01-24-2017, 11:52 AM
Quote:The "Trump is fascist" stuff is BS.
True.
Quote:However, the notion of the US ceasing to lead the free world and perhaps leaving NATO, is an entirely different matter, not to be scoffed at or poo pooed as paranoia.
Very possible.
Quote:Have you really thought about how that movie might end?
Quite frequently, it is one of the major reasons why I am here.
Quote:Pretty dumb if we blunder ahead thus and it turns out we could have won a war that we end up losing because of it.
And now we're wandering off the reservation again. Have you genuinely thought of how a great power conflict would actually play out, if such were to occur? Have you considered genuine geopolitical parallels between, for instance, the US' balancing act off Eurasia and Imperial Britain's balancing act off the Continent (read: Europe), or Nixon/Kissinger's rapprochement with Communist China v. the USSR, or FDR/Churchill's alliance with the USSR vis Nazi Germany, and how those examples cited might inform present policy?
If you haven't, here are some basic ground rules:
Avoid fighting on multiple fronts.
Pick your battles.
Don't let your enemies gang up on you.
Instead, gang up on your enemies by supporting the weaker of the two versus the stronger one.
Reducing tensions with Russia to focus on China is a perfectly legitimate geopolitical move. Forcing two major powers with a long history of mistrust into each other's arms, where their strengths and weaknesses are complimentary and they could operate along interior lines, is not.
Hopefully conflict can be avoided, and if not at least managed well (read: not allowed to escalate to a full-scale nuclear exchange or a land war in Asia), but as a hegemon, pushing a maximalist agenda against everybody at once is the height of foolishness. The Habsburgs were a mighty power, as was Louis XIV or Napoleon's France, or Imperial/Nazi Germany for that matter, but they didn't follow those rules and their bids for hegemony were ultimately thwarted. We should not make the same mistakes.