Hour Two
Friday 6 April 2018 / Hour 2, Block A: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: Globalists vs nationalists. The elites of the US and Europe increasingly are congruent with those of the Third World elites, just as [most Americans] are feeling insecure about our established ways of life. Metaphor for the contagion of the Other – taking our jobs away to overseas – and the broad masses of the downtrodden who work or a pittance and are now in competitions with US workers. Fear that this will entirely transform the nation, and I think they’re on to something.
Foreign policy rooted in imperial elites going head to head with a nationalist group whose goal is to protect America. Contrast to post-WWII, when the two joined to spread American ethos across the world. One now has “contagion” as its metaphor; the other is narcissistic.
Back in the days of George W Bush, we made a rapid passage from our late Twentieth Century nation-building, to “If we don't kill ’em there we’ll have to kill ’em here.” The 5,000 refueling missions the US has performed to support Saudi bombing [and terrifying destruction of the civilian population] of Yemen: does not serve us well at all. The pursuit of an aggressive foreign policy is exacerbating the [bifurcation] at home
Friday 6 April 2018 / Hour 2, Block B: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: Regular Americans see no need to ____, nor will they be sucked into another Pied Piper path of a another cold war with China, Russia or Iran; thus hope for a modus vivendi with Russia,. . . . The nuclear issue is relevant here as Russia has posited that it’ll use nukes early to “de-escalate” – a useful way of intimidating nations from being unreasonably aggressive to Russia.
US needs to stand down in its aggressiveness in Ukraine, inter al. The notion that we can go into conflict with everyone with whom we disagree is a definite path to conflict.
Blue elites, esp, want to [mollify] China. They seem to think that we should be absurdly aggressive with a weaker adversary such as Russia, but be kind to China, which steals massive volumes of our intellectual property [and a lot more].
Makinder* argued that the center had ocean to protect it; we have our Navy. We’ve always been a pan-oceanic Navy – the Mediterranean, East Asia, as well as the Atlantic and Pacific. The Blue imperial vision risks conflicts with Russia and burnishes the American caliphate – US guardianship in the Sunni world. It makes intl treaties that oblige the American people to surrender sovereignty. Strange that we abide by climate-change agreements but send drones to strike any people we wish whenever we care to. The brittleness of the imperial stance, the narrowness of . . .
The guard troops on the border upset the elites – the faint-heatedness of the Washington Post. Happy to have Trump voters go die in the Middle East but refuse to let them defend our border. They don't like regular Americans.
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Sir Halford John Mackinder PC (15 February 1861 – 6 March 1947) was an English geographer, academic, politician, the first Principal of University Extension College, Reading (which became the University of Reading) and Director of the London School of Economics, who’s regarded as one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics and geostrategy. . . . In 1895, he was one of the founders of the London School of Economics. . . . In 1904, Mackinder gave a paper on "The Geographical Pivot of History" at the Royal Geographical Society, in which he formulated the Heartland Theory. This is often considered as a, if not the, founding moment of geopolitics as a field of study, although Mackinder did not use the term. Whilst the Heartland Theory initially received little attention outside geography, this theory would later exercise some influence on the foreign policies of world powers. . . .
