Nuka-sama

Under our current political system, there's no reason for our representatives to be policy experts of any kind at all. Election after election, people go for "Who would you rather have a beer with?" as much as they do anything else. Realistically, if a bunch of billionaires backed George Clooney to run for President, he'd win.

And he'd probably do "fine," because most of politics in the American sense is acting anyway, as has been proved over and over again, most notably by Reagan, an actor. I don't share Plato's concern that democracy is mob rule. My problem is that it's a popularity contest, not an issues-or-effectiveness driven system. One way to get around this is to make the people's vote mostly meaningless (which is more or less what the Founders did, see also: Electoral College), but I'd prefer something that might actually work as advertised. But that requires limits.

In a perfect world, with a perfect bureaucracy, I would make every single aspect of the franchise require accreditation and licensing. You turn 18, or whatever, you get a Basic Voting License. You can vote on the most basic things (and accordingly a more direct and less representative democracy). There would be tests to certify you had the aptitude and knowledge to vote on higher level issues. These would have to be made rigorous, but fair, and the education needed to pass them would need to be widely and easily available. You could in theory vote on everything but only if you were motivated enough to earn the right to do so.

If democracy has a failing it's that the people aren't 1. educated, 2. rational, 3. self-interested, 4. motivated. The more they're all those things (or some of them; you'll never really get 2 and only sort of 3), the better democracy will work. As it is, it's kind of a shambles.

Yeah, I'm pretty big on technocracy and statism in certain areas.

Of course, I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

Communist bloc weapons were always built for numbers and reliability rather than quality. The PRC is only just now starting to transition away from that paradigm.

I don't approve of a bunch of people who are mostly lawyers playing policy and field experts on things as diverse as engineering, military science, and ecology. I don't have a precise solution but those things should be handled by people who know the topic. If I had to take a stab at it, federal agencies should work more closely with the budgeting bureaucracies of the OMB and CBO and Congress should have relatively diminished powers to alter those budgets, as a start.

Because who do you think has been compelling the Europeans to stick to the embargo?

The Chinese have more or less stolen everything they can from the Russians in response, which is why they're now stealing from us. It's also why their defense industry is less strong than it looks.

As to why, people don't always anticipate how things will change. George H. W. Bush was helping Saddam against the Iranians under Reagan one year, then bombing them three years later. France had just returned to NATO, and didn't want to give up specs on stuff it'd sold Saddam to Coalition forces despite being on the Coalition. Stuff happens.

No idea, but I remember seeing somewhere that it's expected to take weeks to months for them to reach full effect, so probably at least that long.

Europe imposed an arms embargo on the PRC after Tiananmen Square and although they've flirted with the idea of dropping it (and the PRC has basically begged them to), it's still going 25 years later, so.

Everyone is bad at foreign policy. Putin in particular has essentially been winging it the entire time and his own neuroses and failings are finally showing through.

This is why Putin shot himself in the foot on the Eurasian Union: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/05/vladimir_putins_impotent_eurasian_union_kazakhstan_belarus_ukraine

Any time Russia and China being allies is brought up you should always remember that from 1960-1989 despite being the "Communist Bloc," they hated and feared each other about as much as they feared America, which was pointing all its nukes at both of them pre-1962. This is why the Soviets courted the Indians and the PRC set up the "Only Nixon can go to China," moment. The PRC will never regard Russia as an equal partner and Russia will never tolerate being a junior partner to the PRC.

They'll probably keep going but we'll have washed our hands of them and accordingly will no longer pay the price for their hubris. Iron Dome is a great example of how manipulative Israel is. We're paying hundreds of millions of dollars for something made in Israel for Israel by Israelis. What does America get out of this arrangement? Nothing. No money, no bases, no foreign troops to assist in our own adventurism, no technology, nothing. Nothing but headaches. It's dumb.

"The Interior Ministry has claimed that there are 2 million. Other estimates place the Chinese population at 5 million. [...] Only 7.4 million Russians populate the entire Russian Far East, versus more than 70 million in northeast China." There aren't 131 million mainland Chinese immigrants in America.

They do sometimes.

Yes. No. Chinese foreign policy is essentially idiotic and schizophrenic. They're essentially driving Japanese remilitarization out of supposed fear of Japanese militarization.

All aide to Israel should be suspended immediately and made entirely contingent on demonstrable progress toward a permanent peaceful settlement, with milestones such as "permanent end to settlement construction." Not one cent of foreign aide or one bullet should be supplied. They've prepared for decades to be able to go it alone, so let them. We have to stop enabling them.

CFC walls are dumb.

Russia is already losing the Far East to China: http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=82969

France is essentially irrelevant but they have delusions of grandeur and are willing to do dirty work so that counts for something.

China's basic operating position is more or less "For 23 of the last 25 centuries we have been top dog on planet Earth and it is our birthright to return to that position," so yes, I would regard an alliance with them as generally unfeasible.

Israel directly manipulates US politics, steals US secrets, actively works against US interests, and is a drain on US foreign aid that it has no need for. The only reason they're widely supported in D.C. is AIPAC goes around calling anyone who criticizes Israel an anti-Semite and a racist. As far as I'm concerned they're a national security risk.

You could do worse, so it sounds like a fine enough choice.

Yes, in an ideal world, which this isn't.

Well, Japan's still #3 economy in the world, and unlikely to be displaced for awhile. Depends what kind of business you're really interested in doing.

There's really nothing stupid left to do that doesn't have much graver consequences. Putin is that strong, but it's not all roses for him.

Down.

We more or less promised them we wouldn't expand NATO further east way back when and then we did it anyway. We defend Europe, not vice versa, so expanding NATO at all was of dubious utility. Russia already has gas and oil in abundance, more is kind of whatever. We'll probably continue engaging with NATO at about the same level, although clearly increasingly unhappy about it (see: Gates and Hagel complaining about European defense spending), but we've already made clear our focus is on China, which is where it should be. Maybe they'll get their act together, maybe not.

At any rate, Russia is functionally a regional power. Dudes can't even successfully run a breakaway rebellion in a next door neighbor. (Imagine if the US failed at supporting a breakaway state of Chihuahua or Quebec it was trying to back.) It's Europe's problem, not ours.

Crimea, socioculturally, is probably better off with Russia than Ukraine. Khrushchev signed it over to the Ukrainian SSR in, IIRC, 1954. Also, all the water and such runs through the north, and so it's actually untenable if Ukraine is hostile (which it is), forcing Russia to build redundant stuff in from the east, so it's a good way of making them waste money and prestige while they "get what they want." Ukraine was the lynchpin of the Eurasian Union, Belarus and Kazakhstan don't matter. What you're seeing is Russia having raised stakes with a pair of twos, and the bluff's basically been called.

The Europeans are terrible and useless and probably won't do much all told, but Russia's basically screwed itself. The French are selling the ships to Russia because France loves money and has a bad record of selling to the wrong people in pursuit of it. I liked the idea somebody floated that we deduct 25% off the $8 billion they're having to pay us to just buy them instead.

Cripple his economy and dash his pretensions at international prestige. More sanctions, embargoes (e.g., French sale of Mistral class ships) and take away the World Cup. I'm not an economist but forcing Russia to rely more on energy exports will probably exacerbate the Dutch Disease they're already suffering from and it'll take them a decade or more to pivot to Asia.

Putin's rule to date has relied mostly on consensus and popular support because he's seen as returning Russia to its rightful place and fixing the excesses of the 90s. Take that away from him and his job isn't so easy, even if a lot of the blame can be directed externally.

No. It was weird they had it to begin with.