China's more oil-hungry than we are at this point, so that puts them squarely in Putin's back pocket and, yes, makes the sanctions pointless. I'm not worried about Taiwan, though. We've literally positioned a third of our navy there specifically as a deterrent. Unless Russia and China are about to launch an all out war on multiple fronts against the entire planet and see that as an actual reasonable thing to do, I'm not worried about China doing something crazy. China's World War III strategy is very simple: They've learned a lesson from how we fought and won the Cold War. Outspend, outbuy, and bankrupt your enemy. Which they are doing beautifully. The American Republic won't collapse because of Trump, or because of war, or because of social strife. It'll collapse because we were outspent by China. The same way the Soviet Union collapsed because they couldn't keep up with us financially.
China suddenly dropping this decades-long and very well orchestrated strategy to go on a war footing would be the most insane thing possible.
As for Ukraine: While the American press likes to go on and on about how it's exactly like the London Blitz because Kiev also has a subway system and...uh...children and...people who wear hats, I guess? The foreign press is reporting a clumsy Russian advance that has failed to achieve their goals and is taking a surprisingly large number of casualties.
Which is interesting to watch. There are two wars here. There's the war the US media wants us to be fighting? Or...thinks we're fighting maybe? In that war we're at the brink of global disaster. Today Kiev! Tomorrow Hoboken! And then there's the actual war where Chernobyl is the only obvious success and Russia is floundering in the trenches and the oligarchs back home are funding protests against Putin who is decidedly falling apart all across the homefront.
So I suppose the real question is: Which is true? Or is there a third reality somewhere in the middle?
