Oh sure! Now it's "Putin's Multipolarity"
Some of the worst geopolitical reporting I have ever seen
The terrifying WAPO headline:
With Orban in China and Modi in Russia, Putin’s multipolar world takes shape
Holy shit!
I had no idea that multipolarity was Putin’s idea, much less his stunning accomplishment! What CAN’T that Evil Genius do?
This sort of reporting is ghastly bad. Let me rant the ways:
Today’s multipolarity is not something Vlad crafted or particularly much manipulates or exploits. Today’s multipolarity arose from a world system the US put in place after the Second World War. We sought this outcome and now we have it, and it scares us because we no longer control things as we once did (largely an artificial and temporary legacy of WWII)
And that fear has irrationally seeped into our MSM coverage of international events — as in, EVERYBODY IS SEEKING TO DESTROY THE US-LED WORLD ORDER!
With this pinhead mindset, we see danger EVERYWHERE. We also lose all broad-framing capacity.
For example:
Is the picture above showing Mastermind Genius Putin manipulating simpleton Modi?
Of course it is!
Putin bombed a children’s hospital just prior and yet still wins a bear hug from Modi!
Point, set, and entire geopolitical landscape to Vlad!
Or …
Maybe … Modi just loves ripping Russia off on oil right now, paying below market prices because Vlad no longer has a market for good prices in the West. Maybe Modi’s happy to rip Vlad off for as long as the latter remains tethered to his disastrous and pointless war in Ukraine.
Maybe … it’s got nothing, in Modi’s mind, to do with destroying any US-crafted world order, within which India is now rising at speed.
Maybe … India just wants that now-vacated seat at the Adults Table from which Russia was recently disinvited.
Maybe … Modi sees an unfolding and intensifying superpower rivalry with China and wants to insert New Delhi between Moscow and Beijing JUST TO REMIND Xi that India’s the new guy in town and it plans to be involved in EVERYTHING.
Maybe … America doesn’t even figure into this three-way dance.
Maybe … Modi has a working brain, and a pretty crafty one at that.
BUT …. BUT … WHAT ABOUT THE US-LED WORLD ORDER?
Nobody owns multipolarity — duh! That’s the whole concept in a nutshell.
So what is Putin really accomplishing?
Becoming China’s economic vassal? Check.
Becoming India’s junior economic vassal? Check.
Becoming Kim Jong Un’s supplicant on artillery shells? [Shall we shag now or shag later?]
Yeah baby! Yeah!
None of these moves are power moves. Vlad’s been booted from the Adults Table and now he’s running around his narrow orbit of (a) superpowers willing to abuse him economically while they can (Thank you Xi, may I have another?), (b) any rogue state willing to sell him armaments (Thank you Kim, may I have another?), and (c) anybody willing to show him a good time in public (Vietnam).
Slowly remove your head from that hole in the ground and notice:
US trade with Vietnam: $130B
Russian trade with Vietnam: $3B.
Or check out the expanding strategic nature of US military cooperation with Vietnam:
After a Major Upgrade, the US Military Wants to Take Things Further With Vietnam — Despite mutual concerns about China, Hanoi’s wariness of its larger neighbor may limit what it’s willing to do with Washington.
Does that strike you as Vietnam jumping into bed with Vlad in some alternative Moscow-led world order?
More broadly framed, does any analyst in their right mind think Vlad is somehow elevating Russia’s game when, in fact, he playing a very bad hand to the best of his ability?
Think about it: Why in God’s name would big-time Putin go to KJU or Hanoi on bended knee? As a show of strength? As clear proof of some alternative world order?
That’s not analysis, that’s hysteria.
Does anybody think that either New Delhi or Beijing would sacrifice ANYTHING concerning their state security or economic trajectory to bail out Vlad?
If anything, both capitals are looking at Russia as the continent’s “sick man” whose estate will be up for auction by scrambling oligarchs and provincial bosses left stranded once Vlad finally dies from his various rots.
Here’s a solid quote about what Putin is accomplishing in Ukraine. It comes from Carl Bildt, the co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden in Foreign Policy:
If Ukraine and its Western supporters lose resolve, Europe may face a scenario where Russia subjugates the rest of Ukraine, installs a puppet regime, and gradually integrates most or all of the country into a new Russian empire.
In the long term, it would be a Pyrrhic victory for Moscow. The repressive empire would struggle to digest its occupied lands, subdue a restive population, and bear the burden of very high military expenditures in a new era of confrontation. Moscow would trade its medieval Mongol yoke for a 21st-century Chinese one—and be seriously left behind as the rest of the world enters a new green and digital age. Sooner or later, Russia would face its third state collapse in little more than a century.
That is realism, not some fantasy about a Putin-manipulated multipolarity.
America is deeply uncomfortable with its variously enabled accomplishments (modern globalization, global middle class, multipolarity, risen Asia, the negative accomplishment of accelerated climate change). All of them speak to a more competitive and fluid geopolitical landscape, and all of these are moving toward a digital/AI future and constellation of solutions, while America is left holding the bag on state sovereignty with our huge conventional military and our 750-or-so military facilities around the world. [Add up all the foreign military bases owned by the US, European NATO, Russia, India, and China, and we account for 92% of them — advantage or liability? How about both?] Our sunk costs are unreal and unsustainable and they prevent us, in many ways, from embracing the Military Singularity already upon us (a post-human battlespace ruled by drones, robots, AI, and cyber).
Putin is NOT leading Russia toward any such future either. He is retreating into Russia’s imperial past, just like Trump would like us to retreat — rather fruitlessly and fantastically — into our post-WWII “golden age” past.
Beware of Boomers bearing childish dreams.
Putin has effectively captured the ideological allegiance of the GOP in America, where he is considered a civilizational “savior” (White, Christian, nationalist) not unlike Trump and certainly a “better” answer to our world’s challenges than “satanic” Dems.
Compared to the damage Putin has inflicted upon our political system, his efforts to craft a “multipolarity” of his own design are laughably pathetic and almost completely irrelevant to the global balance of power. Modi’s not dancing to any Putin tunes, nor is Xi. He is their useful idiot, and Trump is his useful idiot.
That’s where America stands today: the Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant to Rising Superpowers.
This is where the Boomers have taken us. Be sure to flush on your way down.
This WAPO reporting is so Cold War braindead that it infuriates me (Tell us what your REALLY think, Thomas!). It is a distraction added to distraction; it is fear-mongering without strategic purpose or moral responsibility.
Worse, it blinds us to the real deficits in our approach (we think defending state sovereign in a cyberspace world is THE GRAND STRATEGIC ANSWER) and goads us into some asinine counter-strategy of lining up allies in response — allies who are already motivated plenty by either Xi or Putin or both and don’t exactly need any histrionic prodding to do more.
I know what we get with Trump: capitulation and sidekick status to the GREAT MEN OF EUOPE like Putin and Orban.
I also know what we get with Biden: more Cold War answers to 21st century challenges.
Neither suffice.
I know it. You know it. Most Americans know it.
This is why every poll shows that the vast majority of Americans DO NOT WANT THIS CHOICE IN NOVEMBER.
Brain-f*#king dead!
Anybody else want to piss me off today?
