Accelerationist comrade Biden really trying to hurry up nuclear apocalypse

  • @darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
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    352 years ago

    So, I think what it is, is the US wants to create one of two results:

    1. China backs down, they militarize Taiwan, turn it into an unsinkable aircraft carrier, turn the fascist reaction ideology dial up to 11 in the domestic propaganda and the anti-communism dial up to 12, hit them with that and try and create a situation where they can never peacefully re-integrate and are a permanent military outpost and bulwark as well as thorn in Beijing’s side.

    2. They probably actually prefer this one. They push Beijing’s buttons enough and tip-toe over the red line that they react, they launch reunification by force. The US may or may not assist militarily, it doesn’t matter. Because the point isn’t to win against China militarily but to use the incident to create a Ukraine 2.0 situation of international liberal solidarity against China, to forcibly decouple anything resembling high-tech, slap embargoes on it, maybe even prevent Africa or Latin America from buying for example Huawei phones as part of sanctions they impose. This will be used to bully Europe and the rest of the world, by force, threat, and economic assault if necessary to decouple from China’s high tech, to strangle them diplomatically, trade-wise, etc. This will probably work for Europe who will fall right in line and suffer great pains to save the imperialist, anglo world capitalist order. They’ll probably follow this up with sanctions, high pressure, coups, etc against Africa, Latin America, rest of Asia to get them to fall in line. It really depends on how hard the global south resists but no matter what this would hurt China’s development and economy and buy the west time which is what they want.

    A military loss to China over Taiwan is insignificant as while China can win in their neighborhood they don’t have the naval power to challenge and win against NATO far afield in say the middle east, Europe, etc where they can conduct interdiction and harassment of Chinese shipping to enforce a high-tech blockade. The real goal of 2 is to force liberals to back the fascist final struggle of capital against communism, to beat them over the head with the “democracy”, “liberal values” propaganda and sobbing.

    • SovereignStateOP
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      212 years ago

      Astute observation I think. As capital is wont to do, I think the second option would lead to the transatlantic empire consuming itself in its myopic greed. Decoupling from Russia has meant a 1000% increase in electricity bills for Europeans over the span of less than a year. China becomes more self-sufficient by the day, and in the long-term I am near certain that their high-tech industries will be able to overtake the west. The west forcefully decoupled from China, though? Economic catastrophe. If Chinese scientists are able to make good on their projected achievement of true nuclear fusion, being prevented from transporting that energy technology with the world… I don’t even know.

    • MexicanCCPBot
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      132 years ago

      Your scenario assumes western capitalists would be okay with them being sanctioned out of their factories and supply chains in China and being forced to relocate elsewhere, or that China wouldn’t reciprocate with such sanctions if provoked. Russian gas is one thing, the factory of the world is another. It would mean global shortages of basically every product out there. That’s one scenario where I could see the US getting couped by level-headed capitalists just to restore the economic status quo.

      • @darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
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        72 years ago

        Well the thing is, there are multiple factions of bourgeoisie in the US. Some are for this, some are quite against and even friendly towards China and against current sanctions and tensions. It’s really about who is at the wheel and has power right now and it looks to me like the defense industry types and such currently have the upper hand. After all capitalism doesn’t survive in a vacuum, it needs the exploitation of imperialism that China is going to destroy. Those capitalists who don’t want some sort of confrontation with China could be said to be ignorant of how the system works. Because once that exploitation of the global south ends, they’re fucked on the home-front.

        The thing is, they think they can do this and China will just be forced to take it. Because the truth is, if China just stops shipments to the west (US/Europe), their economy will burst into flames as well. They’ll have to either let it burn for a while or nationalize and still suffer some pains but also scare off any remaining investors after seizing assets. China is trying to work to minimize the effects of this but it will take time, time during which they’re still vulnerable and have to choose between sort of working economy that’s hamstrung by the west to just blowing the whole thing up and going home. Because as noted in regards to naval power beyond the SCS, if they do cut off the west, the west might retaliate by preventing their goods reaching African, Latin American and Asian markets by boat which would be a problem as Russia, China, and the current BRI neighbor countries aren’t enough to support China’s economy or manufacturing base. It would also be something that would force even the China-friendly capitalists in the US to greenlight emergency measure to re-shore manufacturing in India, perhaps the west short term, etc and would force a decoupling. Now whether the western proles would take this or rise up is the real question. But it’s just too many ifs and very dangerous for China and the world.

        So lots of things /could/ happen. The US could get couped, things could be walked back. But lots of things could spiral out of control too, those sympathetic to China and against the imperialist plot could be arrested or killed as well. The thing is, the intelligence apparatus is loyal I think to the hawkish elements and would not choose to help coup against them unless it served some greater chessboard plot of theirs.

        • @cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
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          82 years ago

          I think you’re raising very fair points, but I think you’re being woefully too pessimistic. I won’t knock on you for that, because the difference between being a realist and pessimistic is like planck-length.

          I think you’re slightly underestimating the brilliance and tactical leadership of the CPC, who are basically required to plan things out a century in advance.

          • @darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
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            32 years ago

            I think you’re overestimating the ability of humans and communist parties to plan things out a century in advance when other humans are involved. The situation is ever changing in ways no one can predict. Lenin never though he’d live to see the revolution, yet he not only lived to see it, he and others had to take steps, make changes to help it succeed as it occurred and react to developments underway to secure it.

            If next year for example against all apparent odds France moved over into the Chinese sphere because of various pains, who could foresee that? Yet a good tactician would have to adjust based on that happening, not steam ahead merrily “trusting in the plan” like some Q conspiracy weirdo.

            This is why communists have 5 year plans. Because while one can plan things in the abstract long-term and set goals, the short-term requires tinkering, adjustments, reactions to developments.

            When they bought Cisco equipment from the Americans for example, did they plan on it having NSA hardware spy implants that allowed them to map their networks, infiltrate their systems, spy on them extensively? When they banned Tesla’s after the fact from government facilities because of their internet connected cameras was that forethought or a reaction to someone realizing (a little later than they should have probably) that “oh shit, the Americans have used their companies to spy on us in the past (Cisco), they’ll probably do it again”?

            The CPC has done a great deal of good and shown great competency on many fronts but they’ve been very badly underestimating the duplicity, backstabbing dishonesty of the US for a few decades now. I’m sure there are voices within it who knew better but on the whole many developments have caught them by surprise. Among other things I think one of the reasons the US has been accelerating their freak-out about China is because it’s gone dark for their spies, they finally rooted out the hardware implant compromised devices, the malware they implanted and their human-int networks. It certainly wasn’t the CPC plan to be compromised deeply by CIA bribes and corruption or any of these other problems. Xi has been reacting to the reality he found and trying to fix it. It wasn’t their plan to have images of party officials being forced to sell en-mass their imported Audi luxury sedans by Xi’s push. Forethought would have meant never allowing it to start.

            Nor is it the CPC plan to re-unify Taiwan by force. And yet they don’t get to decide that. The US does because it is their puppet and they can at a time of their choosing make them cross red lines until the CPC reacts (or else until the CPC decides not to and is shown to not really care about their red lines but that too is a departure from the plans).

            The CPC have been following basic Marxism-Leninism, it’s really the foolish Americans who have fucked up and hung themselves with their own rope by misstep after misstep. If they’d moved to crush China economically and encircle it in the 90s instead of off-shoring for medium-term profits China would be in a much different situation with a much steeper, more perilous climb ahead of them in a very hostile world. If they’d just given Russia more concessions they could have turned them against China at the mere cost of a competitor capitalist bloc. The CPC has good planners but a lot of it is taking advantage of western capitalist own-goals against themselves. And to do that you have to react to the situation at hand and adjust.

            The strength of Marxism-Leninism is the ability to react to changing circumstances and be adapted to new or changing conditions. It isn’t a bible. It isn’t a master plan with every step planned out. It’s a scientific approach to dealing with the situation you find yourself in.

            The west is full of greedy, short-term-thinking fools and it is very likely they’ve already dug their own grave but we also shouldn’t assume until they’re fully in it and the dirt is atop them as they’ve pulled out of tricky situations before and all it requires is a big misstep or two on the part of China in the right areas to extend their life another century.

            We must be on guard. We must assume the worst comes to pass and prepare for it. We’ll hope for the best of course and we will always keep the hope for a better future under communism in our hearts. But our bodies and minds we steel for the battle.

            • @cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
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              22 years ago

              I understand your sentiment, and I’m not claiming that the CPC is psychic. I’m just saying I think they’ve earned some faith. Not in a religious way, and I agree with preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

    • @Shrimpy@lemmygrad.ml
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      102 years ago

      I think you are wayyy too pessimistic. An all out World War would not have China limited to its immediate neighbors. The US has 11 (or 12?) aircraft carrier strike groups. All of them are huge sitting ducks for the new generation hypersonic missiles. Can’t be intercepted, can’t be defended against. Without the carriers worldwide reach becomes very hard as cargo planes are also large masses of metal that can’t maneuver fast and can’t be hidden from radar. Things will get hard but the US doesn’t have a guaranteed victory.

      • @darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        China isn’t going to strike out and sink US carrier groups around the globe with long-range missiles. If they do outside of the theater of the SCS that’s the gloves off. The US will strike back at military assets on the mainland. Even if they did so. NATO fleets are more than just aircraft carriers. Just small coast-guard sized cutters are more than capable of carrying out interdictions.

        The US has hundreds of bases around the world. They have an air-force, they have planes, they have land assets that can strike at sea. If China starts sinking US carriers globally outside of the SCS they are going to hit back by sinking all Chinese shipping in the SCS before it even leaves it. You’ll have a world war situation.

        Too many people use hypersonic missiles like some people misuse the word “quantum” as if it’s some magical solution to whatever problem is proposed. No doubt large US ships in the SCS in an engagement with China are fucked but the global situation on the seas is more complicated than just throwing very fast missiles at things.

        The fact of the matter is, it is easier to play pirate and aggressor who strikes out and sinks or stops ships than it is to possibly guard ships all over the globe at the same time. For that you need escort ships or a global air force. I’m sorry but missiles aren’t going to cut it. This isn’t some Hollywood movie where they’ll just use satellites to find US ship locations and target them using that info thus keeping Chinese shipping safe in real-time from afar, because if they do that and expand the theater way beyond their waters the US is going to target and take out their satellites one way or another and blind them. They won’t do so until a carrier or other large ship is sunk far from China but once it happens the US isn’t going to just sit there, cry, throw up their hands and state they can do nothing. Nor will they just build more ships for China to sink in a game. Once things turn hot they will get very serious about containing China to the SCS region.

        NATO’s fleet is much more than aircraft carriers. In fact for global sea interdiction and piracy operations aircraft carriers aren’t that useful. They’re useful for projecting force onto land or covering an area in planes. If you know about where the ships are, you send smaller ships, smaller than even destroyers usually and they have a fair amount of those. If you’re at the point where it’s weapons-free because of a global conflict with China, they’ll just use subs to sink Chinese shipping and they have a fair amount of submarines which aren’t amenable to being easily discovered and targeted by far away missile launches. For that you need an air-force to drop buoys and/or ships/subs to sweep for and kill the enemy subs.

        They don’t need reach into the middle of the Indian ocean. They only need reach along probable shipping routes, coastlines along the middle east, Africa, middle of the Pacific. Their land air-force bases in their vassal nations are capable of covering a lot of that area.

        There are too many variables here to say for certain how things would unfold. Both on the Chinese side, on the side of their allies like Russia, and other more fair-weather-friends and on the NATO, evil-empire side.

        I’m not saying it would be a win for the US but it’s not as simple as some people flippantly suggest for China. I was more or less giving how I think they see it. Not how it is. I don’t even hazard to guess how some of these things would play out, too many variables.

        • @holdengreen@lemmygrad.ml
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          62 years ago

          Yes there is some food, weapons, bibles, that sort of thing. But so much of what makes my life enjoyable like stuff from aliexpress will be completely inaccessible.

          Atleast I can get a pretty good selection of used computer parts on ebay (but the corps are trying to take that away).

        • Probably some stickers, weapons, books and toys. Most of those are astronomically more expensive and does not help any country’s citizen thanks to how PPP interacts with capitalism. Even capitalism does not support them.

  • @chad1234@lemmygrad.ml
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    182 years ago

    The senile zombie can say whatever he wants, but you should all remember to stock up on essential goods and medications.