Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz (and known by all in his time simply as “Kaunitz”) was effectively chancellor of the Austrian Empire (within the framework of the very reduced Holy Roman Empire) from 1753 to 1792. I have mentioned him before mostly because he’s one of the most fascinating figures in history, though little known these days. But in his time he very much strode the world as a colossus … everyone listening to him, wondering what he’d do next, that sort of thing. He served a total of four Hapsburg Emperors but he’s most famed for his service to Maria Theresa. It is something he did there that I want to bring up.
A lot of nonsense is being written about foreign affairs since the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting. Lots of people are considering it a disaster and that it’ll encourage Russia and China and we’re really screwed now unless we somehow get Ukraine to victory over Russia. But among the hand-wringing dramatics a couple voices have whispered: “you know, we need Russia as an ally against China”. These voices are ridiculed – yet more accusations of being a Putin stooge and so forth because, as these people say, Russia and China are friends and the only way to deal with them is to show them we’re tough…by backing Ukraine to the hilt!
It is like nobody can read a map or has even cursory knowledge of history.
To be sure, Russia and China are friendly today – China providing lots of help to Russia against Ukraine. While the war goes on, Russia will be careful to keep China happy. The quid pro quo everyone expects here is that since China supports Russia against Ukraine (which Putin states is a renegade province of Russia), Russia will support China against Taiwan (which China considers to also be a renegade province). And that does make sense. But there’s one fly in the ointment: China doesn’t need Russian help against Taiwan. Not even in the UN where China holds the same veto power as Russia. Sure, Putin issuing a diplomatic note supporting China’s annexation of Taiwan will be nice for China at the time, but it will also be quite meaningless…the merest gesture.
One does have to actually think about things and in the Russo-Chinese case given that Russia needs China right now but China needs Russia not at all, try to figure out why China is being so helpful. It becomes blazingly obvious with just the least bit of thought: a conflict between Russia and the West means there’s a conflict between Russia and the West and that suits China right down to the ground. The western world concentrating its military and diplomatic efforts over the Donbas is a West not paying attention as China builds a blue water Navy and deeply economically penetrates Africa and South America. It is a no brainer for China to help Russia – just as its a no-brainer for Russia to accept Chinese help. But because their interests coincide today doesn’t mean they always will.
And that brings us back to Kaunitz. He was made first minister by Maria Theresa because she thought him the man to cobble together an alliance which would undo the result of the War of the Austrian Succession. This had occurred just after her father had died when Prussia had invaded Austria’s province of Silesia. Entirely without justification – a mere power grab by the Prussian king who felt his army the stronger and himself the superior to any woman on a throne. In the event, after 8 years of war, Prussia did manage to keep her stolen goods in the form of Silesia, but Maria Theresa had proved herself a woman of courage and good sense, more than a match for the Prussian king. And she hadn’t given up on getting back what was stolen…but she needed a man of brilliance and tact to rework the European balance of power in her favor. That man was Kaunitz.
Part of the problem Austria had in the previous war was that Prussia was allied with France, which was Austria’s ancient enemy (French and Austrian rulers had engaged in wars for centuries). As long as Prussia could count on the large French army attacking Austria from the west and south then things would go well for Prussia. Kaunitz had the skill and he carried out Maria Theresa’s instructions – France was detached from alliance with Prussia and entered alliance with Austria (it actually was in France’s best long-term interests to curb Prussian ambition…as was proved in 1870). Getting Russia to join the Franco-Austrian alliance just made it even more powerful. This diplomatic tour de force has been called “The Reversal of Alliances” and it was an earthquake in diplomatic affairs. And it almost worked – when the war between Prussia and Austria resumed the combination overwhelmed Prussia with sheer weight of numbers…until the very untimely death of the Russian Empress at the time pulled Russia out of the war. But that is neither here nor there for our purposes today: what we’re doing is pointing out that alliances aren’t permanent. That you don’t conduct your foreign affairs based on sentimental attachments but on the cold, hard facts of your situation. The problem for the USA is that since the fall of the Berlin Wall, sentiment has governed our actions. It is time for facts to come to the fore.
The biggest fact we have right now is that China is far and away the biggest foreign challenge we face. Our foreign policy should be geared primarily towards curbing Chinese ambitions. If you take a look at the map of the world and all the strategic points on it, there will be one rather glaring absence: Ukraine. It has no strategic importance in global affairs. It is a geographic irrelevancy. To Russia it is important. Poland, too. But if you don’t border Ukraine then Ukraine doesn’t matter. Whoever holds it will not harm your own strategic position. Not for nothing have the Dardanelles just south of Ukraine been fought over for centuries while Ukraine has slumbered in obscurity for almost all its history. The former is a crucial strategic point…the latter is just a bit of flat land really good for farming. There is no upside for the USA in fussing over Ukraine – it does not help us contain China.
Another glance at that map and you’ll notice that China and Russia share a huge land border in Siberia – which is 5.1 million square miles with 37 million people living on it. Do that bit of math: that is 7.25 people per square mile. China, just south of Siberia, has a density of 381 per square mile. Siberia has vast reserves of gold, silver, lead, tin, zinc, oil, diamonds, nickel, natural gas…like some of the largest reserves in the world for these materials. Oh, and huge chunk of Siberia was under Chinese rule until the late 19th century.
Do you see what I’m getting at? Russia has this gigantic territory – larger by itself than the USA or China – which is largely unpopulated, stupendously rich in natural resources and part of which used to be Chinese…which sits south of the border with 1.2 billion people, limited natural resources and a crucial need for cheap and easy economic growth to keep their people from questioning Communist party rule. In other words, while Russia and China have a community of interests today, it doesn’t mean they always will. And, truth be told, the only way Russia can be certain of holding Siberia is in alliance with the USA. There are, then, fertile grounds of a new reversal of alliances…detaching Russia from the Chinese connection and adding her to a consortium of nations (USA, India, Vietnam, Korea, Japan) united to keep China under control.
But how can we ally with Putin?!?!? You Putin stooge!!!! Yeah, whatever. We allied with Stalin against Hitler so allying with the far less unsavory Putin against China is within the realm of possibility. And this alliance with Russia remains valid even if Putin – or any Russian leader – tries to cobble together the entirely of the Czarist Empire. It would not alter America’s strategic position. It would gravely alter Europe’s, of course, but that is an European problem…and so far only Poland and Italy are acting like Russia is a problem by vastly increasing their defense spending. But no matter how it goes over there, it isn’t an American problem.
But we can’t let aggression stand! Sure, whatever – that boat sailed in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea and we accepted stalemate. The two World Wars were very much fought on the ground that you can’t shoot your way into power. The Allied victory in both wars placed that ideal as an absolute in global affairs. Heck, we even hung and imprisoned Nazis on the charge of plotting aggressive warfare. But at the very first challenge to the principle in Korea, we and the rest of the West folded like a cheap suit. We actually had Nazis sitting in jail for aggressive war at the time we decided that North Korea’s aggressive war was something we’d just have to live with. Don’t blame me that the main point of the world wars was wasted…that while the great good of stopping Nazism occurred, all other fruits of the victory were thrown away within a decade of the end of the war. That was done by others, not by me. And I won’t adhere to a standard rejected before I was born. Whether or not I’ll try to stop aggression is entirely dependent on whether or not that aggression negatively impacts the United States. And, sorry, but a Russian invasion of Ukraine doesn’t qualify.
I don’t advocate for a pullout from NATO out of petulance but simply because I can’t see the slightest need for it. A Russian invasion of Ukraine doesn’t matter to me. Those whom it does matter are quite powerful enough to build an army to repel a Russian invasion. I also know that in the primary challenge my nation faces – China – the Europeans are far more likely to back China than the USA. There is little community of interest between the USA and the EU…and as Europe is arresting people for social media posts, I can’t see how a stand for Europe is a stand for liberty…sure, a German prison is much nicer than a Russian prison, but both are holding people who said things offensive to the government. This is very alien to the American experience – it makes Europe no longer America’s cousin, but a very strange, malevolent place that Americans better not travel to any longer, lest we run afoul of their Orwellian speech laws.
As in so many things, it is time to enter the real world. The real world is that the USA has maybe one or two friends in the world (Israel and Japan? Maybe a couple others). Everyone else wants us dead or at least to play us for their own ends. We might have a sentimental attachment to France because of Normandy but we must start to understand that the French government will piss on our graves over there if they felt it was in France’s best interests to do so. Nobody else in the world acts on sentiment, and we must stop it.
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A Secretive Movement Known As ‘#AltGov’ Is Openly Rebelling Against Trump And Musk From Inside Our Federal Agencies
We’ve gone through more than four years of hysterical screeching based on the word “insurrection” and been told that an insurrection is the most awful thing that could happen to a government or a nation.
Of course, these people simply redefined the word. An insurrection is not a rowdy or even violent expression of disagreement with a government action, or even a disruption of a government action. An insurrection is an effort to assume the powers of government outside the prescribed methods for transfer of power. It can be violent, but it can also be a coordinated effort to undermine the authority of a government until it collapses, whereupon the insurrectionists can assume formal power and authority.
I’ve been thinking for a long time of politics in terms of the actual framework of government represented by each of the two competing political movements and not of the people who represent each side. But it took the Trump victory in 2016 for this to be made blatantly obvious, as an entire rebellion within the United States government workforce was openly acknowledged. At the time its most public identity was that of #RESIST, and its stated goal was not to take over the government but merely to cripple the Trump administration and make it ineffective until the Left (the true identity of the movement) could reassert power through the appearance of a legitimate election.
But now we are seeing open, overt, organized efforts within the government structure itself to topple the Trump presidency and assume its authority and power. This is well beyond the sabotage of his policies and programs, well into the territory of efforts to not just thwart the efforts of his presidency but to exert power over their opposing agendas.
As an example of my personal approach to something like this: I had a house which had extensive water damage, and spent an entire summer working with an architect and a contractor to figure out how to address the structural issues and other damage, such as black mold in some of the walls. I concluded that a piecemeal approach would not only be time-consuming and expensive, it would still not give the best outcome, so I tore down that entire end of the house and rebuilt from the foundation up. So this is an indication of my personal reaction to the rot that is undermining our government’s ability to function.
That is, tear it down and start over. Going through the hundreds of thousands of government employees to pick and choose which are productive and trustworthy and which are not would take the entire four years remaining of the Trump presidency and no doubt leave cells of incipient rot behind. I think it is better to wipe the slate clean, reorganize and then interview former employees to evaluate their contributions to the visions and agendas in place.
And I would eliminate from consideration anyone who had participated in any of the insurrection/insubordination efforts in place.
That is what some of the bed-wetters on the Right don’t get – we can’t tinker around the edges of this.
I don’t think any of us realized just how bad it was but the more DOGE reveals, the more we see that the entire system is geared to two things:
1. Theft.
2. Self perpetuation.
That’s it – they just want to steal and the primary purpose of the stealing is to make sure they stay in power so they can steal some more (ie, they steal money, hand it off to an NGO…the employees of the NGO of course donate to the elected thieves but, also, the very purpose of the NGO is to buttress the power of the thieves).
It is claimed that a cabal of Democrats and Neocons pushed Zelenskyy to give that Oval Office performance but I bet it didn’t take much pushing. Here’s Zelenskyy’s problem: if the war ends short of total Ukrainian victory, he’s done. People who lose wars don’t get re-elected. Trump’s deal ends the war with Ukraine still fully independent but Zelenskyy and those in his group have no upside in that…the cessation of death doesn’t keep them in power. On the gravy train. Able to continue stealing.
I’ve talked of this before but we really need to internalize it – because there were people in the USA also more interested in keeping the theft going than the lives of young men in the trenches: the people who run the world are by and large completely immoral. They just don’t care who dies. As long, of course, as it isn’t them. Nothing is more important than the place at the trough. They’ll blithely watch another million young men die if that makes sure the deposits keep getting made.
I believe we are in this state of affairs because too many of the really good people were wiped out in the 20th century…gotta remember, in two World Wars it was the best men who were at the front the whole time. When Communism, Fascism and Nazism set out to kill, it was the best people who were cut down in droves. Anyone who could think. Anyone with faith in God. Anyone who had simple physical courage. The West, outside the USA which never suffered too much, has been breeding from the dregs for three generations now. The people in charge slipped in because they were the lower half of the Ruling Class after the best part of it had been wiped out. One thinks of men like Rupert Brooke:
He did die because he was brave…and what was left behind? The morally and physically weak…who spent their time denigrating the sacrifices of better people. Snide, sniggering satirists who didn’t have an ounce of the guts the men of Vimy Ridge, Cambrai, Tobruk and Normandy had.
Now, I know enough biology to know that this can be cured – but only by a selection. The Romans grew weak, after all, but the barbarian flood meant that only the toughest parts of the Romans survived…and eventually thrived in Renaissance Italy. Something like that would have to happen to the West to wake it up. We can’t force it to happen – and we here in the USA still have people with courage. I’ll defend us, not them. They aren’t worth it.
I didn’t write this, but I could have.:
Since the topic of this thread is Foreign Affairs, I thought this was more than appropriate:
Robert Malone has an excellent essay today on Fascism.
That is an excellent article! I’ll add that in a very real sense Liberalism, Socialism/Communism, Fascism and Nazism are all near-aligned. They all stem, ultimately, from the rejection of Christendom during the so-called Enlightenment of the 18th century. Liberalism was going to cure Feudalism. Socialism/Communism would cure Liberalism (which is also Capitalism). Fascism/Nazism would cure Socialism/Communism. But the cure was a disease and the later remedies were all based on the initial infection. Brings to mind the little joke I make now and again when the latest bit of insanity comes up:
“Stop burning the heretics, they said.
It’ll be great, they said.”
But here is the very weird thing in this whole progression – the United States works. Or, it would if we (per Amazona’s demand and desire) obeyed the damned rules. I’ve thought about it. Lots of Constitutions have been written. Lots of different arrangements of governments. None of them work, but ours does. And it hit me not too long ago why:
“Congress shall make no law”.
That is the key to American success – telling the government in your organic law that it can’t do certain things. And, man, do a lot of people hate that. They’ve hated it since the ink was scarcely dry. A huge effort has been afoot since the Constitution was ratified to get around that tiresome “Congress shall make no law”. It just went into overdrive in the so-called “Progressive Era” (say, 1905 to 1940). The commonality between Liberal, Socialist, Fascist and Nazi regimes is the presumption that some people have select knowledge which gives them the moral right and duty to dominate society. When the Liberals were enclosing the Commons, when Socialists were confiscating property, when Fascists and Nazis were Gleichschaltung the heck out of everything, the common thread was just that: we know best! You don’t! Shut up, peasant, and accept your place in our order…it’s best for you! You’ll thank us later! When you’re living in a slum after you lost your farm, or working as a drudge in a collectively owned factory, or dying in a camp when you were deemed socially hostile…
We’ve really got to hold on to “Congress shall make no law”. I’m almost to the point where I want us to start breaking off diplomatic relations with nations unless they insert those words into their own Constitutions. It is that crucial to human liberty.
They all stem, ultimately, from the rejection of Christendom during the so-called Enlightenment of the 18th century.
And they are all about the consolidation of power in the hands of elites, about massively powerful Central Authority, and about collectivism instead of individualism. That is, if we remember that in this case “Liberalism” is with a capital “L”, to set it apart from liberalism, which is its antithesis.
Very serious…
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1896248819547070782?s=46&t=i3nFdoOJBaYcipis8iTWEA