A glass of wine.
I have been sipping at a bottle for the last week or so, and it has been quite enjoyable. However, even though it is a decent shiraz from Australia, it isn't as good as it could be, because I am drinking alone. I drink alone a lot these days, because my wife so rarely drinks and when she does, she just has a sip and hands the glass to me anyway. This makes me sound like an alcoholic, but I can't remember the last time I was even tipsy, so I don't think I am a problem drinker yet.
Perhaps with the state of the world, a drinking problem is understandable.
I was reading today that once again the US is threatening to "leave NATO" and ´honestly, I think that might be the best thing to happen to the alliance since its inception. I get that a lot of people think that the rest of the world can't function without the US military, but over the last couple decades, it has become an increasing liability to global stability. And if the US leaves NATO, it means that especially European countries will have far less enthusiasm to buy weapons and weapons systems from the US, and that is currently 50% of the US weapons exports. European NATO "allies" spent 71 billion on weapons from the US, and it is only going up.
It shouldn't.
Once the US leaves NATO, that creates a vacuum for sure, but it also creates a massive opportunity for local development and production, and it is already happening. And while the US believes it can stand on its own, I don't think the people within would like what that looks like from a daily life perspective, or from a military standpoint. And once those alliances and relationships are broken and the trust eroded, there is no reason to tiptoe around the US politically or economically, meaning that suddenly the US really has to compete globally. The discounts end, as do a lot of the dodgy accounting practices that seas service companies funnelling copious amounts of unpaid tax back into the US. This means the subsidised military ends also.
I don't believe the average person has the stomach for war, nor economic hardship, and at some point the debt mechanisms supported globally that keep the US war machine fuelled, stop working. Some see it as far-fetched, but the US is on surprisingly shaky ground economically, if enough debt holders and those with other means of income start pushing back financially. The markets in the US crash, investment from abroad shifts to European investment instead, and those many gateways of money flows get plugged. The US quickly becomes an island, and while the military might may be great, it has never faced a large conflict in isolation, it has always had allies by the side - and still struggled.
They have lots of nukes.
Good. They can use them. Drop one on me first, please. Because once they start flying about between countries that possess them on opposite sides of the draw, that is the end of life as we know it, and perhaps life on earth in near completion. The nuclear "threat" is pretty toothless if you consider that it is an all or nothing scenario. It is not 1945 anymore. And even if some people did survive, who would want to live in that world post-humanity?
So yeah, I would be quite happy for the US to leave NATO because it forces Europe to take a more active role in its own protection, and that ultimately will lead to more opportunity in Europe, without having to pander to the protection and racketeering activities of the US. Russia will try to take advantage, but ultimately, Russia is pretty toothless at scale also, considering the struggle they are having against Ukraine. China will be the real threat as a military, but I don't think China is keen to enter into global conflict, as it has other ways of getting what it wants.
I think at the moment, a lot of people in the US are under a mistaken impression about the rest of the world, as well as about their own capabilities externally, and internally. I don't think the average American is ready for what it would mean if the US was to become more isolated economically and have to provide for itself from internal resources only. I think most people are insulated as they go about their daily lives, chanting U-S-A with star and stripe flags adorning every surface, believing they will never actually have to be in combat directly. Average America seems to think America is untouchable.
But that is only the case with a lot of allies between.
Remove the reason to align with the US economically and ideologically, and those allies fade away and create new alliances, new capabilities, and perhaps new ambitions. If the EU aligned and chose to become a unified power, it has the potential, and it hasn't burnt the bridges the US has in terms of potential new alliances. At some point, the US becomes unsupportable, because it starts to look too much like a regime. And while many will not see that yet, the trajectory is there and scholars will choose some "turning point in history" that shifted the balance.
Sad, eh?
No one wants any of this disruption in their lives, except for the warmongers who profit from it. They don't care what anyone else wants, as they are just driven by the financial ideology of maximisation of token. Don't get tricked into believing that any of this is about anything other than profit and power. None of it is in the cause for peace, nor for some religious deity, or to right injustice - it is all about control of resources.
And that is all we are.
Resources to burn.
Taraz
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