Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "The End of the Peace Dividend" video.

  1. Georgia was too small and too far away, whereas Ukraine is a major agriculture supplier who's on the doorstep to the EU.
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  2. For America at least. Europe didn't wake up until last year.
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  3. The US is arguably the peacekeeper, providing Europe the space to enjoy that peace dividend through all the "wars" that contained threats away from their homelands and global sea lanes. Now they're realizing that an alliance of one isn't a credible enough deterrence, and that they need to invest in their own capabilities in order to contribute and benefit from the actual mutual support that an alliance promises.
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  4. The US tried to stay neutral and open in WWI, and cut off oil to Japan who was undergoing its own offensive imperialism into China by that time.
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  5. China is more worried that the US could blockade China. They depend on open sea lanes for affordable food, fuel, and foreign revenue. An invader would need to disable like half of the US to stop its self-sufficiency, whereas an invader into China doesn't even need to step foot on its soil.
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  6. STEM students in general have to be forced to take humanities courses, just to balance their minds and mitigate madness in their science. There's a reason STEM folks generally fail as managers and politicians: not everything humans care about can be enumerated as simple variables they can calculate.
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  7. Beijing is betting that Americans don't have as big an appetite for losses, so combat will be a deterrence in itself. I'd wager that they underestimate our resolve once they start slamming the cities of our friends, the largely air and naval battles won't be able to provide live news updates that attrite our willingness, and they overestimate how patriotic Chinese families will remain when their only sons disappear on deployment.
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  8. The tariffs was America being protectionist against all countries during the Great Depression. The "ABCD Line" (as in encirclement by America, Britain, China, and Dutch) didn't arise until after Japan had seized Manchuria and began invading China Proper in 1937.
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