Wild Speculations on the Current State of Planet Earth

There is a surprise everyday, and will be for the foreseeable future. Half of us hate the surprise and half of us love it. Here are some of my thoughts.

Russia has been pressured politically and economically by the West since there was a place called Russia, and their quest for security, resources and a warm water port within their own control has guided them. The communists taking over for a while and their economic collapse in the 80s/90s from the Reagan pressures brought them to where they are now, a strong second rate power who would be even less than that without nuclear weapons. Their population and GDP are both far lower then Europe’s or the US’s (or China’s or India’s) and they are showing a lot of strain fighting the West via proxy their Ukraine proxy.

China has a lot more economic problems than most people realize like debt and inefficiency, and they know that if they don’t keep up with growth, the people will rise up like they are doing in Iran as of this writing. Like WW2 Japan, China is impinging on Imperial America in the Pacific. I am thinking they take Taiwan and we make a lot of noise and do little else — but we strengthen our alliances with Korea and Japan and keep the “peace.” Likewise, I don’t see us fighting hard to combat their efforts to take over parts of Africa and the Middle East economically, which is a resources play. We will maintain and strengthen our alliances with the Saudis and the Israelis. The Middle East will not change their ways, so that will be enough.

Europe is a basket case and has been for some time. Scale wise, their GDPs, arms industries, and populations are all in the same ballpark as America, and far outpacing Russia, but it takes cohesion and they have none. The West and other parts of the world are now beginning to grapple with the population stagnation bomb. Europe for their part in the security sector are at least making some noise, especially in Poland, Finland and Sweden, about doing better with NATO and defending themselves. They are making some progress. The American technologies like the F35 and sensor fusion is very far ahead of anyone else. But the entire world needs to be deal with the advent of what is being called precise mass systems (cheap, mass produced stuff like drones) over exquisite systems (like the F35).

Still, it was impressive to see just how fast and completely Isreal dominated Iran in their war with Isreali fighters flying over the Iranian capital with impunity.

India is a little China and we’ll see how that goes, but they don’t have the reach, technology, experience or will to do more than work inside their boundaries.

The entire Pacific and the Americas basically belong to Imperial America. One problem for any Navy, which is the projection of power for any nation, is that capital ships are now vulberable to fast, sneaky missiles and would not last long in a real war. I believe that new navy assets will be a lot of smaller, such as small missile frigates, and submarines with cruise and ballistic missiles, and smaller transport ships to shuttle air assets to unsinkable carrier islands, making those islands more and more important. See battle of Midway for how this can work. If you look at a map of the Pacific, places like Okinawa and many others now become even more strategic.

North Korea is one small nuke from not existing or being swatted by big brother China.

That brings us to America. I think from reading a lot of sources from all sides of the political spectrum and seeing it unfold in real time that Trump is both listening to key people (like Richard Hanania and Christopher Rufo on DEI type stuff), and more realist-leaning people (like William Ruger and for now Marco Rubio) on foreign policy. He knows long term that Imperial America really does need to control Greenland because the ice up there is already melting and the trip from Russia and China to Canada and our East Coast is now shorter and different than before. I still think the US will make some kind of agreement with the Danes that they “own it” and we, together, forbid any control other than our own. For 100 years. Something like that. They could spin that as being good buddies again and saving NATO. Trump’s actions show he thinks of everything is business and deals and winning a deal over his competition is and has been his schtick.

They are working against a huge amount of resistance (the vast set of federal “who moved my cheese” people who resist all, and that they are fucking some stuff up, as they move fast and in unpredictable ways. And they are not doing things in the “polite, sensible” way of the past 50 years, but none of that surprises anyone anymore.

South America, if it were not for petroleum and the Panama Canal, would be less in the news. Long term we will need oil and Venezuela as we are all now aware, has the largest proven extractable reserves in the world. It is lower grade high sulpher oil, but some of the US refineries are apparently built for this. Combine this with Trump’s advisors educating him on Venezuela communists stealing all of America’s infrastructure during our 1970’s debacle with oil shortages and inflation and I can see what Trump is doing. China and Russia were also making moves on Venezuela, but they know they are not welcome anymore. Cuba and Iran are now also out of the picture there.

The thing about Venezuela is that it shows the truth about the work to combat climate change: In the spheres of influence that matter (ie money circles), climate change work is obviously not a thing at all. Very probably never was, as supported by COP being headed up by Big Petroleum. The grab for their oil has surprising repercussions for both Wall Street and OPEC+. Wall Street is trying to place bets of course, and OPEC is now contending with an upending of their world order, supply and pricing per barrel, even with modest increases in production from the South American producer.

Behind the scenes and all the spin, I will not be surprised when China grabs Taiwan, possibly by influencing their politics so the island “voluntarily” joins the mainland, Imperial America get most of the Pacific and the Western Hemisphere, and we both supply Europe and Russia with arms to duke it out in Ukraine for a while longer.

All of this is mild to wild speculation but it is all based on reading of various opinions from people who actually know what they are talking about.