How many expensive wars has China been engaged in since Mao wrested political control from Chiang Kai Shek, more than half a century ago?

 Secretary of State Blinken is off to China again and President Biden is apparently working the phone with Chinese President Xi, but there is little evidence that Chinese/American relations are improving.  The Chinese are claiming that America is trying to stifle their growth, while Americans are worried about China’s efforts to improve their standing in the world at our expense.  I believe that both sides see the current state of our relationship correctly.  I also believe that the contest is not only between Chinese and American, but also between democracy and dictatorship in a world increasingly dependent on technology.

I consider myself to be very nationalistic and patriotic.  The very first war that I volunteered to participate in was Korea where our principal antagonist was China.  Much of my professional career was devoted to problem sets that involved Chinese aggression.  I am not any smarter than the next guy, but I have thought about China all of my adult life, and I have spent much of it dealing with Chinese aggression.  The Chinese approach to aggression is softer than many others.  It is also more tenacious and far, far more effective.  During my time as Consul General in Udorn, Thailand, our principal interest in the region was the several airbases that we were using to bomb North Viet Nam.  Chinese activity in the region was minimal and we had several large military bases located there.  Today, we are no longer present, and the Chinese operate a facility there that repairs Chinese military vehicles from all over Southeast Asia.

When I was in high school, China was subject to periodic famine and America was the most powerful nation in the entire world.  Today, China is the second largest economy in the world and we, in this country, are tearing ourselves apart with our inane bickering about minutia.  It is relatively easy to point out various tactical errors in dealing with China on the part of our various political leaders, but I contend that the fundamental problem lies with you and me refusing to think about the various factors that are contributing to China’s successes and our failures.  China has knocked us back on our heels and we are trying, ineffectively, to counter-punch.  The proper course of action would be to compete, but we find that course of action to be unattractive.  Because we are a democracy, we reflect the will of the American people and the American people are very used to being in a dominant position in the world - politically and economically.  The vast majority of Americans alive today were born into wealth and have virtually no experience with life in the rest of the world.

China is literally eating our lunch all over the world and our response is to resist inadequately, rather than compete effectively.  Competition would risk lower wages, less profit margin, more work, and better ideas than the other guy - in this case 1.4 billion Chinese that are willing to work hard, think of new ways to do things, steal any and all technology that already exists, and relentlessly support a given policy for decades.  Compare Flip Flop America to the Chinese Communist Party in any of these areas and they win.  In China disobedience in thought or action is immediately punished.  In America diversity in everything is championed.  Think about life as a football game.  One team is unified behind its quarterback.  The other team is bent on finding new ways to create diversity of thought and action.  Very unfortunately, we are increasingly effective in creating the conditions that are destroying us and amazingly we are adamant in our conviction that because some of us vote every couple of years we will prevail.

PS:  how many expensive wars has China been engaged in since Mao wrested political control from Chiang Kai Shek, more than half a century ago?  How many ineffective, very expensive wars have we been engaged in during that same period of time?  How many countries has China abandoned while we fled countries involved in conflict all over the globe during that exact same period of time?  We take great pride in the fact that we still possess better technology.  Or do we?  China nailed their first effort to land on the moon.  The only country to accomplish that feat.  We invented the iPhone and China gave us Tik Tok.  Hubris is alive and well here in America and we are needlessly engaging in the self-destruction of what was the most promising experiment in human history.  You and I are idiots, pure and simple.  Well meaning, cowardly, well-educated, miserly, delusional, idiots.

... and you continue to tell me that we are not dumber than dumb. Bah!

 Speaker Mike Johnson is being criticized because Democrats supported his recent efforts on behalf of Ukraine.  Republican hard liners wanted to leverage Ukraine in order to get progress on improving border security.  I totally agree that border security is an extremely serious problem.  I also agree that President Biden’s policy vis-a-vis Ukraine is a muddled mess, but I heartily disagree with the notion that it is somehow wrong for Democrats to vote for a bill proposed by a Republican.  Those that take that view are championing the very thing that is destroying us - our inability to compromise.  That lacunae in our thinking leads directly to the flip flop nature of our policies at home and abroad.  Neither conservative nor liberal has all of the answers to any of the problems facing us.  As each successively gains the upper hand in domestic politics, both domestic and foreign agendas flip to a new set of inadequate talking points, supported vociferously, at best, by only half of the country.  Oversimplifying, Trump wants to make America Great Again, in part, by attempting to ignore the rest of the world, and Biden wants to invite the rest of the world to come live with us so that we can take care of them with your and my tax money.  Neither policy is going to cut the mustard, but none of us take the time to understand that because each one of us are firmly committed to one side of the pissing contest that allegedly is our national dialog.  There is no dialog.  There is just a bunch of crazed, self-important lunatics yelling at the top of their lungs about stuff that they know virtually nothing about.

I make the argument that World War III is incompatible with the continued existence of humanity as we know it now, but the challenges surrounding that fact are so humungous that the average human is unable to wrap our minds around them.  The reaction of most of us is to lower our head and focus on what is directly before us in our daily lives.  This accounts for our fascination with the age of the fetus, the price of gasoline, the number of chips in the bag, the proper use of pronouns, and our precious feelings.  We willingly give up our democratic responsibilities to one or the other blowhard that seeks to recruit us to his or her brand of tribalism.  These career politicians on both sides of the political aisle obfuscate rather than lead.  Some percentage of us will not change our minds about anything, while the rest of us willing go with the flow and accept whatever our favorite talking head tells us is truth.  An extremely small percentage of us try to think things through and come up with real solutions to real problems and those that try are immediately sanctioned by a society that can not stand the truth.

I was asked to be Consul General in Danang by a government that already knew that it was going to abandon Viet Nam.  I was told in writing, that if the North Vietnamese were to invade, my government would send a battalion of Marines and an aircraft carrier full of helicopters to help me get out of Dodge.  When the NVA did come across the line a year or so later, the aircraft carrier did not come.  The guy that commanded the designated Marine battalion was a personal friend.  He called me on the telephone and told me that he was ready, but that he was not being permitted to come.  My team and I implemented the alternative, hard scrabble, plan that we had developed because I did not expect my government to come to our assistance when push came to shove.  (They never did tell us - they just didn't come.)  I confess that that experience has gone a very long way in educating me about all manner of things and obviously explains some of the reasons why you and I see the world differently.  I am proud of the fact that my team and I got every single person that we were responsible for, not only out of I Corps, but out of country and a lot of other folks that were not on any list, but should have been, as well.

Biden told Ukraine that he would help them withstand Russian aggression.  Putin remembered that Biden/Obama gave him Crimea and Biden walked out of Afghanistan in the middle of the night without telling his NATO partners that he was leaving town.  Push is coming to shove in two or three places in the world, the American government is getting squishy again, and you and I are arguing about when we find it acceptable to snuff the fetus.  The idiots that we have put in charge of the insane asylum are going to make decisions willy nilly and things will be decided.  We, in our infinite wisdom, after the shit hits the fan, will assess blame and vote the other tribe into office.  

The flip flop will continue until some idiot pushes the nuclear button and you continue to tell me that we are not dumber than dumb.  Bah!  We should stand up for what we say we believe, even if it puts our precious asses in harms' way.  Cowardly vacillation just plain does not work and neither does greedy self interest that ignores the plight of others that are not members of our particular club, tribe or sexual persuasion.  I am beginning to think that people are too stupid for humanity to long survive.

Life was better back when we used to talk to each other.

 Inflation is more of a threat to our future than the average American understands and, very unfortunately, our president is among those that refuses to understand its importance.  Rising prices are not only making everything more expensive, they are also reducing the value of all savings and of money itself.  If we were wise we would reduce all unnecessary spending and focus our economic policy on bringing inflation down as a very high priority.  We are not, of course wise enough to do this.  Quite the contrary, we are engaged in all manner of stupidities that feed inflation.  The absolute dumbest of all being the several very expensive wars that we are presently, needlessly, ignorantly engaged in, but the causes are many, and I see little hope that we will wake up in time to deal with them before they wreak further hardship on us.

Culture change is the handmaiden of inflation as well as the cause of some of it.  Far too many native born Americans are irresponsibly lazy and increasingly timid.  It is not their fault.  They were born into wealth, they take it for granted, and they understandably want more of it.  They are very nice people who have never had to fight for their wealth, and they don’t want to start now.  They are lazy in body, and in mind, the latter being the more dangerous of the two.  If the rest of the world were in the same situation, the challenge would be somewhat less difficult, but there are countries out there that are full of people who see an opportunity to advance their own interests at our expense.  Some of them are armed with weaponry that can inflict massive damage.  Damage so severe that it calls into question whether it is possible for anyone to win the next world war.  

The most amazing part of the present situation is the magnitude of our ability to ignore what is happening.  Many of us actually believe that if we are nice enough to enemies abroad and criminals at home, we can live in peace and prosperity.  Americans have long had the ability to ignore poverty in other countries, but now we increasingly ignore it here at home and are actually going out of our way to expand it by actively encouraging the rest of the world to come live with us.  We vociferously demand more housing while simultaneously writing building code that requires million dollar homes for any two of the more successful of us.  We invent “small homes” for the people that are living on our city streets.  Shacks for people that don’t really count.  Our foreign policy is motivated by the exact same thinking.  Throw a reasonable amount of money at people living in wherever and get back to the reality that you are creating on your phone.  A reality that censors dangerous diversity of thought, but does not deal with it.  Stay away from real people as best you can.  Eschew brick and mortar for online convenience.  Message those in your inner circle but stay away from any gathering that is not absolutely necessary - not because of health concerns - but rather to avoid having to talk face to face with someone that does not see the entire world exactly the same way that you do.

Life was better back when we used to talk to each other.  Now, we just yell at each other long distance.  The demonstrations in our colleges and universities merely being the most absurd tip of the more pervasive problem that infects all of us, to include you and me.  When the feces hits the whiling blade we will look for people that can deal with the real world, but as long as we can pretend that our fantasy world is real, we will continue to disparage them.  Our motto being "Death to America."

I have trouble updating my computer so I can not pretend to understand electronic warfare, but apparently the Israelis are really good at it.

 Assuming that my analysis of the Israeli attack on the Iranian military facility in Isfahan is correct (yesterday's blog post), it may well have some implications beyond Iran, in as much as I assume that the Iranians have access to the very best Russian air defense systems currently available.  I am long out of touch with military technology, but my guess is that the Israeli missile got through the Iranian air defenses because they were jammed and the missile moved fast and accurately.  I have trouble updating my computer so I can not pretend to understand electronic warfare, but apparently the Israelis are really good at it.  The miserable showing of the recent, massive Iranian missile/drone attack on Israel would also seem to indicate that Israel is better at defense technology and organization than is Iran.  Hundreds of targets in the air simultaneously with Arab, Israeli and American assets trying to knock them down without killing each other is an absolutely amazing feat no matter how you look at it.  The fact that they were so successful is absolutely unbelievable, even if you allow for luck.

I once had an opportunity to spend three days with General Moshe Dayan on his visit to Viet Nam during the war there.  I asked him why Israel had been so successful in their various wars with different Arab nations.  His response was that “it helps if your enemy is an Arab.”  I presume that his compatriots in the IDF are saying much the same thing to themselves right now.  While that attitude has obvious advantages during conflict, it is the antithesis of what is required whenever the killing lets up a bit.  Both Jerusalem and Washington are understandably focused on the conflict that is immediately at hand and that is understandable and very necessary, but I try to look beyond the immediate chaos to find a way to end this stupidity that has been going on for millennia.  My conclusion is that conflict can not be eliminated in the Middle East without addressing it throughout the entire world.  It is no longer possible to “win” a war in one part of the world without addressing the issues that lead to conflict elsewhere.

Today, Russia and China are piggy backing on the Iranian argument with Israel to further their own objectives in other parts of the world and Iran is helping them with their various regional arguments in return.  All three of them are meddling with various other arguments in other parts of the world in an effort to gain more support for their own malign activities.  Specific conflicts grow into regional conflicts and regional conflicts threaten to grow into global conflicts.  We try to resolve all of this with inadequate regional solutions.  Congress is currently deciding how much money to parcel out to which friend and the American people are trying to decide whether they want to be led by a megalomaniac or a coward.  Everybody is fascinated with the technology and none of us are thinking about how to resolve the issues that underlie all of the discontent.

What is needed is a leader of the free world.  Such can not be attained through any amount of wishful thinking.  It requires massive numbers of individuals to agree to address the challenge with their minds, pledge their resources to the effort, and think creatively.  Look around yourself and ask if you see any of this.  I quite frankly do not.  What I see is a group of really nice people that are too busy with their own lives to think about any of it.  And that is here, in the best educated, richest, most caring country in the history of the world.  Our solution to every single one of our problems at home and abroad is to explain endlessly that it is the other guys fault and preach our own brand of wishful thinking at the top of our lungs.  Think about the fact that our national legislature sees it as being their responsibility to protect the American people from Tik Tok.  The fear being that the Chinese’s Communist Party is able to mold our minds by putting trash on our phones.  That does not sound to me like a populace that I want leading the world. It sounds more like a group of robots that think that they are human, flowing with the vibe, cherishing the moment, believing in the greater good - as defined by their tribal masters.

Why just one missile that does not appear to have done much damage?

 Assuming that the Israeli response to Iran’s massive missile fiasco was a single missile that did little to no damage, I presume that there is more to the story than we now know - on both sides of the disagreement, and I confess to being curious.  I presume that eventually we will begin to get a better idea as to what is currently afoot in the inner circles, inside both countries.  My present, uninformed, wild posterior guess, is that the Israeli missile was meant to display some capability that Iran was incapable of defending against and the choice of Isfahan Province for the demonstration was an effort to tie it to Iran’s underground nuclear development facilities that are located there.  If so, it was not meant to be retaliation, but rather warning.  The grinding attack on Hamas is the retaliatory effort and it is going the way that the Israeli leadership intends.  The pending attack on Hamas in Rafah is what all of these missiles is really about.  In this connection, Sunni Arab support of Israel’s defense against the Iranian attack was seen as being very bad news in Shia Teheran.

The most important conversation between antagonists, engaged in conflict, is rarely verbal, and an outsider peeking over the fence, is at a serious disadvantage in trying to understand what is going on in the minds of people about which we know so little.  Outside observers frequently replace knowledge with speculation and that frequently results in serious mistakes.  My own experience has been that individuals in leadership roles are frequently forced to speak and act before they know as much as they would like about the situation that they are attempting to address.  Analysts considering the same situation, feel required to explain events without adequate information and describe those events so as to fit their predisposition as to the overall conflict.  This results in misinformation and confusion.

I used to do this stuff for a living and I was pretty good at it.  My success was directly proportional to the accuracy of my understanding of the people involved.  I frequently lost debates with my colleagues as to how best to deal with a given situation, but rarely was my analysis wrong, whether I won or lost the given policy debate.  It is my belief that you can predict a person’s decisions in a given circumstance, if you know enough about him or her.  I used this principal to accurately predict coups, military actions, and legislation.  More crassly, I also used it to get ahead in the bureaucracy.  I should also point out that the exact same principals apply to American decision-makers as foreign and it applies to people all through society down to the malcontent that lives down the street and harbors thoughts that are inconsistent with the best interests of the rest of us.  When I was still in harness, my objective was to shape the foreign service so that we provided far better support to our political leadership.  I’m angry with myself for giving up my quest, because of my disgust with domestic politics.  That was a cowardly, wrong headed mistake, but the objective that I was championing was valid.

I offer this advice to any and all that might be reading this:  success is easy to achieve if you truly understand the community in which you are trying to succeed.  Wishful thinking is your greatest enemy and having the courage of your convictions is the greatest test.  My current assessment of America is that we all have a serious problem in truly understanding each other, let alone the rest of the world around us.  Our escape to alternative realities is not a solution.  Quite the contrary, it is what is destroying us.  Rome had their circus.  We have our phone.  The world has problems that we are permitting to destroy us, because we are too cowardly, too ignorant, too greedy to face up to them.  Our ongoing demise is on us, not Russia, China or Iran.  If we humans intended to continue resorting to violence to protect ourselves, we should not have introduced nuclear weapons.

The disunity that characterizes America is the more important subject.

The press is, today, full of stories commenting on the unusual fact that Democrats helped pass a Republican bill on Ukraine funding in the House of Representatives.  The unusual nature of the vote being that Democrats and Republicans agreed on something.  The fact that Republicans and Democrats agreeing on something is seen to be unusual is the definition of what is wrong with us - you and me.

Ukraine is an important subject.  The disunity that characterizes America is the more important subject. 

 The press is full of stories speculating on how Israel will respond to Iran’s recent missile attack.  There is also a plentitude of stories speculating on what the United States Government has said privately to Israeli leaders.  Nobody outside of Israel knows for certain what will be decided and how it will play out.  Speculation abounds.

I leave Israel’s national interest to the Israelis and focus on America’s national interest.  I take Iran at its’ word when its’ leaders direct crowds in chanting death to America, and see Iran as a serious threat.  I am less interested in the parameters of Israel’s response to Iran’s most recent provocation than I am in the overall strategy that guides our actions in the Middle East.  I argue that we do not have one, and flip flop back and forth between equally inadequate appeasement and confrontation, as the tide of our domestic disagreement continues to govern our foreign policy.  In our heart of hearts, all of us would much prefer to be “out of the Middle East,” rather than trying to help the people there live a better life.

I suggest that the governing structure in Teheran is a troublesome version of Islam and what is required, on our part, is a national strategy designed to deal with all aspects of the Islamic world from Indonesia to ISIS.  I take the exact same approach to our problems in Europe, Africa, and Asia.  My objective would be to minimize the need to micromanage disputes such as the one between Arab and Jew, and focus more of our attention on building stronger societies that were better equipped to manage local disputes so that they remain local and are resolved locally.

The problem with my strategy is that humans all over the globe, to include here in this country, see it as being impossible pie in the sky.  That attitude, of course, makes it so and results in all of us all over this increasingly small chunk of rock, aimlessly spinning in space, quarreling about our relationships needlessly.  Before we invented satellite guided, nuclear tipped ballistic missiles, this was an imperfect, but acceptable, way to manage world affairs.  It is not any more.  We are indeed our brother’s keeper and because we are not doing a good enough job, we are on the road to destroying ourselves.  Not just you and me - humanity, at least as we know it now

PS:  I apply the exact same reasoning to the mindless quarreling that plagues us internally.  Our rhetoric is hilarious, if you disengage, step back a bit, and listen to it.  We MUST defend democracy, diversity, and our feelings, but we shun anyone that disagrees with us about any of the minutia that makes us “different” from one another.  If “they” persist in their disorderly thinking, “we” do our very best to destroy them.  Because the real world is so confusing, we increasingly seek refuge in the pretend world that we create on our increasingly realistic devices.  We band together on social media with like-minded soul mates and increasingly shy away from having to deal with the riff raff that live down the street.  Very unfortunately more and more of “them” are developing more and more destructive capability - soon to match that which we already possess.