Chinese analysts have a long history of being hilariously wrong. After all, communism, merit based. Pick one.
Maybe you'll notice that Canada has been a bit leftist for a while. Maybe you'll notice that historically if a country's sovereignty is questioned or nationalist sentiments increase, these countries begin to lean back to the right. Maybe you'll notice we've been doing that intentionally around the world to make the world more conservative. Globalism went too far and for strategic reasons it would be beneficial to unwind that some. These are basic things. It has the extra benefit that China has less influence with conservatives, so by increasing the influence of conservatives around the world, we are simultaneously reducing China's influence in those places.
Maybe you'll notice that we haven't actually invaded Greenland or Canada. Maybe you'll notice that the countries we're actually physically acting against are dictatorships, not democracies.
We don't need you to understand. You will feel all your emotions and your emotions will control you and you will behave exactly like we're banking on you to. The reality is that the US remains the only superpower despite China's advancements and we're still using that power for good, whether you realize it or not.
> Exactly, and our allies aren't going away.
Anything US-related is increasingly seen as a liability. Take the HIMARS, for example. An increasing number of countries that recently bought HIMARS are favouring South Korean Chunmoo for their next purchases. Chunmoo comes with technology transfer that allows customers to maintain the launchers and manufacture the ammunition themselves, whereas HIMARS is micromanaged from Washington, and poorly so.
> Maybe you'll notice that we haven't actually invaded Greenland or Canada.
> The reality is that the US remains the only superpower
The US is losing credibility as a security guarantor, because it has failed to impose its will even on countries such as Iran. From failing to adopt modern anti-drone warfare, and using very expensive interceptor missiles instead, and then running out of them, we can all see that the US military and industrial might is a postcard from the past.
Why does China even need to fight or even directly confront the US when it can simply bribe its government into halting military aid to Taiwan, pressuring Taiwan to surrender, and pressuring others to drop their sanctions? Putin offered Lukoil to Trump's buddies, and today's WSJ top story says that Trump is pressuring Europe to resume buying Russian gas so that his friends can use intermediaries like Lukoil to skim their share of the revenue and enrich themselves. China can offer TSMC to Trump's buddies, too. That would send decades of US wargaming down the toilet, just as Trump's actions have done regarding Iran and Russia.
Which is exactly what needs to happen.
> An increasing number of countries that recently bought HIMARS are favouring South Korean Chunmoo for their next purchases.
I don't see a problem with this.
> The threat to Greenland got real enough that Denmark moved special forces to Greenland, rigged airport runways with explosives to disrupt US airborne assaults, and stocked up on blood to treat casualties. Only then did the rhetoric from Washington change. That burned through most of the goodwill Denmark (and many of its supporters) had towards the US.
That sounds like performative politics. It says nothing about how real the threat actually was and is more likely a performative political demonstration to Greenland that being tied to Denmark has value, which would be a net win for the US since a large part of our concern about Greenland was that they were being given the option to become independent. So performative politics for Greenlanders that has strategic benefit to the US more than Denmark, or useful military practice. It doesn't make it any more real or not.
> Doubtful if the US deserves to be called a superpower anymore. Instead of supporting Ukraine to the fullest extent possible and setting an example that America's partners are not to be messed with, the US government has consistently shown weakness by falling for Putin's bluffs and humiliating itself in the process. Witkoff calling Putin a "humanist" is a good recent example. Pathetic beyond words.
We don't need the US industrial base ramping up for the Ukraine war. We need it ramping up for the war with China. Europe needs to be ramping up for the European war.
As far as Steve Witkoff goes, he's literally a special diplomatic envoy. The point of a diplomat is not to go and insult the people you're communicating with, it's to achieve results through diplomatic means. Saying positive things is also a way to get your message into Russia past the censors.
If you let the media tell you what to think and feel, then they will preserve your lack of understanding of what is happening which creates a self reinforcing cycle of you depending on their nonsense.
> Which is exactly what needs to happen. /---/ I don't see a problem with this.
BRUSSELS — U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau on Wednesday slammed European NATO allies for prioritizing their own defense industry over American arms suppliers, according to three NATO diplomats. /---/ Landau, a longtime NATO skeptic who spoke first at the closed-door meeting, told ministers not to “bully” his country’s defense firms out of participating in Europe’s rearmament.
The expectations seems to have been that elevated military spending would flow to US arms manufacturers. Instead, it is flowing to European manufacturers, making them more competitive and reducing the influence that the US government had through export controls, which essentially gave the US veto power over the foreign and defence policies of other countries. That influence is now rapidly waning.
> That sounds like performative politics.
This was the moment when trust was broken beyond repair. No amount of flowers or apologies will restore the trust that was before. It is perhaps one of the most important events of the past decade in US-EU relations and a fundamental shift in the understanding that had stood since 1949 when NATO was established.
> We don't need the US industrial base ramping up for the Ukraine war. We need it ramping up for the war with China.
> The point of a diplomat is not to go and insult the people you're communicating with, it's to achieve results through diplomatic means.
There's a reason why the US government has not achieved any meaningful concessions from Russia since the 2021 ultimatum. The endless talks with Witkoff serve only as a humiliation ritual. Putin even got to walk down a red carpet on US soil while US officers saluted him, all without giving anything in return. Allegedly, that embarrassing Alaska summit happened because Witkoff misunderstood what Russians meant by "withdrawal from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson". He mistook Russian demand for Ukraine to withdraw from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson for an offer by Russia to withdraw its own forces. This led Trump to immediately annouce the summit in Alaska that produced flashy photos for Russian newspapers, but nothing else. My God, what a bunch of retards. They don't even understand what's being told to them, and you're trying to condescendingly convince me that they're playing clever reverse psychology on Europe. It's time to face the reality.
After years of mocking the sovereignty of allies like Canada and Denmark, are they more or less likely to support the US in the event of a war with China? Less likely, and the same applies to most other countries, too.