GEOPOLITICS the MAIN TRAP for TRAMP P.2

GEOPOLITICS the MAIN TRAP for TRAMP   P.2

Here P. 2: rightist view:  keep balance & mild change in status quo. No war

In P.1: key to succeed was a deal with RU-Chi based on radic-change inside

P.2 requires correct OB errors: regime-change, containment & Isis support

Though these changes look like radical, they’re mild in front of crisis ahead  

Read these extracts & continue reading: What comes inside brackets is my commt

GEOPOLITICAL OVERHAUL: What Will A Post-Obama World Look Like?

Debt reduction and the visible reduction of what is seen internationally as overbearing statism in the U.S. economy will be critical to building back long-term U.S. global capabilities. The U.S. has not seen such an opportunity for strategic reversal since the Reagan Administration. But only if the incoming Administration adheres to the principles which won it the election, and avoids the compromises which the bureaucratic base of government will attempt to force on it to avoid disruption of the status quo.

[ In short: more neoliberalism but without nasty speculation & over Statism= Soft FDR line. Next will be my view on P.1-2 plans. Premise: FDR faced hard Econ crisis. Now D-S is Strong]

For the incoming U.S. Trump Administration, the difficulty will be in moving away from the U.S. confrontational posture toward Russia (in particular), without further diminishing the perceived national standing of the US. This will see a difficult set of strategic-diplomatic challenges for Washington, if it is not to further erode its standing in the Middle East and Mediterranean while damping down concerns within the Europe-an community, particularly in the Balkan states and Poland.

This will require Washington to avoid being led, particularly by Poland and Lithuania and their historical concerns and rivalries with Moscow, into strategies which are against broader U.S. interests while at the same time preserving a stable balance in Europe. But at this time, for the first time since World War II, Washington must ask itself whether its interests still lie in seeing a prosperous Europe, or whether the U.S. can afford to once again be a guarantor of European peace. It is possible that the U.S. must now consider the cost-benefit ratio of such a commitment, given that the U.S. itself is not at present in a position to offer unlimited largesse.

The end of the containment of the PRC poses different questions for the US.

[ Premise: Building nuclear capabilities in today’s strategic environment only has a short-term psychological viability, but a long-term economic/structural distortion cost = road to failure.]

….

Several “new” macro-level realities are evident, and which are creating new and evolving dynamics:

- Russia and the People’s Republic of China have broken out of their earlier containment by the West;

- The Five+one deal with Iran in 2015 was one of the factors which changed the Middle East dynamic irreversibly. That factor was compounded by the strategic decline now facing Saudi Arabia, which had (because of the collapse of Iranian governance in 1979 and the decades of isolation which followed for Iran) enjoyed an artificial period of regional dominance;

- The artificial structure of the European Union is in profound decline, but its continued existence in its present form will make it difficult for member states and their allies to achieve any strategic flexi-bility, which may set the stage for implosion. The euro currency is being deployed as a holding measure to ensure a degree of control, but it is also inhibiting flexible economic recovery mecha-nisms within member states;

- Some parts of Africa and the Middle East, now without overarching external power and economic in-fluence to give them structure, are reverting to the influence of traditional factors. Inherent con-cepts of nationhood and sovereignty will begin to emerge, but will be resisted by the “modern” power structures — the post-colonial nation-state structures and borders of Africa and the Middle East — which were created in the 20th Century, and which have benefited from the exploitation of the inherent wealth of those societies. In other words, older ethnic, linguistic, and cultural struc-tures will begin again to re-assert influence;

- New security technologies and structures are emerging which render obsolescent many older sys-tems and doctrines, and yet capital-intensive legacy systems and thinking cannot yet be entirely abandoned. This is its own technology version of the “Thucydides Trap”: rising new security options versus declining older capabilities. As a result, the risk of miscalculation in attempting strate-gic confrontation has risen substantially, and in many respects this represents a generational gap in thinking as to how to technologically and doctrinally approach the transformed global architecture;

- Totally transformed population cohesion in many societies — due to population decline (in many areas), urbanization and trans-national migration — significantly impacts national productivity and economic planning, but in turn raises the viability of earlier (pre-globalism) approaches to self-sufficiency within nation-states; and so on.

MANAGING THE POST-CONTAINMENT ERA

It is not merely a matter of recognizing that the past two centuries or so of containment of Russia and China have ended, it is worth looking at the separate original and evolving reasons for those policies in the first place, as well as understanding the reality that the containment policies could not even be reinstated adequately even if that was a desirable policy.

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Source:  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-27/geopolitical-overhaul-what-will-post-obama-world-look

Submitted by Gregory R. Copley via OilPrice.com,

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