Political Posts

[Hektor]

https://fortune.com/2025/02/18/why-xi-jinping-met-with-top-leaders-from-alibaba-huawei-tencent-meituan-xiaomi-and-more/

 

Why Xi Jinping met with top leaders from Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, Meituan, Xiaomi, and more

 

"Chinese President Xi Jinping met with several prominent Chinese tech entrepreneurs on Monday in a major show of support.

 

State media reported that Xi hosted Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma, Meituan CEO Wang Xing, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun alongside Unitree founder and CEO Wang Xingxing, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, Tencent founder Pony Ma, BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu, and CATL CEO Robin Zeng.

 

Together, the executives represent chipmakers, electric carmakers, and AI developers that Xi hopes will help China reduce its reliance on U.S. alternatives.

 

In a speech, Xi urged the executives “to maintain their competitive spirit and have confidence in the country’s future,” as a Bloomberg report put it. China is the world’s second-largest economy but its momentum has slowed and its trade war with the U.S. has rattled supply chains.

 

Xi also promised to eliminate unreasonable fees or fines impeding entrepreneurs in the state-dominated economy. “It is necessary to resolutely remove all kinds of obstacles to the equal use of production factors and fair participation in market competition,” Xi told the entrepreneurs, according to a Xinhua report. 

 

How far will Beijing actually go to support the private sector? It remains to be seen. But entrepreneurs like Jack Ma surely remember that it wasn’t so long ago that the Chinese government was willing to scuttle the country’s largest IPO in the name of alignment."

 

[crs223]

7 hours ago, winjitsu said:

 

Enter the role of HKD and Hong Kong, basically the mechanism to acquire offshore dollars.

 

 

According to ChatGPT, this would not be a viable option to return capital to shareholders:

 

Alibaba wants to return more USD to shareholders via buybacks and dividends on the NYSE but it was run out of USD.  Can Alibaba bypass CCP capital controls and simply exchange their CNY to CNH and then to USD?

 

Alibaba, like other Chinese companies, faces strict capital controls imposed by the Chinese government, which regulate the conversion and outflow of renminbi (RMB) into foreign currencies like USD. Here's why the approach you suggested—converting CNY to CNH and then to USD—would not be a simple workaround:

1. CNY vs. CNH: CNY (onshore renminbi) is subject to strict regulatory oversight by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), while CNH (offshore renminbi) is traded more freely in markets like Hong Kong. However, converting large amounts of CNY to CNH is still monitored and restricted.

2. Capital Controls on CNY-CNH Conversions: Even though CNH is more freely traded, the ability of a Chinese company like Alibaba to convert onshore CNY to CNH is not unlimited. The Chinese government carefully monitors and restricts large conversions to prevent capital flight.

3. USD Liquidity Constraints in Offshore Markets: While CNH can be converted to USD in offshore markets, it would still require sufficient USD liquidity. If Alibaba attempted to do this at scale, authorities would likely intervene.

4. Regulatory Oversight: Given Alibaba’s prominence, any large-scale attempt to bypass capital controls would likely attract regulatory scrutiny, leading to potential penalties or restrictions on future transactions.

[Spekulatius]

You cannot move capital out of China without regulatory approval. This is true for domestic as well as subsidies of foreign companies.

 

The Yuan is not freely convertible into other currencies either.

[changegonnacome]

Interesting times - and have many thoughts on this....

 

Strategically the US to seemingly save a few lousy bucks......with this defacto withdrawal from NATO/Europe is being 'penny wise pound foolish' move IMO - making monkeys out of the European's to supposedly 'pivot' to Asia is simply short sighted and makes a kind of mockery of the pivot to Asia strategy itself......hitting Europe with tariffs would be doubly so....dont really want to get into the politcs of this....but its consistent with my view that Trump/Hegseth have a very limited framework for how they think about the complexity of international security....which one would expect from a Manhattan real estate developer turned TV personality turned US president...and a foot soldier turned Fox TV personality turned United States Secretary of Defense. 

 

See Europe's lack of military capability is/was a feature not a bug of NATO.....Europe's lack of  strategic autonomy i.e. their complete dependence on the US from a military/security umbrella standpoint -  is what makes them such beautiful subservient partners to overarching global dominance of US foreign policy.....Europe for the longest time has had an overwhelming incentive to go along with whatever hair brained scheme the American's came up with whether that's economic (sanctions, tariffs on China or withholding technology from China (ASML)) or military (Iraq, Afghanistan etc.).......pivoting to Asia.....which is a containment strategy around China not moving out beyond the first island chain is enhanced by the US having effective strategic (military & trade) oversight over the world's wealthiest aggregate economic block of consumers.....the US has 331 million wealthy buyers of Chinese goods which is great leverage......but the EU (with the UK) has ~540m first world wealthy consumers......the combined leverage against mercantilist China is simply immense.....a fracturing of the US/EU coalition in anyway is a good day for Beijing.....China's aim is to maximize its relative power within the global system.....the European's peeling away from the Americans which one can envisage on foot of this Ukraine pivot with potential tariffs to follow.....increases China's relative power in the system while diminishing the US's.....this is not how you run a railroad folks!

 

Now in regards to the Ukraine:

 

The reality for those paying attention is that in a very real sense the Western coalition lost the war in the Ukraine perhaps 18 months ago.......there's no doubt that Russia now and for many months now has had the upper hand on the battlefield and most importantly has the will and the capacity to continue the offensive indefinitely. The same can not be said for Ukraine....most importantly they are running out of men......next they are running out of artillery (as the Russian artillery absolute advantage grows)....and most importantly they are running out of 'partners' who are willing to bankroll the whole thing. 

 

This was all depressingly predictable. For all our hot air in the 'West' about "Adolf Putin" - Russia proved that it cared more about the conflict than we did..how could they not care more?...many pages back in this thread I pointed this out...Ukraine is/was a side project for the EU/USA......a kind of liberal democratic nation building project that liberals are so enamoured with but fail at time and time again........nobody in the core EU ever seriously considered the threat inflation of the Biden rhetoric of Russia marching on Warsaw, then Berlin to be anything other than good old threat inflation.

 

For Russia - the Ukraine is and always will be existential.......perseverance which is measure of how much one cares about something......remains the most under-appreciated factor in most military conflicts......and the most consistent mistake in international security and conflict frameworks is the complete over-estimation of military power to effect strategic goals......ask the American's in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam etc. or the British in its various colonies...or the Israeli's in Gaza/West Bank/Lebanon.......I'm not sure how many times folks need to be taught this lesson.....but in the era of nationalism there are profound limitations to hard power.

 

The reality in the war in Ukraine is that Russia expanded their military industrial base commensurate to how much they cared about their strategic objectives..........and we in the West with our 'We Stand with Ukraine' flags & all the puffery from European and US leaders never truly matched our rhetoric with concrete military industrial actions. For example by late 2024, many analysts noted that Russia was manufacturing more ammunition than all NATO countries combined – reportedly about 7× the West’s monthly output. Importantly the asymmetry in terms of artillery capability occured after the invasion of March 2022 and not before it.....the West wasn't blindsided by some secret Russian build up of artillery capability....it happened in plain sight with Ukraine's military reporting privately and publicly to its partners the growing asymmetry on the battlefield. The reality as evidenced by the hard reality of artillery production capability is that we simply didn't care enough about what happened to Ukraine on the battlefield. Its depressing but true - as I said many pages back and to mangle the Buffet adage - you shouldn't get involved in a war for twenty seconds that you wouldn't be happy to be involved in for twenty years. 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2025 by changegonnacome

[Luke]

42 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

You cannot move capital out of China without regulatory approval. This is true for domestic as well as subsidies of foreign companies.

 

The Yuan is not freely convertible into other currencies either.

 

3 hours ago, crs223 said:

 

According to ChatGPT, this would not be a viable option to return capital to shareholders:

 

 

Alibaba wants to return more USD to shareholders via buybacks and dividends on the NYSE but it was run out of USD.  Can Alibaba bypass CCP capital controls and simply exchange their CNY to CNH and then to USD?

 

 

Alibaba, like other Chinese companies, faces strict capital controls imposed by the Chinese government, which regulate the conversion and outflow of renminbi (RMB) into foreign currencies like USD. Here's why the approach you suggested—converting CNY to CNH and then to USD—would not be a simple workaround:

1. CNY vs. CNH: CNY (onshore renminbi) is subject to strict regulatory oversight by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), while CNH (offshore renminbi) is traded more freely in markets like Hong Kong. However, converting large amounts of CNY to CNH is still monitored and restricted.

2. Capital Controls on CNY-CNH Conversions: Even though CNH is more freely traded, the ability of a Chinese company like Alibaba to convert onshore CNY to CNH is not unlimited. The Chinese government carefully monitors and restricts large conversions to prevent capital flight.

3. USD Liquidity Constraints in Offshore Markets: While CNH can be converted to USD in offshore markets, it would still require sufficient USD liquidity. If Alibaba attempted to do this at scale, authorities would likely intervene.

4. Regulatory Oversight: Given Alibaba’s prominence, any large-scale attempt to bypass capital controls would likely attract regulatory scrutiny, leading to potential penalties or restrictions on future transactions.

Isnt Alibaba also mainland listed now and can just buy back shares locally without this USD conversion problem?

[Dinar]

@changegonnacome, I agree with you, except for one thing: it's not perseverance, it's the West's unwilligness to do what has been done since time immemorial - violence and population transfers.  It was easy to win the Afghan war, just kill them all!  (For the record, I am not advocating for the US to have done it, but it should have been killing 10,000 Afghans a day until Taliban handed over Bin Laden & Co!).   Similarly in Gaza/Judea and Samaria (West Bank technically includes Israel pre-1967 borders)/Lebanon, just transfer the populations to Syria, and end the problem.  This was done time immemorial, and in the 20th century Turks massacred millions of Greeks and Armenians and kicked them out of lands that they lived on for at least 3,000 years.  Germans were kicked out of Sudetenland, and Koenisberg, etc...

The problem is not the unwillingness to fight, the problem is not willing to be sufficiently brutal to ensure victory.  

 

[rogermunibond]

Not sure what the big deal is.  PetroChina, a state owned enterprise, has been making dividend payments to shareholders since the 2000s.

 

Sure the VIE is cumbersome and has never had its regulatory status "blessed" but there are SOEs that have listed using the VIE.

 

And China VIE controlled companies have made dividend payments to ADR/ADS over the last 4-5 years.  No issues.

 

SAFE review and approval, but if you read the rules it's mostly related to payment of dividends or share buybacks funded from retained earnings.

[Spekulatius]

Essentially, NATO has been split apart and Europe needs to find a way on their own.

 

If Europe doesn’t arm itself, they have a combined Russian/ Chinese force on their door knocking in a couple of years making nuclear threats.

 

Some understand this but many do not yet. Welcome to the multipolar world.

[cubsfan]

1 hour ago, changegonnacome said:

Interesting times - and have many thoughts on this....

 

Strategically the US to seemingly save a few lousy bucks......with this defacto withdrawal from NATO/Europe is being 'penny wise pound foolish' move IMO - making monkeys out of the European's to supposedly 'pivot' to Asia is simply short sighted and makes a kind of mockery of the pivot to Asia strategy itself......hitting Europe with tariffs would be doubly so....dont really want to get into the politcs of this....but its consistent with my view that Trump/Hegseth have a very limited framework for how they think about the complexity of international security....which one would expect from a Manhattan real estate developer turned TV personality turned US president...and a foot soldier turned Fox TV personality turned United States Secretary of Defense. 

 

See Europe's lack of military capability is/was a feature not a bug of NATO.....Europe's lack of  strategic autonomy i.e. their complete dependence on the US from a military/security umbrella standpoint -  is what makes them such beautiful subservient partners to overarching global dominance of US foreign policy.....Europe for the longest time has had an overwhelming incentive to go along with whatever hair brained scheme the American's came up with whether that's economic (sanctions, tariffs on China or withholding technology from China (ASML)) or military (Iraq, Afghanistan etc.).......pivoting to Asia.....which is a containment strategy around China not moving out beyond the first island chain is enhanced by the US having effective strategic (military & trade) oversight over the world's wealthiest aggregate economic block of consumers.....the US has 331 million wealthy buyers of Chinese goods which is great leverage......but the EU (with the UK) has ~540m first world wealthy consumers......the combined leverage against mercantilist China is simply immense.....a fracturing of the US/EU coalition in anyway is a good day for Beijing.....China's aim is to maximize its relative power within the global system.....the European's peeling away from the Americans which one can envisage on foot of this Ukraine pivot with potential tariffs to follow.....increases China's relative power in the system while diminishing the US's.....this is not how you run a railroad folks!

 

Now in regards to the Ukraine:

 

The reality for those paying attention is that in a very real sense the Western coalition lost the war in the Ukraine perhaps 18 months ago.......there's no doubt that Russia now and for many months now has had the upper hand on the battlefield and most importantly has the will and the capacity to continue the offensive indefinitely. The same can not be said for Ukraine....most importantly they are running out of men......next they are running out of artillery (as the Russian artillery absolute advantage grows)....and most importantly they are running out of 'partners' who are willing to bankroll the whole thing. 

 

This was all depressingly predictable. For all our hot air in the 'West' about "Adolf Putin" - Russia proved that it cared more about the conflict than we did..how could they not care more?...many pages back in this thread I pointed this out...Ukraine is/was a side project for the EU/USA......a kind of liberal democratic nation building project that liberals are so enamoured with but fail at time and time again........nobody in the core EU ever seriously considered the threat inflation of the Biden rhetoric of Russia marching on Warsaw, then Berlin to be anything other than good old threat inflation.

 

For Russia - the Ukraine is and always will be existential.......perseverance which is measure of how much one cares about something......remains the most under-appreciated factor in most military conflicts......and the most consistent mistake in international security and conflict frameworks is the complete over-estimation of military power to effect strategic goals......ask the American's in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam etc. or the British in its various colonies...or the Israeli's in Gaza/West Bank/Lebanon.......I'm not sure how many times folks need to be taught this lesson.....but in the era of nationalism there are profound limitations to hard power.

 

The reality in the war in Ukraine is that Russia expanded their military industrial base commensurate to how much they cared about their strategic objectives..........and we in the West with our 'We Stand with Ukraine' flags & all the puffery from European and US leaders never truly matched our rhetoric with concrete military industrial actions. For example by late 2024, many analysts noted that Russia was manufacturing more ammunition than all NATO countries combined – reportedly about 7× the West’s monthly output. Importantly the asymmetry in terms of artillery capability occured after the invasion of March 2022 and not before it.....the West wasn't blindsided by some secret Russian build up of artillery capability....it happened in plain sight with Ukraine's military reporting privately and publicly to its partners the growing asymmetry on the battlefield. The reality as evidenced by the hard reality of artillery production capability is that we simply didn't care enough about what happened to Ukraine on the battlefield. Its depressing but true - as I said many pages back and to mangle the Buffet adage - you shouldn't get involved in a war for twenty seconds that you wouldn't be happy to be involved in for twenty years. 

 

 

 

I remember your posts on this subject very well 18 months ago - and you certainly called it correctly regarding Russia's goal to keep NATO out of Ukraine. You also called the stalemate due to displacing a dug in Russia and production of artillery. 

 

At the current time, Europe has to swallow a tough pill: If Europe is so concerned about future Russian aggression - then why are they not scaling up their defense spending dramatically?

The Europeans have had 3 years to do it - yet - they want the USA to carry the burden.

 

The current President's message is clear: The USA will be an ally against Russia - but the Europeans need to shoulder the burden of spending. It could not be more obvious.

 

The USA has a $37B deficit while funding to protect the borders of Europe, without protecting our own borders. The President is making a pragmatic and popular decision among Americans.

The tide is turning on Europe -and if they wish to self-destruct with minimal defense spending and out of control immigration - the USA is going to stand by and watch with this new adminstration.

 

After the JD Vance speech, the flunkies at the Munich conference acted so immature about "protecting democracy" while shutting down the most important values of a democracy - free speech -  and free and fair elections across much of Europe.

[Xerxes]

In couple of years time, Warsaw will have a nuclear weapon. It is clear. How else does one protect itself.  

 

Many refer to UK as an European nuclear power. I somewhat disagree. Only France has truly sovereign control over its nuclear arsenal while UK’ arsenal is subordinated to US to a certain degree. 

[John Hjorth]

17 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

 ... The USA has a $37B deficit while funding to protect the borders of Europe, without protecting our own borders.  ...

 

... After the JD Vance speech, the flunkies at the Munich conference acted so immature about "protecting democracy" while shutting down the most important values of a democracy - free speech -  and free and fair elections across much of Europe. ...

 

Mike [ @cubsfan ],

 

Why do you continue to derail this topic with these kinds of political nonsense and *BS*, not related to the war we discuss here? To me, by doing so, you are playing with the posting privileges of others in this topic, who can stay on topic here.

[cubsfan]

25 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

 

Mike [ @cubsfan ],

 

Why do you continue to derail this topic with these kinds of political nonsense and *BS*, not related to the war we discuss here? To me, by doing so, you are playing with the posting privileges of others in this topic, who can stay on topic here.

 

....Says the guy posting offensive political cartoons for all to see.

 

Keep it up John.

Edited February 18, 2025 by cubsfan

[changegonnacome]

1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:

Europe doesn’t arm itself,

 

Yes that's the obvious answer...Europe should load up on weapons......the issue with re-arming Europe is like the person who buys a gun to protect his family from somebody breaking into their home.....not realizing that by bringing a lethal weapon into his house he's made his family statistically less safe, not more safe.

 

See the other, somewhat unarticulated, purpose of NATO for many years.......was to create a security umbrella under which European players but mainly France & Germany had no need to build up a military defensive capabilities. This type of re-arming is exactly how the continent has been wrecked twice in the last hundred years or so.

 

European history is the story of nations—especially France and Germany—expanding their military capabilities in the name of defense.....the issue here however is that external parties defensive military investments are kind of indistinguishable from offensive investments because its impossible to know the full intent of another countries leadership or more impossible still it's impossible to know the intent of future political leaders whom may come to power in those countries. This is important as say for example the far right in Germany seems to be gaining political traction.

 

Security competitions but lets call it defense spending, as I've described, has a way of breaking out into full blown military conflicts because as at a certain point one party reasons that the best defense is a good offense and so they should strike first to gain a desceive military advantage over their competitor.

 

Perhaps Europe can build a military capability that is abstracted away from a France or Germany and sits at a supra-national level - and if that's possible it should desperately try to build out this European Defense Force - the only issue remains that the EU construct is quite a weak foundation I think.....when push comes to shove....old habits die hard and I dont see in Europe a European nationalism like I do in the US.......I see 27 distinct nations....who've pooled some sovereignty for economic upside but I see very very little pooling of national identity into an overarching European one.....no child in Europe goes to school in the morning and pledges their allegiance to the United States of Europe....this is a big problem if individual nations in Europe go on a spending spree in the name of national defense..........nations & persistent nationalism are forged in the fire....perhaps a United States of Europe will be created when Putin & Xi's armies pour across the borders of Belarus into Poland and beyond but at this point I dont see it.......Europe at this point IMO is more likely to fragment than to come together to create a European Defense Force......I see little Brexit's everywhere I look in Europe right now  

[cubsfan]

4 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Yes that's the obvious answer...Europe should load up on weapons......the issue with re-arming Europe is like the person who buys a gun to protect his family from somebody breaking into their home.....not realizing that by bringing a lethal weapon into his house he's made his family statistically less safe, not more safe.

 

See the other, somewhat unarticulated, purpose of NATO for many years.......was to create a security umbrella under which European players but mainly France & Germany had no need to build up a military defensive capabilities. This type of re-arming is exactly how the continent has been wrecked twice in the last hundred years or so.

 

European history is the story of nations—especially France and Germany—expanding their military capabilities in the name of defense.....the issue here however is that external parties defensive military investments are kind of indistinguishable from offensive investments because its impossible to know the full intent of another countries leadership or more impossible still it's impossible to know the intent of future political leaders whom may come to power in those countries. This is important as say for example the far right in Germany seems to be gaining political traction.

 

Security competitions but lets call it defense spending, as I've described, has a way of breaking out into full blown military conflicts because as at a certain point one party reasons that the best defense is a good offense and so they should strike first to gain a desceive military advantage over their competitor.

 

Perhaps Europe can build a military capability that is abstracted away from a France or Germany and sits at a supra-national level - and if that's possible it should desperately try to build out this European Defense Force - the only issue remains that the EU construct is quite a weak foundation I think.....when push comes to shove....old habits die hard and I dont see in Europe a European nationalism like I do in the US.......I see 27 distinct nations....who've pooled some sovereignty for economic upside but I see very very little pooling of national identity into an overarching European one.....no child in Europe goes to school in the morning and pledges their allegiance to the United States of Europe....this is a big problem if individual nations in Europe go on a spending spree in the name of national defense..........nations & persistent nationalism are forged in the fire....perhaps a United States of Europe will be created when Putin & Xi's armies pour across the borders of Belarus into Poland and beyond but at this point I dont see it.......Europe at this point IMO is more likely to fragment than to come together to create a European Defense Force......I see little Brexit's everywhere I look in Europe right now  

 

Brilliant.

 

I wish the Europeans the best of luck - as you say, they face very difficult decisions regarding the future of their continent given the tightrope they attempt to walk.  New leadership is required for an effective defense.

[changegonnacome]

53 minutes ago, Xerxes said:

In couple of years time, Warsaw will have a nuclear weapon. It is clear. How else does one protect itself.  

 

Absolutely - Ukraine would not be in the situation its in today if it did not foolishly believe the USA and UK's assurances around security guarantees giving up its 1200 nukesor whatever it was and signing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in exchange for verbal vibe assurances around its borders. Deeply deeply foolish move by the Urkanian leadership at the time.

 

The post-WWII ideal of nuclear non-proliferation was completely correct and again back to my point about the short sightedness of these Trump/Hegseth moves......you dismantle the global security architecture (however imperfect/costly) at your peril .....in the nuclear age the concept of national security for a superpower via isolationism is quaint & naive......a concept from a time when the world didn't have ICBM's and 100 megaton bombs ...the US withdrawing into itself and away from Kissinger-esque stable equilibriums or balances of power which manifest themselves in supra-national organizaitons.....really does not enhance the safety of Americans, it makes them less safe over the long pull...in a world without rules with no cop on the beat so to speak.....nuclear proliferation is now the logical default position for any sovereign nation.....that looks at the rules based system (NATO, UN, WTO etc.) being sidelined or completely deconstructed by Trump.

 

I admire what Trump is doing in terms regulation, the deficit and backing us philosophically out of this crazy woke cul-de-sac we were in I actually applaud him on these polcies.... but as it relates to foreign policy (tarriffs on allies, UN/WTO/NATO) I must say I dont see a President optimizing for America's interests over the long pull.....I see a guy smashing away at a load bearing wall with no plan for what's going to hold up the roof up after he's done with the wall.

[crs223]

2 hours ago, rogermunibond said:

Not sure what the big deal is.  PetroChina, a state owned enterprise, has been making dividend payments to shareholders since the 2000s.

 

Sure the VIE is cumbersome and has never had its regulatory status "blessed" but there are SOEs that have listed using the VIE.

 

And China VIE controlled companies have made dividend payments to ADR/ADS over the last 4-5 years.  No issues.

 

SAFE review and approval, but if you read the rules it's mostly related to payment of dividends or share buybacks funded from retained earnings.

 

BABA could not get enough USD to perform buybacks last year... so they issued convertible bonds denominated in USD to fund the buybacks.

[Luke]

1 hour ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Yes that's the obvious answer...Europe should load up on weapons......the issue with re-arming Europe is like the person who buys a gun to protect his family from somebody breaking into their home.....not realizing that by bringing a lethal weapon into his house he's made his family statistically less safe, not more safe.

 

See the other, somewhat unarticulated, purpose of NATO for many years.......was to create a security umbrella under which European players but mainly France & Germany had no need to build up a military defensive capabilities. This type of re-arming is exactly how the continent has been wrecked twice in the last hundred years or so.

 

 

There is currently around 2.5T USD of cash spend annually on building out the military of states, thats capital which is almost completely wasted and cold metal sitting around doing nothing while we face (with the exception of china) severe underinvestment in infrastructure in basically any developed country. Now people come up with ideas of increasing that amount severely to protect us and make the world safer which leads to others doing the same in a never ending spiral. Just by this argument it becomes evident that building out the military does not lead to more peace but rather to malinvestment and the potential for bigger and bigger catastrophy, even just by accident. Thats why we need to elect leaders that are capable of developing international relations which all previous administrations of NATO, US whatever were incapable. The UN was already dismantled by previous US administrations with breaking the UN law over and over again, thats why BRICS is forming, thats why there are many states turning their back towards the "western alliance" and seek diplomatic relationship with China or at least continue to maintain them with russia. That trump is negotiating is great but he is unfortunately a mixed message, doing two steps ahead and two back at the same time.

49 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

The post-WWII ideal of nuclear non-proliferation was completely correct and again back to my point about the short sightedness of these Trump/Hegseth moves......you dismantle the global security architecture (however imperfect/costly) at your peril .....in the nuclear age the concept of national security for a superpower via isolationism is quaint & naive......a concept from a time when the world didn't have ICBM's and 100 megaton bombs ...the US withdrawing into itself and away from Kissinger-esque stable equilibriums or balances of power which manifest themselves in supra-national organizaitons.....really does not enhance the safety of Americans, it makes them less safe over the long pull...in a world without rules with no cop on the beat so to speak.....nuclear proliferation is now the logical default position for any sovereign nation.....that looks at the rules based system (NATO, UN, WTO etc.) being sidelined or completely deconstructed by Trump.

 

I admire what Trump is doing in terms regulation, the deficit and backing us philosophically out of this crazy woke cul-de-sac we were in I actually applaud him on these polcies.... but as it relates to foreign policy (tarriffs on allies, UN/WTO/NATO) I must say I dont see a President optimizing for America's interests over the long pull.....I see a guy smashing away at a load bearing wall with no plan for what's going to hold up the roof up after he's done with the wall.

The US was never this peaceful hegemon under previous administrations that brought everyone together but rather played out everyone and only served its own interest and continues to do so, economically and military.

Edited February 18, 2025 by Luke

[Luke]

I think europe is incapable of organizing their military properly together, its much easier if there is a small chain of commands than a chain of command through 27 member states attached with X military personnel, constitutional differences, different electoral cycles etc. I think its best that the nations focus on their sovereignty, invest strategically in sectors with future potential and become experts in these fields that grow both their domestic economy but also are products that can be sold at high margin globally (see semiconductors, biotech, automachines etc), eventually some succeed and some wont and have to continue to sell their labor at low margin or be jobless and try to get up the value chain (the weaker southern countries for example). The Ukraine war is a showplace for the US and Russia and will end anytime soon, the billions of weapons where a waste of money and a waste of human life. There was the window of an even better deal in 2022 and it was neglected, just madness.

Edited February 18, 2025 by Luke

[changegonnacome]

14 minutes ago, Luke said:

The US was never this peaceful hegemon that brought everyone together but rather played out everyone and only served its own interest and continues to do so, economically and military.

 

Not saying the US is/was an angel - far from it but this is a relative game......but when one thinks about this problem (let's call it global stability, prosperity & existentialism in the nuclear age) it's almost like a currency pair.....one should think about the status quo relative to the possible alternative.......perhaps the alternative is all pizza and fairytales......I tend to think we might look fondly back at the unipolar moment and the historically benign hegemon that was the United States Empire......you dont miss your water till the well runs dry......and I suspect we wont miss the rules based order with all its deep deep flaws, imbalances and exploitations till its gone and replaced by a system which inherently will be anarchistic. 

 

Time to bust out the 4th Turning to see what happens next.......but If I remember correctly......it seems like a bunch of people are going to have re-learn how important overarching institutions are......which can only be learned it seems by experiencing a touch of anarchy for a while.....if my mental cliff notes are right from that book! 

 

Edited February 18, 2025 by changegonnacome

[Luke]

1 minute ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Not saying the US is/was an angel - far from it but this is a relative game......but when one thinks about this problem (let's call it global stability, prosperity & existentialism in the nuclear age) it's almost like a currency pair.....one should think about the status quo relative to the possible alternative.......perhaps the alternative is all pizza and fairytales......I tend to think we might look fondly back at the unipolar moment and the historically benign hegemon that was the United States Empire......you dont miss your water till the well runs dry......and I suspect we wont miss the rules based order with all its deep deep flaws, imbalances and exploitations till its gone and replaced by a system which inherently will be anarchistic. 

This rulebased order could have only existed as long as the majority of countries globally were underdeveloped or continue to stay underdeveloped. This changed with china which was actually not what the US wanted i believe. I think we are now facing a future with much more growth and increased competition and that will be good for humankind.

1 minute ago, changegonnacome said:

Time to bust out the 4th Turning to see what happens next.......but If I remember correctly......it seems like a bunch of people are going to have re-learn how important overarching institutions......which can only be learned it seems by experiencing a touch of anarchy for a while.....if my mental cliff notes are right from that book! 

The UN was founded after WW2, i hope we dont need a WW3 to understand why it was founded...the UN is the only tool how we can lower military spending, increase mutual trust and move closer to each other instead of more and more distance and hostility that will ultimately end in escalation either by accident or by the wrong administration.

[Luke]

But my gut tells me that Trump does not want to be a war guy and he and his administration have spoken a lot about the problematic expansionism of the US, like Vance. We will see whats going to happen...:)

[cubsfan]

If you want peace, you prepare for war.

 

There will always be evil people in the world, that only understand strength.

[Luke]

27 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

If you want peace, you prepare for war.

 

There will always be evil people in the world, that only understand strength.

Yes, so soon military will be 50% of the annual budget and we need to build bases on mars to store all the tanks and nuclear weapons...you always have to prepare and the other guy is also preparing...there will always be evil and they only understand strenght...

[Spekulatius]

I think the main lesson is that everyone needs nukes. North Korea already does some saber rattling and my guess is that Iran is tong to get theirs for sure as well. Europe needs to get its own nuclear umbrella. It’s a matter of sovereignty now.

 

South Korea needs nukes yesterday.

[Xerxes]

6 hours ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Absolutely - Ukraine would not be in the situation its in today if it did not foolishly believe the USA and UK's assurances around security guarantees giving up its 1200 nukesor whatever it was and signing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in exchange for verbal vibe assurances around its borders. Deeply deeply foolish move by the Urkanian leadership at the time.

Wrong. 
 

Those ICBMs were not Ukraine’ to give or not to give, nor they had command and control. They belonged to the Soviet Union, and then Russia as the surviving state. 

That said I agree that they could have “taken” them and through their ingenuity found a way to control them. They are after all resourceful people. Had they done that, they would have become a pariah state. You cannot change one parameter in the past assume everything else would have remain the same.