by Brett Stevens on February 1, 2018

In international politics, you do not have enemies so much as opposition or more gently stated, competition. This occurs because everybody wants to rule the world, mainly because only when one is on top can goals be realized; otherwise, any effort spent on reaching goals is effort taken away from necessary defense.

Diversity fails for the same reason. Every group wants its people in charge, its rules to predominate, society to be shaped after its preferences and aesthetics, and the sense of being in command of its future. It cannot do this when it shares any space with other groups, so conflicts arise. The only solution is for one group to be supreme in each area, and even then, if they are not separated by large bodies of water or mountain ranges, they tend to engage in constant jockeying for who is on top. Anyone who has seen a wolf pack, plate tectonics in action, or even streams of water acting on rock knows this: everything wants to be in the position of effortless power.

When the Soviet Union fell, the United States and Western Europe went into calm oblivion because they had eliminated the last threat that they recognized. At that point, they turned entirely toward internal disputes and ignored the possibility that someone else might be scheming to dethrone them, even though they had fought two wars against this power and suffered historical invasions by its race. They even lulled themselves to sleep on easy wealth based on its labor, and then, easy debt purchased from the people we had just finished enriching with our lust for cheap consumer goods.

Then rumors began to move like shapes in murky air. Hollywood seemed to be being bought up, bit by bit, by a new group. This same group was also investing heavily in real estate in America and Europe, especially the UK, and sending most of its students to our universities. Members of this group seemed to get caught spying and awful lot, especially around military contractors. Their companies began blocking ours overseas, and regulating our products out of existence, while making steady inroads in our market. Still we slept, in part because those in power — the Obama-Clinton gang — seem to have been receiving funds from this group. The Clintons in particular were always known to be friendly with them and even gave them military technology.

The experts tell us that we are entering a multipolar world where instead of having two big superpowers and then only one after the Soviets fizzled, there will be many powers each ruling over the areas around their continents. The Leftist narrative, always one to delight in the failure of anything good so that the failed can feel better about themselves, points out that much of this involves former “developing” nation-states like Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa rising to become new powers. What few will say is that this situation has happened before and always resolves itself the same way: some rise above the rest, and those become the new superpowers.

What the West might tell these people is that being a superpower is a kind of a trap, a slaves-and-masters paradox. When you are a superpower, you can pursue your visions of power without restriction, but at the same time, this converts you from being a country focused on its own health to a country being used as a means-to-the-end of power itself. By being masters, you become servants of power, and this leads you to treat your people, customs, values, history, and even existence as secondary to financial, political, and ideological objectives. America for example was happier before it became the guardian of the world, and Europe was glad to relinquish colonialism because of the high cost of maintaining overseas bases and the destructive social effects that it had. In the end, the lesson of power is that it is a lot like alcohol: too little is frustrating, but too much can be lethal, all ensconced within the same warm feeling of fuzzy anesthesia that makes the danger invisible until the next morning, when everything is destroyed and you have to peer through a hangover to realize the growing dread.

China finds itself in the grip of both thymos, or a desire to be recognized for excellence in a natural hierarchy, and hubris, or the compulsion to rise above its station despite the negative externalities that are generated. It has many internal instabilities that will need to be rectified before it can become a stable power, and lacks the time to fix those, so instead it will become increasingly repressive, which will backfire the same way it did for the Soviets. Speaking the Russians, they are — as they were during the Cold War — allies of the Chinese and yet always scheming against them, much as the Chinese are doing in return. The American Left is fanatical about blaming the Russians in order to take the heat off the Chinese, and Russia aims to both sabotage America/Europe and destabilize China by goading them into radicalism much as the USA used military programs like SDI to goad the Soviet Union into over-extending its unstable and incapable system.

If the Chinese stay true to form, their approach will be to do as much damage indirectly as possible, then humiliate the West in some conflict like the Vietnam war, which despite being a win — Chinese expansion stopped — was quite a PR hit for the otherwise previously undefeated West, not least of all because of the social instability it created through anti-war protests and the quivering neurotic paranoia it unleashed in our political system. If they can buy up enough of the West to influence it, spread destructive habits throughout the society, and then lure it into over-extending itself and getting clobbered in another Asian land war, then the Chinese will consider themselves to have risen above the West as a superpower, even though their own internal disorder will prevent them from being anything like the stable society needed to be powerful without consuming itself. Part of this advance manipulation has come through buying the allegiance of the Left and certain key industries so that the 1960s scenario can be replayed with every newspaper shouting the same message of pacifism, disarmament, and focus on nonsensical social issues in order to weaken the West.

Unlike the stumblingly incompetent Obama administration, Team Trump has tackled the Chinese problem head on with hard negotiation on trade while strengthening both infrastructure and industry. At the same time, Trump is now signaling that the Chinese Cold War (via /.) is entering its final stages before it potentially becomes “hot”:

“Trump national security officials are considering an unprecedented federal takeover of a portion of the nation’s mobile network to guard against China, according to sensitive documents obtained by Axios.” This is based on a PowerPoint presentation Axios has in their possession. Two options are described — a national 5G network funded and built by the Federal government, or a mix of 5G networks built by existing wireless providers. A source suggests the first option is preferred and essential to protect against competition from China and “bad actors”. The presentation suggests that a government-built network would then be leased out to carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. The PowerPoint presentation was produced by a senior National Security Council official, and argues that the move is necessary because “China has achieved a dominant position in the manufacture and operation of network infrastructure,” and “China is the dominant malicious actor in the Information Domain.” It also suggests America could export its secure 5G technology to protect its allies, and “Eventually this effort could help inoculate developing countries against Chinese neo-colonial behavior.”

If you read between the lines, the point here is clear: China is a national security threat, they are using industry as their vanguard, and they are attempting to subvert former colonial nations so that they can spread their system and mobilize allies against us. Basically, the old Communist plan is the new Communist plan, mainly because Communist like dysentery is eternally unchanging.

And look, it gets even more explicit as Team Trump acts against Chinese embedded spyware (via /.):

Huawei devices still work on both companies’ networks, but direct sales would’ve allowed them to reach more consumers than they can through third parties. The government’s renewed concern about Chinese spying is creating a potential roadblock in the race between Verizon and AT&T to offer 5G, the next generation of super-fast mobile service. Huawei is pushing to be among the first to offer 5G-capable phone, but the device may be considered off-limits to U.S. carriers who are beginning to offer the next-generation service this year in a few cities. U.S. security agencies and some lawmakers fear that 5G phones made by companies that may have close ties to the Chinese government could pose a security risk.

This is point two of the message above, reiterated. China is not just the government, but its industry. The two are one and the same as in Communism or fascism, and they are working against us much as the “deep state” Establishment spanning government, media, academia, and industry is working against us here. The point is to cut them off and also savage their economic lead, forcing them to fund their ambitions through state funds instead of American product dollars.

Right now, Trump and the Democrats are playing a long dance. They demand something; he offers a compromise; they reject it and blame him. This benefits both sides. Trump gets to keep peeling back layers of the last seventy years of Leftist insanity. The Left gets to escape being blamed for not doing what they promised their coalition.

Why are both sides okay with this? Once the Obama fog lifted, it became clear that China was moving aggressively against the West. Then China formalized that with a slow reveal of its plans for world domination that scared the heck out of the West. This meant that the West has to get out from under China’s thumb, which remains reducing our debt because China is our biggest creditor and if they stop buying our debt, they can crush us. That means they can manipulate us by regulating their buying, and sabotage our markets by simply announcing that they plan to stop buying.

Trump and the Left are seeing eye-to-eye on this, behind the scenes. America and Europe have to get free from their creditors. The only way to do this is to remove the 60% of our budget that goes to entitlement payments and get competitive again. That means making our own car parts, computers, televisions, phones, and basic life gadgets. We will have to starve the Chinese of our consumer dollars and radically cut our spending, or they will own us.

And the Russians? They continue to sabotage us with psyops that emphasize our internal division not on the basis of race, but politics:

There is a third possibility, namely that the dossier was part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot targeting both parties and Americaâ€™s political process. This is what seems most likely to me, having spent much of my 30-year government career, including with the CIA, observing Soviet and then Russian intelligence operations. If there is one thing I have learned, itâ€™s that Vladimir Putin continues in the Soviet tradition of using disinformation and espionage as foreign-policy tools. …The pattern of such Russian operations is to sprinkle false information, designed to degrade the enemyâ€™s social and political infrastructure, among true statements that enhance the veracity of the overall report. In 2009 the FSB wanted to soil the reputation of a U.S. diplomat responsible for reporting on human rights. So it fabricated a video, in part using real surveillance footage of the diplomat, that purported to show him with a prostitute in Moscow. …The FSB probably believed that Mrs. Clinton would win the election, and that once the dossier became public Mr. Trump would vociferously argue that she had played dirty. Thus the dossier would have had dual benefits: The salacious portions would undermine the Republican candidate, and then his attacks would delegitimize the eventual Democratic administration. The 2017 ODNI report says that pro-Russia bloggers even prepared an election-night Twitter campaign, #DemocracyRIP, designed to question the electionâ€™s validity after a Clinton victory.

For Russia, the winning move is for both China and the US/EU to fall, which will enable Russia to occupy Europe and subjugate China. To that end, it would be best if the American society became unstable and paranoid at the same time China was emboldened by Russian support, guaranteeing war between America and China in which Europe would join. Afterwards, Russia would attack and conquer the victor, who would be almost certainly massively weakened by that great contest. That is Machiavellian realism.

In the meantime, China faces an uncertain future. Its hybrid economic system requires intense state control by a state that is notoriously slow to respond to change. Its people are mostly peasants, and its economic growth is based on a boom in consumer electronics that may not last. Even more, its quality seems to have issues as many of its products are low-quality, leading to a question of how well its own infrastructure and technology will work. The tiger may be partially a paper tiger, and that may make them as unstable as the Mongols, who were able to conquer vast swathes of territory but not administrate it.

China probably needs — in parallel to Hitler’s Germany — several generations to begin recovering from the chaos of the past three thousand years. But, like Russia, China sees the solution to internal instability in external conquest. Russia wants to own Western Europe for its wealth, forgetting that under Russian management, that will likely be paltry much as it is in Russia now despite massive reserves of natural resources. These countries need solutions that are part structural, and part eugenics, in that they are bottom-heavy with peasant laborers and short on actual visionaries.

For reasons unknown, America and Europe have decided to follow that lead by making their already slightly bottom-heavy societies really bottom-heavy through the importation of large numbers of third world laborers who will take more from the welfare benefits state than they will put into it, guaranteeing a systemic crash on economic and political levels.

Despite that, the Trump/Brexit years show us the West re-awakening to a need for a general direction other than further into the ghetto of Leftism. Instead of bowing to China, Trump has challenged China. Instead of indulging in pity politics as the Left does, he encourages growth through competition and excellence. And now, by identifying China as the force that is historically and in the present day most likely to attempt to overthrow us, he has changed the dialogue on the Western future entirely.

Tags: 5G, china, donald j. trump, huawei, multipolar, Nerdcore, superpower

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.