Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Two Quick Hits

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On November 4, 2025

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

First, Dick Cheney died today. He was 84 years old. It’s a personal policy of mine to avoid speaking ill of the dead on the same day they die. I’ll comment on the consequences of his time in office some time soon. You are certainly free to say whatever you want in the comments.

Second, when it comes to military power, Singapore is a nasty, mean little porcupine crossed with a skunk whose motto is FAFO and if I were a neighbor I wouldn’t want to find out. (What a damned fine run-on sentence, yeah?) It’s also something their new Victory Class MRCV (multi-role combat vessel) makes abundantly clear and reminds me of an experience I had while living there.

In the run-up to National Day, or Independence Day, I don’t remember what it’s officially called but the military was out in full force, rehearsing its marching routes for the celebrations.

I lived on Beach Rd. and was sitting out in front of my favorite duck restaurant when an absolutely terrifying thunderclap occurred. I damn near pissed my pants. I looked up at the clouds, as thunder is kind of rare in Singapore, and saw the shadow of a triangle pass a kilometer down Beach Rd. from where I sat.

“What the hell was that?” I asked the waiter.

“Just a jet practicing for the parade down our street,” he said all nonchalantly.

Then the f**king thing made another run down Beach Rd. no more than 300 feet overhead. The windows rattled everywhere.

My experience in that moment gave me just a small inkling of how terrifying it must be to face the business end of a US F-15. It’s a feeling that cannot be described.

One I am not interested in repeating, either.

 

 

On the Public Abuse of Our Historical Ignorance

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On November 4, 2025

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

When supposedly well-educated people abuse history, analogize incorrectly, or make ridiculous comparisons for political gain I lose all semblance of mindfulness, which results in a complete takeover of monkey-mind (a Zen Buddhist term for losing your shit). For example, a few days ago I watched this video of US Air Force Brigadier General Douglas Wickert asserting that China is preparing for a Pearl Harbor style-attack. After calming down, rewatching the video and reading the transcript in an attempt to confirm the Air Force general made such an ill-informed assertion it became clear he did not make the assertion explicitly, but implied it in multiple ways at multiple times. He also cited Army Air Force General Billy Mitchell, the father of the strategic bombing doctrine America so loves, several times. I’ll explain why citing Billy Mitchell is both correct and important, but indicative of a dangerously unimaginative strategic mindset. But first let’s discuss the You Tube video’s click-bait title “U.S. General Warns: China Prepping for ‘Pearl Harbor-style’ surprise attack.”

I don’t know about this. I’m ambivalent here.

Why?

Well, I’m unable to decide if this is just lazy, racist thinking, or plain old-fashioned historical ignorance, willful or otherwise. But I can state, without an iota of ambiguity that China, in its six thousand year history, has absolutely no history of conducting surprise attacks on non-combatant sovereignties.

Zero.

Even at the dawn of Chinese history there is no mention of surprise attacks against states one is at peace with. Not in Sima Qian’s ‘Records of the Grand Historian’, who is China’s version of Herodotus, nor in the Art of War, by Sun-Tzu, which is without question the greatest book on strategy ever written. Sun-Tzu was a Chinese general living during the Warring States Period. His realism and understanding of human nature reminds me a great deal of the Athenian general and author Thucydides, but I digress.

The assertion that China is preparing a sneak attack is so utterly ignorant of East-Asian history it’s embarrassing to read. And the parallels Gen. Wickert tries to make are like a thirsty man reaching down from the rim of the Grand Canyon to get water from the Colorado River: delusional. But, it’s also unsurprising.

Why?

Because what Gen. Wickert embodies is another in a long list of American generals competent in both tactics and the operational art of war—which includes exceptional prowess in utilizing America’s unparalleled logistical expertise—but a insipid and unimaginative general who has zero concept of strategy, historical, grand and/or otherwise.

Need another more obvious example?

Okey-dokey. Here’s a blast from the past: US Army Gen. Tommy “Catastrophic Success” Franks.

Here’s where the abuse of history gets worse and kind of sways me towards thinking this is kind of an unacknowledged form of racist thinking regarding East-Asians. I mean, seriously, aren’t they all clothes washers, little and yellow, and all look the same, right? Obviosuly East-Asian diversity is immense. If you’ve lived in Asia and traveled in several of the nations and are observant one can recognize by sight alone the facial incongruities between Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc. But I again, digress.

Taking a Neo-racist interpretation further and adding a dollop of historical ignorance, let’s discuss Japan’s long history with surprise attacks. Anyone who has read Japanese and Russian history on even a basic level is aware of Japan’s most famous sneak attack: the Battle of Port Arthur.

Wait, what? You’ve never heard of it?

In short, the Battle of Port Arthur was a surprise night attack by the Japanese on the then neutral Russian fleet moored in the harbor at Port Arthur, Manchuria in 1904. So now you know.

But let’s push our historical horizon a bit further, shall we?

People who say “no one could anticipate Pearl Harbor” are fucking idiots. Japan proved at Port Arthur how far it was wiling to go to hobble an adversary it was at peace with. One could argue that Pearl Harbor was a clear failure of American strategic imagination. One could also argue that perhaps it was exactly what the historically well-informed president at the time was expecting when he ended the sale of oil to Japan, thus provoking an attack by Japan that would a.) hobble the US fleet and make the capture of the oilfields in the Dutch East-Indies easy and b.) force US entry into the war. That’s a debate honest people can have.

But arguing that China’s going to do it?

GTFO!

Now when it comes to 9/11—another great failure of the American strategic imagination—all the morons who said, “no one could ever have imagined such a thing” are fools. No less than seven years before author Tom Clancy sketched out a similar scene in his novel “Debt of Honor” in which a disgruntled Japanese jumbo-jet pilot crashes his jet into the US Capitol Building during a State of the Union address. Clearly imaginable. Clearly conceivable. Clancy was even interviewed many times after 9/11 about it. But those interviews disappeared down the memory hole.

Digressing. Digressing. Digressing. I know. My bad.

I’m going to state it again, unequivocally: China, i.e. the Han Chinese people, have no tradition of surprise attacks on non-combatant nations or polities they are at peace with. Of all the history I have read regarding the Chinese they have almost always approached jus ad bellum with honor. Jus ad bellum is a fancy smancy-pants way of discussing the laws a state or sovereignty must obey before engaging in war and sneak attacks are not only a huge no-no, but dishonorable as all get out.

Now let’s discuss suprise attacks in the context of jus in bello, meaning the conduct of war once declared, or how one acts during hostilities. Like how reprisals are allowed so long as they are proportionate, one principle the US has pretty much violated in every war since WWI. As for the element of surprise, or sneak attack? For fucks sake, that’s got to be obvious; everyone hopes and aims and seeks it and it is a totally legitimate aim to seek such an advantage. Take good ole Cherry Tree toppling General George Washington at the Battle of Trenton. His surprise attack across the Delaware River against the Hessians was a complete success and altered the course of the war. It also demonstrated Washington’s increasingly excellent grasp of strategy and its influence on morale. The Battle of Trenton galvanized his troops, and earned an enormous amount of loyalty, loyalty he truly needed after a long and mostly demoralizing year of campaigning. There is only polity I’m aware that has practiced sneak-attacks, jus ad belllum, on nations with which they were at peace: Japan. There may be others. If so, enlighten me. Sincerely.

To repeat, ad naseum, China has fuck-all history of acting this way. Zhuge Liang would rise from his grave and smite any Chinese leader who acted so dishonorably. Perhaps Gen. Wickert confuses China’s long history of attack through indirection, jus in bello, with sneak attacks, jus ad bellum, which would indicate he’s a pretty dim bulb.

Now, Wickert’s mentioning Army Air Force General Billy Mitchell’s prediction that the US and Japan would go to war was correct. It’s inarguable. But it’s Mitchell’s role as the father of the idea of strategic bombing that is problematic. The idea, refined, means a war can be won by air power alone. Only one war has ever been won by air power alone, the bombing campaign against Serbia to partition Kosovo. This air campaign was waged by Gen. Wesley Clark. The Serbs endured weeks of bombing and only relented when the US threatened to use ground troops. So, in a technical kind of way, it wasn’t won by air power alone. I’m already at a thousand words, so I’m not going to go into why such a strategy alone can’t win a war. The idea is problematic, nay, deleterious to US strategic thinking, inspiring ideas like missile defense and the like, which dumb down strategic thinking faculties in US generals, Air Force, Navy and Army alike.

The enduring use of the apocryphal story about the time the Soviet Premier asked the US President for permission to nuke China is another piece of history abused so frequently for so many different purposes I’m surprised no one has written a book debunking it. Historian Sarah Paine relays this Cold War anecdote for propagandistic purposes against contemporary Russia in this video. I didn’t go full monkey-mind listening to her, but I could not help but comment why this anecdote gained currency and how. I noted, 

“The story that the Soviets asked the USA if they could nuke China is a fable. It is pure balderdash and a piece of Cold War myth that has metamorphosed into having some aspect of historicity and it does not. It never happened. Never. It was a lie whispered to certain sections of the US public to be spread in preparation for the opening to China that Nixon performed in 1972.”

I didn’t get this straight from the horse’s mouth, but I got it from a flag officer who got it from Henry Kissinger himself and I am fully convinced of my long-since passed friend’s veracity. Besides, Sarah Paine is wrong about everything she says in just about everyone of her lectures. Why people listen to her is simple: she reinforces their preconceptions, offering no challenge or opening for revision. The worst kind of historian in my opinion.

Finally, there is this video interview of ‘historian’ Sam Biagetti by Katie Halper.Starting around minute 5:37 Mr. Biagetti states that he doesn’t really believe there was ever anything like a unipolar moment. He then adds that people “assume” hegemony is the norm historically. He adds, “when it is not the norm,” and further indicates his ignorance by implying multi-polarity is the natural order of interstate relations. My head near exploded. I proceeded to write in the comments a brief history of hegemony/empire versus multipolarity, beginning with the Greek city states prior to the Persian wars and up to the end of the Peloponnesian as the first multi-polar system, that was followed by a long period of empire. In hindsight, I imagine there was a sort of multi-polarity in Mesopotamia in the 6th millenium BC but I can’t get it all right all the time. I’m not immune to forgetting. Anyway, this is the gist of my comment on his ignorance of ancient, medieval and modern history, including the post-Cold War era:

Sam B. is super misinformed and/or flat out wrong. The historical norm is empire, or hegemony. Mulitpolarity is actually very rare. Here are the only historical examples of mulitpolarity: Greece pre-Peloponnesian war, roughly 650 BC through the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Soon thereafter Alexander conquered most of the known world and the classical Hellenistic world settled into empire and/or a handful of hegemonic powers. Likewise in East Asia, along the Yellow River basin in modern China, the Warring States period lasted from 475 BC – 221BC when Qin Shi Huang Di conquered all the warring states and united all of China. China has been a multi-ethnic empire to this day, ruled by rising and falling dynasties. As Luo Guanzhong wrote in his first sentence of China’s most famous novel: “”The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been” (話說天下大勢．分久必合，合久必分),” a statement that remains true to this day, even though the dynasty ruling now calls itself Communists.

There was a brief period in India of multipolarity, round about the time the Buddhist and Jain reforms of Hinduism gained traction. There was a handful of independent states along the Ganges River that warred against each other and made alliances when interests aligned.

Back in the West Rome’s rise acccelerated rapidly after winning the Second Punic War in 201 BC conquering the entire Mediterranean Basin by 14 AD, the basin remained uni-polar for a thousand years. After the fall of the Western half of the empire, conquerers ruled most of Europe, Charlemagne created the great Frankish empire. More unipolarity. The Eastern half of the Roman Empire, ruled from modern day Istanbul, lasted until 1453.

Renaissance Italy was a congeries of independent powers practicing a sort of balance of power multipolarity until France was invited into their politics and invaded. Empire reigned supreme in Europe for another two centuries. It was only until the peace of Westphalia in 1648 that the modern concepts of the soveriegn state, and the principle of non-interference in a sovereignty’s internal politics was forbidden, were codified by the international treaties signed in 1648. This concept spread throughout the world in the 19th century by the few states that could resist European colonization, such as Siam, Ethiopia (for a time), China and Japan and then grew exponentially during the decolonization era of the 1950-60s. But the successor states of the great Littoral empires of the UK, France, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese united in alliance under the auspices of a new hegemon after the second war of European suicide known as WWII: the United States, a hybrid-republican empire. It had one peer at the end of WWII: the USSR. But the USSR collapsed under the weight of mismanagement and stagnation of the 70s and recevied its death blow with Chernobyl. Had there been no Chernobyl glasnost and perestroika might have worked.

But by 1992 the US had no peer competitor, until the elite of the nation traded the foundation of its power, industry, to China for individual fortunes. It is unfortunate your interlocutor Sam B. is incapable of understanding post-Cold War history. Quite fascinating really. One wonders what subject of history he focused on, because geopolitics, war, empire, and the like are clearly not his strong suits.

Obviously my comment is a gross oversimplification, but necessary nonetheless. Miss Paine, Gen. Wickert and Mr. Biagetti are three easily found and disproven examples of the kind of a-historicity degrading political discourse in America.

As an historian myself, I am of course biased. So what? That doesn’t mean I’m wrong about this.

But how are we to learn to think with a national historical sensibility when the teachers of history in junior and high school double as the football and/or basketball coaches? You get what you pay for, and we aint getting nothing but shit. Our uniquely American scatalogical ignorance of history is dangerous, leads to easy political manipulation of an ignorant electorate and contributes to the rise of neo-quasi-racist belief system now taking over our public discourse.

These videos provide ample proof.

The State Of Play In Late 2025

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On November 3, 2025

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Let’s run thru the important points:

Domestically in the US the only issue that really matters is affordability. Food, housing and medicine. This will dominate the next few years, maybe even the next decade. Mamdani will win, he will be blocked from doing much of he wants by courts and the the State and federal government, and his future will depend on him making those who stop him the villains. The mid-terms and the next election will be fought in bread and butter issues.

China is going to win the AI race, as predicted. 

This is, again, because Chinese models are at least 90% cheaper to run, and mostly open source. Only a complete and utter moron would run their business using proprietary models where OpenAI or Anthropic can jack up the price any time they want or depreciate the model you actually needed. Even US startups agree, 70 to 80% of them are using Chinese open models.

American AI either bursts or causes a great depression. Or perhaps bursts and causes a depression. There isn’t any other possibility. They’re spending trillions so American business can mass replace their workers. If it works, it causes a demand depression, a great depression like the Great Depression of the 30s. Who the hell do they think will buy their products? People can barely afford food and rent, let alone fancy AI crap. When they’re homeless they aren’t going to be customers. Meanwhile the rest of the world won’t be buying US AI crap either, they’ll be buying Chinese open source AI crap.

The War of attrition is nearly won by Russia. Ukraine just doesn’t have enough men and drones, it’s that simple. Next year, absent a peace deal, the big arrow moves everyone was wondering about will happen and Ukraine will be forced into unconditional surrender.

Europe is done. They’re losing their industrial base and their tech base. The people are unhappy and turning to populist opposition, either left or right. The Eurocrats are using lawfare to make outsider parties illegal if they look likely to win. This will take some time to play out. There will be changes in government away from neoliberalism, and if they can’t be achieved peacefully there will be a lot of violence. The EUs only play here is to try and gin up a war against Russia, but if they succeed, they’ll lose the war.

China and the US are now co-equal powers but that won’t last. China is on the rise, America is gutting its own science, arts and intellectual base while immiserating its own people and keeping smart foreigners out. (Or throwing them out.) All the big spend isn’t on re-industrializing, it’s on an AI moonshot which probably won’t succeed and will burst, or which if it does succeed will cause a Great Depression.

I will remind you that rich people have limited real power. They can buy a lot of influence, but if government turns on them they are done, because they do not have private armies capable of standing up to the State’s military and paramilitary forces. If the political zeitgeist turns against them, the government can make any changes it wants. Ask various Chinese billionaires how things worked out for them when the CPC decided they were too big for their britches.

One way they lose their influence is simply by having a real, undeniable depression. They’re doing everything they can to create one. If the Fed can’t bail them out, they’re done. The Fed’s ability to print dollars is going away, they have at most one large bailout left in them. After that, they can’t, because if the dollar isn’t the unit of trade for the world, over-printing will be catastrophic. Dozens of countries have found this out, again and again. Money can’t buy what your country can’t actually do, and the US can do less and less—the rich people sold America’s ability to do things to China to get three generations of fake wealth.

We are moving towards the end-game. It will take ten to fifteen years to play out. The West will be immiserated, neo-liberalism will end, US power and Empire will collapse. There will be wars and revolutions around the globe, because the force holding the world in its post-war, post-Soviet collapse state, including such things as borders, is going away. China is not likely to engage in massive military operations thousands of miles from its border and has shown itself uninterested in what happens in other countries domestically, unless they’re countries very close to it geographically.

Covid remains a thing, more specifically long Covid. We don’t measure it much any more, since governments don’t want to know, but there are multiple data points indicating its still disabling people. (I’ll do a proper article on this at some point.)

Likewise climate change and environmental collapse are real and so are resource issues. Farmland continues to lose fertility, the food-web is collapsing, the insects and fish and bird and everything else are dying and species are going extinct. This is going to cause huge problem. 1.4 billion Chinese cannot have a Western lifestyle without catastrophic environmental issues. If this is not dealt with (and it takes more than some orbital spraying to do so), the era of Chinese supremacy is not likely to last.

China will take the complete tech lead in essentially everything and they will also become the premier space-going nation. They have actually reduced carbon emissions, a good sign, and are massively planting forests. It’s not enough, but they are the only major nation taking these issues at all seriously. They look likely to start moving industry and power generation to space over the next 20 years and if they can get space mining and refining going, that offers some hope. (This is not space colonization, and the idea is to make it self-sustaining off world minus biologicals. Dropping resources from space is easy, getting resources into space is hard.)

The major geopolitical and economic issues I have been writing about for over 20 years are coming to fruition now and will play out over the next ten years. End of Empire. End of Neoliberalism. End of dollar hegemony. End of Europe. Western economic collapse. It’s all happening, exactly on schedule.

The glimmer of hope for Westerners is that political change is also coming. Put crudely, there are three possibility: authoritarian corporatism wins thru a nasty surveillance and police state; right wing populists take charge and go nasty and mean, or left wing populists take charge and actually try to help people.

The third world will find a great deal more freedom than they’ve had for a long time. China will be the superpower, but at least for the first while seems likely to be fairly laid back about it. These countries, if they cooperate with China intelligently, will have a chance to really develop, in most cases an opportunity to make it to middle income status, since they will no longer be forbidden from the policies required to actually develop, as was the case under the IMF/World Bank “development” duopoly.

This is where we are, and where we’re going. Tighten those seatbelts and make what preparations you can. Remember that things like power and water and food will become more and more unreliable. It’s been a long time since the West and westerners had to deal with such issues, but they will be on the plate for at least thirty to fourty percent of Westerners within fifteen years in nations which do not make the turn correctly, which seems likely to be the majority.

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 02, 2025

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On November 2, 2025

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by Tony Wikrent 

 

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

MAGA’s 9/11 Is an Assassination — “Charlie’s death is like a domestic 9/11,” says Treasury Secretary

Ken Klippenstein, Oct 28, 2025

Within hours of Charlie Kirk’s shooting last month, politicos in the White House and lawyers at the Justice Department and Homeland Security scrambled to draft up back-of-the-envelope plans for a crackdown on their domestic foes, sources tell me. Illegal immigrants, anti-ICE protesters, leftists, trans people, gamers, Hamas supporters, Antifa; the administration had a hard time pinning down who exactly was the new enemy, so they ended up including them all.

But how to do it? How to destroy the “enemy within”? The answer was to frame the Kirk assassination and political violence generally as a national security problem and not merely one of law enforcement….

As one source close to the White House told me, the gruesome spectacle of Kirk’s bloody assassination was traumatic for the many administration officials who knew him personally; especially Donald Trump, who narrowly survived his own assassination attempt last year. Their anxiety about domestic terrorists walking among us, hiding in plain sight, is in large part attributable to this.

Asked if the murder was traumatic event for MAGA, Mike Howell, a former homeland security official and president of the Heritage Foundation-backed Oversight Project, replied simply: “100%.”….

The administration’s frantic planning session precipitated by Kirk’s murder was formalized days later in Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. Called “NSPM-7” by insiders, the sweeping directive targets radical left “terrorism” by relying on so-called indicators like “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” speech. (I’ve reported on the significance of NSPM-7 here.)

Banking compliance expert Poorvika Mehra told American Banker that NSPM-7 “is basically asking you to follow the money, but within ideological movements, and compliance teams immediately ask which customers put the banks at risk.” She anticipates that banks will respond to NSPM-7 by simply dropping affected clients rather than deal with the headache….

ICE following orders from far-right activist Laura Loomer

Drop Site Daily, October 27, 2025

British journalist and political commentator Sami Hamdi was detained by U.S. immigration officers at San Francisco International Airport while on a speaking tour, reportedly after criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Hamdi appeared to have been taken into custody following pressure from far-right activist Laura Loomer, who publicly claimed credit for the detention. Hamdi had just spoken at CAIR’s Sacramento gala on Friday and was scheduled to appear at the group’s Florida event the following night. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin posted on X that Hamdi’s visa was revoked and that he was in ICE custody “pending removal,” adding: “Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country. It’s common sense.”

Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases

Michael Scherer, Missy Ryan, and Ashley Parker, October 30, 2025 [The Atlantic]

How Designating Antifa as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Could Threaten Civil Liberties

Thomas E. Brzozowski, October 27, 2025 [justsecurity.org]

Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designations are one of the most powerful legal instruments in America’s counterterrorism arsenal. Originally conceived to combat international terrorist networks like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), these designations trigger sweeping financial sanctions, severe criminal penalties, and extensive surveillance authorities. President Donald Trump’s comments at a White House roundtable on “Antifa” earlier this month make it likely that his administration will designate this decentralized anti-fascist movement as an FTO — a move that would create an unprecedented expansion of counterterrorism authorities into the domestic political space….

Once an organization is designated as an FTO, providing “material support” to it becomes a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison, or life if the support results in death. The statutory definition of “material support” is intentionally expansive and includes providing: “currency or monetary instruments, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, personnel, and transportation.” Only medicine and religious materials are explicitly exempted.

The breadth of this definition reflects Congress’s determination to eliminate all forms of assistance to designated organizations. The statute applies to U.S. persons regardless of where the prohibited conduct occurs, creating global reach for American terrorism prosecutions. The Supreme Court’s decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project clarified that even speech intended to promote peaceful conflict resolution may constitute material support if provided to a designated organization….

Trump DOJ Charges House Candidate Kat Abughazaleh With Conspiracy for Protesting ICE

Jessica Washington, October 29 2025 [The Intercept]

The Department of Justice has brought federal charges against Illinois House candidate Kat Abughazaleh and five other activists for protesting outside of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview, a suburb of Chicago.

The 11-page indictment, which was filed on October 23 and unsealed Wednesday, accuses Abughazaleh and the other protesters of using “force, intimidation and threat” as part of a conspiracy to prevent an unnamed ICE agent from “discharging his duties” and to “injure him in his person or property.”

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Open Thread

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On November 1, 2025

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

The New Cold War Is Taking Form

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On October 31, 2025

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We’re near the end of our fundraiser, and now about $1,100 out from our fundraising target. If you read regularly and value the site and have the money to spare, please consider subscribing or donating. Over 10k people read this site every day, and it’s free, but it and Ian do take money to run. Huge thanks to all who have given so far, a number which is now slightly over 100 people.

This speech by Russian Secretary of State Glazyev is important, and underlines how the days of dollar hegemony are close to an end:

“The easiest way to stop the arms race is by ceasing the use of NATO countries’ currencies,” he stated unequivocally. “Because to the extent that we use the dollar, euro, and pound, we finance their defense expenses.”

He provided a staggering figure: “The total volume of [Western] monetary issuance last year was five trillion dollars. Of this, two and a half trillion dollars is what the Eurasian states, among others, have taken on. If we stop using these currencies… we will practically halve the financial potential of the global hybrid war.”

“In the US, their satellites have completely destroyed international law… The World Trade Organization is not functioning, the norms of the global financial system are violated, and the generally accepted norms of business ethics are ignored,” he said, endorsing the Belarusian-led “Charter of Multipolarity and Diversity” as the ethical alternative.

He announced concrete steps to build this new system, revealing that work is “already underway to create a large social network that would unite hundreds of millions, maybe billions of citizens, who are ready to adhere to traditional norms, ethics, and follow their commitments.”

But it’s not just about money. For example the Power of Siberia pipeline means more than a hundred billion cubic meters of natural gas, which once went to Europe, will now go to China. Europe gets to buy much more expensive American natural gas. African countries are kicking France and the US out, ending their base leases, at an increasing rate, and from Japan I read:

Japan must stop importing liquefied natural gas from Russia. It means developing alternative energy sources, including the restarting of nuclear power plants.

Even as the G7 countries are stepping up sanctions against Russia, Japan finds itself in the position where it is now procuring just under 10% of its LNG from Russia.

However, there is a chance that Japan will not be treated as an exception. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent has said that he is “expecting” Japan to cease energy imports from Russia.

Japan’s public and private sectors need to prepare to ensure that LNG availability is not disrupted.

Japan does roughly equal trade with the West, and with BRICS, with about a 2% edge to BRICS. This is a terrible position to be in, though I’d suggest that going with the rising powers rather than the falling ones is the way to go.

The problem is that America is forcing nations to choose. Playing both sides: trading with both, may not be possible going forward. There will be two payment systems, so simple financial sanctions won’t work, but other types of market controls like tariffs and import/export controls have come roaring back into use.

Trade that can be cut off or curtailed at any point, apparently arbitrarily, can’t be counted on. When one looks at America and China’s strategy, China’s is mostly “punch back”. They rarely initiate sanctions except in cases where a country chooses to side with Taiwan. America, on the other hand, is… erratic. One can’t make plans, because one never knows when the rules of trade may change.

This is another reason why I think joining BRICS and that trade bloc is the sensible move. The old “rules based order” as Glazyev has pointed out, no longer exists in practice: the rules change at a whim and aren’t fairly enforced. While this was always true to some extent (Canadians remember how the US just ignored rulings against it on softwood lumber) it has become so common that the rule is now “whatever the US wants, and who knows what that will be tomorrow?”

America is trying to force a clean split into two blocs. But the other bloc is richer, more trustworthy and arguably stronger. And if it isn’t stronger yet, it will be in a decade, guaranteed.

This also relates to America’s actions in South America, an attempt to try and keep the America’s “American”, which is bound to fail. But as the declining power America wants to use its military force while it still has local superiority and before China and Russia can sell or give local nations enough weapons to become effectively immune to US force.

This process is the culmination of one of the major themes of my writing for almost a quarter century. The US era of sole supremacy has now ended. It can no longer force China to do what it wants, and it can’t even keep the sea lanes open, as Yemen has proved.

The old era is dead. There will be a brief period of co-equality, then America and Europe will fade into has-beens. I thought at one point we might have a new real cold war. We will, but not for very long. America isn’t going to be as strong as the old USSR, it won’t be able to hold up its end, and its current policy is to bleed its vassals, especially Europe, white. That will make them virtually worthless as vassals and will most likely lead to a revolt sometime between ten and fifteen years from now, as the European standard of living collapses under de-industrialization and without its sub-vassals selling it under-priced resources.

Centuries of Western rule of the world are coming to an end, and the Middle Kingdom is resuming its accustomed role as the most important country in the world. It’s a fascinating change-over to live thru, if not much fun if one lives among the Golden billion, who are being demoted  to the Bronze or perhaps Copper billion.

Yes, Canadians Did—Did Think America Was A Friend & Yes, Trump Is Good For Canada

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On October 30, 2025

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These numbers are astounding:

36 per cent of Canadians currently view the United States as a friend, compared to 60 per cent at the end of 2020 and 89 per cent in 2013, and that 27 per cent of Canadians presently view the U.S. as an enemy, a number that stood at 11 per cent in 2020 and as low as one per cent in 2013.

Notice that 1% figure regarding the US as an enemy in 2013, and 60% viewing it as a friend as late as 2020. When I say I was a lone voice screaming that we couldn’t trust America, I’m not exaggerating by much.

My position was half “America has never been trustworthy to anyone, and it ignores NAFTA rulings and destroyed our aviation industry” and half “countries have interests not friends.”

The moment it wasn’t in America’s perceived interest to be friends, it wouldn’t be, and empires are always implicitly enemies of their vassals, seeing them as useful tools, not friends.

But I want to emphasize how grateful I am to to Trump. If he had played along, given the appearance of friendship while slowly screwing Canada over, the way most recent administrations have, Canada would have gone along with it. If the past 45 years have taught us anything, it should be that people will tolerate a slowly eroding situation for ages, the metaphorical frogs in the slowly heating pot. (Frogs aren’t actually that stupid, not being humans.)

Canada spent the 90s and 00’s making nice with China, then reversed on a dime under US pressure, arresting the daughter of Huawei’s CEO for America and slapping 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs.

Then came Trump with his talk of annexation and his lies about Fentanyl (the same lies being used against Venezuela, you’ll note. Trump is not very imaginative. One lie for all seasons.) The truth is that Canada is exactly the sort of trade partner that America should want: yes we have a surplus, but it’s because we sell oil and minerals to the US. In the far more important manufactured goods area, we’re net importers.

If we were to cut the US off from Canadian crude, multiple refineries would be shuttered and there wouldn’t be enough gasoline. (Ironically, Venezuela is the other big supplier of the sort of heavy crude these refineries are set up to use.) You don’t want it? You don’t have to buy it, it isn’t competing with US crude.

But lately Trump may have gone too far for even Canadian politicians, though to be fair, Canada has been far more resistant to tariff blackmail than almost any other country except China. Japan and the EU buckled far more easily.

Two important events: first Stellantis said it was going to move a factory to the US from Canada. Reshoring industry and all that. Canada and America’s auto industries have been integrated since World War II under the Auto Pact. This is why Canadian politicians were ready to hit China with that 100% EV tariff, they were protecting Canadian jobs since Chinese cars are half the price of American made ones.

Then, in response to Ontario Premier Rob Ford’s ad quoting Reagan as against tariffs, Trump slapped on another 10% tariff on Canadian goods, and stopped all trade talks.

Thank God for Trump. Canadian politicians want to capitulate, if they can get surrender terms that don’t amount to “you won’t be re-elected” and he keeps not letting them.

So word is that the Feds are considering ending the 100% tariff. Presumably the idea is to try for the same sort of deal Mexico got: assembly plants in Canada for Chinese EVs.

If we can’t have American car manufacturing jobs, why not Chinese? Bonus, happy consumers/voters when they can get better cars for half the price.

Trump just keeps giving, just not to anyone who voted for him who isn’t worth 7 figures. Canada should have been pivoting to China hard years ago, and now, thanks to Trump it may well happen.

I just hope that after Trump gets on his knees and begs Xi to let him off the China trade war hook, that he doesn’t let us off the hook and give Canadian pols a way to avoid the pivot.

All praise Trump. He’s a genocidal monster, has the attention span of a dementia patient and betrays anyone stupid enough to trust him who can’t afford to bribe him, but he may just save Canada yet.

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Development Politics in Central and South America

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On October 29, 2025

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

Most of you probably know I lived in Nicaragua for a time—about six months—overseeing renovations to my father’s house, where he lives even now.

Me? I’m no fan of the country, nor its politics, nor do I romanticize the pervasive, grinding subsistence poverty in the countryside and sad, soul destroying poverty in the cities. About two dozen rapacious families guarantee Nicaragua’s place as second poorest nation in this hemisphere.

Nicaragua is not without its charms. I have a deep respect for the people of one of three nations in this hemisphere who, one, told the United States to fuck off and two, have largely succeed in keeping the US at arms length. The Spanish spoken in Nicaragua is, in two words, incomprehensibly unique. They distinguish between beans and rice and rice and beans. Seriously they make up two distinct dishes, although I can’t tell the difference. They eat some crazy vegetables—they have ten different varieties of squash, which I detest. But, they know how to cook meat in ways as diverse as barbecue, stew, seared and broiled. Chicken, pork, beef (no lamb or goats) and of course gallino de palo (tree-chickens AKA iguanas) make up the usual tasty fare.

Nicaragua’s best aspect is its untapped collection of perfectly sized waves, best on the Central American Pacific Coast by my estimation; waves for beginners and pros alike. There is only one monster, which I’ll get to in a moment. Sadly (or not) the changes in the political situation between 2015-2025 have scared off most surfers and they’ve migrated to Costa Rica, which has some sweet waves and parts of Guatemala that remain damned near empty. But, I digress.

One late morning, completely disgusted after persistently being thrashed by the waves breaking on the beach at Popoyo—the barrels collapsed so rapidly I was unable to get all but three drops (and no, I was not surfing the A-frame point break Popoyo is famous for, as a beginner I had no death wish I’ve seen too many boards munched on that wave) so I gave up, hopped in the car and began the two hour drive back to Granada.

After 30 minutes drive on a dirt road I turned north on Nicaragua’s stretch of the Pan-American Highway. No fan of Latin music (the radio was off) my mind wandered along the amazing scenery. Volcanoes rose. Small villages disappeared in a sneeze. The olive shades of Lake of Nicaragua were seemingly endless. Isla Ometepe, an island of twin volcanoes, shot up and passed by just as quickly. A few small attempts at agriculture grew to my left and right. All disappeared in blur or blink.

But time passes strange in a foreign land and stranger still on the road. I pulled over next to an anemic sugar cane field, cut a small stalk, sliced it into three pieces and returned to the car. As I shaved the outer layer off and bit into the heart of the cane, two thoughts, as if in quantum superposition, occupied my mind.

“Damn, this is sweet!” Mundane, indeed, but the other was the “a-ha” moment my brain had been silently working out for the last hour.

“Holy shit,” I mouthed silently, “Nicaragua is full of a whole lot of nothing.” Sure, up north in the mountains they grow some mid-grade coffee. Tobacco growth is accelerating also. Why in the current anti-tobacco global climate I don’t know? But it is. Cassava is a major crop, it’s like a potato but tastes like a brown paper bag on a good day. True hunger makes much palatable, I suppose. Plantains and bananas are grown of course. And there are a handful of other root-like plants and squash-like plants that grow there also. The country imports most of its rice, but grows a lot of beans/legumes.

Later I shared this realization with my father who was as surprised as I was by the realization. He agreed. Of course, Dad and I think alike in many ways—father and son, best friends, traveled in 50 plus nations together—so we quickly developed a shorthand for my “whole lot of nothing” observation, calling it ‘low hanging fruit’ syndrome, LHF for short.

LHF came to signify the lack of economic development and general lack of entrepreneurial spirit in Central America. Now, not every nation on the planet is going to be entrepreneurial. Laos is an excellent example—and please this is not a criticism of Laos and Laotians. When I was there they just seemed to have other priorities, like Buddhism. But Nicaraguan’s? The Pinoleros—the preferred demonym of the Nicaraguans and it has not one whit of the pejorative to it—are natural, gifted hustlers, practically pure bred entrepreneurs who are imbued with a naturally prepossessing work ethic and quite a bit of chutzpah. In short: they know when to engage, when to toss out a bit of bullshit. They can sell with the best Wall Street sharks—I’d know—and they know how to make and keep money.

“Why then,” you ask, “is Nicaragua, the largest nation in Central America, making no economic progress and going backwards instead?”

Great question!

There are two reasons for Nicaragua’s penury. First, 90% of Nicaraguans live west of the Pacific slope or in the interior highlands. This population occupies only 38% of Nicaragua’s landmass. The remaining 10% of Nicaraguans live on a narrow strip of the Caribbean Coast or the Corn Islands. Almost two thirds of the country—62%— is uninhabited. Not that I am advocating the rapine of all the pristine tropical forest of the Caribbean lowlands, but far to little of it is being developed and far too many people occupy a very crowded Pacific slope. What is the cause of this underdevelopment? The Pacific slope is littered with LHF and to travel through the Caribbean Lowlands to the coast takes two days on very, very bad roads. Until there is significant infrastructure development that opens the lowlands to development Nicaragua will remain mired in LHF poverty.

Hurdles aside, development politics in Central and South Americ are undergoing a seismic shift. That’s good news for the Pinoleros, money is pouring in. It’s bad news for the USA because the cash is coming from China. As is China’s policy, the money comes with no strings attached, unlike American money with its persistent moral litany of “Do this, don’t do that!”

“Do as we say, not as we do!”

This is not what the Nicaraguans hear from China. The only real demand the Chinese make is on the bigger infrastructure projects. Chinese builders design it, and Chinese build it, hiring few, if any local workers—usually because they don’t have the skills. The Chinese also pay for it, mostly, and don’t lecture. The US can’t compete—not after 150 years of terrible behavior in Latin America. The conclusion, the only conclusion, one can come to in Nicaragua and many other Latin American nations is that the USA is losing influence and power to China. Big time. And fast.

We have a sustained current account deficit with Nicaragua of $1.9 billion. That means we consistently import more from them than we export. China is the reverse. Much of that is due to FDI (foreign direct investment). This investment doesn’t benefit China solely. At present China is building a huge new airport that’s primary goal is to displace the Avianca Hub in San Salvador as the go to airport in Central America. China funded it to the tune of $499 million. It will possess two 4,000 meter runways, long enough and large enough to accommodate Airbus A380 and other wide body jets. The airport is intended to act as a non-stop hub to Europe, Asia and all of South America. Ground has been broken and the expected operational date is sometime in 2028.

The Chinese are also going to help build out the road network to the Caribbean Coast. This will create many new opportunities. Ortega, for all his faults, brought about some serious land reform at the beginning of his rule, so the Caribbean lowlands are now open to just about anyone who has the gumption to settle them.

The decline in American power is as palpable now as it was during the COVID epidemic. The moment COVID was politicized I could literally sense our decline, it was so obvious. Now, under Trump II, the decline is accelerating. Even in our own backyard.

The jury is still out on whether it is rapidly relative decline or real decline. I think it is the latter, only time will tell. Just not enough time for my taste.

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