The Cynic
A few days ago, the think tank RAND released a rather interesting article stating that a long-term military conflict is a threat to US foreign policy.
The message is backed up by intelligence reports that Xi will likely give the order to conquer Taiwan by 2027.
RAND was one of the main think tanks in the US, but RAND has difficulty switching from the realities of the Cold War to the realities of American victory in this war, which is why RAND sins with a “conservative-realistic” approach to Washington’s foreign policy. Thus, think tank repeatedly “lowered the stakes”, referring to the need to conduct a strategic struggle, which requires “time and resources”.
The rather controversial policy of Washington towards Moscow since the beginning of the 2000s more or less meets the recommendations of the RAND. Moreover, at the very beginning of the war, RAND was advised to avoid supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine in order not to provoke a nuclear conflict, which, according to the think tank, Russia was ready.
Now that Washington has crossed out the RAND recommendations, the center is writing that the war must be stopped as soon as possible in order to wage a true war with China.
But the current war is the war with China, only on a slightly different plane. Russia is under the dome of Chinese influence.
RAND, both at the beginning of the war and at this stage, gently pushes the American administration to lobby for negotiations. In principle, the model of “putting out the fire with your own sheet” has already led to the fact that Washington, in the eyes of the dwarf natives, has ceased to be an absolute center of power, which has given rise to the current decade of chaos and escalation.
The position of the “realists” after the collapse of the USSR led to “Bush’s legs”, led to non-interference in the last democratic Russian elections (the change of Yeltsin to Putin, when the States could “choose” anyone for a position in the Kremlin), led to “sluggish promotion of NATO to the East” , when it became clear (2008) that it makes no sense to negotiate with the Kremlin, led to the Georgian “soft” war, to filling Africa with the Kremlin’s PMCs, and Europe with the Kremlin’s money, led to sanctions on Crimea “with an eye so that Moscow would not be offended “, which resulted in the current war in Ukraine.
This soft policy of caution and non-intervention has led to the fact that China, which grew up on American technologies, turned out to be capable of “reversing” the foreign policy orbit, although it could be isolated from anti-Americanism.
What RAND proposes is a “policy of forced coexistence” with an eye on the “big brawl” somewhere ahead. But there would not have been a big mess if Washington, after winning the Cold War on the wings of euphoria, had not missed the birth of plague ulcers at the gates between West and East.
The position of the “hard hand” has shifted to the East, but even there the United States was unable to “pull the noose” either in China, or in Iran, or in North Korea. Moreover, the US failed to play hard and rational in Cuba and Venezuela.
So Biden, who effectively abandoned the policy proposed by RAND, was able to return the United States to the global throne.
The states now need to create conditions for ensuring full external control over Russian financial reserves, as well as come up with options for external disposal of the Russian nuclear arsenal. A quick war does not allow this. And the long term does not guarantee this, but the balance in Europe can be formed both through the decolonization of Russia and through the desubjectivization of its state system. The option of “control according to the German model” only between one’s own people, or between the West and China looks safer than an uncontrolled walking field in the event of an unsystematic collapse of the Russian Federation.
And it is these consequences of a “winning little war” that will be a far greater deterrent to China than all the other Western military, technical, and economic measures that RAND, Burns, and Sullivan have to offer combined.
RAND once again proposes to slow down, and this time, fortunately, the White House will not agree to such a proposal.
