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75% of Russia's Satellite Electronics Come From US
schwit1 writes: One Russian aerospace industry expert noted today that three-quarters of all their satellite electronics comes from the United States: "According to [Nikolay Testoyedov], up to 75 percent of the electronic components for Russian satellites come from the US. Consequently, if it retaliates should Moscow refuse to sell RD-180 rocket motors to Washington — which Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has threatened — Russia's satellite program would be frozen for at least two years. "The imported electronic components in our satellites represent 25 to 75 percent of the total in communications; in military ones, somewhat less; in commercial ones, more," Testoyedov says. Of these imported components, approximately 83-87 percent come from the United States thus giving Washington the whip hand." If we stop providing these electronics he estimates that after their present stock runs out in about a year it would take at least two years before Russia could replace these American-made parts. As the above linked article at The Interpreter mentions, this is relevant in part because of recent talks about U.S. sanctions which could affect this kind of commerce.
Or buy it direct from China, where it's actually made.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Texas Instruments fabrications are done in China?
Who knew?
(actually they do have one plant under construction in Chengdu. but most of their fabs are done in Maine, Texas, and Japan).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
And 75% of electronics in USA satellites come from Taiwan. - Lev Andropov
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
well, yes, considering TI/NS supply most of the space hardened electronics for the entire planet...
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Is TX Instruments somehow related to this story?
Yep.
Who do you think builds radiation resistant electronics? Radio Shack?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
uh... a movie quote presented as fact??
This is about as believable as the rest of the movie.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
You can find the electronics components in many shops around the world. Will the US prohibit the sell of basic electronic componets to the entire world?
Really? Space rated parts? What planet are you from?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm kind of shocked there are still chip fabs in the USA.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
There is no way that Russia could ever figure out how to have someone in the U.S.A. (maybe even someone who works that the Russian embassy) just order this stuff from Digi-Key and then send it back to Russia, maybe even in a diplomatic pouch.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Aren't ULA building engines to the RD-180 design in Alabama? The only real issue is the prohibition by the Russians of the US using their RD-180s for military payloads. They're looking for local contractors, Boeing just aren't interested at the moment.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
This is why Putin cannot afford to retaliate with their own economic sanctions. Economically, they are about the same size as Italy. Putin and his cronies can talk as much as they want to about shunning the West economically (or not cooperating with America in space), but if it really came to a trade war, Russian society and their military would suffer far more than America and the rest of the West. Aside from oil/gas exports, Russia makes nothing of use for the West.
If I were an official in Russia, I would just keep my mouth shut about sanctions and just hope everything blows over in a year.
That title is terrible, and not supported by the article.
The article presents some numbers, quoting Nikolay Testoyedov:
Now, I think Slashdot gets off the hook for the misleading title, because the firggin article attributes the 75% from the US number to Nikolay Testoyedov and used the same number in its title. But the article title demonstrates some terrible critical math and reading comprehension skills.
No, no they're not. They had the option to build them and they decided it would be too expensive to tool up. Instead, they continue to purchase the engines from NPO Energomash. What you might be thinking of is the NK-33's being refurbished into AJ-26 engines for the Antares rocket used by Orbital; at least until one blew up a few seconds after launch in Virginia in 2013.
Why? Manufacturing goes overseas because it's cheaper, but when you automate the process or require skilled labor it's not really any cheaper to offshore it. In fact, according to Wikipedia the US has more chip fabs than any other country. Significantly so. In fact in general the US is third in the world (behind China and the EU) in total manufacturing output. It just doesn't have very many manufacturing jobs anymore, because most of the plants went hi-tech.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Having lived through the cold war, and then not the cold war, and now a little miniature cold war again, I liked not the cold war better.
Creating radiation resistant computer components is not as easy as fabricating a consumer video card. It is extremely expensive and time consuming. In industries that deal with specialty military hardware, you'll tend to see that there are only a handful of those companies in existence and they are concentrated in America (in this case, Texas Instruments has that particular market). You cannot export that sort of fabrication to another country without also exporting the people, R&D, and military secrets along with it.
So yes, it would be very difficult for Russia to find another supplier for a lot of these components or to start manufacturing all of them locally. This is not consumer technology.
Amsat can get the stuff. Elon can get the stuff. It might have to be special ordered, but I can't find any law or regulation keeping it out of the hands of Americans. So yes, I expect it can be bought in this country and then it will wander across our notoriously open boarders.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They should just get their stuff from HobbyKing and save a bundle of cash
Most of the time the 'rad hard whatever' is just an old chip manufactured at a lower density factor that is less susceptible to radiation. Like those i486 they put in the Hubble. At one time they did use sapphire substracts, gallium arsenide, and weird shit like that but I doubt they do anymore.
The Chinese have plenty of obsolete chip plants they could use to manufacture something like that. Heck even the Russians probably could manufacture some old SPARC CPU clones in their even more obsolete plants like they already do.
Or they could just do what SpaceX does. Use off-the-shelf consumer electronics and use software to make it resilient. Although I'm unsure of how well that would work on something that needs more lifetime than a rocket launch.
hmmm... they are and are not. It is complicated.
We have strong business interests and the chinese NEED the western markets. The chinese also have ZERO experience with modern warfare so they don't want to fight the sole remaining super power even in limited engagements. Anything capable of firing back won't be touched.
The US of course doesn't want a problem with china either. Our concern is the sea lanes. The free movement of trade goods by sea is a center piece of US strategic policy. What US strategic policy even is often not understood by most people. Most people don't understand that there is a design in the US's over all agenda.
Free trade is critical. It cannot be allowed to be threatened. The exception obviously being if it serves our interests but it rarely does.
We're generally okay with whatever china wants to do so long as they don't invade any country we're allied with, invade a country that changes our strategic posture via our allies, or interferes with trade.
If China doesn't do these things then we're going to just do business with them.
Their actions in the South China sea have been troubling because it threatens trade, upsets maritime law, and makes the US and her allies by proxy appear weak. The US is therefore going to be interested in shutting that down to protect trade lanes, preserve the maritime status quo that has existed since the Victorians, and because to not act would cost the US "face" which is quite important in diplomacy.
If you respect me and I tell you "do that and there is going to be trouble" this has a different effect than if you don't respect me and I say "there will be trouble." Do you see? A lack of respect means the US will have to prove itself by force more often. But if the US is respected then this is not necessary. The US can simply say "stop doing that" and the situation is resolved.
The dynamics of US, Chinese, and the various pacific partners of the US is complicated. The US is currently engaging in a "shift to china" policy where we're stepping down involvement in the middle east and focusing on East Asia.
Our allies in the region are asking for this change and China does not want it. So you see... there will be trouble. But China's policy has been thus far to do what it can get away with and to not do what it cannot get away with.
The problem China is going to run into is that the US is a very complex culture. We are like an onion of personalities and interests. And in different contexts, different layers of our cultural onion are preeminent. Most cultures that try to best us in something get used to the way we act in one context and then get surprised when we act a very different way in what is to us a very different context.
Take for example the attack on US embassies. Osama bin ladin believed that because the US reacted one way to attacks on their embassies that the US would act the same way if he blew up a building in Manhattan. Now from the outside, this seems logical. The US had many attacks against it by terrorists and generally didn't do anything. In one case we fired some cruise missiles at a terrorist camp which could have been abandoned for all we knew. But the attack on the trade center buildings triggered a massive response.
This is typical of American interactions with various powers that try to anticipate our reactions without understanding our culture.
Another example was the attack on Pearl Harbor by the imperial japanese. The imperial japanese had been doing things to US shipping and interests in the pacific for years. We ignored it. The japanese assumed that because we didn't react to those provocations that they could sink our pacific fleet in a surprise attack and the worst that would happen is we'd send them a strongly worded letter. Yamamoto who had gone to college in the US and had a better grasp of US culture knew that the attack would trigger a massive response. He tried to tell his peers this but they didn't believe him. So instead he did his best to make the atta
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Yes. radiation hardened and MIL spec is used in a lot more places than just space. A lot of medical equipment or even just stuff that needs to last uses those specifications. If you're building something and you want to make sure it works when purchased and lasts for 20 years after that, that's what you buy.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
China is not as complex. China has a highly centralized autocratic power structure. Their commander of their military is largely the head of the country. Not the president. You can tell because in times of crisis such as TIanaman Square, the people in charge of different branches will start changing hats. And person ultimately in control will be the commander of the military. Which is again, not the president.
The ways in which china is actually simplified via its power structure are many.
In the US, the political gestalt is relevant. In china it something to be controlled but which does not impose itself on the politicians or bureaucrats.
A simplified way of thinking about the US would be to imagine a group of high school students in a stereotypical horror movie. This is useful because the stereotypes can stand in as abstractions of the political mass.
Now, watch that group of teenagers in various situations. Depending on the situation, different teenagers will be in control of the situation. The brain nerd is going to be queried for his opinion when brainy nerd stuff comes up. The macho jock guy is going to be the most relevant when there is some kind of physical threat to the group. One or some collective of the girls might be relevant in various other situation.
And so on. The point is that the people that make decisions changes based on the circumstances.
Your violent alcoholic uncle is usually a joke. But if someone in your family needs to charge into melee or risk getting a bottle cracked off his head... he's probably going to be the guy that steps up. And no one in the group is going to suppress him in that situation.
In the context of the US, the economic and business people are relevant if there is money to be made. They care about that and will buy access... and on top of that, most people appreciate that they're the best people to send into that situation because they'll know what matters and what doesn't for business.
But the way they think and their priorities are specific to their subculture.
Now if you destroy the economic interests in that situation then the business people will abandon it and you'll probably get some faction of the diplomatic wing showing up to make nice with people.
If that all goes to hell and people start getting killed, then diplomats are going to get suppressed and you'll swing over to the hawks. And the hawks naturally have a very different way of looking at the world than do the other groups. Scare the country or present some sort of credible threat to the nation and these sorts of people that normally don't get a lot of attention or authority... are suddenly the most powerful people in the society.
This rapid shift in mentality confuses other powers because they get used to dealing with one faction and they assume that faction is the whole country or will regardless call the shots in any situation.
As such, the peace and diplomacy crew are often assumed to be the only faction in the US of relevance. Enemy powers get used to the dithering of this group when there are minor hostilities. But what happens when a major incursion happens is that these people lose all power. Literally all. They're dog food. And the often irrelevant hawks step into place... and basically do this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If you don't understand American culture, then you don't grasp that the diplomatic core is the softly spoken words. And confusing that for weakness is a mistake.
The rage, ferocity, and merciless of the American people when this line is crossed is frequently a surprise to rival powers. They don't see it coming.
They get used to in some cases decades of inaction, tolerance, and unconditional forgiveness for various slights or transgressions. But the line is crossed... and things change completely.
We have far more factions than that. Different groups have more credibility in different situations. If you change the conditi
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Unless all of NSA is busy sifting through Facebook status updates, I would expect any such purchase to receive some very special attention. As it should be.
USSR did that. But today's Russia is not USSR, even though it tries pretty hard to cosplay that.
When the Soviet Union collapsed you Americans were the first to loot the corpse. You basically privatized everything and stole the rest with the oligarks. You kept treating Russia with no respect untill Putin started to show some muscle. You could have really fixed the relationship between the two countries but you chose to humiliate and neglect.
Keep watching the History Channel and writing your history essays. Nobody cares for the guy who loves his own voice as much as you do.
We did no such thing. If we had, we'd own Russia.
Do we own Russia or are you wrong?
Because... one of the two is true.
If we "looted" russia, what did we loot and where did that loot go? Did we steal Lenin's mummified corpse and put it in the white house as a hat stand?
Nope.
As to your oligarchs looting the country... how is that our fault? First the soviets had been looting the country for years. They were living high on the misery of millions. And when it fell, did the country really change? Not really. Some people that ARE Russian looted the country as they always had so they could live high.
And point of order, a lot of them are Putin supporters. Who do you think keeps Putin in power? The oligarchs.
If the US were in control, would we keep Putin in power? No. He's a meanie beanie. Why would we support someone that doesn't like us?
Basically you're doing the same thing that all failed states do... blame an external power for your own failures.
Typical of banana republics, war torn african shitstorms, and of course... Russia has decided to join that club.
Congrats. Do you know how many successful countries blame their problems on the US?
Zero. Not fucking one of them does well.
So by all means, blame the US instead of your own resident cleptocrats. That way your people will never escape poverty and domination.
You're basically pushing a belief system that is believed exclusively by ignorant peasants. So good work there. ;)
I'm not a peasant. I take responsibility for the shitshow my country is on occasion. That is because I am a citizen. And citizens take responsibility. Peasants are taught that they are powerless and so take responsibility for nothing.
*Kiss Kiss*
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Or if you want to buy something that will be supported and available for 20 more years. I will have to track down the video of the storage vaults that TI(?) use to maintain older parts to enable some of the military requirements.
"A lot of modern parts are reasonably radiation tolerant: very small feature sizes helps, because it requires a lot of doping to make the junction work in such a small size. Large doping levels means less likely that a particle will upset the apple cart."
You missed the converse of that. As features get smaller there is a higher probability that a high energy particle can and will cause something to go wrong. A lower probability of it actually hitting something. Sort of a trade off.
Reminds me of the Solarsail stories here on /. They knew that the hardware would reset due to random particles hitting it. something would trigger one of the watchdogs.
As such, the peace and diplomacy crew are often assumed to be the only faction in the US of relevance. Enemy powers get used to the dithering of this group when there are minor hostilities. But what happens when a major incursion happens is that these people lose all power. Literally all. They're dog food. And the often irrelevant hawks step into place...
I think of it less as "lose all power", than "authorizing a temporary grant of power" to the "General Ripper" and "The Blood Knights".
Think of the US as "The Federation", who is quite willing to be the Picard most of the time, but if they think you're a credible threat, then you discover that those "exploration cruisers" are actually heavily armed battleships.
And another thing, Russia could have made it work, they had plenty of examples of making it work, but no, mafiya, kleptocracy and oligarchs. And they did it to themselves.
The USA is not perfect, as you said "shitshow", but we put people in federal prison for stuff that is considered expected and penny-ante in Russia and the Third World.
The U.S. is #1 in manufacturing and has been since WWII. http://www.wisegeek.org/what-a...
Well thank you for a typically illuminating comment from another gifted AC. It is because of minds like yours that most people have such a high regard for the common ACs on this site.
Keep up the good work.
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You're missing the point in an attempt to gain some sort of illusory high ground.
The point I'm making is that when certain thresholds are crossed, the US is prone to rapid changes in nature and character.
This is not the case for Russia. Putin for example would remain in power regardless of the situation and the various people that advise him would remain largely static.
This means there is no sudden change in character.
The US is different. When the thresholds are crossed, different groups of people gain and lose power in the system. This causes a sudden change in the nature of the nation.
Again... you can look at Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as examples. Other world powers don't change like that.
They start out more prepared to engage in hostility and then make a relatively subtle transition in posture.
The US changes are not subtle. They are sudden and extreme.
This was my point.
Your point is what? That the US isn't full of nice people? Compared to whom? We're nicer than anyone else of similar power levels and responsibilities.
I love the fuckwits that try to compare the US to Sweden or Mexico or something when it comes to geopolitics. Those powers have no international responsibilities. No one stops and says "the Swedish will save us!"... and because of that, they're not comparable.
Powers you can compare the US to?
The old British Empire.
The Soviet Union.
Ancient China
Imperial Japan
Nazi Germany
The Holy Roman Empire
The Turkish Empire
The Mongol Empire
Etc. And if you limit your comparison to nations and peoples that actually had REAL power, you'll find the US is pretty much the nicest hegemonic empire EVER in the history of the world.
Here I presume you're going to find my point inconvenient because you really wanted to compare the US to Sweden or something. Tough shit. Its an unreasonable comparison.
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I suspect skilled labour over there is still cheaper than skilled labour over here (for suitably Western values of here). And if your assertion is correct why is any electronics production offshored?
Plus there's more to it than labour. It's always good for business being able dump toxic effluent anywhere you goddam want.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The Russians are fed so much propaganda that their opinions aren't worth a lot.
You believe what you're told. Like good little peasants.
As to the Soviets descending into the economic crapper, they were in the crapper before that. Your standard of living has been much lower than ours since always. Your people are poor and have been poor for a very long time.
And that is despite having great resources, great industrial capability, and a relatively well educated technical population that could have made Russia very rich. You stand between east asia and europe.
The trade between those countries could flow THOUGH you. And along the way you'd get manufacturing jobs and service jobs to manage that trade or do assembly or manufacture things or something.
But what happens? The trade bypasses you. You profit NOTHING from the trade between Europe and East Asia.
And why is that? Because you're untrustworthy. We believe you'll steal the good or hold them hostage for political concessions. Look at what you did to Germany with your oil? Germany doesn't trust you now. They trusted you enough to depend on you but they don't want to rely on you anymore because you're an extremely foolish people. You don't know how to conduct business.
And you did the same thing to the US with our shared space program. Do you honestly think the US needed your help to maintain a space program? You are meaningless to us. It was a test. We wanted to see if you'd betray us. And you did. Its what your people do. And as a result, the US is going to break off its space program with yours. Which means you'll have to fund it entirely on your own. Good luck with that.
Our goal at this point is to make you poor and primitive enough that you aren't even a chimp with a shotgun. Your people already have a per person economy worse than Slovaks. It is going to get a lot worse.
And then your neighbors in the south and the east are going to start nibbling at your territory. Eating your rotting society alive.
And America will watch and smile.
Your one chance as prosperity was maintaining good relations with the West. We're the only people that could have been your friends. We could have injected capital and given business contracts to your people. We could have helped you build up your infrastructure. We could have made you rich and powerful. Not our slave any more than Australia is our slave.
And you pissed it all away for NOTHING.
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Is the US debt load increasingly unsustainable? Yep. Comes from having an out of control welfare system pushed by idiot socialists.
Are you a socialist? Then it is people like you that create this sort of problem. If not, then welcome to the few that aren't responsible for fucking it all up.
That said, we have a 12 trillion dollar economy and our debt's interest rates are very low. So really it isn't so bad.
As to Wallstreet being out of control, yep. But again how does this grant Russia any superiority? Russia couldn't create an economic problem if it wanted to because it is irrelevant. The US creates global economic problems when it fucks up because it is the most relevant economy in the world.
As to trade imbalances, that is actually not quite true. You have to keep in mind that a lot of things are not tracked in those trade statistics. For example, if I sell or license my intellectual property to you and in return you sell me steel... my IP is not counted as trade and your steel is. The US has a larger portion of its economy in IP than any other economy in the world. So it is natural that we'd have a big trade imbalance because the statistics do not count all trade.
As to the Fed being a slimy organization... yep. I don't see how this proves Russia is better though. You're poorer than us by an extreme degree. We're about four times more wealthy than you per person. That is, you're paid about 25 percent what we're paid. Think about that. So yeah... we have problems and we're not perfect. But that's life. Russia is still a joke.
As to too big to fail... yep again, though is Russia any better there? Do you let your core institutions fail and die when they fuck up? The only difference is that ours are larger than yours and require proportionally larger bail outs when they collapse.
Look, I'm a libertarian, buddy. I don't like the fed. I'd like it abolished entirely. It was only brought into law through trickery in the first place. The law that brought the Fed into existence was passed on a Christmas.
But we at least have rule of law. Enemies of Putin are murdered in the streets. Media outlets critical of the regime are thrown in jail on trumped up charges.
Your people are mushrooms. You're kept in the dark and fed shit.
We at least know what our problems are... you don't even know what yours are.
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No, their failures are their own. Denying this is merely self delusion.
As to the US having some negative consequences of fighting the drug war?... sure. Which nation would you rather be?
The US or Russia? Comparing the two isn't even close. Russia and has been for a long time... a sad joke.
If they weren't run by fools they could be very rich and very powerful.
But they are run by idiots and the price is to be an international laughing stock.
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Here I presume you're going to find my point inconvenient because you really wanted to compare the US to Sweden or something. Tough shit. Its an unreasonable comparison.
Not with the list you put up above. To quote the previous start of the entry for Sweden in the CIA world fact book "Though a military super power in the 17:th century..."
So if you can compare the US to the holy roman empire, then you can compare it to Sweden. The 30 years war for example, was the first true world war and it lasted three times as long as the two the US has been involved in, combined. There were plenty of people who said "the Swede will save us!" (and for a time we actually did), just about as many as sang "Sleep, child, sleep, for tomorrow comes the Swede".
Not that I'm particularly proud of this moment in history, mind you, but it happened all the same.
Stefan Axelsson
That's a distinction without meaning. First, you're not talking about modern sweden but about 17th century Sweden which had a very different character and nature than the modern Sweden. Compare the US morally and ethically against 17th century Sweden, and it is unlikely the modern US would look worse.
Second, while Sweden might have been threatening to their immediate neighbors, they had no where near the projection of true empires. I grant they were formidable. But only within their region.
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Point of note, here in the UK we never really gave a dam about what Sweden was getting up to in the 17th Century. I also suspect neither where the Spanish.
I'm well aware. The super power claim wasn't taken seriously.
I only brought up that tangent because I could smell the moral equivalency coming and I had to head it off by insisting on ACTUAL equivalency. Such arguments tend to rely on conflating very minor powers that couldn't do anything really nasty even if they wanted with huge powers that often have no choice but to do nasty things. It comes with the power.
So if the US is to be judged morally or ethically, it should be judged against its peers... which are other hegemonic powers. Powers capable of dictating policy on a word. That narrows the field considerably and also puts the US in a context where it is hard to actually impugn the US in any great extent.
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No, their failures are their own. Denying this is merely self delusion.
Why do you think I'm disagreeing with you? I said "They did it to themselves" which is EXACTLY THE SAME as "Their Failures are their own"
You're missing the point in an attempt to gain some sort of illusory high ground.
I think you're misconstruing my point. What I'm saying is that the US doesn't fundamentally change, it just changes the tools it's using. You see it as one group losing all power, and I see it as the US as a whole just changing the tools it's using for a while.
After Pearl and 9/11 the US didn't turn into a military dictatorship, the civilian government just gave the OK to the military to do their thing and gave them the resources necessary to do so. The diplomats and politicians were still running things, they just sent their hounds out to teach a lesson. The toolset changed, because the country decided to switch it's toolset.
And where did I compare the US to Mexico or Sweden? I think you're reading some kind of nefarious intent where there isn't.
sorry, i was still basically reacting to this guy:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
he was saying the Russians failed to produce a prosperous democracy because the Evile Amerikanzis looted his country and some how instituted the oligarchy.
So we're on the same page that that guy had his head up his ass... sorry for the confusion. :)
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The problem is that that isn't what happens. There is a sudden change in mentality.
You could say Russia or China or any country just changes the tools. They don't send their general to negotiate a trade deal or their diplomat to command their armies.
And yet this sudden change in US posture is unique to the United States so far as I know. I've seen no other nation that shifts that fast and will make changes that extreme to its policy.
The US will make 180 degree turns in policy in an instant. There's no other power that does that.
Now why does the US do that? I offered my theory for it. You don't like that theory? Okay... Do you have one of your own that explains the shift and why it is unique?
As to the US turning into a military dictatorship, to the contrary we had people in internment camps, we were executing German spies almost daily, we had rationing, a mandatory draft, and a great many other hallmarks of a militarized society.
What is more it isn't just that we gave the Okay to the generals. It was that prior to that point the Generals had very little influence. They were suggesting a firmer hand with Japan long before Pearl harbor. And this was overruled by the diplomats.
Then Pearl Harbor happened. No one gave a fucking shit what the diplomats said at that point. All anyone wanted to hear was what the Generals and Admirals wanted to do.
It was a sudden shift. You say this is just a change in tools? How is that any different from my comment if the tools ultimately control how things are done and your PREVIOUS tools are utterly ignored for the duration and they controlled how things were done in their time?
The answer is that you've cited a distinction without meaning.
As to mexico and sweden:
""I think of it less as "lose all power", than "authorizing a temporary grant of power" to the "General Ripper" and "The Blood Knights".
Think of the US as "The Federation", who is quite willing to be the Picard most of the time, but if they think you're a credible threat, then you discover that those "exploration cruisers" are actually heavily armed battleships.""
The point appears to be to render some kind of moral or ethical judgement. To suggest the US isn't so pure or so sweet.
I say "compared to whom?" I'm not competing against a fictional ideal. Real world comparisons only. And lets keep it to hegemonic powers.
Cite a hegemonic power purer than the US. You won't find one.
Do we match up to some goalposting fictional ideal? No one can. I'm not even going to take that challenge seriously.
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That's a distinction without meaning. First, you're not talking about modern sweden but about 17th century Sweden which had a very different character and nature than the modern Sweden. Compare the US morally and ethically against 17th century Sweden, and it is unlikely the modern US would look worse.
No argument, it was you how brought up the comparison with empires of yore, and then mentioned Sweden in the next breath.
Whether you'd look worse... Good question. "We" were pretty bad, so I'm not sure that's aiming very high. However, the world has also changed, we're much more peaceful now, so an absolute comparison is fraught with difficulty anyway.
Second, while Sweden might have been threatening to their immediate neighbors, they had no where near the projection of true empires. I grant they were formidable. But only within their region.
Well, by that token, so were many others on your list. Also, those that covered lots of land, often ruled vast "empires" of no-one, as many of the areas where they ruled didn't have much of a population to begin with (the Mongols come to mind here).
The British ambasador of the time did after all tell the Swedish monarch that Sweden's natural border in the east ought to be considered to stop at the shores of the black sea. The crown didn't think the Swedes had any natural claim beyond that (and schemed to start another war with Russia to put a stop to that). So, "our" influences well beyond the local region were considerable at the time.
So, in short, I'm not really arguing with your basic premises, just picking a nit regarding comparisons between "empires" and "Sweden" being invalid. Historically it's not a stretch.
Stefan Axelsson
As to what the British Empire told you... consider ulterior motives. This is an unavoidable consequence of the sort of power I'm talking about.
A lot of an empire's power is based on pretense... image... machismo... fear... respect... love... some kind of emotion. And the best application of that is to get people to do what you want them to do.
I know that the British were fighting the Crimean War around 1853. Do you have a date on when the British said "oh hey, you should totally go in that direction because its your destiny and stuff."?
If it lines up at all trouble the british were having in the vicinity of wherever they told you to go, then it is possible they simply wanted you to be a stablizing force in the region. After all, what does it cost them if you dominate people that aren't them and in the process serve their interests?
The US does this with some regularity. Though we tend to feel it is important that whatever we're telling you to do actually can work out well for you... and whomever might be getting suppressed.
Again, it goes back to the "win- win" scenario. We ideally like outcomes where in our opinion everyone profits.
So for example, dictator gets toppled... we tend to view that as a win win because freedom is awesome and tyranny sucks for everyone. Trade deals where various countries agree to not fuck with free trade that therefore allows other countries to trade freely with those countries. The net result is generally a common economic boom. win win.
Anyway, the old British Empire was not above such things. Great powers never are. They handle it differently sometimes based on the internal philosophies of each culture. But the core ethics of it are "this is a tool and using it will save our people time, money and life."
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Oh yes, there were plenty of ulterior motives. You see, the Swedish government in about 1670 before Charles XII realised that in order for Sweden to survive we had to have peace with the Russians. So the deal was made that we would help open the old silk road. We would help the Russians build canals etc. for a transport route that would take gods from India and China via Persia, across the Kaspian via Volga to Narva via Moscow. The endpoint would be where present day St Petersburg is, i.e. with handy access to the Baltic (Swedens "Mare nostrum" at the time as Finland and the Baltic were Swedish), Sweden and the world.
BUT, this of course pissed off the naval powers that had a lock on that trade royally. So they schemed and schemed to have war between Russia and Sweden, and with a new Peter the Great, who listened too much to the Dutch (another of the two great eastern sea/trading powers at the time) and a Charles the XII who listened to the Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill (yes an ancestor of that Churchill), who at Sachsen/Saxony persuaded the young king to not join the Saxony/English against the French, but instead keep at the war with Russia! (He thought it better in the long run for Sweden and Russia to bleed each other dry, rather than having the extra help against the French. And this at the time when the war against the French was a very closely run affair, and not at all certain. He later professed this to be his most prominent achievement). This against the protestations of the Saxony/Hannoverian government official Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (yes that Leibniz!)
And of course the plans of Marlborough worked. Sweden lost at Poltava 1709, (which marked the end of the Swedish empire and the rise of the Russian), and then the king fell at Halden in Norway in 1718 and in hindsight that was all she wrote. Sweden was too tired of war to even try and continue, and little by little the "empire" collapsed. The Russians hit the final nail in the coffin in 1809 when the took Finland (which had been Swedish for 600 years by that time). We basically haven't been to war since.
So, definitely not a win-win scenario. And as you point out, like everything important, based on trade. We wanted it, the Dutch, English, (and Portuguese, and Spanish) didn't want to lose it, and they took steps to prevent that from happening, and we and the Russians fell for it. Hindsight 20-20 and all that... :-)
Stefan Axelsson
There you go. You know a lot more about this specific incident than I do, but I still predicted accurately that there were some unstated hijinks involved. I should note again, that I didn't claim the British were believers in Win-Win. This is an American belief... The British empire believed in the more traditional "win-lose" system.
The reason America believes in Win Win is not just altruism but what we think of long term wisdom. First, when people lose they are rarely destroyed. Which means they are left resentful and become long term enemies because you've slighted them again and again.
Next, nations inside your influence web should profit and be strong while countries outside your influence web should be weak. If we're constantly fucking over everyone that listens to us then those inside our influence web will be weaker than those that do not listen to us. That is our allies have to profit to stay strong.
Third, you don't want to balance your entire hegemony on ONE thing. The fear of military reprisals works only so long as you have the military force to back up that position. Lets say you get into a big war such as happened to the British empire in WW1 and WW2. What happened to their empire? It fell apart because the primary thing holding together... the British image of invincibility... was gone. We want powers to stay with us for as many reasons as possible. Like us if possible. Like our culture. Profit from our trade. Like our technology. Anything and everything at once.
Its like a table with at least a dozen legs. Take one away for a time and the table still stands. A table with one leg cannot survive having that leg removed.
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The British empire believed in the more traditional "win-lose" system.
That may be a bit harsh. I would say it was more a "we win, we don't care particularly what happens to you". If you look at e.g. the African nations that won independence from their European masters the former British ones usually did OK. The Brits had taught the natives how to actually run a country, as they needed the country to be run and didn't want to waste their own manpower on it.
You can contrast this to many of the smaller players, like Portugal or, horror of horrors, Belgium. They were more likely to just abuse the locals for sheer short sighted profit taking and to hell with everything, and everyone else. "The heart of darkness" was after all written as an argument against the abuses of King Leopold of Belgium.
Stefan Axelsson
I didn't mean to be unfair to the British. They knew how to run an empire but they didn't uplift nations in their spheres for the mutual profit of those peoples. They invested in those countries to profit the empire or make controlling the territory easier.
No one ran a global empire better or more benevolently than the British until the Americans came along. Our administration is very different in character but arguably more stable, definitely more profitable, and the people's within our sphere tend to be happier because they can pretty much do whatever they want until it comes to geo politics.
That's really where the US starts paying attention to things... when something crosses the lines on the map. If it stays within certain borders we tend to ignore it. This is why for example we don't get involved in the brutal civil wars in Africa. Central africa from our perspective is all sort of one big mess. We have very little invested in it and the chaos there doesn't spread. They just kill each other in huge numbers.
The middle east draws us because they keep invading each other and especially messing with Israel which we have a lot invested in. If they just killed each other in their own countries we'd probably do nothing. Our assumption is that such wars burn themselves out and there's no long term benefit to getting involved in some country's civil war. Wait for one side to kill the other and then sign a trade deal with the victor.
Let me just finish with saying I have great admiration for the old British empire and the US learned a lot of what it knows from it. Forgive us if we have our own spin on the issue. We're all going to do things differently.
Our method has pros and cons. But this is the system we're most comfortable with.
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And what makes you think Pakistan is an ally of China?
You can move economic goods that way. But then the US believes in free trade so we wouldn't interfere with that in any case.
Now imagine what happens if Chinese troops enter pakistan? The chinese are not muslim. ;) So the fun is pretty predictable. The beardy death cultists will cause problems.
What is more, pakistan is very unstable. They've a very tense relationship with India and the two can be played off against each other if you need them to change policy. China's road further doesn't get them out of the box.
To get out of the box, China would need a network of contracted ports that they could dock warships in at any time for supply/repair/RR for crew. And then china would need a large Navy to make use of that.
China is a land power. Not an air power. Not a sea power. They are a LAND power.
Land powers very rarely are able to field credible navies or to invest the time to really understand what they are doing.
When land powers go to sea, they are frequently incompentent, their designs are comically bad, they easily lose interest and go back to their land issues, and even if they aren't... you can intentionally distract them very easily.
It takes a special mentality and commitment and experience to be able to pull it off. The chinese have none of it. None.
They don't think in terms of the sea. They think in terms of their borders.
Think of the US. Do we think in terms of OUR borders? No. Our borders are the least of our concerns. America is the world's largest Island naval power. North America is our island. At a strategic level, we dominate it utterly. China can't make that claim. Russia can't make that claim. The UK can. The US can. Japan can. And this means that such powers can project without having to man expensive forts or whatever along our borders because we can more easily intercept things at sea long before they get to us. And since we're already out there ready to intercept... we can use the same force to project power.
China also has iffy relations with their islamic population. The chinese love pork. They're not big fans of foreign religions. And they're pretty xenophobic compared to most people... and there are some muslims living in China. And that means that with some frequency the Chinese crack down on them whenever they get uppity.
Beyond that, to secure Pakistan, China would have to PAY them. I mean MONEY. Not public works. Cash. That's what the Pakistanis really want. Mostly to keep their government from collapsing and to keep the political wheels greased in what is one of the most corrupt societies possible. The US pays Pakistan. If Pakistan flips on us, we'll double down on India, stop sending checks to Pakistan... and then China is going to have fun dealing with the shit storm that creates.
The thing I find the most interesting about these discussions is that people don't appreciate that Americans not only are capable of but have generally thought through the geopolitics through in greater detail than most nations. We after all must consider wider spans of the globe. We balance one area that is getting pissy with another.
We are not a stupid people. To the contrary, we have a better handle on how to manage these issues than most powers can imagine.
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I didn't mean to be unfair to the British. They knew how to run an empire but they didn't uplift nations in their spheres for the mutual profit of those peoples. They invested in those countries to profit the empire or make controlling the territory easier.
Sure, don't get me wrong, I didn't say they did. However, they were much better than most of the "competition".
No one ran a global empire better or more benevolently than the British until the Americans came along.
That is up for debate I think. :-) I even said as much during your past and current debacle in Iraq. "You even had the British with you, the best imperialists there have ever been, and you still couldn't take their advice and do the smart thing." (They moved to have Abu Ghraib bombed for example, it being such a powerful symbol for Saddam's oppressive rule. Did you? No instead you made it a symbol of your oppressive rule. It's such a rookie mistake it's painful to see.
And then sending his army complete with political leadership home? WTF? You didn't even do that to the Nazis until after several months. German army units and US units even patrolled together all through the summer of '45, to ensure a stable and peaceful transition. It wasn't until after that was secured that you started hunting Nazis in earnest. So analogously, following your own example, in Iraq you should have rounded up the republican guard in short order and left the rest to simmer until done. Then dealt with it. You didn't and ended up with Iraq a vassal state of Iran, and the bloody Isis in the north.
So, I understand that you try and sell the current US as the empire that thwarts all other empires, but from outside I (and many with me) just can't see it. We see business acumen, and nothing else. No knowledge of actual facts on the ground, no sense or knowledge of history (local or otherwise), no shrewdness, no long term plan or direction. And by your own explanation, that's perhaps not surprising as the US leadership almost guarantees that there can be none of the above. To be a skilled imperialist, you need knowledge, direction, and being in it for the long haul. The US system, with everybody changing all the time, as you point out guarantees that that won't happen.
And hence you get the many messes that you get yourself involved in. Half heartedly and haphazardly. You can't seem to neither shit, nor get off the pot. From Vietnam to Iraq the symptoms and outcome are the same. And everybody else knows this, beating the Americans is easy. Just bleed them until they lose interest, as they inevitably will. The US have no staying power. (Compare that with the British if you will.) Even two-bit Somali war lords understood this, and managed to pull it off without much effort.
Now, why the US as imperialists are a failure, is a good question, and one we could write books on (as others have), but let me end with saying that of course this isn't all bad, or even overwhelmingly so. I'd absolutely hate for the current US to start behaving like the British, even as late as the late nineteenth century, don't get me wrong. I'd rather see an inept US that doesn't really want to be imperialist, than one that would and started doing that competently. But I'd also rather see a US that took an even more complete step in that direction and avoided clumsiness like Iraq altogether.
Stefan Axelsson
As to it being up for debate that the US was more benevolent... not by any objective measure.
Set hard standards that can be quantified and you'll find the difference is quite stark.
We have no colonial india. we have no colonial egypt. we don't even control the panama canal.
Stop and think. Would the British have given up something like the Panama Canal during their Empire?
Of course not. The US did. We gave it up on the understanding that if it is held hostage or misused in any way we might come back. But so long as they don't do that... we take no part. :)
No comparison. Look at the world and notice that there are no US colonies... anywhere.
We do have military bases But they're military bases. People typically don't live there with the intention of having a family and living on the military base forever. They live there for some years and then they come back to the US.
We have no Australia. There is no US version of Pakistan under the British empire. The British did nation building by replacing the local government with a british governor.
The US doesn't do that. We didn't even do it in Iraq. We found this hapless fellow that apparently was the best we could do and put him in charge. We gave him giant stacks of cash and weapons. We helped them draft a constitution and explained to them how republics work. We hoped they'd build something respectable. Sadly the idiots looted the money, sold the weapons, and all the soldiers deserted.
What are you going to do.
We tried. Those idiots apparently deserved the old Empire. It didn't respect the locals to know how to run anything and apparently that lack of trust was well placed.
As to our handling of Iraq, the problem with all this is what we're asked to do two mutually exclusive things. We're supposed to win and we're supposed to be politically correct. We've been having trouble with the PC police because we know what we have to do but we also know that doing it creates "bad optics" in the west and at home. So we have to do everything as much as possible while satisfying BOTH agendas. Its not easy.
The British Empire never had to deal with a 24 hour news cycle, teenagers calling your campaign genocide from their parent's basement, and assorted indignities from the morons on social media.
WE have to deal with that. Lets not pretend the playing field is equal here. Can you imagine the old British empire having to explain to their own people for every little ugly thing that ever happened in any corner of the empire AS IT HAPPENED. There's no point.
So we have special circumstances to contend with that the British never had to struggle with.
As to this notion that we're stupid... A lot of this stems from a forest from the trees mixed with quite a lot of 20 20 hindsight.
First, you have to appreciate that we're not focused on one area. Everything is linked.
The issue with Iraq was the possibility of the nuke. And the possibility of the nuke was the possibility of a nuke in Iran. And the nuke in Iran means the entire middle east goes nuclear. And that creates a game theory paradox for general strategic policy which would force the US to retreat from his position as global policeman. This would cause a collapse in international law since who would enforce it. And a collapse in the global trade lanes because who is going to keep them open.
That whole statement likely sounded completely bizarre to you. If so, I'll explain it in detail because this lies at the bottom of most of the confusing things you see the US do. Most people outside of the US don't get this. But US strategic policy for decades has been rooted in the imperative to prevent the US from getting annihilated in a nuclear engagement.
THAT is our policy. Everything we do is derived from that.
Take the current US undermining of Syria. Why are we doing that? Because it gets us closer to Iran and it will make it easier for us to seal them up tight if they get a bomb. We want to have a
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