in 2018 Trump and Putin held a summit in Helsinki and Trump was perceived as deferential to Putin. if you google "Trump Putin Helsinki" you'll find writeups on it.
I'd emphasize three things here: One, of course you should establish any long-term matter via a treaty, and they are supposed to be hard to enter and exit. Other nations are aware of this and position accordingly. The people -- even insiders -- seem to just forgot one day this is how it's done, and all actions are expected to be made mainly by fiat while complaining about Kings. So? Don't do that. It's essentially illegal, or non-functional, just as not declaring war is. No, and all nations ignore their own internal rules like this anyway.
Two, I propose to think about e.g. the U.S. as WHO is doing the planning. They just SAY we have no planning at all, and as you establish, this is wholly untrue. But the Long-planners have to just make up stuff, go around, throw a bone to the Short-planners. Who are often the People, the voters. They DO plan long, and sometimes for good vs the People, and sometimes against the good of the people. Lately a lot of the latter, although they would claim it's for the good of the Abstraction they call "The State". Note: What's good for the State doesn't harm the State's people. By definition. This is where they get vengeful against a "Deep State". So this is a decided two-tier system we pretend isn't there.
Third, not mentioned, all of this sort of predicates ONLY the Government is supposed to be "The State" or to Plan. That is, it unconsciously leans into how only the Government=Nation, Nation=Government, and Government = Economy. That they're SUPPOSED to do this. Not ours. You don't see the "Power of the Federal Government to direct every part of the Economy" Clause in the Constitution, do you? Washington set up the "Department of Picking Economic Winners and Losers".
This may be for better or worse, but WE the People are supposed to do that. As Washington said, with economic trade with all and malice to none. Perhaps that would not work, but if not, we need to establish even a whisper of law that makes it legal. And more practically, the People, who also are the staff of all Corporations, THINK that the government should do it all and they have no duties or responsibilities in that regard. This also is somewhat new where it was once understood that, say, United Fruit or GE was a representative of both America the Government, Americans, the People, as well as themselves, and were asked or expected to behave accordingly. ...Even if that was still a lot of P.R. at the time.
So should we have NO responsibility as long-term planners, where American fathers or households start thinking like Family Offices? I think they once did more than now so clearly it's possible.
Fourth, all the other nations know all this. Also they ALSO can just change their positioning willy-nilly. China COULD end up with 4 Presidents in 4 years in a Party wrangle, and may someday. That is to say, what you describe is happening now, yes, but it's not an absolute. At the same time, even staying Democratic, we can hit upon another Deep approach like the PetroDollar was, and we probably have. Then despite our ability to change, we don't for decades. I couldn't predict either, but there's no absolute we have to be ADHD and they're Kasperov. Clearly they are not or we wouldn't remain so strong despite decades of battering. India is a good example. They clearly CAN do several things, including become sovereign, and their own internal choices have prevented that so far.
«How these institutions operate isn’t debated in town halls, but crafted by elite policy mandarins existing outside the approval of the unwashed masses; who are mostly completely unaware of what these institutions even do. That’s why containment and commitment lasted, because it didn’t require your neighbor’s opinion every four years.»
«Postwar containment — perhaps the most-impactful commitment in US history — was sustained not through democratic consensus but bureaucratic inertia.»
Call me an unsavory brute, but I don't buy that these mandarins were washed for a second.
I'm fully Hanania-"Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy"-pilled on that. It's essentially all just a grift. Any competence or beneficial outcome is incidental. If the American Deep State truly would have had any competency, they'd have listened to John von Neumann:
"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"
Instead the US did not manage prevent the nuclear arms race or even stop proliferation. Allowed communism to kill tens of millions more and become an existential threat, allowed China to become the rival it is today. Spent trillions on military capability that's utterly irrelevant in a nuclear war. Fueled the military-industrial complex, though.
Just because coincidentally, we live in a timeline, where billions did not die in a nuclear holocaust (yet anyway), does not mean, you can give the American NatSec-state any credit for it. That's just (preliminary!) survivorship bias.
The US had true sovereignty for a couple years, when they had a monopoly on nukes. They cowardly let it lapse and we're all the more endangered for it. Now nobody has:
«Unilateral capacity to wage and sustain offensive war without anyone’s approval»
Now we have two-bit players with the unilateral capacity to wage nuclear war without approval, and we can only pray that they care it about it not being sustainable.
This is a banger.
What’s a Helsinki Overture?
in 2018 Trump and Putin held a summit in Helsinki and Trump was perceived as deferential to Putin. if you google "Trump Putin Helsinki" you'll find writeups on it.
I'd emphasize three things here: One, of course you should establish any long-term matter via a treaty, and they are supposed to be hard to enter and exit. Other nations are aware of this and position accordingly. The people -- even insiders -- seem to just forgot one day this is how it's done, and all actions are expected to be made mainly by fiat while complaining about Kings. So? Don't do that. It's essentially illegal, or non-functional, just as not declaring war is. No, and all nations ignore their own internal rules like this anyway.
Two, I propose to think about e.g. the U.S. as WHO is doing the planning. They just SAY we have no planning at all, and as you establish, this is wholly untrue. But the Long-planners have to just make up stuff, go around, throw a bone to the Short-planners. Who are often the People, the voters. They DO plan long, and sometimes for good vs the People, and sometimes against the good of the people. Lately a lot of the latter, although they would claim it's for the good of the Abstraction they call "The State". Note: What's good for the State doesn't harm the State's people. By definition. This is where they get vengeful against a "Deep State". So this is a decided two-tier system we pretend isn't there.
Third, not mentioned, all of this sort of predicates ONLY the Government is supposed to be "The State" or to Plan. That is, it unconsciously leans into how only the Government=Nation, Nation=Government, and Government = Economy. That they're SUPPOSED to do this. Not ours. You don't see the "Power of the Federal Government to direct every part of the Economy" Clause in the Constitution, do you? Washington set up the "Department of Picking Economic Winners and Losers".
This may be for better or worse, but WE the People are supposed to do that. As Washington said, with economic trade with all and malice to none. Perhaps that would not work, but if not, we need to establish even a whisper of law that makes it legal. And more practically, the People, who also are the staff of all Corporations, THINK that the government should do it all and they have no duties or responsibilities in that regard. This also is somewhat new where it was once understood that, say, United Fruit or GE was a representative of both America the Government, Americans, the People, as well as themselves, and were asked or expected to behave accordingly. ...Even if that was still a lot of P.R. at the time.
So should we have NO responsibility as long-term planners, where American fathers or households start thinking like Family Offices? I think they once did more than now so clearly it's possible.
Fourth, all the other nations know all this. Also they ALSO can just change their positioning willy-nilly. China COULD end up with 4 Presidents in 4 years in a Party wrangle, and may someday. That is to say, what you describe is happening now, yes, but it's not an absolute. At the same time, even staying Democratic, we can hit upon another Deep approach like the PetroDollar was, and we probably have. Then despite our ability to change, we don't for decades. I couldn't predict either, but there's no absolute we have to be ADHD and they're Kasperov. Clearly they are not or we wouldn't remain so strong despite decades of battering. India is a good example. They clearly CAN do several things, including become sovereign, and their own internal choices have prevented that so far.
«How these institutions operate isn’t debated in town halls, but crafted by elite policy mandarins existing outside the approval of the unwashed masses; who are mostly completely unaware of what these institutions even do. That’s why containment and commitment lasted, because it didn’t require your neighbor’s opinion every four years.»
«Postwar containment — perhaps the most-impactful commitment in US history — was sustained not through democratic consensus but bureaucratic inertia.»
Call me an unsavory brute, but I don't buy that these mandarins were washed for a second.
I'm fully Hanania-"Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy"-pilled on that. It's essentially all just a grift. Any competence or beneficial outcome is incidental. If the American Deep State truly would have had any competency, they'd have listened to John von Neumann:
"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"
Instead the US did not manage prevent the nuclear arms race or even stop proliferation. Allowed communism to kill tens of millions more and become an existential threat, allowed China to become the rival it is today. Spent trillions on military capability that's utterly irrelevant in a nuclear war. Fueled the military-industrial complex, though.
Just because coincidentally, we live in a timeline, where billions did not die in a nuclear holocaust (yet anyway), does not mean, you can give the American NatSec-state any credit for it. That's just (preliminary!) survivorship bias.
The US had true sovereignty for a couple years, when they had a monopoly on nukes. They cowardly let it lapse and we're all the more endangered for it. Now nobody has:
«Unilateral capacity to wage and sustain offensive war without anyone’s approval»
Now we have two-bit players with the unilateral capacity to wage nuclear war without approval, and we can only pray that they care it about it not being sustainable.