The Gloves Are Off: The West Edition
The Gloves Are Off: The West Edition
When the world's leaders tell us they are not interested in peace, we should listen
This is the first in a 3-article series. It will look at how all the major world powers are giving up on diplomacy, actively cultivating confrontation instead. A grim realization, but one investors and citizens need to realize, and the sooner the better.
This one will focus on the steps taken by the Western alliance that are either accelerating deglobalization or escalating military tensions.
A Short Press Review
Changes in tone in the news is very valuable to analysts, as they reflect one or two things:
The current zeitgeist/consensus.
What the highest levels of power want the consensus to be.
So what can we guess from the press coverage and titles over the last 2 months?
Financial Times: Can TikTok convince the world it is not a tool for China?
Fox News: China conducts secretive space walk ignoring international norms: 'contempt for transparency'
WSJ: Chinese Jet Fighter Shadows U.S. Aircraft Over South China Sea
The Age: Australia ‘must prepare’ for threat of China’s war
The Sydney Morning Herald: Red Alert: War risk exposed / Australia faces the threat of war with China within three years – and we’re not ready
NBC News: Air Force general predicts war with China in 2025
The Economist: America and China are preparing for a war over Taiwan
This comes on top of the “Balloon Madness” I covered previously. But wait, we are also now told a MASSIVE security risk is … Chinese-made cranes. Yes, really.
The conclusion to draw is that the public is trained to see anything Chinese as nefarious and a prelude to war.
Astronauts. Mobile Network. Short videos platform. Baloons. Cranes. Foreign harbors. All part of an ever-expanding conspiracy.
Nevermind that at most, it would be a level of spying or expansion similar to the one the USA uses on its own allies, even if has been already memory-holed one year later (“U.S. spied on Merkel and other Europeans through Danish cables”).
Official Declarations
Another good tool is simply to listen to the official declarations by the government and government agencies. This will tell you a mix of what they actually believe and/or what they want the public to believe.
The big one is this declaration by the CIA director: "Confident" Chinese government is mulling lethal aid for Russia. Resulting in Germany’s Scholz Warning China Not to Supply Russia With Weapons.
This would be big indeed, as China has so far stuck to telling both sides to look for peace.
But after the “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” or Syria’s “moderate rebels” outrageous lies, I do not believe US intelligence automatically. So what is the evidence?
Well, the White House has not seen any evidence about it.
I would not be surprised if this does not matter when it will come to sanctioning China some more. The CIA lie is just there to prepare the public consciousness of painting China as a belligerent in Ukraine.
Among the more incompetent but maybe more honest declarations are also the German FM “We Are Fighting a War Against Russia“.
Something of which I am afraid the EU citizens have not been informed. Still, probably the reason why, according to the EU’s Industry chief, “EU must shift to wartime economy”.
Iran
Another component will the Iranian threat. For example, did you know that a few low capacity frigates, thousands of kilometers away from the US, represent “ a direct threat to the safety and security of Americans?”
This is what Senator Ted Cruz claims, with Iranian ships docking for refueling in Brazil. For good measure, he also threatens Brazil, a generally non-hostile country with sanctions.
It is getting truly hard not to get sanctioned by the USA these days.
This was the hard truth discovered by a Chinese company. The headline claims it is helping the Iranian building drones that are then sent to Ukraine. This is maybe true but wait for the fine print.
Apparently, the total amount of sales were at the highest estimate of … $1M. Maybe just a few hundreds of thousands of dollars. Essentially sheets of plastic polymer for the armature of the $20K drones. Nothing very high-tech from what I understand.
Is $500K of products sold to Iran enough to threaten the USA’s 842 BILLION dollars military budget? Apparently. Or what matters more is to sanction everything on sight and increase geopolitical tensions.
Meanwhile, the retired Chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force has (legitimate) concerns about the Iranian nuclear program, and claims to have a plan to “taking out the Iranian nuclear installations auxiliary sites”.
I could add more but I would like to keep the article readable.
More military bases in the Philippines. Doubling of Japan's military budget. More US troops in Taiwan. Accusations of slave labor in Chinese shipyards by US Navy officials.
Narratives & Goals
The last thing analysts can pay attention to is narrative.
If you paint the “enemy” as a threat/expansionist/etc… this leaves the door open for de-escalation as this is just “business as usual” between great powers.
Repel the threat, and negotiate the new boundaries.
If you paint it as an archetypal evil, a primal force of destruction, the only possible moral conclusion is the utter annihilation of this evil.
So besides its cartoonish, utterly immature tone, and almost comic absurdity, the tweet below is actually scary.
Apparently, the Eurasian powers are not nations we can talk to and find compromises to establish peace, even in a cold war context. No, they are primal evils that, as Hollywood has taught us well:
Cannot be compromised with, only fought against recklessly.
Who always lose against the pure force of light.
This is not the behavior of mature, responsible powers, competing with each other. This is war propaganda to create emotional response and consent for war escalation.
Concurrently, the US has made official they consider Russia responsible of crimes against humanity. Irrelevant of it being true, this also means a quasi-impossibility to make a peace treaty with Russia without defeating it, Nazi-Germany style.
Are Nuclear Powers Soluble?
The narrative escalation makes sense when very influential think tanks reveal the ultimate goal of the Ukraine war: The dissolution of Russia.
This is rather insane.
Because if this was even remotely likely to happen, Russia, like any other nuclear state, would resort to its ultimate weapons to stop it.
But apparently, this is not stopping Washington think tanks to aim for it.
This is really similar to how all major countries were itching for war in 1912-1913. They all felt it was unavoidable anyway, so the only question was not how to avoid the war, but how to win it.
I am afraid we are back to that. As we will see in the other 2 articles of the series, the rest of the world seems to share this opinion.
Last remark
I started this series with the West, but this does not mean the West is the sole instigator of these tensions; far from it. Only that it contributes to it.
As you will see in the next parts, everybody is burning bridges and picking a side at an accelerating pace.
Don’t believe me? Even the Pope says so: