Tonya Harding. You don’t win with loser strategies.
"Russia and China Are Facts of Life"
by Robert Gore
"In 1904, Sir Halford Mackinder, director of the London School of Economics, gave a presentation at the Royal Geographical Society that proved to be influential. “The Geographical Pivot of History” posited a World-Island: Africa Asia, and Europe, the “heartland” of which stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Siberian Sea. Mackinder later summarized his thesis: “Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island. Who rules the World-Island commands the world.” This would become a key tenet of Britain’s foreign policy until the end of World War II. It was largely responsible for the destruction of its empire. At that point, the intellectual baton was passed to the American empire, to which it will do the same.
The problem for both British and American imperialists is that their countries are peripheral to this Heartland of the World-Island, while Russia and China are the biggest part of it. In the nineteenth century, Britain’s peripheral position was overcome by maritime and industrial prowess. Britain’s navy was the linchpin of the empire. Its shared position with the U.S. as an Industrial Revolution leader bolstered its power and led to the relentless drive for resources that was an impetus for the empire’s growth.
John Maynard Keynes once wrote: "Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. The U.S. intellectual and political establishment are slaves to a defunct geopolitical scientist, Mackinder. That’s not to suggest that his World-Island and Heartland aren’t important, but rather to challenge the quasi-religious belief that the U.S. can subjugate and control them. It can’t, and how well it adopts to that reality will determine how the rest of the 21st century and beyond goes for the U.S."
In the heady euphoria of World War II, U.S. policy makers embraced the concept of a U.S.-dominated, confederated global empire. They should have questioned it in 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb. The ensuing Cold War arms race instituted an unprecedented reality in global affairs: a war between nuclear armed states could mean the end of humanity.
This didn’t mean that some lights in the American establishment ruled out war with the Soviet Union. In the 1950s and early 1960s, various plans were drafted for nuclear attacks. However, the Strangelove option was never exercised. Instead, the U.S. ostensibly “contained” the Soviet threat by establishing a Pax Americana based on the British imperial model.
In addition to a vast armaments buildup, the U.S. ringed the rim of the Heartland with military bases, circled it with its navy, forged military alliances (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949), the Middle East Treaty Organization (1955), the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (1954), and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (1951)), became a military- and intelligence- dominated national security state, and engaged in regime-change, other intelligence skullduggery, and proxy wars. The confederated empire was helped immensely by the communist ideology of its two primary foes, which tied one hand behind their respective backs; smothered their citizens; eliminated troublesome rebels that so infuriate totalitarians but are usually the fountainheads of progress, and stifled potential development.
Communism destroyed the Soviet Union and would have done the same to the Chinese government absent its dramatic adjustment in ideology under Deng Xiaoping, leader from 1978 to 1989. Russia had a difficult decade after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but Vladimir Putin, elected president in 2000, has sparked a transition that in its own way has been as dramatic as China’s. While there have been setbacks, since the turn of the century, both countries have been ascendant.
Even prior to the turn of the century, the U.S. has gone the other direction. Its industrial base, so dominant from World War II through the 1960s, has been hollowed out. The FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) has increased its share of the GDP. This sector is based on transfer payments, not production, and is supported by what remains of productive manufacturing. Government, law, accounting, and the medical and educational systems can be characterized in the same way.
Because it exercises coercive power, government has been particularly pernicious. Local, state, and the federal government command over 40 percent of the GDP, and almost all of what they do is counterproductive. They are the parasites killing the host. Perverse, predatory, and destructive ideologies pervade government and its affiliated institutions. Productive Americans and business are smothered by an ever expanding body of laws, regulations, taxes, liabilities, and an exponentially increasing federal debt, which is driving interest rates higher.
The pretentious, arrogant, corrupt, and just plain stupid American ruling class is emblematic of its descent. The Ukraine proxy-war fiasco is a monumental example of its inability to comprehend what Russia and China have done, or to adjust to new realities.
When the Ukraine war started, the Ukrainian military had been trained and armed by the West for eight years. The actual purpose of the two Minsk agreements was not peace, but to buy time for that project. The Ukrainians would repel Russia on the battlefield, and sanctions would bring the Russian economy to its knees. The West’s Ukrainian proxy would win, and the defeat would probably cost the hated Putin his job and perhaps his life. Russia itself might shatter, and the West would scoop up the valuable pieces, much as it had tried to do in the 1990s.
Russia’s slow, grinding pace in Ukraine has been endlessly criticized, however, it is not without its merits. Russia has had its share of missteps, but Ukraine has been decimated. It has at least 500,000 killed in action, and the real number may be closer to a million. Total casualties—killed and wounded—are over a million. Russia’s strategy has been to preserve its manpower and it’s worked; casualties are a tenth to a fifth of Ukraine’s. Unlike Ukraine, it has been able to recruit or conscript additional soldiers. Ukraine has huge morale problems, and consequently problems with draft avoidance and desertion.
Steadily advancing, Russia is close to achieving the territorial objectives of its special military operation, and will do so once it takes Ukrainian transportation and logistics hub Povrovsk. It has also obliterated much of Ukraine’s energy grid, industry and agriculture. Ukraine’s economy is a basket case, propped up by Western aid. Millions of Ukrainians have emigrated to either Russia or Europe. Corruption is rampant. Zelensky’s term expired and he suspended elections. He rules only because no faction has yet emerged that can overthrow him, although there are undoubtedly several that would like to.
Russia’s defeat of the U.S. and Europe has been just as dramatic as its impending defeat of Ukraine. NATO nations have blown through over $200 billion, around $180 billion of which came from the U.S. Their weaponry has been battlefield-revealed as inferior to Russia’s, although Russia spends roughly a tenth of what the U.S. does on defense. The Russians have supposedly been on the verge of running out of missiles and other armaments since the special operation began, if you pay attention to Western governments and media. However, Russian industry is far more geared to produce necessary weaponry than Europe’s or the U.S.’s; it’s been the West, not Russia, that’s found itself in short supply.
The U.S. has done everything it can to force Europe to substitute expensive American liquid natural gas for inexpensive Russian oil and gas. The U.S. or its proxy Ukraine sabotaged three of the four Nord Stream pipelines and the fourth, though functional, is shut down. Ukraine recently refused to renew an agreement allowing transport of Russian gas through Ukraine to Europe. Ukraine also mounted an unsuccessful drone attack against a natural gas compressor station in southern Russia, which is part of the TurkStream pipeline that carries gas under the Black Sea to Europe.
Sanctions and energy warfare have not brought the Russian economy to its knees. Russia has ready markets in China and India for its oil and gas, albeit at discounted prices. Some of its exports to those countries are surreptitiously routed back to Europe at higher prices, defeating the sanctions and extracting more economic rent from hard-pressed European economies, most of which are in or are on the verge of recession. The American axis is an eighth of the world’s population. Much of the global majority has lined up with the Russia-China axis and has constructed alternatives to Western financial and economic arrangements.
Russia can be considered the ideological head of the global majority; China is the operational muscle. One of the more ludicrous assertions from the U.S. ruling class, echoed in both the Western mainstream and alternative media, is that once the U.S. wraps up the Ukraine war it can turn its attention to “containing” China. Leaving aside that on present course Ukraine will be a debilitating and humiliating defeat for the U.S., China represents a much more difficult challenge.
In a span of 45 years, the Chinese have worked an unprecedented transformation from an impoverished nation in the throes of communist ideology to a manufacturing, scientific, and technological powerhouse. The only comparable transformation has been America’s Industrial Revolution. To illustrate, I’m cherry picking facts and figures from a lengthy (14,200 words) article by Ron Unz, “
American Pravda: China vs. America, A Comprehensive Review of the Economic, Technological, and Military Factors,” which I posted on SLL. The length may seem daunting, but the article is well worth the time. It obliterates any notion that the U.S. will “contain” China, much less win a war, kinetic or otherwise, with it.
The basis of Chinese success is the Chinese people. You don’t have to buy physicist
Steve Hsu’s estimate, cited and linked to by Unz, that China has 30 times the number of 160-plus IQ individuals than the U.S., to acknowledge that the Chinese are smart and hard-working. That was obvious even before China dropped Maoist ideology, from the Chinese who escaped communism to other Asian nations. In those countries, they achieved success far disproportionate to their numbers, in some instances dominating the local economies.
The pillars of the present Chinese economy are manufacturing, science, technology, competitive internal markets, and exports. Manufacturing is 38 percent of the Chinese economy and services 55 percent, versus 11 percent and 88 percent, respectively, in the U.S. China produces 35 percent of global manufacturing output versus 12 percent for the U.S.
The CIA World Factbook confirms that the size of China’s real productive economy is three times larger than the U.S.’s. While the U.S. produces several times the oil and gas that China does, Chinese coal production is five times greater, steel production thirteen times greater, wheat production three times greater, and their ship-building capacity 232 times that of the U.S. Indeed, China’s real productive economy is greater than the combined total of the U.S., the rest of the Anglosphere, the EU, and Japan.
Oh, but who cares about that stuff when the U.S. is beating China where it counts: professional services? They account for 13 percent of the US GDP, only 3 percent of China’s. The U.S. has 1.33 million lawyers, China has around half of that, with over four times the population. The U.S. has 1.65 million accountants and auditors, China only 300,000. There are 59,000 Certified Financial Analysts in the U.S., 4,000 in China. And in the all-important lobbyist profession, the U.S. has 20,000 registered just in Washington DC, while China has zero. (That’s not to say lobbying doesn’t go on in China; however, there isn’t a profession devoted to it.) Surely the Chinese tremble when they contemplate these measures of comparative national power.
Two important services are healthcare and education. Education in China is free through graduate school, and healthcare is free or heavily subsidized. Seven percent of China’s GDP is healthcare, versus 18 percent in the U.S., while China’s life expectancy is 78.6 years and America’s is 77.5. Like every successful society and social group throughout history, China stresses education. Their system is highly competitive and extols Confucius’s tenets of meritocracy and personal virtue. China graduates over 5 million STEM college students a year, the U.S. 800,000. (A nontrivial portion of the U.S. graduates are Chinese.)
A hoary canard, repeated by
Marco Rubio at his Secretary of State confirmation hearing, is that Chinese science and technology consists of what it begs, borrows, or steals from the U.S. Undoubtedly, the Chinese have committed, are committing, and will continue to commit intellectual property theft and other nefarious acts; they are hardly alone in doing so.
However, according to the “2024 Critical Technology Tracker,” published by the ASPI, an Australian-based think tank hostile to China, in the 5-year period between 2019 and 2023, China led in 57 of 64 different technologies (the U.S. led in the other 7), grouped in 8 meta categories: advanced information and communication, advanced materials and manufacturing; artificial intelligence (AI); biotech, gene technology, and vaccines; defense, space, robotics, and transportation; energy and environment; quantum technologies; and sensing, timing, and navigation. The ASPI concluded that 24 of the 64 technologies are at high risk of Chinese monopolization; they are doing over 75 percent of the research in those fields. Mr. Rubio never explained how the Chinese can lead in so many categories if all they’re engaged in is theft.
Innovation fuels the world’s most competitive internal market and the Chinese export dynamo. For instance, the U.S. has one major EV company, while China has 8 major and dozens of minor competitors, as well as Tesla. Chinese BYD is the world leader in EV sales. The U.S. has one mobile phone company, Apple, China has 5, plus Apple and Samsung, which is South Korean. China has four major e-commerce companies plus Amazon, which is the U.S.’s only global-scale e-commerce platform. Paraphrasing the song “New York, New York,” if you can make it in China you can make it anywhere, and the Chinese export to the world, piling up trade surpluses and foreign currency reserves. Yes, they have a lot of debt, but they have the industrial and export capacity to pay it. And all those exports can’t just be cheap stuff that ends up on Walmart shelves.
The wherewithal from exports, China’s science and technology, and its people are the key constituents of its formidable military, which at over two million active duty personnel is the world’s largest. Like Russia, China has a variety of both nuclear and non-nuclear hypersonic missiles (some of which may be superior to Russia’s); state-of-the-art command, control, guidance, surveillance, antiaircraft, artillery, and cyber warfare systems, and the industrial capacity for protracted war.
It is the world leader in drones—both their technology and production—which have emerged as a key element in modern warfare. In the Ukraine war, the five giant U.S. defense contractors have been unable to produce in sufficient quantities even basics like artillery shells to match Russia’s output. Against China’s superior industrial plant, their production would be woefully uncompetitive in not just shells, but drones, missiles, warships, and fighter planes. All this while
China spends 1.8 percent of its GDP on the military and the U.S. spends 3.4 percent (Wikipedia).
The one knock on the Chinese military is that it has no war experience; it hasn’t fought anyone in over forty years. Curiously, that knock often comes from the same people who claim that China, in contravention of its own history and doctrine, is hell-bent on becoming an offensive military power that will rule the world. Certainly China doesn’t have the experience of the U.S. military, which has fought many wars since World War II. However, U.S. military muscle memory comes from prolonged, defense-contractor-enriching wars against ostensibly inferior opponents that led to unsatisfactory outcomes, often outright defeat. China doesn’t have to unlearn the American military’s bad habits.
China will soon acquire war experience if America’s many China hawks get their way. In an actual war, in addition to its military and economic prowess, China will have a number of intangible advantages. It will be defending its own territory, a massive advantage, and will be fighting for its national pride. It’s military doctrine, called Anti Access Area Denial, is defensive, based on territorial integrity and annexation of Taiwan.
The nearest U.S. territory, Guam, is 4800 kilometers away. While the U.S. has bases in and agreements with Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, how long will those countries aid the U.S. once China retaliates? How long will the U.S. electorate support a war once Chinese hypersonic missiles sink U.S. sea dinosaurs aircraft carriers and their accompanying flotillas? As Hua Bin notes in the Unz article: In essence, the war will be one between a landed fortress and an expeditionary air and maritime force. For most of the history of war, ships lose to fortress.
China has built up goodwill and a network of friends through the Belt and Road Initiative’s funding, infrastructure development, alternatives to Western financial arrangements, and global-majority rhetoric. It draws on the vast resources of most of the World Island, and is expanding its political and economic influence in South America.
It portrays itself as a peacemaker, a telling counterpoint to the U.S.’s overt and covert warmongering. It intermediated an Iranian-Saudi Arabian rapprochement and has offered to broker a resolution to the Ukraine-Russia war. It doesn’t peddle “shining city on a hill” and “exceptionalism” verbiage (although the Chinese have ample national pride, xenophobia, and racism). The world wouldn’t buy such verbiage from China; it no longer buys America’s.
The U.S. employs a Tonya Harding strategy. Instead of addressing its competitive deficiencies, it tries to kneecap its competitors via proxy wars, alliances, sanctions, tariffs, intelligence skullduggery, hostile propaganda, and export and import restrictions, particularly in technology. It didn’t work for Harding; it hasn’t worked for the U.S. The government has wasted trillions of dollars and killed millions—mostly citizens of other countries—trying to maintain its faltering empire. It has incurred the enmity of the global majority, sparked innovative workarounds from Russia and China, and made vassals of its allies.
A recent development illustrates the innovative workaround phenomenon. Hours before President Trump announced Stargate, a $500 billion public-private AI boondoggle infrastructure project,
Chinese company DeepSeek released DeepSeek R1 (Mike Whitney, “China’s DeepSeek Bombshell Rocks Trump’s $500B AI Boondoggle,” unz.com, 1/22/25), an AI model superior to American research laboratory and AI leader OpenAI’s models. DeepSeek R1 costs a small fraction (3 percent) to operate, uses a small fraction of the power, is completely open source, and can be downloaded and run for free.
Western microchip sanctions were supposed to sabotage Chinese AI for at least a decade, but instead the Chinese have responded with a better system that is more affordable, accessible, and transparent. U.S. restrictions have backfired disastrously and Stargate’s $500 billion will be money down the toilet. Being open source, DeepSeek is already being customized and upgraded by legions of software developers around the globe, in many cases publicizing their improvements. It’s the number one app on Apple’s app store. Political analyst Arnaud Bertrand succinctly sums up the implications in a post on X:
"it speaks to a different philosophy/vision on AI: ironically named “OpenAI” is basically about trying to establish a monopoly by establishing a moat with massive amounts of GPU and money. Deepseek is clearly betting on a future where AI becomes a commodity, widely available and affordable to everyone. By pricing so aggressively and releasing their code open-source, they’re not just competing with OpenAI but basically declaring that AI should be like electricity or internet connectivity – a basic utility that powers innovation rather than a premium service controlled by a few players. And in that world, it’s a heck of a lot better to be the first mover who helped make it happen than the legacy player who tried to stop it." @RnaudBertrand
America’s experiment with ever-expanding government exercising ever-increasing coercive control over not just Americans but the rest of the world has been a disaster. Its exponentially mounting debt spells the end of both imperial delusions and domestic subjugation. Annexing additional territory and coopting resources won’t restore a preeminence that is already gone. America once minded its own business and its citizens were free to mind their own. It was the beginning of the end of preeminence when its government started minding everybody’s business.
America’s cream of the crop can compete with anybody else’s when they’re free to do so. Geographically, Russia and China are at the heart of Mackinder’s Heartland and they’re not going anywhere. Neither are their governments, regardless of Tonya Harding strategies to engineer internal collapse and regime change. The Trump administration can either adjust to or fight that reality. And it can either get out of the way and allow Americans to compete again, or it can kill what’s left of competitiveness with the spurious “kindness” of tariffs, Stargate, and the rest of the crony collectivist nonsense peddled by Trump’s many newfound friends."
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