Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Power Page 1 of 15

Western Elites Are Making A Play For Eternal Oligarchy

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On February 25, 2026

36 Comments

We have a very odd spectacle right now: Anthropic’s CEO has said the US government cannot use Anthropic products if they will not guarantee that they won’t be used for autonomous military robots (firing without human intervention) or mass surveillance. The Pentagon has responded by threatening to eminent domain Claude, and make their own version. The Secretary of “War” has summoned Anthropic’s CEO to a meeting today. We’ll see if he cracks. I’m sure they won’t just threaten his business.

A core problem faced by elites who want to rule is that they must rule thru other people. Enforcers: cops, military, judges, prosecutors and various bureaucrats. They can’t rule alone, and the enforcer class isn’t always reliable. Many joined the Russian revolution; the French; the American. Praetorian guards tend to be corrupt, incompetent and untrustworthy.

The solution to this is AI. Autonomous robots which fire when ordered to and have no conscience. But, if those robots are controlled by a mass of technicians and engineers, well, that’s no good: you’ve just got a different enforcer class.

But what if AI gets to the point where it can write its own updates and can run entire factories with no human intervention?

No soldier who won’t shoot. No technicians or bureaucrats who get in the way of what the rulers want. The elite is served by robots who always obey orders and will do anything. They no longer need to rely on retainers who might be a threat to them.

That leaves the masses. Of course autonomous military and police bots go a long way to making sure the hoi polloi know their place and stay in it but there are two more tools to deploy.

The first is mass surveillance. As Anthropic’s CEO points out in the current/old days even if you had mass surveillance it didn’t do you much good, because no one could be aware of all of it. But AIs can map out an entire opposition. They can read it all, pick the important nodes and tell the autonomous robots who to deal with.

The second is electronic cash. We’ve seen this repeatedly. Germany has been particularly forward about this, de-banking critics of genocide and making it a crime for anyone to give them money, food or aid.

In the old days you could get around de-banking with cash. Most places accepted it, you could pay your rent with it, go on holidary with it, you didn’t even need a credit card till the 80s or so.

But with everything pretty much electronic now, plus mass surveillance, anyone our masters want to completely destroy they can just cut off. No money. No home. No food. No medicine. If anyone tries to help, mass surveillance will catch it and they can be de-banked too.

AI plus autonomous robots gets rid of the need for retainers. AI, mass surveillance and electronic cash means that any attempt by the masses to organize can be crushed by rendering anyone homeless, starving and ulitimately dead. And in most countries all it takes is an administrative order. No need for a messy trial or anything.

This is the plan. The oligarchs time, under normal circumstances, would be coming to an end. The support they need from the 90-99% is going, mass support is dying, their societies are crumbling.

But get the autonomous robots, e-cash, mass surveillance and self-writing self-manufacturing robots going and they can stay in charge forever.

Or that’s their bet, anyway.

 

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Is Virtue An Advantage Or Disadvantage For Societies?

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On February 24, 2026

47 Comments

There’s an idea going around that virtues are anti-competitive. That being loyal, honorable, honest, generous, kind, etc… puts you at a disadvantage.

It’s one of those half true statements. It’s true if your society is shit, but in a decent society it can be disadvantage, and if a society has predominantly virtueless people in charge, or as the majority of the population, then the society as a whole is at a disadvantage against virtuous societies.

In a society where everyone is out for themselves or a small group, and where any behaviour is acceptable as long as it “wins”, like the US (notice that even child rape is acceptable to US elites, if it wasn’t, they’d punish it) having morals will hold you back, no question. If you won’t make decisions which impoverish mass numbers of people, or kill them, if it’s in your self interest or the interest of your small group (bank, political party, corporation, family, whatever) then you’re at a disadvantage.

The problem is that such societies self-cannibalize. Instead of growing the pie they fight over who gets how much of a slice, and what they do makes the pie smaller than it otherwise would be. (Ignore every dipshit who tells you how rich the US is. It’s less rich in real terms than it was 60 years ago compared to its competitors and in many cases even to itself. A CT scan in China costs about $50, and you get it the same day.)

Whatever one thinks of China, the fact is that its elites concentrate on making the population more prosperous and the country stronger in real terms. They aren’t offshoring their steel production. They can build ships. They lift people out of poverty, they don’t shove people into it. There aren’t massive homeless encampments everywhere. They arrest senior party members and billionaires for corruption and even execute them for crimes.

They are better people than Americans. Doubtless that will outrage many, but if you think otherwise you’re engaged in special pleading. How many countries have they invaded and destroyed? How many people have they killed or impoverished, including their own people? They’re expanding education and healthcare, working hard to make housing cheaper, etc, etc…

This is an old observation. Societies which work for more people out-compete those that don’t. Lee Kuan Yee, the founder of Singapore was massively impressed with the Britain of the 30s and 40s because he saw, for example, that newspapers were simply left in a pile, people would take one and leave money and no one cheated. They dynamism of 50s thru 90s America (all a result of post-war government spending, by the way, the internet is a government creation all the way up and down) massively impressed him as well.

Good is stronger than evil. It always has been, because cooperative societies defeat societies which are competitive in the wrong ways. It’s alright to have some competition, but when it becomes existential and unbounded by ethics, it damages the host society. America can’t even ramp up weapons production any more because the firms in the business want to charge 10x what weapons cost. Russia and China, no problem increasing production if they choose.

None of this is to say that being evil doesn’t have advantages. Of course it does. But evil, as Tolkien observed, consumes itself over time: it is a war of all against all, with any alliances temporary and untrustworthy.

This is true even when dealing with “evil” societies. It isn’t the evil which makes them effective, it’s the parts they have that are good. Mongol loyalty and discipline and bravery, for example. Genghis Khan never had a single senior general or administrator turn on him. Not one. At the very least a nation needs to be good to more of its own members than than its opponents, but even this has problems, because what you do to external enemies eventually seems reasonable to do internally.

Good isn’t weak. Instead it’s hard. It’s easy to be evil, to betray, to hurt and to take advantage. But if you run your group or your society that way you will weaken it and in time that weakness will lead to destruction.

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The Amount Of Contempt Elites Have For Public Intelligence Is Breathtaking

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On February 4, 2026

33 Comments

The latest episode is an attempt to suggest Epstein was working for Russia:

This is ridiculous. Epstein was close friends with the Israeli Prime Ministers. Ghislaine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell might have been Israel’s most important spy. Israel’s fingerprints are all over the Epstein files, and there are almost no significant ties to Russia. There’s one email where Epstein tries to coach Trump on how to deal with Putin, and some trafficking ties, though more to Ukraine than to Russia, but they are dwarfed by Israeli ties.

Source

Elites think we’re morons. But hey, why not? I mean the “Trump is a Russian asset” lie worked (he massively increased sanctions on Russia). They lied over 80% of the time about Corbyn, including ridiculous anti-semitism smears, and it worked. They lied about WMD in Iraq, and Iraq ties to 9/11 and it worked. They lied about mass baby murders by Hamas and it worked. They lied about Gazan hospitals being Hamas bases and it worked.

They’re completely used to a plurality to a majority of the population believing their lies, so why not this time?

Are they right? Can they tell us the moon is made of blue cheese and get us to believe it? Perhaps so.

This is one of the reasons why, when I talk about war crimes tribunals I always include the media, who lied and lied and lied to enable genocide, child killing, rape and war. The media is almost entirely captured, certainly every corporate media outlet is little more than a source of propaganda. Truth only peaks out when one part of the elite disagrees with another part of the elite, but if the elites are united, as they were against Corbyn and are for mass murder of mostly children in Gaza, well, the media salutes and falls in line.

As I have said many times, the only way to fix the West and especially America is wholesale replacements of the elites and all their courtiers. No one with a conscience works at the top levels, because if someone has a conscience they can’t do the job.

They all have to go, and to ensure there’s no repeat, most of them need to be tried for their crimes, have everything they have beyond basic subsistence taken from them (they’re why so many people are homeless) and be thrown into prison.

This is is also a matter of simple self-respect from the rest of us. Enough pretending these people aren’t psychopaths who would kill or impoverish anyone if it would earn them a single bent nickel or, in many cases, even if it wouldn’t, because it’s how they get their rocks off.

It’s them or us, and so far it’s mostly been us.

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Epstein Occupied A Structural Position, So Who Has Replaced Him?

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On February 2, 2026

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As sometime contributor DanfromTo points out, Epstein performed “necessary” tasks for the elite: control thru blackmail and the provision of experiences many of them genuinely want to have. Power is allowed to people who can be trusted with it by other members of the elite, who will do what the elites want: whether that be bailing out rich people or committing genocide.

Some people, like Biden, will do these things because they are true believers, but it’s always best to have them collared, in case they have an attack of conscience or just decide that the bread is better butter on another side.

Epstein wasn’t the first pimp to rich people and he won’t be the last. Almost no one who fucked under-age women (or performed worse acts, there are indications of murder and cannibalism in the files) has actually suffered any consequences. There’s no real reason for American elites to stop and Israel, certainly, needs collars on new members of the elite.

So who replaced him?

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A Word On Elite Pedophilia

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On January 31, 2026

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More Epstein documents have been dumped, and they’re atrocious. It seems like most of the US elite was involved.

There are two reasons for this. One is that people who are super-powerful and super-rich feel like ordinary morality and laws don’t apply to them, and rape and torture and pedophilia are, to them, an ultimate rush, a proof of their power.

The other is similar to some gang initiations where if you want to be a member you have to kill someone. (Making your bones.) Once you’ve done that, you’re in, because they have you by the balls. You can’t betray them because they know who you murdered.

If you want to be in the top echelon of American (or Israeli, and possibly UK) elites they need to know you can be trusted. They need blackmail. You have to make your bones. Once you’ve committed an unspeakable crime, and they have pictures and video (remember, Epstein had cameras everywhere), well you can be allowed in, because you’re not going to use any power you have in any way the betrays elite interests, because they can destroy you any time they want.

(This is also how the Yale fraternity “Skull and Bones” is alleged to operate. You tell them your secrets to get in. They push your career. You’re one of them, and you can be trusted by other members, because you all have dirt on each other.)

Elite pedophilia isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, at least to other members of the elite classes.

 

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The Evolution of Richard Bruce Cheney’s Foreign Policy Ideology

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On November 8, 2025

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

Former Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney, the human manifestation of the US Deep State, died four days ago.

Good riddance.

The man was a war criminal. He is also the man singularly responsible for the US’s accelerating international decline. His policies effected the death of thousands of American soldiers and Marines, and the death of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of innocents. Here is Col. Larry Wilkerson, Gen. Colin Powell’s outspoken chief of staff, in a video from a few days ago everyone should watch, unequivocally called him a war criminal.

If there is a hell, he’s there.

If there is such a thing as reincarnation he’ll soon return as a cockroach. But I’m not here to discuss his afterlife.

It’s the evolution of his ideology that I want to consider.

Cheney was President Ford’s Chief of Staff from 1975-77. While Chief of Staff, he engineered Donald Rumsfeld’s appointment as the youngest SecDef ever. He did so on the basis that Rumsfeld would act as a successful counterweight to Kissinger, whose power and influence over President Ford was almost total in the foreign policy realm. All his life, Rumsfeld cultivated a persona of intelligence and wisdom, but ultimately he was an incompetent boob, losing himself in detail and missing the big picture, always. Sure, his comment about known-unknowns was actually insightful, but it was deriviative of a better thinker than he.

Rumsfeld’s two tenures as SecDef were both failures. But back in the 70s, he and Cheney stood no chance against Kissinger. They lost virtually all their foreign policy battles with the maestro. While National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State, Kissinger dominated American foreign policy-making like no other Secretary of State since John Quincy Adams and like no other since. Kissinger was a briliant man, a cunning bureaucratic infighter and skilled leaker. He was also an extremely self-serving memoirist.

Whether you like Kissinger or not, when in office, he co-created a diplomatic framework with Nixon and Chou Enlai that lasts, in many respects, to this day. They built something few men ever accomplish, and it deserves respect and an urgent reappraisal. Kissinger promoted detente, linkage, triangular diplomacy, and most importantly, prudence in the conduct of US foreign policy. Yes, I realize the irony of using prudence to describe Kissingerian foreign policy, but it’s true. Taking the long view, it’s hard to deny — especially when comparing his diplomacy with every SecState that came after him.

The world order Kissinger and Nixon created between 1969-74, endured for decades. But, as Nixon said, “in politics, nothing lasts.” Their order lasted until it was wrecked by a resentful Dick Cheney and his neocon acolytes during the presidency of Bush II. While Kissinger and Nixon engineered a time of great global stability, whatever you think of their politics or their actions while in office, they laid the foundations for the end of the Cold War, not to mention an era of relative peace between Israel and its enemies that endured until the assassination of Yitzakh Rabin in 1994. Cheney and Rumsfeld, on the other hand, inaugurated the era of the Empire of Chaos. When and where American power has been used since Dick Cheney’s rise, the result has been chaos. Name me a single American intervention since Cheney’s ascension as Vice President and after that has resulted in success. You can’t do it. Every single one is a master-class in the creation of chaos. We don’t nation-build; we manufacture failed states.

Ford’s loss to Carter in 1976 imbued Cheney and Rumsfeld with a lifetime resentment of Kissingerian diplomacy. Cheney and Rumsfeld took different paths, but had the same ultimate policy goal for the US: “Project for a New American Century with the central goal of promoting its “clean break” policy prescriptions. PNAC ideas soon became the sole driver of post-Cold War foreign policy in the US, especially when President Clinton adopted them, damn near wholesale.

This is a crucial point. Clinton adopted regime change in Iraq as a policy goal. He beefed up the no-fly zones over Iraq, as well. Indeed, Clinton’s foreign policy was totally incompetent. Seriously, we still have troops in the Balkans. And don’t forget the illegal partition of Kosovo from Serbia, which opened up the nasty can of worms affecting us even now. The main point here is: WE DID IT FIRST. The USA — not China, not Russia. The indispensable nation created the precedent. At the time, partition was vehemently opposed by the Russians. Russia was so incensed (though mostly impotent at the time) that they sent troops to occupy Pristina’s airport. US forces were ordered to overpower them. US Gen. Mike Jackson, to my eternal gratitude, defied the order saying, “I’m not having my soldiers responsible for starting World War III.”

I recount this episode of Bubba’s presidency because it represents what international relations scholars and historians call a “revolutionary diplomatic moment.” Spoiler: This is a big fucking deal. The partition of Kosovo was the exact moment when the US went from being a status quo power, defending the pre-existing order, adhering to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations (a principle established in 1648, by the way), to a revolutionary power, engaging in regime change, and the conduct of illegal aggressive war — neoconservatism in action. The kind of action whose results form a straight line from Kosovo to the war in the Ukraine. Bubba ain’t blameless by any stretch of the imagination. But Cheney represents “Boss Level” culpability.

Cheney’s final acts were many and deleterious, directly causing the decline he sought to avoid by abusing American power. First, he got himself appointed to Bush II’s Veep selection committee. He then chose himself. The rest of the story is a tragic recital of ignored intelligence, spilled blood, criminal invasions, vast American fortunes pissed away in the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the senseless death of millions of innocents. All this because he got his feefees hurt by Henry Kissinger.

He may be dead, but his influence persists like a zombie, and I have no idea when it will finally be killed.

Four Randon Econonic, Political, Geopolitical and Scientific Musings

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On September 15, 2025

9 Comments

First economic: The US dollar is down 5% over the last six months against a basket of currencies. And over the past year, it’s lost 9.6%. The biggest winner against a dollar has been the euro which has gone up 13% however, which truly is a win for Europe because it makes their natural gas imports from the US less expensive. But their natural gas imports are still a poison chalice. Expect the dollar to continue its slide, perhaps precipitously at some point in the New Year.

There were large moves out of US equities in the spring confirming the adage “sell in May and go away.” What September will look like is anyone’s guess, especially as Israel is more than likely to start the second phase of its war against Iran? Or October—that worst of months for Wall Street? What happens if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz and oil goes above 100 dollars a barrel? That would be great for oil producers, but it would be terrible for markets across the globe, even China, possibly leading to a worldwide recession, especially with Chinese growth being somewhere between 4% and 5% at present.

Regardless of what happens in September or October—both always being bad month’s economically for the US economy, America’s bond market and the value of the dollar will continue its downward trajectory because America’s lenders are now demanding gold for loans instead of treasuries. This smells to me like the beginning of the end of dollar hegemony.

It makes me wonder what kind of “store of value” the BRICS will adopt to support their currency? Will it be a basket of their currencies? Will it be backed by gold and petroleum? That would be truly hard-core, because it would mean we were in for a long era of tight money. Our entire lives, actually, the entire history has been based on easy money. And as you know money creation is only possible when using a fiat currency.

There are many ways to imagine what they’ll do. Maybe blockchain? Who really knows? But there are other commodities that do have a store value, silver among them, maybe even rare earths and others they could use. It certainly is an interesting time to live.

Second domestic political: Niall Ferguson in his interview by Charlie Rose posted a week ago on the Internet was asked about Trump‘s challenges of outright ignoring the constitution with the following question: are we the Roman Republic, is this or are we witnessing the collapse of the constitutional order like the Roman republic. Rose asks if Trump is Augustus. He clearly is not. I would say that Trump is more like Marius and the Kennedys were more like the brothers Gracchi. In fact, I made this argument on a graduate school paper that I got a very good grade on, but in which my professor seriously disagreed with my analogies. Regardless I would say that we are at the beginning of the end of our constitutional order, and that we are looking down the barrel of Caesarism. It’s on the way. Maybe two years, maybe four years but it’s coming. Will it be a general? Will it be a politician? Those are questions we simply can’t answer. But as Ian Welsh has consistently predicted America is heading for a collapse, be it constitutional or economic or both it’s gonna happen and there isn’t anything anyone of us can do about it. Besides, Ferguson, while whip-smart, is kind of a tool.

Third is about some weaknessess the SCO currently must contend with if they are to become the anti-NATO military block. Here they are in no particular order of importance: One, the nations that make up the SCO are too diverse and often times their interests do not align with everyone in the SCO. For example, China and India have serious border issues. Pakistan and India have serious issues in Kashmir. Those are just two examples of several potential conflicts between members of a block, supposedly to oppose NATO. The issues between Pakistan and India make the intra-NATO issues between Greece and Turkey look like a family arguement on Thanksgiving.

Second, as the former director general of Russian international affairs Council said in a recent interview, “ the mandate of the SCO is too general.” The SCO can focus on security, development, or terrorism. Not all three.

Third, China is by far the most powerful member of the SCO and that creates a dangerous asymmetry in the organization. Much like the United States dominated NATO for so long and skewed it’s purpose after the Cold War for its own unfathomable means.

Fourth: This essay on the relative merits of “Superradiance,”.  Is well worth the three minutes it will take to read, plus it is comprehensible to the layman. The essay describes Superradiance as “a collective quantum optical effect in which a group of emitters, such as atoms or molecules, emit light in a highly coherent and amplified manner.  In the context of mammalian neural systems, superradiance occurs when a group of neurons collectively emit photons, resulting in a stronger and more coherent signal compared to individual neuron emissions. This coordinated emission of photons across vast networks of microtubules within neurons could potentially achieve the long-range coherence necessary for the emergence of consciousness.”

The essay stands as a correction of sorts to Sir Roger Penrose’s “Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR)” theory of human consciousness, which Wikipedia describes thusly: Orch Or “is a controversial theory postulating that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons (rather than being a product of neural connections).” In short, says Penrose, “Consciousness does not collapse the wave function; instead it is the collapse of the wave function that produces consciousness.”

One thing we do know is that consciouness is decidely not computational and most likely occurs in the quantum realm.

As you can tell, I dig this kind of stuff.

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The Solution to The USA’s Taiwan Dilemma

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On September 11, 2025

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“The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”

三国演义 ~by Luo Guangzhong

Earlier I promised to post my plan to prevent a war between the United States and China over Taiwan. I’ve traveled and met with Taiwanese diplomats. They are some of the most sophisticated operators I’ve ever encountered. Taiwan is a highly advanced technological country. Very wealthy, with a sophisticated full coverage heath care system and a vibrant democracy. Furthermore, based on the Shanghai Communique issued on February 27, 1972 by Nixon and Mao, both mainland China and the USA formally acknowledged that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China”.

The Communique goes on to state the US side does not accept a violent solution to the unification of the two parties and the Chinese side retains the option to violence if Taiwan ever declares independence, paraphrasing here, folks. It’s been a long time since reading my Kissinger.

Conversely, I have traveled seven times to China. Here is an idea most Americans will probably never understand. China’s potential to utilize enormous amounts of soft power is profound. This is based on China’s circular view of history and that China has been invaded and ruled by foreign powers many times in its history. In each and every case China has overcome said invaders very differently than the way the Russians have. Or anyone else for that matter. Where the Russians trade space for time to husband their resources for a great counter attack and push the invader out of the country, China seduces the invader, with its ancient, deep, amazing and incredibly seductive culture. I cannot emphasize enough the depth, breadth, and tantalizing sophistication of its culture, be it material, artistic, political or spiritual. I do, after all, practice Chinese Chan Buddhism in my own life. Every time China has been invaded and completely taken over by a foreign power this strategy works. Even today we’re watching Chinese movies on Netflix. That is the use and export of soft power. And unlike America, that has only 250 years of history to draw upon its soft power, China has almost 4000 years of history to draw upon. The efficacy of Chinese soft power is not to be underestimated. It is indeed seductive.

Now the question moves to goals and intentions. And here an understanding of Chinese history can aid us in a better understanding of the present Chinese leader, Xi Jing Ping.

What are Xi Jing Ping’s true goals? Simple, he seeks membership among the greatest of Chinese emperors. The greatest of Chinese emperors are judged by a single metric: did they unify all of China? As the opening sentence of the great Chinese novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I quoted at the beginning of this essay, unification is the way the Chinese see themselves when in a golden age.

This compulsion to unify all of China is the defining source of Xi’s ambitions. And that means Taiwan. Taiwan is the last remaining province of a fully unified China. China equal to that ruled by the Qin Shih Huang Di, the very first emperor to unify all of China, or the great conqueror Han Wu Di, or Li Shimin of the mighty T’ang or Zhu Yuanzhang of the wall building Ming. It is to this rank of Chinese men that Xi aspires.

What should America do? I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to avoid a war with China that most people are certain is inevitable. They call it the “Thucydides Trap.” But, if the study of history has taught me anything it is that nothing is inevitable, contingencies matter, and human agency means the most. We may live in a complex adaptive system, but nothing, nothing is inevitable. Therefore, America must find a way tone down its arrogance and find a way to peacefully unite Taiwan with China.

Here is how I would do it if I were president.

First, I would engage in a series of CBM’s (Confidence Building Measures in diplospeak) with Xi Jing Ping regarding our naval stance in the Straits of Taiwan. I would make it policy that no American naval ships traverse the Straits of Taiwan any longer. Then I would halt the sale of advanced weapons to Taiwan.

Second, I would begin preparing the Taiwanese to consider peaceful unification with the mainland along the lines of the British handover of Hong Kong to China in the 90s. I would make it clear that we would not consider unification unless Taiwan was allowed to keep its democracy, and democratic traditions for a minimum of 80 years. I would do this to assuage the Taiwanese about a possible authoritarian takeover of the island in the case of unification. China did one nation, two systems successfully once before. They can do it again.

Third, I would secretly engage Xi Jing Ping with the following proposal: the United States of America would fully encourage and accept the unification of Taiwan with the mainland under the following conditions. Number one, Taiwan would have three representatives on the politburo, one of which would be a power ministry, either interior, defense, or foreign affairs. My fallback position, which is my true goal of course, would be the acceptance of two politburo members from Taiwan, but I would not relent on one serving as a power minister in one of the three ministries aforementioned.

I am relatively certain that Xi and the current politburo would agree to this proposal. It would serve to put Xi in the exhalted ranks of Chinese leaders in which he craves to be included. Mos timportantly, it would not harm a single vital national interest of the United States. The Chinese might have a salient in the first island chain, that being the island of Taiwan, but the United States would still have Korea, Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines. Not to mention the defenses in depth that the second island chain provides us in the Pacific ocean. Much less the great fortress of the third island chain of Midway, Wake and Hawaii. Defenses in depth matter much more than a salient in the first island chain.

Now, I recognize this goes against every national security intellectuals thinking. It is completely contrarian. But the more I’ve thought about it over the last few years the more I believe that is the best way to avoid general warfare between two nuclear great powers from the Straits of Malacca to the South China Sea and into the deep blue waters of the Pacific.

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