“I think I’ll use crayons this time.”

Niccolo Soldo

Oct 15, 2024

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Out of everything that I have written on this Substack, the concept that has gained the most traction has been the one that I call “Turbo-America”. Published back in April of 2022, you can read it here:

Geopolitica

Turbo-America

Niccolo Soldo

·

April 21, 2022

“Don’t get me into a shooting war with the Russians”, Obama told his CIA Chief during the Syrian Civil War.

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Many people found the concept interesting enough to share, discuss, and debate. I am happy that I was able to introduce a concept that generated a fair bit of interest.

On the other hand, it has also been a victim of misunderstandings, purposeful-misconstruing, ignorance, and “strawmanning”. The concept is very, very simple, but I now feel the need to dumb it down even more/re-state it because I find myself being confronted by people, either innocent or acting in a malevolent fashion, who mangle this simple concept and waste my time over and over again.

Therefore, I am going to do the following:

1. re-state the definition of Turbo America
2. why I originally introduced it
3. explain what it actually means in concrete terms
4. explain what it does not mean
5. list conditions for when it no longer is applicable

Turbo America is my concept. I defined it. You can critique it, you can agree with it, and you can also reject it. You can add to it/borrow from it to create your own concept. What you cannot do is argue with me as to its definition because I am the one who defined it.1

Definition

In the original essay, I wrote the following:

Still others want to go for gold and take on BOTH China and Russia at the same time. This screams of hubris, and we can now safely conclude that the various moving parts of the USGov and non-governmental centres of power have agreed on this approach. The drive for global hegemony whereby both China AND Russia are targeted simultaneously is what I mean by the term “Turbo America”.

That’s it. That’s the definition….and that is precisely the condition that exists today. No more, no less.

The Reason Why I Introduced the Concept

When you read this portion now, it might seem like a “no brainer”, which is testament to the strength of the overall concept. The reason why is simple: today, the USA seeks to both weaken Russia and contain China simultaneously.

This is an undeniable fact today, but only recently were we not absolutely certain that this would be the foreign policy of the USA. Recall that during the Trump administration, the mainstream media partnered up with what we call the “Deep State”, Big Tech, and NGOs to promote a discredited conspiracy theory that centered around the accusation that Donald Trump was in league with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Quite a lot of people have very short memories, but that was the actual colour of the room during those four very annoying years.

At the same time, Trump was pursuing a more belligerent strategy against Beijing, something that won him bipartisan support and that resulted in some fairer treatment from mainstream media.2

With Trump’s exit from the stage in early 2021, many observers and analysts were left wondering what the incoming Biden regime would choose to do, as the previous four years saw the temperature rise to boiling hot when it came to Russia and Putin. Would the Biden administration seek a confrontation with Russia? Or would it look to finally complete the long-awaited Pivot to East Asia?

Four years of “Trump-Russia” suggested that the incoming regime had scores to settle with Moscow, and the appointment of Vicki Nuland was a strong sign that this was the direction that it would take. On the other hand, increasing worries about China’s rise (specifically its growing economic power and its militarization program) suggested that maybe, just maybe, the “Russian threat” was being overstated for political (read: anti-Trump) reasons, and that the real focus should be on boxing in Beijing. Here’s how I phrased it in the original essay:

There are those like Henry Kissinger who seek to do a “Nixon Goes to China”, but in reverse, whereby the USA engages in détente with Russia to bring it onside in a showdown with China over who gets to be the primary power in East Asia. These people view China as the greater threat, when compared to Russia, to US interests. This coloured the tone of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy as it was the first to take China on, by launching a failed rebellion in Hong Kong, by publicizing accusations of genocide in Xinjiang against the Uighurs there, and by slapping tariffs onto Chinese goods destined for the US market. COVID-19 caused a pause in the escalation of the US targeting Beijing.

There are others who insist that Russia is the greater threat to US interests and seek to surround and neutralize Moscow’s ability to engage in nuclear deterrence. Full-Spectrum Dominance is the concept whereby a military has complete control over all dimensions of any potential battlefield. It order to achieve Full-Spectrum Dominance, a state must have Nuclear Primacy, i.e. the ability to win in a nuclear war, whereby the other side’s nuclear arsenal is wiped out before it can launch any of its missiles. Russia’s nuclear arsenal is the only present roadblock towards American Full-Spectrum Dominance, which is not just why many US foreign policy planners seek to defeat the Russians first, but is also a large part of why this war in Ukraine is taking place at present.

The debates at the time were plentiful. Which country would the Biden regime target? Would it target Russia? Or would it target China?

By early 2022, we learned that the Americans would seek to tackle both simultaneously (and thereby push together two nuclear powers in an alliance of convenience/self-preservation against the USA), in a strategy that reeked not just of over-confidence, but Hubris as well:

Geopolitica

Hubris

Niccolo Soldo

·

May 25, 2022

Arrogance is commonly defined as the excessive pride one has in relation to others. Hubris is beyond arrogance, as it is the condition of that same excess of pride combined with an extreme self-belief in one’s own abilities, oblivious to all others. The difference between these two terms is important to understand, as it not only relates to individuals that we must deal with on a consistent basis in our lives (or worse; one or the other may describe you or I), but it is also valuable in comprehending the larger world around us, specifically international relations between states.

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Common sense dictates that it would be an error to drive your two biggest threats together into an alliance that both viewed as necessary to protect their own existence. The act of rejecting common sense due to a feeling of overconfidence is the very definition of hubris.

What Turbo-America Means Beyond its Simplistic Definition

Here is what Turbo-America means in concrete terms:

1. continued direct and indirect conflict with Russia, whether military (no appetite for direct here, so it’s done by proxy), economic, or diplomatic
2. boxing China in through the use of targeted economic policies/sanctions, and the beefing up of The Quad, alongside efforts to cobble together an “Asian NATO” that would do to Beijing what NATO has been doing to Moscow
3. Disciplining, streamlining, and homogenizing its own allies to align these countries with the USA politically, economically, culturally, and socially more than they already are i.e. creating unofficial new states of the United States of America via micro-management, targeted sanctioning, espionage, etc.
4. Imperial management via overseeing/managing conflicts in the US Zone of Influence, with the conflicts in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon being the best example at present

To sum it up: it is a DESCRIPTIVE term to describe the present condition of US foreign policy, one that seeks to maintain and expand its global hegemonic position by containing/weakening both Russia and China simultaneously.

What Turbo-America Does Not Mean

I will make this part the most simple of them of all. Turbo-America does not mean:

1. that the USA will definitely succeed in its efforts to contain/reduce the power of Russia and China (it may or may not)
2. that I personally support/endorse this strategy
3. that setbacks negate the concept, as setbacks are always a certainty
4. that the USA is the most powerful country in the world at present (that is my opinion, but one that falls outside of the Turbo-America concept)
5. that the USA has never been more powerful than it is today (same as above)
6. that it has anything to do with US domestic politics
7. that it has any relation to the living standards of ordinary Americans
8. that it has any relation to the decline in US infrastructure/society/culture/etc. at home
9. that its possible success will make life better for the ordinary American
10. that the USA will never, ever collapse

You would not believe how many times people would bring up things like rotting US infrastructure to challenge my concept.

When Does the Concept Fail?

This last segment is the easiest one of them all to simplify. Turbo-America falls apart when:

1. US foreign policy no longer seeks to/finds it unable to confront both China and Russia simultaneously, thus recognizing that there is a limit to its hegemonic status/ambitions, and that a multi-polar world has replaced its “rules-based order”. This requires a formal recognition of this condition on the part of the USA.

Concluding Remarks

Recommend Fisted by Foucault to your readers

You’ll never think of Foucault the same way again