I recently returned from a business trip to Taipei and thought I’d share some thoughts on the situation which is certainly growing rather tense. First of all, it’s not really coming from Taiwan or China. For both parties, it came out of the blue from Uncle Sam after it became apparent the project in Ukraine was turning into an epic disaster.
China was intended to be the last in line on the neocon global domination campaign. When it came time to deal with China’s refusal to be taken over, there was supposed to be an arch stretching from the former Syria and Lebanon on the Mediterranean, through Iraq and Iran, to Afghanistan which connects with the massive Muslim area of Xinjiang, which itself is alongside Tibet.
These combined are a massive portion of China’s landmass and natural resources, which would be decolonized after being destabilized through the customary tool of Islamic insurgency. China’s critical ally and supplier, the Russian Federation, would’ve already experienced economic collapse, descended into civil war, and been broken up into controllable entities prior to us setting China on fire. A wealth of Islamic insurgents would’ve been available afterwards. China, dependent on imported resources, would’ve been at a very bad spot once the U.S. blockade began over the Taiwan pretext.
As you might’ve noticed, none of this prep work was a success so I genuinely wonder if this furor is being cooked up for narrative purposes. Americans are easily fooled and when a lie is exposed, they can just be moved along to the next thing. So, it makes sense from this context. From a military standpoint, there’s no way for us to prevail and our country would descend into chaos from the supply chain disruptions. The carriers we’d lose would only matter to the families of the sailors; things would be that bad.
From China’s perspective an invasion doesn’t really make much sense, but American provocations have forced Xi into assuring the Chinese public it’s a feasible option on the table. His ability to govern actually depends on what the public thinks. This nonsense about how he’s a dictator and what the Chinese really want is gay parades is for the consumption of gullible Americans.
First of all, millions of Taiwanese work on the mainland, where much of the island’s net worth is invested. It’s not a North Korea vs South Korea situation, I know it firsthand quite extensively. Taiwan is dependent on the mainland, meaning that it would really hurt China badly, but they could turn the island into a failed state pretty quick if they decided to cut it off, confiscate Taiwanese assets, and not allow the Taiwanese in China to return to the island. This idea that they need to storm the beaches is wholly ignorant. China has much safer courses of action.
Second, China claims sovereignty over the island and thus Taiwanese are Chinese citizens to whom the government has obligations such as not killing them en masse or destroying their lives. We in the West are rather cynical since our governments actively do both, but in a sane country the government’s legitimacy is derived from doing the opposite. Don’t apply our context to theirs.
In the wake of COVID, I’d characterize the Chinese as reasonable but autistic if considered within an East Asian context. They just went a bit further than everyone else in the region, who went pretty damn far. I was forced to do a 19-hour layover at an empty airport in Korea as the insanity was escalating. It was like a post-apocalyptic movie seeing all the planes parked there and not being able to buy a stiff drink either, so I think the Chinese are pretty much par for the course in terms of their racial situation.
Moreover, if the decision is made to invade, Pandora’s Box is opened insofar as what might happen in the battles as well as an escalation into World War 3. Time is on China’s side with this one, so taking that sort of risk doesn’t make sense. Putin tried to resolve the situation in Ukraine through compromise at his own political expense, but pulled the trigger when he realized there was no solution but military force to this existential threat. Xi isn’t in his position. There are no ethnic Chinese being slaughtered by partisans in Taiwan while the Chinese public howls for blood. NATO hasn’t assembled a massive army on China’s border.
So, in conclusion on the Taiwan issue, I don’t see the big one breaking out over this island. Most Taiwanese don’t want to join China, which I respect, but the situation is like The Melian Dialogue. They’re in the weak position regarding China, which will probably get what it wants over time. At the moment though, it has a set of very serious domestic issues it hasn’t been dealing with successfully. Taiwan isn’t the problem Xi would like to be addressing with his tenure in office, we just keep crying out in pain as we strike him.
It never seems to be brought up just how terrible the birthrate situation is in East Asia. It was really bad before the COVID insanity, which sent it to even deeper lows. It’s been talked about for years, but now it’s reached the crop of military age young men. I’m not sure how either side is going to maintain its current force size going forward and, at some point, the functionality of these nations will be compromised as well. China ain’t taking over the world.
In terms of escalation, I’m not optimistic about what’s going on in Ukraine. At some point, the total defeat is going to become naked. In terms of the narrative, we’re at the stage where they can still say that Ukraine held the line against Russia while inflicting massive losses so they can never do this aggression again. The Biden Administration keeps saying it will offer a ceasefire when the counter offensive is over, as if the Russians would have to be grateful and take it.
My thinking is that certain things will happen from which there’s no way to salvage a viable narrative or resurrect Ukraine as an anti-Russian platform. It’s not Kiev. Even Putin has said when asked that if the Russian army wanted to storm this city there would have to be a general mobilization, so he doesn’t want to bother. Kiev was estimated to be garrisoned with around 300,000 men and the Russian military proper went into Ukraine with maybe 120,000 and probably only fight with about 80,000 at any given time. They never wanted or needed to subdue this city.
On the other hand, there’s a city that’s absolutely going to Russia in the wake of Ukrainian collapse: Odessa on the Black Sea. It has a Russian population which couldn’t declare for Russia like the breakaway republics because it was under occupation and not connected to Russian territory. Odessa was founded by Catherine the Great. To Russia, it’s culturally very significant. Moreover, it’s one of the Soviet Hero Cities for the siege in 1941. It’s a strategic and political imperative for them to get it back, which shouldn’t be too hard when Ukraine falls apart.
At that point, the rest of Ukraine is finished because it’s landlocked. Its only salvation will be through Russia, which will probably break it up into various entities because the current Ukraine is far too loaded up with debt, among other reasons. Compliant governments will be put into place and eventually the new countries will also be absorbed back into Russia piecemeal.
I’ve talked about this extensively with Russians. Russia has paid too high a price to not comprehensively resolve its security situation, and they hold all the cards. There’s no reason for them to accept a ceasefire without a de facto unconditional surrender.
The Russian government has said that it won’t be signing deals with the U.S. but instead have outlined a new post-war security treaty with Europe. The U.S. ordered the Europeans to broker the Minsk Agreements to buy time for a conflict. Merkel and Hollande have both admitted to this one. Moreover, the Ukrainians signed what was essentially a surrender at the outset of the conflict when the column was parked outside Kiev. This would’ve led to this same resolution peacefully over more time. Putin presented this signed document to an African delegation last month for propaganda purposes.
The U.S. ordered Zelensky to rip it up, so Russia moved on to the kill everyone and blow everything up phase. Again, just like the Chinese vs Taiwanese, the Russian government views Ukrainians as Russians and this current situation as a civil war. Putin didn’t want it to end this way because basically what he’s doing is slaughtering future Russian fathers and productive citizens.
If he wanted Ukrainians dead, he wouldn’t offer every single one, no matter where they are, Russian citizenship. I’m not giving my opinion on the matter to Ukrainian Nationalists, I fully respect their position on being distinct from Russians, I’m just pointing out what’s going on. I have friends on both sides of this horror.
There is a limit, both to Ukrainian lives and NATO supplies, while Russia has done its utmost to minimize casualties and shifted to a partial World War 3 footing, bringing its massive state-owned enterprises fully online with mothballed production lines, which the private U.S. MIC doesn’t have because they’re highly unprofitable. Russian production takes place in efficient city-sized industrial centers located safely in the interior by Stalin, not scattered all over the federation to bribe legislators.
We don’t have anything like Research and Production Corporation Uralvagonzavod but the Russians have a bunch. Despite the population differential, they’ve got about as many engineers as us. They can sustain this conflict until they achieve their objectives, we can’t. Their munitions production alone for 2023 is four times what it was last year. Extra facilities and skilled personnel are required to immediately boost production. We don’t have them; this is very simple. It’s nonsense when Biden says we’re boosting production, when you look at the numbers for this year, it’s not by much at all.
Once Russia has Ukraine under control, countries like Serbia and Hungary, which are surrounded and coerced by the EU, have new options. The entire strategic picture changes as Western Europe descends into mass migration induced chaos. France offers a grim preview of this fate. The West has been demographically transformed into a powder keg, and the accelerator pedal keeps getting pushed on the rate of change.
If we lose in Ukraine, how much public enthusiasm does the Taiwan question proffer? One should ask additional pertinent questions. For example, given the psychotic nature of the string pullers and the delusional nature of the U.S. government, do they just take the L and walk away? I don’t think that they will.
A new global system is being set up and fast. This isn’t like what happened in the wake of World War 2, where the center of gravity shifted to DC and the dollar from London and the pound. They were still part of the same parasitic, opaque banking cartel rooted in the City of London.
This new system is directly at odds with it, with Putin referring to it as “Satanic” and “the Anglo-Saxons” while eyes almost pop out of Chinese heads in rage at the hypocrisy of people who publish white papers about destroying Russia and China while publicly claiming they have no ill intent and merely support freedom. Chinese genetically can’t handle the hypocrisy, while the Russians approach it with far more cynicism.
So, what our system would have to do is admit defeat along with the consequences while then trying to cope with its subjects experiencing what’s being done to them but not being done to other White Christians in Russia and its protectorates. What are they willing to do to avoid this scenario? They always push things too far, every single time.
What seemed to be shaping up is that the Ukrainians said the Russians would blow up their own nuclear power plant at Zaporozhye. They used releases from upstream reservoirs to max the water behind the dam near the plant and managed to blow up the gate, but the Russians had already shut the reactors down so they couldn’t be overheated. The containment facilities are too hardened to be penetrated with a missile. Then, the Ukrainians said the Russians had packed the roofs with explosives, and the Russians accused them of planning to hit them with missiles armed with nuclear waste.
That was pretty alarming, but it appears that the U.S. has managed to rein the Ukrainians in on this one. There was probably a substantial threat made behind the scenes by Russia, perhaps of the tactical nuclear variety. To the Ukrainians, they’re already in World War 3, but to everyone else, we actually have quite a bit to lose if it goes nuclear.
But still, what will the U.S. pull if we’re on the verge of comprehensive defeat? I really don’t know but I wouldn’t be surprised if this escalates. It’s not going to be some land war, we don’t have the resources, assets, or production for that sort of thing. Something dramatic to scare the Russians into not absorbing Ukraine, that seems to be the best bet. Escalation is the logic of our age, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
There could be some potential warning signs. For example, if Russian forces suddenly evacuate Syria where they’d be vulnerable to NATO retaliation or if the U.S. navy surface fleet vacates the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf where it doesn’t have space to deal effectively with incoming threats. What’s clear is that behind the scenes, the Russians have been incredibly reluctant to avoid escalation because nobody knows where that stops and they’re making significant progress on their objectives without it.
For instance, one of the senior Azov Battalion leaders released by Turkey revealed that his unit beneath Azovstal surrendered in order to spare the American officers with them from Russian captivity. They were allowed to go free and spare Uncle Sam embarrassment without any official mention at the time or since that they were in that bunker. So, the Russians are willing to go pretty far in order to keep a lid on this conflict. The question of escalation is more about Uncle Sam.
I’m proud to officially announce my candidacy for the office of Dogcatcher.
I believe the ceasefire negotiated in March, 2022, would merely have implemented the Minsk agreement and left Donbas in the Ukraine. Crimea would have been recognized as part of Russia. Russian troops were removed from the Kiev region as a sign of good faith.
By sending Boris Johnson to squash the ceasefire, the US forced Russia to attempt the conquest of all of Ukraine. What part Russia will retain is not certain, but looking at the results of the 2010 runoff election between Yanukovych and Timoshenko, all of Ukraine east of the Dniepr, Crimea, and the Odessa region up to Transnistria seems likely.
One remembers that all of Ukraine and Belarus and most of Poland was the Russian heartland for 300 years.
The distance between Russian and US territory is only 2.4 miles in the Bering strait/Diomede Islands. Sarah was right. You can see Russia from the US.