Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Godfree Roberts's avatar

Wonderful summary. Many thanks!

China now dominates the Western Pacific militarily, thanks to its bigger, more modern, better armed navy and its vast array of specialized missiles.

One airborne missile exists solely to destroy AWACs and theater command aircraft. Another drops torpedoes close to submarines...Read and weep: All Your West Pacific Belong China Now..

https://herecomeschina.substack.com/p/all-your-west-pacific-belong-china

Expand full comment
Stephen T Johnson's avatar

"...The really interesting question is whether the political, systems of the West can learn to live with this situation..."

Well, live with or understand? I think we have a colossal case of crimestop here. Orwell classically defined crimestop as a kind of protective stupidity...the inability to think things that will get you into trouble. For the leadership of the collective west right now doubleplusgood crimestop on the topic of "Ukraine=good=winning, Russia = bad = losing" is needed, and the only real question is When (or, God help us all, if) does the whole affair collapse?

I'm hoping it's *before* a general thermonuclear conflagration, but I'm not too optimistic. It seems to me that the Nordstream destruction is likely an act of desperation, but we're way outside the realm of rational acts here, and it's not inconceivable that it was an act of demented overconfidence.

Ugh, I think I'm going to have to hide under the covers for a bit.

Expand full comment
29 more comments...

No posts