" Preparing for World War III: The Home Front. "

By : Michael Hochberg & Leonard Hochberg

March 27, 2024

" During an interview on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, Brigadier General Amit Sa’ar of the IDF disclosed that he penned a letter intended for Prime Minister Netanyahu just before October 7, 2023, cautioning “that Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah recognized an opportunity to attack Israel … due to internal conflict … as well as the level of readiness of the IDF at the time.”  His reflection, which focused on military preparation, domestic politics, and international threats, should be taken as a warning for the United States.

On June 6, 2021, the anniversary of D-Day, the authors of this essay predicted that the major Eurasian autocratic powers—China, Russia, and Iran—would soon launch multiple opportunistic or coordinated attacks.  Thus far, three of the four fronts of a new global conflict have emerged.

Given that the upcoming general election will likely provoke political instability, we believe the following warning must now be issued:  Eurasian autocracies will see this election and any associated instability as a strategic opening for asymmetric and grey-zone attacks against the United States. At the same time, China will escalate its campaign to reincorporate Taiwan through blockade, invasion, or economic coercion.

The ongoing conflicts have strained the military and policy resources of the United States and its allies. The perception of these conflicts as disconnected, rather than as parts of one coherent conflict, has produced profound confusion among the American and Western polities. The piling-on by our adversaries has stretched the military and industrial capacity of the United States to the point that allies are running short of key warfighting materiel, such as artillery shells.  The resources to fully support our allies are not available. None of the Western Powers have shifted their economy onto a wartime footing.

Several factors precipitated the Western Powers’ fall into this geo-strategic mess. First, military capabilities among many of our NATO allies have been eroded over the past generation.  Second, adversaries across Eurasia came to believe that the United States would no longer defend partners and allies, following the debacle in Afghanistan. And finally, in the American corridors of power, foreign policy experts tend to be regional specialists. They believe that a local rout of American influence and armed force has consequences only for neighboring states – the wider picture does not come into focus.  In this view, each front of this Eurasian war can be treated as a separate event, with only isolated, regional consequences.

In the run-up to this presidential election, all signs point to an increasingly polarized electorate, one that believes it has the luxury of engaging in escalating demands and actions vis-à-vis their domestic rivals without suffering deleterious international consequences. The perception of a weaponized judiciary will only lead to further domestic strife. Authoritarian regimes watch the domestic politics of their democratic adversaries very closely for signs of weakness:  When the polity is divided and distracted, they perceive an opportunity to strike.

Autocratic powers will act to incite and exploit domestic instability through social media (here, here and here).  The rulers of autocratic regimes believe that public discontent, especially violent discontent, is a sign of weakness, and an indication that democracy cannot govern effectively, secure its territory, or defend its national interests overseas. In their calculus, domestic chaos in an adversary state creates an opportunity to seize an advantage by engaging in military adventurism.

Such perceptions may be an error:  In Israel, the disagreements over judicial reform were immediately put to one side to focus on destroying Hamas. National security, a dire necessity, trumped domestic disagreement, a political luxury. Political resilience and social solidarity reemerged in the breach.

The United States and our allies are being subjected to relentless information and digital grey-zone warfare intended to polarize the electorate and stymie coherent foreign policy action.  Attacks will no doubt ramp up in the run-up to the election. What’s more, the presence of antagonistic diasporas in the United States has roiled domestic electoral politics: Their competing and mutually exclusive demands are leading to incoherent foreign policy. In order to garner electoral support in critical districts, American political parties are increasingly pandering to antagonistic diasporas. Under these circumstances, identifying a bipartisan national interest is exceedingly difficult.

As the British geopolitical thinker, Halford Mackinder, once argued, “Democracy refuses to think strategically unless and until compelled to do so for purposes of defence.”  In the absence of a ‘Pearl Harbor’ moment, the United States is unlikely to shift to a war footing, no matter how many of our allies are threatened or attacked.

What should the United States do in advance of dire necessity compelling strategic thought? First, political will must be summoned to establish an emergency, bipartisan commission, the function of which will be to develop a grand strategy and an associated mobilization plan for the United States. The United States, as the dominant maritime power, has a national interest in maintaining the autonomy of those “bridgehead” powers, which occupy the rimland of Eurasia.  It is a national imperative to provide direct, early, and decisive support to deter the Eurasian autocratic regimes from realizing their imperial ambitions.

Second, because American deterrence has failed repeatedly in recent years, a more decisive step must be taken.  The means to secure deterrence must be distributed among allies and partners along the Eurasian littoral.  Threatened allies and partners across Eurasia must look to their own defense and the United States must enable these powers to develop their own arms industries, the products of which will be deployed at their own discretion.

Third, the U.S. must recognize that a Chinese attack on or blockade of Taiwan is likely as the election approaches or in its immediate aftermath, especially during a lame-duck presidency or should the electoral outcome be contested. The United States must act forcefully to deter such an attack in the short-term.

Fourth, the political elites of both parties must agree to refrain from calling their adherents into the streets to engage in violent protests. Governors and mayors should warn would-be demonstrators that the laws pertaining to lawful assembly will be fully enforced.

Fifth, the commission should quickly recommend how to place our economy, society, and military on a wartime footing, and appropriate legislation should follow. NATO allies should be pressured to dramatically increase expenditures on arms and training.  Industries in the United States and among our allies must be called upon to invest, once again, in the production of military armaments and relevant advanced technologies, with the provision of strong economic incentives. Because the manpower of the Eurasian autocracies is potentially overwhelming, the United States and its allies must advance new and asymmetric military technologies. The export of dual-use technologies to autocratic regimes, either directly or through third party regimes, must be ended. And measures must be taken to allow this to occur without harming crown-jewel industries in the West.

Regrettably, in the context of electoral polarization, it is hard to imagine the major political parties taking these actions.

The coming years will see not only massive disruptions to supply chains that flow through or near the territories of authoritarian regimes, but also increasing demand for the systems and munitions required for warfighting. With governments failing to act, the onus of shifting to a war-time footing falls on corporate leaders. Setting aside questions of national security and moral imperatives, pure economics justifies taking action now: Companies that are positioned to serve a broad war mobilization in the West will benefit from a period of increasing instability and strife, while those that continue to depend on autocratic regimes for their customers, suppliers, financing or personnel will find themselves in desperate straits.

Western companies must not wait for governments to act. Choosing to act now – in anticipation of a broadening conflict, rather than engaging in business-as-usual thinking – will differentiate the businesses that thrive from those that struggle over the coming years."

" Biden Talks to Xi About Conflicts, From Ukraine to the Pacific. "

" President Biden aimed to keep relations stable in a call with Xi Jinping of China, but also raised concerns over Beijing’s activities around Taiwan, the South China Sea and Russia. "





By : Edward Wong and Erica L. Green

" President Biden spoke with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, in a call on Tuesday morning that was aimed at addressing a variety of combative and cooperative issues, as the United States grapples with wars and other global crises, U.S. and Chinese officials said.

The topics raised by Mr. Biden included fighting narcotics production, the Middle East conflict, North Korea’s nuclear program and China’s support of Russia during the Ukraine war, according to a White House summary of the call.

Mr. Biden intended the talk to be a “check-in” rather than a discussion with concrete outcomes, said a senior administration official, who spoke to a small group of reporters on Monday night on the condition of anonymity, as is customary for such Washington briefings. But it was a crucial marker during a pivotal political year and as the countries try to steady a relationship that hit a multidecade low last year.

The call took place days ahead of a trip to China by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who will be followed soon afterward by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, the official said. Those would be the first visits to China by cabinet members this year; both officials traveled to Beijing last year to stabilize relations after tempers flared during the Chinese spy balloon episode.

Since last summer, Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi have sought to prevent any eruptions between their nations. Mr. Biden is seeking to focus on his tight race for re-election this year. Mr. Xi is grappling with a range of domestic issues, including a troubled economy and corruption in the top ranks of his military.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi held a face-to-face summit in November at a lush estate in Woodside, outside San Francisco. The two also met in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia — their first in-person summit as national leaders — and had their last call in July 2022.

The senior U.S. official told reporters that the call on Tuesday was part of U.S. efforts toward the modest goals of maintaining contact and managing competition “responsibly.”

Mr. Biden raised two issues over China’s aggression in the Pacific: Taiwan and the South China Sea, according to the White House summary.

The Biden administration has warned China to rein in its coast guard ships, which have been firing water cannons at Philippine resupply ships in a contested area of the South China Sea. And the United States has said the Chinese military is using jets and ships in a provocative manner near Taiwan, the de facto independent island whose status is the biggest flashpoint between Washington and Beijing.

However, Mr. Biden reiterated to Mr. Xi that the United States abides by its “one China policy,” which recognizes the mainland People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China — while saying nothing about Taiwan’s status.

During the call, Mr. Xi “stressed that the Taiwan question is the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations,” according to a description of the call released by the Chinese government. Mr. Xi called for “concrete actions” from the United States to demonstrate a commitment not to support Taiwan’s independence, the description said.

Like previous Chinese leaders, Mr. Xi has said Taiwan must be brought under Communist Party rule, by force if necessary. Mr. Biden has said four times that U.S. troops will defend Taiwan if China tries to invade. Those remarks were a deviation from the decades-long efforts by the U.S. government to leave ambiguous whether the American military would defend Taiwan from a Chinese assault.

Joseph Wu, the foreign minister of Taiwan, said in an interview with The New York Times in Taipei on Thursday that China had steadily increased its military activity around Taiwan, as well as its cyberespionage efforts and promotion of online disinformation, all amounting to “gray zone” aggressions short of a full war. “We need the U.S. to work closer with Taiwan,” he said.


In the call, Mr. Xi also criticized the “endless stream of measures” taken by the United States to try to suppress China’s economy, science and technology, the Chinese government’s summary said. Mr. Biden has imposed limits on the export of advanced semiconductors to China.

Mr. Biden told Mr. Xi that his government “will continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced U.S. technologies from being used to undermine our national security, without unduly limiting trade and investment” and criticized China’s “unfair trade policies,” according to the White House summary of the call.

The senior U.S. official said Mr. Biden wanted to stress to Mr. Xi that China must not continue helping Russia rebuild its military-industrial base. Russian arms production has been robust despite economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries after President Vladimir V. Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The steady production of ammunition and missiles — as well as weapons aid from North Korea and Iran — is helping Russia in Ukraine.

China has picked up some areas of trade European nations have stopped, and that has allowed Russia to rebuild its weapons production capabilities, the official said.

Mr. Biden also wanted to get Mr. Xi to help curb the attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea by the Houthi forces of Yemen, an Iran-backed military group that says it will continue strikes as long as Israel carries out its war with Hamas in Gaza, the U.S. official said. The Biden administration has pressed China to ask Iran to rein in the Houthis, especially since Chinese ships also pass through the Red Sea.

The official said Mr. Biden would like to cooperate further with China on several issues: limiting the export of chemicals used to make fentanyl, senior-level military talks, discussions over artificial intelligence and climate change policy. "

" Gold Is Speaking Very Loudly Now, Is Anyone Listening?"

BY : John Tamny

" Mountain Valley Spring Water is bottled in Arkansas. Roughly two months ago an unexpected snowstorm in the state briefly shut down production. Sufficient inventory meant that the production interruption didn’t initially have an impact on customers, but two months later there’s a very real inventory shortage that has customers experiencing near-term delivery delays.

What’s happening for Mountain Valley customers is useful to think about with the happenings of March 2020 and beyond top of mind. A brief interruption at a water plant is being felt around the U.S. a few months later. In which case, readers might better understand why shortages and higher prices were – and still are – so notable across the U.S. and global economy four years after politicians around the world panicked about the coronavirus, and in panicking, shut down the world economy.

If a brief interruption at a water plant can have such a profound impact on water availability, is it any surprise that all manner of goods and services are still quite a bit more expensive today in the aftermath of a global shutdown that lasted weeks and months? Hopefully the question answers itself, but if not, just stop and think about the remarkable global cooperation that goes into the production of everything that we buy today. That prices are still elevated is a statement of the obvious.

Why all this throat clearing ahead of a piece about gold? It’s pretty basic: the higher prices we’ve endured in the months and years during and since the mindless lockdowns weren’t “inflation,” and we know they weren’t because there was no notable decline in the value of the dollar ahead of the Fed’s pivot to rate hikes in 2022. On the other hand, there were global shutdowns of production and there was evisceration of global commercial relationships built up over many decades. Of course the prices of numerous market goods are higher now when it’s remembered that globalized production relationships were what had prices so low before March of 2020. Alas, the bitter, expensive fruits borne of command and control are NOT inflation. Inflation is a decline in the unit, a decline that hadn’t occurred leading up to when the Fed began hiking in 2022.

All of which brings us to the gold price. To be clear about the yellow metal, its price doesn’t move as much as the currencies in which it’s priced move. Which is why markets happened upon gold as money long, long ago. Constant as a measure of value, it was money par excellence simply because money exchanges always and everywhere signal the exchange of actual goods, services and labor. Since those exchanging want roughly equal value for what they bring to market, gold offered producers the stability necessary for near-frictionless exchange.

Yet as you’re reading this, gold sits at all-time highs in dollars. What that signals is that the dollar’s value against the constant that is gold is at all-time lows. It’s a reminder that the Fed’s rate hiking begun in 2022 was the equivalent of a doctor treating the elbow when it’s the leg that’s broken. Really, what would rate fiddling have to do with the value of the dollar as is? Furthermore, and as evidenced by the value of the dollar after 525 basis points in hikes, it plainly achieved nothing. See the gold price. $2,350 gold is signaling actual inflation, as opposed to the higher prices that naturally revealed themselves after global production shutdowns.

Responding to the gold price, editorialists at the Wall Street Journal asked if markets are “concluding that the Fed is willing to declare victory before inflation slows to the central bank’s 2% target, despite official avowals to the contrary.” The analysis reads as a non sequitur. As we saw with the falling dollar in gold terms amid the first 525 basis points in hikes, the value of the dollar is immune to Fed fiddling. We saw the same in the 1970s as the dollar price of gold soared amid a rapidly rising Fed funds rate. Never explained by the Fed focused is what blind stabs at rate price controls have to do with the value of the dollar.

Not acknowledged by the Fed focused is that devaluation (actual inflation) is as old as government issued money is. In other words, governments devalue. To bring the Fed into a discussion of the dollar is just odd.

The main thing is that gold is speaking loudly now about a dollar in decline. And with it in decline, watch the economy weaken as investment flows more into hard assets representing wealth that already exists, and away from stocks and bonds representing the creation of future wealth. Here’s your inflation. Too bad the “inflation hawks” of the various economic religions near unanimously fell for a fake version borne of command and control, but are ignoring the real one along with the simple truth that a stable currency is a policy choice of governments, not an effect of Fed meddling."

" Putin and Xi’s Unholy Alliance."

" Why the West Won’t Be Able to Drive a Wedge Between Russia and China."




By  : Alexander Gabuev


April 9, 2024

" Just a decade ago, most U.S. and European officials were dismissive about the durability of the emerging partnership between China and Russia. The thinking in Western capitals was that the Kremlin’s ostentatious rapprochement with China since 2014 was doomed to fail because ties between the two Eurasian giants would always be undercut by the growing power asymmetry in China’s favor, the lingering mistrust between the two neighbors over a number of historical disputes, and the cultural distance between the two societies and between their elites. No matter how hard Russian President Vladimir Putin might try to woo the Chinese leadership, the argument went, China would always value its ties to the United States and to U.S. allies over its symbolic relations with Russia, while Moscow would fear a rising Beijing and seek a counterbalance in the West.

Even as China and Russia have grown significantly closer, officials in Washington have remained dismissive. “They have a marriage of convenience,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told U.S. senators in March 2023 during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit to Moscow. “I am not sure if it is conviction. Russia is very much the junior partner in this relationship.” And yet that skepticism fails to reckon with an important and grim reality: China and Russia are more firmly aligned now than at any time since the 1950s.

The tightening of this alignment between Russia and China is one of the most important geopolitical outcomes of Putin’s war against Ukraine. The conscious efforts of Xi and Putin drive much of this reorientation, but it is also the byproduct of the deepening schism between the West and both countries. Western officials cannot wish this axis away, hoping in vain that the Kremlin bridles at its vassalage to Zhongnanhai or making futile attempts to drive a wedge between the two powers. Instead, the West should be prepared for an extended period of simultaneous confrontation with two immense nuclear-armed powers.

In a joint statement issued on February 4, 2022, Putin and Xi described ties between their two countries as a “partnership without limits.” That phrase won a lot of attention in the West, especially after Putin invaded Ukraine just 20 days later. Yet the deepening partnership was not born in February 2022. Following the bitter estrangement of the Sino-Soviet split that spanned the 1960s to the 1980s, China and Russia have become closer for several pragmatic reasons. Both sides wanted to make the territorial conflict between them a thing of the past, and by 2006, their 2,615-mile border had finally been fully delimited. Economic complementarity also drove them together: Russia had an abundance of natural resources but needed technology and money, while China needed natural resources and had money to spare and technology to share. And as Russia grew increasingly authoritarian with Putin in charge since 2000, Beijing and Moscow teamed up at the UN Security Council, using their power as permanent members to push back against many of the positions and norms advocated by Western countries, including the use of sanctions against authoritarian regimes and U.S.-led pressure campaigns in regional hot spots such as Syria.

China and Russia have also long shared a distrust of the United States, seeing Washington as an ideology-driven global hegemon that wants to prevent Beijing and Moscow from taking their rightful places in leading the world order and, even worse, that aims to topple their regimes. The ideological and political compatibility between China’s party-state and an increasingly authoritarian Russia has also grown. Leaders in Beijing and Moscow also refrained from criticizing the other’s record of repression at home and treatment of national minorities—subjects routinely brought up by Western counterparts.

After the breakdown of Russian relations with the United States following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin pivoted to the East to offset the effect of Western economic sanctions and make the Russian economy more resilient to Western pressure. Russia, whose defense industry survived the lean 1990s largely by selling arms to China, stepped up its exports of more sophisticated weaponry to its southern neighbor, such as S-400 surface-to-air missiles and Su-35 fighter jets, and invested in expanding pipelines, railroads, ports, and cross-border bridges that bring Russian natural resources to the Chinese market and Chinese imports to Russia.

As a result, the share of bilateral trade between the countries in Russia’s overall trade jumped from ten percent before the annexation of Crimea to 18 percent before Putin’s full-scale onslaught against Ukraine in 2022. The EU remained a more important partner for Russia, however, accounting for 38 percent of the country’s trade, as well as being the country’s largest investor and technology provider and a key destination for oil and gas exports. As for China, Russia accounted for only 2.5 percent of its trade in 2022, barely scraping into the ranks of its top ten trading partners. China has counted its commercial, financial, and technological ties to the United States and Europe as far more important for the dynamism of the Chinese economy than its equivalent ties to Russia.

This helps explain why, after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—which by many accounts Beijing had not expected—China tried to sit on the fence. It maintained ties with Russia, seized the opportunity to buy cheap Russian oil (as did other fence sitters, including India), and did not directly criticize Russian aggression. At the same time, it refrained from supplying Moscow lethal aid except for occasional small shipments of gunpowder and other war-related materials, formally supported Ukrainian territorial integrity, and did not engage in gross violations of Western sanctions—although several Chinese companies were put under U.S. and EU sanctions in early 2024 for shipping banned goods to Russia.

Despite Beijing’s initially cautious approach, most available data points to a much more robust relationship between China and Russia developing in the two years since the invasion. In 2022, bilateral trade grew by 36 percent to $190 billion. In 2023, it grew to $240 billion, surpassing the $200 billion mark in November, a goal that Xi and Putin initially intended to reach in 2025. China has imported energy commodities worth $129 billion—mostly oil, pipeline gas, liquefied natural gas, and coal—that account for 73 percent of Russian exports to China, as well as metals, agricultural products, and wood. At the same time, China has exported to Russia goods worth $111 billion, dominated by industrial equipment (around 23 percent of exports), cars (20 percent), and consumer electronics (15 percent).

Western export controls and the increased focus of Western capitals on the enforcement of sanctions have meant that Russia has no other long-term option than to shift to importing Chinese-manufactured industrial and consumer goods. As a result, sales of Chinese industrial equipment jumped by 54 percent in 2023 compared with the previous year, and sales of Chinese cars nearly quadrupled, making Russia the largest overseas market for Chinese automobiles with combustion engines. Hidden in these figures are Chinese-made items that directly boost the Russian military machine, including growing exports of chips, optics, drones, and sophisticated manufacturing tools.

China and Russia have grown notably closer in the critical area of security and military cooperation. Even amid Russia’s war of aggression, China’s People’s Liberation Army has increased the number of joint activities it performs with the Russian military. In September 2022, despite significant problems on the frontlines in Ukraine, Russia conducted a strategic exercise in its Far East to which China sent 2,000 troops. A few months later, in December, the Chinese and Russian navies held their annual exercise, this time in the East China Sea. In 2023, Beijing and Moscow held three rounds of naval exercises, and in 2022 and 2023, they conducted four joint patrols in Asia with nuclear-armed bombers. These activities still clearly lack the breadth and depth of the joint drills between the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia, but the Chinese and Russian militaries are undoubtedly deepening their interoperability.

That closeness is reflected in diplomacy as well. Since the war in Ukraine, in-person meetings between Russian and Chinese elites have increased markedly. The Kremlin and Zhongnanhai have worked together before, but personal bonds were rare, with the exception of that between Putin and Xi. Now the two presidents have made a point of encouraging their top officials to work together and to get to know each other. Since Xi’s state visit to Russia in March 2023, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and senior members of his team have traveled to China twice, in addition to Putin’s own trip to Beijing in October. Throughout 2023, many senior Russian officials and CEOs of the largest state-owned and private companies shuttled to and from China. Senior Chinese leaders—especially those from the military and security sectors—have also made trips to Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is currently in Beijing for talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. It is notable that this traffic is mostly one-sided—senior Russian officials and business leaders are going to China much more frequently than their Chinese counterparts go the other way, a clear indication of Russia’s desperate need for China. The one exception is the military-security domain, where the visits of high-ranking officials have tended to be symmetrical and reciprocal.

Beyond professional ties, connections to China are becoming increasingly important for Russian elites in crafting futures for themselves and their offspring. Most of these figures are now under Western sanctions, with the possibility of keeping their wealth in the West or sending their children to the United States or Europe for education foreclosed. The top Chinese and Hong Kong universities, meanwhile, are ranked much higher than similar institutions in Russia. There is growing anecdotal evidence that for the first time in Russian history, members of the Russian elite and their children have started to learn Mandarin.

The overall warming of attitudes to China is reflected in opinion polls, too, including recent data produced by the joint efforts of the Carnegie Endowment and the Levada Center, the independent Russian polling organization. At the end of 2023, 85 percent of Russians viewed China positively, whereas only six percent had a negative opinion of the country. Nearly three-quarters of Russians do not believe China is a threat to them—against around a fifth of Russians who think China is a threat. Over half of Russians now want their children to learn Chinese, a stunning development. More than 80 percent of people still want their kids to learn English, but the number of people interested in Mandarin is rising rapidly. The most China-friendly attitudes are recorded in the Russian Far East, a region that shares a border with China and is most exposed to the country in day-to-day life. This generally positive public disposition to China has allowed the Kremlin to enter a closer economic, technological, and political embrace with Beijing than ever before.

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, war has become the organizing principle of Russian domestic, economic, and foreign policy. The Kremlin now assesses every relationship with a foreign power through a lens of three essential considerations: whether this relationship can help Russia directly on the battlefield in Ukraine, whether it can help sustain the Russian economy and circumvent sanctions, and whether it can help Moscow push back against the West and punish the United States and its allies for supporting Kyiv.

Russia’s relationship with China emphatically checks all three boxes. Russia’s cooperation with China has to a large extent enabled Putin to continue his aggression against Ukraine. Beijing is not providing direct lethal aid to Moscow, but China’s indirect support for the Russian war effort is indispensable. It includes the supply of commercial surveillance drones, Chinese-made computer chips, and other critical components used by the Russian defense industry. On the economic front, Putin’s war chest relies heavily on revenue from Chinese purchases of Russian exports. The clearance of payments in the Chinese yuan keeps the Russian financial system afloat, and imports of cars, electronics, and other consumer goods keep shops well stocked and ordinary Russians quiet.

More telling, however, is Russia’s decision to firmly align with China in its geopolitical contest with the United States. Before the war, some voices in the Kremlin privately urged caution and advised against blindly rushing into China’s arms. The fragmentation of global order, skeptics warned, could lead to China’s emergence as a hegemon in its neighborhood and the most potent power in Eurasia—with Russia playing the role of a subservient vassal for many years to come. Accordingly, before February 24, Russia tried to guard its own autonomy by maintaining at least some balance in its relationships with the U.S.-led West and China, although the anti-Western tilt in Moscow’s policy became increasingly pronounced after Putin formally returned to the presidency in 2012.

The full-blown invasion of Ukraine has destroyed that precarious balance once and for all. With the West helping kill Russian soldiers and waging an economic war against Russia, it is no longer possible for the Kremlin to maintain ties with the United States and its partners in Europe and Asia. Throughout the war, Putin has reiterated that Moscow’s true enemy is not Ukraine but the West, which he claims seeks to weaken and dismember Russia. Helping China undermine U.S. global dominance is thus an important Russian goal because it can hasten victory in the war against the West that the Kremlin believes it is fighting. This change in attitude explains Moscow’s desire to step up military and technological cooperation with Beijing, as does China’s growing leverage in the bilateral relationship—Russia is having a hard time resisting China’s requests to share sensitive technology. Integrating Russia’s economy, brainpower, and military technology into a Pax Sinica, a Chinese-led order with Eurasia at its geographic heart, is the only way Russia can sustain its confrontation with the West.

Unsurprisingly, this shift has only exacerbated the asymmetry that characterizes Sino-Russian relations. As a larger and more technologically advanced economy that maintains pragmatic ties with the West, China has stronger bargaining power and many more options than does Russia, and its leverage over its northern neighbor is growing all the time. Russia is now locking itself into vassalage to China. A couple of years down the road, Beijing will be more able to dictate the terms of economic, technological, and regional cooperation with Moscow. The Kremlin is not blind to that prospect, but it does not have much choice as long as Putin needs Chinese support to fight his war in Ukraine, which has become an obsession.

To be sure, vassalage to China will not necessarily constitute full and unconditional subordination. North Korea, which depends on Beijing for nearly every aspect of its security and economy, has some maneuvering space when it comes to its giant neighbor, and Pyongyang can sometimes make moves that upset Beijing—for example, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the assassination in 2017 of his half-brother Kim Jong Nam, who was living under de facto Chinese protection. Russia is much more powerful than North Korea. No matter how much it needs Chinese support, it will not simply become China’s quiescent and obedient servant.

Putin likes to rationalize his fateful choices by looking to historical analogies. Late last year, he referred to the thirteenth-century prince Alexander Nevsky, who ruled multiple principalities in what is now modern Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine as a vassal of the Mongol empire that at the time, ironically, also included China. Nevsky is lionized in Russian history as the leader who repulsed several attacks from the west, notably his defeat in 1242 of the Livonian Order that sought to spread Western Catholicism into regions where Eastern Orthodoxy was predominant. Putin sees himself following in Nevsky’s footsteps, defying the West even as he defers to the East. “Prince Alexander Nevsky traveled to the Horde, bowed to the Khan and obtained a Khan’s edict for his reign, primarily to be able to effectively resist the invasion of the West,” Putin remarked in November 2023. “Why? Because the Horde, arrogant and cruel as it was, never threatened our greatest treasure—our language, traditions, and culture, something the Western conquerors were eager to suppress.” The parallels are clear: the Russian ruler today is ready to tolerate vassalage to a power that does not threaten Russian identity and does not interfere too much in domestic affairs in order to push back against the West, which Putin and his ideologues portray as decadent and a mortal threat to traditional Russian values.

For its part, China has also come to see Russia as part of a fundamental geopolitical realignment. Going into 2021, Beijing had reasons to hope that its relations with the United States—the most important bilateral relationship of the twenty-first century—would be back on a predictable trajectory after the disruptive presidency of Donald Trump. Although China could not expect a comprehensive détente, it hoped for a healthier mix of competition and cooperation between the two most powerful countries in the world. Not only did Chinese decision-makers know the team of experienced foreign policy operators in the new White House, but Xi’s personal relationship with Biden dated back to the then vice president’s visit to China in 2011. But Beijing’s hopes were dashed when Biden retained much of Trump’s hawkish China policy, which involved strengthening military partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and limiting China’s access to cutting-edge U.S. technology as much as possible. Unforeseen developments, such as U.S. House of Representative’s Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022, have also convinced Beijing that China’s confrontation with the United States is bound to deepen, regardless of who occupies the White House.


This realization shapes how China thinks about its relationship with Russia. Following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing made sure to ascertain the United States’ redlines and largely tried to adhere to them. But as Xi discovered in October 2022 after Biden authorized far-reaching U.S. export controls targeting China, such a cautious approach will not stop Washington from trying to constrain Beijing. Throwing Putin under the bus was never an option for Zhongnanhai, since China is afraid of potential instability in Russia and the prospect of a pro-Western regime installed in the Kremlin should Putin abruptly leave the political scene. And if a protracted confrontation between China and the United States is inevitable, Beijing needs all the partners it can get, since the United States enjoys a huge advantage in its large network of resourceful allies.

No other power can bring as much to China’s table as Russia, particularly right now. Russia’s abundance of natural resources—not just oil and gas but also metals, uranium, fertilizers, wood, agricultural goods, and water—can help feed the Chinese economy. The problem for Russia, of course, is that this trade with China will increasingly occur with prices dictated by Beijing and payable in yuan. In the meantime, this flow of Russian resources boosts China’s energy and food security while decreasing its dependence on vulnerable maritime routes such as the Malaka Strait, which is patrolled by the U.S. Navy. It also increases the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing by lowering energy costs. Although the Russian market is much smaller than the U.S. or EU markets, it is still sizable and increasingly hungry for Chinese products. Russian sales are becoming ever more important for Chinese manufacturers, given unstable domestic demand in China and decreasing exports to traditional markets in the West. Moreover, since 70 percent of Chinese trade with Russia is settled in yuan, Beijing can treat the trade relationship as a flagship project for its currency’s internationalization. Indeed, in November 2023, the yuan’s share of global trade reached 4.61 percent, according to SWIFT data, its highest level ever.

Russia also has some advanced military technologies that China still needs, despite the overall superior sophistication of Chinese defense manufacturing. These include S-500 surface-to-air missiles, engines for modern fighter jets, tools for nuclear deterrence such as early-warning systems, stealthier submarines, and technologies for underwater warfare. Despite an exodus of talent following the invasion of Ukraine, Russia still has some brainpower, particularly in information technology, that China is interested in tapping.

Military-to-military cooperation with Russia is an important asset for China. There is still potential for the two countries to step up their intelligence sharing, conduct joint cyber-operations to steal sensitive Western government or commercial data, and coordinate their influence operations, including disinformation campaigns. So far, Russia and China have not really worked in tandem on the disinformation front, instead spreading similar narratives in parallel—but a combined approach could well take shape as the governments grow ever closer.

Moscow and Beijing do not want to sign a formal military alliance, as senior officials on both sides have reiterated multiple times. Neither wants to have a legal obligation to fight for the other and be dragged into an unnecessary conflict. Still, two large nuclear powers that are on friendly terms standing back-to-back on the giant Eurasian landmass is a major headache for Washington. With the collapse of global nuclear arms control regimes and China’s rapid nuclear buildup, U.S. strategists will face tough choices about resource allocation: the United States will need to develop a strategic nuclear force that can at the same time deter two partnered rivals with vast nuclear arsenals. A de facto nonaggression pact between China and Russia, and the countries’ shared perception of the United States as an enemy, could lead to increased coordination between the European and Asian theaters, further stretching U.S. resources and attention. If, for example, China decides to make a move in the Taiwan Strait, Russia could simultaneously stage a provocative large-scale military drill in Europe, helping China by straining U.S. capacities to respond.

“There are changes happening, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years. Let’s drive those changes together,” Xi told Putin in parting at the end of his state visit in March 2023. The Russian leader eagerly agreed. Beijing’s and Moscow’s actions are indeed driving some profound changes to the global order, but these are not necessarily informed by careful strategic plans and well-articulated visions. Putin’s anti-Western rhetoric that defines his invasion of Ukraine both as a rebellion against U.S. hegemony and “neocolonial practices” and as a bid to build a “more just multipolar world order” fails to convince the countries of the diverse global South (a group Putin grandiosely claims to represent), many of which look askance at Russia’s blatant disregard for Ukraine’s sovereignty and international law. The problem for the West is that many countries perceive its leader, the United States, to be just as cynical as Russia, thanks to Washington’s checkered legacy of interventionism and selective respect for international law. Recent U.S. and European support for Israel in its war in Gaza, which is seen to flout some international norms, has only reinforced that perception.

Beijing’s hypocrisy and the distance between its rhetoric and deeds are also plain to see. China’s muscular assertion of its maritime claims in the South China Sea against the Philippines, for example, flies in the face of Beijing’s claims that it respects international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, and wants to solve territorial disputes with its neighbors through peaceful means. Xi and Putin are fond of invoking “the indivisibility of security,” as they did in their joint statement on February 4, 2022, as a call to the United States to take the security concerns of others seriously, but that seemingly principled insistence is belied by Russia’s total disregard for Ukraine’s security concerns and China’s bullying of its neighbors.

Hollow words do not change how the real world operates. Nor does the much-touted expansion of organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or the multilateral grouping BRICS alter the international order by itself. What has had a real and durable impact on the order is the fact that in the last two years, Beijing’s and Moscow’s dealings have clearly demonstrated the limits of Western coercive power and provided a viable alternative to countries seeking to hedge against dependence on Western technology and the U.S.-dominated financial system. Russia is on its way to replacing near total reliance on the West with reliance on China; it stayed afloat and has been able to wage an expansive war against a large country backed by NATO. Other countries wary of dependence on the West now see how Beijing can be a ready source of technology and payment settlement mechanisms, as well as a giant market for commodities producers. This is the most significant contribution of the Chinese-Russian alignment to the remaking of the global order.

Indeed, the deepening of this partnership is one of the most consequential results of the Ukrainian tragedy. Moscow and Beijing may never sign a formal alliance, but the evolution of their relationship in the years ahead will increasingly affect the world and challenge the West.

To come to terms with this development, Western policymakers should abandon the idea that they can drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow. Under Trump, the National Security Council entertained the idea of a “reverse Kissinger” approach of engaging Russia, the weaker partner, but to no avail. Whereas former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger courted communist China during the Cold War by offering Beijing a normalization of ties with the United States, U.S. officials cannot extend a deal of that sort to either Moscow or Beijing at this point. Any hopes of peeling them away from each other are nothing more than wishful thinking. Certainly, the Sino-Russian relationship is not without its strains, and existing tensions may be exacerbated as China grows more confident and is tempted to start bossing around the Russians in a more heavy-handed way—something that no ruler in Moscow would take lightly. For now, however, Beijing and Moscow have demonstrated a remarkable ability to manage their differences.

If the China-Russia tandem is here to stay, Western leaders must build a long-term strategy that will help maintain peace by accounting for all the ramifications of having to compete with China and Russia simultaneously. For a start, the West will need to find the right balance between deterrence and reassurance with Moscow and Beijing to avoid dangerous escalatory situations that could arise from accidents, misperceptions, and miscommunication. Western governments should consider the second-order effects of the coercive economic measures they have applied to Russia and China and how retaliatory countermeasures further erode the fabric of globalization. And while they should not tolerate Russian and Chinese disinformation and attempts to subvert the functioning of international institutions, Western countries should seek to make some of these institutions, such as the United Nations and its related agencies, functional again even with Beijing and Moscow on board. When considering how to protect European and Asian security, rein in climate change, govern new disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, and address the challenges facing global financial architecture, Western policymakers must now reckon with the reality of an increasingly resolute Sino-Russian axis."

" China's war on Taiwan and our economy. "


By  : U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer
R-Missouri

" One sunny Friday, you wake up and start your day like you always do. You pour yourself a cup of coffee and begin getting ready for work, take the kids to school, or start your daily duties. Your routine is interrupted by an emergency radio broadcast: “China has invaded Taiwan.”

You go on to listen to the trade speculations made by the broadcasters, but this surely can’t affect you – you’re thousands of miles away, right? Shrugging it off, you continue to enjoy your morning.

A few minutes later the voices on the radio begin talking about the stock market dropping. You’re not a Wall Street trader so this again doesn’t really affect you, does it?

Then, you learn that your retirement savings, the account you’ve been contributing to for decades has lost 40% of its value. In the span of a few moments, your day takes a dramatic turn, leaving you wondering how it all unraveled so quickly.

The unsettling truth is – If China invaded Taiwan today, more than just your retirement account would be impacted. In fact, most Americans would be shocked at how quickly the fallout from a Chinese invasion of an island more than 7,000 miles away would hurt America’s main streets. 

The U.S. would immediately enact massive financial sanctions and major trade restrictions on China. China would do the same to us. Military actions would follow. The two largest economies in the world who are also each other’s largest trading partners would, for all intents and purposes, be at war.

Obviously, the greatest tragedy of war, is the lives lost on all sides. A war with China would result in thousands of Taiwanese, Chinese, and American deaths. It's an outcome we have to avoid at all costs.

The secondary effects would be the economic devastation to our country. Trade between our countries would stop. We would no longer buy goods and products from them, and they would stop buying our crops, cars, and other products. The supply chain disruptions during Covid would pale in comparison to the economic paralysis we would experience.

An analysis from global financial firm GTS has estimated a short-term stock market plummet of up to 34% after an invasion, as uncertainty about the U.S. response may lead institutional investors and retail investors to quickly exit their equity positions while market makers struggle to accurately price stocks in this volatile environment. The long-term effects would be much greater.

Bloomberg speculates that a military engagement over Taiwan would cost roughly $10 trillion and reduce global GDP by 10%. This drop would be almost twice what was observed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and Covid pandemic, events which triggered peak to trough declines of 57% and 35% in the S&P 500.

This week, I introduced the Fortifying U.S. Markets from Chinese Military Aggression Act. This bill directs the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) at the Treasury Department to establish an advisory committee to analyze, study and report on market implications and vulnerabilities related to Chinese military aggression with the goal of establishing open lines of communications between policy makers, government agencies, and capital markets.

FSOC will develop recommendations and support analysis to identify security concerns surrounding the safety and soundness of the United States financial system and any potential loses faced by the United States. This will act as a safety measure to protect American consumers like you, so you won’t relive the 2008 stock market crash.

While FSOC may not serve as a comprehensive solution for predicting or preventing Chinese military aggression, it could serve as a crucial tool in mitigating the infiltration and influence exerted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on our economy and nation. By loosening the grip that the CCP holds over our financial institutions and economy, our government would be better positioned to shield citizens from potential retaliation by China.

Establishing robust oversight through FSOC could help identify and address vulnerabilities within our economy that could be exploited by hostile foreign actors. This heightened awareness and regulatory framework would strengthen national security and economic resilience, reducing the leverage and impact of external threats. Essentially it reduces the leverage other nations have on us while increasing ours.

This bill cannot prevent war, but it can eliminate the notion of mutually assured economic destruction China hopes will prevent the U.S. from standing our ground. Planning for the day China invades Taiwan, but removing America’s economy from the equation protects our communities, your financial future, and ultimately bolsters national security."

[ Might As Well Get Juiced !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ]

Thanks Paula  ------ Emperor Xi and Myself are " TIGHT !!!!!! "    We Go WAY Back !!!!!!!!!!!!    

" CHINA IS BATTENING DOWN FOR THE GATHERING STORM OVER TAIWAN."



BY : MIKE STUDEMAN

" Chinese war drums beat on as pundits hotly debate if or when Beijing will try to seize Taiwan by force. There is no apparent countdown to D-day for initiating a blockade or invasion, but major strategic indicators clearly show that General Secretary Xi Jinping is still preparing his country for a showdown. Developments under way suggest Taiwan will face an existential crisis in single-digit years, most likely in the back half of the 2020s or front half of the 2030s.

Despite the manifesting peril, China’s recent economic setbacks and faux conciliations suggest to some, including President Joseph Biden, that the danger is passing and China will end up too preoccupied with domestic challenges to focus on a fight and risk global ostracism, leading to further economic calamity. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Xi is militarizing Chinese society and steeling his country for a potential high-intensity war. China’s trajectory signals deepening danger and a hardening of Xi’s intent to execute an act of aggression similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The simple fact is that peace in the Indo-Pacific and even the wider world will be held hostage to one man with totalitarian control, messianic ambition, strategic impatience, and implacable resolve. Xi has made unification with Taiwan the signature issue of his tenure. He now calls it the essence of national rejuvenation. For years, his domestic speeches have been grooming officials, the military, and the public for a “great struggle” and “major test” that will require extraordinary sacrifice. At every turn, he dares them to fight and be good at fighting. At a meeting with Biden in late 2023, Xi stated, “Look, peace is … all well and good, but at some point we need to move towards resolution.”

Xi’s most critical choices reflect a march to war. Leadership changes at the 20th Party Congress in late 2022, for example, turned the Politburo into a body more akin to a war cabinet. Fifteen of its 24 members now have Taiwan-related experience. Included in this cadre is the most recent former eastern theater commander — the general responsible for executing a Taiwan fight — who was leapfrogged to the Politburo without being a prior member of the Central Committee.

As disturbing, the war machine of the People’s Liberation Army continues to modernize at a sprint in every area. China’s hyper-militarization represents the greatest build-up of arms since the end of the Cold War. In 2020, Xi accelerated significant military milestones from 2035 to 2027 because he wanted China’s military to modernize faster and give him Taiwan options earlier. The People’s Liberation Army has since built vast underground complexes, a modernized and proliferated space layer, thick aircraft and air defenses, and the world’s largest navy. China also created a Strategic Support Force, which integrates space, electronic warfare, and cyber capabilities. And it boasts the most active and sophisticated ballistic missile force in the world.

China is concurrently building up its nuclear triad at a gallop. China aims to neutralize any possible American nuclear advantage in a crisis in order to devolve a fight to conventional forces where China thinks it might have the edge. The former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard, repeatedly called China’s nuclear force advances “breathtaking,” “explosive,” and a “strategic breakout.” Their nuclear missile, warhead expansion, launch-on-warning, silo construction, and orbital bombardment developments are all part of Xi’s broader push through the 2020s to get ready for a potential major power confrontation.

On top of this, Xi has been deploying more military forces nearer to Taiwan to reduce Taipei’s warning time, practice in anticipated wartime areas, demonstrate supposed Chinese military superiority, and slowly exhaust and demoralize the Taiwan military. In U.S. parlance, these acts are akin to warm-start efforts at “softening the battlespace” for follow-on action. Employing a boiling frog tactic, China aims to condition Taiwan to an ever-increasing number of forces surrounding the island. Additional patrol patterns east of Taiwan are a form of psychological warfare attempting to highlight China’s power to cut off resupply lifelines. Meanwhile, the Chinese military has also been intensifying the scope and scale of exercises practicing simulated assaults on Taiwan, which last many months on China’s eastern coast each year.

At the strategic level, China dropped “peaceful reunification” as its longstanding official approach to resolving the Taiwan issue. Xi has passed new laws allowing the nationalization of foreign assets in wartime and stronger measures for nationwide civilian mobilization, including more societal drills, to improve support of the People’s Liberation Army in wartime. Efforts to boost food and energy security are well under way, and China is building overland pipelines and coal-fired plants with renewed fervor in anticipation of limiting the impact of expected foreign maritime interdiction of oil and gas during any conflict. China has been building its strategic petroleum reserves for years in above- and below-ground facilities well beyond nominal nation-state peacetime buffers. At the same time, Beijing has deepened its alliances to secure flows from global energy providers, notably Russia, Gulf Cooperation Council states, Iran, Iraq, Angola, Brazil, and others.

Xi’s absolute prioritization of security over the economy is perhaps the most telling of all war preparation indicators. In the last 18 months alone, Xi has undertaken massive efforts to insulate the Chinese economy from potential external vulnerabilities, stressing self-reliance at the expense of growth. This strategic shift is not just related to trade wars, perceived supply chain vulnerabilities, or de-risking dynamics. Xi seems to have studied the sanctions playbook the West used against Russia over Ukraine and subsequently initiated long-lead protective measures to batten down the hatches of China’s economy to resist similar pressure. In contrast to the milquetoast pushback from the other leading powers after China put Hong Kong under its boot, Xi likely knows attempting to assimilate Taiwan would lead to much fiercer global resistance and harsher whole-of-society repercussions that would likely last years. And he intends to ready China to endure them.

In addition to the extraordinary measures Xi has already undertaken to protect Chinese supply chains, cyber security, and critical infrastructure, China may be quietly reducing exposure of its foreign exchange reserves. Steady declinesin Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds since 2018 (from $1.2 trillion to less than $800 billion) roughly parallel year-on-year increases held by Belgium and Luxembourg, suggesting China may be shifting the financial custodianship of its American bonds. If true, this would presumably serve as a layer of protection against Washington directly capturing China’s reserves in wartime. It remains unclear if China’s shift to U.S. agency bonds (held by government-sponsored enterprises instead of the U.S. Treasury) may also be a protective measure. These moves would make sense considering Xi’s order to Chinese banks in May 2022 to reevaluate risk and insulate against possible “severe U.S. sanctions.” Guidance like this might also explain other curiosities such as why China, as the world’s largest producer of gold, has been buying gold on global markets for 16 straight months. Economists who tend to attribute these financial moves solely to diversification, de-dollarization, or increasing the yuan’s value may be missing the forest for the trees. These measures would also help shock-proof China from cyclopedic sanctions stemming from a Taiwan conflict.

All strategic war preparation indicators are brightly lit, but the most telling is Xi’s willingness to breach the Chinese Communist Party’s covenant with the Chinese people established 45 years ago to allow China the freedom to get rich. Xi has deliberately switched the party’s mandate from enabling China’s economic vitality and building up comprehensive national power in a stable ecosystem to the securitization of everything and tightening down in anticipation of “reunifying the motherland” and preparing to recover Taiwan at the expense of that power. Xi’s charm offensive with the White House and attempts to curry favor with U.S. corporate leaders reflect less a re-prioritization of economic imperatives to the top billing than an experiential insight that many profit-myopic Americans can still be played to China’s advantage and induced into business-as-usual complacency during Xi’s crucial combat preparation years. China would classically call this approach wielding “a hidden knife behind a smile” and ultimately “killing with a borrowed sword.”


Xi’s elevation of geopolitics and security over China’s economic well-being might make sense in an era of strategic competition where paranoias about encirclement and containment abound. But the choices he is making today leading to domestic wealth destruction portend his willingness to countenance even greater wealth destruction on a global scale. Although estimates suggest a war over Taiwan would wreck China’s economy, cost 10 percent of global gross domestic product, and devastate worldwide supply networks for years to come, Xi may not care overly much given the inescapable backsliding of his economy even in the absence of any war. In the coming years, he may conclude he has everything to gain and nothing to lose by waiting any longer.

In fact, a strong case could be made that Xi might need a nationalistic “wag the dog” issue to restore the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. A rechanneling of public passions could prove essential as criticisms surge over a self-induced economic downturn created by greater state interference in private industry, dulled investor confidence, demographic graying stemming from the party’s one-child policy, after-effects of harsh pandemic lockdown policies and “long COVID” impacts, youth unemployment, a high debt-to-gross domestic product ratio, poor domestic consumption rates, and de-risking by enlightened foreign companies that see both greater geopolitical and financial risk in China’s future.


Even in a so-called “war of choice,” where Beijing can carefully select when to move against Taiwan free of any domestic pressures, Xi’s age (70) matters. He only has ten reliable years of vitality to conduct a major operation and then lead China through the inevitable multi-year recovery from anticipated international retribution. Based on how Xi appears to be interweaving his legacy with assimilating Taiwan, it seems unlikely he would leave it up to a successor to absorb the forever glory of overseeing a long-sought unification and subsequently re-stabilizing China’s place in the world, a feat that could put Xi on par with Mao Zedong.

Following traditional Chinese decision-making that emphasizes advancing when the propensity of factors flows favorably in one’s direction, Xi will likely be inclined to wait opportunistically before making a major decision on Taiwan. He is more likely to make a big move when the People’s Liberation Army is deemed more ready and when domestic and international dynamics unfold in a way that is more conducive to success. Given the stakes for his leadership mandate of China, his power, his reputation, his legacy, and probably his very life, Xi knows he must do more to load the iron dice before he rolls them on a Taiwan crapshoot. International views of Chinese power may weigh heavily on Xi’s decision-making calculus. He may be tempted to act before China is seen as beyond the apex of its power, so that he can still overleverage coopted nations to remain compliant in the face of Chinese aggression.

A storm from Beijing is heading to Taiwan. Although hopes were high that the Russo-Ukrainian War might deter Xi from folly over Taiwan, nothing in his behavior, speech, or actions so far suggests he is learning anything other than how to better prepare to subjugate Taiwan. Xi’s internal views and decisions matter more than Beijing’s outward-facing guile that is threaded through the latest rounds of leader, business, or military talks. Washington ought to engage for many reasons, but the wise should see these so-called “stabilization” measures as Beijing likely does: devices to buy time and regain a sense of normalcy while hiding Xi’s true designs.

Xi’s worsening domestic economic troubles in coming years may only increase his temptation to take extreme action, especially as the true limits of Chinese coercion become apparent. U.S., allied, and partner political unity in defending Taiwan’s democracy and maintaining the current political status quo, coupled with substantial material strength forward where it matters, when it matters, remains the best hope for deterring Xi and confounding his expansionist agenda. The effectiveness of deterrence will probably swing on the extent to which Washington and allies field more capabilities that can make real the Indo-Pacific Command’s “hellscape” plan to wreak havoc on hostile forces threatening Taiwan. Deep magazines of long-range fires and more forces forward — especially many small, mobile, lethal, persistent, and uncrewed types — will not increase the chance of war, as some mistakenly fear. Rather, they would dissuade a would-be aggressor from a strategic blunder of epic proportions.  In facing the rising danger of a country that seems only to respect muscular opponents, not being fully prepared for war will be the surest invitation to naked aggression across the strait."