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US Grand Strategy: NATO, Alliances, & Ukraine – how alliances underpin American influence

Another excellent presentation by Perun…

7 comments to US Grand Strategy: NATO, Alliances, & Ukraine – how alliances underpin American influence

  • Carnivorous Bookworm

    That’s pretty much on the money, international relations 101 presented better than most profs.

  • Paul Marks

    But is the “American influence” good or bad?

    I have supported the United States all my life – but at this point, with the endless pushing for tax “harmonisation”, regulation “harmonisation”, “Net Zero”, and utterly evil things such as the sexual mutilation of children, a sharp distinction must be made between the United States as a country, and the American government and allied Corporations (which, due to the Credit Money Cantillon Effect have a stranglehold on the American economy). The core principles of the United State, as summed up by the Bill of Rights, are good – but the American government, and allied Corporations (watch their advisements if you doubt that they are evil), are evil.

    However, this should NOT lead us to supporting a rival power – the evil (and it is evil) of the American government and allied Corporations will NOT be fixed by Mr Putin’s regime or the (even worse) Communist Party Dictatorship of the People’s Republic of China.

  • Paul Marks

    As for the Ukraine – it should be an independent country, neither under Moscow or under Brussels, Washington or the rest of the accursed “international community”.

    “Would you accept military aid from evil powers given the current invasion by Mr Putin?” – yes I would. As Winston Churchill did in relation to the 2nd World War. Sometimes one has little choice in military matters. Stalin was the murderer of tens of millions of human beings (including in the Ukriane) – but the alliance with him was the correct military move – although that does not justify the diversion of British military equipment from the Far East to Stalin’s Soviet Union.

    There were hardly any tanks or anti tank guns in the British Far East – and hardly any modern aircraft. The alliance with Stalin was the correct military move – the obsession with sending him everything (at the expense of British forces) was not.

    The same is true of the United States – where the Roosevelt Administration starved the Pacific theatre of resources, under the everything-for-Stalin policy.

  • Paul Marks

    In the film itself there is no sign of understanding that the “rules based international order” no longer means what it used to mean. Since the start of the 1990s the term “rules based international order” has increasingly meant the various Collectivist “agendas” (such as Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030) including their “cultural aspect” (censorship and so on) – pushed both by governmental and corporate bodies (and hybrid organisations such as the World Economic Forum).

    As for American prosperity being based on Free Trade – again this is NOT Free Trade as Adam Smith or the other great economists would have understood the term.

    Creating endless “money” from nothing and using it to import endless consumption goods (whilst American towns and cities decay) is not what they meant by Free Trade, and it is not what they meant by prosperity.

    Professor Krugman believes that “men with guns” (his term) means that the United States can just carry on doing this – creating “money” from nothing and using it to import consumption goods.

    Professor Krugman, and the American government and allied Corporations, are mistaken.

  • Trilby

    But is the “American influence” good or bad?

    As Perun himself observes, a bit of both, it sorta depends.

  • Paul Marks

    Trilby.

    Once “a rules based international order” meant supporting private property rights and free enterprise – that is how Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher would have have understood the term.

    But for more than 30 years it has meant the “Sustainable Development Goals” of the “international community”. “Public Services” and government (and corporate) control of life – including of the “cultural aspect” (via censorship and so on).

    In short – it used to be good, and now it is bad.

    As for the more distant past….

    Even back in the days of the Kennedy Administration there was a lot of American pushing for “non Communist Social Reform” in Latin America and elsewhere.

    The idea being that a bigger and more interventionist government (which is what the Kennedy Administration tended to push – even in Canada, where it intervened in the Canadian election) would “help the people” and thus make America more popular.

    In short the Welfare Statism, “Food Stamps” (1961) and other such that were becoming fashionable in American domestic policy circles, were starting to influence foreign policy – long before Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030.

    These days international “governance” (including the corporations) pushes a wide range of policies – all of which are terrible, and which added together can only lead to totalitarianism.

    The “land use” policy alone would make private property in land a legal fiction.

    Land would come under the de facto control of governments and their corporate friends.

  • Paul Marks

    There is a major difference between American foreign policy now and American foreign policy 60 years ago – at least I believe so.

    It seems clear that policy makers 60 years ago really did believe that a bigger and more interventionist government would “help the people” in foreign countries, just as they believed that the same policy would “help the people” in the United States itself.

    It was a sort of “Star Trek” foreign policy – with Captain Kirk saying “we will build schools, hospitals, provide……” of course such policies led to harm in Latin America and elsewhere, helping the Communists they were supposed to hold back. But the intentions (the intentions) were good back in the 1960s.

    The policy makers (political or other) do NOT believe that any more – they are not blind and deaf, they know what “Social Reform” has done to cities such as Detroit over the last 69 years.

    Yet they have doubled down on it – now the agenda is total Collectivism on the Saint-Simon (rather than Karl Marx) model.

    The are pushing policies in the United States, and in other countries, which they know (they know) will cause harm.

    Why?

    Well listening to someone such as Governor Gavin Newsom of California – the answer is simple but stark.

    Gut churning human evil.

    They see, understand, the harm they have done – and they wish to do more harm, do more harm everywhere.

    In the end there is no great gulf between domestic and foreign policy.

    People who push harmful policies at home will tend to push harmful policies in other countries.

    The difference between the past and today is that in that in the past, say the 1960s, people who pushed harmful policies thought they were pushing good policies – thought they really were “helping the people”.

    Someone like Governor Newsom does not believe that, not for a second – Governor Newsom pushes harmful policies because he wishes to do harm. And he is not alone – they are Legion.

    Not just in the United States – but over the world.