Duterte, who has advocated against the kafala system at the UN for much of his career, maintained that “nothing can justify its continued existence.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1933911/world
The half millennia long plans to own China and Russia as much as Africa and South America’s have run out of stepping stones towards these ends. USA was also merely one giant one. Philippines and Japan others.
India and Pakistan are what’s left - Modi (supposedly without heirs and the compromised Khan with his inheritors in place ( “ he is one of us said Kissinger after that arranged marriage !) are the ones made ready to be the last chance proxies for the ancient bastards. Let’s see if their people wake up before they too are sacrificed like many others. Going by India’s failure to send representatives to China’s Import Export Fair last week it would seem that they are blindly being led to being the sacrificial cows for China to fall upon!
The Chinese won’t bite. India will eventually remember their ancient friendship, when Tripitaka brought that understanding across the Himalayas...
The Soviet Union lost the battle to put a man on the Moon. It had to surrender.
That didn’t mean Russia had to turn over and let itself be buttfucked, that was not in that dangerous but fair bet - JFK was publicly executed for that unapproved risk.
Why else do you suppose the Russians haven’t made the attempt again? Because they stick by the deal is why.
The Chinese are free to do so - they have laid claim to the Far Side , fair and square, and their Mars mission is a success, their Rover and command module happily functioning still - not a single peep in the controlled western MSM acknowledging or celebrating these great achievements. Crowing instead about ‘individualistic’ achievements of their concocted billionaires.
3 super powers? Fuck right off Milley mouthed messenger.
Africa will rise and be even bigger. South America will throw off its chains as the Aseans are beginning to.
And watch this space so will most of the Europeans who have been played for these millennia into killing each other’s children, kith and kin, by the ancient Powers, their fake religions, including ‘economics of capitalism/anti capitalism, left / right bullshit rabble rousers and Supremacism philosophies in owned and controlled Universities and Foundations to keep us subdued.
———-
Hilarious that various talking heads are picking up on what many of us amateurs have been analysing and saying for years now.
The Unipolar Empire is dead dead dead.
Long live the new multipolar Empire!
Posted by: D.G. | Nov 6 2021 9:50 utc | 62
Milley lies bigtime when he said:
"... they want to challenge the so-called liberal, rules-based order that went into effect in 1945 at the end of World War II...."
That's precisely the opposite of what China via Xi has stated as its intentions, which is to enforce the UN Charter against the actions of the Outlaw US Empire
Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 5 2021 18:29 utc | 7
It's the usual US projection. It is the US which is trying to challenge the international law-based order that went into effect in 1945 by trying to replace it with the fictional "Rules-Based Order", which is based only on the moving ground of its momentary whims.
Posted by: BM | Nov 6 2021 10:00 utc | 63
I await China's demand for the Empire to use Yuan to purchase Chinese made products as dollars will no longer be accepted. Same with Russia and Rubles.
Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 5 2021 21:37 utc | 28
Where will the US get the Yuan from, will they print them themselves in Wall Street? If they buy Yuan using dollars, China still ends up with mountains of toilet paper.
More meaningful would be to demand payment in gold, with periodic deliveries of physical gold bullion.
Of course, China could let the US dollar plummet against the Yuan by demanding ever more dollars to the Yuan (in relation, for example, to dollar printing, deficit, ability to honour debt etc). That would have - in the current environment - devastating effects on China's ability to export to dollar-based countries [China does have a very potent fall-back though in its vast internal market, which it is prepared to use]. The more the US tries to isolate the Chinese economy, the closer it comes to using that strategy; the end effect on the US will surely be to wipe out the US dollar and the US reserve currency status, and cause the collapse of the US compared to EU and other states.
Posted by: BM | Nov 6 2021 10:37 utc | 64
Why else do you suppose the Russians haven’t made the attempt again? Because they stick by the deal is why.
D.G. | Nov 6 2021 9:50 utc | 61:
What deal? AFAIK, it was their failure on getting the N1 to work. Or, are you referring to the conspiracy theory that the US didn't go to the Moon and asked the Russians to keep quiet about it?
As for land claims on the Moon, the Chinese also placed a rover on the Near side as well (Mare Imbrium). In the end, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Rovers don't count.
Posted by: Ian2 | Nov 6 2021 10:48 utc | 65
As Hudson notes, removing IMF and World Bank from US control so they can do what they were designed to do ...
will be a boon ...
Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 5 2021 21:37 utc | 28
I wouldn't have thought it would be possible, the IMF and World Bank would surely have to be written off as defunct US monsters ... or has Hudson proposed something specific about how they might lose their US-controlled status?
Posted by: BM | Nov 6 2021 11:03 utc | 66
Posted by: BM | Nov 6 2021 11:03 utc | 65
When the IMF or to be exact China's and Russia central banks start using their services to loan credits to other countries. When they started issuing credits not denominated in US dollars.
Posted by: Lucci | Nov 6 2021 12:17 utc | 67
karlof1 @37: "...a Populist is a person from the great mass of people who stands with the people and promotes the people's interests. Ralph Nader is a genuine populist. Bernie Sanders projects himself as a populist but is just another charlatan in reality--despite his grandiose rhetoric, he's completely failed the people by not standing with them and capitulating instead."
I would like to offer a different perspective, which is that there is no such thing as a "genuine populist". In the end all populists who attain political power will completely fail the people and capitulate instead. To a degree this is a failure of character in the populist, but they are not deities, after all. They are just human.
So why is it inevitable that the populist always fail to deliver to their followers? The first clue can be found in that very statement: "followers", with the populist being their leader. A genuine leader feels compassionate and protective of his followers. He wants what is best for them, and as their leader that is his judgement call to make; his responsibility. If there are obstacles does he lead those followers into a fight to clear the obstacles? When leading from the front that leader can see his opponent's guns and determination which his followers behind cannot. Even if the populist leader is assured by his followers that they are ready for a challenge, can the leader know they fully understand the seriousness of that challenge? If the leader pushed forward to truly challenge the system, as he must to deliver his promises, then some of his followers will suffer, or even die, and those deaths will be the direct result of the leader's decision and thus his responsibility. Really, is a $15/hr minimum wage worth even just one death? No, so the populist leader puts off the conflict hoping for better circumstances later.
The second reason that the populist leader will always fail is because the populist leader's ideology is ultimately the same as that of the ruling class of the society he operates in.
[Aside: Everyone has an ideology; a way of looking at the world. Even very intelligent people, like many in this forum, who feel utterly confident that they have no ideology and just look at the world as it really is and judge each occurrence in their lives completely independent of any sort of systematic framework for understanding the world, have ideologies. Unless one deliberately tries to cultivate a specific ideology then one ends up with the default ideology. In our case in the West that ideology is capitalism. Everyone who asserts that they are free of ideology are actually just indicating that they work with the default ideology. There are no exceptions. Not even one.]
So all of even our most earnest supposedly ideology-free populist leaders are actually capitalist deep down under their rebellious self-images. Moreover, as I have said many times, the capitalism we have now is the best possible capitalism that there ever was and ever can be. It has been developed and refined over centuries and what we have right now is as good as it gets, at least within the constraints of current technology. This is something the populist leader will come to understand when he gets closer to the reins of power. Because he is stuck within the capitalist paradigm our populist leader has no alternative but to compromise on his former professed ideals, which no longer make sense to him once he sees how things are really run.
What you are calling a "genuine populist leader" would more accurately be termed a "revolutionary leader". This does not mean a populist leader cannot affect change. Sanders, particularly in 2015-2016, forced enormous change by throwing open the Overton Window while turning the word "socialism" from a pejorative to a positive. Sanders' failure was 100% expected by Marxists, because Sanders was just a genuine populist and there is only so far a genuine populist can go in challenging capitalism. Those of the Trotskyist line of Marxist analysis supported the Sanders campaign anyway because we could see that is where the true progressive forces in society were organizing themselves. Two steps forward and one step back. We are still well ahead of where we were a decade ago despite the massive establishment crackdown, and that is thanks to Sanders. While it would have been really nice if Sanders had broken with the Democrats at the party convention back in 2016 and formed something like a "People's Party", and in retrospect he would have easily won the general election had he done that, such a move was a step too far for someone who wasn't ideologically prepared to go to the mat against the forces of capitalism. Nader would likely take that step to form an independent party were he in the same position as Sanders, but that is largely only because he has never held public office and thus is unaware how serious a challenge that would be to the establishment.
Basically, the populist doesn't want or intend to destroy and replace the establishment, only get its attention and influence it. To go much further than Sanders did would necessitate a commitment to destroy existing power relations, which is a revolutionary act.
Interestingly, the rising real (potential) progressive forces in society right now are considered "Trumpists" and "deplorables", despite massive efforts to slander them as hateful racists, misogynists, and homophobes. The wave initiated by Sanders is ebbing, but the tide is still coming in.
Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 6 2021 12:40 utc | 68
Situation in eastern Ukraine looking grim. Apparently globalists want this to happen. Putin seems determined to allow Z to make 1st move.
Posted by: jared | Nov 6 2021 13:39 utc | 69
Posted by: aquadraht | Nov 6 2021 8:22 utc | 55
I would add, even if its faster than the missile, can the laser track it fast enough for a long enough time to deliver a disabling amount of energy into the missile?
Posted by: Misotheist | Nov 6 2021 14:30 utc | 71
Situation in eastern Ukraine looking grim. Apparently globalists want this to happen. Putin seems determined to allow Z to make 1st move.
Posted by: jared | Nov 6 2021 13:39 utc | 68
No significant changes on the front. It was a grim place and it is.
But it is not soccer or some other game, sides make moves, positions change slowly, sometimes someone collapses, but this is rare.
A subtle move by Russia: Moldova was "bullied" by being denied an equally big discount on natural gas prices and equal lenience about debts as, say, Belarus. Ukraine helped them by loaning enough gas to last a day, and Poland by selling enough gas to last about two hours. EU helped with cash, enough to pay for 3-4 days of natural gas needs at the current commodity exchange prices. Next day Moldova somehow lost the tag of "unfriendly" country and got a contract with conditions similar to Hungary, and nobody commented if the contract was consistent with intricate EU rules. In the process, I learned about intricate mutual dependence in Moldova: "separatists" controlling a narrow strip between Dniester river and Ukraine get natural gas only through Moldova, while Moldova gets 80% of electricity from the "separatists".
Uncommented subtle move by Russia: the government decided to equalize the salaries and benefits in "not-under-control" Donbas and the adjacent Russian regions. Salaries in schools and other public institutions were raised immediately, next, the largest enterprise with mines and steelworks, effectively in bankruptcy and owing workers months of pay was taken over by a Russian capitalists who, in truly capitalist fashion, paid all the back pay, and started new investment and a schedule to bring the salaries to Rostov levels within two years. That's a hostile takeover for you. I wonder what workers think across the line of control.
Yet to be commented move: Ukrainian power stations have about 20-25% of the stockpiled coal needed for winter, in part because of summer/fall embargo on the enemy fuel, in part because it is hard to find uncontracted coal anywhere. But they did find coal that is neither produced by the enemy, and available, in Kazakhstan. Alas, Russians do not have enough railroad cars to move it. One could think that Russia has as severe supply chain problems as USA...
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 6 2021 14:52 utc | 72
To continue: energy situation of Ukraine last winter was precarious, and this winter it looks more precarious: smaller stockpiles, Russia is not selling, and Kazakhstan can either lack railroad cars, or a permission to send trains through Russia. What saves the day to a degree is the end of the Ukrainian embargo on electricity from Belarus and positive response from Belarus. But the moment Ukraine decides to test its fleet of Bayraktar drones in earnest, the precarious situation will change to dire. Thus Russian troops train few hundreds kilometers away from Ukraine.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 6 2021 15:05 utc | 73
Re: 300kW laser.
Anyone ever seen a 1000W heater? Perhaps something like a moderate hair dryer. This is like 300 of them working at the same time. That might seem like a lot of heat, but even so it will take a moment or two for that much heat to start melting metal. Furthermore, as aquadraht @55 suggests, a lot of that energy will just get dumped into heating the atmosphere, perhaps even ionizing the atmosphere along the path of the laser and further impeding itself. Even worse, if these lasers are going to be hooked into the grid then that means land-based weapons, which in turn means that to hit missiles their laser beams must first traverse through the thickest (and moistest) part of the atmosphere. Airborne laser systems avoid some of that problem, but then your aircraft must have a really big (and thus really heavy) power source to provide juice for the lasers. Nowhere near 300kW of energy will reach the target.
Just to give everybody an idea a single .357 magnum bullet will deliver about 200kW of energy at the muzzle of the gun; less of course at 100 feet.
Lasers are a very long way from being the blaster beams you see in Hollywood movies. Electrically pumped lasers don't really even make sense as a weapon as the power supplies needed to deliver a reasonable amount of energy to a reasonable distance are huge. Chemically pumped lasers can pack a much bigger punch in a dramatically smaller package, but there are technical challenges of reliability there (chemical reaction products - soot, in other words - gumming up the works).
Lasers are fun toys, but as weapons systems they leave a lot to be desired.
Now, if you happened to have a monster power source in Earth orbit and you mounted your lasers there, then hitting missiles high in the atmosphere becomes very doable. Hitting low flying missiles, like cruise missile, would still be a problem though.
I wonder who has been working on how to build industrial strength power plants in orbit...
Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 6 2021 15:16 utc | 74
@ Piotr Berman | Nov 6 2021 14:52 utc | 71 72.... thanks for those updates and overviews piotr...
Posted by: james | Nov 6 2021 17:04 utc | 75
@Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 8:54 utc | 58
Your comment above, like many “analyses/extrapolations/strategies” of spectators, is predicated upon a misunderstanding of lateral processes, namely that within which some component phenomena change whilst others do not change but remain the same, deemed a plausible belief given that many spectators believe that change being a constant is an oxymoron given their levels of immersion in “binary thinking”.
Could it be, amongst the things which do not change, and thus remain the same over time and events,the continuity of the III Reich into the EU, and the perpetual rule by the royals and descendants of the black nobility in charge of banking and financial system, and thus especulative finance, organized crime, and organized religion, in so called Western civilization and its satellites around the world, whose right to rule is substantiated in a particular management of the account of time throughout living history of human life on Earth?
https://chronologia.org/sp/index.html
Posted by: Black bread | Nov 6 2021 17:16 utc | 76
@Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 8:54 utc | 58
How can we learn from history and mend past errors when we are living in an hologram?
https://chronologia.org/sp/diagrama_global/hipotesis_v3.pdf
Posted by: Black bread | Nov 6 2021 17:21 utc | 77
RE: Posted by: D.G. | Nov 6 2021 9:50 utc | 61
“that they could be three EQUAL partners in the continued great crimes against humanIty and the World and ‘share’ the booty! “
This is a hope predicated on frustration and methodological lacunae sketched in MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 8:54 utc | 58 above.
The illustrations of thinking that the opponent is as stupid as he/you are, include but are not limited to “equal partners” but also include failure to understand the opponents' definition of “partners” by projection of his/your own.
From the posing of the question of “How to drown a drowning man with the minimum of blowback ?” from 1969 onwards, one definition of “partner” was the opponent who is complicit in her/his own transcendence.
This question was a component and a consequence of analyses which established the understanding of some not restricted to citizens of “The Soviet Union”, that “The Soviet Union” was not sustainable for myriad reasons.
This understanding encouraged/facilitated the implementation of various strategies in preparation, including but not limited to, the restructuring (perestroika) of the KGB from 1971 onwards, and Mr. Andropov appearing to become the mentor/umbrella of Mr. Gorbachev since others were unlikely to perceive Mr. Gorbachev as a threat due to his lack of blat.
Another definition of “partner” informed the policies towards “The near abroad” by some factions within “The Soviet Union” from circa 1985 onwards, with the exception of Mr. Gorbachev and his associates whom after a meeting with Lithuanian representatives at Zonikai airbase outside Saiulai, in frustration were complicit in the killing of Lithuanians by spetznats outside the Vilnius television
station, since the definition/practice/purpose of perestroika by Mr. Gorbachev were antithetical to those who facilitated the restructuring (perestroika) of the KGB from 1971 onwards, including but not limited to Mr. Andropov, as Mr. Andropov had expected when he appeared to become the mentor/umbrella of Mr. Gorbachev.
“Long live the new multipolar Empire! “
This illustrates that you are also immersed in notions and methodological lacunae sketched in MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 8:54 utc | 58 above, and share with Mr. Milley the belief that others are as stupid as you are.
One of the bases of understanding that “The Soviet Union” was not sustainable was that seeking/maintaining “Empire” is self-defeating and a potential existential threat through many vectors – the opponents not yet attaining such level of understanding and hence the hopes/framing of Mr. Milley and others.
The “independence” of the “near abroad” including Poland and the Baltic States was facilitated/welcomed by some, and gave rise to amusement in 1993 when fronting for others, Poland and Lithuania made a discreet approach to buy Kaliningrad oblast.
Crimea was not “invaded” by the Russian Federation, but reached a mutual agreement that Crimea should become a member of The Russian Federation, in part facilitated by and an illustration of, the ongoing lateral process of the creation of the Russian Federation including its name.
Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 17:29 utc | 78
DG @61:
Oh that's a nice rant :-)))). And, AGREE!
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 6 2021 17:33 utc | 79
BM @63:
Uncle Sam can raise Yuan through selling arms (at gun point if necessary), growing corn and soy, and selling some forestry.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 6 2021 17:36 utc | 80
I meant selling arms to lackey nations demanding payment in Yuan :-)
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 6 2021 17:37 utc | 81
Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 8:54 utc | 58
RE: Posted by: snake | Nov 6 2021 7:29 utc | 54
Snake<=“but with regards both to USA and Russia, the benefit producing masses, will permanently absorb the losses and hence be weakened forever, while the oligarch top will continue to rake in the benefits the recovered economy produces. The direction of flows is related to the degree the governments deny economic monopolies to develop and endure. “
MagdaTam at 58=>Your comment above, like many “analyses/extrapolations/strategies” of spectators,
Snake to MagdaTam<= I am a victim, not a spectator, watching different economies, which I have no control over, distribute their productive outputs? I am a victim of the political processes and the so called experts, and their facts and figures which allow well paid promoters of lateral process dynamics to try to steer and engineer economic outcomes.
One problem with taking action or adjusting things based on a measurement is that the measure comes from a result produced from the past.
The different objects which constitute our economic world d\n necessarily relate to the processes" involved in economization? More like these objects actively participate. They produce a picture of the economy @time t, which can be studied in laterally layered data, hierarchy arranged according their adoption in levels of influence. The core assembly of the economy often comes from non-economic processes and depend more on the knowledge and presentation used by so called experts to shape the economy (databases, tables, charts, news articles, or table in many forms, etc.)
But my point is that the flow of benefits (funds and social and power accumulation results) are directed either upward (and are therefore extractive and self defeating) or downward (and therefore are cyclic enough to form positive feedback directed adjustments at target objectives). Such positive feedback systems correct, on the fly, in dynamic fashion, the lateral components of any economy. The downward flow of net benefit constitutes a reinvestment and the lateral objects merely measure the past result with zero input from actual ongoing economy. I certainly do not think this is binary thinking, the binary is in the direction of flow of the net benefit produced by the economy: Upward or Downward.
thank you for the reply..
Posted by: snake | Nov 6 2021 18:09 utc | 82
RE : Posted by: Black bread | Nov 6 2021 17:16 utc | 75
“Could it be, amongst the things which do not change, and thus remain the same over time and events,the continuity of the III Reich into the EU …....“
Your formulation above is predicated upon a misunderstanding of velocities and agency/facility interactions, including but not limited to one of the observations made my Mr. Marx in his Theses on Feurbach – approximately “philosophers here to fore have merely interpreted the world, but the purpose is to change it” (a component in a lateral strategy of transcendence).
Mr. Marx understood that he like others was a participant in history, and hence did not seek to write devotional texts but texts that could inform implementation, since he realised that his analyses would be transcended, as outlined in his “German ideology” Collected Works of Marx and Engels volume 36 published by Progress Publishers during the 1970's, part of a perestroika project to fashion umbrellas for “dissidents”.
Mr. Marx's observation also informs in some degree the opponents' efforts in using “division of labour” in facilitation of attempts at “divide and rule”.
RE: Posted by: Black bread | Nov 6 2021 17:21 utc | 76
“How can we learn from history and mend past errors when we are living in an hologram? “
Learning from the past to mend errors/reliance on precedent is a fool's crusade in self-delusion/self-deflection since change is a constant.
This has utility for those who seek to sustain a “status quo”, including a “status quo” which never existed except as a projected hologram since change is a constant, who unlike Cher apparently believe that they can turn back time/still the revolutions of planet earth around the sun, unlike Mr. Donne an evangelist who realised that time and tide wait for no man.
This is illustrated by many deemed to be "intellectuals" including in the "alternative histories" of Mr. Ferguson and others, but in present contexts the late Mr. Stephen F. Cohen's book "Soviet fates and lost alternatives" may prove more illustrative of such conceits.
The past cannot be changed because it has passed, it can be misrepresented in a limited timeframe but not sustained although the opponents tend to disagree illustrating their continuation of not being agreement capable.
The past can be transcended through lateral interactions of agency/facility despite the half-lives of components of holograms, through usage of the half-lives of components of holograms for different purposes.
Thank you for your attachments since all datastreams have utilty – although not all agree.
Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 18:29 utc | 83
Wasn't general Milley one of the few men in the USe-less of North A military who was man enough to phone the Chicoms at the end of trupish times to tell them not to take counteraction, because "we do that by ourselves"? By USlessness of North A standards. that makes him a true hero. So also to Chinese: In Bêijing 1974-76, 1984-92 we met many top Republican commanders (Generals under Jiáng Jiè-shí'/Chiang Kai-shek who had simply walked over to the Commie side of Dèng Xiâoping and Máo Zé'dōng in 1946-50 to avaid annihilation (many faught with bravadou in Korea later on!) I wish Millay a like end-time!
Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐/טלפ וש | Nov 6 2021 18:36 utc | 84
RE: Posted by: snake | Nov 6 2021 18:09 utc | 81
“I am a victim, not a spectator “
No you are complicit in facilitation of your own victim/spectatorhood.
You are a spectator which renders you a victim, rendering you a spectator/re-iterator.
You are a spectator who has limited facility in testing your assumptions, thereby encouraging your
self-perception of victimhood sustained by re-iterating your assumptions.
You like many others are a “Hamlet” derivative complicit in “collateral damage” including but not restricted to your assumptions/comfort blankets.
Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 18:45 utc | 85
William Gruff @67--
Just a brief response. Note I only named Nader as a current populist as there are only the artificial ones that you describe present within Congress and state legislatures. The last genuine potential populist politician was Henry Wallace--only potential because in his case it was the people who failed him. There were several populist congressmen that served from the 30s-late 40s; but there was a whole crew--an entire political party--from @1884-1900, who gained state and national offices and made the Rs become Progressives. The irony of the Populist is presented somewhat in the movie Bulworth.
What made the 19th Century populists so potent a force was the numbers of populists amongst them--AND--their solidarity, which is why so much effort's expended to keep the masses divided via Culture Wars. What ought to become the leader of a Populist Movement is that Movement's Manifesto--for it cannot be murdered or bought off. That's why several years ago I asked barflies to present their manifestos but I only got one response.
In our situation, We the People must become our own savior for none is going to suddenly appear. WE become our own savior by gathering together in solidarity around an agreed upon manifesto, which at this point ought to be simple to compile. Either the People decide to save themselves or they surrender to the Oligarchy. January 6 had the right intentions, IMO, but failed because it chose a very underserving man to be savior--a position he had no intention of becoming: in essence, no different from Sanders.
Back in 1969 The Beatles released a song All Together Now advocating the solidarity required to win over the Establishment, but was never properly utilized. It ought to be revived as today's Political War Chant.
My vote for a second pole (aside China) would be Iran. a country that has driven the US nuts for forty years and even under severe sanctions all that time has gained primary influence in the Middle East, an important violation of the Carter Doctrine. Who can forget Obama's Iran policy with Iran "all options are on the table" (often repeated).
...the latest
"Iran announced today it has increased its stockpile of enriched uranium. Spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Behrouz Kamalvandi said the amount of uranium enriched to 60% in the country has reached 25 kilograms (55 pounds). Iran has also produced more than 210 kilograms (460 pounds) of uranium enriched to 20%, the semi-official Press TV reported." . . .fifty-five pounds at sixty percent, in the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world!! Scary stuff; soaring tensions.
So it's Iran for me, but Milley has to support a half-million person ground force because he's Army, don't you know, and so Russia is a "threat." The US without a huge, expensive army for "national security" (think Canada & Mexico?) would be like. . .a normal country.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 6 2021 18:59 utc | 87
RE: Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐/טלפ וש | Nov 6 2021 18:36 utc | 83
“Wasn't general Milley ...”
You do not refer to and/or validate Mr. Milley's purpose in your contribution, but rely on implicit assumptions thereby rendering your contribution ultra vires.
Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 19:00 utc | 88
The past can be transcended through lateral interactions of agency/facility despite the half-lives of components of holograms, through usage of the half-lives of components of holograms for different purposes.
Thank you for your attachments since all datastreams have utilty – although not all agree.
Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 18:29 utc | 82
Even after waterboarding I couldn't not tell why the past can be transcended through lateral interaction and not lacerated through transcendent interactions. OTOH, aren't data streams subject of the law that the more you have them, the smaller the marginal utility is?
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 6 2021 19:12 utc | 89
Karlof1 @ 41, Aquadraht @ 56, WG @ 74:
I recall a very brief discussion over at The Kremlin Stooge (now New Kremlin Stooge) about US military laser beam "death ray" weapons. Apparently the US has been researching such technology for a long time, since 1976 (I think). It is still in its experimental phase which itself might suggest it is a white elephant. Apart from the issues of how laser beams can operate once they hit the atmosphere and are subjected to the vagaries of wind currents and air pollution which would scatter light particles, I think there is also the problem of the weapon itself being so hot it could potentially burn up the satellite or weapons system delivering it.
It seems that large-scale laser beam weapons can only be used as weapons of attack (because they are delivered from the high ground). If so, they could potentially come under international laws and conventions governing human rights violations.
On a small scale people are already using handheld laser beam guns as recently witnessed during the 2019 Hong Kong riots where protesters were using them to blind police officers. Since the damage is permanent such weapons merit scrutiny as weapons of torture.
Posted by: Jen | Nov 6 2021 19:24 utc | 90
@Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 6 2021 18:46 utc | 85
"Populists" of all stripes, are almost always a byproduct of the elites behind the curtains, or competing ones, to keep control when they feel like they are losing their grip on populations, as the sad cases of the 5Star Movement and Salvini´s Lega Norte so clearly have shown, with their ideological and political zigzgas ending n their embrace and support of Dragui´s thechnosanitary totalitarian rule...There is talk all these "populist" movements are promoted from the lines of the real "deep state", in the Italian case the old nobility, The Savoyans, the same case of their past support for fascist dictator Mussolini, which ended their reign in Italy, but did never ended their reign over covert and overt powers in Europe...
Since everybody talks always about The Rothschild, these are not but employees of The Savoyans, their bankers, and Macron is not but an employee of The Rothschild...
Then what we do of the new populists in France, in spite that they always tell part, or most, of the truth, to gain the support of the masses, are they ( who in the past supported Le Pen, who this time kept silent about the harsh totalitarianism impossed on the French people who refused to submit to Macron´s dictatorial powers...) for real this time or is ti just damage control tto keep the bipartisan system and avoid a real revolution, this time not controledd by The Masonery ?
Posted by: Black bread | Nov 6 2021 19:25 utc | 91
@Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 6 2021 18:46 utc | 85
The Beatles are part of the mind control operations on the masses, a byproduct of the Tavistock Institute...
Posted by: Black bread | Nov 6 2021 19:29 utc | 92
OTOH, aren't data streams subject of the law that the more you have them, the smaller the marginal utility is?
@Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 6 2021 19:12 utc | 89
No, as the current interest in Big Data management and why the pandemic, in the first place, so clearly show...
They aspire to predict what the people will buy, what the people will believe ( if condiitoned enough...), what the people will endure, what the people will swallow, and, finally, what the people will vote ( at least while "representative democracy" is still on feet...and whether they can guide this impulse...
Through the current live exercise they are testing how many and which people will go willingly to the slaughterhouse or will accept factual slavery if conditioned and scared enough on grounds of apocalyptical predictions and promises of "common good"...
You can be sure they are collecting data, even the MIT reseachers infiltrated so called "negationist" collectives to find that far from being some frikie conspiractionists they were people well edcuated, read, and reserached, which considered and were able to differentiate objective data from plain propaganda, and which considered science an evolutionary process, not a totalitarian institution where no debate is possible...
Posted by: Black bread | Nov 6 2021 19:48 utc | 93
Yes I did a quick scoot online after posting @ 90 and found that laser beam weapons and similar blinding and dazzling weapons come under Geneva Conventions. A Wikipedia article on laser beam weapons also listed many examples of US military projects developing and testing such weapons, several going back to the 1980s, with no clear results. Some comments on the article that karlof1 linked to @ 41 were scornful as well.
It would seem that much of the expenditure on laser beam weapons is to simply give people jobs. Plus there are people in the military and the private corporations like Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman who are obviously unwilling to give up such projects after all the time, money and staff resources invested in them over nearly half a century.
Posted by: Jen | Nov 6 2021 19:54 utc | 94
Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 6 2021 18:29 utc | 82
“Mr. Marx understood that he like others was a participant in history, and hence did not seek to write devotional texts but texts that could inform implementation, since he realised that his analyses would be transcended, ...
Mr. Marx's observation also informs in some degree the opponents' efforts in using “division of labour” in facilitation of attempts at “divide and rule”.”
I think that is well said. I don’t understand how the ‘supposed’ left can trash Marx so readily. His analyses for his day were accurate. It’s up to us to adapt his method to the realities of our time. I don’t see any anti-Marxist lefty (pardon the oxymoron) offering a better system of analysis.
I just re-read Lenin’s The State and Revolution for the second time in a couple years. It’s a wonderful book in that Lenin brings everyday language to the task of trying to understand what Marx and Engels were all about. It's a short read at about 70 pages and I give it as many stars as your system allows. It’s available online The State and Revolution. I took the time to copy and paste it into a Word doc. in order to make it more readable for my aging eyes and to insert notes. From the opening of Ch. 1:
“What is now happening to Marx's theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the Labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie.” [my emphasis]
Posted by: waynorinorway | Nov 6 2021 20:06 utc | 95
Jen @90
Yes, handheld lasers that can easily do permanent eye damage can be readily found online. Eyes are relatively delicate organs, though, and the same laser hitting the back of your hand wouldn't even get your attention.
Weapons-grade lasers in orbit would definitely need massive radiators to shed heat, that's for sure. It wouldn't be something you could put up there and not have anyone notice it.
Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 6 2021 20:33 utc | 96
@46 Don Bacon, asking what reasons qualify Russia as a pole?
Answer: weapons.
Grieved | Nov 6 2021 4:38 utc | 51
Also: Energy. Europe and China need Russia.
Posted by: David G Horsman | Nov 6 2021 20:45 utc | 97
Mercouris on YouTube laments that top folks in American foreign policy are worst in memory. I decided to comment and copy here:
Pompeo was a good representation of Trump, huge mouth etc. The current problem is not personal, but structural. USA is overextended in many ways, it needs to retrench to comprise positions. E.g. if USA decides that some mercantilism is needed is needed in respect to China, some grudging deal is eminently possible if they refrain from needless annoyances like trumped-up "Uighur issue". Taliban is in a very uneasy position, with an olive branch (e.g. not confiscating bank accounts of Afghan state), it could be nudged some equidistant policy toward Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and, last but not least, USA. Iran is a similar case, actually. The war in Yemen could be ended. On any such common sense "retrenchment" there would be a swarm of mad dogs howling everywhere inside the Beltway (a genuine security issue, actually). The trick is to present it to the nation as a bold approach -- which it is. But telling to be bold, rather than grandstanding, to current American elite is a fool's errand.
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Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 6 2021 21:07 utc | 98
Don Bacon #49
They hope to do it with mobile microgrids described in "DOD Demonstrates Mobile Microgrid Technology "
Diesel generator on the back of a truck. I can see it now - the green laser sweeping across the sky trying to ping a hypersonic missile.
Ooops there goes a passenger jet, not to worry it's a Boeing so we can blame them.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 6 2021 21:23 utc | 99
Jen @ 90
I’ve posted about him before, don’t want to keep dropping his name. But a real person, lives a block south of here. An old friend worked on Star Wars specifically the lasers in space. He created the one and only million amp switch. To test it, fire up every power station in the Bay Area, brown out SF. That’s what you need for power. That kind of power is not being orbited.Or even existing at a ground station.
Boys with toys. Spending money because that’s how we play. I am told there are tech wunderweapons. They exist. In some form or other. Lasers not one of the possibilities.
Posted by: Oldhippie | Nov 6 2021 21:25 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
Great and historic article.
Multipolar, based on the UN Charter purposes & principles.
Russia thought it would be 25 years for the new reality to penetrate the US fascist think tank echo chambers whose 'media perception' boot is on the American public's throat.
They were unduly pessimistic.
Posted by: Powerandpeople | Nov 5 2021 18:04 utc | 1