Nation states are resilient. That should be no surprise. People are amazingly resilient – otherwise human history would have ended long ago. Nation states are just really large groups of people so they have the traits of people. They can be incredibly resilient and incredibly stupid, often at the same time.
Humans are fun.
If you’re used to playing computer games where you get to be a character or you’re from the TV generation, this basic fact is hard to comprehend. Aren’t mysteries supposed to be solved in an hour, less with commercial breaks? Don’t statesmen get prompts asking whether they say something diplomatic or something counter-productive? The answer to both questions is of course, no. Humans are messy and complicated and annoying. They don’t resolve everything by the commercial break.
Half the time they don’t resolve anything by the end of the year, either.
Generations of instant gratification have not prepared us for the determination, persistence and just plain old dogged stubbornness that is the human race. We expect our political crises to be resolved by the end of the week so we can move on to the next outrage of the next news cycle. Whatta ya mean China hasn’t collapsed yet and the Ukrainians haven’t kicked the Russians out of their country yet?
SIGH.
China had an uptick in manufacturing this last quarter. So obviously, their economy has completely recovered and there won’t be an economic collapse. So you’d think looking at CNN and Reuters. But an uptick is not the same thing as a stabilized manufacturing sector. None of the foundational issues have changed as far as we know. Could this be the start of China pulling itself out of the economic hole its dug for itself? Sure. It could also be a total nothing burger. It’s too early to tell.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive hasn’t reached the Sea of Azov. So obviously, the war is lost and the US should stop sending support. So you’d think listening to some commentators on both sides of the aisle. But Ukraine isn’t the US and can’t must the kind of air superiority that lets the US run roughshod over anything foolish enough to get into a military conflict with us. Could this mean Ukraine will lose? Sure. But it could also just be another chapter in a longer book. It’s too soon to know.
International relations is a bit more football game than video game. Only it’s a football game that had a baby with a golf game. Sometimes fast and exciting, other times glacial and boring, nation states never seem to choose a regular pace. Oh, they try but just like we can’t always control the pace of our lives, nation states don’t have the best accelerators, either.
Oh, don’t think that China and Russia are the only teams in town. Japan and South Korea are both gearing up their defenses in light of Chinese aggression while staring down the barrel of a demographics crisis. Italy is trying to decide if it is going to keep running its economy into the ground or cheat its sizable population of old people out of the benefits they spent the last three decades paying for and are strangely unwilling to part with so the kids don’t get taxed to death.
Why is that political? Italy belongs to the EU and is WAY out of compliance regarding its vast amount of debt. Germany has its own problems and doesn’t want to bail out the rest of the EU again. Not that it will matter, between Ukraine and a number of insane EU policies coming home to roost, the EU is about to give California a run for its money in the governing yourself into a pit category.
Armenia found out the hard way that Russia isn’t much of a security partner. Iran has it in for Azerbaijan so don’t bet on this being much of a respite as the Southern Caucasus’s go from ‘tense’ to ‘hot war’. Gee, thanks for the help, India. India?
And so on – the road to international relations has never been paved. Doesn’t seem to have been graded anytime this century, either.
The point? Like I said a while back, there are no real crises, just the normal ups and downs of life in the big world. You can’t determine what’s going on with only a single event or data point. The world is way too complicated for that. But that means it also doesn’t go off half cocked every other day; it only seems like it does. Crazy and way too excitable for its own good, this neighborhood is remarkably stable.
That’s bad news for China and good news for Ukraine. China likely has a much, much steeper mountain to climb to get both its internal and external politics back into some semblance of control, assuming they can. Ukraine still enjoys a lot of support in the US House of Representatives despite the ‘loss’ of aid in the continuing resolution Saturday. For the record, that aid package had no business being in that bill and I suspect the Dems included it just to cause trouble for the Republicans. It did that, then backfired and in a few months they will be back to passing aid bills, if not sooner.
US politics are fun. Well, for us Americans, anyway. Probably scary as heck from the outside looking in but don’t fret, this is not the new normal; it’s the old normal back from vacation.
The telltale stuff is in the trends. No, not polling trends, those are unreliable. The trends that show themselves in current events. Hiccups are just outliers. Ignore the outliers. Look for the stuff that fits the overall patterns. Yes, I said patterns, plural. Nation states make teenage love triangles look simple by comparison.
So yes, I think China is still on its train wreck with destiny, for now. I’m waffling on whether or not they attempt a military action and where only because they may have already passed the point where they even have the real capability. India’s military hardware is surpassing theirs. Russia has way more experience and better tech. The US has submarines that actually work. Taiwan has the entire buffet and the support of most of the South China Sea. North Korea isn’t worth the effort and just might win anyway. That leaves Mongolia which isn’t even militarized.
Russia’s impressive trench lines and defenses in Ukraine kinda scream ‘desperation’ to my political Spidey sense. They may not last until January 2025 – in fact, it’s looking more and more unlikely. I hear a variety of opinions on mobilization but it’s probably not in the cards in the near term and that is not good for their over extended military. There might – I emphasize might – be an effort afoot to silence pro Ukrainian voices on YouTube in America. If so, stick a fork in it, they are done. When you need to prevent another country from sending military aid to a financially and militarily inferior opponent there isn’t enough left in the tank to make it until the West gets bored and goes to play with something else.
But that’s just how I see the trends shaking out today. There are bright spots for both China and Russia. I could be reading the trends wrong. Or the stubborn little authoritarian jerks may pull rabbits out of their respective hats. There are some pretty little ice castles on the hillside for both.
The avalanche may not care. Just saying.
