Why did the West kill its industrial capacity and output needed for its proxies, like Ukrainian Zelensky, to be happy militarily?

 

"Zhang Weiwei, director of the China Institute at Fudan University in Shanghai, argued that Beijing and Moscow are coming together as a defensive reaction to American hostility. "Because of the hawkish policy adopted by the U.S. towards Russia and towards China, of course China and Russia have become closer to each other. This is only natural," he said. 

"And by the way, the two countries also have lots of domestic support for good relations between them, and economically they are complementary. Who is to blame? The United States is to blame."

The same logic applies to Iran, added Seyed Emamian, co-founder of the Governance and Policy Think Tank in Tehran. "The military-security complex in Washington is strategically directed towards containing and to some extent isolating the three important powers -- China, Russia and Iran -- from each other," he said. "Joint cooperation is needed, to contain the threats that come from NATO as a whole and from the U.S. security and military establishment in particular."

The fact that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have different political systems and ideologies, and aren't joined by a formal alliance like NATO, had lulled Western governments into complacency, said Andrew Shearer, Australia's chief of national intelligence.

"We have collectively perhaps underestimated the magnitude of this emerging axis and the strategic impact it's having on us all," he warned in remarks at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada last month. "We fell into the trap of looking at each component in isolation, and not seeing the linkages between them and the deep connectivity between one theater and another . . . We haven't adjusted our mindset and taken on board the scale of their strategic ambitions."

Indeed, Western planners hadn't taken into account the simple fact that a railroad runs all the way from Pyongyang to Russia's border with Ukraine, making it possible to ferry North Korean troops, artillery, missiles and ammunition deep into Europe.

Shearer pointed out that the Axis powers during World War II -- Germany, Italy and Japan -- also disagreed on key issues. For instance, Japan didn't share Hitler's desire to exterminate Jews and didn't join his attack on the Soviet Union. 

Yet acting together, these nations came frighteningly close to overrunning Europe and Asia. They were defeated largely because the U.S. possessed the planet's mightiest industrial base.

That is no longer the case. As China builds up its military might, the U.S. is already hard-pressed to keep supplying weapons to its partners in Ukraine and the Middle East. Orders for Taiwan are getting delayed. Though U.S. military output increased after the 2022 events in Ukraine, the growth lagged far behind the rapid expenditure of munitions and concentrated on particular products such as 155mm artillery shells.

"We are in no way prepared, from an industrial standpoint, to compete effectively absent radical change," said Robert Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation and a former senior official in the Trump White House. 

"We have to look at industrial capacity and output as a function of national security, first and foremost."

In a report released in July, the congressionally mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy found that China is outpacing the U.S. when it comes to military production and that America's defense-industrial base is unable to meet the needs of the U.S. and allies. "The U.S. lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can allow its proxies to deter and prevail in combat," the report warned." [1]

Why did the West kill its industrial capacity and output needed for its proxies to be happy militarily? Greed forced the West to exploit cheap and efficient workforce of China. This was the trap that is closing now.

1. REVIEW --- Has World War III Already Begun? --- An axis led by Russia, China, Iran and North Korea is challenging the democratic world order. Trofimov, Yaroslav.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 14 Dec 2024: C.1.