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George Friedman Warns - "This Is Nightmare For China" CROSSING This Can DESTORY China In 20 Days
Perhaps Georgie is right. My main hypothesis is that all great powers are high-functioning mafia (robber barons and corrupt politicians), so egoistic and transactional rationality plays a significant role when they make decisions. But even outlawed mafia can be influenced by religion and myths. University of California:
Sicilian Mafia, Patron Saints, and Religious Processions: The Consistent Face of an Ever-Changing Criminal Organization
"Religion, in particular, appears to be a central component of mafia identity."
High-functioning mafia (great powers) can be emotionally attached to religion or ideology in a way similar to how football hooligans get attached to their own club and fight other football supporters who wear different t-shirts. Classic tribalism. A tribe needs symbols and (semi-)sacred objects to secure group cohesion and survive in the jungle.
So while many leaders of great powers are psychopathic opportunists who only exploit religion/ideology to get power, they can have a tendency to get emotionally attached to these idea systems. They begin to (subconsciously) believe their own propaganda. Some leaders are more prone to this than others. If a president or a king is a "true believer", subordinates will follow, because humans usually act as if they are herd animals. A great power can therefore get caught up and trapped in its own religious/ideological propaganda, like a drug dealer who starts to use his own products. This can (eventually) override transactional rationality.
Neocons and neoliberals for example are so emotionally attached to the idea of spreading "democracy" globally that they are willing to risk WW3 in Ukraine. That's not rational.
Kevin Rudd has said that Xi is the return of "ideological man". Asia Society:
Xi Jinping, the Rise of Ideological Man, and the Acceleration of Radical Change in China
The way China deals with Covid-19 is arguably not in line with how Friedman perceives rationality. Things look a bit dicey in China now. So perhaps PLA's war prepping is much more than just theatre. We are not at the end of history after all, so given the bloody history of mankind it's natural to think that a war in Taiwan is on the horizon.
The Orthodox Church also plays a major role in Russia. I assume Putin is a sociopathic opportunist, but he too must now play by the rules of this religious language game (Wittgenstein) after having promoted it in public.
The neocons/neoliberals in the West have made Big Tech into a holy cow. They are addicted to computer screens. Smartphone junkies. It's therefore irrational from their perspective to start a global war that sacrifices the fourth industrial revolution, because they believe that 4IR has intrinsic value that will save us in a transhumanistic protopia.
CPC on the other hand probably views 4IR as a tool which can be used to secure the power of the CPC. Xi is hooked on neo-Confucian Marxism. He's much less addicted to China's Big Tech. If he sees that US Big Tech is close to winning Cold War 2, then he will probably prefer a global nuclear war, to level the playing field and create a very primitive international situation where China's weakened power is still relatively strong compared to the weakened power of the US/EU in a post-apocalyptic world.
Russia has no chance of winning Cold War 2, because the Russians lack the high-tech skills needed to beat the US and China in today's 4IR arms race. It's therefore instrumentally rational from a Russian perspective to nuke Big Tech. Orthodox Christianity, or at least the cultural and temporal aspect of this religion, almost demands it, in order to stop the coming global AI regime of woke transhumanism (aka "Satan", to use religious terminology).
Russia has existed the last thousand years. China's history goes back 4000 - 5000 years. The fourth industrial revolution started 25 years ago. The United States of Amnesia is mesmerized by 4IR tech, but don't take it for granted that old civilization states are equally attached to Big Tech. When leaders in China and Russia get ready for nuclear war, by prepping for it, don't assume it's just live action roleplaying. It's perhaps a bluff, or maybe it's not, but 4IR tech is a game changer, because AI robots in the future can neutralize nukes - Stuxnet was only the first iteration - so R&C may think: use 'em or lose 'em.
To understand the importance of computers look at the vital role they play in new stealth bombers and air defense systems. The National Interest:
Stealth vs. Missiles: Who Wins When Russia's S-400 Takes On America's New B-21 Raider?
Russia and China have so far had a leading edge when using computers to improve air defense systems. But the Ukraine War has convinced woke computer geeks in the West that helping NATO is now more important than making online games and smartphone apps. Silicon Valley is today an enraged moralistic giant determined to defeat anti-woke Russia. Kremlin will predictably lose this fight in 2035 or 2045 if not nuking US Big Tech in the 2020s.
The naive wokeness of the US/EU and the Orthodox Christianity of Russia make this global war almost inevitable, if things continue to follow the same trajectory we have seen in 2022. The woke elite has forgotten the horrors of past world wars, so they indulge in hypocritical self-righteousness when playing nuclear Russian roulette in Ukraine. Most likely a third world war is needed to make the Western elite more humble, because they don't learn from history.
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