Why Kennedy's Rise & Fall of the Great Powers matters much more than the poli-sci BS emanating from the 'West' ever since: NATO is brain-dead, and here's a primer into the likely consequences
Kennedy's text can be summed up in a pithy little metaphore, or if it's a simile - things blur in my mind:
Great trees are either felled by the axe or rot from within.
Longer musings over cold coffee:
So the trick in politics is to keep the axe at bay while guarding against rot. That is, if one is a politician which cares at all about such things as one blood - one people, language, history and tradition, pro patria and so on: all the stuff declared evil for the past fifty years or more. Evil for white people to use the american's confused labelling of ethnicities. I'll use the american term, race, from here.
The successful races overtaking us share three themes: chauvinism (or bias towards their own kind), a low starting point meaning change measured in percentages will look great, and being inundated with monetary support from the West.
The first point, call it patriotism in short, is easily understood. They are doing it right and we are thrice deluded thinking patriotism evil, thinking prefering your own means hating the other and thirdly believing they will start to think like us if they get to our level socially and technologically, a point which really merits more exposure. I'll just say it's incredibly condescending and racist to believe a chinese or an arab moslem would want to mutate his own culture and mores to emulate the US dominated West. There is no one linear civilisational progression, and there's no goal or end.
The low starting point is the only lead one needs to understand that when it comes to non-european civilisations, they must either be subjugated and dominated - a fool's errand when one looks at the demographics involved - or be held at arm's length a business parterns. Sell and buy, trade with them, but don't let them buy land here, don't let them settle here and don't finance their anything other than by free trade. Again, this warrant exposition so I refer to Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order" where he looks in on this, though without mentioning race since that's a no-no politically. He avoids it so deftly it instead becomes obvious: different races will have different outcomes in similar settings and circumstances, simply due to being different.
Finally, monetary support. Not only as aid money but in favourable deals and in western corporations and governements overlooking atrocities and perpetually excusing those when they're brought up as some kind of "developmental problems". Hee, Goodwin's law actually serves us in good stead: did nazi-Germany do it? Was it excused when they did it? If not, why is it excused when [Country] does it? And the killer question: if Hitler had refrained from starting the war, would it then have been business as usual despite the slave factorie and the eugenic programmes and the death camps? At this point, the liberal (to use it as a collective noun in an expanded sense) angrily pouts, stomps her feet and runs away.
Coda: we are well past the point of no return now. Historically, this is equivalent to the slow collapse during 400AD to 600AD. No existential outer enemy, too much corruption internally, lots of migration and a new religion - espoused as the 'bestest evah' by the state no less (very evident in Sweden where it is a crime to criticise islam if the criticism offends moslems) - and a failing monetary system. Of course, looking for historical parallells is like picking you nose - the very act defines what is to be found.
I'll close this this: any species, race, or civilisation which curbs its own breeding and expansion dooms itself.
I am looking at all of this from the U.S. and thinking about how our government has the habit of sending the army to a foreign country and making an even bigger mess of things...and how sending the army is perceived as the morally superior thing to do (at least in the beginning of a conflict). There a large number of people who are called 'isolationists' in the U.S., and they come to that position for various reasons, but I think this article https://zeroaggressionproject.org/perry-willis/the-munich-myth/ sums up a very good reason for taking the so-called 'isolationist' position. I am interested in your opinion of it, because of your professional background. Does he sum up the history correctly?
I had a brief look, and I think this warrants a more elaborate answer, if you'd like me to do so. I shall, however, say this: it's almost impossible to ascribe any one event or development to a singular cause (hence the appropriate notion, I'd argue, of including 'chaos theory' and 'complex systems' into historical analysis, even though the number of unknown factors, known and unknown ones, is tricky).
As to the case at hand, there was both a domestic (Czechoslovak) as well as an international (foreign policy) angle to the course of events that led to 'Munich 1938'. I've actually given a lecture course about 'Czech' history a few years ago about, and if you'd like me to, I shall go through my notes (it's also needed as I'm about to teach another lecture course on the subject matter come autumn term) and post a bit on the subject?
Russia was tricked into invading Ukraine. This war is about testing America's weapons against Russia's weapons. Also about justifying American foreign aid (cough-kickbacks-cough) in Ukraine and about American private investment in Ukraine after the war.
I think that these are both very valid points, cue Hunter Biden's laptop and what we all know about the US-led shenanigans in Ukraine.
While weapons development and testing is always something to consider, I'd also add the coming arms sales to 'allies' abroad, esp. the F-35 (Norway bought them, the Swiss will also likely do so, and with Germany's new military spending binge in the news, who knows what they will buy…)
I'm particularly intrigued by the post-war aspect of your comment: Mr. Zelensky already enabled legislation that allows foreigners to actually buy black earth farmland, and the fole of foreign investment in comparable contexts is certainly telling and something to keep an eye on.
Kennedy's text can be summed up in a pithy little metaphore, or if it's a simile - things blur in my mind:
Great trees are either felled by the axe or rot from within.
Longer musings over cold coffee:
So the trick in politics is to keep the axe at bay while guarding against rot. That is, if one is a politician which cares at all about such things as one blood - one people, language, history and tradition, pro patria and so on: all the stuff declared evil for the past fifty years or more. Evil for white people to use the american's confused labelling of ethnicities. I'll use the american term, race, from here.
The successful races overtaking us share three themes: chauvinism (or bias towards their own kind), a low starting point meaning change measured in percentages will look great, and being inundated with monetary support from the West.
The first point, call it patriotism in short, is easily understood. They are doing it right and we are thrice deluded thinking patriotism evil, thinking prefering your own means hating the other and thirdly believing they will start to think like us if they get to our level socially and technologically, a point which really merits more exposure. I'll just say it's incredibly condescending and racist to believe a chinese or an arab moslem would want to mutate his own culture and mores to emulate the US dominated West. There is no one linear civilisational progression, and there's no goal or end.
The low starting point is the only lead one needs to understand that when it comes to non-european civilisations, they must either be subjugated and dominated - a fool's errand when one looks at the demographics involved - or be held at arm's length a business parterns. Sell and buy, trade with them, but don't let them buy land here, don't let them settle here and don't finance their anything other than by free trade. Again, this warrant exposition so I refer to Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order" where he looks in on this, though without mentioning race since that's a no-no politically. He avoids it so deftly it instead becomes obvious: different races will have different outcomes in similar settings and circumstances, simply due to being different.
Finally, monetary support. Not only as aid money but in favourable deals and in western corporations and governements overlooking atrocities and perpetually excusing those when they're brought up as some kind of "developmental problems". Hee, Goodwin's law actually serves us in good stead: did nazi-Germany do it? Was it excused when they did it? If not, why is it excused when [Country] does it? And the killer question: if Hitler had refrained from starting the war, would it then have been business as usual despite the slave factorie and the eugenic programmes and the death camps? At this point, the liberal (to use it as a collective noun in an expanded sense) angrily pouts, stomps her feet and runs away.
Coda: we are well past the point of no return now. Historically, this is equivalent to the slow collapse during 400AD to 600AD. No existential outer enemy, too much corruption internally, lots of migration and a new religion - espoused as the 'bestest evah' by the state no less (very evident in Sweden where it is a crime to criticise islam if the criticism offends moslems) - and a failing monetary system. Of course, looking for historical parallells is like picking you nose - the very act defines what is to be found.
I'll close this this: any species, race, or civilisation which curbs its own breeding and expansion dooms itself.
I am looking at all of this from the U.S. and thinking about how our government has the habit of sending the army to a foreign country and making an even bigger mess of things...and how sending the army is perceived as the morally superior thing to do (at least in the beginning of a conflict). There a large number of people who are called 'isolationists' in the U.S., and they come to that position for various reasons, but I think this article https://zeroaggressionproject.org/perry-willis/the-munich-myth/ sums up a very good reason for taking the so-called 'isolationist' position. I am interested in your opinion of it, because of your professional background. Does he sum up the history correctly?
Hi Erika,
I had a brief look, and I think this warrants a more elaborate answer, if you'd like me to do so. I shall, however, say this: it's almost impossible to ascribe any one event or development to a singular cause (hence the appropriate notion, I'd argue, of including 'chaos theory' and 'complex systems' into historical analysis, even though the number of unknown factors, known and unknown ones, is tricky).
As to the case at hand, there was both a domestic (Czechoslovak) as well as an international (foreign policy) angle to the course of events that led to 'Munich 1938'. I've actually given a lecture course about 'Czech' history a few years ago about, and if you'd like me to, I shall go through my notes (it's also needed as I'm about to teach another lecture course on the subject matter come autumn term) and post a bit on the subject?
Yes. I would be interested in reading more about this topic of Czech history and Munich 1938. Please do a post, if it would not be too much trouble.
Russia was tricked into invading Ukraine. This war is about testing America's weapons against Russia's weapons. Also about justifying American foreign aid (cough-kickbacks-cough) in Ukraine and about American private investment in Ukraine after the war.
I think that these are both very valid points, cue Hunter Biden's laptop and what we all know about the US-led shenanigans in Ukraine.
While weapons development and testing is always something to consider, I'd also add the coming arms sales to 'allies' abroad, esp. the F-35 (Norway bought them, the Swiss will also likely do so, and with Germany's new military spending binge in the news, who knows what they will buy…)
I'm particularly intrigued by the post-war aspect of your comment: Mr. Zelensky already enabled legislation that allows foreigners to actually buy black earth farmland, and the fole of foreign investment in comparable contexts is certainly telling and something to keep an eye on.
So, the White House today asked for $10 billion for foreign aid to Ukraine...kickbacks, as I predicted. I must be psychotic!