Andrew, you are generally correct concerning the goals and methods of Trump 2.0. However, when it comes to “contain China and then coerce it into a lopsided trade deal that “rebalance[s] China’s economy toward household consumption” per the National Security Strategy.”, that is a nonstarter from the beginning. Chinese militarism and nationalism although tainted with a degree of communist ideology is way to advanced to be reduced to serving Western interests with gadgets for “household consumption”. Chinese politicians and acts of their government make it clear that this is an outdated idea. Trump’s job is to simply manage America and the West toward a final showdown that is unmanageable. Also, it is my opinion that the very recent dismissal of Chinese Generals by President Xi and the consequence of highly concentrated power in his hands, clearly point toward a tilt to a hardcore military solution from China.
I am looking at the whole of the geopolitical struggle as it is entering a final tectonic shift where the many centuries of Western domination of the planet is being dissolved by treason in the West and the consequences are already unavoidable.
I agree that China is unlikely to agree to what would de facto amount to its strategic surrender to the US, but I still believe that the US is nonetheless committed to aggressively pursuing that despite the odds, which explains what Trump 2.0 has been doing thus far.
Absolutely correct and this brightly illustrates how detached from reality the whole of the US plan is. They are pursuing a path that cannot be realized for the complete lack of a realistic strategy for a positive outcome. The US is already walking down a dead-end street, geopolitically speaking. Naturally, one can easily conclude that they are knowingly pushing for WWIII as they have no alternative solutions. It is blackmail with the Samson option.
Not ever gonna happen. Russia and China know what is going on, and they both are taking their time understanding that the US and therefore the entire western economy is in freefall. It is not sustainable. More than 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The US middle class has all but evaporated. Prices are going out of sight for everything. Unemployment is massive. Everything in the US is crumbling and falling apart. Besides, Russia and China can see that Fascism has taken over and the country is on the verge of civil war. Don't worry! Be Happy. Humpty Dumpty is falling off the wall and their ain't nobody going to put him back together again.
You're welcome, Ludwig! To your question, it's the US obtaining proxy control over Venezuela's resource exports, the model of which it wants to replicate with Iran, Nigeria, and other countries, ultimately also getting the Gulf States to comply at what the US believes to be 'the right time" for maximum effect.
China's foreign policy is centered on trade and investment, the tools of which are unable to thwart the US' coercion of its top trade and resource partners, which puts China in the dilemma of either standing aside as the US gradually continues implementing its grand strategy of "peripheral"/"indirect" containment or radically changing its own foreign policy in an attempt to preemptively avert the aforesaid.
There's this grossly misleading meme on social media about China winning by doing nothing as the US supposedly accelerates its allegedly irreversible decline but that couldn't be more wrong as I believe to have already been proven over the past year. Unless something unexpected happens, Trump 2.0 is -- I believe -- going to continue containing China.
You paint a very interesting scenario, Andrew, and I agree that both Russia and China are well aware of what the Americans are up to. But then they’ve known this since at least the Nixon era, if not before then.
However, your argument ultimately rests on the premise that Russia is hell bent on never becoming China’s junior partner, preferring to be America’s concubine. For that it is what she would be if we accept that the US is determined to be the sole global hegemon.
It also assumes that Europe, Asia and Latin America would willingly and meekly opt for subservience to the United States. Personally, I believe the rest of the world understands America’s hegemonic aspirations and also that Washington will not accept anything short of total global primacy. Certainly not the status of primus inter pares, first among equals.
Russia, I believe has two aces in her hand, enabling her to assert parity with China. The first is her extensive Arctic Coast line stretching from St. Petersburg to the Bering Strait and beyond. In effect, Moscow can render the Arctic impassible to America, if only because she’s positioned to totally disrupt any American/Western trade through that ocean and prevent America from mining the region’s abundant raw materials, by adopting the same strategy as America’s proxy, the Baluch Liberation Army, used to kibosh CPEC’s hoped for goal of ultimately accessing the Indian Ocean through the Gwadar Port. Moscow must surely have noted those tactics if she hadn’t already thought of them beforehand.
Russia’s second ace is the Power of Siberia 2, the pipeline which would free China’s remaining energy dependence on the West. Beijing’s apparent willingness to consider rerouting PoS 2 to suit Russia’s strategic interests itself shows that Moscow is no Chinese Lackey.
I could go on to discuss the home ground advantage that both Russia and China would enjoy in any war with the West in Central Asia; the fact that Azerbaijan’s claim to being kingmaker in the region lies primarily in defeating Albania; that the Caspian is too shallow to sustain heavy traffic; and/or Türkiye’s desire to construct a Turkic speaking empire in Central Asia, but suffice it to say that Russia and China together make a power block as strong as anything the Americans can use to entice Russia to join arms with them.
Which brings me to a key problem I have with the picture you paint. Namely, the lack of agency you ultimately attribute to China. I reckon there are grounds for disputing this. First, the great military parade in Beijing was both a celebration of past glory and a message to the U.S. that China actually has a first, second and perhaps third strike capacity to hit mainland America with hypersonic, electronic, laser and cyber weapons, launched from space, the air, ground, sea and the ocean bed. She also has the radar and satellites necessary to mount a relatively effective early warning defence against American/NATO weapons. But, even if China hasn’t the capacity to actually defeat the West, she can ensure that she inflicts so much damage on her adversaries that the pursuit of global hegemony is not worth it. Not for the Americans. Not for her allies. MAD is back in play.
In short, I believe a stalemate has already been reached. This is not to say that war won’t break out. It probably will. But it is to say that all parties will quickly sue for peace. Perhaps, a U.S. attack on Iran will prove my point. But even if it doesn’t it will teach China about what to expect and adapt to that.
Finally, it was the UK that first announced that in the event of Ukraine’s defeat on the battle field, an insurgency would follow that kept Russia fighting literally until kingdom comes.
But all that would do is to ram home the fact that insurgency is a game that two can play, with Russia in all likelihood having its own version of Gladio, with sleeper cells long since dotted all over America and Europe. In that regard, too, China is the maestro of guerrilla warfare. And who knows how many thousands of ‘illegal aliens’ have been smuggled across the Mexican and Canadian borders over the years, ready to take up armed struggle inside the belly of the beast. It would be one thing for America to achieve global hegemony, another to keep it. It ain’t over until it’s over.
"But it is to say that all parties will quickly sue for peace."
Unless they see that a Forever War can be very stabilizing domestically, as long as all parties know not to cross certain lines. As predicted by Orwell.
Europeans, under pressure from the USA, wanted to break all energy imports from Russia because Russia as an exporter would have too much control over Europe.
But when it comes to China, Russia doing the same exact thing, would suddenly turn into a dependent, weak party under the control of the importer.
So which is it? Does exporting oil&gas make Russia a strong party or a weak one. It cannot be both.
I said Russia being in a proxy war with the US would drive it towards China, nothing about where it sends it's gas. Such a proxy war would also weaken Russia, making it more likely to be the junior partner in any such alliance. No matter what each leader says in public, this is the way the world works.
The USA wanted to stop Russian gas imports into Europe in order to economically hurt Russia while helping US gas exporters. Russian gas doesn't seem to have much influence on Europe, since they import it while using it to fuel factories that supposedly will turn out arms to fight Russia.
Biden removed sanctions on NS2…he wanted Gazprom to make even bigger profits unlike Trump who along with Cruz (Big Oll) sanctioned NS2. Putin is the party that invaded Ukraine and caused Biden to sanction Russia.
How would a nation in a proxy war with a far more powerful coalition of nations be pushed into dependence on it's only major ally? Do I really need to answer that?
The US isn't buying Russia's resources, we are embargoing them, or at least trying to.
And no, Russia doesn't disarm west. At the contrary.
Russia empties the old NATO stock, wake up the western military will, force West to modify its military doctrine , to conceive and build new and better weapons, make rebirth the european weapon industry.
Some thoughts. If you push two neighbouring countries into existential crises, you leave them no choice but to set aside their differences and focus on what they have in common. For Russia, the option of throwing her lot in with America is tantamount to Hobson’s Choice: i.e. no choice at all. After all, why prostate herself at the feet of America, when she needn’t have to do the same with China.
Second, the goal of a Russia-China military alliance would not be to defeat America and NATO, but to wear them down. Bring them to the point where winning the war was far more costly in lives, materiel, a shattered economy, and lower domestic morale.
Third, I speak from the first hand experience of watching the armed struggle in South Africa nearly bankrupt and exhaust the seemingly omnipotent Apartheid state. There are many in this country who didn’t want to stop the fighting, believing that an outright ANC victory was close to hand. But, they, too, accepted that while the Apartheid state was down and out, it still had sufficient support and bite to wage a guerrilla war against the new ANC government that would force it into a non-violent compromise.
Fourth, I believe that America’s hopes of decisively beating Russia and/or China disappeared down the crapper once Beijing developed the capacity to match the U.S. in waging war from space. That is the direction of travel for modern warfare. Arguably, Mackinder’s notion that whoever controlled Eurasia would control the world is being superseded by whoever controls space.
In a transition period such as the world is going through - potentially from unipolarity [read: American post 1992 global hegemony] to multipolarity - it’s not clear which way the chips will fall. We cannot know what the relative global balance of power will be. China and Russia are wise to wait and see which way the wind blows before choosing sides. Either jointly or severally. After all, the Europeans might decide that the Americans are incorrigible and that their best option is to side with the dragon and/or the bear. It wouldn’t be the first time that Europe chose expedience over principles. It’s worth remembering that Europe gave us Cicero, Machiavelli and Metternich to name but some. While Britain gave us Lord Palmerston.
I’d imagine that Europe’s calculation would also depend on whether or not the EU Commission could be democratised and the shift to some sort of undefined supranationality could be reversed. Left to their own devices, blocs of European countries might decide to join forces with Russia and China.
I doubt that the current narrative that everybody hates Russia and China would remain intact if VdL and Kallas weren’t around to push that line. I have a hunch that the next three years are going to be momentous as the global kaleidoscope turns and new relationship patterns emerge.
The U.S. could get lucky and achieve their aims but is it not far more likely that they will implode domestically? The rest of the world is playing a waiting game as the monster dies. Attack politically or militarily too soon could be fatal but time is not on the side of the U.S. When in history did a a country with an overpriced largely obsolete military and an empty treasury succeed geopolitically? They are having some success but equally some failures. Their great strength is the ability to corrupt and undermine political leadership but that does not always work and the successes do not necessarily endure. Their evident indifference to the welfare of their so-called allies is embarrassingly obvious- who wants to be the next Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, Syria or above all Ukraine?
You don’t mention LNG once which is what all of this is about. America invested in LNG export infrastructure while Putin invested in pipelines and it turns out importers prefer LNG. China is not making the same mistakes that Bush era America made in getting addicted to energy imports because that was the proximate cause of all of the global economic issues in 2008/09. And fracking was the engine the pulled our economy out of the Bush clusterf*#k!! China is investing in natural gas production and natural gas storage and natural gas import infrastructure and renewables which are essentially natural gas storage because when hydro is flowing then natural gas isn’t being burned.
Regarding the possible Putin-Trump understanding: as you have rightly observed, this scenario would partially expose China to the US, which for the near future would not represent - let's assume - a big problem for Russia. However, in the medium term, once the Americans would "solve" the Chinese problem, nothing guarantees that they would not turn against Russia! This time, a Russia that would no longer benefit from the support of its strongest ally. And this, I think, is also obvious in the Kremlin. For this reason, I fear that the scenario is not exactly valid.
USA can't solve the Chinese problem as long as Russia supplies most of China's needed raw materials. With the belt&road initiative, China is only depending on sea lanes for trade with Latin America and Canada. Everything else is within its dry land reach. And Russia is no longer trusting USA, so there is almost no King's ransom* that USA might offer to put daylight between Russia and China. Even India is very suspicious of USA because the latter encourages Pakistan and Bangladesh to fragment India.
*That would probably involve USA giving up on the Baltics, Scandinavia and Former Yugoslavia. Before that happens, hell will freeze over.
I don't see why the US would not give up the Baltics...they are of no real value, just a distraction. The EU/Poland seem far more interested in them, and inflaming something there.
No, I really don't see how USA could give up Baltics. There would be too much opposition in Congress, particularly Senate Republicans. As well as NATO. For example, EU and UK only agreed to the asymmetric trade deals because they got US involvement in Ukraine in return. Without the Ukraine support the deals are off. Plus, Trump looks like he is on his way out.
That was a Clinton era clown show, for sure. But without a land bridge connecting them to Russia proper, I don't think there's much value there. Syria is now RU's Mediterranean port it seems.
Nope. Serbian Bosnia and Serbian Kosovo have emotional value for Russia. If these were connected to Serbia, Montenegro and Makedonia will realign with Serbia too, and Russia would have a Northern Mediterranean port. Besides, the Syrian ports are completely useless in geopolitical bad-weather. They only work if US, Israel, Türkiye and Syria are all OK with it.
The crux of the probleme is very simple and harsh.
Russia has far more territory and resources compared to its tiny( 145 millions) and aging population.
This huge cake, owned by a dwarf, arouses desire of two mean giants.
China: 1,5 billion inhabitants piled up in a relatively poor and three quarter desert country. The biggest GDP PPP in the world, a navy equivalent of the US navy. The most industrialised and technologic country in the world.
US empire: ,370 millions inhabitants for USA, 500 anglo-,sphere, 1,2 trillion inhabitants with alliances, 3 billions with vassals. Almost 2/3 of world GDP and 3/4 of world military defense spending.
Those two giants are starving for resources, water, arable land, space.
For the US giant, Russians are inferiors, "snow niggas" and must descend to a status related to their relative insignificance on a global scale, their resources must be taken and used by western masters. H
Russian compradores will be able to become even more wealthier and they don't give a shit of the population, russian nation and it's destiny.
For the Chinese giant, Russia have been ,during one century, one among the evils which humiliated , used, abused, exploited the country and even stole big part of country's lands. Imperial Russians were as evil as westerners or Japanese. At the death of Staline, Russia(USSR) became the worst enemy of China during almost 40 years. Russia, untill today, helped India,the second worst enemy of China, to fight China and its friend like Pakistan. China has no reason to love and trust Russia. I don't think that russian people particularly like and trust China and I don't think that Chinese people like and trust Russians .
The gentlemen's agree between the two country, far from an alliance and even an "eternal friendship", began only in 2011 after both have been fucked in UNO by West about Libya and when they began to think : "it's enough".
This "eternal friendship" only held together because of Poutine and Xi. One or both of them exit and the house of cards collapse.
The first of the two giants who will take control of the russian territory at the east of Ural, will be the master of the game for at least one century.
You are Russian. You are Poutine. Reduced to a kind of Geronimo. You do what?
The best combination ia an alliance of Russia & America. The 2 have 90% of the worlds nuclear weapons. Russia itself has vast oil,gas, mineral resources and can easily extend control over whatever resources the 2 need. Come on Trump & Putin just do it.
Despite y our assertion Trump doesn't want to replicate the Japanese Imperial precedent this is exactly what he is doing. The only difference is the US hasn't seized Chinese assets or embargoed products. Nevertheless sanctions, tariffs and depriving China of oil from Libya, Syria, Iraq, Venezuela and possibly Iran is similar to what the US did to Japan. Like Japan, China will soon have no other option but war and unlike the past, the US doesn't have the manufacturing capacity nor control of the critical rare earth minerals to wage a protracted modern war with a peer super power. The Chinese remember the Opium Wars how they were humiliated by the West, they are never going to allow that to happen again! Once the war starts its all or nothing.
Keep in mind Russia is winning in Ukraine and the US has no leverage there since Europe cannot win a war against Russia. and Russian weapons are far superior to the US.
The US Empire dropping to number two is not the end of the world, but a war with China just may be.
First, I'd hate to be the guy playing against Mr Putin and his team, let alone against both Putin and Xi at the same time.
And, yes, the mystery of all the apparent insanity we've seen since covid is finally resolving to the truth of the matter.
In light of this, it's been interesting to see most of the alt-media being either ignorant or duplicitous in their expert commentary.
It's also interesting to me that the US seems to have learned from Covid that China is not as dependent on US trade as it perhaps once thought. Hence, the trade lever alone is insufficient for purposes of containing China, which realization seems to have caused all pretense of conforming to rules-based behavior to be dropped. (Ie, "Sorry, we're taking Greenland because it's become strategic to controlling sea trade.")
Imo, all of this jockeying hopefully amounts to an enormous negotiation, because the 3 players are all nuclear superpowers and none will concede to bowing to another. If it gets to a war (hot, economic, or unfriendly encirclement), and especially if the parties start playing up their supposed resilience to nuclear war, it'll be time to start worrying.
What happens in Iran, the people of which are sadly caught in the middle of all this, is going to be consequential. Prayers for them, especially my old college roommate....
Meh… Thing is that Trump’s major cudgel: Tarrifs were just taken away from him.
And many of the “deals” he signs are symbolic and theoretical. Like:
“Yes, we PLEDGE at some point in the future to, maaaybe, but less Russian oil!”
Or…
“Yes, we pledge to invest X AMOUNT of billions in America starting from 2030! We pinky swear despite the investments being private and the government having no way of guaranteeing them!”
Off the charts delusional, Russia and China are in bed for good and India is an independent player. The Supreme Court just cut down Trump's tariffs. The US is too late to stop China.
Andrew, I wonder if you would do a post on China's War Against Russia, or such. Because that seems a blind spot to many. Constantly stoking tensions in Eastern Europe, trying to revive the Cold War mentality in the West -- these distractions serve China's strategic interests, regardless of what face saving diplomatic speech is emitted.
The main cause of Japan striking out in 1941 was that FDR impeded its oil supply. So Japan had no way out - without war. This can't happen with China since Russia is providing it with oil at prices below the world market. Courtesy of the Ukraine war.
In 2023, Republicans in Congress were reconsidering funding Ukraine after Ukraine lost its battle against the Surovikin line. But then, Iran and China gave the green light for October 7. And since then even the Congress Republicans decided to continue providing Ukraine with stuff and intelligence, because helping Israel was only possible in a deal together with helping Ukraine.
Hence, possibility for a real detente between USA and Russia is now gone. Trump just uses this as a pretext to extract concessions from the EU and UK.
Yes but isn't it obvious that once China has its straw in the resource milkshake that is Siberia and becomes critically dependent, any attempt by Russia to cut China off from critical resources would become a casus belli. That's the definition of sovereignty, that Russia has political control and trade control, borders, sanction power, etc, within its own territory. If Russia has to accept snowballing "investments and joint ventures" in Siberia that provide raw materials for China, then it's pretty much lost de facto control.
Yawn. Between Sept 1939 and Jun 1941 Soviet Union was supplying Germany with tons of critical raw materials. That's not the point. Up to June 1941, the Soviets felt they had no allies in the West.
June 1941 is when Germany invaded the USSR. In large part strategically, because of the need of petroleum in the Caucasus that Europe lacked.
This is of course a literal 1:1 template of the situation I posted above about: Germany bought from the USSR until the USSR stopped selling, then it invaded.
This is the fundamental danger that resource rich, but smaller (population) or under-developed countries face with neighbors that are resource constrained but higher up on the value-added chain.
Nope. Without fighting Soviet Union Germany had sufficient oil supply from Romania as well as from industrial coal hydrogenation. If oil were the point, it could have invaded Africa and Middle East... Plus invested more in building an adequate air force after the Battle of Britain disaster.
Two things - (1) Waging war on Soviet Union was very energy-demanding. (2) Adolf also thought that taking away Soviet Union's oil supplies will hinder Soviet military capacity.
Both things depended on having the Nazi-Soviet War in the first place. Without that war, both arguments collapse. By the way, the US would have provided complete compensation for any loss of Soviet oil revenue, to keep the Soviets fighting. Duh
I agree with that resource angle. Concerning Iran there is certainly a dimension making sure that China cannot get access to Iran’s oil and gas, even at the price of flatly destroying the infrastructure connected.
But there is another dimension to that, a message to other oil producers like Saudi Arabia: “do not dare to sell oil and settle the transactions outside the Dollar system.”
Therefore, a lot depends now on the Saudi response. If they comply with the US and the US attack Iran, the Saudi oil infrastructure might go together with the Iranian to ashes. If they are defiant, they might face by themselves regime change and destabilisation operations from the US and EU.
Andrew, you are generally correct concerning the goals and methods of Trump 2.0. However, when it comes to “contain China and then coerce it into a lopsided trade deal that “rebalance[s] China’s economy toward household consumption” per the National Security Strategy.”, that is a nonstarter from the beginning. Chinese militarism and nationalism although tainted with a degree of communist ideology is way to advanced to be reduced to serving Western interests with gadgets for “household consumption”. Chinese politicians and acts of their government make it clear that this is an outdated idea. Trump’s job is to simply manage America and the West toward a final showdown that is unmanageable. Also, it is my opinion that the very recent dismissal of Chinese Generals by President Xi and the consequence of highly concentrated power in his hands, clearly point toward a tilt to a hardcore military solution from China.
I am looking at the whole of the geopolitical struggle as it is entering a final tectonic shift where the many centuries of Western domination of the planet is being dissolved by treason in the West and the consequences are already unavoidable.
I agree that China is unlikely to agree to what would de facto amount to its strategic surrender to the US, but I still believe that the US is nonetheless committed to aggressively pursuing that despite the odds, which explains what Trump 2.0 has been doing thus far.
Absolutely correct and this brightly illustrates how detached from reality the whole of the US plan is. They are pursuing a path that cannot be realized for the complete lack of a realistic strategy for a positive outcome. The US is already walking down a dead-end street, geopolitically speaking. Naturally, one can easily conclude that they are knowingly pushing for WWIII as they have no alternative solutions. It is blackmail with the Samson option.
Exactly!
Moreover, I don't think Trump is this excellent dealmaker, but simply a clumsy blackmailer.
He understands this craft brilliantly.
That's how he got his hands on Trump Tower.
That's why, as a fundamentally neutral person, I wanted him to become president again with this amount of power.
So that the world can see even more clearly what makes the USA tick under the thumb of Zionism.
Not ever gonna happen. Russia and China know what is going on, and they both are taking their time understanding that the US and therefore the entire western economy is in freefall. It is not sustainable. More than 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The US middle class has all but evaporated. Prices are going out of sight for everything. Unemployment is massive. Everything in the US is crumbling and falling apart. Besides, Russia and China can see that Fascism has taken over and the country is on the verge of civil war. Don't worry! Be Happy. Humpty Dumpty is falling off the wall and their ain't nobody going to put him back together again.
can’t happen fast enough.
Thank you for this post.
Just wondering what is ‘the combined effect so far’ which is putting China under so much pressure.
You're welcome, Ludwig! To your question, it's the US obtaining proxy control over Venezuela's resource exports, the model of which it wants to replicate with Iran, Nigeria, and other countries, ultimately also getting the Gulf States to comply at what the US believes to be 'the right time" for maximum effect.
China's foreign policy is centered on trade and investment, the tools of which are unable to thwart the US' coercion of its top trade and resource partners, which puts China in the dilemma of either standing aside as the US gradually continues implementing its grand strategy of "peripheral"/"indirect" containment or radically changing its own foreign policy in an attempt to preemptively avert the aforesaid.
There's this grossly misleading meme on social media about China winning by doing nothing as the US supposedly accelerates its allegedly irreversible decline but that couldn't be more wrong as I believe to have already been proven over the past year. Unless something unexpected happens, Trump 2.0 is -- I believe -- going to continue containing China.
Thank you Andrew.
That all makes perfect sense.
LF
Very good explanation. Also comprehensible and valid.
However, this would also mean the complete scrapping of all plans for the new Silk Road.
I can't imagine China accepting that.
I also think that not all countries that have been tormented by the USA over the last 50 years are as oblivious as we are in the West.
In my opinion, Russia and China know what the U.S. is up to and they are taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen 🤞🏾
Yes, but Russia also knows what China is up to, namely pushing the US to confront Russia in order to make Russia more dependent upon China.
You paint a very interesting scenario, Andrew, and I agree that both Russia and China are well aware of what the Americans are up to. But then they’ve known this since at least the Nixon era, if not before then.
However, your argument ultimately rests on the premise that Russia is hell bent on never becoming China’s junior partner, preferring to be America’s concubine. For that it is what she would be if we accept that the US is determined to be the sole global hegemon.
It also assumes that Europe, Asia and Latin America would willingly and meekly opt for subservience to the United States. Personally, I believe the rest of the world understands America’s hegemonic aspirations and also that Washington will not accept anything short of total global primacy. Certainly not the status of primus inter pares, first among equals.
Russia, I believe has two aces in her hand, enabling her to assert parity with China. The first is her extensive Arctic Coast line stretching from St. Petersburg to the Bering Strait and beyond. In effect, Moscow can render the Arctic impassible to America, if only because she’s positioned to totally disrupt any American/Western trade through that ocean and prevent America from mining the region’s abundant raw materials, by adopting the same strategy as America’s proxy, the Baluch Liberation Army, used to kibosh CPEC’s hoped for goal of ultimately accessing the Indian Ocean through the Gwadar Port. Moscow must surely have noted those tactics if she hadn’t already thought of them beforehand.
Russia’s second ace is the Power of Siberia 2, the pipeline which would free China’s remaining energy dependence on the West. Beijing’s apparent willingness to consider rerouting PoS 2 to suit Russia’s strategic interests itself shows that Moscow is no Chinese Lackey.
I could go on to discuss the home ground advantage that both Russia and China would enjoy in any war with the West in Central Asia; the fact that Azerbaijan’s claim to being kingmaker in the region lies primarily in defeating Albania; that the Caspian is too shallow to sustain heavy traffic; and/or Türkiye’s desire to construct a Turkic speaking empire in Central Asia, but suffice it to say that Russia and China together make a power block as strong as anything the Americans can use to entice Russia to join arms with them.
Which brings me to a key problem I have with the picture you paint. Namely, the lack of agency you ultimately attribute to China. I reckon there are grounds for disputing this. First, the great military parade in Beijing was both a celebration of past glory and a message to the U.S. that China actually has a first, second and perhaps third strike capacity to hit mainland America with hypersonic, electronic, laser and cyber weapons, launched from space, the air, ground, sea and the ocean bed. She also has the radar and satellites necessary to mount a relatively effective early warning defence against American/NATO weapons. But, even if China hasn’t the capacity to actually defeat the West, she can ensure that she inflicts so much damage on her adversaries that the pursuit of global hegemony is not worth it. Not for the Americans. Not for her allies. MAD is back in play.
In short, I believe a stalemate has already been reached. This is not to say that war won’t break out. It probably will. But it is to say that all parties will quickly sue for peace. Perhaps, a U.S. attack on Iran will prove my point. But even if it doesn’t it will teach China about what to expect and adapt to that.
Finally, it was the UK that first announced that in the event of Ukraine’s defeat on the battle field, an insurgency would follow that kept Russia fighting literally until kingdom comes.
But all that would do is to ram home the fact that insurgency is a game that two can play, with Russia in all likelihood having its own version of Gladio, with sleeper cells long since dotted all over America and Europe. In that regard, too, China is the maestro of guerrilla warfare. And who knows how many thousands of ‘illegal aliens’ have been smuggled across the Mexican and Canadian borders over the years, ready to take up armed struggle inside the belly of the beast. It would be one thing for America to achieve global hegemony, another to keep it. It ain’t over until it’s over.
Nobody will ask europeans, etc. what they want. Europeans in particular, like being slaves.
Also,a Ukrainian insurgency is a pipe dream. The one thing every successful insurgency has in common is a young population.
"But it is to say that all parties will quickly sue for peace."
Unless they see that a Forever War can be very stabilizing domestically, as long as all parties know not to cross certain lines. As predicted by Orwell.
Doesn’t really make any sense.
Europeans, under pressure from the USA, wanted to break all energy imports from Russia because Russia as an exporter would have too much control over Europe.
But when it comes to China, Russia doing the same exact thing, would suddenly turn into a dependent, weak party under the control of the importer.
So which is it? Does exporting oil&gas make Russia a strong party or a weak one. It cannot be both.
Not what I argued, also mostly not true.
I said Russia being in a proxy war with the US would drive it towards China, nothing about where it sends it's gas. Such a proxy war would also weaken Russia, making it more likely to be the junior partner in any such alliance. No matter what each leader says in public, this is the way the world works.
The USA wanted to stop Russian gas imports into Europe in order to economically hurt Russia while helping US gas exporters. Russian gas doesn't seem to have much influence on Europe, since they import it while using it to fuel factories that supposedly will turn out arms to fight Russia.
Biden removed sanctions on NS2…he wanted Gazprom to make even bigger profits unlike Trump who along with Cruz (Big Oll) sanctioned NS2. Putin is the party that invaded Ukraine and caused Biden to sanction Russia.
But how would Russia become more dependent on China? By buying its resources, the U.S. wants to own those resources
How would a nation in a proxy war with a far more powerful coalition of nations be pushed into dependence on it's only major ally? Do I really need to answer that?
The US isn't buying Russia's resources, we are embargoing them, or at least trying to.
I hear what you are saying but I don’t see it as being pushed into dependence on China, and I am only going on what Putin and Xi have said.
Russia is disarming NATO and Europe is beggaring itself
Yes, Europe ruins but USA is enriched.
And no, Russia doesn't disarm west. At the contrary.
Russia empties the old NATO stock, wake up the western military will, force West to modify its military doctrine , to conceive and build new and better weapons, make rebirth the european weapon industry.
Some thoughts. If you push two neighbouring countries into existential crises, you leave them no choice but to set aside their differences and focus on what they have in common. For Russia, the option of throwing her lot in with America is tantamount to Hobson’s Choice: i.e. no choice at all. After all, why prostate herself at the feet of America, when she needn’t have to do the same with China.
Second, the goal of a Russia-China military alliance would not be to defeat America and NATO, but to wear them down. Bring them to the point where winning the war was far more costly in lives, materiel, a shattered economy, and lower domestic morale.
Third, I speak from the first hand experience of watching the armed struggle in South Africa nearly bankrupt and exhaust the seemingly omnipotent Apartheid state. There are many in this country who didn’t want to stop the fighting, believing that an outright ANC victory was close to hand. But, they, too, accepted that while the Apartheid state was down and out, it still had sufficient support and bite to wage a guerrilla war against the new ANC government that would force it into a non-violent compromise.
Fourth, I believe that America’s hopes of decisively beating Russia and/or China disappeared down the crapper once Beijing developed the capacity to match the U.S. in waging war from space. That is the direction of travel for modern warfare. Arguably, Mackinder’s notion that whoever controlled Eurasia would control the world is being superseded by whoever controls space.
Because Russia doesn't want to be a partner to China. The Russian elites want that Gelato In Tuscany.
In a transition period such as the world is going through - potentially from unipolarity [read: American post 1992 global hegemony] to multipolarity - it’s not clear which way the chips will fall. We cannot know what the relative global balance of power will be. China and Russia are wise to wait and see which way the wind blows before choosing sides. Either jointly or severally. After all, the Europeans might decide that the Americans are incorrigible and that their best option is to side with the dragon and/or the bear. It wouldn’t be the first time that Europe chose expedience over principles. It’s worth remembering that Europe gave us Cicero, Machiavelli and Metternich to name but some. While Britain gave us Lord Palmerston.
I’d imagine that Europe’s calculation would also depend on whether or not the EU Commission could be democratised and the shift to some sort of undefined supranationality could be reversed. Left to their own devices, blocs of European countries might decide to join forces with Russia and China.
I doubt that the current narrative that everybody hates Russia and China would remain intact if VdL and Kallas weren’t around to push that line. I have a hunch that the next three years are going to be momentous as the global kaleidoscope turns and new relationship patterns emerge.
That would require Russia and China to be aggressive, audacious and proactive, which they have entirely lacked so far.
Russia desperately wants to be allowed to join The Club. China hopes that the Americans will turn in them last.
The U.S. could get lucky and achieve their aims but is it not far more likely that they will implode domestically? The rest of the world is playing a waiting game as the monster dies. Attack politically or militarily too soon could be fatal but time is not on the side of the U.S. When in history did a a country with an overpriced largely obsolete military and an empty treasury succeed geopolitically? They are having some success but equally some failures. Their great strength is the ability to corrupt and undermine political leadership but that does not always work and the successes do not necessarily endure. Their evident indifference to the welfare of their so-called allies is embarrassingly obvious- who wants to be the next Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, Syria or above all Ukraine?
More likely, what we are seeing is the end of any remaining pretense that America is anything other than an empire.
And that BRICS could be something else than a bid pile of bullshit
You don’t mention LNG once which is what all of this is about. America invested in LNG export infrastructure while Putin invested in pipelines and it turns out importers prefer LNG. China is not making the same mistakes that Bush era America made in getting addicted to energy imports because that was the proximate cause of all of the global economic issues in 2008/09. And fracking was the engine the pulled our economy out of the Bush clusterf*#k!! China is investing in natural gas production and natural gas storage and natural gas import infrastructure and renewables which are essentially natural gas storage because when hydro is flowing then natural gas isn’t being burned.
Don't forget China uses a lot of coal it is one of a few nations that has not abandoned coal as a major energy source.
Coal degrades quality of life…just ask anyone that lived in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. Check out the Donora Smog disaster.
Be that as it may, China still uses coal. as a main energy source. https://angeassociation.com/location/china/
Regarding the possible Putin-Trump understanding: as you have rightly observed, this scenario would partially expose China to the US, which for the near future would not represent - let's assume - a big problem for Russia. However, in the medium term, once the Americans would "solve" the Chinese problem, nothing guarantees that they would not turn against Russia! This time, a Russia that would no longer benefit from the support of its strongest ally. And this, I think, is also obvious in the Kremlin. For this reason, I fear that the scenario is not exactly valid.
USA can't solve the Chinese problem as long as Russia supplies most of China's needed raw materials. With the belt&road initiative, China is only depending on sea lanes for trade with Latin America and Canada. Everything else is within its dry land reach. And Russia is no longer trusting USA, so there is almost no King's ransom* that USA might offer to put daylight between Russia and China. Even India is very suspicious of USA because the latter encourages Pakistan and Bangladesh to fragment India.
*That would probably involve USA giving up on the Baltics, Scandinavia and Former Yugoslavia. Before that happens, hell will freeze over.
I don't see why the US would not give up the Baltics...they are of no real value, just a distraction. The EU/Poland seem far more interested in them, and inflaming something there.
What about Kosovo and Bosnia?
No, I really don't see how USA could give up Baltics. There would be too much opposition in Congress, particularly Senate Republicans. As well as NATO. For example, EU and UK only agreed to the asymmetric trade deals because they got US involvement in Ukraine in return. Without the Ukraine support the deals are off. Plus, Trump looks like he is on his way out.
That was a Clinton era clown show, for sure. But without a land bridge connecting them to Russia proper, I don't think there's much value there. Syria is now RU's Mediterranean port it seems.
Nope. Serbian Bosnia and Serbian Kosovo have emotional value for Russia. If these were connected to Serbia, Montenegro and Makedonia will realign with Serbia too, and Russia would have a Northern Mediterranean port. Besides, the Syrian ports are completely useless in geopolitical bad-weather. They only work if US, Israel, Türkiye and Syria are all OK with it.
The crux of the probleme is very simple and harsh.
Russia has far more territory and resources compared to its tiny( 145 millions) and aging population.
This huge cake, owned by a dwarf, arouses desire of two mean giants.
China: 1,5 billion inhabitants piled up in a relatively poor and three quarter desert country. The biggest GDP PPP in the world, a navy equivalent of the US navy. The most industrialised and technologic country in the world.
US empire: ,370 millions inhabitants for USA, 500 anglo-,sphere, 1,2 trillion inhabitants with alliances, 3 billions with vassals. Almost 2/3 of world GDP and 3/4 of world military defense spending.
Those two giants are starving for resources, water, arable land, space.
For the US giant, Russians are inferiors, "snow niggas" and must descend to a status related to their relative insignificance on a global scale, their resources must be taken and used by western masters. H
Russian compradores will be able to become even more wealthier and they don't give a shit of the population, russian nation and it's destiny.
For the Chinese giant, Russia have been ,during one century, one among the evils which humiliated , used, abused, exploited the country and even stole big part of country's lands. Imperial Russians were as evil as westerners or Japanese. At the death of Staline, Russia(USSR) became the worst enemy of China during almost 40 years. Russia, untill today, helped India,the second worst enemy of China, to fight China and its friend like Pakistan. China has no reason to love and trust Russia. I don't think that russian people particularly like and trust China and I don't think that Chinese people like and trust Russians .
The gentlemen's agree between the two country, far from an alliance and even an "eternal friendship", began only in 2011 after both have been fucked in UNO by West about Libya and when they began to think : "it's enough".
This "eternal friendship" only held together because of Poutine and Xi. One or both of them exit and the house of cards collapse.
The first of the two giants who will take control of the russian territory at the east of Ural, will be the master of the game for at least one century.
You are Russian. You are Poutine. Reduced to a kind of Geronimo. You do what?
The best combination ia an alliance of Russia & America. The 2 have 90% of the worlds nuclear weapons. Russia itself has vast oil,gas, mineral resources and can easily extend control over whatever resources the 2 need. Come on Trump & Putin just do it.
There is no alliance with USA, only unconditional surrender and submission as dog.
Despite y our assertion Trump doesn't want to replicate the Japanese Imperial precedent this is exactly what he is doing. The only difference is the US hasn't seized Chinese assets or embargoed products. Nevertheless sanctions, tariffs and depriving China of oil from Libya, Syria, Iraq, Venezuela and possibly Iran is similar to what the US did to Japan. Like Japan, China will soon have no other option but war and unlike the past, the US doesn't have the manufacturing capacity nor control of the critical rare earth minerals to wage a protracted modern war with a peer super power. The Chinese remember the Opium Wars how they were humiliated by the West, they are never going to allow that to happen again! Once the war starts its all or nothing.
Keep in mind Russia is winning in Ukraine and the US has no leverage there since Europe cannot win a war against Russia. and Russian weapons are far superior to the US.
The US Empire dropping to number two is not the end of the world, but a war with China just may be.
Another outstanding piece, Andrew.
First, I'd hate to be the guy playing against Mr Putin and his team, let alone against both Putin and Xi at the same time.
And, yes, the mystery of all the apparent insanity we've seen since covid is finally resolving to the truth of the matter.
In light of this, it's been interesting to see most of the alt-media being either ignorant or duplicitous in their expert commentary.
It's also interesting to me that the US seems to have learned from Covid that China is not as dependent on US trade as it perhaps once thought. Hence, the trade lever alone is insufficient for purposes of containing China, which realization seems to have caused all pretense of conforming to rules-based behavior to be dropped. (Ie, "Sorry, we're taking Greenland because it's become strategic to controlling sea trade.")
Imo, all of this jockeying hopefully amounts to an enormous negotiation, because the 3 players are all nuclear superpowers and none will concede to bowing to another. If it gets to a war (hot, economic, or unfriendly encirclement), and especially if the parties start playing up their supposed resilience to nuclear war, it'll be time to start worrying.
What happens in Iran, the people of which are sadly caught in the middle of all this, is going to be consequential. Prayers for them, especially my old college roommate....
Meh… Thing is that Trump’s major cudgel: Tarrifs were just taken away from him.
And many of the “deals” he signs are symbolic and theoretical. Like:
“Yes, we PLEDGE at some point in the future to, maaaybe, but less Russian oil!”
Or…
“Yes, we pledge to invest X AMOUNT of billions in America starting from 2030! We pinky swear despite the investments being private and the government having no way of guaranteeing them!”
Off the charts delusional, Russia and China are in bed for good and India is an independent player. The Supreme Court just cut down Trump's tariffs. The US is too late to stop China.
Andrew, I wonder if you would do a post on China's War Against Russia, or such. Because that seems a blind spot to many. Constantly stoking tensions in Eastern Europe, trying to revive the Cold War mentality in the West -- these distractions serve China's strategic interests, regardless of what face saving diplomatic speech is emitted.
https://thediplomat.com/2026/02/why-chinese-nationalists-want-russias-far-east
The main cause of Japan striking out in 1941 was that FDR impeded its oil supply. So Japan had no way out - without war. This can't happen with China since Russia is providing it with oil at prices below the world market. Courtesy of the Ukraine war.
In 2023, Republicans in Congress were reconsidering funding Ukraine after Ukraine lost its battle against the Surovikin line. But then, Iran and China gave the green light for October 7. And since then even the Congress Republicans decided to continue providing Ukraine with stuff and intelligence, because helping Israel was only possible in a deal together with helping Ukraine.
Hence, possibility for a real detente between USA and Russia is now gone. Trump just uses this as a pretext to extract concessions from the EU and UK.
Yes but isn't it obvious that once China has its straw in the resource milkshake that is Siberia and becomes critically dependent, any attempt by Russia to cut China off from critical resources would become a casus belli. That's the definition of sovereignty, that Russia has political control and trade control, borders, sanction power, etc, within its own territory. If Russia has to accept snowballing "investments and joint ventures" in Siberia that provide raw materials for China, then it's pretty much lost de facto control.
Yawn. Between Sept 1939 and Jun 1941 Soviet Union was supplying Germany with tons of critical raw materials. That's not the point. Up to June 1941, the Soviets felt they had no allies in the West.
Not the point? What? :)
June 1941 is when Germany invaded the USSR. In large part strategically, because of the need of petroleum in the Caucasus that Europe lacked.
This is of course a literal 1:1 template of the situation I posted above about: Germany bought from the USSR until the USSR stopped selling, then it invaded.
This is the fundamental danger that resource rich, but smaller (population) or under-developed countries face with neighbors that are resource constrained but higher up on the value-added chain.
Nope. Without fighting Soviet Union Germany had sufficient oil supply from Romania as well as from industrial coal hydrogenation. If oil were the point, it could have invaded Africa and Middle East... Plus invested more in building an adequate air force after the Battle of Britain disaster.
"Unless we get the Baku oil, the war is lost" -- A. Hitler.
Two things - (1) Waging war on Soviet Union was very energy-demanding. (2) Adolf also thought that taking away Soviet Union's oil supplies will hinder Soviet military capacity.
Both things depended on having the Nazi-Soviet War in the first place. Without that war, both arguments collapse. By the way, the US would have provided complete compensation for any loss of Soviet oil revenue, to keep the Soviets fighting. Duh
I agree with that resource angle. Concerning Iran there is certainly a dimension making sure that China cannot get access to Iran’s oil and gas, even at the price of flatly destroying the infrastructure connected.
But there is another dimension to that, a message to other oil producers like Saudi Arabia: “do not dare to sell oil and settle the transactions outside the Dollar system.”
Therefore, a lot depends now on the Saudi response. If they comply with the US and the US attack Iran, the Saudi oil infrastructure might go together with the Iranian to ashes. If they are defiant, they might face by themselves regime change and destabilisation operations from the US and EU.
The Saudis say in public that they will not allow their airspace to be used, but there already are newly arrived American aircraft at Saudi airbases.
To be fair, the Americans won't give Saudi Arabia a choice.