The FP: Niall Ferguson: Weâre All Soviets Now A government with a permanent deficit and a bloated military. A bogus ideology pushed by elites. Poor health among ordinary people. Senescent leaders. Sound familiar? —-
Illuminating. Affirming. Thought provoking.
Everyone will find a mix of each in this terrific opinion piece. Well worth the read, IMO.
An excerpt:
Asked if they would favor ârationing of gas, meat, and electricityâ to fight climate change, 89 percent of Ivy Leaguers said yes, as against 28 percent of regular people. Asked if they would personally pay $500 more in taxes and higher costs to fight climate change, 75 percent of the Ivy Leaguers said yes, versus 25 percent of everyone else. âTeachers should decide what students are taught, as opposed to parentsâ was a statement with which 71 percent of the Ivy Leaguers agreed, nearly double the share of average citizens. âDoes the U.S. provide too much individual freedom?â More than half of Ivy Leaguers said yes; just 15 percent of ordinary mortals did. The elite were roughly twice as fond as everyone else of members of Congress, journalists, union leaders, and lawyers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 88 percent of the Ivy Leaguers said their personal finances were improving, as opposed to one in five of the general population.
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The question that haunts me is: What if China has learned the lessons of Cold War I better than we have? I fear that Xi Jinping has not only understood that, at all costs, he must avoid the fate of his Soviet counterparts. He has also, more profoundly, understood that we can be maneuvered into being the Soviets ourselves. And what better way to achieve that than to âquarantineâ an island not too far from his coastline and then defy us to send a naval expedition to run the blockade, with the obvious risk of starting World War III? The worst thing about the approaching Taiwan Semiconductor Crisis is that, compared with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the roles will be reversed. Biden or Trump gets to be Khrushchev; XJP gets to be JFK. (Just watch him prepping the narrative, telling European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that Washington is trying to goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan.)
For seven and a half years, I served as director of the State Department office that leads Leahy vetting of foreign security units. I have seen how even and fair application of the Leahy law is key to U.S. foreign policy and credibility abroad. But when it comes to Israel â the story so far is about a lack of application.
U.S. State Department spokespersons assert that the department complies with the Leahy law via âongoing processes,â and that treatment of Israel under the Leahy law is the same as for any other country.
Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic The U.S. military launched a clandestine program amid the COVID crisis to discredit Chinaâs Sinovac inoculation â payback for Beijingâs efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic. One target: the Filipino public. Health experts say the gambit was indefensible and put innocent lives at risk.
To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the militaryâs psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.
âWe werenât looking at this from a public health perspective,â said a senior military officer involved in the program. âWe were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.â
We have about 50 percent of the worldâs wealth, but only 6.3 percent of
its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy
and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern
of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on
our immediate national objectives. We should cease to talk about vague
and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to
have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered
by idealistic slogans, the better.
