violet wrote:so, what's Russia up to with it's fleet in the North Sea?
provocation/chest beating?
and how long until China starts calling in all those financial favours across the world?
interesting times indeed....things are gonna change but how soon?
also, would Russia really use its warships against a European country unprovoked and have a good old fashioned invasion? I ask because it always interests me that the UK and others in the area push their pieces onto the board. Is it all necessary or is it just 'what we do'?
Putin sees NATO as the paper tiger it is. He knows the US and Western Europe are not going to go to war for Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. and surely won't lift a finger to help non-NATO countries like Ukraine or Georgia in the event of further Russian aggression.
China sees its opportunty to boot the US out of the South China Sea and is grabbing influence with both hands. No surprise here. I also wonder what the long game is for China. They can afford such largesse in the form of low interest mega-loans as long as their economy keeps growing at such reported leaps and bounds. But one has to suspect that demands for some form of return for their investments will eventually be forthcoming from the Chinese. I imagine the required payback starts with:
1) pro-China/anti-US votes on controversial United Nations issues,
2) allowing Chinese bases on their soil after the Amercian forces are evicted, and
3) keeping silent as China devours Hong Kong and Taiwan in quite unpleasant fashion.
This is all blowback for (often) unnecessary actions taken by the West to encircle their perceived enemies in the East, and decades of ill-conceived foreign and military policy. What goes around comes around. But now it's China's turn at the wheel. Let's hope they have learned from the prior mistakes of other so-called world powers and find ways to avoid making similar mistakes, although I've yet to see much indication of that foresight in their actions.
Maybe the so-called "Chinese debt bubble" will actually implode (as some economists have been predicting for ages) and that will reign-in Chinese ambitions of empire for the near future. Maybe low oil prices will continue, and restrain Russia to only making aggressive talk and occasional military sabre rattling. Maybe not.
"The final straw actually involved my mortal enemy vladimir, who you may or may not know is an insufferable, overposting asshat."