Image is of German farmers blocking the road near the Brandenburg Gate in early January 2024.
The ruling German coalition - the FDP, the SPD, and the Greens - has been in dire straits since the war in Ukraine began due to their steadfast commitment to destroying their country as much as possible in solidarity with Ukraine destroying themselves too. Scholz is deeply unpopular, with a record low approval of 20%, and his party's approval is even lower.
The German left has been entirely unable to take advantage of this situation, with Die Linke fragmenting due to split opinions on what position they should hold on Ukraine, among other issues. As a result, the major conservative party, the CDU, has gained a lot of voters over the past couple years. Most worrying, however, is the gains that the fascist party, the AfD, has made - from 10% in 2021 all the way to ~20% today. A significant chunk of the vote is likely protest votes due to the lack of an alternative, but a vote for fascists makes you a fascist nonetheless.
Recent controversies with the AfD - including an allegation that they held a secret meeting discussing a plan to mass-deport millions of migrants in an obvious parallel to Nazi meetings planning to remove all Jews from the country - has recently slightly damped approval for the AfD. This meeting generated counter-protests and condemnation from many Germans. It was later revealed that the meeting might not really have happened as alleged, but it doesn't actually matter, because the AfD's stance is being increasingly reflected by the ruling coalition, who recently introduced a bill allowing faster deportations of rejected asylum seekers and significant new powers for authorities in that regard, including potentially the criminalization of sea rescue organizations and imprisonment for aid workers.
The German government is increasingly considering banning the AfD, with their anxiety and motivation to do so rising as the AfD maintains and improves its position as Germany heads towards elections in late 2025. There are intermediate steps that could be done, such as revoking state funding, but if that doesn't work, then the party might well be banned. While I will never argue with fascist parties being banned, this probably won't fix anything, as the underlying economic and social conditions that are fueling these electoral shifts in the first place are not improving. Germany, the largest industrial power in Europe, is mired in a recession, particularly a manufacturing recession, from which there appears to be no escape. It has so far carefully shepherded its natural gas resources to keep the population as mollified as possible, but this has come at the expense of industry. In a trend starting from July 2022, manufacturing PMIs are still well below 50, reaching 45.5 in January 2024, which indicates decline. I suppose if you wanted to look on the bright side, it's better than it was in July 2023, where it was a whopping 38.8, so the rate of decline is becoming a little slower.
And this is just the domestic stuff. Germany has also famously sided with Israel to support them during the ICJ genocide case, has kowtowed to Netanyahu as they bond over being Genocide Experts, and maintains its support of Ukraine, continuing to send military gear and money to be converted to scrap metal by Russian artillery - rather than spending money on doing anything about the cost of living. In the face of a historic economic downturn, it has only more fervently stated its desire to remain militarily opposed to Russia for decades.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
It's not so much that the US is incompetent (although there's definitely plenty of incompetence to go around and the current US political class is nowhere near the political competence of the political class immediately after WWII) but that the US is an irrational actor if we understand a rational actor in the context of geopolitics to be an actor that focuses on self-interest and has long-term agendas that it wishes to pursue.
Being a rational actor itself isn't good or bad. China is a rational actor, probably one of the most rational actor in existence today, and its foreign policy is very much a product of it being a rational actor. This is why it simultaneously has the BRI and pays lip service to anti-imperialism while at the same time has normalized relations with the Zionist entity, partly to use Israel as the middleman in order to procure US military tech. Everything that China does is calculated for the sake of its own national self-interest and for the sake of its long-term plan. In contrast, Ansarallah isn't a rational actor at all. The rational thing to do would be to issue a bunch of anti-Zionist/pro-Palestinian statements while ensuring the Saudis and Emirates through backroom channels that they would do nothing substantial to help the Palestinians. Instead, they pretty much torn up the detente they had with the Saudis by launching cruise missiles at cargo ships. That's because their guiding ideology for international relations isn't realpolitiks but political Islam, which is a completely different paradigm. Therefore, we don't have to read tea leaves when the Yemeni military states that the attacks will continue until the blockage in Gaza is lifted, but take them at their word. This is a good thing.
So if the US doesn't fully embrace realpolitiks in the same way China does, then what is its guiding ideology? I would say that part of its guiding ideology is white supremacy. US society is completely build on white supremacy, so for a bunch of geopolitical wonks to say, "well, we made it all the way without addressing our white supremacy, but for the sake of crafting reasonable policies against China, let's temporarily turn off the white supremacy switch in our heads so we can impartially analyze China." It doesn't work like that. Another key ideological component is triumphalism over winning the first Cold War. When you combine the two, it becomes, "We beat the Soviets. These bug-brained Chicoms are even more pathetic than the Soviets ever were. We totally got this." And among the stereotype of Chinese people is that they are incapable of creative ingenuity which leads to your second assumption.
I would argue that their ideological commitment towards white supremacy and self-aggrandizing triumphalism means that they are very much not well aware of this fact and that plenty of the US political class still believe that the US can continue to surpass China. I'm not making the argument that the entire political class or even the majority of the political class believe in this delusion. But if something like 17% of your political class continues to believe that China can't innovate and just steals IP, well that's a dice roll and if you roll a 1, your senior heads will enact policies that operates under the wrong assumption that China can't technologically surpass the US.
So how did the US pull off the vassalization of Europe? They were able to pull if off because it was the rational agenda to pursue, and since everyone involved is European from the British to the Germans to the Ukrainians to the Russians, none of the white supremacy ideological blinders is applicable, which means the US was able to accurately assess all the players involved. But for China, the US will attempt to pursue a rational agenda, perhaps pursuing the gameplan that you've outlined, but there will be plenty within the political class that want to take advantage of the inherent bug-brainess of the Chicoms and pursue a completely different plan and in the process, fuck up the hard work of the rationalists.