Russia is often portrayed as the invincible military power. And
yet, this reputation is based on two wars – Napoleonic and
WWII. In both cases Russia won only thanks to the alliance
allied with the leading economic powerhouse of that era.
Category: Geopolitics
China wants their Russian seized land back again
This is the map that Chinese children are taught should be the borders that rightfully belong to China are in purple and the current borders are in red.
Russia is the last colonial power. Just before Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine, some of his retired generals warned him that Ukraine wasn’t their enemy. It was China.
Every #Chinese schoolchild and adult citizen knows how Tsarist Russia exploited Chinese weakness and seized Chinese territory in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and the 1860 Treaty of Peking, two “Unequal Treaties” that Tsarist Russia imposed on the decrepit Qing Dynasty.
China will now wait for NATO to bleed Russia so that they end up a vassal state of China. Previous Chinese Dynasties have not invaded their neighbors , but forced them to become vassal states that paid tribute to the emperor. Xi is trying this with his Belt and Road initiative. China prints 4 to 5 times the amount of money in relation to the the US Fed. That pays for the initiative and ghost cities. Is it sustainable?
Who’s been showing up at our Southern border?
With title 52 expiring, and a flood of immigrants expected at the U.S. Southern border, it is interesting to see the composition of where they have been coming from. Most recently the big increase has been Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s “workers Paradise”. That is why there is some talk of trying to have some kind of detente with him to try and slow the exodus.
Chinese Urban Renewal
Russian “Field Wives” are back again like in WWII
Chinese Debt Problem Worse Than US
It’s fascinating to see everyone focusing on how bad the #Real_Estate market will get the #US but completely ignoring the real estate situation in #China, which is by a magnitude much worse.
You think the #FED will print and “dilute” the #USD? Wait till you see the #PBOC
Here are some numbers to put things into perspective 👇
#US:
#GDP: $25 trillion
#Money_Supply (M2): $21 trillion
#FX_Reserves: It has the USD
#Banking_Assets: $24 trillion
#Non_Performing_Loans (Dec 2022): $143 billion
#Real_Estate: Represents 36% of Americans household wealth
#China:
#GDP: #Officially: $18 trillion
#GDP: Unofficially: $14 trillion (shorturl.at/deMU8)
#Money_Supply (M2): $40 trillion
#FX_Reserves: Total: $3.1 trillion
#FX_Reserves: Liquid: $900 billion
#Banking_Assets: $55 trillion
#Non_Performing_Loans: ??
#Real_Estate: Represents 62% of Chinese household wealth
Here… https://t.co/qixr0vKKgP
(https://twitter.com/mnicoletos/status/1645717845144219648?t=-wQsTKoPUOeYkSEzj69hTQ&s=03)
Yes Toto in our in the midst of a 4th Turning. Read this to understand what that means…
The Dress that launched a thousand Slave Ships
How an aristocratic fashion revolution in Paris brought about our Civil War. – the Law of Unintended Consequences
Marie Antoinette and her fellow fashion trendsetters made cotton desirable. Technology and slave labor made it affordable. It was the perfect storm. The affordability increased the desirability, resulting in an even higher demand, which in turn increased the mass production so that the price dropped even further. The cycle caused “King Cotton” and the institution of slavery which it stood upon to rule the South. Of course, we all know what happened from there. A simple dress launched an elaborate butterfly effect with far-reaching consequences that the young French queen never could have predicted when she took a step outside her lavish royal wardrobe.
The dress that launched thousands of slave ships
Bill Perry Is Terrified. Why Aren’t You?
When I was a child, I often had nightmares that ended in a blinding nuclear flash. I became an evangelist for building basement fallout shelters and actually convinced one neighbor to build and stock one.
We have been lulled back into a false-sense of security. Our aging minuteman missiles, which still run on floppy discs, are our biggest risk for an accidental annihilation of civilization, as we know it. The Russians have no early warning satellites left in orbit, so their paranoid that we could launch an ICBM leadership-decapitating sneak attack,has been to develop a six thousand-mile range remote-controlled thermonuclear torpedo, which could destroy a coastal city. Russia still openly discusses using tactical nuclear weapons in regional conflicts, without apparently appreciating the resulting inevitable escalation.
The mechanics of building a crude nuclear device are easily within the reach of well-educated and well-funded militants. The crate would arrive at Dulles International Airport, disguised as agricultural freight. The truck bomb that detonates on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol instantly kills the president, vice president, House speaker, and 80,000 others.Where exactly is your office? Your house? And then, as Perry spins it forward, how credible would you find the warnings, soon delivered to news networks, that five more bombs are set to explode in unnamed U.S. cities, once a week for the next month, unless all U.S. military personnel overseas are withdrawn immediately?If this particular scenario does not resonate with you, Perry can easily rattle off a long roster of others—a regional war that escalates into a nuclear exchange, a miscalculation between Moscow and Washington, a computer glitch at the exact wrong moment. They are all ilks of the same theme—the dimly understood threat that the science of the 20th century is set to collide with the destructive passions of the 21st.“We’re going back to the kind of dangers we had during the Cold War,” Perry said. “I really thought in 1990, 1991, 1992, that we left those behind us. We’re starting to re-invent them. We and the Russians and others don’t understand that what we’re doing is re-creating those dangers—or maybe they don’t remember the dangers. For younger people, they didn’t live through those dangers. But when you live through a Cuban Missile Crisis up close and you live through a false alarm up close, you do understand how dangerous it is, and you believe you should do everything you could possibly do to [avoid] going back.”
Source: Bill Perry Is Terrified. Why Aren’t You? – POLITICO Magazine
If you want to read further on this risk http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistake
A Brave New World Order
Japan had the first world leader to meet with President-elect Trump. For the first time in eleven years, Putin just visited Japan for two days of talks. Trump’s proposed Secretary of State was awarded a Friendship medal by Vladimir Putin. What if anything do these have in common? Maybe nothing, but I can’t help but consider the implications for a Grand Alliance between Japan, Russia and the United States to contain China’s expansionist tendencies
Until recently, only Mao and Deng Xiaoping have achieved the title of “Core Leader”. Deng wanted the Communist Party to become a consensus-based system with rotating leadership and he would be the last Core leader. Current Premier Xi has put the end to that with his recent appointment as Core leader. We will have to see if this turns out to be an over-reach or the start of Emperor Xi’s dynasty.
China has always been a difficult country to rule. There are five distinct regions and multiple languages. There have only been a few times where a dynasty has been able to rule them all. Revolutions start, not when things are at their worst, but when rising expectations are dashed. Xi can see the demographic wall they are about slam into, as a result of the one-child policy lasting too long. He also knows that there will be economic dislocations, as they try to change from an Export-driven to a Consumer Society.
His biggest threat internally may not come from the aging establishment’s backlash, but from a youthful burgeoning left-wing Maoist movement. That is why the charismatic populist Bo Xilai was the victim of one of the first Stalin-like Show Trails. Xilai’s popular message was that Mao’s revolution has been hijacked by the corrupt Princelings – a group that Xi was fortunate enough to be born into.
China doesn’t it view itself as a Rising Power, but a a Returning Power. After all, with just 250 years under their belt, these Americans are only upstarts. While Kissinger was secretly meeting with Deng for Nixon’s Machiavellian opening to China, he asked Deng what he though about the French Revolution. After a pause, he said “We’ll have to see how it turns out”. China takes the long view of history and their future.
Embattled leaders will often use external threats to distract a restless populace. Xi knows the end of China’s economic miracle will bring unrest. Xi’s expansionist foreign policy has unnerved its neighbors, the most powerful of which are Russia and Japan. They could be open to a Grand Alliance with the United States to counter China’s rise. After all the US joined with Stalin to defeat what we thought was the greater foe – Hitler.
There is no love lost between Russia and China. They fought a seven month undeclared border war in 1969. China is financially taking over Mongolia and expects its other neighbors to eventually become vassal states also.
Russia had always been torn. It’s either a European or an Asian power. The construction of St. Petersburg was supposed to tilt Russia to the West. Putin rose to power from there. He has revived the Russian orthodox church. Putin’s Russia feels more comfortable with the West than the East. Russia is a declining power, who is afraid of the dragon’s growing power on it’s western borders. Japan is afraid too. Fear of a common enemy can make for strange bedfellows. Trump’s unconstrained collection of no-nonsense generals and plutocratic deal makers could think far enough outside the box to try and pull off such a Grand Bargain.