The New Great Game: The U.S. and Europe are the new sick men of the world

This is an article that fans and connoisseurs of global geopolitics might find interesting - it ran in yesterday's (March 20) Real Clear Politics under the title "The New Great Game -- and Why We're Losing" and is written by Joel Kotkin and Hugo Kruger. Kotkin, as some as you know, is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Globe Middle Class, which is a meticulously researched book that I highly recommend, regardless of your ideological and political views.

Anyway, this article is an interesting look at the broader implications of the Ukraine-Russia war and how it might be playing a role in the alignment (or non-alignment) of many nations throughout the world. However, as one can see, the "progressive" ideological, political, economic, environmental and social/cultural policies embraced by many in the West are having a greater impact on the views and alignment of developing nations than the West's position on the Ukraine-Russia war.

It should come as no surprise that many nations don't support many of the policies Western "progressives" promote - particularly the economic, environmental and social policies that many Westerners don't support, either - and no doubt many of those developing nations see a great deal of hypocrisy in the West's opposition to fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal, etc.) when those fuels provided the energy for our own economic and industrial development. Thus, it's not surprising that many of these countries are turning to Russia for energy and China for help developing their economies. While it's frustrating to watch those countries ignore Russia's aggression in Ukraine, what's even more frustrating is watching them fall into the orbit of those two autocracies, and that doesn't bode well for the future of individual freedom and sovereignty around the world. Unfortunately, the same thing can be said for "progressive" policy, so it's somewhat ironic, yet fitting, that "progressive" policies are driving people and nations into the arms of the fascist autocrats in Russia and the Neo-Marxist autocrats in China who are also hostile to individual freedom and sovereignty.

The authors offer a solution to all this and I'm inclined to agree with it. As an American, I've found that the embrace of "progressive" ideology and policy in our country (primarily economic and environmental), for the most part, is hurting us at home, and now I'm seeing how it is going to hurt the freedom-loving people in the developing world, as well, which is doubly disappointing. Certainly, the U.S. government is far from perfect, but the governments in Russia and China care nothing about human life and individual rights, and the governments driven into their orbits are not going to feel the least bit compelled to preserve them for their own citizens.

Anyhow, here are a few quotes to introduce you to the article but it will require reading the whole thing to get the full picture. I think you'll find it well worth the time and I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are.

*BTW, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the "Great Game" and "sick man" references, see the links provided beneath the article.

*Great Game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Game

*Sick Man of Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe

 

An obviously right-biased article and website. And I don't see a solution offered at all, just some whining about climate policies and a claim that they are hampering economic growth, which the authors claim is in turn limiting economic growth in the developing world and proving detrimental to our influence in such countries.

If the authors imagine that abandoning any effort at being a leader in green energy and fighting climate change would make us more influential in the world, he is, at best, a foolish ideologue. The science doesn't lie -- we are altering the global climate, and the effects aren't good. We're already in the midst of a mass extinction event caused by us.

 

Obviously, a Left-biased response, right down to the "mass extinction" histrionics. AOC would be proud. How many more years do we have left to live - nine?

Riiight. Queue the P.T Barnum cracks about suckers....

Moving along to the Biden Admin's ill-conceived energy/climate policies, there's no question they have hampered economic growth and will continue to do so, and those policies are going to continue to harm the American consumers who have to pay more for everything that is impacted by higher energy prices. Voila! Highest inflation in decades...



Another problem with your own uber-partisan theories/claims/propaganada is that we're not going to be the leader in green energy - Qiáo Xiden's masters in Beijing are going to be that leader, and China being that leader is going to come at America's expense. Meanwhile, the Chinese will be ramping up their fossil fuel consumption and developing countries will turn to Russia instead of the United States for energy. So much for us leading the fight against climate change. We're not, and isn't it wonderful how the policies you have voted for are helping pay for Putin's war in Ukraine?

You might not like it, but the facts Kotkin and Kruger laid out are facts all the same. Countries who want fossil fuels are going to purchase or produce them, and if we're not going to sell it to them, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, et al, will. They don't give a damn about "progressive" climate propaganda and hysteria...

Russia Sending More Arctic Crude To India And China
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Russia-Sending-More-Arctic-Crude-To-India-And-China.html

Oh, and look what's happening in Karachi today:

Russia and Pakistan to Meet Today to Seal Crude Import Deal
Published Mar 21, 2023
https://propakistani.pk/2023/03/21/russia-and-pakistan-to-meet-today-to-seal-crude-import-deal/

and there's more....

Russian oil trade remains in ship-shape as the EU price cap has failed to stem Moscow's freight and insurance income, analyst says
Jan 22, 2023
https://markets.businessinsider.com...-not-cheap-shipping-fees-kpler-analyst-2023-1

American "progressives" ceding power, money and influence to Moscow and Beijing. Some things never change....

 

Nothing really new here. In 1982 I attended the US Army Field Artillery Advanced Course at Ft Sill, OK. I was a assigned to "sponsor" a Major from Nigeria that was also attending the course. It was my job to help him with American customs, social gatherings and anything else he might need. Wonderful guy... brilliant... a proper "British Gentleman". We talked one night over a few beers and he told me that Nigeria really wanted to be close to America due to their traditions of freedom and economic success. He said that America seemed not to care much, so they had no choice but to work with Russia and China. Sad, unfortunate situation... even then.

 

Europe is conclusively screwed by demographics but could improve it's economy greatly by giving up the authoritarian and anti-free trade EU. Such no democratic institutions have no place in the west. The U.S. is doing fine demographically and as soon as we can get rid of the anti-business and anti-human radical leftists from government our future looks bright.

 

Totally true... if we still exist in a few years that is.

 

The US and Europe, the good guys. The third world are fools if they side with the Chinese totalitarians, how can they possibly prosper.

 

A lot of similarities between now and then, most notably these:

1) By the early 80s we had developed many of the conditions associated with the historical "Sick Man" just as we are developing those conditions again today.

2) In the early 80s we were just starting to work our way out of a decade-long leadership crisis, and now we find ourselves mired in another leadership crisis today.

Needless to say, leadership and policy matters, and both our "leadership" and its policies have failed miserably, as many of us knew they would. I'm not inspired by all this failure and there's no reason to expect people abroad to be inspired by it earlier.

Furthermore, we have "progressive" idiots here in America who are fond of the CCP's dictatorial control over the economy, which is why they have embraced a similar form of control through the stakeholderism developed by the fascists in Italy and Germany in the 1930s and promoted by the WEF today. One of stakeholderism's most prominent fanboys happens to be none other than Joe Biden. Go figure....

 

The people won't prosper but the corrupt individuals and parties governing their countries most certainly will.

 

I don't have time to dive into the rest, except to say calling us the "sick man of Europe" like the Ottoman Empire is what's histrionic, but a climate denier may be surprised that even without climate change, mankind has and is causing a huge number of extinctions. Why? Because we remake the surface of the earth to suit our needs and destroy many habitats and niches in the process. So saying we cause mass extinction is definitely not histrionic. Just fact.

Holocene extinction - Wikipedia

"
With widespread degradation of biodiversity hotspots, such as coral reefs and rainforests, as well as other areas, the vast majority of these extinctions are thought to be undocumented, as the species are undiscovered at the time of their extinction, which goes unrecorded. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates,[9][10][11][12][13] and is increasing.[14]

During the past 100–200 years, biodiversity loss and species extinction have accelerated,[10] to the point that most conservation biologists now believe that human activity has either produced a period of mass extinction,[15][16] or is on the cusp of doing so.[17][18] As such, the event has also been referred to as the sixth mass extinction
"

 

Russian lovers and liars frequent this website. How quaint.

 

The New Great Game: The U.S. and Europe are the new sick men of the world

Who are the old sick men other than myself?

 

The original Sick Man was the dying remains of the Ottoman Empire that had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Fortunately, you appear to be in much better shape, fmw.

 

Quite interesting. Thank you.

You might be interested in this, too. A lot of historical parallels to our world today. None of them good.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/16/are-we-the-byzantines/

 

A good and thought-provoking post. Maybe those countries who you see as ignoring Russia's aggression in Ukraine are also ignoring 50 years worth of US aggression all around the world, including Vietnam, Syria, Libya, Iraq and all the others including most of Central and South America? Maybe they perceive some level of hypocrisy in the belligerence of the US while lecturing Russia about defending its own eastern territories from US aggression?

You say that Russia and China care nothing about human life and individual rights, which seems to ignore the US and other western governments doing exactly that. The world watched as US drones killed innocents throughout Afghanistan, Iraq and even parts of Africa. Do you think they see us as beneficent rulers or hypocritical practitioners of military aggression? Considering the widespread use of bioweapons by the US government in the Plandemic, do you think they see malignant hypocrisy?

 

So China, Russia, and America are equally evil? Do tell.
FYI: The link to the article:
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-new-great-game/

 

Only by their actions can we know them. It does not make me happy to report that during my lifetime the actions of the US government have been criminal more often than not, evil more often than not.

That does not mean that China or Russia are innocent, but it does mean that in the case of Ukraine, Russia is well within its rights to defend against NATO encroachment.

 

That is an opinion without human values.
NATO exists to protect Western Europe from Russia. Russia had developed (or so we thought) an overwhelming ground attack force. The “ground” is Western Europe.
China seeks to carve up world trade into “mine and ours” by the use of theft, spying, and military force.
The USA is in the middle east as a reminder that if you attack the US on its soil we are going to be “all up in ‘ya” for twenty years.
Russian goals: annex neighbors and make them vassal states of Russia.
Chinese goals: to have Han Chinese rule the world as heaven intended.
America: freedom, capitalism, and a multinational economic world.
They all have flaws. The USA just has fewer flaws.

 

Nigeria hadn't discovered a huge oil reserve in 1982. Just another poor African country. Seems the US only fights for democracy in places that hold a strategic value for the US.

 

NATO used to defend against the Soviet Union, now they are an offensive organization. Kosovo never attacked NATO nor did Libya. It's clear the US/NATO is pushing for direct contact with Russia. NATO encroachment is now very obvious.

 

Tell me more about this mythical "U.S. aggression" that Russia is defending its eastern territories from. Is this occurring in Kamchatka or Chukotka?

The only aggression that has occurred along Russia's frontiers is the revanchist Russian aggression occurring in Ukraine's eastern territories. This Russian aggression that Ukraine is defending its eastern territories from began in 2014 when Russia first invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in order to help itself to the naval base at Sevastopol. Last year this revanchist Russian aggression recommenced in earnest again when Russia invaded Ukraine a second time to help itself to a land bridge connecting the Black Sea Fleet's base at Sevastopol and the Crimean Peninsula to Russia.

Another thing the propagandists in the Kremlin didn't tell you is that all this Russian aggression was set in motion back in June 2008 when the Ukrainian government under Viktor Yushchenko declared that it would not renew Russia's lease on the naval base at Sevastopol when it expired in 2017. Guess what happened two months later? The Russians invaded Georgia and began making plans to build a base for the Black Sea Fleet at Ochachamire in Abkhazia, which was formally announced in January 2009:

Abkhazia, Russia in talks on Black Sea Fleet base - minister
RIA Novosti
13/11/2008
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2008/11/mil-081113-rianovosti01.htm

Report: Russia to build naval base in rebel region
January 26, 2009

Russia's Itar-Tass news agency quoted an unnamed official at Russian naval headquarters as saying it wanted to station vessels at the Abkhaz port of Ochamchire on the Black Sea, Reuters.com reported.

"The fundamental decision on creating a Black Sea Fleet base in Ochamchire has been taken," the official told Tass, in quotes carried by Reuters.com. "This year we will begin practical work, including dredging, along Abkhazia's coast.

"It will take more than a year to implement all works."...

https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/01/26/russia.abkhazia.naval.base/

Yet, here we are, freely and openly exercising our individual rights to criticize our governments and their policies in a public forum without having to worry about disappearing into the Chinese Laogai or taking a dirt nap beside a road outside Moscow. I'm no fan of our government, but at least it isn't doing exactly what the Chinese and Russian governments do, otherwise you and I wouldn't be having this conversation.

 

As it should be. We SHOULD only risk national treasure and American lives in places that hold a strategic value for the US.

 

Nigeria has been extracting oil since the 1950s & joined OPEC in 1971. You just make this stuff up, don't you?

 

So Russia has a 'right' to prevent its neighbours protecting themselves from Russia by joining an alliance of democracies. Well at least you are homest about embracing Russian imperialism. No pretence about stopping Ukranians dying or anything like that, just straight out arguing Russia has the 'right' to dominate its neighbours. Completely amoral, but honest.

 

Yes I stand correct on that.