Trump advocates nuclear proliferation

Here's the best reason I've seen yet why Donald Trump should
NOT be elected POTUS.

article excerpt

By STEPHANIE CONDON CBS NEWS March 29, 2016, 11:05 PM
Donald Trump: Japan, South Korea might need nuclear weapons

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday
night defended his assertion that more countries, such as
Japan, South Korea or even Saudi Arabia, may need to develop
their own nuclear weapons.

'You have so many countries already -- China, Pakistan, you
have so many countries, Russia -- you have so many countries
right now that have them,' Trump said in a Milwaukee,
Wisconsin town hall televised by CNN. 'Now, wouldn't you
rather, in a certain sense, have Japan have nuclear weapons
when North Korea has nuclear weapons?'

Trump said that the United States spends too much money
protecting countries like Japan and Saudi Arabia, but 'we
can't afford to do it anymore.'

CNN moderator Anderson Cooper pointed out that it's been
U.S. policy for decades to prevent Japan from getting a
nuclear weapon. Trump responded, 'Maybe it's going to have
to be time to change, because so many people -- you have
Pakistan has it, you have China has it. You have so many
other countries are now having it.'

Trump similarly suggested that Japan and South Korea
should develop nuclear weaponry in an interview with
the New York Times last week.

Following Trump's remarks to the Times, Japanese Chief
Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters that his
nation remains steadfastly against owning, making or
allowing nuclear weapons. He said this position will '
remain an important basic policy of the government.'

Trump said he's in favor of potentially seeing countries
like Japan develop nuclear weapons because 'it's going to
happen anyway.'

'It's only a question of time,' he said. "They're going
to start having them or we have to get rid of them
entirely.'

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-japan-south-korea-might-need-nuclear-weapons/

Presently a far stricter policy is required so more nations would not play with nukes...
But, aggressive as Trump trumpets his stuff, foreign policy is going to be a first rate challenge to any candidate this year. I am still hoping that no intervention happens from the guys and gals in the cosmic T-shirts to alter what looks like his fate is: a giant loss in November, taking many of the Reps with him.

However, seriously, I am reading chess champion Kasparov's book on the Putin phenomena "Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped" and it seems to me that Bill Clinton, Obama, G. W. Bush and Hillary Clinton have been described as naive in the course of many steps of the buildup of this dangerous spot on earth... so I'm very skeptical. Politicians do not always take intelligence seriously. And this will be a DECISIVE question in a couple of years in not sooner. The propaganda warfare is doing better than any time.

Of course the less nukes we have proliferating, the better. But handling them is a case too - I'll never forget the example in War in Heaven about Kennedy and the Cuban crisis.

reg, #2, re: "Presently a far stricter policy is required so
more nations would not play with nukes... But, aggressive as
Trump trumpets his stuff, foreign policy is going to be a
first rate challenge to any candidate this year. I am still
hoping that no intervention happens from the guys and gals
in the cosmic T-shirts to alter what looks like his fate is:
a giant loss in November, taking many of the Reps with him."

At this point, it looks to me like there's a lot more than
meets the eye to this whole Donald Trump phenomenon. He's
already completely fragmented the entire political right
in the USA, not just on the ideological level, but on the
personal level as well. However, I see no signs that he's
trying to found a permanent political party or movement
of any kind, and in fact, seems to be going out of his way
to keep one from forming. You might say he's forming a cult
of personality around what's obviously just a role he's
playing on stage and not actually giving his followers any
kind of role model to imitate.

IMO, the question we ought to be asking is the usual "Cui
bono?". Who stands to benefit from what Trump is doing?
And right now, I can't think of a single major special
interest group who stands to gain from what he is doing.
Can you?

re: "However, seriously, I am reading chess champion
Kasparov's book on the Putin phenomena 'Why Vladimir Putin
and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped' and it
seems to me that Bill Clinton, Obama, G. W. Bush and
Hillary Clinton have been described as naive in the course
of many steps of the buildup of this dangerous spot on
earth... so I'm very skeptical. Politicians do not always
take intelligence seriously. And this will be a DECISIVE
question in a couple of years if not sooner. The
propaganda warfare is doing better than any time."

It looks to me like this is a situation where there is
no actual "intelligence" available about what is going
to happen next in either the Information Revolution or
the world economic system. And it's impossible to win
a propaganda war if you can't identify either your
enemies or your allies, which seems to the be the case
right now, not just in the "Free World", but in Russia
and China as well. The present clash between Islamic
extremists and everybody else is actually a symptom
of the actual disease, which is the lack of ideology
of the sort that usually drives all of the world's
major conflicts. The Modern Era began with conflict
between heriditary power and various forms of
meritocracy. The Age of Discovery was driven by
conflict between government control of the economy
and free enterprise. The Age of Enlightenment was
made possible mostly by the proliferation of
firearms that empowered the masses more the elites.
And the Industrial Revolution created the competition
between "haves" and "have nots" that's now becoming
obsolete ... without any new recognizable conflict
arising to replace it.

re: "Of course the less nukes we have proliferating,
the better. But handling them is a case too - I'll
never forget the example in War in Heaven about
Kennedy and the Cuban crisis."

I'm pretty sure that nuclear weapons are going to
be used in anger quite soon, and this may allow the
next true ideological conflict to be identified.
But I still have no idea what it will turn out to be.

I just read Garry Kasparov's book "Winter is Coming" where he dissects Western handling of Putin with a lot of data and quotes. Later on as I was browsing, I stumbled upon an article where he compares Trump to Putin, with caveats... Basically he says Trump is just as authoritarian as Putin is, which is something we discussed briefly in another thread. Plus that no one among Western politicians has dared to stand up to him - responses always come late like Clinton's actions against Slobodan Milosevic back then. So my real question is how Hillary - who stands in a winning position if this outrageous populist is defamed somehow - is going to handle this.

Times have gone around since 1989, and I wonder what changed. I think Eastern Europe is doubly threatened and we can take it for granted that unless someone produces horrors like Hitler, is it ever going to try to stand up to Putin and the likes of the Daesh. Realpolitik is a bane, really. At this point all I hope for is that the information society has enough power, but the thing is, the KGB is much better suited to handle it with all their conspiracy theories and an incredible amount of money poured into clever propaganda. The collective Russian imperial game of playing the national victim who is supposed to save the world - we heard all about that when Germany was tricked in Versailles. To me, the Olympic Games at Sochi really seemed like a replay of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. (Followed by 1940 Tokyo, then 1944 Rome... how interesting.) Then Budapest is competing for Olympic Games I don't know which year. 2020 probably. Well, if these things go on as they seem, Budapest is out for a very different game...

With the going down of the EU, the US would lose its number one trading partner as well as a military ally.

The oil and gas argument is flawed: Russia needs the EU stronger than the reverse - the EU actually gets about one third of its oil and gas supply from Russia, and now that Putin provoked Turkey, the Southern pipeline is shot.

I think that Putin stands to gain the most should any nuclear stuff be used by any groups - Sunni or Shia - in the Middle East. As long as direct ties cannot be proven, oil prices would go up and Putin would gamble from the money again. BTW he could well be the richest man on Earth right now, and Western powers could simply stop him at this point. But the way things are going, they are not going to. It's not good for business. And the later they act, the more war and cost it will take. He was waging a war in Georgia in 2008 during the Olympic Games. That was a warning to Ukraine among others. Well, Ukrainians took to the streets, and Putin was mad because if the same thing happened in Russia, he would end his days in a jail in Siberia...

It's one thing to be speculating, and another to read the passionate lines of a chess champion for 20 years, an active member of the Russian opposition, who has an IQ of at least 190, and decided to move to New York City last year because after the open shooting down of Boris Nemtsov, another prominent Russian opposition leader, next to the Kremlin building, he was rightly afraid he would not be allowed to leave Russia in peace...

So as bad as he was in other respects, McCain was right four years ago. However, Trump is a no card for "the leader of the free world"...

Still I think that from next year on, "freedom" will again be an important buzzword. I wonder where the development of the historical ideas the IC has embraced and promoted will continue. Canada, Norway and Holland will not be enough... and Australia has some weird shadows too, with their forceful response to the "migration" crisis.

Let's hope that this "rightist" agenda will crumble at the same time but Putin's Russia seems to be a tough stone in the cookie jar.

The new Russian line does have an ideology, however, no positive goals except the usual hypnotic patterns.
Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov just published a book - I read a detailed review. Their ideology seems very strongly put: glossing over all the human horrors of the Soviets, Russia has always been on the good side and the US on the bad side. The article highlights what I have been observing for years: that by a careful ideological operation, the new Russian power not only caters to the far-right fringe nationalists but also to the Western left wing. All this today, when Russia started a new war in the Caucasus - the clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan are a proxy war between Russia and Turkey. (From all I know about Erdogan - from Turkish people and others who have recently been there and the news - he is humanly and socially just as bad as Vladimir, only, they are rivals.)

The common enemy named in the book is the US - despite the fact that Obama received Putin in the White House, and yesterday he also received our mafia chief, Orban. Which is a shame, as most EU leaders know him better and basically refuse to have diplomatic functions. (Merkel tried last year but it was scandalous - she had to ask Orban on the open forum what the term "illiberal democracy" meant, for she could not really construe that term.)

By a reversed argument, Lavrov says that Russia has been always ready to ally with the West, it is only Western imperialism (I am not sure if he uses that word but that is the one that suits the argument) that consistently put Russia on the outsider's bench. (Forget the Ukrainian and the Georgian situations, and the Malay airplane shot down over Ukraine with Russian weapons by Russian-funded "rebels", and the long propaganda war on the West by RT channel). When trying to polish Stalinism (which, after researching some of the documents after the fall of the Soviets, such as the pact between Molotov and Ribbentropp, appears far worse than we were aware in the 70's and 80's), he also points at France which produced a revolution also with blood and guillotines.

He conveniently forgets that while the French revolution was started for more freedom, and in retrospect has proven to produce some progress on Earth, Stalinism was the opposite. In view of the Soviet-Nazi pacts and the Soviets supplying Nazi Germany after the British blockade, even Stalin's anti-Nazi war feats seem a little questionable. But the whole thing seems to be built upon the usual myth of the Russian "third way". Lenin and Putin are featured side by side on mugs sold for fans in Russia...

At a deeper level, I think a general anti-Enlightenment philosophy drives the whole thing.
Added to this is the strange coincidence that many of the leaders of the Daesh are from Chechnya (a war basically led by Putin), and last year local informers were saying that about 8% of their troops spoke Russian.

What this points to me is that no historical steps can be spared and left out - contrary to what we had to learn about Lenin. His Soviet state brought Russia to the industrial age technically, but humanly not to a post-capitalistic society, rather to a pre-capitalistic one. It is odd how they lament the most successful fifth stage theocracy while allying themselves with the Russian Orthodox Church...

It seems nonsense to one steeped in the intellectual history of the West with a view on India and China as well, but it makes perfect sense for many Russians. On top of it, there is more than a tinge of anti-Semitism in the brew.

1. It is bad when smart people rule the world. 2. We are "the heart and soul" of the world, and the US as well as Israel and Jews in general are heartless monsters. 3. We have always had compassion with the downtrodden millions.

The weird thing is that there were a few good things about life in the Soviet system but those are not the ones Lavrov puts forward. He also perpetuates the belief that the existence of the Soviet Union was actually good for the West because it was stimulating the heartless Western capitalists to behave nicer to their own working class and minorities. That is a tough nut to crack, because there is some truth to it, but the way this partial truth is used as an apology for the new Russian imperialism, it goes against the general idea of the human freedom and progress which started the entire critique of capitalism in the first place. What they mean is that "our" capitalists are good, like Alexey Miller, while "their" capitalists are bad, like George Soros, and also those are "bad" who we are ready to rip off, like Khodorkovsky...

Imagine a German writing a book in a few years arguing that Nazism had its bad side, but it was indirectly good for the Jewish people and the other persecuted minorities... just look at the results.

So yes, I basically agree that neither side has a coherent ideology - neither Trump, nor Putin. A common ground is that they are both fabulously rich and have thus no need to ask for money from a Parliament, a Duma or a House of Commons etc. Trump will fall sooner though for as you point out he is badly narcissistic - not even catering to the usual Republican slogans which at least have sometimes a tinge of idealism (democracy, frugality, the US Constitution etc.) Putin has no coherent ideology either beyond the "us vs. them" but he is desperate to sell stuff sounding as ideology...

reg: #4, re: "I just read Garry Kasparov's book 'Winter
is Coming' where he dissects Western handling of Putin
with a lot of data and quotes. Later on as I was
browsing, I stumbled upon an article where he compares
Trump to Putin, with caveats... Basically he says
he is just as authoritarian as Putin is, which is
something we discussed briefly in another thread. Plus
that no one among Western politicians has dared to
stand up to him - responses always come late like
Clinton's actions against Slobodan Milosevic back
then. So my real question is how Hillary - who stands
in a winning position if this outrageous populist is
defamed somehow - is going to handle this."

So far, Hillary Clinton seems to have adoped the
best strategy possible under the circumstances:
she's simply riding on the coat-tails of her
husband Bill and President Obama and posing as
"the moderate alternative of all forms of
extremism". Her main so slogan so far seems to
have been, "America is still a great nation, and
let's fight to keep it that way." And of course
the Republican Party leadership, (I assume with
the tacit backing of the country's actual
plutocrats), is now looking for ways to "dump
Trump" because they have come to believe that if
he is the GOP Presidential candidate, the result
at the polls in November will be utter disaster,
with the Demos winning the White House, control
of the Senate, and possible even the House.

re: "Times have gone around since 1989, and I wonder
what changed. I think Eastern Europe is doubly
threatened and we can take it for granted that
unless someone produces horrors like Hitler, is it
ever going to try to stand up to Putin and the likes
of the Daesh. Realpolitik is a bane, really. At this
point all I hope for is that the information society
has enough power, but the thing is, the KGB is much
better suited to handle it with all their conspiracy
theories and an incredible amount of money poured
into clever propaganda. The collective Russian
imperial game of playing the national victim who is
supposed to save the world - we heard all about that
when Germany was tricked in Versailles. To me, the
Olympic Games at Sochi really seemed like a replay
of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. (Followed by 1940 Tokyo,
then 1944 Rome... how interesting.) Then Budapest is
competing for Olympic Games I don't know which year.
2020 probably. Well, if these things go on as they
seem, Budapest is out for a very different game..."

Yes, it's pretty hard to apply the principle of
Realpolitik when what worked yesterday seems to be
failing today ... and that seems to be what's going
on in both Eastern Europe and the Middle East. It
looks to me like the ultimate practicioners of
Realpolitik in the world today are Daesh and all
the capitalists who are making massive profits off
of the War on Terror.

re: "With the going down of the EU, the US would lose
its number one trading partner as well as a military
ally. The oil and gas argument is flawed: Russia needs
the EU stronger than the reverse - the EU actually gets
about one third of its oil and gas supply from Russia,
and now that Putin provoked Turkey, the Southern
pipeline is shot."

It's also important to point out that it wouldn't be
hard for the EU to switch to importing oil from the
West via supertankers rather than from the East via
pipelines. And once the infrastructure for doing
this was put in place, Russia would become a third-
world nation over night.

re: "I think that Putin stands to gain the most should
any nuclear stuff be used by any groups - Sunni or Shia -
in the Middle East. As long as direct ties cannot be
proven, oil prices would go up and Putin would gamble
from the money again. BTW he could well be the richest
man on Earth right now, and Western powers could simply
stop him at this point. But the way things are going,
they are not going to. It's not good for business. And
the later they act, the more war and cost it will take.
He was waging a war in Georgia in 2008 during the
Olympic Games. That was a warning to Ukraine among
others. Well, Ukrainians took to the streets, and Putin
was mad because if the same thing happened in Russia,
he would end his days in a jail in Siberia..."

As I said above, it looks to me like the Russian
economy is more fragile than the general populations
of most Western nations realize, though both the
politicians and business leaders in the EU, the USA,
and the rest of the world are well aware of this.

re: "It's one thing to be speculating, and another to
read the passionate lines of a chess champion for 20
years, an active member of the Russian opposition,
who has an IQ of at least 190, and decided to move to
New York City last year because after the open
shooting down of Boris Nemtsov, another prominent
Russian opposition leader, next to the Kremlin
building, he was rightly afraid he would not be
allowed to leave Russia in peace...

Yes! I tend to agree with Garry Kasparov completely
on this...

re: "So as bad as he was in other respects, McCain was
right four years ago. However, Trump is a no card for
'the leader of the free world'..."

IMO, McCain or any other legitimate politician in the
Republican Party's right wing could serve as "the
leader of the free world" today just as Ronald
Reagan did back in the Eighties. As an American
leftist, I would loudly voice my opposition to
just about everything he said and did, as I did
back then, but I'd also realize that the Democrats
would eventually get back into power and set things
right. However, Trump is just plain scary, and the
more of his thoughts I'm exposed to, more I realize
that he has to be kept out of the White House...

re: "Still I think that from next year on, 'freedom'
will again be an important buzzword. I wonder where
the development of the historical ideas the IC has
embraced and promoted will continue. Canada, Norway
and Holland will not be enough... and Australia has
some weird shadows too, with their forceful response
to the 'migration' crisis."

It looks to me like the development of the historical
ideas you're referring to has already switched from
the physical world to the cyber world and that
bottom-up revolution is beginning to occur on both
the economic and political levels is beginning to
occur in many different parts of the globe.

re: "Let's hope that this 'rightist' agenda will
crumble at the same time but Putin's Russia seems to
be a tough stone in the cookie jar."

As I said, it looks to me (and the IC) like Russia
is actually walking on thin ice, and the stone
represented by Putin and the small political
faction he represents can punch a hole at time
and icy water will come pouring up.

Reg, #5, re: "The new Russian line does have an
ideology, however, no positive goals except the
usual hypnotic patterns. Foreign Secretary Sergei
Lavrov just published a book - I read a detailed
review. Their ideology seems very strongly put:
glossing over all the human horrors of the
Soviets, Russia has always been on the good side
and the US on the bad side. The article highlights
what I have been observing for years: that by a
careful ideological operation, the new Russian
power not only caters to the far-right fringe
nationalists but also to the Western left wing.
All this today, when Russia started a new war in
the Caucasus - the clashes between Armenia and
Azerbaijan are a proxy war between Russia and
Turkey. (From all I know about Erdogan - from
Turkish people and others who have recently been
there and the news - he is humanly and socially
just as bad as Vladimir, only, they are rivals.)

I agree with everything you just said, but it's
also important to point out that both Russia
and Turkey are actually peripheral to the wider
power struggle that's now going on world-wide.
That struggle is actually economic, and involves
control of natural resources and the industrial
infrastructure needed to turn them into useful
products. Neither Russian nor Turkey possesses
enough of either of these to matter much, and
ironically, neither does Israel or the Islamic
world. The oil reserves that underlie many
Muslim countries look important on the surface,
but it's important to realize that it's
reasonably easy and cheap to transport oil by
ship. So countries like the USA, China, India,
the EU, and a bunch of smaller Western nations
are going to build the future and countries
like Russia are going to be pushed aside.

re: "The common enemy named in the book is the
US - despite the fact that Obama received Putin
in the White House, and yesterday he also received
our mafia chief, Orban. Which is a shame, as most
EU leaders know him better and basically refuse
to have diplomatic functions. (Merkel tried last
year but it was scandalous - she had to ask Orban
on the open forum what the term 'illiberal
democracy' meant, for she could not really
construe that term.)"

The way to cut through this kind of propaganda
is to go back to the traditional definitions
of "liberal thinking" and "liberal education".
These are grounded in open-mindedness, learning
by trial and error, and checks and balances on
all forms of power, which automatically give
people access to the tools that create both
wealth and political/military power from the
ground up.

re: "By a reversed argument, Lavrov says that
Russia has been always ready to ally with the
West, it is only Western imperialism (I am not
sure if he uses that word but that is the one
that suits the argument) that consistently puts
Russia on the outsider's bench. (Forget the
Ukrainian and the Georgian situations, and the
Malay airplane shot down over Ukraine with
Russian weapons by Russian-funded 'rebels',
and the long propaganda war on the West by RT
channel). When trying to polish Stalinism
(which, after researching some of the
documents after the fall of the Soviets,
such as the pact between Molotov and
Ribbentropp, appears far worse than we were
aware in the 70's and 80's), he also points
at France which produced a revolution also
with blood and guillotines."

What he's neglecting to mention is that
the French Revolution of 1993 started a
whole chain of political, social, and
economic changes that had world-wide
impact and were intimately linked with
similar progress taking place in Britain
and the USA throughout the 19th and
early 20th centuries.

re: "He conveniently forgets that while the
French revolution was started for more freedom,
and in retrospect has proven to produce some
progress on Earth, Stalinism was the opposite.
In view of the Soviet-Nazi pacts and the
Soviets supplying Nazi Germany after the
British blockade, even Stalin's anti-Nazi war
feats seem a little questionable. But the whole
thing seems to be built upon the usual myth of
the Russian 'third way'. Lenin and Putin are
featured side by side on mugs sold for fans in
Russia..."

It's important to realize that the Russian
Revolution after the end of WW1 was orchestrated
by the dying gasp of feudalism represented by
the Central Powers. Lenin was put in power to
prevent a French-style revolution from bringing
Russia a politico-economic system similar to
that already in place in France, Britain, and
the USA.

re: "At a deeper level, I think a general
anti-Enlightenment philosophy drives the whole
thing."

I absolutely agree, using "Enlightenment" in
the sense used by the revolutionaries of the
late 18th century.

re: "Added to this is the strange coincidence
that many of the leaders of the Daesh are from
Chechnya (a war basically led by Putin), and
last year local informers were saying that
about 8% of their troops spoke Russian."

The Caliphate and the DAESH are just the
modern equivalent of the pirates of the
Age of Discovery, who also practiced world-
wide terrorism and tried to form their own
small independant nations. And they will
eventually be wiped out as the major powers
settle their differences by a mixture of
warfare and diplomacy that is always taking
place.

re: "What this points to me is that no
historical steps can be spared and left out -
contrary to what we had to learn about Lenin.
His Soviet state brought Russia to the
industrial age technically, but humanly not
to a post-capitalistic society, rather to a
pre-capitalistic one. It is odd how they
ament the most successful fifth stage
theocracy while allying themselves with
the Russian Orthodox Church..."

Yes! The Russian Revolution established one
of the first major fifth-stage theocratic
regimes, and it still remains in place. IMO,
Putin is actually the heir of Lenin, using
the same deeply flawed polticial and economic
infrastructure.

re: "It seems nonsense to one steeped in the
intellectual history of the West with a view
on India and China as well, but it makes
perfect sense for many Russians. On top of it,
there is more than a tinge of anti-Semitism
in the brew: '1. It is bad when smart people
rule the world. 2. We are "the heart and soul"
of the world, and the US as well as Israel and
Jews in general are heartless monsters. 3. We
have always had compassion with the downtrodden
millions'."

I completely agree, and this is as good a
summary of the actual mind-set of the Putin
faction in Russia as I've ever seen.

re: "The weird thing is that there were a few
good things about life in the Soviet system but
those are not the ones Lavrov puts forward. He
also perpetuates the belief that the existence
of the Soviet Union was actually good for the
West because it was stimulating the heartless
Western capitalists to behave nicer to their
own working class and minorities. That is a
tough nut to crack, because there is some truth
to it, but the way this partial truth is used
as an apology for the new Russian imperialism,
it goes against the general idea of the human
freedom and progress which started the entire
critique of capitalism in the first place.
What they mean is that 'our' capitalists are good,
like Alexey Miller, while 'their' capitalists are
bad, like George Soros, and also those are 'bad'
who we are ready to rip off, like Khodorkovsky..."

What Putin is missing is that capitalism can
only exist under a free-enterprise system ...
which has never truly existed in Russia. What
he is really running is a modern feudal system,
with himself as king and people in his favor as
nobles.

re: "Imagine a German writing a book in a few years
arguing that Nazism had its bad side, but it was
indirectly good for the Jewish people and the other
persecuted minorities... just look at the results."

Books like that have already been written and
publised, but fortunately, so far none of them
have been taken seriously by either the public or
major political movements anywhere in the world.

re: "So yes, I basically agree that neither side has
a coherent ideology - neither Trump, nor Putin. A
common ground is that they are both fabulously rich
and have thus no need to ask for money from a
Parliament, a Duma or a House of Commons etc. Trump
will fall sooner though for as you point out he is
badly narcissistic - not even catering to the usual
Republican slogans which at least have sometimes a
tinge of idealism (democracy, frugality, the US
Constitution etc.) Putin has no coherent ideology
either beyond the "us vs. them" but he is desperate
to sell stuff that sounds like ideology...

Weirdly enough, Donald Trump is just an entertainer
who is putting on a big show because he applied for
membership in the small economic elite that exerts
a lot of plutocratic power from behind the scenes
and was turned down. And Putin would like to become
a tyrant powerful enough to be accepted by the
world's political elites but has also been turned
down. So they actually have a lot more in common
than most people realize...

Yes! Very good points.
If I look at the larger picture now, in the light of your insights and confirmations of mine, the oil bubble could burst soon.
Switching to tankers is one step, and the US as far as I know has been experimenting successfully with liquefied natural gas too - one shipment was famous to arrive a few months ago in Italy I think. That is what Kasparov advocates too, apart from a far stricter diplomatic behavior on the part of the West, plus deterrents... He writes that Putin is deadly afraid of fracking, and while no doubt there are dangers, as with every technology, his FSB operatives actively promote conspiracy theories riding on the various traditional, left and right counter-arguments.

Still, as the bubble bursts, there may be casualties. I will never forget my earlier graphic vision about Russia I cited on these boards many times. The economy of Russia has weakened for years due to lack of a market economy, the grip of a power-hungry feudal mafia on all resources and making the country basically one track in foreign trade - oil and gas, like the Arabs, with a little nuclear stuff. Though weapons exports are also very significant - the picture has a few more shades. Bulgaria is actually manufacturing a lot of weapons for Soviet standards, many Islamic and other third world groups are buying them. My country of birth is already a casualty.

Czech Republic isn't a casualty mainly because of the active idealism of Václav Hável - somehow they managed to adopt the Enlightenment democracy they always wanted.

Parts of the Middle East will also be casualties, as will some Caucasian nations. No doubt Putin isn't as quick and dangerous as Hitler was - economically speaking, Hitler then commanded a working industrial economy on a par with the output of the US so it was sadly realistic that he dreamed about conquering half the world. That does not fit with 21st century Russia. Still, Russia is second in weaponry in the world in recent CIA estimates. True, there is a several times overlap between the No. 1 and the No. 2. I don't expect the coming two or three years to be easy until after 2021...

It is so natural for many US leaders with a better social sensitivity to fall back into isolationism - and as I witnessed when I was there a few times, people can focus on internal politics way too much in an election year. As if the US economy wouldn't depend on global cooperation, and as if the dollar wasn't hanging together with the US executing some of the will of the many members of the global community which are either fully or totally past the Enlightenment limit. I already read analyses that said the US military many times does things that China wants it to, not always but many times, because China reasons that it holds a lot of US debt, and the US is its most important export target, so why not take a little economic flak and let the American military do what we want?

reg, #8, re: "Yes! Very good points. If I look at the larger
picture now, in the light of your insights and confirmations
of mine, the oil bubble could burst soon. Switching to tankers
is one step, and the US as far as I know has been experimenting
successfully with liquefied natural gas too - one shipment was
famous to arrive a few months ago in Italy I think. That is
what Kasparov advocates too, apart from a far stricter
diplomatic behavior on the part of the West, plus deterrents...
He writes that Putin is deadly afraid of fracking, and while no
doubt there are dangers, as with every technology, his FSB
operatives actively promote conspiracy theories riding on the
various traditional, left and right counter-arguments."

And it's always been my assumption that Russian despots from
the Czars clear down to Putin have always been aware that the
universal law of "the carrot is better than the stick" makes
virtually everything they do fruitless over the long haul. No
Russian power elite has ever had enough "carrots" to keep the
"vast silent majority" happy, so they've always operated under
the fear of, "If you use the stick too much, you'll end up
beating a dead horse." That fear is what brought the USSR
down, and modern technology is already far along the road to
rendering both the carrot option and the stick option obsolete.
Automated production is already capable of producing an economy
of abundance almost anywhere, and computerized communications
technology empowers terrorists more than it does any kind of
conventional police or military forces.

re: "Still, as the bubble bursts, there may be casualties. I
will never forget my earlier graphic vision about Russia I
cited on these boards many times. The economy of Russia has
weakened for years due to lack of a market economy, the grip
of a power-hungry feudal mafia on all resources and making
the country basically one track in foreign trade - oil and
gas, like the Arabs, with a little nuclear stuff. Though
weapons exports are also very significant - the picture has
a few more shades. Bulgaria is actually manufacturing a lot
of weapons for Soviet standards, many Islamic and other
third world groups are buying them. My country of birth is
already a casualty."

It's not hard for me to imagine the present Russian regime
making all the same mistakes the leaders of the former USSR
made, but in a world where everything happens about ten
times faster than it did then.

re: "Czech Republic isn't a casualty mainly because of the
active idealism of Václav Hável - somehow they managed to
adopt the Enlightenment democracy they always wanted."

I assume that "Enlightenment democracy" is going to start
breaking out like a plague in many different places. The
fact that it works is already highly visible on the Web,
on a level that is probably impossible to filter out with
government censorship. This is going to hit both Russian
and China very hard, very soon, but it's not something the
IC wants discussed on these boards right now.

re: "Parts of the Middle East will also be casualties, as
will some Caucasian nations. No doubt Putin isn't as quick
and dangerous as Hitler was - economically speaking, Hitler
then commanded a working industrial economy on a par with
the output of the US so it was sadly realistic that he
dreamed about conquering half the world. That does not fit
with 21st century Russia. Still, Russia is second in
weaponry in the world in recent CIA estimates. True, there
is a several times overlap between the No. 1 and the No. 2.
I don't expect the coming two or three years to be easy
until after 2021..."

Hitler's industrial economy was based on using steam-powered
railroads for basic transportation and coal, which was
abundant in Germany at the time, for energy, but there is
no equivalent of either in present-day Russia. And more
important, the area around Berlin had been the birthplace
of modern weapons technology, starting in the 1800's and
continuing until the end of WW2. There's nothing like this
in either Russia or the Islamic world today.

re: "It is so natural for many US leaders with a better
social sensitivity to fall back into isolationism - and as
I witnessed when I was there a few times, people can focus
on internal politics way too much in an election year. As
if the US economy wouldn't depend on global cooperation,
and as if the dollar wasn't hanging together with the US
executing some of the will of the many members of the
global community which are either fully or totally past
the Enlightenment limit. I already read analyses that
said the US military many times does things that China
wants it to, not always but many times, because China
reasons that it holds a lot of US debt, and the US is
its most important export target, so why not take a
little economic flak and let the American military do
what we want?"

Yes! You just mentioned a number of issues I do NOT expect
to see debated during the 2016 US political campaigns.
However, I expect those "guys and gals in cosmic tee
shirts" will quietly steer the world press towards most
of them quite soon.