- (june 2024)
Putin and Xi, the Involuntary Couple
subtitled "Why North Korea could break the China-Russia axis".
Both Putin and Xi share the view that the USA is trying to surround them.
Putin fears the mighty NATO alliance, which gathers 6 of the top 10 economies.
Xi fears the many alliances made in Asia and Oceania by the USA.
They are right to fear the US-led alliances.
What they are missing is the reason that the USA has so many allies: those allies are afraid of either Russia or China.
There is nothing genetic, cultural or linguistic that brings together the USA and Finland. Even more fragile are the cultural ties between the USA and Japan. Finland would probably ignore the USA in a world without Russia, and
Japan would ignore the USA in a world without China.
Putin and Xi just cannot grasp the simple fact that they are the cause of their country's isolation.
But they reach the correct conclusion: they need each other. A world without China would be a world in which Russia is powerless. A world without Russia is a world in which the West could focus its hostility on China.
China needs Russia as a distraction. Russia needs China as an economic lifeline. When the USA asked China to help defeat Russia in Ukraine, Chinese diplomats openly mocked the idea: the USA wants China to help defeat Russia so that then the USA can turn on China next.
Breaking the Xi-Putin alliance will not be as easy as breaking the Mao-Brezhnev alliance was in 1972. Back then China and the Soviet Union greatly despised each other, and Kissinger was able to push them further apart.
Of course, the USA had to pay a formidable price: surrender the status of Taiwan as the legitimate representative of the whole of China.
Mao's China got the seat at the UN that Taiwan used to have, and also got veto power.
Today, breaking the Xi-Putin alliance would be possible only with another formidable gesture: handing Taiwan to Xi's China, something that would require convincing 20 million Taiwanese who have no intention of becoming subjects of the Chinese Communist Party.
China’s economy is over ten times larger than Russia's economy ($20.2 trillion in 2023 versus US$1.9 trillion), and China rivals the USA in all the major technologies. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has stolen Russia's influence in Central Asia. China has become the indisputable leader of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which has become the world’s biggest regional organization, accounting for 40% of the world’s population and 20% of the world's GDP (blame Trump for killing Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership which would have been even bigger and led by the USA).
The war in Ukraine has widened the imbalance between the two countries, with Russia becoming de facto a vassal of China (See Putin's invasions and Thoughts on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine - Part II)
Russia gets only one thing from China: a lot of Chinese yuan for all the oil and gas that China buys.
China's own military growth, intended to counter US expansionism, poses a hypothetical future threat to Russian territory.
Therefore the one partner who would be easier to pull out of that alliance is Russia, which so far has had everything to lose from it. Unfortunately, it would require handing Ukraine to Russia and even forgiving the whole invasion mess.
And, generally speaking, Russia is the international troublemaker, not China, so it would be dangerous anyway to side with the troublemaker, who would most likely start trouble somewhere else.
Luckily, Putin never misses an opportunity to make enemies. His trip to North Korea and the treaty he signed with North Korea offer the West a golden opportunity to separate China from Putin's Russia.
This time Putin has messed not in the backyard of the West but in China's backyard.
North Korea's regime has survived only because of China's food and energy subsidies.
China (and Xi in particular) has never particularly liked the Kim dynasty in North Korea, a dynasty of incompetent, capricious and ridiculous kings. China tolerates North Korea's regime because it provides a convenient buffer between China and US troops stationed in South Korea as well as a convenient annoyance to the USA (the only serious annoyance in the whole of Asia east of Afghanistan).
But China tolerated North Korea's regime also because it was an isolated and powerless regime that depended entirely on China, basically a sort of vassal state.
If North Korea becomes a close ally of Russia, with military and energy aids provided by Russia, China loses control over it.
China views Kim as a troublemaker, although a convenient one, and is probably
increasingly aware that Putin has become a troublemaker too: that couple can wreak serious havoc in China's neighborhood.
Kim's nuclear threats have resulted in Japan and South Korea getting closer to each other and closer to the USA, precisely the opposite of what China aimed for.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has damaged China’s relationship with Europe just when it looked like Europe was ignoring US paranoia towards China's rise: now Europe is as paranoid as the USA because it views China as enabling Putin's invasion.
And the result of Putin's invasion was a strengthening and an enlargement of NATO, hardly a positive result for China's geopolitical ambitions.
Putin and Kim are forces of instability not only for the West but increasingly also for China, and just when China needs stability to boost its economy.
It doesn't take a Chinese genius to realize that China's interests are no longer in propping up the Kim dynasty and defending Putin's reckless adventures.
The meeting between Putin and Kim revealed them to be just two opportunistic amoral crazies, not exactly the company Xi wants.
The Chinese-Russian "friendship with no limits" is ultimately based on the personal relationship between Xi and Putin, and Putin may have just exasperated Xi.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2024 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (may 2024)
What do these Russians have in common?
I don't have time to go back to the beginning of the Putin era. Just in the last two years. All of these Russians committed suicide:
Leonid Shulman, executive of Gazprom (2022);
Alexander Tyulakov, executive of Gazprom (2022);
Vasily Melnikov, CEO and owner of Medstorm (2022);
Vladislav Avayev, former executive of Gazprombank (2022);
Sergey Protosenya, former deputy chairman of Novatek (2022);
Yuri Voronov, CEO of a subcontractor of Gazprom (2022);
Vladimir Makarov, former police general in charge of cracking down on anti-war protesters, fired by Putin (2023);
Marina Yankina, senior military officer of the ministry of defense (2023);
Igor Shkurko, deputy director of Yakutskenergo (2023);
Grigory Klinishov, physicist who worked on the hydrogen bomb (2023);
Vladimir Sviridov, former lieutenant-general in the air force (2023);
Zoya Konovalova, editor-in-chief of state radio and television Kuban (2024);
Andrei Morozov, military blogger, shortly after revealing the scale of Russia's casualties in Ukraine (2024);
Vitaly Robertus, vice president of Lukoil (2024).
All of these fell out of a window from a high-rise building:
Ravil Maganov, chairman of Lukoil (2022);
Pavel Antov, meat magnate (2022, two days after his partner Vladimir Bidenov died in the same hotel);
Artyom Bartenev, federal judge of the Kirovsky District Court (2023);
Kristina Baikova, vice-president of Loko-Bank (2023).
Alexei Maslov, former general of the Russian army, died in a hospital but he was not known to be sick (2022).
Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, died in a plane crash (2023).
Alexei Navalny, Russia's most famous dissident, died suddenly in prison (2024).
Ivan Sechin, son and heir apparent of Rosneft's boss Igor Sechin, died suddenly of a mysterious disease (2024).
Now let's see how many scientists, businessmen, politicians and officers you can find who committed suicide or died in mysterious circumstances in all the other countries of the world combined.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2024 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (april 2024)
Putin's rhetoric mirrors Hitler's
I wrote that Putin's rhetoric to justify his war in Ukraine mirrors Osama bin Laden's rhetoric to justify Al Qaeda's attacks on the West (See Putin's Radicalization and the Russian Jihad).
But there is another telling model for Putin's rhetoric.
Hitler argued that Germans are a superior race. Putin claims that
Russians are morally superior to the West.
Hitler argued that the old colonial empires were decadent.
Putin claims that western European countries are decadent.
Hitler claimed "God is with us" and aimed to create the "third Reich".
Putin claims that his war has a religious mission to restore the "third Rome".
Hitler saw Russia as a "Jewish Bolshevist" regime and
Ukraine's president Zelensky happens to be a Jew.
Hitler claimed that Germany was provoked to the war by the imperialist countries.
Putin claims that he was provoked to invade Ukraine by an imperialist NATO.
Hitler argued that he was defending the German "volk" living outside the borders of Germany. Putin claims that he is defending the ethnic Russians living outside the borders of Russia.
Hitler claimed that historical German areas were under foreign occupation.
Putin claims that Kiev, the birthplace of the Russian nation, is de facto under NATO occupation.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2024 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2024)
Why Poland should Worry
A neofascist US journalist, Tucker Carlson, was picked by Putin as the one to interview him, after a long absence from Western televisions.
Carlson's team translated the interview into English for the Western audience but the translation that appeared on Carlson's channel is mostly inaccurate and biased: it tries to describe both Putin and Carlson as smart and reasonable, when their words are in fact often dumb and extreme.
If you listen to what Putin truly said,
the one that should worry the most is Poland.
The faithful translation of what Putin said about Poland (he mentioned it more than 30 times) shows that he doesn't make Poland much more worthy of
independence than Ukraine.
During his lengthy and delirious history lecture (Carlson kept nodding as if
fascinated by the wealth of historical information which in fact was mostly
disinformation), Putin said that in 1939 Hitler invaded Poland (and massacred
its population) because Poland had provoked Hitler by not giving him what he
wanted (the Danzig corridor). In Putin's demented mind, one is guilty of
provocation if he doesn't give in to the bully.
This is a word by word translation of Putin's sentence by Masha Gessen, a Russian-born translator:
Poland "refused to comply with Hitler’s demands... By not ceding the Danzig Corridor to Hitler, Poles forced him, they overplayed their hand and they forced Hitler to start the Second World War by attacking Poland.”
Many Westerners saw the similarities between Putin's 2014 annexation of Russian-speaking Crimea and Hitler's 1938 annexation of the German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia. Now we can understand that Putin's view of World War II is that
Hitler was "provoked" by those who didn't yield to his territorial demands, just like
Putin himself was "provoked" by those in Ukraine (and in the West) who didn't yield to his territorial demands.
Putin keeps repeating that Ukraine's regime is "Nazist" but then he seems to
excuse the real Nazists (Hitler's Germany) and identify with them (which is of course what we Westerners do: it is a no-brainer to us that Putin is doing to Ukraine what Hitler did to Poland, and that Putin does to Russian dissidents what Hitler did to German dissidents). But in Putin's mind all seems upside down: it is Ukraine that is "Nazist" because it refuses to cede territory to Russia, and it was Poland that was "Nazist" because it refused to cede territory to Hitler.
Poland could be next in Putin's mind.
Poland does border on Russia because Russia owns Kaliningrad, a small region
between Lithuania and Poland. Coincidentally, Putin decided to install nuclear
missiles in Kaliningrad.
No wonder that Poland has been a major contributor to Ukraine's defense.
Incidentally, the Carlson interview could be useful to understand more of Putin's state of mind. He was surprisingly friendly to the USA, willing to negotiate, willing to repair relations.
Just like Hitler didn't understand why Britain would not be friendly to him (who, after all, was an enemy of communism just like the West was), Putin doesn't seem to understand why the USA cannot be friendly with him (who, after all, is a good white Christian who has fought Islamic jihadists just like the West has and who could help the USA counter China).
Simplifying, Hitler thought: "all you have to do is let me have Eastern Europe, and you Brits and French can keep your colonial empires, and we can fight communism together". Putin thinks: "all you have to do is let me regain the old Soviet territory, and you Westerners can keep your democracies and we can fight the anti-Christians (Islam and China) together".
Read also:
Putin's Radicalization and the Russian Jihad
Who's paying for the Western sanctions on Russia?
Thoughts on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine - Part II
Putin's invasions
P.S.
Carlson tried to follow Putin's script by later boasting that the cost of living is much lower in Moscow than in the USA, as if this was due to inflation under Biden. Obviously this Carlson has never traveled around the world and doesn't even know that most of the world's countries are way cheaper than Western countries (because they are poorer and their currencies are weaker). Someone should tell this clueless yankee cowboy that North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba are other countries much cheaper than the USA, and he's very welcome to migrate there.
Anyway, the point is that involuntarily he told us that the sanctions are working: if you have dollars, everything is very cheap in Moscow. Before the sanctions, Moscow was ranked one of the most expensive cities in the world, and the rouble
was a strong currency.
Apparently, now it has become one of the poorest countries with one of the weakest currencies.
Inflation in the USA in November 2023: 3.1%.
Inflation in Russia in November 2023: 7.5%.
GDP per capita in the USA in 2023: $80412. GDP per capita in Russia in 2023: $13,006. If groceries are ONLY four times cheaper as Carlson claims, then Russians can't afford to eat. When ordinary Russians go to the grocery store that Carlson visited, they probably don't perceive it as paradise.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2021 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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