uh remember we're only in the second month of the ukraine war right here and so to think that
this just just gonna end with the russians and the ukrainians is is a bit naive uh let me just kind
of draw a thread here and this is a possibility there's any number of ways that this can all go
but we know that we're going to lose four to five million barrels of russian crude within a couple
of months and in that scenario in the short term it is europe that suffers 100 of the pain but the
europeans have something they can do about it they can tap american crude which the united states is
going to be willing to give them and they can go to their former colonies in africa and renegotiate
deals so that the crude goes north to them between the united states and africa that's enough
for almost everything that the europeans need but then that crude is not going somewhere else
and the country that is at the very end of the line that absorbs most of the world's crude
the single largest importer is china but china doesn't have the naval power to get to say the
persian gulf in order to convoy ships back but the japanese do so it's very easy for me to see
african economic and political issues triggering a conflict in east asia where the chinese are left
out and then you're going to have some degree of military confrontation if if we're lucky it'll
stay constrained if we're not it'll get very big in east asia and to think that the middle east
with the americans absent is suddenly going to be a peaceable place with the saudis and the iranians
already glaring each other across the gulf i think is a little naive as well so those are like
the three big ones but you can look at almost any country pairing in the eastern hemisphere
and there's a lot of bad water under the bridge and these hateful pairs are perfectly capable of
coming up with their own dustups in a very short period of time if there isn't a global policeman
right now while i applaud the biden administration for trying to support the ukrainians you'll notice
that that's not really happening anywhere else except with australia the united states is not
interested in the world in the way it used to be the europeans have been at peace because of
the globalized system for 75 years and because the peace was imposed from the outside and because the
first the country that imposed that piece the united states smashed the germans as part of
the process we have taken the center weight out of the european system and replaced it with a
degree of placidity and wealth that they could have never generated on their own i am hopeful
hopeful that the ukraine war is going to be a new page for the europeans where they both acknowledge
their history and build something better and uh you know maybe we have seen some things pushing
in that direction the last few weeks but on the other side the geography hasn't changed at all the
conflict with the russians isn't something that's new it has been part of european warfare politics
and security going back to the beginning of the concept of europe and to think that the germans
can go from a pacifist socialist background to just flip and double the defense spending and be
asked to defend poland from the russians again and there's not going to be any side effects from that
i really hope it works but we're going to have a situation here very soon where all the
patterns are going to repeat there are a couple of pipelines that come to germany that don't go
through ukraine and don't go through poland so we're going to have a situation here very soon
where the russians are going to tell the germans hey yeah we can totally keep your lights on and
keep supplying you with energy but there's going to be a cost you have to back out of the nato
coalition when it comes to all issues ukrainian in which case the nato position would cease to exist
because we can't do it without german logistics so all of these historical fault lines are still
there and i dare say the russians are more aware of them these days than most of the europeans
if you want to patrol the sea lanes in a more chaotic world you don't want 12 platforms half
of which are going to be important any given time you want hundreds of platforms like destroyers or
arsenal ships we don't have that anymore or we don't have that yet anyway so in a world
where everyone in the american alliance refers to the united states on security issues and so does
not float a hostile navy and where your primary foes are russia and china and they're functionally
landlocked this works but when globalization goes away and each country has to start looking
out for their own interests economically and especially in the maritime realm you will have
multiple navies that are competing and while the united states will by and large still have the
most powerful navy by at least a factor of five moving forward it's about a factor of 10 right now
we no longer can operate with complete impunity and in that environment we cannot protect the sea
lanes for everyone we can only protect the sea lanes for certain countries that for whatever
reason have bought into our program whatever that happens to be administration by administration
we're not there yet but we're getting there because in a world where the russian energy
supplies are disrupted or in a world where the chinese and the japanese are in each other's
throats or in a world where persian gulf energy supplies break down we will need regional regional
powers will be forced to look after their own interests and they cannot do that without a
functional navy there's no reason to expect the united states to enter into a significant war with
any of them but in fact a lot of them that will be arising are likely to be friendly rather than not
but the days when the united states can just by fiat dictate a security environment on the waves
those are gone and we're in the transition now to whatever's next while ukraine suggests that
maybe the united states is to a degree getting interested in the world again we'll see how long
it lasts but for all the other conflicts that are going on in the world right now i think they've
just completely fallen off the radar i mean when was the last time you heard about congo or sudan
or yemen or even iraq you know none of these conflicts have stopped just the americans have
stopped caring uh if you want to be involved if the u.s government wants america to be involved
there is a case you have to make the case to the american people about why it's worth intervention
after 20 years of the forever wars that's a hard call and even with ukraine biden has
gone well out of his way to make it very clear that this is not going to be a regular conflict
there are risks absolutely anything with the russians is going to be risky
but we're not talking about forward surging forces to face the russians down in eastern
ukraine and that's not going to be on the agenda at all so either you are a country
that is able to negotiate a side deal with the united states where you are on your own
and countries are still coming to terms with what that means the country that by far is looking
at the worst position of the chinese because the security situation ukraine has laid bare their 40
years of their planning as being wrong and they're losing the ability to talk to the united states in
a constructive way due to internal problems and that the americans are walking away too
and there's no country in the world that is more dependent upon the old system than the chinese
to start out with it anyway there's only going to be a very few and they're countries that
are either cultural cousins or just strategic necessities to keep options open so australia
is far and away at the top of the list japan paid to join under trump and if you know if you can cut
a deal with both biden and with trump you're good and the japanese have figured out how to
make that work uh singapore definitely a u.s ally moving forward and of course the united kingdom
but anything outside of those four you have to make the case now we are seeing
the first reinvigoration of nato in decades i would argue that europe is operating on
the same page for the first time since like the treaty of westphalia this sort of integration and
cooperation in europe is utterly unprecedented let's hope it lasts beyond that everything in
the western hemisphere is kind of behind a bit of a cordon cemetery so it's not like a
lot of the countries in the western hemisphere are allies but the mexicans are friends and family now
and that that works and the americans have their own reasons for keeping eastern hemisphere powers
out of the western hemisphere which will benefit a lot of western hemispheric powers but there's
nothing that they can bring to the table in terms of security cooperation that will assist that
none of them have deployment capability the closest of course would be canada and as we've
discovered less than six weeks into the ukraine war they have already shipped everything that they
have to the ukrainians the cupboard is bare and so the canadians are actually in washington right now
talking to arms manufacturers in the u.s about purchases because they don't have any of their
own anymore they all broke down and closed after the cold war so it's it's a really short list well
let's start with currency and then let's go to fdi so with currency everyone who for whatever
reason doesn't care for the united states saw this as proof in the pudding that they need to shift to
a different system and so everyone started having conversations about what they would shift to
the russians say well obviously it should be rubles the chinese no no it should be yuan
but it's not convertible so you you're gonna have to fly those to you a pallet at a time and
we don't want any of them back ever and the indians were like well hey rupees let's use rupees
and so you know it's only been six months and all of those plans have imploded and the us's dollar
role in the global system has gone up uh even because the euro now has basically hitched itself
to the dollar as a secondary support system rather than its own independent poll and same with the
japanese uh so you know there's just there's no alternative here there's no other option
on the investment side the chinese have had a reputation for using a lot of capital flight
and a lot of export earnings to purchase what they consider to be strategic assets around the world
and that has generated a lot of heartburn in a lot of places well they now know that that's pointless
because the germans who are you know let's say not where should i put this made some poor
strategic decisions over the course of the last 30 years as regards to the russians they're already
nationalizing russian assets in germany you know the germans the ones who are the pacifists the
socialists so the chinese are now realizing that everything they bought overseas is worthless and
they're trying to sell a lot of it so at least they'll get some cash out of it but they only want
seven zero four dollars four zero rtb linking via septum
you