EU Spectacle
The word spectacle is carefully chosen, since this is what the current drama of which Greece is the symptom, not the cause, has become. It no longer bears any relationship to coherent democratic leadership or process of governance in a workable political and currency union. The cancellation at a moment’s notice of a summit of all EU leaders is extraordinary.
There is a problem with Greece, but it is not that difficult to solve. Indeed this blog working alone would be able to negotiate a workable solution. What is proving impossible is to find an acceptable solution, because the institutions normally established to process decision making at national and international levels are not there, or there in such abundance nobody can detect who is in charge. And to make matters worse the structure of the currency itself is unsustainable as it lacks a treasury and a finance minister answering to an elected government. A committee of finance ministers at loggerheads, elected by only one member state in each case, on conflicting mandates and to differing electoral timetables will work only in the good times and becomes dysfunctional under pressure.
So all we know at this moment is that Greece may or may not go bust tomorrow, the euro looks more like an impediment to growth than an engine of it, and the reputation of the EU as a coherent political union is severely damaged. Beneath that a big gap is developing between the north and the south of Europe, between the politicians and their electors everywhere and between those in the eurozone who want to stand firm to high principle even if it brings the whole thing down, led by the Germans, and by those who feel pragmatic reality demands compromise, led by France and Italy.
At the heart of of this crisis now engulfing the whole EU are three violated principles. You cannot have a democratic political union without an elected forum from which all authority flows. You cannot have a currency which cannot be printed. You cannot have capitalism which does not permit debtors to go bust. The first is violated because the whole EU is wrongly configured. The last two are rescinded because Germany says No.
message 451:
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Linda
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Nov 18, 2015 07:57AM
You are very well informed about current events. You think a lot about them and write about them, too. Do you have any ideas that haven't been tried yet about how to deal with the Islamic State? You obviously don't like my suggestion about occupation. What would you suggest instead? Have you read about any suggestions that you support?
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On New Years Eve we always play a predictions game. We list various categories such as weather and politics, etc and try to guess what will happen in the coming year. This December 31 obviously we are going to predict the next American President, for instance. We also guess things like what trip we will take,etc.and even what crazy thing might happen next. Then we send the answers by email back to me. I don't read them. I store them on my computer. We print them out. On New Year's Eve we read aloud what we all predicted one year before. We score the answers to see who has the most accurate predictions and announce a winner. Then we answer questions for the next year and seal them again. We've been doing this for many years. Do you have any predictions for the coming year? What do you think will happen to Islamic State? Who will be the next American President? Anything else you care to make a prediction about?
What always amazes us when we grade our answers is how we failed to predict all the crazy things that happened during the year. But that's part of the fun of it.
Lots of interesting points you make but tonight having just got home I have to fix dinner for my daughter who is coming over and afterwards I shall be too tired to make sense! More tomorrow.
Linda wrote: "On New Years Eve we always play a predictions game. We list various categories such as weather and politics, etc and try to guess what will happen in the coming year. This December 31 obviously we ..."That sounds a really interesting game. I tend not to make predictions, but I do analyze events unfolding and then predict the potential outcomes. I have not got enough 'feel' for the US Presidency yet, so I am in as much fog as everybody else. That will change when the primaries get under way.
I can say that Europe would be happy with Hilary, quite likes Rubio, would be wary of Bush because of the baggage of his brother (ok about his Dad)and would regard Trump as a joke that would make it impossible to take the US seriously. The outsider Bernie Sanders would, if he won, become a popular hero because of the populist/socialist flavour of his politics.
Where did you go for lunch in London? I always like to hear about the menu. You and your friends seem to know just where to go. Thanksgiving here is one week from today. So I'm thinking about food and recipes.
I was reading through your previous comments and noticed that you said you had a phone that was Chinese. I've never heard of Chinese phones. What is it called? Does it work reliably? If you had to write a review of it, what would you say? Right now I have an Apple iPhone 6 that I got last Christmas. It's not a top of the line model. It's about average. But the biggest problem with it is that it's too expensive. It cost me about $450.00 to buy it. Then it cost ridiculous amounts of money to operate it while in Europe and on the ship. I think my top bill for July was about the purchase price of the phone all over again because of roaming and calls at sea. You'd think there would be a more sane alternative! Gary had an Apple Fire phone. That cost about $90.00 to buy on Prime. He liked it because of the connectivity with Amazon. He could read Kindle books on it, too. But the screen broke all the time. Recently the puppy broke it. Now we find that Amazon doesn't make it anymore, and he doesn't know what to try next. I'm getting Kenny his first Apple iPhone for Christmas this year. It's an iPhone 5 unlocked this time. That means there will be no commitment for a 2 year contract. But in order to get it unlocked I had to pay $450.00 again just yesterday when I bought it! Gary doesn't like Apple, and I don't know what else to buy now.
Do they sell Chinese phones in the US?
You say you have a laptop from China? That really confuses me. I certainly didn't know that China made personal computers. I thought all personal computers were either Apple or PC's.
Linda wrote: "You are very well informed about current events. You think a lot about them and write about them, too. Do you have any ideas that haven't been tried yet about how to deal with the Islamic State? Yo..."The problem with IS is that America sees itself as the solution, but it is actually the problem. The world is now much more nuanced than in the previous hundred years. It is no longer a world of goodies and baddies. But America still views the world through that out of date prism. So it is fighting IS and is allied to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, while opposed to Iran and Russia. Yet its allies are arming and funding IS and its enemies are fighting it.
After Paris France has become formally allied to Russia in Syria and Putin has ordered his forces to cooperate with the French as allies. Russia has increased its firepower to included huge strategic bombers (looking rather like Concord) and cruise missiles fired from aircraft, submarines, and surface ships. France has moved an aircraft carrier into the war zone and increased its air strikes. Iran has beefed up Assad's forces which are now advancing.
America is fixated on getting rid of Assad, which is irrelevant, whereas everybody else now realizes that the survival of the Syrian state is now critical to building some kind of political settlement.
IS is the product of the fiasco of the War on Terror. This destabilised the region, has produced three failed states, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, cost billions and made matters much worse. Militarily the combined weight of Russia, France and Iran is enough to stabilise Syria if that is possible. Iraq is a bigger problem because there is no proper form of government, although we pretend there is. The only way out is to break up the region into Kurdish, Shia and Sunni independent states, while leaving what is left of Syria intact.
The UK government is still publicly backing the US, but has adopted China (with whom America is presently trying to pick a quarrel over the disputed islands in the South China Sea) as its Big New Friend. Chinese media have had wall to wall coverage of the Chinese president riding in a gilded coach in London, addressing both House of Parliament, and dining with the Queen.
Without saying much about it the UK has sent a D- Class destroyer which is the world’s most advanced ship for air and missile defence, to guard the French carrier, its tanker planes to refuel the French jets in mid-air and is guiding them into their targets with its surveillance planes. So covertly Britain too is allied to Iran and Russia.
Britain is pouring money into its security services and its surveillance platform because it knows that you cannot defeat terrorists in head on combat on their territory, but you can defeat them by foiling their terror campaign in your homeland.
The best possible thing that America could do now, but it has not the courage to do it, is to walk away from the Middle East. It does not need a single thing the region has to offer. It has all the oil and energy it needs. It does not need to get embroiled . Let them all get on with killing each other if they want to. It is not and never has been America’s problem.
France is there because of the baggage of its North African empire, Russia is there because it faces a major threat from IS in Chechnya, Iran is there because it faces a direct threat from the Sunnis and the Gulf States are mixed up in it because they have too much money out of too much oil. Britain is there because it dreams that once it was a world power and also because it hopes to profit from the pieces.
America is only there because it sees itself as the world policeman or it imagines its way is the best and everyone else should follow. Both concepts are way out of date. Time to kiss a affectionate goodbye to history and step into today. Because today is where we live.
Linda wrote: "You say you have a laptop from China? That really confuses me. I certainly didn't know that China made personal computers. I thought all personal computers were either Apple or PC's."Oh dear, I fear you are missing out. China makes everything and it is all top quality. On the computer front they bought the PC side of IBM and developed it.
Lenovo is the brand name here. I have their Laptop which operates Windows Ten (Microsoft) and their smartphone which operates on the Android system, which is the same as Samsung use. Any ideas you have about poor quality forget. Chinese stuff is mega quality and mega reliable. And its very good value. The smart phone costs about $100 in your money and the laptop about $700 complete but it is very powerful at 8G. If you scale down to 3 or 4G it is cheaper.
Always buy the phone yourself outright, then do a sim card only deal with a provider.It is much better value and you are not locked in.
I have checked you can get Lenovo phones and laptops on Amazon.com. The phones are to be rebranded Motorola soon because they have bought that as well.
"Today is where we live". Yes, but today is a product of our past. Britain was the one who embroiled us in the Middle East. It used to "occupy" Egypt for one thing. Mid-East Headquarters --- Edward's kind of place --- used to be in Cairo. It also had troops in Jerusalem fighting Arabs. In Captive at the Berghof Edward goes there, too, briefly and stays at the King David Hotel while Helga gets their friend, Mrs. Roberts, to abscond with Thomasina to visit Hitler on the Obersalzberg. The US is fated to get involved wherever Britain was once involved. The real question is why Britain got involved there.
Yes, I used to always have "unlocked phones". But last year about this time when I bought my Iphone 6, the locked version was $450.00 and the unlocked version was about $1300.00 or more! I was a little short of change that week and opted for the $450.00 model with the 2 year contract. Supposedly the Hot Spot service is superior in the model with the contract, though. I used to have a device with a $25.00/month subscription called Virgin Mobile. That "hot spot" service was inferior. So I don't know what to do about that. Also the Apple iPhone enabled Gary to receive a business call from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean! I thought that was quite incredible and took a movie of it when on the ship. I couldn't believe it at the time. With our previous phones we couldn't do that.
I just got Byron: A Portrait in the mail. I’m going to look up the story about burning his autobiography. I’ll let you know what I find.
I also finally viewed my skiff at sea footage from the trip. I’m trying to post that.
Linda wrote: "Yes, I used to always have "unlocked phones". But last year about this time when I bought my Iphone 6, the locked version was $450.00 and the unlocked version was about $1300.00 or more! I was a li..."I think iPhones are the choice for business use but for more limited applications which are still mind blowing in their extent, the Android system which powers 90% of smart phones is fine.
Apple actually has only about 15% of the market but because they have such a huge profit margin they have more cash in the bank than the federal government. And people are willing to pay because they deliver something special.
Virgin Mobile is a British owned provider.
Linda wrote: ""Today is where we live". Yes, but today is a product of our past. Britain was the one who embroiled us in the Middle East. It used to "occupy" Egypt for one thing. Mid-East Headquarters --- Edward..."And a very good question too. It should not have, but it was a mix of wanting to keep the French or Germans out and never quite getting over losing the American colonies. Britain never tried to build an Empire in Europe but it wanted to control everywhere else. America saw itself as the inheritor of the empire and it has been a driver of the Federal Government since the end of WWII.
Part of this has always seemed to me to be to do with the fact that the Federal Government does not really have enough to do in the US and its power is limited. Except for Foreign policy and the military, where it has more or less a free hand. This has led it to look everywhere but home and allowed the military, which has always been a huge player at Federal level to get too big. This actually creates the threats it then confronts.
One or two of the Republican hopefuls are calling for retrenchment and I think that idea might catch on, not least because the Republicans want lower taxes. America's defence budget is not only the biggest, but it is significantly bigger than all the big military spenders put together ie Russia,China, Saudi Arabia, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan put together. Yet just one on their own of four of those countries have the power to wipe America from the map. It is a ridiculous overspend which does not buy security and vastly more than needed for deterrence.
It perhaps explains why the US has only $ 119 billion in the bank and China has $ 3.6 trillion. And why America's debt mountain, much of it owed to China is now a handsome $17.5 trillion. Your new President will have quite a big in tray but believe it or not the finances are better than when Bush 2 left office. This is because Reagan and the two Bushes ran vast deficits as they liked low taxes and military mega-spending. Funnily enough Clinton managed to run a surplus.
I'm finally back on Goodreads.We both agree that the US inherited Britain's foreign interests. But we disagree about your other points. For some reason you see America on the decline. I see it at its summit or even on the rise. Strange. But I guess it's because nobody can really tell what's going on since we're living through it. You can point to one statistic. I can point to something else that seems to contradict it. The difference I think is in what interpretation or what emphasis to put on that statistic. I'm willing to believe your statistic that the US has only 119 billion in the bank and China has 3.6 trillion, though I suspect there's some sort of "fudge" room here. But I don't think it matters what the US has in the "bank" because it's the only country right now that can print money safely. Why do I say that the US can print money at will right now? That's because right now it's the foundation of the capitalist system that rules the world. That's why it doesn't matter if a rating service downgrades its bonds. It's a meaningless act. So in effect it has an infinite reserve right now. It could say that it has any sum you name.
Not that it's a good idea to print money. but it can if it wants to. That's the thing.
P.S. By the way Britain is perceived to be number 2 in this hierarchy. On 9/11 when the stock markets closed in New York instantly trading resumed in London. Everybody knew where to go in the Anglo pecking order. Anglo right now in the world is very dominant and growing. Look how many people speak English and feel that they must learn English.
P.S.S. Translation into and out of English is an exploding job category.
Many Chinese want to learn to speak English. Very few Americans or Brits want to learn Chinese. Also the heads of government in England and America usually take pride in speaking only English. They act like they alone don't have to speak other languages. On the Continent the very foundation of the EU is speaking many languages at once. This by the way is the largest translation market --- the EU.
Little known fact: Did you know that the Russian government has a rule that all documents MUST be translated into English. The US government obviously doesn't translate hardly anything into Russian. Ditto the British government.
The three leading currencies of the world are the US dollar (Canadian dollar sort of is the same thing), British pound, and the euro.
The Russian oligarchy and Putin keep all their investments in foreign currencies, especially dollars, pounds, and euros, maybe Swiss francs too. They think of their currency as the money for the poorer sort of Russians. Strange. I bet the Chinese do something similar but you don’t know about it. They like to keep all things hidden.
Linda wrote: "I'm finally back on Goodreads.We both agree that the US inherited Britain's foreign interests. But we disagree about your other points. For some reason you see America on the decline. I see it at i..."I agree with most of your points; except the printing of money. Yes the US printed $ 4.5 trillion after the crash, but the UK printed £375 billion and the ECB is presently printing a trillion Euros.
At the end of the day you see America as the best country on earth. I don’t. I see it as a great country but with flaws. I know for a fact that it does not have the same influence on this side of the Atlantic and in Europe as was once the case. It is not because America is weaker, it is that others are growing stronger. As for the stock exchanges, New York and London are the gold standard, but since 2001 the Dax, Hong Kong and the Shanghai exchanges have become major players. It is now a world where power is less concentrated than when there were just two blocks.
Britain has begun to see that ,which is why it is reaching out to China at the very same time as the US is squaring up to her. It always seems to me that the State Dept is driven by the Pentagon. Our Foreign Office went through a spell when it was just a branch of the State dept, but more recently it has come under the drive of the Treasury. Trade was always the driver of the Empire.
Many countries in the world still see America and Britain as one. An Empire in all but name seeking always to project power. Of course HQ is now Washington not London. Something else interesting. We are in the process of completing the building of two vast aircraft carriers second only in size to the US mega carriers. The reason given for this deluded strategy is that it will enable us to defend our homeland by projecting power overseas. Where have we heard that before I wonder. Cameron says that only the US will have greater air power at sea.
Linda wrote: "Little known fact: Did you know that the Russian government has a rule that all documents MUST be translated into English. The US government obviously doesn't translate hardly anything into Russian..."Although he never does in public, Putin speaks very good English.
One of the reasons English is becoming the world common language is that it is not a'virgin' tongue. It is made up of Latin, French and Norse. A lot of French. That is why we have two or three words for almost everything and why as a writer one rarely has to repeat oneself in a scene.
I don't see America as the "best" country on earth. I see it as the most powerful. It had an ugly birth on July 16, 1945 with the test of the first atomic bomb outside Socorro, New Mexico which I have now driven past several times. Unfortunately the atomic bomb symbolizes more than anything else the military power that the US holds. It has for the foreseeable future ended conventional warfare among major powers. That's one of the major reasons you see terrorism. No one can mount a conventional attack against the US --- that means Britain, too. You might counter by saying lots of other countries including some rogue countries have the atomic bomb, too. But studies have shown that they can't really operate the bomb. Apparently it takes a sophisticated military/industrial complex to even drop one successfully. Dirty nuclear bombs won't cut the mustard except in fiction (I have one in my novel The Black Stone that destroys Washington, D.C.). You notice that Russia almost blew itself up playing with nuclear weapons.
All this stuff about the US and the atomic bomb always included Great Britain from the inception. Great Britain knew about Los Alamos. British scientists were present. But apparently Britain couldn't have carried it out alone. To invent the bomb you had to create a secret city. European countries don't have room for this. Where in England would you put a secret city like Los Alamos or even Oak Ridge, Tennessee to name two of them? (This past summer we drove past Oak Ridge outside Knoxville, too).
I don’t mean that other countries don’t literally print money, especially Great Britain which follows the same economic model. What I mean is that the US is the only country that can print money without consequence except possibly the historic consequence in the future. (I’m surprised that the EU is printing money. It’s not what Germany believes in. ) Most countries risk inflation and a host of other economic ills by printing money. The US doesn’t. Nor does it have any risk from bond rating agencies, etc. What it risks in the nebulous future, of course, is that someday, somehow it will get knocked off the top of the stack by unforeseen, unknown powers or forces.
I don't know what you mean by the US doesn't have the same influence on your side of the Atlantic. You amazed me several months ago by revealing the American military base in Britain with joint operations. I didn't know that still existed. I don't care who the US President happens to be. If Germany and England tried to go to war again, which sounds ridiculous, we would not allow it.
I agree that the US and Britain have to act as one when it comes to foreign policy. It's the Anglo dominance in culture, politics, language, and economics. All those things originally came from Britain to America and then got an American gloss. The rest of the world would think it was silly and ridiculous if the US and Britain disagreed with each other. Needless to say it would make the Anglo dominance less compelling.If the US and Britain and what was Britain's Anglo Empire including Canada and Australia aren't dominant, what is? It would be very hard to argue that the language isn't dominant. Capitalism springs from Adam Smith and England. Pop music seems to be an Anglo/American thing, too, as do popular movies as well as the genres of fiction that we write.
This great migration of people from the Middle East trying to come to Europe proves what I am saying. They hear about western things in the media, and they want it, too. They like democracy, capitalism, etc. which they can't find in the Middle East. The Great War seemed to have been caused by the Industrial Revolution and various democratic revolutions that shook the world one hundred years ago and is still shaking it one hundred years later.
I see I have stimulated you into making a number of very good points and I am going to let them ride.The are two things I would say.It was the British scientist, Rutherford, who first split the atom and Britain was the first to start work on the A bomb, but had not the money (or the space) to complete it so FDR took it over and the two countries combined their efforts under American leadership at Los Alamos. After the war congress would not allow Britain to share in its own secrets because it had elected a Socialist govt. that some in Washington feared would go pro Soviet. This made the Brits furious so they went on to develop their own.
They then built their own H.Bomb but Eisenhower persuaded Macmillan to use the American design for full production because it would make it easier for joint servicing of weapons. I suspect Ike wanted the Brits to stop development work anyway. We now have Trident which is American but we build our own submarines and warheads which are MIRV.
It may be that some of the countries with apparent nuclear weapons have unreliable systems, but the French, Russian and Chinese are top class.
China is the third country after the US and Russia to successfully put a man into space.Actually it has also sent up a woman.
At the moment Americans are ferried to the international space station on Russian rockets as the US has not got a working passenger system at the moment. There is a new one in development and talk of returning to the moon, I saw on the news the other day.
Here is a statistic that you will love. The country in the world which attracts the most inward investment is the US. The country which invests more in the US than any other is the UK.The country in the world which attracts the second highest volume of inward investment is the UK.The country which invests most in the UK is the US.
However in 2015 it appears another country has taken the top spot for inward investment. Yes you guessed it. China.
I'm not talking about countries which can boast they have the atomic bomb. I'm talking about countries that could use the atomic bomb. Of course this is somewhat theoretical since no country has done so except the US bombing the Japanese in 1945 to end WW2. In other words just because you boast you have a bomb doesn't mean you could use it. For one thing it doesn't detonate automatically. There are built in safeguards against this when it is being transported for one thing. Then it has to be delivered from the air. You can't just throw it around. And your bomb has to be built to have sufficient power. None of this is easy. It's not likely that China could do any such thing. Nor France either. Forget Russia. Remember they almost blew themselves up. I can't say what Britain could do by itself. But since it won't act by itself anymore without us involved it's an academic question. That's the formula for military dominance. No one can really USE the atomic bomb besides the US.
In other words the Cold War scenario of mutually assured destruction was just a myth. It was like a science fiction movie that we used to scare ourselves with. We had no reason to fear the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the Russians had reason to fear us. After all, we had actually used the bomb. But you can't go throwing atomic bombs around. Lots of the top scientists who worked at Los Alamos later regretted that they had invented the bomb after they witnessed its destructive potential in terms of radiation, which was something they hadn't calculated on.
I see you don't dispute the dominance of the English language. That's because it is a fact. No one can really dispute it anymore than they can dispute the dominance of capitalism.
You seem to love to talk about China. I never thought much of that country. When I studied the East I always preferred Japan. I guess this is something I never mentioned to you. It never came up. When I was in junior high and high school my favorite novel was The Tale of Genjii by Lady Murasaki from about the year 1000 in medieval Japan before the age of the shoguns. She wrote the novel on rice paper. To this day she is considered Japan's greatest novelist, sort of like the Japanese Shakespeare. I also liked Yukio Mishima from the twentieth century. He was a dark, brooding figure who wrote menacing novels such as the Temple of the Golden Pavilion. He is sort of like Dostoevsky but even darker. I don't think he would be to my taste now. When I was in college I took one course on Japanese history and culture. But China never interested me, despite the fact that one of my best friends in high school was a first generation Chinese girl. P.S. I also like Japanese paintings of waves that look like mountains and snow clad mountains that look like waves.
By the way the British translation of The Tale of Genji by Arthur Waley is a classic.
Linda wrote: "I see you don't dispute the dominance of the English language. That's because it is a fact. No one can really dispute it anymore than they can dispute the dominance of capitalism."Agree, but there are degrees of capitalism and a lot of variations of it. Europe's model is more socialist than the US, as you have pointed out before.
Linda wrote: "You seem to love to talk about China. I never thought much of that country. When I studied the East I always preferred Japan. I guess this is something I never mentioned to you. It never came up. W..."I think you are much more inspired by art and history than I am. My inspiration comes from what is going on in the world right now. And the China of Nixon's day is nothing like the China of today.
I have watched the meteoric rise of China which although still a communist country has become the world's second capitalist power. It is astonishing when you think about it. And it still has a long way to go.
Linda wrote: "I'm not talking about countries which can boast they have the atomic bomb. I'm talking about countries that could use the atomic bomb. Of course this is somewhat theoretical since no country has do..."Linda I hate to say this but this post is complete nonsense and you do not know what you are talking about. You are living in a land of make believe if you really imagine there is a shred of reality in this.
The atom bomb is superseded by the hydrogen bomb which is vastly more powerful, bombs have been replaced with missiles, missiles have been upgraded with multiple warheads. Be in no doubt that that Russia, France and the UK can deliver the goods spot on.India, Pakistan and North Korea have missiles and warheads but there is doubt about the reliability of their systems and whether they would hit their target or somewhere else.
But the idea that only America knows how to use nuclear weapons is so laughable I cannot believe you said it. You are 50 years out of date! You need to do a bit of reading. This will get you started.It is about China.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-...
America, France and Russia all house their main deterrent in submarines which are on continuous patrol and undetectable. Under a post cold war agreement, they are not ready targeted , but can be by computer in about 15 minutes. The biggest threat now comes from hackers who may be able to disable the firing or guidance systems. Hence the huge investment in cyber warfare.
Here is a bit more. It tells you who has what.
http://www.businessinsider.com/nine-n...
To be fair you are a literary scholar and historian and writer and there is no earthly reason for you to be familiar with issues connected with the strategic balance and so forth. I am at the moment writing about the issue of the U.K. Nuclear deterrent in connection with my book. Decisions have to be taken about its renewal, upgrades and new submarines which are being argued about politically.But you may find it helpful to get a little more up to date. There is an argument that says that these things no longer deter because they are too powerful to use. They make the original atom bombs look like artillery shells.The original A bombs had a yield of about 15 kilo tons , that is about 15 thousand tons of TNT. An H bomb is above a mega ton, which is a million tons of TNT. Warheads on missiles are typically about 100 KT and most submarine launched missiles have a range of about 6000 miles and carry several warheads which can be aimed at different targets.
Obviously capitalism has been modified to fit the country. So has democracy. This was the formula that in centuries past the Catholic Church used to spread its religion. It's also the model that modern companies use to sell products which can be modified to suit local tastes. We saw McDonalds doing this in Germany this summer. They don't sell American ketchup for one thing. The McCafe is much fancier. They sell all sorts of pastries. And they serve the food on porcelain plates. What does McDonalds do in England?
I don't think China is the second capitalist power. Numbers don't matter. It doesn't have a functional democracy. It has no conception of democracy. So it can't be a leader. And it's certainly not a model.
Your response about the atomic bomb needs vast comment which I don't have time for now. Just a note: By atomic bomb I don't mean just the old Fat Man bomb. I mean the hydrogen bomb, warheads, missiles, the whole works. Just one more note for now. My father worked at Bettis Atomic Laboratory for decades until he retired. He knew and met scientists from Los Alamos. Look up Bettis. It's an American defense contractor that worked on nuclear submarines. So I have something of an insider's view of this matter.
I did a lot of research about atomic warfare not only for The Black Stone,which was a novel set slightly in the future and which we have never discussed, but also for one of my YA novels The Third Coming which has never come up in our discussions either but chiefly for Unlocking Trinity in the Edward Ware Thriller Series. I am not 50 years out of date.The discussion that I am quoting is recent where the professor says that no one could successfully mount a nuclear attack except the US.
I will send you a picture of the turn off for Bettis. We drove right past it just a few months ago. We were staying at the Extended Stay in West Mifflin just a mile away from the gates to the facility.
Linda wrote: "Obviously capitalism has been modified to fit the country. So has democracy. This was the formula that in centuries past the Catholic Church used to spread its religion. It's also the model that mo..."I am sorry I cannot help you there. I never go to such places but I will ask around.
Linda wrote: "I don't think China is the second capitalist power. Numbers don't matter. It doesn't have a functional democracy. It has no conception of democracy. So it can't be a leader. And it's certainly not ..."Well it is a hybrid. It has a capitalist economy controlled by the state which is not a democracy. But it's light years away from Mao's China or the old Soviet Union.
And numbers do count. That is just the point. In capitalism they are everything. As for a model, it depends on your outlook.To us it does not appeal.
Linda wrote: "I did a lot of research about atomic warfare not only for The Black Stone,which was a novel set slightly in the future and which we have never discussed, but also for one of my YA novels The Third ..."Okay I accept that you have the knowledge and you were generalizing, but the way your post read did not make that clear. As for this professor, he is wrong on two counts. The first is America is not the only one who can do it, although it is the best armed. The second is that the only way you can have a 'successful' outcome is if you hit somebody without nuclear weapons.So if America went for Russia, Russia would launch a counter strike and even if it lost, the US would suffer 100 million casualties. The whole point of nuclear deterrence is that nobody can succeed.
As for insider information here is a tit bit. When Kennedy and his top aides gathered on the morning of the critical moment in the Cuban Missile crisis, they acknowledged that they did not know if they would live to see the end of the day. If America was not scared its leaders were. Perhaps they knew something.
Numbers matter only when the civilizations are about equal. But in the case of China it isn't. It's like Caesar against the German tribes, and even they were more western. They may have massacred Augustus's legions in 9 AD at the Varusschlacht which we visited this past summer outside Osnabruck. But that was one skirmish. The Romans won the day by civilizing western Europe at the time. The Germans may have overrun Rome in 476 AD but by then they were civilized by Rome. However, the Germans had a warlike tradition even before they met Rome. The Chinese don't. They never have. I dare say they never will.
