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)