Ian Welsh – Page 4 – The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Let’s keep this brief. In 2025 the US:

Gave up trying to win the Ukraine war;
Turned NATO from a vassal protection scheme into a vassal looting scheme;
Slashed scientific spending massively;
Lost a trade war to China;
Doubled down on the AI Bubble, in a race it will lose;
Was humiliated by China’s rare-Earth sanctions, realizing it couldn’t build weapons without China;
Pivoted hard to trying to hold onto Latin America, after almost all Latin American countries had replaced the US with China as their main trade partner;
Went to war with their own university system;
Realized (this is now widespread) that dollar hegemony is almost over;
completely destroyed what remained of their moral soft power to enable a genocide in Palestine, making everyone realize America is run by people who might as well be Nazis;
Was governed by the most corrupt and stupid President of the 20th and 21st centuries; and,
Gave up on solar and renewable energy.

Some of this is sort of admirable. Ukraine can’t be won, so you might as well not pretend it can be and acknowledging the end of dollar hegemony is wise. Pivoting to the Americas won’t work in the medium run, but it’s at least an acknowledgement of actual power realities.

However basically the US now knows that it is weaker than China. China has a larger navy by ship number, and it won’t be long before they have more tonnage (if they wanted to, they could have larger navy by tonnage in two years, they have the capacity.) The Chinese and Russians have more advanced missiles and drones, and far more production capacity. The Chinese are ahead in almost all tech areas with only a few bastions (civil aviation, chips, space launch being the most important ones) remaining and all those bastions are under assault and WILL fall. There is precisely no question that in 10 years, perhaps even five, China will be equal to the West or ahead in every important technology and almost all non-important techs.

What people are not understanding is that while the US may be able to turn Venezuela (MAY) their days of throwing their weight around are almost over. The drone/missile revolution and China’s advances in making them cheap and abundant mean that sitting offshore and freely bombing other nations is a strategy whose best-by date is now in sight.

The US/West had already lost years ago in the most important sense: all the important trends (tech, industrial capacity, military build capacity, shipbuilding) were running against it and there was zero possibility that those trends would change. For over 20 years I have pointed out that US policy and international trends meant the US dollar would lose its reserve and default trade status, now it is becoming common wisdom.

2025 wasn’t the year the US lost, but it was the year when everyone with two brain cells to rub together and even a smidgen of objectivity realized it.

The US is still a great power, and ex-hegemons do not go gracefully into that long night. America will kill and impoverish a lot of foreigners and Americans as its decline accelerates.

But it is all over but the shooting, and 2025 is the year it became impossible to argue otherwise without people laughing in your face.

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American Sanctions Are Now Benefiting Countries

By Ian Welsh

On December 30, 2025

22 Comments

The war against Russia was a big bet on sanctions. The Russian military was always stronger than Ukraine, but the West believed that sanctions would destroy the Russian economy, enabling a win and hopefully weakening Russia so much that it could be broke up.

Instead Russia’s economy has performed better since the war than it did before. Sanctions encouraged re-industrialization and Russian and Chinese businesses replaced Western ones.

Venezuela has been under sanctions ever since Chavez launched his Bolivarian revolution. Every year there are more sanctions. For a while, it worked. But…

That’s right, the most sanctioned country in South America has the highest GDP growth. It’s not doing as well as it was a couple years ago, but it’s still growing fastest.

This explains, in part, the desperate attempt to overthrow Maduro and install an American backed government.

The simple truth is that America and Europe just don’t matter much any more:

No one needs the West any more. They’ve got China. Thus the oil blockade, which is a simple act of piracy. Sanctioned ships are only sanctioned by the West, not by the countries that Venezuela is sending oil to like Cuba, China and Iran. This is a last ditch effort to collapse Venezuela’s economy, in a way that failed with Russia. The bet is simple enough: you can’t really mass-seize Russian ships, because Russia is a great power and anyway, increasingly oil is shipped by land. Venezuela has one major weakness left and Trump, led by the nose by Neocons and Cuban exiles is making a last gasp government change effort.

We’ll see if it succeeds. My money is on “no”, though they can cause a lot of damage along the way, and probably hope that seeing the damage, other countries will be dissuaded from outright hostility to America.

My bet is that it doesn’t work: Chinese and Russian anti-ship and and anti-air systems will be sold in vast quantities to developing countries and increasingly America will find itself unable to enforce blockades. It couldn’t even defeat Ansar-Allah, after all.

The twilight of Empire is an ugly time, but this is America’s twilight.

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Can You Just Out-Breed Your Domestic Enemies?

By Ian Welsh

On December 29, 2025

25 Comments

There’s a constant trope on the right that the best way to win is to have more kids because eventually you’ll outnumber your enemies?

Seems like it makes sense. It is part of why Christianity won in the Roman Empire: they forbade anal and oral sex and contraceptives (yes, they had clumsy contraceptives back then) and emphasized that sex was for having kids and out-bred the pagans.

But it wouldn’t have worked if the children had preferred the pagan life. Christianity at the time offered a ton of social support, including very practical support like food and housing. Most Romans were poor, and if you were poor you needed the community that Christianity (and some other mystery religions) offered. Christianity offered a better life and a better after-life, for that matter.

Christians today think “we’ll just out-breed them” but it only works if when your kids grow up they don’t go to the big city and discover that there’s a more enjoyable and dignified way to live. Women may realize they don’t want to have multiple children and would like to have sex without necessarily getting pregnant. Ideas of social justice and equality may appeal to both sides, and arguments for atheism and agnosticism start looking mighty convincing when you see how many different religions there are all claiming that they’re the true religion.

The same is true for political ideology. If you’re poor and have no hope for the future maybe socialism looks a lot better than capitalism or the day’s version of MAGA. Maybe communism or anarchism. Or even just standard liberalism with individual rights.

This is what has been happening for well over a century to religion in advanced countries. Fewer and fewer believers, even when the religious breed like rabbits, because secular society or ideologies offer more hope and self-respect. Same with the decline in belief in capitalism. Capitalism says that people earn what they deserve. If you’re not making it are you going to believe you suck and deserve a shitty life or are you going to find an ideology which says “actually, the game is rigged, you aren’t a loser and we can make the world better for people like us.”

I know which one I’d choose.

Breeding is fine, but it only matters if you can hold onto the kids you spawn. And you can only do that if you are seen to offer a better life. This is at the heart of the right wing hatred of universities: kids go to university and realize that a better life is possible if they don’t buy into right wing arguments. They also meet brown people and discover, “hey, they’re just people.”

For a long time, when each generation was better off than the one before it, liberalism basically took the majority of non-liberals and turned them into liberal capitalists. Why wouldn’t it? It was clear that if they bought in they’d have a better life than if they didn’t.

Now liberalism and capitalism are failing. The right is trying to offer an alternative, and a lot of people have gone for it, but it’s also failing to deliver. Watching Trump basically destroy farming communities is instructive. And when it fails and is seen to fail, well, it’s going to be hard to hold on to those kids.

Breed all you want. It’s irrelevant if what you offer isn’t better that the lives possible to people by changing their ideology and loyalty. True victory isn’t having the most descendants, it’s having people act as you would have them act.

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 28, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On December 28, 2025

2 Comments

by Tony Wikrent

Howie Klein (February 20, 1948–December 24, 2025)

Thomas Neuburger, December 25, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]

[TW: Howie had a keen instinct for news and articles that could move the needle in favor of justice, freedom, and solidarity. And he was also hardened by a deep repugnance for the hypocrisy and transgressions of conservatives, libertarians and the morbidly rich. It is exactly the lack of that repugnance that makes centrists and most Democratic Party leaders so soft, squishy, pliable, and ultimately useless. I will greatly miss Klein and his online efforts. ]

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

On Trump’s “battleship”

[TW: First of all, let me note the obvious. Floating the idea for a new battleship is only evidence that Trump and his minions have no knowledge of naval history and no understanding of modern warfare. But I’ve been extremely disappointed by the media coverage so far. No one has yet slogged through the books, articles, writings and internet postings of the US Naval Institute and the Naval War College to report back what the current naval consensus and discourse is concerning major surface combatants.

[Secondly, there should not be so much attention on Trump’s use of the word “battleship.” The US Navy has for decades been subjected to a debate over whether the largest number of its surface warships are most properly called frigates or destroyers, with some people adding to the confusion by wanting to use the word “cruiser.” Trump can use the word “battleship” if he wants to, but the fact that he did not include some discussion of how his “Trump class of battleships” will mark a departure from or bear similarity to the historically understood use of the word is just further evidence that the man is an imbecile interested only in propagandizing his glory and grandeur, and not actually engaging in a discussion of naval strategy, doctrine, tactics, and required capabilities.

[The last point is much more important and profound. Has Congress authorized and approved funding for a new class of surface warships? No, it has not. This means that if Trump and his regime actually proceeds to so much as sign a contract in furtherance of building a “Trump class” warship, he will once again be acting in complete defiance of the US Constitution and the rule of law. Article I,
Section 8 on the powers and duties of Congress is clear, and the historical development of the budgeting and spending process of the national government is unambiguous: any decision on any program of military spending must originate in Congress as a Defense Authorization Act, and then Congress must vote to approve actual funding with a Defense Appropriations Act.

[Trump’s announcement of a new class of surface combatant and a so-called “Golden Fleet” (which smacks loudly of the ostentation of ancient oligarchies like Venice) is just one more instance of Trump’s complete disregard for the Constitution. Which he swore to uphold and defend.

[And which he craftily neglected to place his hand on a bible when he did so.]

The real purpose of ICE raids.

[Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd, Dec 20, 2025, via Naked Capitalism 12-22-2025]

Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On December 27, 2025

19 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Merry Christmas

By Ian Welsh

On December 25, 2025

7 Comments

Hope it’s a good one for you, whether you celebrate or not. If it’s miserable, my condolences and a virtual hug. Life is often ass, may it be better for you soon.

What Constitutes A Successful Life?

By Ian Welsh

On December 23, 2025

23 Comments

I never fully bought into the consensus ideas of what constitutes a successful life. Money, power, 2.3 kids, a house in the burbs.

I was an only child and I spent a lot of time around adults as a kid, especially before my teens. Most of them were spending their lives doing things they wouldn’t have done if they didn’t need money, and most of them didn’t seem happy—in some cases happy about their work, in other cases happy about their lives.

I grew up, went to work because I had to eat and keep a roof over my head and heat on in Canadian winters, and I didn’t find much to recommend itself in most jobs. Half the time the work didn’t need to be done, the rest of the time it did need to be done, but we were stopped from doing it properly due to management wanting to increase profits, and often what they did would only increase profits in the short run and hurt them in the long run while alienating customers and employees.

I could have respected my job in life insurance if we’d actually been looking out for those we insured more. There were a few old school underwriters left who did, and I could see my employer had once been run honorably, but by the time I got there all that remained were a few guttering embers. A lot of people got rich under the new regime, but long term profitability went down. (Doing good isn’t always stupid even in terms of greed.)

But the bottom line really was “would I do this if I didn’t need the money?” The only jobs I ever had where that was somewhat true were being the managing editor at FireDogLake and the Agonist, and writing this blog, though even in those three cases I’d have done less if I didn’t need the money.

“I worked all my life and most of it I would never have done if I didn’t want or need more money” doesn’t seem like success to me. (I’m talking only for myself. If it does to you, great. There’s certainly honor in providing for one’s family even in a job one hates, for example.)

There’s a lot of chatter about falling fertility rates and lots of pro-family propaganda these days. I’m not anti-family or pro-family, both stances seem absurd to me. I’m pro-good families and anti-bad families and I’ve sure seen plenty of people have children who fucked their kids up beyond belief and none of them seemed happy in their family life. “I produced 2.3 fucked up kids and was miserable almost all the time” doesn’t smell like success to me. Again, talking only for myself. If it does for you, awesome.

Then there’s power. It seems, in the West, that almost everyone who has power does more evil than good. Corporate or political, this is true. I’m hard pressed to think that “I became President of the US and bombed five countries and killed a million people and made another 5 million homeless in an unnecessary war justified by lies” is success. Or it’s not any success I want and if it’s a success you want, you’re human filth.

Of course, the power is a Western issue (and Africa and a lot of other places, but especially the West in this time period). I have issues with Xi, but I think he can legitimately claim that he uses his power more for good, especially for the Chinese, than evil. FDR could have said something similar. But right now power in the West is poison. Even people like Bernie Sanders and AOC have voted to send Israel weapons while they commit genocide.

I do think that getting power and then doing more good with it than harm is admirable and a life worth living. So I guess there’s that.

But in the end we all share the same fate: death. All the money, all the power, all the wealth, even our families will be lost. I’ve been close to death more than once, a whisper away, and I live my life in the knowledge that everything I have here, in this life, I will one day lose. Perhaps my knowledge is an exception, perhaps I will be reunited with people I love at some point. Perhaps. But for sure the money and power and possessions are all lost.

I don’t have any real answers. I’ve tried, personally, to live a life where I spend as much of my time doing what I want to do as possible, and not what someone else wants me to do. I’ve tried, not always successfully, not to hurt people except to protect others from them and to be kind, because life is often shit and I don’t like it when others make life worse for me and do like it when people are kind to me. I’ve tried to speak the truth as best I can, hoping that the truth is something good. Obviously I’ve failed at times, truth being a slippery thing.

I don’t view myself as successful or as a failure (though I certainly thought of myself as a failure for years). Just as someone stumbling around, trying to live a life I like more than I hate and to not do more harm than good. If I die and can look back and think “yeah, I more or less enjoyed a lot of that and helped more people than I hurt” then I’ll consider my life a success no matter the scale or the stage.

But thank God I never bought fully into what society considers success. The idea of being Obama or Trump or Musk or Zuckerberg or most executives I’ve ever met is nauseating.

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Western Leadership Is The Most Worthless In My Life

By Ian Welsh

On December 22, 2025

21 Comments

Which is saying something, because worthless has been in charge of the West for generations. There are no leaders in charge of any major Western country who aren’t functionally morons.

Europe is run by utter idiots who want war with Russia, refuse to acknowledge that Ukraine is losing, are actively speeding up their loss of industry and imagine they can bully China and think America was their friend before Trump.

Trump is the stupidest president of my lifetime. No one else even comes close. Reagan with Alzheimers was better. Congress is a sewer of morons. Every major American politician, even AOC and Bernie, are functionally psychopaths. (Yes, both Bernie and AOC have repeatedly voted to send more money and weapons to Israel.)

Britain’s Starmer is the stupidest PM of my lifetimes and stunningly incompetent and evil. Yes, his job is to make rich people richer and suck off Netanyahu, but a competent pol would do that without destroying Labour as a party.

Macron has accomplished nothing for France except to make it weaker and its citizens poorer. Germany’s government is presiding over the destruction of a German industrial base that is 150 years old and one of the greatest in the world: the very foundation of Germany’s power and affluence.

Australia is acting as if America is more important to them than China with a military buildup, which is insane since Australia’s future is with China, or it has no future. Japan is antagonizing China, again, insane, without a serious plan. Either make nice or try and get nukes, there are no other paths.

Everyone is destroying free speech to symp for a genocide. Everyone is immiserating their own populations, setting up serious future political instability.

The US is all-in on AI, spending trillions it does not have, driving up energy prices, and creating a larger more concentrated bubble than the real-estate bubble which caused the 2008 crash. If AI is everything they say, it will utterly destroy the US economy by replacing 30% of workers, and if it isn’t, it’ll never pay back all the resources spent. Plus China will win the AI race anyway, since no one with sense will pay for a proprietary model when Chinese open source models are about as good and mean you can’t suddenly be hit with a massive price increase or rate restrictions.

Politicians are either ignoring climate change and doubling down on fossil fuels (which are more expensive than solar) or using climate change as an excuse to immiserate their own people.

Britain is destroying their own farmers.

Meanwhile morons are constantly whining about fertility rates when humanity is in population overshoot so severe that it is causing the second fastest great extinction in Earth’s history. Most countries would be better off with fewer people, but because they don’t know how to stabilize an economy whose population isn’t always growing leaders and their intellectual dupes are panicking.

Only China is handling this with some grace, but they’re not Western. They’re trying to increase fertility somewhat but have accepted there will be population decreases and are moving hard on robotics to care for an aging population and reduce the need for workers.

There isn’t a single major challenge that the West is facing that our leaders are not actively making worse, not better. Not a single one. It’s extraordinary. Even Nixon managed to sign Clean Air and Water Act and to pivot on China. Reagan reduced nuclear weapons. Clinton made everything worse long-term, but was able to manage the economy during his Presidency, at least, so that it felt good to ordinary people, including pushing oil prices under $20/barrel. George Bush Sr. managed the collapse of the USSR with grace. Biden had good anti-trust policy and half decent industrial policy. Trump has done nothing good of significance. Nothing. Even when he has a good idea (tariffs, reduction in H1-B Visas) he fucks it up completely because he can’t execute and has the attention span of a coked up flea.

This reminds me of the Weimar Republic or the late Roman Empire. Most things can be fixed in principle: in theory. Nothing can be fixed in practice because leadership is beyond corrupt and incompetent, high on their own wealth and convinced they are the masters of universe and that reality is what they want it to be.

Prepare, if you’re in the West. By all means feel free to keep working at the politics, but don’t count on it. Instead prepare as individuals and groups. Government isn’t going to save you, not in the West. Your leaders are the number one danger to you, more than any outsider, “terrorist” or “foreign enemy.” Treat them as such, and protect yourselves from them.

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