COVID to Afghanistan to Ukraine to Gaza, delineating American Prestige Loss and the End of Deterrence as a Concept

Greetings Friends. So this is a similar concept to what I've been talking about as far as the causality of current wars and so on but in theory is still worth thinking and writing about. If you listen to Western Military leaders a lot of it is about "How do we deter Iran or the Houthis from fucking with us" and fundamentally the question is why would they not care about the American military response. The answer is fundamentally we are away from the unique era where deterrence exists as Nuclear Weapon usage fades from living memory so those can't function as a deterrent until they get used again (which is more likely now than at any point since the early 1960s, but still not very likely); so we are back to Great Power politics or strategic competition or whatever and the concept of global Prestige is more meritorious than anything resembling deterrence...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................American Prestige started to fade with COVID as 1.2 million Americans died as a result of it compared to 5.8 million for the entire rest of the world, if the most powerful country suffers the most then that's an indication that they aren't actually that powerful anymore with the inability to stop the spread of a contagion (due to lack of social control or the president(s) being a moron or whatever), obviously there are a multitude more factors in how and why COVID happened the way it did but those are the ones that are prominent and easily perceived by friends and foes alike. After this we had the withdrawal from Afghanistan which might as well be a total defeat for a 20 year war which didn't accomplish much of anything and then the invasion of Ukraine and October 7th; at this point its safe to assume there isn't that much American prestige on the global scale on the whole so my question is how do you stop the decline of American prestige or is there a way to stop it............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................So fundamentally I think the only way to regain prestige is an extraordinary military success against a peer competitor; the US could technically win the war in Ukraine on a whim (and risk nuclear escalation) but that doesn't seem to be in the cards so we'll just have China be the only peer competitor in this scenario. IF China invades Taiwan and the US helps stop it inflicting a catastrophic defeat then the US will re-emerge as the world leader at least for 5-10 years; I still think China will get back in position and return to the pre WWI-ish alliance system state that we're in right now but technically the US does have an out for prestige regrowth assuming China invades Taiwan. If China just does nothing for 20 years then they will probably automatically become more prestigious over time as the US becomes less prestigious both because of that and additional other factors; mostly just the progression of time. China does appear to have a superior industrial base for military procurement presently even if we still have the technological advantage in most areas, so while we have the Gerald R. Ford aircraft Carrier we lack the ability to produce more of them quickly enough but China could theoretically produce more carrier strike groups over time with their larger naval production capabilities; same is true of other areas though I would assume the US still has the advantage purely for aircraft (this is a vague area with untested systems so on one actually knows until a war breaks out)

FFVII Rebirth Ending Analysis; Philosophically Similar to Ending E from Nier Automata; Schrodinger's Aerith (Spoilers)

Greetings Friends, a rare non geopolitics post though by the time the next FFVII sequel comes out (titled Reunion no doubt) Japan will very likely be in at least a large regional war if not a world war so basically any Japanese game that you were planning on playing in the next 2-6 years could get delayed indefinitely...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................So basically the question at the end of Rebirth is "Is Aerith dead or not?" I think to be dead in the traditional sense of FFVII she would have to not effect the plot of the third game until the very end with the summoning of Holy (Note this isn't necessarily where the third game will end but probably is in some way); but instead Cloud is perceptive of a timeline where Aerith is alive while everyone else is in a "normal timeline" (though Tseng is alive for no apparent reason) where she "died;" essentially the (8 hour long) ending is as ambiguous as it possibly could be; so the answer to the question of "Does Aerith die?" In FFVII Rebirth is "Yes... no... maybe? Also fuck Nomura" I think ultimately the most dead she could be in the third game is being a Jokerlike figure in Arkham Knight which is to say having more dialogue than every other character in the game but she'll also show up as a playable character during the final boss fights (of which there could be 15 consecutively); is that what you define as dead or will she be more properly dead by the end of the third game? They don't even have the scene of Cloud putting her body in the water which is the most "yo she's dead" scene that they could've put in; doesn't happen.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................As far as the general construction of the third game, they more or less did about 90% of the remaining plot in Rebirth, so you had 5% in Midgar with Remake (which is a much better, more coherent game with an outstanding soundtrack (Rebirth's is all over the place)); therefore the only plotlines still out there are Wutai (?) and the Northern Crater. Tifa's plot is completely butchered in Rebirth, they will probably retcon this and still have the Tifa saves cloud thing happen in Reunion but that doesn't mean they didn't butcher her plot in Rebirth. Fucking Zack is not even dead at the end of Rebirth, even he has no satisfying conclusion to being a ghost dream final boss helper man (complete with character tutorial and mechanics during the 27 phase final boss fight). Basically they have nothing other than nostalgia references to carry the third game with, and Rebirth itself was only particularly strong in a few key moments (though the combat gameplay is still fantastic), also Aerith being sort of alive doesn't mean she'll be a party member for much of the game though a Search for Spock situation could happen where she rejoins 10-15 hours from the end. Mechanically the game suffers a lot without Arcane Ward so it seems like they'll have to introduce some sort of caster character to make the combat jive again (or just keep Yuffie unnerfed so she can solo everything)..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................So why the Nier comparison; well 2B does in fact die with an actual departure scene and everything but there's an implication that her memory unit is still alive in the possession of pod, I think if they ever make a Nier sequel 2B will come back like halfway through the game. However Aerith is probably going to be effecting the plot of Reunion throughout the story, every time Cloud has an argument with Sephiroth in his head there'll be him having a conversation with Aerith too; so essentially she'll be omnipresent and might have more dialogue than everyone else in the game. To me that is more alive than 2B's current state though I would also argue that 2B is "alive" or potentially alive in the context of a Nier sequel, thus Aerith is in some state of living and not being actually dead despite sort of dying in some perceived reality (though again there's still some alternate timeline bullshit going on). Ultimately Nomura probably wanted to leave the potential of Aerith being properly alive and not just ghostly alive to the next game, but there really is no plot allure to the next game at all (though people will still play it just like people went and saw Rise of Skywalker), at best if they somehow integrate Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus into the core plot (not DLC) then it could be somewhat interesting though still a giant clusterfuck. Aside: Final playtime with Rebirth was 114 hours so it's somewhere around 2.5 times longer than traditional FFVII, plot threads resolved: 0.

Theorizing about General Wesley Clark's Cryptic Message in a CSIS Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk8_UBmKu0U Greetings Friends..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................CSIS has been producing some excellent content overall on virtually every topic of late, I think the North Korea focus is maybe a bit sketchy given the relative unlikelihood of a Korean conflict before the Taiwan conflict but I could easily be proven wrong on that point. The above youtube link is Clark's chat with Eliot Cohen "Reflections on the War in Ukraine" which is a wonderful video as far as being relatively apolitical and just assessing the military situation without non military biases; if you pay any attention to the news or any other media source this is a super rare thing to find on either side but Colonel Marcus Reisner's videos out of the Theresan Military Academy in Austria are a pretty consistent (if somewhat sporadic now) source.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................Anyway the point of this post is that Clark mentions classified information regarding the Battle for Kiev, so the question is what was he referring to? There are 3 or 4 high probabilty things or some combination of them, could be other stuff like the sinking of the Moskva though. The most obvious point would be propaganda information, the Ghost of Kiev nominally but also the long stuck convoy train; both of those stories were false but propagated everywhere and presumably only like 5-10% of people that saw them know they were at this point, that level of information control would be difficult to produce internally in Ukraine given the hectic nature of the moment so it being exterior seems fairly likely.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................A second point is the assassination of Russian Generals on the front line, I think there were 4 or 5 such commanders killed but not sure on the exact number, it is reasonably well documented (again questionable as to why that would be if it's not propaganda); I don't think the US actually killed them but probably relayed all the necessary information via satellite data and so on.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................A Third point is the peace talks in Turkey, this is something that is mentioned a lot on both sides right now but moreso from Putin's POV (famously in the Tucker Carlson interview); Putin says that the withdrawal from Kiev was part of those talks but I don't think that exactly lines up timing-wise; however the US disrupting those talks in some covert way is highly likely; its a very complicated situation so I suspect the truth will never be known on this one as to exactly what happened, most likely some 75% of the truth narrative will win out in 10-50 years and that'll be the story going forward in history books. The withdrawal from Kiev is probably the second most interesting aspect of the war so far, the most interesting by far being Prigozhin's mutiny (which is probably the most interesting event of my lifetime, and technically I was alive when the Soviet Union fell; obviously the Taiwan invasion commencing might trump it but maybe a blockade will be sufficient)

Guyana and General Demographics, Scarcity Issues Leading to War

So around a week ago the phenomenally unpopular Nicolas Maduro basically stood in front of a map that said 2/3rds of Guyana is part of Venezuela and gave a speech; it's not super clear whether this will lead to war precipitously or a thousand other possibilities but it is an interesting event. Maduro wants to shore up his absymal popularity and maybe attempt to fix the disastrous Venezuelan economy so what better way to do that than to invade your neighbor that has 1/35th your population and 1/40th to 1/100th the size of your military. The territory in question is extremely sparsely populated; it's kind of the inverse of Gaza, in Gaza you have 2+ million people in 141 Square Miles and in Essequibo you have roughly 125,000 People in 61,600 Square Miles; so 2 people per Square Mile basically. It is one of the densest Forests/Jungles on Earth and there's basically no one there so if theoretically Maduro was to occupy the coastline he would face little or no resistance presently.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................There's a wide variety of Oil interest in the location (especially Offshore) and the GDP per capita of Guyana entirely (~850,000 people) has tripled since 2020 and is now almost 8x the Venezuelan GDP Per Capita under Maduro, to put it bluntly I don't think Venezuela is even remotely capable of holding any of the Naval Territory in question which seems to be the main corporate interest but they can definitely hold a portion of the land territory if they want to; is there anything gained from doing that other than more sanctions and a 1% chance of Desert Storm 2.0 (Jungle Storm edition) is more debatable but if it's strictly a popularity or Military loyalty measure instead of an economic one (because Maduro is astonishingly inept in that department) then it could work.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................This next bit is just a musing secondary aspect of this and other recent posts; essentially the Demographics of the world have lined up to incentivize war before inevitable fertility decline but another point is that in 40-80 years or whatever the main fuel of existing war materiel will be much more scarce; so if you want to fight a war the time is now before everything is electronic drones that aren't very good at taking territory (but could be quite adept at holding it); in this scenario if you succeed in taking Taiwan and the Phillippines by 2070 or what have you and then fossil fuels are starting to run out it's possible you wind up in a similar world state to 1991 where there are very few disruptions for around a century until offensive drones and/or EMPs/EWS's are figured out; so if your country is in a strong position going into the scarcity period and the demographic decline phase then in theory it will prosper more in that environment; possibly even leading to an uncontested rise or unipolarity (unlikely admittedly but we are projecting to the far flung future at this point).

Ukranian Diaspora, Immigration Rates, and the Demographics of War

Source for the above image: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293564/ukrainian-refugees-in-poland/ Greetings friends, this is just a surmising of population values on a fairly simplistic level to determine likely outcomes for the near term in Ukraine (basically the next year and change); before the war started there were approximately 44 million people in Ukraine and 15 million have crossed the Polish border since then at a rate of around 25,000 a day; since May or June that number has gone up to as much as 40,000 and decreased a bit more recently (probably because of the winter). I believe the initial surge of immigrants had some male participants but they did at least attempt to close the border so it would just be women and children; I don't know what the current state of that law is but suffice to say the border has not closed and just in Poland there's somewhere between 5 and 7 million Ukranians as a result of the war (nearly doubling the size of some Polish cities for example)................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... The spring offensive as it was known happened somewhere between May and July and not very much changed, the Russians have counterattacked and also not accomplished much other than raw attrition; but fundamentally Russia just has more manpower and the Ukrainians aren't causing 4x as many casualties as they are receiving which is roughly the rate required to stabilize the conflict for all eternity. Therefore the war will end (for now) or have a ceasefire soon-ish and the purpose of this exercise is just to figure out when that should happen demographically. If we assume there's 30 million Ukrainians left in Ukraine presently and the willingness to leave over time does not change (so basically the immigration over the Polish border rate is constant at approximatley 25,000 which it has been for 1.5 years); then Ukraine is losing 750,000 people per month or 9 million per year; obviously at some point that rate would go down since you run out of people that are capable of leaving (I would have guessed this would have happened already but apparently it did not); but 9 million per year plus military attrition leaves us with 2.5-3 years as a maximalist depopulation; this isn't a reasonable thing to happen so at some point between peace talks will commence and then we'll have a frozen conflict for at least a few years (I would guess further Russian aggression later on, maybe like 8-10 years after the ceasefire, probably targetting Odessa first and foremost). As far as when that happens I'd guess middle of next year at the earliest and start of the following year at the latest; Even if NATO sends all of the armaments at its disposal they still won't send actual soldiers so essentially the war is a demographic certainty with current migration rates; that said insurgencies can be very powerful so I wouldn't anticipate much Russian offensive success either thus stalemate into peace talks is the rule of the day (with extensive fortifications thereafter and theoretically trying to get more Patriot Missile batteries and F-16s). I suppose if Russia realizes this they could try to deliberately extend the war for longer, as a rule of thumb pitching a long protracted war of attrition for 2+ more years isn't a very good marketing strategy though; no matter how much state control of media you possess.

Predicting Future War Trends, Alliance Systems, Willingness to Fight, Armageddon Potentials (not likely for 50+ years even though War is a virtual certainty)

Greetings Friends, this is mostly from a question my Dad asked and I answered in like 20 different short ways but I'll try to consolidate that here a bit. The above map is an okay representation of current geopolitics though south america should be green and Indonesia/India/Malaysia should also be green; Australia is blue for the time being but probably not after the Philippines fall/accede to China whenever that is (25-75 years). We are in a state where there is mass militarization in the places where war is most likely to happen therefore war will happen (and there's somewhere around 8 wars going on right now or on the cusp of going on in some cases); however the alliance systems in place do not lead to a chain reaction of death and destruction like the first and second World Wars; even if a NATO country was directly attacked most likely they would only receive military support and maybe aerial support, so just a little bit more involved than in Ukraine; also if the war in Taiwan had not started by then there might still be a perceived interest in pursuing a stalemate instead of a total victory (which seems to be the default conclusion of every modern conflict except for Azerbaijan/Armenia where one side clearly won)...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... As to Taiwan the war is extremely likely because of mass militarization and also demographics, China has reached the point where they don't need to get richer and being richer doesn't enhance their prestige much but winning or even having a partial military success against the US is an enormous prestige boost for them and a lot of the education system in China inspires young people to be interested in things like Nationalism and belief in the National Idea/Willingness to fight in the army; anything that reinforces those notions greatly strengthens China further. In the West there is a very minimal interest in these sorts of things because fundamentally the system was built on the lie/false belief/stupidity to think that the entire world would embrace western values, trade freely forever, and allow resources from poorer countries to gradually be siphoned to richer countries forever (and then be consolidated in the hands of a few hundred people mostly). To put it bluntly Singular Globalization died with COVID and has continued to die afterward but there are now multiple trading hubs and throughroutes for shipping and so forth so that there actually multiple models of globalization which is generally the way forward................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Apologies if the previous paragraph sounded Marxist as I've become less and less Marxist over time, I no longer perceive Capitalism as the evil itself but rather foolish and terrible academic and political systems where everyone buys into the same notions without questioning them; the cult following of the Francis Fukuyama End of History narrative which was always specious but maybe true for 5-10 years and just an outright fabrication after that point. Essentially every academic that has a decent point of view on foreign relations is from 30 years ago because that's when diplomacy actually existed, it wasn't just "you accept our values and get slightly richer, we get a lot richer, thanks" which has been the case for at least 20 years and is now falling apart entirely. The mass exportation of values worldwide concept was just a trusted aspect of socialization for decades so now everyone thinks that there is one specific way that everyone should feel about every social issue (or one of two different ways in a bipolar political system), and that somehow this should apply to every country in every situation throughout time. This is just an unbelievably foolish, even utopian ideal that isn't applicable to reality and probably never was, sure China would take your investment but they wouldn't care what dumbass shit you were spewing with it; they just wanted to get wealthier..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................So we're left with a situation where China is essenitally in an unlosable position, it's just a matter of how fast they want to move; do they let 600-700 million people die off in the Age Pyramid before witnessing ascendancy or just wait for things to naturally go their way. Unfortunately I don't think the latter is even remotely likely currently; but with some Nixon-esque diplomacy if some thunderbolt from heaven descended on a mass of incompetent dipshits in the political system it's probably not a completely unfixable situation at least as of 2023; that seems farcically unlikely so we can just assume that Taiwan will be invaded and the US will not have 50,000 missiles in Okinawa to shoot down every LST (Amphibious Assault Ships) before it can reach the shore; if all China does is get a beachhead and hold it they've essentially done enough to damage US prestige; the frozen conflict state is default as expressed before so having nominal control over Taiwan with some resistance is probably pretty likely and then 5-10 years after that they attempt to remove US influence from the Philippines. China doesn't want to conquer anything that's not Taiwan as far as I can tell but they do want nominal trade/sphere of influence control over basically every country between China and India (possible Australia or New Zealand could be exempt); this will probably happen naturally before 2100 but based on current trends it will be decided by war and not slower more methodical diplomacy, if that even exists anymore.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................All of that said China Vs Taiwan/US/Japan is a localized conflict and probably wouldn't result in further wars elsewhere, fairly small theater and the fanciest weapons ever used being thrown at each other to see who wins; Taiwan will suffer immensely but non Taiwanese casualties will be "light" compared to Ukraine and the purge of Palestine (though heavy compared to Iraq and Afghanistan); once that was happens I think other wars will happen elsewhere because of lack of US ability to intervene or even wave a finger and also just the global norms of conflict have already reverted to the Pre-WWI state. Nuclear weapons exist but their usage is not in living memory so someone will have to use them again if they're going to function as a deterrent, conventional war is brutal and horrible but not as intolerable as everyone dying instantly so no amount of conventional force would function as a true deterrent between peers.

Artillery Production Incentives (Ukraine, Russia, Every Country that Borders Russia, Why would China want to supply Artillery Ammunition to Russia logic path

Greetings Friends, I've been watching a decent amount of Perun videos of late which are mostly focused on logistics vis-a-vis modern militaries and the War in Ukraine especially; but in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zcUe47xerQ toward the end he seems to have meandered, briefly, into an interesting point; what is the logical incentive for China to supply Russia with ammunition; is it to ensure Russia doesn't fail or succeeds or to have any direct impact on the war (unlikely) or is it to build up and sustain their own industrial production of ammunition for future conflicts. This is most assuredly going to happen in every country that has an eastern border with Russia or Belarus (So Finland, Poland, the Baltic States etc.); but China itself may simply want more ammunition even of shorter distance variety at some point in the future. So by supplying Russia with ammunition now they are developing engineers and factories for future wartime production; thus pre-emptively taking advantage of a "War Boom" production model. All of that being said everything points to stalemate in Ukraine aside from potential Russian Civil War randomly negating that which went back to being kind of unlikely but hard/impossible to tell.