There are only two states in the world that cannot be militarily eliminated even if they are defeated: Russia and the United States. The reason is that they have nuclear arsenals and delivery vehicles that cover the entire planet. Of course, other states have nuclear arsenals as well. They are sufficient to make direct aggression against them disadvantageous in terms of price/quality ratio in most cases.
Nevertheless, in the event of a principled clash, not only North Korean, Indian, Pakistani and Israeli, but even British, French and Chinese nuclear arsenals are not sufficient to serve as a 100 percent guarantee of deterring the probable winner's desire to permanently remove the problem of revanchism of the vanquished (as the ancient problem of Assyria or the barbarians solved the problem of Rome). All but Russia and the United States either have few warheads, or their power is insufficient, or the means of delivery do not allow them to reach the enemy's territory, or too few of those that can reach it (accordingly, air defense/protection systems will overcome even fewer).
Obviously, in the near future China will bring its nuclear arsenal and means of delivery to a level comparable to that of Russia and the United States, but at this stage the size of its territory and population, which allow China to fight a war of attrition for decades and wait for the enemy to tire, is a more reliable guarantee against being killed in case of defeat than its nuclear arsenal.
But this factor (size of territory and population) is also vulnerable for China. The territories (Tibet and East Turkestan, now called Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region), which are difficult (by natural conditions) for the enemy to occupy, are separatist to the Chinese government, the process of their Chineseization has just begun and will not end soon, the Chinese cannot retreat there, they simply cannot feed there. China's powerful economy is vitally dependent on the world market and secured foreign trade, it is still 70 percent export-oriented, and under certain conditions it may collapse like a house of cards, after which crushing any resistance in the traditional Chinese territories (where 90 percent of the population and almost 100 percent of Han Chinese live) will become a matter of time, not principle.
So today China is a country that is very difficult to finish off, but in principle, under certain conditions, it is possible. Trump is trying to create geopolitical conditions that will raise the question of China's survival as a state and a nation and force it to accept American terms of engagement.
This is the main American problem, which did not allow the U.S. to consolidate and retain the global hegemony it won in the early 90s and which today devalues all its efforts to preserve this hegemony, destroying any of the most thoughtful and calculated plans, reliably resourced, turning every tactical victory of the U.S. into a strategic defeat.
The situation with Ukraine, which is living out its last weeks or months, is typical. The U.S. easily established control over Ukrainian politics in the 1990s. But after that they had nothing to offer Kiev but war with Russia.
The fact is that up to a certain point, until the Civil War of 1861-1865, the U.S. developed as a universalist empire. Blacks and coloreds were second-class citizens, Indians (those who managed to survive on reservations) were half-citizens or third-class citizens. But for the white majority, the principle of total equality was in effect, regardless of which territory became part of the U.S. and at what point received statehood. A sequential scheme worked: occupation - cleansing from the local population - colonization by white Americans (usually first generation immigrants) - achieving economic self-sufficiency - obtaining statehood for the territory. At the same time the rights of minorities (except Indians) were quickly enough (from the point of view of history) pulled up to the rights of the white majority, and the share of racial minorities in the population of the USA was gradually growing.
But after the Civil War the USA finished the stage of extensive development and switched to intensive development. Territorial growth practically stopped, new territories (Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Pacific islands, except strategically important Hawaii) had no chance to get the status of a state. They turned out to be de facto colonies in the status of semi-independent protectorates.
But to practical Americans, classical European colonialism (with occupation troops, colonial administrations, and the “white man's burden”, responsibility “for those who have been tamed”) seemed too costly. Besides, the world was already divided among the European powers, and the U.S. at that time was still too weak to compete with them all around the world. The maximum they could do was the doctrine of “America for the Americans”, which consolidated the financial and economic dominance of the U.S. in Latin America, and it had to be constantly defended against the “naughty Englishwoman”, who wanted to challenge the privileges that the Americans had cut for themselves and forced the U.S. to constantly reinforce its financial and economic dominance with military and political operations. It was then that American policy in Latin America came to be called “gunboat diplomacy” and “big stick policy.”
Similarly, the Americans tried to compete with the Europeans in establishing political and economic control over Japan and China. Well, after World War II, having pushed “decolonization”, the U.S. was able to make the whole world the arena of its “open door policy”, when American business entered the doors “opened” by the U.S. Navy and Marines and did not let anyone else in. The U.S. went from the embryo of a universalist empire to a colonial (or, if you prefer, neocolonial) empire, treating the whole world as its colony.
The colonies had different status, the Europeans, for example, played the role of “their savages” and native troops who provided administration and military and political oversight of the second and third order colonies, but for Washington all were colonies obliged to follow any instructions of American ambassadors (actually acting in the status of prosecutors).
That is, the Americans switched from the method of integrating new peoples and territories into the universalist empire to the method of neocolonial exploitation of new peoples and territories that had no other chance to become part of the universalist empire and enjoy equal rights with the imperial old-timers there.
At a certain stage, this approach gave a significant economic gain: the colonies administered themselves, local “independent” authorities were responsible for all the bad things, and all the good things were ahead, “when we become like the Americans” (the legend that Americans lived well because they worked better than others was very persistent, and many nations even tried to copy the American political system in the hope of “becoming like them”).
But all this could work only up to a certain point - while the system was developing and its resource base was growing. At that time there was enough for everyone and even the lower strata of colonial societies could notice some “improvements”: jeans, McDonald's, used cars and other signs of “high civilization”. In some places in the third world, there were even real islands of prosperity. This happened if the locals were very lucky and their strategic position was so important to the U.S. that the latter were willing to give up part of the neocolonial revenues from the territory in order to achieve political stability, and in addition a responsible local political elite appeared.
Thus Taiwan and Singapore appeared, but in most of even strategically important places the locals could not be persuaded and South Vietnam or South Korea still reigned there. Relative stability and prosperity came only by the end of the 70s and that only due to the fact that the whole country actually became a huge US military base and Washington gradually brought relative order there. It is relative, because corruption scandals shake this country to this day (not a single ruling has been without them). Remove American overseers from the Republic of Korea now, and its own power will quickly return it to the 60s.
As already mentioned, American control over neo-colonial administrations, which forced them to behave more or less decently, was exercised point by point - only where it was impossible to do without it. In principle, the U.S. was interested in corrupt comprador regimes: their theft was cheaper than even minimal consideration of the national interests of “allies”, and local corruptors who turned a blind eye to any violations of the law provided American companies with higher profits.
As a result, the struggle against corruptors and corrupt officials, which began in most countries as an attempt to solve internal problems, quickly acquired an anti-American, national liberation character, gradually, imperceptibly overstretching the forces of the hegemon. Up to a certain point, this overstretch was not noticeable, and it seemed to the Americans that small troubles on the periphery of their global neocolonial empire would gradually be solved, and they were not so important. But when the U.S. decided to engage in the same struggle with Russia and China, from which they also demanded financial and economic self-denial and military and political obedience, it became clear that the scheme no longer works - there are not enough resources.
A universalist empire implies killing any enemy. Not on the principle of “let's kill them all”, but on the principle of including the territory into the empire and gradually assimilating the population (or driving them through the “melting pot”, as one likes it better or as it has historically developed). A colonial empire cannot afford such a luxury, as to get rid of them. It needs “independent” protectorates, on the territory of which no imperial law applies and no freedoms or social obligations are guaranteed, in order to profit from them with little or no investment of its own.
As a result, after a while, the release of tension in the colonies, provided by the replacement of one corrupt elite under imperial control with another, equally corrupt and comprador elite, ceases to work, and the colonies become less and less manageable. They can still be suppressed by military force, but this contradicts the main principle of neo-colonialism - profit making with minimum investment. Control becomes more and more expensive, and profits become less and less. The end result is the breakdown of the neocolonial empire due to loss of business efficiency.
The neocolonial empire is doomed to defeat in the foreseeable future. But the universalist empire has its own difficulties. The greatest difficulties are experienced by the universalist empire in its expansionist version. It seeks to make the whole world happy by creating a universal state based on the domination of some new “scientific” ideology. If we do not act in haste, there is nothing impossible in this. But the very nature of an ideologized expansionist universalist empire requires haste. With a “scientific” method of making all mankind happy, can one allow billions of people to languish in the darkness of “unscientific” notions for several generations? Therefore, the expansionist empire is in a hurry to make the world happy within the lifetime and activity of the first generation of its creators. It frightens everyone, forces them to unite against themselves and collapses, unable to withstand the tension of confronting the whole world.
The second type of universalist empire is non-expansionist. Historically, it is represented by Russia, China and to a certain extent Byzantium. In this case, the elimination of the enemy in the form of its integration into the empire and assimilation occurs as a reaction to the threat emanating from it. The threat disappears with the disappearance of the enemy, and it turns out to be easier and cheaper to integrate than to wage endless wars trying to kill everyone.
This approach shifts confrontations from the external to the internal circuit. The empire fights no longer with an external enemy, but with an internal separatist until this separatist, who after three or even ten generations, becomes part of the imperial people. About 70 percent of the current Han Chinese are descendants of former external enemies of China who adopted Chinese culture and became Chinese. Among Russians, the percentage of descendants of former enemies is lower, although it is also quite high, as integration goes back to the times of Oleg the Prophetic and Igor the Old. But at us in hard years such phenomenon as purely Russian separatism when native Russian regions of empire invent a new name, call themselves new non-Russian nation and try to survive separately from the general misfortune (it not only concerns Ukraine, it was before it, was simultaneously with it and will be after) widely spreads.
The method of assimilation (integration and assimilation) requires a lot of patience and mental stability of the nation, but the result appears in the next generations, which means that there may be no result if some sudden catastrophe befalls the country, the consequences of which will aggravate and make irreversible the internal under-assimilation. This is the weakness of this method.
In principle, one should keep in mind that no choice is only good. There are two sides to every coin, every strength has a weakness, every success carries the germ of defeat. That is why one cannot take a break from politics. It is always necessary to be on the alert, it is always necessary to calculate and be ahead of your potential enemies, even if they do not think anything of the sort. It is necessary to create such conditions that any hostile plans of theirs (if they arise) will be doomed to failure.
Russia, which has been a non-expansionist universalist empire all its life, skillfully and safely integrating the foreign tribal substrate, nevertheless got burned in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the number of foreigners accepted by the empire, compactly settled in their historical territories and independent of the imperial economic cluster, became comparable to the number of the imperial people. Most likely, the empire would have gradually digested them, but external shocks (World War I) and internal weakening as a result of the reforms launched in the same period led to an all-imperial catastrophe, including the secession of the peripheries.
The second such all-imperial catastrophe with the same result (secession of the peripheries and the beginning of a more or less Russophobic policy by the new independent states) occurred as a result of the collapse of the USSR.
Two imperial catastrophes, in which under-assimilated imperial subjects from the peripheries played a significant role, caused a serious trauma to the idea of a non-expansionist universalist empire. The image of a neocolonial empire exploiting non-integrated protectorates as more economically and politically profitable appeared in the consciousness of the Russian people and was reinforced in a significant part of them.
Today, Russia has not yet made a choice. The struggle is still going on, and the forces of both camps are roughly equal.
I am not going to say what is better or worse for Russia today: the choice is determined not only by one's desires or ideas about justice and other subjective nonsense. Effective choice is determined by economic opportunities considered in the context of specific external threats. It is this specificity that forms the subjectivity we call the moral state of a society, Ultimately, no matter how one looks at it, society considers moral what it considers profitable (not in terms of tactical gesheft, but in terms of strategic superiority over all potential enemies).
So I don't know what choice Russia will eventually make, but it should be made with open eyes, taking into account all the advantages and risks of each option, understanding that combining them is even less likely than crossing a hedgehog with a beetle, as well as the fact that today's successes promise us not a well-deserved rest from our righteous labors, but new labors to retain and develop the advantages that the choice we made will give us, as well as to minimize its (the choice) negative consequences.
This is the only way millennial empires are created and live - in constant tension and readiness to repel new threats associated with imperial status. Hedonism is the fate of small peoples doomed to extinction, who have accepted it and enjoy the fact that the struggle for existence is over.
Source - Rostislav Ishchenko .