Dr. Gregory Mitrovich

PH.d IR/History, Cold War, grand strategy, author of award winning "Undermining the Kremlin,” Harvard/Stanford fellow, Rise and future of US; in WaPo, SCMP, TNI

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@NormOrnstein Only topped by the soulless Supreme Court who caused this disaster.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@RadioFreeTom Please keep in mind this is NORTHERN EUROPE—Southern Europe has enjoyed AC for the past 25 years.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

What really amazes me about these arguments regarding China is that the West offered China the greatest security guarantee in history —starting in 2000 we literally moved the bulk of our manufacturing to China. What nation planning either a war or some form of destabilization moves its manufacturing base to the country it’s going to attack?

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

In 1949 the competition was with the Soviet Union, not China which had just emerged from a brutal civil war, not to mention world war 2, and was a nation the US hoped would be more like Tito’s Yugoslavia and weaken the Soviet bloc. China’s intervention in the Korean War dispelled that notion.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

What most amazes me about this is that Putin’s turn against the West has often been ascribed to the West’s unwillingness to treat Russia like a true partner and to acknowledge a Russian sphere of influence. However, China is treating it like a colony and that’s okay to Putin.

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

My jaw is on the floor: it’s one thing for us to say that Russia has become a vassal of China, it’s quite another for the Kremlin to openly say so. But here we are, from RT, the mouthpiece of the Kremlin, an article on the eve of Putin’s annual tribute mission to China:

Russia is China’s junior partner. China knows it, Russia knows it, and everyone else knows it. This is what it means when RT says there’s a “strategic pillar” in Russia becoming China’s largest supplier of oil, while surging other materials like nickel, copper, aluminum, metal ores, and grain. It’s the classic extraction from periphery to the imperial metropole.

(It’s funny that RT claims that import-substitution in Russia is the reason for collapsing demand for Chinese products when much of that substitution is built on Chinese imports.)

What’s happening right now is that the vassal got himself into a serious bind with his foreign misadventure and the sovereign hasn’t done enough to help him. So Putin is begging Xi to get him out — this is what RT means when it complains that “China still often behaves as though it can enjoy the benefits of strategic partnership without fully committing itself to the burdens that come with it.”

But RT’s conclusion is a bunch of wishful thinking: “At some point, Beijing will have to decide whether it truly views Russia as an equal strategic partner or merely as a useful resource base operating on China’s periphery.”

You see, no, China does not have to make any such decision. It benefits tremendously from Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine. There’s no upside to siding with Russia openly and provoking hostility in the entire West. Beijing’s current policy is quite smart in that regard as it allows it to profit from increasingly desperate Russians while encouraging a rift between the Europeans and the Americans, a rift that is, by the way, completely unnecessary and caused by idiots in Washington. It will, in fact, not be impossible for China to find a modus vivendi with the US as long as it doesn’t push for a military solution in Taiwan.

The RT article is remarkable: it’s whining about China while simultaneously trying to portray Russia’s fundamental structural weaknesses as some sort of strength while demanding for Beijing to act against its interests in order to save Putin from his own folly.

How fitting that Putin understands so well imperial China’s Tributary System to keep bending the knee but not well enough to understand that the Emperor plays on a larger board and will only throw him crumbs from the table.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@PopovaProf @UmlandAndreas My favorite part as a debate I had with a British “realist” who argued Russia was understandably in the right to have seized Crimea because Ukraine refused to renew RU’s leasing of the naval base at Sevastopol.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@zriboua Tech bros on strategy—only what is immediately in front of them matters

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@Stassiaaaa @cmclymer Lucky you that you are in both!!

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@slantchev These aren’t statements of policy, just senseless babble. This guy won’t even remember what he said the next morning.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

Taiwan is an island, not bordering China. That is its great advantage over Ukraine. A Chinese attack would be the greatest amphibious assault in history, greater than D-Day which the US prepared for years under real combat ops. I am sure that, under the radar, Taiwanese are studying Ukrainian drone tactics to make any across channel invasion a costly disaster.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@slantchev This administration has no idea what it wants or what it is doing since it only reflects the moment by moment whims of the Orange Blob. That said, Rubio’s call for a referendum would end disastrously for the Chinese.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

And what is that vision? How is it attractive to other nations? To me, the only vision is a corrupt world order where Chinese diplomats come with suitcases of money (dollars or Euros of course) drop them at the feet of corrupt 3rd world leaders to get them to agree to some B&R project or vote in the UN. Many later deeply regret engaging the Chinese, I know this is the case in Montenegro and Serbia whose broader population viscerally dislike the Chinese.

There is nothing the Chinese are doing that is replicable elsewhere, unlike the US whose vision of the world was replicated to a surprising degree by nations in europe and Asia, and to a lesser extent in Latin America, since the late 19th century.

Also, I would argue that increasing Chinese corruption of the UN has only weakened that organization as a relevant body. UN resolutions have become almost meaningless when compared to decades past.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@Euan_MacDonald This is how he talks all the time—how many times has he told someone there are the absolute best only to shiv them the next day.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@NaturalEye78321 I live near Sveti Stefan and the Villa Geba is indeed beautiful—but that isn’t Villa Geba.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@ulrichspeck However, many commentators have invested so much of their intellectual capital in the “China rise” discussion that it is impossible for them to realize the US badly outdistances China in aggregate power.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@TonyNashNerd The Thucydides Trap flatters Chinese sensibilities by “confirming” China’s inevitable rise and the equally “inevitable” decline of the US. When Xi asks how the power can avoid it, he is asking the US to acquiesce in China’s assumption of global dominance without resorting to war.

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@RasmusJarlov Of course Americans understand, even MAGA Americans who want know international engagements find this offensive. Stop attacking the American people overall. Trump voters are the first to say “I didn’t vote for this.”

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

@michaeldweiss By which autumn?

[Dr. Gregory Mitrovich @gregmitrovich]

This is exactly why Trump won and the US is facing its greater domestic crisis since the Civil War.

[Nicole Grajewski @NicoleGrajewski]

I will not vote for a democratic party that favors the advice of men who have had the privilege to travel the world but still felt content with the grace of ignorance.