I maintain that you have to look at the big picture here. The war isn’t between Russia and Ukraine, it’s between the west and the east. And the principle players are the US and China. So, the real question is which bloc can maintain discipline longer. As I’ve said many times before, Russia collapsing or becoming politically unstable would be a disaster for China. They rely on Russian food and energy imports, and Russia protects China’s western flank. If Russia was destabilized or balkanized, then it would become China’s Ukraine. Therefore, it’s obvious that China cannot allow that to happen under any circumstances. If Russia was genuinely in trouble then China would do everything in its power to bail them out. There’s no two ways about it.
Given this unarguable fact, the next question is who is in a better position to provide support. Can the US help Europe more than China can help Russia? Again, the answer is obvious, China being the industrial superpower, is in a far better position to support Russia materially than the US is to support Europe. In fact, the US itself is largely dependent on Chinese imports to function. And China cutting off critical things like rare earths is already affecting military production in America.
So, given all that, there’s only one way this war can go. You can look at all the palace intrigue, and the drones, and all the media about attacks on Russia, but what I explain above is the underlying hard reality of the situation. Everything else is just surface noise. If Russia loses then China is fucked, and given that China is the strongest player here that just will not happen.
And I don’t see what they can do to get out of Iran now. The problem is that Israel is now in an existential crisis, and they will not allow the US to leave. Given the amount of influence Israel has over the US, they will continue to drag them into deeper conflict with Iran. We can already see how the war has restarted and likely to escalate now that the US is attacking stuff like water facilities in Iran.
I can’t see how anything changes in a major way in Ukraine before autumn, but once the global energy shock hits, that’s when things are going to start moving fast. Right now, the US and other countries are frantically dumping their oil reserves on the market to depress the prices, but those are going to run out very soon. After that there’s just not going to be enough oil to go around.
I maintain that you have to look at the big picture here. The war isn’t between Russia and Ukraine, it’s between the west and the east. And the principle players are the US and China. So, the real question is which bloc can maintain discipline longer. As I’ve said many times before, Russia collapsing or becoming politically unstable would be a disaster for China. They rely on Russian food and energy imports, and Russia protects China’s western flank. If Russia was destabilized or balkanized, then it would become China’s Ukraine. Therefore, it’s obvious that China cannot allow that to happen under any circumstances. If Russia was genuinely in trouble then China would do everything in its power to bail them out. There’s no two ways about it.
Given this unarguable fact, the next question is who is in a better position to provide support. Can the US help Europe more than China can help Russia? Again, the answer is obvious, China being the industrial superpower, is in a far better position to support Russia materially than the US is to support Europe. In fact, the US itself is largely dependent on Chinese imports to function. And China cutting off critical things like rare earths is already affecting military production in America.
So, given all that, there’s only one way this war can go. You can look at all the palace intrigue, and the drones, and all the media about attacks on Russia, but what I explain above is the underlying hard reality of the situation. Everything else is just surface noise. If Russia loses then China is fucked, and given that China is the strongest player here that just will not happen.
And I don’t see what they can do to get out of Iran now. The problem is that Israel is now in an existential crisis, and they will not allow the US to leave. Given the amount of influence Israel has over the US, they will continue to drag them into deeper conflict with Iran. We can already see how the war has restarted and likely to escalate now that the US is attacking stuff like water facilities in Iran.
I can’t see how anything changes in a major way in Ukraine before autumn, but once the global energy shock hits, that’s when things are going to start moving fast. Right now, the US and other countries are frantically dumping their oil reserves on the market to depress the prices, but those are going to run out very soon. After that there’s just not going to be enough oil to go around.