I've said this many times, but others get it too.
The fundamental misconception among many congressional Republicans (and some progressives on the left) is that we’re doing Ukraine a favor by sending it weapons. Not so. We are holding Ukraine’s coat as it is sacrificing lives and infrastructure in ways that benefit us, by degrading Russia’s military threat to NATO and Western Europe — and thus to us.“They’re doing us a favor; they’re fighting our fight,” Wesley Clark, the retired American general and former supreme allied commander of NATO forces in Europe, told me. “The fight in Ukraine is a fight about the future of the international community.”
Do you have a take on the extent to which the parts of the world who are not overtly in the US alliance, are sitting out the war, and making sure to build relations with Russia and China's alternative world order? Like India buying Russian oil, and China cementing ties with the Gulf. The US is known for its promethean ambitions, its chutzpah so to speak, and it's certainly very bold to think that the new "multipolarity" is going to go away. I sometimes say that the only way I see the US becoming the center again, is if AI (where it definitely has the lead) somehow allows it to do so, but at that point humans (no matter their country) may not be in charge any more.
ReplyDeleteBoth China and India are quite lukewarm about Russia and easing away as the Ukraine War goes badly.
ReplyDeleteChina faces inner turmoil as well, after a very long run of peace and prosperity. It is becoming more authoritarian at the cost of its economy. Still China is well aware that it needs trade with the West more than it needs ties with Russia.
The U.S. is part of the current alliance, but less at the center of it than it was in Afghanistan and Iraq.