Rich wrote:Biden, America and Western Europe's priority should be pouring both arms and troops into Taiwan. Biden's attempt to flush tens of billions more down the Zelensky toilet should be seen as the act of treachery it is. Biden stands in a long-standing American liberal tradition of treachery, FDR totally unnecessarily let the Soviets take Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and North Korea. Between them FDR and, Truman lost China. Eisenhower and JFK lost Cuba. JFK and LBJ lost Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
There is a very cool saying in Spanish. I knew an undocumented Mexican who died of cancer about 15 years ago. He was the father of 14 kids and his current common-law wife whom he had 3 kids, who he smuggled into the USA, from Mexico, said this saying all the time, '
En el pecado esta la penitencia.'Which translated means, 'In the sin is the penitence (or the punishment)'
It means @Rich that the US government with its overweening and hypocrisy-filled ambitions brought a lot of problems down on themselves. They think they can get away with just manipulating the hell out of the world, and somehow the masters of failed-in-end imperialism like the UK turned out to be, won't notice all the things the US does wrong Rich. Everyone notices.
The problem is thinking that you really can control the rest of the world until further notice with impunity. Cuba is a case in point. It is 90 miles from the US shores. Castro knew that he needed to make a deal with an opposing power, that is strategy on how to try to retain control of your land when pressured by a far greater power than you have in your nation. So he tapped the nemesis of the Cold War for backup. Che Guevara never liked, trusted, or even wanted to cooperate with the USSR. He wanted a movement of unaligned nations who would not be forced to choose to align with Washington DC or Moscow. And be able to band together and not be some pawns on a chessboard. That was his aim in getting involved in African decolonization efforts in the early 60s.
I think it was the wrong timing for that in that historical period in history. The USA was embroiled in trying to control the wave of radicals at home and abroad it kept an old post-WWII foreign policy that heavily relied on American military prowess. It was complex.
Unlike you Señor @Rich I never identified with superpowers and imperial nations like the UK, France, the USA, Germany, Spain, Mussolini's Italy, Imperial Portugal via Brazil and its African colonies, etc. The Netherlands had holdings in Indonesia, the Caribbean and Africa, and South America too...no, too. Rich, I do identify with the poorest of the poor receiving the worst end of the stick and the worst of having to deal with constantly closed opportunities for improving life for all of us Caribbean and Latin American regular working folk.
So I can't entirely agree with your stance of the Empires cutting up the rest of humanity like an American Apple Pie and dividing the world into disrespectful concepts of ignoring those primitives on that land, taking what we need, and snubbing our competing European cutthroat greedy neighbors on the hunt for new profits.
For me? That is not only immoral but counterproductive. But your take on international politics often is insightful and often accurate simply because you think about things that really do make sense when you criticize the dominant political paradigm of our times, which is neoliberalism and liberal elite perspectives. They have created a very powerful brew, of liberal individual rights, capitalist investment and industry, and the Captains of industry and innovation, and access to nations in development with enormous resources, and expending money on the military to secure it all. Also, to threaten even their allies in the future if their hegemony is questioned or threatened in the future.
The issue is Rich, that Biden and others just do not understand that resources are not infinite. At all. Not even for the USA. A relatively new nation with enormous natural resources, human labor resources, and access to technological advancement. It is not realizing that if you throw money down the toilet in shows of force to snow some people and then go and neglect the other groups chomping at the bit for you to remove the pressure? Managing all that gets increasingly complex. That happened to the UK empire too in the past. Managing all that shit of Empire gets complex, expensive and eventually leads to rebellions, violence, and too many holes to plug in a dyke that is constantly bursting at the seams.
Conditions change and so do criteria, if you fail to adapt to that in time you wind up having to let go of all that glorious ambition full of immoral and false thoughts about how superior your society is in the end. There is nothing superior about being callous, being greedy or being warmongering and wanting total control in a world with too many moving parts and unpredictable elements at play.
A much more productive use for international politics is building cooperative coalitions that want the best for other nations and are willing to share to the maximum degree the fruits of the sacrifices of the many to bring a sense of solidarity among the many humans who want supportive politics and policies that benefit many others as well as their interests.
But, I doubt you believe in what I believe in Rich. I think we were born with very different cultures, value systems, family backgrounds, and thoughts...and our politics reflect that.
Biden should not spend any more on useless wars. But the people behind that need for war are a lot more powerful than he is. That is the truth of it.
Yeah I'm sure that's really going to make them behave.
- By wat0n
- By litwin