COLD WAR II: China’s economy is slowing, its population aging. That could make it dangerous.

Two foreign policy scholars, Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins and Michael Beckley of Tufts, have offered a frightening thesis: China’s leaders know their power is about to diminish, and that will make them more likely to take risks in the short run — to invade Taiwan, for example.

China “is losing confidence that time is on its side,” they write in a recent book, “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict With China.”

“China will have strong incentives to use force against its neighbors … even at risk of war with the United States,” they warn. The “moment of maximum danger,” they suggest, is this decade: the 2020s.
A chorus of other China scholars have disagreed.

First, they note, there’s no evidence that Xi or other leaders believe their power is declining; they continue to predict the rise of China and the decline of the West.

Even if China’s economy slows down, it will be growing — still the second-largest in the world.

“Countries can muddle along with a great deal of poor economic performance and still be a major force in international politics,” noted Aaron L. Friedberg of Princeton, author of “Getting China Wrong.”

Besides, Xi and other Chinese leaders have a strategy for solving their economic challenge, he argued. “They see advances in technology as the key to solving all their problems,” he told me. “That’s how they plan to achieve higher productivity and reasonably high economic growth.”

Hopefully, recent developments in Ukraine will convince Xi that jaw, jaw is much better than war, war.

FRAUD GOETH BEFORE A FALL: Columbia’s U.S. News Ranking Plummets From #2 To #18, Its Lowest Ranking Since 1988. It was ranked #2 based on “incorrect data.”

Background here.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Is there a link to the article about the people that got fired over this?” Haha, you people crack me up.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Enough: Most want Biden to fix economy, ‘quit blaming MAGA.’

Related: Dems want the midterms to be a referendum on Trump, not bungling Biden — and the media are compliant.

WE’RE MAKING PROGRESS:  “Google, IBM Quietly Backtrack on Race-Conscious Fellowships in Wake of Free Beacon Reports.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Switzerland looks at jailing people for heating their homes “excessively.” “Of course, for those with the right level of technology in their heating and air conditioning systems, the government will probably just set the temperature for you and lock you out of the ability to change the setting. Think I’m kidding? It’s already happened in Denver, Colorado.”

SUE ‘EM … ALAS, IT’S THE ONLY WAY:  “Lowery v. Texas A&M University System:  The Beginning of the End of DEI Discrimination?“

REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS:  “How Blatant Anti-White Racism Won Acceptance in Elite America.”

HEH: Lawyers Mock Feds’ Claim That Trump Had ‘Classified Docs’ at Mar-a-Lago.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Abortion Debate, Litigation, and Strategy: The Case of The Stanford Law Review.

THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Patty Murray Slams Opponent for Questioning Election Results. She Did the Same Thing in 2004. Senator worried that ‘voting irregularities’ cost John Kerry the White House.

UKRAINE FACES THE PURSUER’S DILEMMA: The choice between “keeping up the skeer” and avoiding over-extension and a dangerous counterattack:

On Monday, the Ukrainian military claimed to have advanced over the past day into an additional 20 Ukrainian towns and villages in the Kharkiv region that had been under Russian control, adding to the hundreds of square miles it has retaken in the northeast. It also said it had recaptured nearly 200 square miles in the southern Kherson region in recent days, as its forces try to cut off thousands of Russian forces stationed west of the Dnipro River.

The military’s assertions could not be independently verified, but Western analysts, including at the Pentagon, said that the Ukrainians were overall making gains as quickly as Russian forces were falling back.

But Ukraine faces potentially serious pitfalls if it pushes any farther.

Any future advances would mean that Ukrainian forces would further extend their supply lines, straining convoys of fuel, ammunition and reinforcements as they have to move farther away from their established logistics hubs.

That could leave Ukrainian units vulnerable, said John Blaxland, a professor of security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. Although he added that a Russian counterattack was “not necessarily going to happen,” in part because the morale of Moscow’s troops appears to be foundering.

Russian officials face their own hard questions, especially with a growing backlash to their “special military operation” from pro-war voices at home. Russia’s military leaders, analysts say, will have to take a cleareyed look at the reality of their forces’ current conditions — depleted and demoralized in some areas — to determine how much of Moscow’s goals they can accomplish in the coming months, if any.

They will also have to contend with the rigid structure of Russia’s military and, ultimately, the decisions of Mr. Putin, who has resisted mobilizing a national draft and sought to preserve a sense of normalcy inside Russia.

That’s going to be hard to keep up.

BELIEVE YOUR ENEMY WHEN HE SAYS HE’S GOING TO KILL YOU: The Iranian fanatics took the wraps off a new drone they claim is designed specifically to kill — who else? — Jews, especially those living in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Reminds of Hitler’s “New Yorker” ICBM prototype.

This is further evidence of the colossal strategic mistake by President Barack Obama in not doing everything possible to support the Iranian Green Movement in 2009. The country was primed for a revolution but Obama effectively sided with Mullahs.

LOVELY PEOPLE; LET’S SEND THEM MORE PALLETS OF CASH: “For the first time, two women known to have been lesbian have been sentenced to death in Iran. It marks a new stage in the Islamic republic’s persecution of LGBT people…It’s quite normal for the Iranian authorities to prosecute gay men under bogus charges. Under Iranian law, sex between two men is punishable by death, but the authorities often charge people instead with offences such as rape, incest, or drug-trafficking. According to Iranian activists, at least four other people have been executed for being gay in the last 12 months, two of them as recently as June.”

YOU DON’T SAY: United Kingdom Data Show the U.S. Public Is Badly Served by the FDA.

In the United Kingdom, people who smoke have the choice of thousands of different vaping products, flavor choices and nicotine strengths, which are greatly succeeding in tempting many away from combustible tobacco and onto consuming nicotine in a far safer manner, as the latest ASH data show.

This is because manufacturers in Britain need only notify the regulatory body which vaping products they intend to market, ensure they are free of certain harmful ingredients, and ensure they are sold only to adult smokers to help them quit.

By contrast, the FDA is preventing the United States from enjoying a “vaping revolution” similar to that of the U.K. by only authorizing a handful of vaping products made by three companies, all of them only in tobacco flavor. This is in complete disregard to governments worldwide that recognize that vaping is at least 95 percent less harmful than smoking and that there have been no reported deaths from nicotine vaping use anywhere in the world since their introduction 20 years ago.

So why is the FDA taking such an over-precautionary approach to vaping, peddling dangerous misinformation at every opportunity? This has resulted in the United States essentially forgoing the huge public health benefits enjoyed by the British population thanks to its establishment’s embrace of harm reduction when it comes to nicotine use.

Nicotine is enjoyable and mostly harmless when you don’t inhale smoke with every drag. But scolds don’t like people enjoying themselves, and the FDA is full of scolds who would apparently rather see people suffer from cigarettes than enjoy vaping.

Previously: Democrats Want to Ban Vaping Because They Want People to Die.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Fireproof Waterproof Safe. #CommissionEarned

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Small business owners: Recession is already here. “A majority (57 percent) of small business owners now believe the U.S. economy has entered a recession, while only 30 percent of respondents rate the condition of the U.S. economy as good or excellent. Meanwhile, a vast majority of small business owners are opposed to a major component of the recently passed ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’ Seventy percent of respondents oppose doubling the size of the IRS, which will trigger more audits of Mainstreet.”

TUCKER CARLSON GOES OUT ON A LIMB: Drawing a parallel between January 6 protests and fall of the Twin towers — true lunacy.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Here’s How Trump Can Protect Himself From Joe Biden’s Bogus Criminal Investigation. “Now more than ever, it looks like this will be Joe Biden’s Hail Mary effort to thwart Trump’s 2024 campaign.”

A Megan Fox podcast: Fitness Over 50 with Paula Bolyard.

Yours Truly: What Ukraine Got Right, What I Got Wrong. “I have yet to see this item confirmed by Russian sources, but if true, it’s a very big deal — a tacit admission that Putin’s gambit has failed.”

NORMALLY ON SUNDAYS I HAVE A POST TO PROMOTE (MOSTLY) INDIE AUTHORS. THIS WEEK IT WAS DELAYED FOR OBVIOUS REASONS: Book Promo And Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

THEY KEEP TRYING TO LAUNCH A FAKE FOOD REVOLUTION: Lab-grown milk to hit shelves by 2024 – minus the cow and the carbon. “The process involves inserting synthetic cow DNA into yeast to form a protein known as a casein micelle, the ‘essential building block’ for cow’s milk. These proteins are then brewed, filtered and dried ready to be rehydrated and turned into animal-free dairy products.”

WELL, THAT AND BECAUSE D.I.E IS AN IDIOT IDEA THAT BREAKS EVERYTHING:  Google, IBM Quietly Backtrack on Race-Conscious Fellowships in Wake of Free Beacon Reports.

What they should look for and reward is competence, not a particular tone of skin, interesting tastes in bed partners, or being in the majority as to the sex organs you were born with. (Yes, women are the majority, which somehow makes them a minority. Go figure. It’s clown world. Every time you turn around, it honks in your face.)

BRIT GIT DISCOVERS TELEVISION SHOWS ARE FICTION:  John Oliver slams ‘Law & Order’ creator Dick Wolf for glorifying ‘good guy’ NYPD cops.

NEWS FROM FANTASYLAND:  Disney CEO Bob Chapek declares victory in ‘Don’t Say Gay’ controversy.

The left is really good at defeating straw enemies over straw issues.

TOPPING THE PREVIOUS ONE OF NAKED MARXISM:  Green Globalism is the Ultimate Expression of  White Supremacy.

The worst damage done by colonialism to Africa was taking their best and brightest and indoctrinating them in Marxism in Western Universities.

GROOMERS:  Book for 8-12-year-olds says kids should WATCH their parents have sex — and then it gets even WORSE.