I agree on the idea of a certain scale being necessary for self-defense. Otherwise the west chokes you out easily using multiple methods. That or the US weakening significantly. Any division is exploited by the west. Sadly many peoples split and divide themselves over often petty historical differences, drama, religion, etc which makes the job of the west easier.
Is there an article to go with this? What has happened in Lebanon today exactly? Is it just more battles and invasion and the national military not resisting or what?
China can definitely withstand this situation for much longer than the US without even considering a direct armed conflict.
Huh? China has reserves but the US is the biggest source of oil and gas in the world at this point more or less. Taking out competitors will make gas more expensive for Americans as well as goods due to rising transport costs but American energy companies will be obscenely rich and if American companies need oil their own government isn’t going to block it. Meanwhile the US might use oil and gas as leverage and withhold them from China if China tries to buy from the US.
China has some reserves but long-term the US situation is far more stable as they can supply their own. A lot of China’s supply comes via sea shipping out of Russia which is under threat of interdiction by NATO due to sanctions and the fact the ships depart from the far west of the country and travel not the arctic route around their own country (not enough icebreakers or something) but down south around Europe and either through the middle east or around Africa making the journey long, the chances for interception very high, and the costs high as well. It will take years to build more cross-Russia pipelines to the far east to deliver significantly expanded supplies to China as these pipes would have to traverse the length of Russia more or less and be under constant threat of Ukrainian terrorist drone bombings.
I mean even remove NATO interdiction and you still have Ukrainians being trained by NATO to use sea-drones and aerial drones to take out Russian shipping. They’re very serious about this and Russia has no practical counter at scale.
Because the US doesn’t make many things higher priced petrochemicals used in making plastics and various chemicals used in manufacturing doesn’t really impact them, they only get hit by higher transport costs. China on the other hand gets hit with higher transport prices on an export reliant economy that also needs those imports for manufacturing. And when manufacturing prices go up factories shut down because the market can’t always bear the price increases for some of these goods which leads to economic pressure on China.
Real “we’ll send in soldiers AFTER a ceasefire” for Ukraine hours. Just baiting the public and allies with nice sounding promises contingent on a solution that’s not going to come.
I presume limited means strikes limited to transport facilities. Trying to destroy ports, rail stations, rail bridges, etc as part of Trump’s conceived blockade. Also quite possibly add energy to that in order to get Iran to take out competitors to US oil and gas in the gulf region.
Additionally many of them are deranged enough to think AI and robotics are on the cusp of replacing workers so those pesky annoyances won’t be a problem much longer anyways and won’t have money to spend anyways either.
Interesting thought: US and zionist entity attack Iranian energy production. Iran makes good on its own threat, destroys gulf energy production. US can then afford to just blockade goods to Iran or lift the blockade entirely. US is now in this scenario in near total control of global oil and gas supplies. It will be the supplier of last resort and can extort Europe and Asia whatever it wants to charge for its oil and gas and make demands of fealty in other ways in addition to money part of the contract. Interdiction of Russian ships will continue. Ukrainians will try with US help to blow up Russian export sea terminals and infrastructure to further cut off global supply especially to China.
If that goes through then the US plan is working beautifully as it will take months to repair some of the types of damage inflicted and Iran will do the work the US cannot be seen doing (bombing their own gulf vassals who supported their petrodollar and regional hegemony).
Right now the strait is not necessarily closed. It won’t remain closed to everyone.
It won’t remain closed to China, to India, to occupied Korea, to Spain, France, etc if they all agree and pay and don’t support the US.
This is a nightmare scenario for the US because they suffer, everyone else dumps them due to the pressure. By closing the strait they change it from the smart thing being abandon the US and pay Iran to you must join the US in fighting Iran because if you don’t we’ll blow up the world economy. Basically a “no you can’t take the US down alone, if we go down we insist the rest of you are under our hands as we sink to the bottom”. Because the alternative is fighting the US and that’s not possible for these countries to do if their Atlantacist liberal brains can even conceive of it.
As per Medhurst’s video the US will not be blockading with Iranian range. They have a bigger navy, they have satellite live recon, they have aerial recon, they have hackers inside every global system for money, transportation, insurance, etc. They can sit out off the coast of Africa and interdict there using Diego Garcia.
By doing this, they are ensuring that no country can cut side deals with Iran for oil/gas/helium/fertilizer deliveries. I think they fear diplomatic normalization and the establishment of neutral (from the US POV) payment mechanisms more than the Hormuz being shut entirely.
Precisely. As Richard Medhurst’s recent video outlines US plans to control global supplies of gas and oil to the maximum extent possible and to use this to deindustrialize vassals/allies as well as attempt the same eventually with enemies while enriching itself, moving capital back to it, and gaining total leverage over them by being their sole supplier of gas/oil. Europe cutting deals with Iran or starting to in order to get past the blockade with payments was driving a wedge between Europe and the US and threatening the leverage the US established by provoking the war with Russia and bombing Nordstream.
This leaves Europe with limited choices just the way the way the US wants. Europe can:
It’s global blackmail gambit by Trump “everyone join me in attacking or at least leaning on Iran to get the strait totally open or I destroy the global economy”. Remains to be seen if the bourgeoisie will rein him in or not.
China could technically do something if they want to attack the US navy directly and get in a hot war but that would serve Trump’s interests and wants at least in forcing a hard decoupling at speed. Russia is in a position where they could fairly give Iran long-range missiles capable of attacking US navy ships in retaliation for US and Europe giving Ukraine ATACMS/Storm Shadows which have been used on Russia. Russia could thus force the US out and re-open the strait. But Russia will never do this because the US would retaliate by lifting its own limits on the abilities they give to the Ukrainians and Russia still seeks a rapprochement with the US as well as realizing only the US can force Ukraine to the negotiating table though I personally think the US intends to leave Ukraine burning for quite some time so they can use Ukrainians to knock out Russian gas/oil supplies to China to complete their ability to squeeze China and control its critical supplies in an uno-reverse of the rare earths situation.
The idea is for the US to create a trap with significant friction if China resists at any point early on (like barbs pointed backwards to prevent leaving it), allow China some exceptions early on so they are less likely to react, then once they’re in deep snap the trap shut after they’ve drained Europe and strengthened themselves. So I don’t think the point is to spring the trap in 2028 but maybe 2030 at which point China is deeper into the trap, US has had time to benefit, to strengthen itself, to drain its vassals, etc.
The point is also keeping China doubting that this is a plan, from seeing it and acting on it. Because there must always be doubt when we’re talking about starting a war with the US, the rational minds in China will say let’s not over-react, we don’t have sufficient proof of this, etc. And they’ll want to wait and that is how China operates, it is patient, it doesn’t react dramatically and the US knows this, the US has studied China and the US will count on this for their trap to work.
There are a lot of ways this could go wrong. It’s not fool-proof even if it is very clever, very intelligent, very elegantly designed. Even if it does go wrong the US has already cemented a lot of power and will continue to drain its vassals, force them to send capital to the US, reduce their competitiveness, and in all likelihood in Europe’s case lead to a resurgence in angry far-right politics which the US wants to see. So even if they don’t achieve their maximum win conditions out of this they’re still likely to profit and extend their life and strength quite a bit by it.
It isn’t intended to be temporary. It’s intended to be permanent via Chevron. The capital flight and de-industrialization of Europe has already begun. The question becomes really if they can make China unattractive and noncompetitive to force de-industrialization and capital flight to the US. They can at the least with this plan put a really big hurt on China and make them reliant on the dollar and maintaining its hegemony which means US hegemony which also means the B&R fails which means the US succeeds in enslaving most of the planet and China’s attempts to free them fail which ultimately if not interrupted at some point in this process leaves China a mere regional power totally under the economic power of the US in a world also controlled by the US.
In other words China and Russia but China especially need to be strident and prepare for combat on the high seas against this pirate empire. The US won’t go down easy. If this video is to be believed they have no intent of retreating to the Americas as many here like to speculate rather they may cede air power and all their air bases for a handful much more defensible and important naval bases and choke points across the globe and attempt to maintain power via a navy.
This is also why Trump’s plan for building American ships by imposing fees on any ships coming to the US that aren’t US made shouldn’t be scoffed at right now as transitioning from an air power to a naval power would require increased shipbuilding capacity which would be helped by opening new naval yards, expanding existing ones via commercial orders. However, even if that should fail the US has enough ship-building capacity as well as established ports around the world to fairly effectively carry out this strategy.
Navies are not easy to disable no. Compared to air forces that sit on tarmacs fairly static ships are constantly moving so a lot harder to find, target, and destroy than air forces that can’t be in the air all the time. Additionally these carrier groups carry anti-sub equipment, travel with attack subs, and have aegis anti-missile defenses on them.
It’s not impossible if China wants to war with the US for them to attack them and start destroying them but two things: 1) China doesn’t want to fight the US, has resisted any military action against them because the US is run by mad-men with nukes who are seething at Christianity losing, white supremacy losing (but I repeat myself), and capitalism losing and China also does a lot of business with the US and while the US might take a lot of slaps from China they’ll probably cut off trade and crash the Chinese economy if China goes to war with them. 2) China does not have a deep water navy. They lack the ability to project power like the US does. They don’t have logistics chains for projecting power like the US does. They don’t have all these colonial hold-over ports and different fleets all over the world supported with air power resupply. Ultimately the US could carry out their piracy just with subs so developing ultra-long-range missiles for taking out carrier groups while firing from China and evading their interceptor defenses won’t be enough to stop the US because the US can continue to carry out this strategy with subs. Thus China requires a deep water navy capable of sub hunting in vast stretches of multiple oceans around the world. This will take time to build, take time to figure out logistics for because they don’t have land bases to resupply from anywhere in the world at this point so it would be more expensive and intensive on them. This gives the US probably another decade of dominance at least during which they can do a lot.
If China strikes now, dissuades the US they might be able to prevent this strategy from fully unfurling and the US might indeed flinch this early on. However if the plan progresses, Europe de-industrializes and the US somewhat reindustrializes or at least “friend-shores” the industry to say Latin America, Asian lapdogs, etc then the US will become progressively less likely to flinch. Problem is China’s navy at the moment isn’t really ready for a full confrontation with the US that rages far from the SCS (US has been very careful in this plan to have its choke points and blockade points far from the SCS).
People said they wouldn’t last 6 months here at the start. Then Ukraine wouldn’t last a year, then not two years. Then repeated assurances a new Russian offensive was coming in 2024, then 2025 that would collapse the front and Ukraine would have to surrender. People have been saying Ukraine would run out of man-power for years so excuse me if I don’t believe it. There are shortages sure but this is a new age of warfare using drones operated by women in apartments in Kiev and the far west of the country which make it hard to advance so even if a Ukrainian position has only half its compliment of men it doesn’t matter because the Russians are pinned by drones that will assassinate them without notice and few counters.
Truth is the lines are not moving much, Russian gains are slow and mostly empty area or small hamlets. Constant drone attacks have made troop movements very slow, very cautious on both sides and the Russians don’t really have a comprehensive counter that enables them to get out of this trench warfare and either really break Ukrainian lines by killing enough of them and/or safely advance their own forces at any meaningfully significant pace.
There’s no sign that Ukraine’s lines will collapse. If anything they’ve adapted to Russian tactics that led to devastating early losses and are only getting stronger technologically and on tactics. At this rate of gain it will take Russia years more just to free the oblasts they legally claim and incorporated as Russian territory to say nothing of how they’re going to move beyond that to forcing Ukraine to surrender by doing something like taking most of it industry, putting Kiev at threat, cutting them off from the black sea entirely, etc.
Ukraine isn’t winning but they’re not going to collapse and give Russia what they want anytime soon either. If the war ends soon it isn’t because Ukraine lost or Russia won decisively on the battlefield its because Ukraine’s backers decided to re-allocate too many resources elsewhere and told them to throw in the towel in doing so.
Well if this is true then nothing on earth can get the US to abandon the zionist entity and all talk of that is as usual just copium/hopium. Not that I seriously thought they would but it would seem their energy dominance re:LNG relies explicitly on the zionist entity continuing to exist, continuing to be part of the rest of the world including open trade with it in order to export gas, remaining stable, and remaining close to the US and coordinating with them in regards to their grander geopolitical strategies with energy which means not turning the US back on them.
One interesting thing I’ll notice is Ukraine is ramping up their drone war, they’re now one of the most skilled operators in the world with very skilled people and a great knowledge set. They have unlimited access to western precursor components to build their drones and if the US says so they’ll coordinate with them for deep strikes into central Russia to destroy gas infrastructure and strangle China. Frankly short of decisively defeating Ukraine and forcing them to the negotiating table by making their position untenable I don’t think this whole Russian plan of bleeding them is working out after all. They only get better at drone terrorism and warfare, they only contribute more skills to the west, they only create better designs, strike deeper, radicalize more of their population with Nazi propaganda.
But I do find it interesting the video brings up Diego Garcia and the US naval advantage and ring around China in as far as they believe it will be part of maintaining the petro-dollar and controlling China. I’ve often noted the same thing, that this, Greenland, Panama Canal, etc is all part of a way to control global trade to control China. He’s come to basically the same conclusion I have but I didn’t notice the gas moves specifically and some of the elegant details of this plan, he really lays it out in a way I never could. Very impressive.
Frankly I increasingly wonder if Ukraine isn’t intended to be kept burning through when the US makes their moves on China so that they can just use Ukrainians to blow up Russian supplies to China and squeeze them using an existing conflict so it isn’t even that obvious. China is averse to alliances, averse to getting involved militarily so their only moves are economic in nature which limits them compared to the US in what they can do especially given the extensive alliances, vassals, etc the US has. The US can have their Ukrainian proxies launch massive attacks and completely devastate Russian abilities to supply China and hurt their economy, force them into submission to the west for vital LNG and other supplies and flip the script on China’s current rare earth monopoly.
And once again I think things like this are valuable because too many people here assume the US is run by incompetent failsons, that it’s floundering around just doing things randomly when in fact there is a grander strategy. Yes some pieces of that come into place in a rather inelegant and floundering fashion due to failings of individual politicians and their moves but the grander plan continues to move forward across administrations.
Nice I guess but also telling how bad things are here that it’s this low. Also I predict this is just treatler rage at higher gas prices and other economic uncertainty as well as nativist sentiment that US people shouldn’t be dying for another country. I’d bet once this war is 12 months in the rear-view mirror that these numbers go down and stay down.
Evangelical Christianity and its consequences.
This is a political problem. You can’t technology your way out of laws without living entirely apart from society as an outlaw.
Private devices worked so long as the west had some sort of interest in maintaining the illusion of “freedom of speech” and other such things to promote their liberalism and hegemony to the world and their own citizenry. Now that it’s time for hard power, for crushing dissent like pro-Palestine movements, cracking down on people’s access to how much better things are getting in China while things get worse for them that is no longer an option.
There are press “list-servs” which these NATO journalists gather on and probably hone in on and harp until it becomes a chorus on a certain phrase.
Russia is already almost maximally sanctioned. 50% tariffs won’t mean anything except nuclear fuel people in the west screaming in pain if not given exemptions.
Nah I’m not sure I buy this.
Bombing railroads is much easier than building them. All the US has to do is bomb some big stretches, use some really big bombs to alter the landscape and the cost goes up significantly trying to fill the land back in and all that. I mean the US and zionists I think can afford to send a single plane every 3 days to bomb their rail bridges with 1-2 munitions. That won’t cost them anything compared to a continued actual aerial bombing campaign on Iran. Iran can maybe do the Vietnamese resistance thing of rebuilding very, very quickly but they won’t get a steady flow of shipments through. I mean they don’t even have to risk pilots, this can be done by drones of via ship-launched cruise missiles.
Also US can start targeting Iranian trains not just the rails but the railyards, the locamotives, the repair and maintenance facilities and those take considerably more materials and effort to build than putting some rails and ties together and fixing some land.
Fact is you cannot move MEANINGFUL amounts of oil or other raw product overland. There’s a reason we use these massive ships. Floating on the ocean means you don’t have to fight gravity and the mass of your cargo as much as you do on rails or roads and the sheer volume you can carry in a few tankers cannot be replicated using a single rail line even with constant back to back trains.
Iran “CAN” make a deal with Turkmenistan but they haven’t. That’s cope. Until it happens it’s cope. The US also “CAN” lean on Turkmenistan HARD to not make a deal and maybe they’d fold, maybe the US would clandestinely bomb it like they did with Nordstream and like with Nordstream no one is going to hold them to account. They’re bandits, they’re pirates. No one is going to slap their face.