It does seem like if I was China, this would be the perfect time to make a big geopolitical move: EU and Russia tied up with Ukraine and Iran, US & Gulf allies now stuck in a war zone, US showing aging tech with large exposure to new drone warfare.
This seems likely the conflict that forces the US into an immediate course correction in military makeup, or suffer large and expensive mass casualties on the battlefield.
What happened to Battleships after Aircraft Carriers entered the picture, comes to mind.
They don't need to do anything militarily. Just keep up with Belt and Road and being a stable trade partner while the US has a trade war with everyone and started an active war with Iran over nothing, and is threatening allies. Fill the vacuum the US left behind and see what happens when the US wants to put sanctions on China in the future.
That's a fair observation. They do a fair amount of objectively warmongery stuff though. All the force measuring in the south china sea, needless escorts, etc. They do engage in border skirmishes and make claim to Taiwan.
Ya, China will win by default, why do something stupid like Trump would? Make friends with the world, provide working affordable solutions to the high price of oil. Uhm, it’s like Trump is doing everything for China’s benefit.
Or not. China just saw two supposedly biggest military superpowers fail to achieve their military objectives. China supplied Iran with tons of most advanced SAM they could muster, and it took Iran over a month to shoot down _one_ 50 year old airframe. Gunning for Taiwan right now could provoke orange one to erase Iran oil infrastructure.
Don't interrupt your enemy when they are busy making mistakes.
Iran is shaping up to be a quagmire worse than Afghanistan or Iraq. Even if Trump pulls back from the brink, the GCC economies are significantly damaged, Iran will extort a massive wergild, and European and Asian economies will suffer another energy shock. China is relatively unscathed.
"any real issue"? Like crippling the world economy? They can extract a tithe on every gallon of oil leaving the Gulf. Without Qatari/Iranian natural gas there is a global energy crunch.
South/Central America has no significant military opponents, most especially none that will consume large quantities of exquisite armaments. It would mostly consume Army resources in COIN, which they are extremely experienced with from Afghanistan.
It's actually mystifying that Trump started the beef with Iran, when he could have just invaded Cuba and had an easy win. The Israeli factor of course, truly America's greatest weakness.
Yes, the downstream effects of the helium shortage are going to be extremely painful. Chip production, MRI machines, welding, many scientific uses. (We can't forget the previous era of US insanity in dumping the helium reserve under the 'party balloon gas' anti-science/anti-facts 1990s Congress.[1])
The world still produces enough fertiliser, but prices will rise significantly. The biggest producers (China, India, USA) also consume most of their supply, and China and India get their methane from elsewhere or from coal. Russia is a leading exporter, so they could easily tighten the screws now, leading to further economic shocks. Big importers will feel a crunch [2] and this will leader to significant crop price increases.[3]
They are waiting for the political pendulum to complete its swing. Once the blue resurgence hits, US will be deeply distracted with domestic issues and too broke for adventures. Spring 2027 will be unseasonably hot…
If China has any sense they will be looking at how well Iran and Ukraine is going for the invaders and maybe think twice before they make the same mistake.
It would be, unless China isn't yet militarily ready.
Also if China's Taiwan plan includes using surrogates like Iran to cause simultaneous trouble, then reducing Iran's capability asynchronously eliminates one US worry during a Taiwan scenario.
Based on what? This reads as pretty standard science journalism to me. She uses em-dashes, but so do I. It's a real punctuation mark with legit uses, and certainly not a 100% LLM marker.
Above ground pipeline seems like it would be difficult to defend, and easy to poke a hole into. I’m guessing a TBM to create an underground pipeline would take decades and billions of $$.
I think you are confusing it with the Thai "Mayuree Naree" [0].
Honestly, it's best to ignore X/Twitter for this conflict. Internet access has been restricted bordering on nonexistent in Iran since the massacres in January, and most countries in the region have also either locked down internet access or don't interact in the English language social media bubble.
The Ukraine War is the last war where OSINT had significant accuracy - most states have cracked down on information dissemination and enhanced OpSec.
There appears to be a very large gathering of tankers on the west side of the straight when I checked. It seemed about 30+ tankers hovering in the same area. I wonder if they’re anchoring together in a roughly ‘safe’ area to wait things out.
South Dakota actually has a few decent tourist attractions west river: (Mt Rushmore, Badlands, Crazy Horse).
With its proximity to Canada, and relative cheapness, likely pulls in quite a few tourists from up North.
One additional South Dakota attraction (although lessening interest as of late) is how much hunting/fishing is available, and how much the community is interested in the ‘visiting’ hunter.
Oh, I wasn't aware of that, thanks! I guess I was only thinking of warmer places, since that's where I tend to travel to. I personally live a bit too far north to drive to the US (in a reasonable amount of time), so I completely forgot that the US is close enough for a summer road trip for most Canadians.
At 66 degrees F? That sounds like put a sweater on if you’re chilly, not some near death extreme.
Any evidence that such an ‘extreme’ would cause issues?
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