- “The US is creating military assistance packages for Taiwan similar to those it creates for Ukraine ahead of a Ukraine-style proxy conflict Washington seeks to create with Beijing;”
- “The US is also passing legislation serving as a stepping stone toward pushing its Taiwan proxies toward declaring “independence” and triggering a conflict with the rest of China;”
- “Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese warships approach “US shores,” however upon closer examination, these incidents are happening near the Aleutian Islands closer to Russian than to the continental US;”
I very much agree with your rationale here, and I recall listening to Michael Hudson talk about something similar as well recently. He pointed out that US simply can’t compete with China in terms of cost of production, so instead they want to prevent western countries from trading with China and effectively become a monopoly manufacturer for the west.
I really hope they don’t succeed. It will without a doubt allow capitalism to limp on longer, western hegemony and dominance to last another 20-50 years. It could lead to unforeseen things like revolutions in Europe as a result of hollowing them out buuut I’m pessimistic about that, I think the US will point to Africa and tell Europe if they don’t want to starve, they better get those Africans under their boot again, get to exploiting, and get them away from China and Russia’s orbit, start stealing, installing fascist dictatorships, start up the mass murders again, we know the playbook as do they, Indonesia, occupied Korea, Chile, etc.
Because Africa too is a threat to this plan. It’s a developing continent, full of young people, full of potential, minerals, China is forming partnerships, that has to be stopped, African markets cannot be allowed to be grown and opened up to Chinese goods or kicking them out of Europe will merely slow China and drive them and Africa closer together. So a lot of moving pieces but it does center on Africa in a way. If China wins Africa, can with Russia keep them from controlling the continent (big IF), it won’t matter if Europe is under the US boot and obediently not buying a thing, it maybe set’s China’s final triumph and the west’s complete demise back a decade but it locks them out of a lot of resources and makes decoupling from the new China/Russia sphere rather hard for them but relatively easier for Russia/China/free-Africa to do.
Same, ideally Europeans will suffer an outbreak of common sense in the next couple of years and start pursuing their sovereign interests instead of continuing to act as a doormat for the US. I think that EU has to die in order for that to happen though. EU is basically a bureaucracy that isn’t accountable to the people of any individual member of the EU, and it’s very clearly become the biggest enforcer of pro US policy over the course of the war. Countries have to break out of EU in order to normalize relations with Russia and China again. I also think that something like EU can only work in times of economic prosperity because different members have very different economies. For example, tourism is a large part of Spain’s economy while it’s manufacturing in Germany. They necessarily have different economic interests because of that. When the pie is big and there’s enough to go around, this isn’t a problem. However, when it shrinks then there is disagreement where the remaining funds should be allocated. As Europe slides into recession, there’s going to be a lot of infighting since each country will want to prevent further slide in conditions of their own people at the expense of others. Southern Europe got fucked over to prop up northern Europe back in 2008, and I don’t think the same trick will work this time.