ἐγὼ τὸ μὲν δὴ πανταχοῦ θρυλούμενον κράτιστον εἶναι φημὶ μὴ φῦναι βροτῷ·
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA - ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.
The eye of Sauron turns to Cuba. This was always one of the goals of the Venezuela operation. This is Rubio’s endgame.
I’m just not sure how this works in practice. Japan is the only proxy that could reasonably fight China, and it’s already militarily occupied by the United States. I just don’t see a way the US avoids getting directly involved.
I mean there’s a non-zero chance that China can take over Taipei before any US aid can arrive, and everybody in Taiwan surrenders, and Trump goes “ok” and then the next day everything is normal. Would be the best outcome, though still unlikely.
U.S. President Donald Trump said “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the status quo, according to an interview the New York Times published on Thursday. “He (Xi) considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing,” Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. “But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that.”
Certainly sounds like Trump is sphere of influence-brained.
I think more broadly that ship has already sailed. We’re still in year 1 of Trump 2. The world is a vastly different place than he left it in 2020, and getting even crazier. Trump 1 was more of a tone thing, but most of his whims were kept in check because the neo-cons were in charge. Trump 2 is very different, he’s got the true believers steering things. You can’t just hand wave away the massive geopolitical shifts that have happened; realistically by the time 2028 rolls around the war in Ukraine might be over, a war with China in the cards or already ongoing, like massive shifts having a Dem in charge can’t do anything about (even if they wanted to). Biden didn’t really reverse anything Trump 1 did, but none of it was so big that the rest of the world was like “oh fuck.” Trump 2 has already done a ridiculous amount of shit the rest of the world is actively working against because they’re already so big, so whether 2028 is a Democrat or a Republican I think is irrelevant.
Good thing the overwhelming majority of the world’s industry is located in the one country who’s developed their entire arms industry to defeat the Americans. 
We don’t need the EU to do it. One day, like Germany, America is gonna bite off something bigger than it can chew. For the Germans it was the Soviet Union, for the Americans it’ll be China. It’s an unwinable war that the United States has been hyping itself up for around a decade, and many understand this, but it won’t matter. And it’ll all unravel from there. Doesn’t matter how many AI data centres you have when the Pearl River Delta alone can produce more missiles in a week than you can in a year.
If Jesus came back today he’d use an AK-47 instead of a whip
There’s not much Japan can do to throw back if their airfields are destroyed by Chinese hypersonic missiles alongside their surface fleet. They don’t have a vast arsenal of offensive missiles like Iran, nor will they be able to achieve anything close to air superiority over China, given their airforce is both smaller and less sophisticated than China’s, and China’s air defenses are arguably some of the best in the world. The only serious throw back force Japan has is its submarine fleet, which could probably shut down the South China Sea for some time. Going to hurt everybody though.
You don’t, it’ll be the same way Ukraine/Russia is a proxy war where Ukraine is a proxy for the West but Russia is just Russia. Problem is there are no viable Ukraines in East Asia. Even the Japanese “self defense force” would get annihilated within minutes in a hot war with China.
The vibes are off folks. 2026 is gonna be a hell of a year. Feels like we’re deep in the shit, 1937-type Nazi Germany seizing Czechoslovakia and Japan about to formally invade China, with no off ramp or end in sight, and nobody opposing any of it. I really have no idea what’s gonna happen next, but there is a major shift underway. Another Israeli strike on Iran feels appropriate, they’re usually quick to get in on any action, but who knows what this year has in store for all of us.
It was built during the peak of Robert Moses-brained car utopia delusion, so yeah it’s terrible.
This line of thinking also brings up a very relevant point, in that as oil becomes less important the American grip on the world financial system through the dollar is also weakened. The more renewable energy China produces and exports to places like Africa, the less relevant oil becomes in those economies, and the less need there is to price trade in dollars. This has a sort of feedback loop. This is not the intent of the mass Chinese pivot to green energy production, but it is an effect, an interesting effect that they could harness if they wanted to wage a real war against the dollar. This is also relevant with Europe tying itself closer and closer to oil (their recent revoking of the ban on ICE vehicles post-2030), kind of tying themselves further to the petrodollar system rather than embrace green energy. This is a very interesting work, thank you for sharing here. I’ll have to give the whole thing a read.
Not explicitly, but I imagine it’s more the US being like “yeah we’ll fight Russia to the last European,” arming them but providing plausible deniability that they are “respecting” Russia’s sphere of influence. Whether that works, and what the EU does, who knows. If they go along with this and rollover to American whims, as is most likely, then yeah practically they’re irrelevant at best and under Russian influence.
Yeah I think this is it. Remains to be seen, but each side has become more comfortable with shaking the status quo and not interfering. Trump has basically given up on Ukraine negotiations and will just let the Russians figure it out, China has continued to escalate with Japan without so much as a peep from the Americans. The Yalta-esque conference we assumed happened with Witkoff in Moscow has clearly changed the game.
It’s kind of like Nixon’s madman theory, but even crazier. Trump’s strange whims provide cover for the worst impulses of the Blob.
In the Mercator projection, the standard in many American maps, Greenland appears Very Big. Like, size of the continental US big. Trump is Mercator-brained and wants to map paint. It also happens his ridiculous whim lines up with the American imperative to secure access to Rare Earth Minerals, of which Greenland has a lot, and mining them becomes more viable the more the Earth heats up. I don’t think it’s useful at all for Arctic trade, it’s just a resource play like the Ukraine deal Trump signed a while back.
I mean regardless, the F-16 is not gonna be used by the Americans unless the entire airspace has already been cleansed of any ground and air threats. They have much more sophisticated aircraft than the F-16 if they want to deal with S-300s.