Like, yeah, they can ‘get away with’ ending soft power. They can ‘get away with’ extrajudicial killings. They’re operating off of pure machismo right now. They’re getting drunk on their vices. They’re stripping masks where masks wouldn’t be advised to be stripped. I feel like I understand now that Fascism is, in part, an expression of weakness. They wouldn’t be doing this unless they were scared. It’s too volatile. It feels both too late on a power-level and too early on a popular-level. Never mind the ticking time bomb that is AI data centers. It feels like, and I’m sure this is cope, there is a timer on their ability to run the circus much longer.
My first instinct here is to doubt myself, intellectual pessimism and all. In that vein, maybe this is just revolutionary optimism, but we’re at the point where it feels like there is a palpable anger brewing in the basement. I don’t know. Maybe Palantir works as an anti-communist panopticon and we just death spiral forever. I don’t want to lose hope.
Xiao, I have to hard disagree. I will throw some of your own analysis back at you, and share some of mine.
China
China’s new 5 year plan includes building up domestic consumption. There is no indication that they will fail to implement this strategy.
China has swapped US debt for 2 African countries for the equivalent in Yuan. We may see even more of this down the road.
Africa
Russia has kicked Western forces out of much of West Africa.
UAE’s and Israel’s forces in East Africa, meant as a force against Iranian proxies - is at serious risk because of the Saudi-UAE conflict. This could also spark issues between Turkey and Israel.
The same Turkey that happily sold oil to Israel, while publicly condemning it for a domestic audience.
West Asia
The geopolitics of Turkey could shift against Israel, and Turkey’s internal politics could easily accommodate that shift.
Ansarallah is chilling with popcorn watching Saudi and UAE proxies demolish each other in occupied Yemen. Remember that despite Saudi spending a quarter trillion on genociding the Houthis over half a decade, they were able to not only resist - but get stronger. All that with an estimated tens of millions spent by Iran. Since the seccesation of direct Houthi-Saudi conflict, we’ve seen them send missiles into Isn’treal and scramble carriers.
Israel is planning another attack on Iran. Likely sometime this month, and during a weekend so as to not scare capital.
Even a successful annihilation of the Iranian political class as well as former leaders would not be sufficient. This is because Iran has Vietnam style tunnel networks that span the country underground, and big enough to drive trucks and drones in.
Think of what Yemen is able to do from underground. Even with a visible and loud and propagandized Iranian defeat on the surface, Israel’s fight would not be over.
And it is increasingly seeming like these riots won’t even go anywhere, even with all the support they are getting from the West.
Latin America
The plot against Maduro was a spectacular military success, as well as a spectacular strategic failure.
They took away Maduro, who could have been couped with some patience due to the political backlash of the economic situation caused by US sanctions. American PsyOps managed to create a meme in Venezuela that the weight loss people experienced due to this travesty was the “Maduro Diet”.
They made Venezuelan Liberals into Bolivarians. They brought a new wave of Latin American unity, with Columbia, Brazil, Cuba, and potentially Mexico (the last being least likely) to come together.
The best they could do in Venezuela was PsyOps about the Vice President being on the US’ side. Even there they couldn’t get consistent messaging across on that front.
Europe
They are shitting themselves at both Russia and the potential of a US threat.
They have no good source of oil/gas, and their industry is being hollowed out. Their war austerity is going to cause internal strife amongst a populace who has come to expect their former QOL as the bare minimum.
They feel betrayed by the US, and the Ukrainian “Stabbed in the back” narrative is propagating continent-wide.
European leaders will fold to the US whims, but the next generation will likely be rabid and oppositional.
Add on top of that that much of the younger generation acknowledges the plight of Palestine. They are disenfranchised and powerless, yes, but their leaders will age and die.
North America
Amongst the youth, both the left and the Nazi right hate Israel.
Israeli campaign contributions are used by people all over the political spectrum as a sign of untrustworthiness and corruption.
The generation of Donald Trump have been the political leaders of the US for this entire century thus far. With the average age of the president tending to go up by 1 with every passing year. But they are near the end of their lives, even with the best medical care available.
Regardless of who dominates US politics in the coming years, it will necessarily be younger, and it will necessarily be anti-Zionist.
The US economy is propped up by AI, for which we can all see the writing on the wall.
And think of the earlier point of China undermining the dollar as a reserve currency in Africa.
In earlier economic crises (ie. 2008), African countries had to accumulate US dollars as a reserve currency in order to keep jobs and hedge against their own inflating local currencies. However, with China having more of a consumption-based economy, and with these countries having Yuan-based debt and reserves - then the dynamic completely changes.
This means that the US economy can implode this time without it taking down the “3rd world” and making them even more subservient.
We are seeing a US that is on the precipice of dying, without the opportunity to recover through vampirism like it had done before.
The attacks on Venezuela and Iran were attacks on China’s customers. China isn’t getting involved according to publicly available information.
These countries are still standing and it would take a dramatic series of events to change that. So far the evidence shows a consistent pattern of failure to undermine this relationship.
The downturn of 20% of trade between China and Iran may be painful, but with the US burning through its global supply of interceptors for many years over the course of 12 days, it is hardly sustainable to militarily force a further downturn in Chinese investment and trade.
Thank you for the response, though a lot of that is too speculative that, while I would love for them to come true, simply does not refute the fact that we’re looking at a lot of inactions today, both domestically in the US, and on the international stage. Yes, there are movements, but not enough to threaten the empire.
The tragedy of the woman murdered by ICE yesterday is one such example. ICE has been kidnapping people for nearly a year now, although most of them aren’t white. They are emboldened because nobody’s stopping them, and the fact remains that if nobody will stop the Gestapo, we all know what that will eventually lead to.
Regarding the specific points on China:
China is already in over-capacity. It needs to build up domestic consumption market to absorb global export surplus goods and drive the domestic demand, not more investment on production. If China fails to do so, the US will remain the world’s largest consumer market and dictate world trade.
Which is probably the worst thing any country should do about their external debt situation right now.
The yuan is currently under a lot of pressure to appreciate, and if (when) it does, these African countries that just swapped the loan for yuan are fucked, because the lower interest rate will not make up for the more expensive yuan they have to earn to repay. In this case, they’re probably better off sticking to dollar debt and take advantage of the USD depreciation instead.
Regardless, no country should take on external debt not denominated in their own currency. It’s a guaranteed way to lose your economic sovereignty.
Besides, since China is running a record $1 trillion trade surplus last year, the question becomes where are those countries going to earn the yuan to repay the loans? In the end, they still have to sell their goods to countries who are willing to run a trade deficit (that means the US) to earn the foreign currencies, sell the currencies on the forex market to buy yuan, and then pay back their Chinese creditors.
It’s extra steps to take advantage of the lower interest rate, but the risks are being shifted to hoping that the Chinese yuan does not appreciate down the road.
Furthermore, the internationalization of yuan (and the rise of China’s consumer market) necessarily involves the appreciation of the yuan itself. You cannot have it both ways - that you want an internationalized Chinese RMB with an artificially devalued exchange rate.
In other words, if you’re betting on the yuan supplanting the dollar, then you should expect the yuan to appreciate and the dollar to depreciate. In this case, it does not make sense to swap the dollar loans for yuan.
What China can do right now is to use its vast USD foreign reserves to pay off those African countries’ debt (the entire external debt of the African continent is $800 billion, well within the reach of China’s several trillions of dollar reserve as well as its $800 billion worth of US treasuries), THEN flood those countries with Chinese yuan in a Marshall Plan style to give them the money to import from China. This will simultaneously raise the income of the Chinese working class, build up China’s domestic consumer market, who will now have more purchasing power to import from the developing countries in return while their countries are freed of debt bondage to foreign financial institutions. This will raise the income of both Chinese working class and those in the developing countries together - a true win-win strategy.
not sure about this. these people are professional american worshippers and very rigid ideological soldiers first and foremost. ten years of brutal sanctions and hyperinflation permanently galvanized them to the other side, if the country wound up magically better they would still work towards its complete demise. We’re looking at the new mustard viet diaspora and all the fascist militancy that comes with them, just, latin american instead.