I mean openly-sunsetting-the-empire huge, they would drive so much reactionary movement in SE Asian, Africa, South America and even Europe. They would destroy hugely important production that the rest of the world relies on. And they would open themselves up to being humiliated in the Pacific when Russia, DPRK, and China eventually activate. It would like be the move that would result in the DPRK invading SK. I mean just all hell would break loose
I mean it would be the dumbest move by far, but at this point I’m not gonna rule out any insanity. More seriously though, I don’t think the US would have to do any sort of military action. It would be more about of coercing the subservient political class in Japan. The US still has a lot of leverage, and Japanese see themselves as being reliant on the US for protection. So, in practice it would be the threat of pulling protection that would get them in line.
I don’t think Japan is genuinely worried about invasion from anyone. No one except the US is crazy enough and I think they know it. Further, the implied threat of pulling protection only needs to be done once for all the anti-imperialists to not invade and suddenly the protection racket falls apart. I think Japan knows that, too. While I think Japanese politics is factional much like the US bourgeoisie, I think that the factions are smartly playing up their schism to convince the USA they still believe them while delicately engaging in rapprochement with China, making it look factional, but actually being strategically ambiguous.
Remember Japan has a history of adopting whatever system they believe is the best in the world and China is proving that it is. It will only be a matter of exposing the US as the paper tiger it is for Japan to align with China openly.
I think we’ll see how this plays out soon. I completely understand where you’re coming from, and I also agree that it would not be rational for US to openly threaten Japan, nor is it rational for Japan to give in to the threats. At the same time, the whole trade war Trump is running is deeply irrational, and so was the proxy war with Russia. The US has already done irreversible damage to its geopolitical position, and as it continue to unravel I fully expect that we’ll see increasingly unhinged flailing from the empire.
I expect that this year is going to be absolutely wild.
I actually don’t think the Ukraine gambit was irrational on the part of the US. They had theories about Russian capabilities but didn’t have enough Intel. They had sleeper cells installed and ready to activate. And the NATO expansion and nuclear push Eastward was all part of a perfectly reasonable encirclement strategy. I think the problem was that Russian counterintelligence was able to create enough distance between US recon and Russian reality that what the US discovered was that Russia was more capable than expected. That doesn’t make them irrational, it just makes them wrong, but they needed the conflict to find out.
What’s irrational was sending Pelosi to Taiwan and openly talking about the Pacific Kill Chain. What’s irrational was destroying Nord Stream 2. What’s irrational is this traumatic decoupling process. I agree with all of that. But I don’t think the military is as of yet operating on completely irrational bases.
I understand their initial goals, and they can even be excused for having bad intel and misreading the situation at the start. What makes the whole thing irrational is that they continued doubling down on failure for three years even when it became blindingly obvious that their assumptions were wrong and they were not achieving the desired result.
I can’t really see a clear way to back out and I think that by that time the internal faction war was in full swing and no one could establish a dominant strategy. What won out was extorting Europe because it was the easiest to understand
I think they would be willing to call the military’s bluff. If the US went hot against Japan, it would be such a huge mistake.
Can you name anything the US has done in the past four years that hasn’t been a huge mistake though?
I mean openly-sunsetting-the-empire huge, they would drive so much reactionary movement in SE Asian, Africa, South America and even Europe. They would destroy hugely important production that the rest of the world relies on. And they would open themselves up to being humiliated in the Pacific when Russia, DPRK, and China eventually activate. It would like be the move that would result in the DPRK invading SK. I mean just all hell would break loose
I mean it would be the dumbest move by far, but at this point I’m not gonna rule out any insanity. More seriously though, I don’t think the US would have to do any sort of military action. It would be more about of coercing the subservient political class in Japan. The US still has a lot of leverage, and Japanese see themselves as being reliant on the US for protection. So, in practice it would be the threat of pulling protection that would get them in line.
I don’t think Japan is genuinely worried about invasion from anyone. No one except the US is crazy enough and I think they know it. Further, the implied threat of pulling protection only needs to be done once for all the anti-imperialists to not invade and suddenly the protection racket falls apart. I think Japan knows that, too. While I think Japanese politics is factional much like the US bourgeoisie, I think that the factions are smartly playing up their schism to convince the USA they still believe them while delicately engaging in rapprochement with China, making it look factional, but actually being strategically ambiguous.
Remember Japan has a history of adopting whatever system they believe is the best in the world and China is proving that it is. It will only be a matter of exposing the US as the paper tiger it is for Japan to align with China openly.
I think we’ll see how this plays out soon. I completely understand where you’re coming from, and I also agree that it would not be rational for US to openly threaten Japan, nor is it rational for Japan to give in to the threats. At the same time, the whole trade war Trump is running is deeply irrational, and so was the proxy war with Russia. The US has already done irreversible damage to its geopolitical position, and as it continue to unravel I fully expect that we’ll see increasingly unhinged flailing from the empire.
I expect that this year is going to be absolutely wild.
I actually don’t think the Ukraine gambit was irrational on the part of the US. They had theories about Russian capabilities but didn’t have enough Intel. They had sleeper cells installed and ready to activate. And the NATO expansion and nuclear push Eastward was all part of a perfectly reasonable encirclement strategy. I think the problem was that Russian counterintelligence was able to create enough distance between US recon and Russian reality that what the US discovered was that Russia was more capable than expected. That doesn’t make them irrational, it just makes them wrong, but they needed the conflict to find out.
What’s irrational was sending Pelosi to Taiwan and openly talking about the Pacific Kill Chain. What’s irrational was destroying Nord Stream 2. What’s irrational is this traumatic decoupling process. I agree with all of that. But I don’t think the military is as of yet operating on completely irrational bases.
I understand their initial goals, and they can even be excused for having bad intel and misreading the situation at the start. What makes the whole thing irrational is that they continued doubling down on failure for three years even when it became blindingly obvious that their assumptions were wrong and they were not achieving the desired result.
I can’t really see a clear way to back out and I think that by that time the internal faction war was in full swing and no one could establish a dominant strategy. What won out was extorting Europe because it was the easiest to understand