[BlutoSays]

What I mentioned earlier was the world order we set up after WW2. There were hundreds of things going on, and that took over a decade to build.

Sorry, but you are way out of your depth here.

Your debate methods are too predictable.

Just a top line sentence/edict based on your belief, not thought. Never get into the details. Lather, rinse, repeat.

[ckaihatsu]

Not even your hero Zeihan would agree that the US was global hegemon in 1945.

What I mentioned earlier was the world order we set up after WW2. There were hundreds of things going on, and that took over a decade to build.

Sorry, but you are way out of your depth here.

Your debate methods are too predictable.

Just a top line sentence/edict based on your belief, not thought. Never get into the details. Lather, rinse, repeat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_indu ... s_exporter

[Rich]

Psst, we won the Cold War...

Its amazing the lengths people will go with to defend FDR's cretinism. First off we didn't exactly win against against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union Communist party gave up. Millions upon millions of of Europeans were abandoned to totalitarianism for decades its far from clear that what happened in 1985 to 1991 was inevitable, their rule could have gone on much longer.

Secondly who exactly is this "we". We won as you put it as part of an alliance with China, China's allies such as the Khmer Rouge and Robert Mugabe, the Afghan Mujahedin, Pakistan, the Islamist regimes of Saudi, Kuwait and the Gulf States and other regimes such as the military dictatorship in Egypt who's shared values are quite minimal. We lost China and North Korea because of Roosevelt and their still lost.

[BlutoSays]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_indu ... s_exporter

My statement of late was his tactics in general. Late will never get hung up on details; just tell you that s/he is the ultimate authority on all things in the universe. Horseshit, but predictable.

Secondly, why would I believe SIPRI numbers? Do you really think Russia or China report their true numbers? Ours aren't accurate either, but more accurate than theirs, because we report everything defense related, as strategically stupid as it is.

China? WTF? China steals R&D from everyone, so of course their numbers will be much lower. A cut and paste from wikipedia ain't doing it.

[late]

Its amazing the lengths people will go with to defend FDR's cretinism. First off we didn't exactly win against against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union Communist party gave up. Millions upon millions of of Europeans were abandoned to totalitarianism for decades its far from clear that what happened in 1985 to 1991 was inevitable, their rule could have gone on much longer.

Secondly who exactly is this "we". We won as you put it as part of an alliance with China, China's allies such as the Khmer Rouge and Robert Mugabe, the Afghan Mujahedin, Pakistan, the Islamist regimes of Saudi, Kuwait and the Gulf States and other regimes such as the military dictatorship in Egypt who's shared values are quite minimal. We lost China and North Korea because of Roosevelt and their still lost.

What's not amazing is people not knowing what they are talking about.

After the war, we had no idea about how we were going to deal with Russia. Turned out there was one guy, George F Kennan, that did know. The Cold War was his idea, and at heart it was about economics. The economy of the USSR collapsed.

History involves a certain amount of work, and you clearly haven't done your homework...

[late]

Secondly, why would I believe SIPRI numbers? Do you really think Russia or China report their true numbers? Ours aren't accurate either, but more accurate than theirs, because we report everything defense related, as strategically stupid as it is.

Wiki discussed that, if you had read it...

For our purposes, SIPRI is good enough.

[Rich]

What's not amazing is people not knowing what they are talking about.

After the war, we had no idea about how we were going to deal with Russia. Turned out there was one guy, George F Kennan, that did know. The Cold War was his idea, and at heart it was about economics. The economy of the USSR collapsed.

History involves a certain amount of work, and you clearly haven't done your homework...

Oh dear! Another Liberal who can parrot a few sound bites from the Liberal school of fantasy and misinformation and imagines that they have some great knowledge.

First off it was not how to deal with Russia but how to do deal with the Soviet Union. There has been this filthy racist lie that Russians were responsible for Communism and imposed it on the non Russian minorities. The Bolshevik leadership was over represented in minorities. The Red Army was lead by a jew the first Secret Police was led by Pole. Latvian riflemen were key to the regimes survival in its first few weeks. It was the presence of German troops, both regular troops and then after the November 1918, Frei Korps units that swung the balance and kept Finland and the Baltics free from Communist rule.

At the end of the World War II the SU was led by Georgian. His secret police chief and the man who would replace him was another Georgian. His successor Khrushchev became a Communist when he was living in the Ukraine, becoming chairman of the local Soviet.

Good god the idea that Kennan was some master strategic genius. he was just a vast egotist who couldn't ever admit that he was wrong and he's become the go to cover up for Liberal cowardice appeasement and treachery in relation to the Communists. Kennan argued that Soviet union was an utterly impotent military threat after world war II, yet at the same time the US dare not send troops to Greece in case it provoked a Soviet intervention. Under Truman we lost China. this was the time of Kennan's greatest influence. Truman let the military run down, so when the communists launched their aggressive expansionist invasion of South Korea the military had to be hastily rebuilt back up.

[late]

First off it was not how to deal with Russia but how to do deal with the Soviet Union.


Good god the idea that Kennan was some master strategic genius.


Under Truman we lost China.

This was the time of Kennan's greatest influence. Truman let the military run down

so when the communists launched their aggressive expansionist invasion of South Korea the military had to be hastily rebuilt back up.

That is what the educated call a distinction without a difference. The government, at the time, of Russia was the USSR..

Kennan came up with the idea of the Cold War, and it worked.

We never had China. The idea that we could have had China is nuts.

We had a tradition of not keeping a big standing army that goes back to George Washington, and the Founding Fathers. Ever hear of them??

We didn't care about Korea, we didn't think anyone else would, either. In retrospect, that was a mistake.

[ckaihatsu]

Oh dear! Another Liberal who can parrot a few sound bites from the Liberal school of fantasy and misinformation and imagines that they have some great knowledge.

First off it was not how to deal with Russia but how to do deal with the Soviet Union. There has been this filthy racist lie that Russians were responsible for Communism and imposed it on the non Russian minorities. The Bolshevik leadership was over represented in minorities. The Red Army was lead by a jew the first Secret Police was led by Pole. Latvian riflemen were key to the regimes survival in its first few weeks. It was the presence of German troops, both regular troops and then after the November 1918, Frei Korps units that swung the balance and kept Finland and the Baltics free from Communist rule.

At the end of the World War II the SU was led by Georgian. His secret police chief and the man who would replace him was another Georgian. His successor Khrushchev became a Communist when he was living in the Ukraine, becoming chairman of the local Soviet.

Good god the idea that Kennan was some master strategic genius. he was just a vast egotist who couldn't ever admit that he was wrong and he's become the go to cover up for Liberal cowardice appeasement and treachery in relation to the Communists. Kennan argued that Soviet union was an utterly impotent military threat after world war II, yet at the same time the US dare not send troops to Greece in case it provoked a Soviet intervention. Under Truman we lost China. this was the time of Kennan's greatest influence. Truman let the military run down, so when the communists launched their aggressive expansionist invasion of South Korea the military had to be hastily rebuilt back up.

That is what the educated call a distinction without a difference. The government, at the time, of Russia was the USSR..

Kennan came up with the idea of the Cold War, and it worked.

We never had China. The idea that we could have had China is nuts.

We had a tradition of not keeping a big standing army that goes back to George Washington, and the Founding Fathers. Ever hear of them??

We didn't care about Korea, we didn't think anyone else would, either. In retrospect, that was a mistake.

Oh, fun. Nationalist geopolitics.

[late]

Oh, fun. Nationalist geopolitics.

Ignorance combined with a wilful refusal to learn is annoying.

Sometimes they say something so stupid is wildly funny. But mostly they are annoying, the internet version of mosquitos...

[ckaihatsu]

Oh, fun. Nationalist geopolitics.

Ignorance combined with a wilful refusal to learn is annoying.

Sometimes they say something so stupid is wildly funny. But mostly they are annoying, the internet version of mosquitos...

Oh, right -- as if what I'm lacking in that statement is *ability*, and/or *understanding*.

Hey, I won't *buzz* around ya -- go ahead and proceed down *that* pastoral path, Cold Warrior.... (grin)

[ckaihatsu]

So how's the empire *going*, anyway -- ? Is there an *app* for that?

[Potemkin]

We never had China. The idea that we could have had China is nuts.

Yes, you did. Chiang Kai-Shek was bought and paid for with Washington gold, almost a billion dollars of it. Which he and his corrupt family personally pocketed, before hightailing it to Taiwan. Lol.

[late]

Hey, I won't *buzz* around ya

You just did, for maybe the 100th time.

[late]

Yes, you did. Chiang Kai-Shek was bought and paid for with Washington gold, almost a billion dollars of it. Which he and his corrupt family personally pocketed, before hightailing it to Taiwan. Lol.

That's true, as far as it goes.

Where it doesn't go was what I was referring to. We weren't about to do a massive land war in Asia.

[Potemkin]

That's true, as far as it goes.

Where it doesn't go was what I was referring to. We weren't about to do a massive land war in Asia.

Indeed. Which meant that you had lost China. You had it, and then you lost it. Which is what @Rich said.

[Patrickov]

Yes, you did. Chiang Kai-Shek was bought and paid for with Washington gold, almost a billion dollars of it. Which he and his corrupt family personally pocketed, before hightailing it to Taiwan. Lol.

That's a exaggerated slandering of Chiang. He may be corrupt, but he did try to bring order to the country.

It took the overthrowing of his regime and the degeneration of the replacement regime after him to prove how wrong he was.

Sadly, the wrong I see in him is probably very different from the wrong you see in him.

[Potemkin]

That's a exaggerated slandering of Chiang. He may be corrupt, but he did try to bring order to the country.

It took the overthrowing of his regime and the degeneration of the replacement regime after him to prove how wrong he was.

Sadly, the wrong I see in him is probably very different from the wrong you see in him.

"They are all thieves, every damn one of them!" - Harry S. Truman

[ckaihatsu]

That's a exaggerated slandering of Chiang. He may be corrupt, but he did try to bring order to the country.

It took the overthrowing of his regime and the degeneration of the replacement regime after him to prove how wrong he was.

Sadly, the wrong I see in him is probably very different from the wrong you see in him.

'Degeneration' -- ?

Like the KMT was the *model* -- invoking the *October Revolution*, even -- so that everything *following* it (Mao) was 'revisionist', you're implying.

Not to excuse Maoism, though.

Much of the left around the world had enthused at the Cultural Revolution. In many countries opponents of the US war in Vietnam carried portraits of Mao Zedong as well as the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. The trite sayings in the Little Red Book of ‘Mao’s thoughts’ were presented as a guide to socialist activity. Yet in 1972, as more US bombers hit targets in Vietnam than ever before, Mao greeted US president Nixon in Beijing, and by 1977, under Deng, China was beginning to embrace the market more furiously than Russia under Stalin’s successors.

The Western media saw such twists and turns as a result of wild irrationality. By the late 1970s many of those on the left who had identified with Maoism in the 1960s agreed, and turned their backs on socialism. A whole school of ex-Maoist ‘New Philosophers’ emerged in France, who taught that revolution automatically leads to tyranny and that the revolutionary left are as bad as the fascist right. Yet there is a simple, rational explanation for the apparently irrational course of Chinese history over a quarter of a century. China simply did not have the internal resources to pursue the Stalinist path of forced industrialisation successfully, however much its rulers starved the peasants and squeezed the workers. But there were no other easy options after a century of imperialist plundering. Unable to find rational solutions, the country’s rulers were tempted by irrational ones.

Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 576

[Rich]

Yes, you did. Chiang Kai-Shek was bought and paid for with Washington gold, almost a billion dollars of it. Which he and his corrupt family personally pocketed, before hightailing it to Taiwan. Lol.

Indeed I believe the American's assessed that the Kuomintang leadership wasn't even really trying to stay in power, just embezzle as much money abroad before the end.

It should be noted that a lot of the so called isolationists in the lead up to American entry into World War II would be better described as Asialationists. They didn't have problem sticking their nose into other counties business, they just had a problem with doing that for the benefit of Britain and France. Winston Churchill famously said that he'd consider a deal with the Devil if he was against Hitler, which funnily enough was exactly how a lot of Irish and Irish Americans felt towards Britain.