xiaohongshu

1973 United States–Soviet Union wheat deal

It wasn’t Stalin but Khrushchev who screwed up the Soviet agricultural sector

If the Europeans had been dreaming about MMT they would have called for abolishing the euro currency. The European left doesn’t even want to leave the eurozone. That’s how dire the situation is over there.

I don’t think the Russians really care about hiding their tracks, or are as competent as you think.

RT literally just got caught funding American right wingers in the most hilarious manner (Trueanon’s latest episode covered this). So the connection with the American right is there, I was just wondering specifically about Project 2025 because the naming convention came straight out of how Russians typically name things.

I was just curious because the naming convention is typical for Soviet/Russian projects. Americans would have named it Operation something something.

Didn’t expect the angry comments though. I should have known that Hexbear is full of Putin’s strongest soldiers before posting.

lmao this is such a Hexbear post. you really cannot find it anywhere else on the internet

It depends on how fast America can rebuild its own supply chain. If the Global South can form their own alternative economic bloc that decouples from the dollar, then there is very little reason to export to America.

When countries export stuff to places like China, they can actually get real, tangible things in return. When you export to America, you get junk papers in return. For now these junk papers are highly desirable, because you need them to purchase energy/food and pay back your debt, but would you still want to obtain junk papers when you no longer need them?

With so much of US consumer products dependent on foreign imports (seriously, name a Made in America product at your home, and even then, how many of its components are actually locally made), it will ultimately depend on what America can offer to the world that is attractive enough that other countries would want to sell their stuff to you. Hospitals, schools etc. still need supplies, many of which America no longer make. Maybe China can ship some humanitarian aid to America or something.

I think America can still sell fossil fuel and food, but those are fairly low value added goods and not nearly enough to sustain a high income economy. The country isn’t going to starve or anything, but it will no longer be able to get cheap consumer products like it used to.

Does anyone know if Project 2025 has a Russian connection behind it?

Honestly “Project [number]” is such a Soviet/Russian way of naming a project/plan, and rather uncommon in the American lingo, that I find it hard to believe that the GOP is naming it this way without Russia behind it as a consultant/mastermind or something.

Socialism can indeed reindustrialize fairly quickly, but it is also contingent on how fast can the landlord/rentier class (i.e. finance capitalists) be rooted out. The purge and the civil war after the Bolshevik Revolution was extremely bloody, and so was Mao’s land reform - both of which were preconditions to neutralize the ability of feudal landlords to mount opposition against industrialization.

Let me just give you an example: with so much of the American retirement/pension fund being tied to the stock market, good luck trying to take out the financial sector. You’re gonna get a whole lot of reactionaries who would fight tooth and nail to oppose seeing their money evaporates. This is not to say it can’t be done, but it’s going to be bloody.

The US empire is unique in that it is the world’s first hegemon/empire that operates as a global debtor, whereas previous empires have all been global creditors. This means that the US simply prints money to get what it wants from the rest of the world (using “debt” that it will never have to repay), without having to build up a robust industrial core to serve a base to expand its imperialist ambitions.

So it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens if the dollar can no longer be weaponized.

It took 30 years for T-72 to finally get its revenge.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the Soviet made T-72 tanks suffered a severe reputation loss, when thousands of Iraqi T-72M (the export, stripped down version of T-72A) laid burning in the desert. Even though only a fraction of them were actually knocked out by M1A1 Abrams, and most of the losses were due to US air superiority, a well organized propaganda campaign was run to depict Soviet military equipments as so overhyped that they turned out to be complete trash.

It was a total propaganda victory for the American military industrial complex. In fact, the reputation of the T-72 was so bad that Russia had to rename its successor “T-72BU” (Project 188) to “T-90” to avoid the association. (T-90 is still one of the best performing tanks that have since taken on the British Challenger and German Leopards in the Ukraine War).

It would be more than 30 years before the T-72s would face the M1 Abrams on the battlefield once more, and this time - we finally have a good picture (literal photographs) of how the M1 Abrams fared against the T-72s without air support. History has finally vindicated the Soviet design - still one of the best designed tanks to exist today despite its age.

Semiconductor fabrication requires very specialized skill sets that take years of effort and dedication to master. It’s not something you can solve by just throwing money at it.

If you cannot build a plant that is so sterile that it does not contain a single speck of dust, there is no way you can compete with TSMC in Taiwan. You’re going to have to spend years to figure out how to do that first, and that’s just one of the first steps along the entire manufacturing chain that each requires very specialized skill and knowledge for the operation to become functional.

It is not a misconception though. See my other response in this thread - this is unique to the US whose wealth is built through financial imperialism.

Most countries on the other hand have industries that produce real goods and services - not real estate or the stock market - that can offer actual material gains to other countries. America can run a huge trade deficit simply because the dollar is the most desirable asset, not because it has anything tangible to offer to the world.

When the dollar is no longer the most desirable asset, its exchange value will plunge, purchasing power will fall, imports will become more expensive, and re-industrialization will be needed to rebuild/reshape its own economy until it has something real to offer to the world. This is going to take decades. Why else would other countries want to sell stuff to America when it doesn’t have anything to offer?

What you’re saying is not wrong, but you still have vastly underestimated the toll it’s going to take on America’s economy if the US can no longer rely on the dollar to get what it wants.

Let’s put it this way: what does America have to offer to the world?

Typically, countries trade with one another because they have something to offer that the other wants. The US is a unique case in that what it offers is a hard currency, something that every country in the world would like to get their hands on. This is what allows the US to run such huge trade deficits and practically get everything on the cheap without having to offer much to the world.

Who wants to sell to America when you can no longer offer the dollar as a highly desirable asset?

Let’s imagine what happens when America can no longer leverage on the strength of its currency, what can America offer to the world?

Boeing planes? Intel chips? 5G telecommunication infrastructure? Google and Amazon services? The tech sector is already being surpassed by other Global South countries, and many of the technical deficits after half a century of neoliberalism will take years if not decades to restore.

Military hardware? Sell them to whom? To fight whom?

Hollywood/Netflix/cultural exports? This can be one of the surviving industries, but the investment cash that used to flush these industries would also be greatly diminished if the dollar is no longer the attractive asset that it is.

Fossil fuel and food/grains? These can also serve as export goods, but they’re pretty low value to sustain a high income society.

And we’re not even talking about how America as an immigrant country will no longer have the pull it has to poach skilled labor from other countries who raised and fed their own people for decades, only for America to just take these labor away through offering them a strong currency that they cannot obtain in their home country.

Who’s going to come to work in America? Who wants to come to America? These will also be big question marks. (The Soviet Union was able to take in talents from America thanks to the Great Depression, but who is America going to poach talents from when the empire itself finally falls?)

So, yes, even the working class in America will have to take a plunge in their purchasing power and hence living standards. This is simply what happens what you have little to offer to the world, and your wealth is built on financial colonialism.

And I’m going to be honest here: if it ever comes to this, you should consider yourself lucky if no Global South demands reparations from America. Otherwise it’ll put on an even heavier toll on the economy.

So, don’t be surprised if your average America chooses to rather be a slave worker under imperialism, who still benefits from the plunders of imperialism even if it’s just crumbs, than to accept the reality that America is no longer at the pinnacle of the world and rebuilding the country will take decades of hardship.