Congratulations! I enjoy reading articles like yours that pinpoint crucial aspects and make sense. I think you are right. In this visit the winner (by unanimous decision) was Xi, and things didn’t go bad for us.
Interesting read, thank you. You say others think "Xi cynically wants to see Russia continue to fight in Ukraine and thereby bleed the United States of its military stockpiles"--is this a thing at all? It's my impression that any (a) bleeding that happens is very much less important than the opportunity to see how our arms work in combat situations, and (b) any bleeding on our side is dwarfed by the hemorrhaging on the Russian side. Not so?
So China is going to continue to by Russian hydro-carbons at a greatly reduced price. To quote (from memory) the preceptive Matthew Yglesias 'part of Russia's bad strategic position is that China is a really sh-ty ally". Other alllies of any signficant are the great power-houses of Iran and North Korea. Oh dear.
The big win for both Putin and Xi is that the show they put on helps brand them as legitimate political leaders deserving of respect and so on, when really they are both just ruthless gangsters who have stolen the freedom and wealth of many millions of human beings who deserve better.
We should think of Putin and Xi the same way we think about the Gambino crime family here in the United States. Dictators are just the smartest and most ambitious form of street thugs. Why rob a bank when you can steal a nation? Why worry about the cops when you can be the cops?
Congratulations! I enjoy reading articles like yours that pinpoint crucial aspects and make sense. I think you are right. In this visit the winner (by unanimous decision) was Xi, and things didn’t go bad for us.
Interesting read, thank you. You say others think "Xi cynically wants to see Russia continue to fight in Ukraine and thereby bleed the United States of its military stockpiles"--is this a thing at all? It's my impression that any (a) bleeding that happens is very much less important than the opportunity to see how our arms work in combat situations, and (b) any bleeding on our side is dwarfed by the hemorrhaging on the Russian side. Not so?
So China is going to continue to by Russian hydro-carbons at a greatly reduced price. To quote (from memory) the preceptive Matthew Yglesias 'part of Russia's bad strategic position is that China is a really sh-ty ally". Other alllies of any signficant are the great power-houses of Iran and North Korea. Oh dear.
The big win for both Putin and Xi is that the show they put on helps brand them as legitimate political leaders deserving of respect and so on, when really they are both just ruthless gangsters who have stolen the freedom and wealth of many millions of human beings who deserve better.
We should think of Putin and Xi the same way we think about the Gambino crime family here in the United States. Dictators are just the smartest and most ambitious form of street thugs. Why rob a bank when you can steal a nation? Why worry about the cops when you can be the cops?