SHORT-SIGHTED PERSPECTIVES CREATE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
(which are…further driving the Russia bear to cozy up to the Chinese dragon…)

Both the EU and the US have probably shot themselves in the foot, so to speak, by the way they’ve handled the present Ukraine/Russian situation. Their lack of strategic vision vis a vis Russia is really the root cause of the tensions that have arisen from that situation.

Granted, until the dust had settled from the collapse of the Soviet system, and all of its former commissars had transformed themselves into elite fat-cat oligarchs, there was not much incentive to reverse if not eliminate our Cold War attitudes about it. Thus Russia was mostly kept out in the cold instead of being slowly brought in to become better integrated into the rest of European society. Today’s situation with it shows how short-sighted perspectives create unintended consequences, which are…further driving the Russia bear to cozy up to the Chinese dragon.

We’ve said it before…none of this bodes well for the Western World if both of these autocratic hegemonies develop any kind of economic, diplomatic, and possibly military rapprochement together. If that happens, it will be a symbiotic relationship with enormous impacts upon the world’s geopolitical equilibrium. The sheer size of the potentials if both those economies join into that kind of relationship, not to mention their combined technological capacities (both inherent and stolen) would create an overwhelming “soft power ” source; and from that, a military capacity of nightmarish proportions.

There are already signs of it, with China flexing its muscles in the western reaches of the Pacific Region, and Russia doing similar maneuvers along the eastern fringes of Europe’s “outback.” Czar Vladimir is visiting Beijing, to dine with China’s latter-day Emperor. One has almost a limitless supply of primary resources that the other desperately needs and wants. The other provides a ready market at its back door, not only to re-boot its economic engines, but also to clean up its environmental conditions besides…leaving each other’s oligarchs perfectly placed to become even more obscenely rich from it all than ever before.

As for the impact of EU and US sanctions against them? Bah! And as they might say in Russian… pissonya…as it goes crying about that all the way to the bank…while enjoying the best of Dim Sum and Peking Duck besides. Meanwhile, those flows of oil and gas to Europe would slowly disappear, making an about-face through Siberia into China’s welcoming tank farms, in exchange for which trans-Siberian trainloads, much like a 24/7 conveyor belt, would be sending a never ending flow of cheap consumer goodies back into the arms of grateful Russian folk hungry for it all. It would be boom-time-on-steroids for both economies. As for the rest of the world…it would be left to…suck eggs.

If this seems too far-fetched a scenario, perhaps it is, but, all the pieces for it to happen have been in place for a long time, and such short-sighted perspectives have created the right conditions for it to start. Now, despite long standing residues of mutual distrust, they are beginning to move in that direction, because volumes of potential cash flows…will always prevail over any other concerns.

CENTURION