This stuff is why I say don't count the US out or laugh at the idea of its plan of encircling, blockading, and decoupling from China.

It's "moderate rebel" proxies and terrorist groups it supports to destabilize regions including markets for consuming goods as well as raw minerals (both of which China needs) have been wildly successful for many decades and I see no Chinese counter to that at present. Russia is doing slightly more to counter that but only barely and it's more a taking the edge off thing as we saw with Syria where Assad eventually fell anyways because Russia wouldn't commit the necessary level of support. Frankly the US can afford to do these things in 12 places at once while Russia can't afford to counter them in even a third.

For every AES (Sahel) that tries to throw off the shackles of neo-colonialism and succeeds for a time (how long is anyone's guess) there are a dozen examples of countries the US successfully suppresses, color revolutions, coups, destabilizes, debt-traps, installs compradors in, etc.

China has an uphill fight and I'm increasingly doubtful the US goes without a world war against it. Even proxies that don't "win" their war like Ukraine do provide benefits for the west, arm sales, knowledge on cutting edge enemy tactics and weaponry, experience, and battle-hardened "moderate rebels" which leave the battlefield at the end or in Ukraine's case even before the end to directly serve in the intelligence agencies or proxies of those agencies around the world. We've already seen that with Ukraine bragging about countering Russia's anti-colonial Wagner group helping the Sahel states and that's the tip of the iceberg.

The US is stoking a hundred fires and has means to turn many of them on short notice into an inferno. Even if they can't they just keep stoking it and burning and they still win by default by denying China new markets and resources while already controlling the old existing markets and resources.

There are going to be a hundred color revolutions, palace coups, moderate rebels taking down or throwing a nation into instability, compradors turning around to betray and sell their nation out, etc that are going to be popping up and going off against China and Russia from Africa to central Asia in the next 15 years as the US fights like hell to enact the project for a new American century.

Locking down the middle east for the coming fight with China I see. China's attempts to woo Saudi Arabia and other US Arab vassals with minor soft power gifts and trinkets and partnerships have failed. Of course they still need to neutralize or overthrow Iran but I suppose they have a few years left to do that.

IF and it is a big IF they succeeded in burying most of their nuclear material with the US strikes and IF Iran's eventual formal ceasefire with the entity includes provisions of not accessing those sites and the zionist right to bomb them in a Lebanon style loss of sovereignty then they may consider that good enough and just go back to preparing a civil war and insurrection quietly in the background.

People keep saying this but the US has so far shown they're smart enough to know the range of Iranian missiles and keep their ships significantly out of that. They then use mid-air refueling to supplement the range of their aircraft if needed and because they control the skies completely they can do this.

It's the same thing with the coming conflict with China. The US isn't going to stupidly sail their fleet to within Chinese land missile range, they're going to keep them over the horizon, use mid-air refueling and other tactics like area denial/mining and deny China a kill on anything so prestigious and valuable. They'll seek like any competent planner to draw China's navy out into deep water where they hold the advantage and destroy them there far away from where their land-based missile units can help them. And if China refuses to be drawn then they can say they have them effectively contained.

Frankly more than that I feel the Iranians don't want to seriously anger the US. They want to avoid giving them a 9/11 style "tragedy" or level of destruction to rally around and justify going full sicko-mode on them because you've wounded anglo pride. So I don't think they'll go out of their way to try and smuggle a large missile onto a boat and get it closer to launch an attack like that.

I have to question what the end-game is for the west here given they can continue striking the zionist entity. Maybe it's a show of power and now they offer them peace if they stop firing now that they have gotten their immediate want and acted all tough.

I get bad vibes from the announced Trump speech thing. Maybe he's just going to yammer on and play up the tough guy act and issue an ultimatum to Iran to totally surrender but maybe he's going to announce we used a tactical nuclear weapon and it was totally justified and good. My guess is either way he'll say the ball is in Iran's court and they can submit or .

Literally got him cancelled off ABC too over that. It was Dinesh D'souza who wasn't disagreeing very strongly if at all if I recall. His show was I think called "politically incorrect" and in that case it definitely was.

The predictable swerve, the pivot. The ability to point back to their last minute words only objections to the genocide after it's concluded and sob about how they realized too late what those scheming Jews were up to and how they tricked them and oh it was all Netanyahu and a few other bad apples really. Thus they believe preserving their righteousness, their ability to shit on China and Russia and other places. Never forget their actions, their support, their lack of action and duty to stop it even after admitting it was going wrong. They'll claim it was only after that they realized it amounted to genocide and wring their hands and weep for the Palestinian people who once were and once again say never again while casually slinging around the genocide accusation at Russia, at China, at AES, etc.

My cynical thoughts are:

Germany's military will always be used for NATO aggression. They are already an occupied vassal, American troops are in the country (Rammstein base among others) and the reactionary German armed forces will NEVER use force to remove them, thus they can only be a pawn of them. Additionally most German officers are trained like dogs for loyalty with the American troops, additionally there is evidence the west runs a significant blackmail network as well as a spy network against its own and those officers and members of intelligence who would help the US coup Germany for its benefit are known and written down and will be called upon.

Remember what happened to Australia and Whitmer, there was a non-violent coup using arcane process to oust someone who wanted neutrality, they would absolutely use violent means to do what's necessary. They installed a military dictatorship in Greece in the last cold war and would not hesitate to place Germany or other places under a similar yoke though would likely prefer to oust elements against them and spin up a tail of their treason and with the loyal German empire loving, immigrant scapegoating press I'm sure they'd have little issue at present or the near future doing so.

There are only two hopes I think for near-term freedom from the US yoke:

1. mass movement building and massive sustained protests and organized economic shut-downs to force the issue (even then 50/50 it goes to an open repressive reactionary dictatorship). It's either that or 2) hoping US decline accelerates before they can drag the rebuilt German/Euro army into wars to sustain the empire in the 2030s and that it picks up to such a pace that they cannot maintain their occupation and control over Germany. Frankly I believe US decline will be slow and take many decades so the realistic hope is movement building. From what I've seen of the self-flagellating, genocide apologizing, self-hating, anti-Soviet German left they have their work cut out for them.

I saw a take that I fully believe as it so describes the deep mentality of Euro-liberals. Namely that the lesson Euro-liberals who run and love the EU today take from WW2 is that America will come and prevent Russia from de-Nazifying you in a war, and will prop up your fascist, reactionary people, install them in government, protect them and help build and maintain a joint bulwark against Russians and communists. Not that genocide is bad, not that war within Europe is devastating and self-defeating, because the wrong people (Nazis) were all installed in positions of power post-war and they learned to not do fascism openly without American help and that's it and that's why Trump has them so upset because Biden worked them all up to do aggressive support of open lovers of Nazism in Ukraine and now they've been blue-balled or feel the threat of it. Add on their decline, the loss of their neo-colonies in Africa, the drain of industry because of sanctions and its just even worse. And the only ones waiting in the wings to supplant these are the open admirers of fascism, the open far-right reactionary parties prepared to conduct a purge of immigrants, to scapegoat on that basis and build Europe up for war to be used as a tool of the US. They've been gaining in Germany, they've been gaining in France. German government pretended it might try to crush them but its hand was held back by the bourgeoisie who wish to have this tool available soon. It looks bleak.

Maybe the US hold on them slips but I think there's a good chance that the European bourgeoisie without a much bigger stab in the back by the US (more than just abandoning Ukraine) still operate under the post-war delusion that they must maintain links with the US at all costs. More importantly they may be conscious enough of their class to recognize their position and understand the consequences of China rising unchallenged in the long-run and be willing to make a sacrifice as they have been doing for the safety of global capitalist hegemony even at the expense of their local profits.

I earnestly believe this will not have a chance to come to the point of causing tensions with France as they will be welded together, united in purpose to defend "the garden" in an attack on China or an attack on Africa to subjugate it again, to pull it away from BRICS and China and get to extracting again. That or a suicide run on Russia (after which they sit in the ruins of nuclear wasteland and pout at each other and the Americans and whine that the evil Russians ruined it all).

I very nearly wrote a comment about this long or longer going off on religion in reply to a post here but decided against it.

Christianity is a slave religion. It is not revolutionary. It is for the status quo, it demands slaves obey their masters, masters obey the state (render unto Cesar) and dangles above them all this idea that submitting here and now doesn't matter because you're on this plane of existence for 60-100 years and then if you're a good Christian you go to heaven literally forever and get to live in a paradise so it's just not worth struggling over. You can sit there as a smug slave, as a smug serf, worker etc as you're beaten and starved because you know you have a ticket of this, you know you have a reward waiting for you so none of this matters. The Protestant work ethic is the Christian work ethic. It demands false peace instead of justice, says CSA victims must forgive their abuser in their church and says that abuser as long as they repent to god (not even the victim, they don't matter) they're golden and their ticket to heaven remains reserved and they can stand up in front of church, forgiven by god and cannot be judged.

You want to be a Christian and push for a better world? Fine I'm not going to go out of my way to make fun of you but I am judging you because you're a cafeteria Christian, I find it unserious, you're picking and choosing and ignoring parts of your religion to suit what you want it to say. You're not an ounce of a more genuine Christian than the reactionary Christians who never do any charity at all who also pick and choose and twist the religion to be what you want it to be to suit your way of thinking.

Additionally Jesus says by the way that the OT is totally valid until he returns. Matthew 5:17-20:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter,[a] not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

I get you know being afraid of death. I honestly think it's the task of a world communist government to create a new religion for people who need this kind of thing, one that's defanged and harmless, one that cannot be misinterpreted in any charitable way to support bigotry, one with equal rights for women at its core and which is simple and short in tenets and wildly progressive. And it should make all the wanted promises, eternal life, etc, etc, only you don't confess to Jesus in your head, you confess to the local commissar in a self-crit and then you're forgiven unless it's a serious crime in which case you're imprisoned or sent to reform labor or whatever but promised your spot in the afterlife is preserved as a result. The point being not to go out of our way to preach and convert the masses to worshiping the party or anything bizarre like that but having an out, an option for these people so they don't get drawn into ancient, patriarchal, homophobic, reactionary ideologies.

It wasn't paused on China. This is just phase 2. Nothing has gone substantially wrong for the US plan.

I plead with you stop buying the circus in front of your eyes and look at the bigger, deeper picture.

IF Trump was rattled by China's retaliation he would include them in the pause and pretend it had nothing to do with them, he'd attempt to play it off as a global thing so as to not given undue impression of power on China's part. That he hasn't tells you he doesn't care.

The point of this was never hurting say India. It was always about China, other nations were included to disguise this fact and to shake them down because why not. Also to pressure them to bring them into the fold for the next phase.

But the fact that China's tariffs were increased, not removed tells you all you need to know. Namely they are absolutely dead serious about decoupling from China. I cannot crow about this enough given how many people in left online spaces have for years dismissed as impossible, absurd, ridiculous the idea of decoupling from China. I'm not happy about it but the US certainly seems to be pushing for a bifurcated world, one camp under their control, another camp for China.

India is not going to help China, they're a reactionary/fascist nation actively trying to ~~stab China in the back~~ weaken China and take their industry and courting the US for a trade deal which the US will give them in exchange for helping move important (iphone, etc) manufacturing from China to India for the US. China is courting them anyways in public but it won't work. The only real allies China has in this are likely to be Vietnam (maybe, US is trying to peel them from China and stoke division and these moves were going to badly hurt Vietnam but were pulled back), DPRK, Russia. The US likes those odds. The US feels it can deal with an isolated bloc of those countries and Trump feels he can maybe peel Russia away with time.

China made a call and Trump seized on them trying to stand fast and rally the world to them to fight the US by giving everyone else a reprieve and thus no reason to stand with China while he leaves them isolated and alone. They can't back down now so in a way I think Trump has them where he wants them. Namely standing alone, with the rest of the world negotiating with the US on terms which will doubtless include measures to pull them into the US orbit and away from China's orbit in exchange for tariff relief.

I don't disagree with China's call but they may have walked right into a trap of certain intent and design by the US. To be fair they didn't have any great choices. If they just bowed their heads and pleaded on their knees things would also be bad for them. I've heard that Trump admin has been refusing meetings with envoys and so Trump and co are lying about China not trying to negotiate, it's just a lie they're pushing while they refuse to listen or treat with China so they can justify all of this and cast China as the belligerent aggressor who doesn't want to be fair.

It's about isolating China. It's about creating economic interests and incentives that isolate China and I think its working at least at this stage. The pause will cause most countries to come and negotiate and most will be given relief for token concessions which Trump will trumpet as big deals and big wins. The US may indeed be intent on devaluing their currency to make exports competitive but as part of this they have to isolate China, they have to smash Chinese industry and competitiveness and look what we have? China standing alone against the US, calling out to other nations who even now slink away from it leaving it alone because no one else wants this fight, they all want to take the out because the US is still too strong.

China needs to use what strength it has to really hit the US.

Though I worry it doesn't matter. I worry they've built into their plans a hope that tariffs can continue to spiral out of control, that Chinese goods become unaffordable, that the economy crashes, that supply chains are forcibly rerouted and there are years of shortages but that they achieve a quick, fast, if painful decoupling from China leaving them free to isolate, sanction, blockade, and attempt to destroy China using their navy, their control of global finances to sanction and make trade with China for third party nations impossibly expensive or painful, and so on and use this to crush Chinese industry and economy, to break up the belt and road, to re-enslave the global south that China was trying to free with better loan and development terms. If that's the case and capital doesn't revolt and I think there's a very good chance it doesn't as at least tech capital seems to be standing with Trump and can always be bought off with specific exemptions for say Apple to import x amount per year not subject to tariffs then China has a hell of a fight ahead of them.

From the Chinese? No. From the US/collective west? Very much yes. Our world has not yet experienced an empire falling and being replaced by another empire* in the nuclear age.

*At least not unfriendly empires. The British/French empires would absolutely supplanted by US post WW2 hegemony but as the US was a white supremacist power like them it was more like handing it off to a relative than losing it to a total stranger which is how the racist rage will regard China taking first place. Additionally the interests of the European bourgeoisie were harmonized with US interests. The US in fact saved them from socialism by occupying western Europe and suppressing communists rather than what would have happened had the USSR won all on its own in Europe and then let them have buy-in. Though the Chinese have given western bourgeoisie some buy-in they have zero power unlike in the aftermath of the Europe to US empire transition.

Strategy of tension type operations IMO. They want western audiences panicked like they were when sputnik was new. They want them to feel they NEED to do the new world war so there isn't that much resistance if they decide to pull the trigger on fighting Russia and certainly for their planned upcoming fight against China. This may be a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing sure but it's not Iranians, it's not China, it's probably not Russia, and it's not extraterrestrial life. US just claims to have succeeded in their joint Navy-Army hypersonic weapons platform finally working so there's that too, once that's operational and they have them built up in some numbers it's go time versus China.

US proxies causing trouble for Russian allies and pressing forward the plans to destabilize the region as a pretext for greater-"israel" and solidifying their grip on the key part of the chessboard.

This is why I laugh at talks of Russia opening up another front against the US led order in retaliation for potential NATO troops pouring over into Ukraine as "peacekeepers". The US has already set so many fires around Russia and its allies, this and Georgia's on-going color revolution attempt, it's stretching itself and doesn't have the means to open another front. The US may not have Russia's production capacity for artillery but they don't necessarily need it when they can keep them bogged down with insurgent extremist proxies, color revolutions, etc which are all force multipliers.

The US is fully leveraging asymmetrical warfare to destabilize and encircle opponents. Mark my words, when Taiwan pops off there is a decent chance something else around China will also go off like an extremist uprising in Pakistan. That's one of my worries. The US sponsoring extremist islamist puppets in Pakistan to seize nuclear weapons and use them on China with enough distance and plausible deniability that they can get away with it or think they can at which point the Chinese have little they can do aside from nuking Japan or occupied Korea and even both of those risks escalation and lock-in to nuclear annihilation.