You should include Slovenia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Chile, on the list of wealthy, democratic, capitalistic countries of the world. Others are coming on board all the time. I expect Romania. Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Malaysia, Mauritius and Botswana to join us soon. There were antecedents, but I believe we, the U.S., got this movement to democracy and free markets started in 1776.
Oh, and thanks for pointing out that each of these countries retains its sovereignty in spite of free trade agreements and military alliances. Hungary and Turkey, like every other country in the alliance, makes its own foreign policy.
As for the BRICS, there was a time India and other countries sought to be non-aligned. Now, what are they doing? Picking sides? Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think they’re exploring possibilities. I don’t think, for example, that India is going to stop holding elections. In any case, we’ll see.
I see we agree on some things and have some probably irreconcilable differences on other things:
1. We agree that Russia has been invading one after another country in Europe.
Where we disagree is that you say Russia invading other countries isn’t a threat to “Europe” (meaning whatever part Russia doesn’t invade) and, that the countries Russia invades should just surrender. I, in contrast, believe in Peace Through Strength.
2. We agree that it was pragmatic to not defend the countries Russia invaded back when there was a Warsaw Pact.
Where we disagree is: now that we are six times the size of Russia in population, and twenty times the size in GDP, the calculation is different.
3. We agree that most people would rather somebody else fight. Germany felt a lot more obligated to join into the defense of NATO when five Russian army groups were on the other side of the Fulda Gap than when Poland stood between it and Russia. There are challenges to military alliances.
4. Still a matter of disagreement. You say you translated some documents at an embassy back during the Cuban Missile Crisis when you were, what?, 30 years old. That would make you 91 years old today.
Possibly because of your advanced age, you can’t process recent scholarship on the Cuban Missile Crisis, nor the logic of Mutual Assured Destruction (and why that worked overall as well as worked in particular during the Cuban Missile Crisis). Let me simply repeat that MAD worked because both the Soviets and the west were rational.
“[Mutual Assured Destruction] is based on the theory of rational deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy’s use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.” from the wikipedia entry
HOWEVER for this equilibrium, the players need to be rational (which the Cuban Missile Crisis reveals that Castro wasn’t). Rogue states, terrorists, and so forth, pose a different challenge. There is also the problem of miscommunication. The argument can be made that nuclear war is more probable now than it was during the Cold War.
5. You think it’s swell that Putin likes to surround himself with communists, left-wing radicals, military dictators, and the like; and, I wonder what’s India doing in that mix. I, on the other hand, like the U.S. hanging out with countries that are prosperous and democratic.