Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"We need to keep quiet on the whole issue of strategic ambiguity, while arming Taiwan to the teeth."

For ‘the West’ read the US and UK. ‘The West’ is flirting with disaster

“President Joe Biden said Monday that the U.S. would intervene militarily if China were to invade Taiwan, saying the burden to protect Taiwan is “even stronger’ after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” I have just looked at the world map. Taiwan, in case you didn’t know, is situated between Florida and Cuba. American imperialism, after defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, is trying to reassert itself. It is contrary to what a few analysts think. The U.S. still has a superior force and supported by subordinate states/allies. Taiwan would be the excuse not the reason for any military action. The real reason and the main objective is to clip the rising technological power of China. That is the main threat to Western imperialism. 

Contrary to what the headline states, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, South Korea and India are not competing for supremacy. They are subordinate states to the U.S. The latter has ‘supremacy’. And because the U.S. cannot control everything everywhere, forges alliances with subordinate states to protect the flow and accumulation of capital.  ‘The countries competing for supremacy’

 The crux of this had been already analysed by Stratfor, the intelligence company, 5/6 years ago. The great uncoupling 

In a  speech on Brexit  in Greenwich on 3 February, he made clear his views on Wuhan-style lockdowns. “We are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric,” he said, “when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage. “Then, at that moment, humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion of the right of the populations of the Earth to buy and sell freely among each other.” Britain's [and others'] response to coronavirus

Global capitalism Why is it that only two large developing capitalist economies* have succeeded in becoming part of the rich capitalist club in the last 50 years ?  Measured in GDP per capita and starting at $3000 per head (PPP real) 40 years ago, Taiwan and Korea now have per capita GDPs over $25,000. In the same period, no other Asian tiger or Latin American economy has risen above $13,000, still within the World B ank‘s middle income range.  Note that both Taiwan and South Korea were American-supported military regimes at the peak of their economic development. *United Arab Emirates or Singapore, for example, cannot be called "large capitalist economies" although they have a very high per capita GDP.