Arnaud Bertrand on X: "People don't realize just how dangerous this rhetoric is. This is in effect the US demanding China become hostile to Russia by stopping to supply items that "power its industrial base"... meaning asking China to join the West in trying to weaken Russia as a country. As a…" / X

Arnaud Bertrand on X: "People don't realize just how dangerous this rhetoric is. This is in effect the US demanding China become hostile to Russia by stopping to supply items that "power its industrial base"... meaning asking China to join the West in trying to weaken Russia as a country. As a…" / X https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1784098974477250629 Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand People don't realize just how dangerous this rhetoric is. This is in effect the US demanding China become hostile to Russia by stopping to supply items that "power its industrial base"... meaning asking China to join the West in trying to weaken Russia as a country. As a reminder this is exactly the reason why during WW2 Japan went to war with the US: the US at some point stopped supplying oil to Japan and this directly led to Pearl Harbor. Countries typically don't take it very constructively when you're trying to strangle them economically... The worst part is that the only rational they give China for doing this is 100% stick and 0% carrot: "if you don't do this we in turn will be even more aggressive towards you than we've been to date". With of course, in the back of China's mind the knowledge that the US's calculus is that they want to be done with Russia in order to fully concentrate on containing them. So they're presenting China with a completely lose-lose proposition: be hostile to your neighbor now so we can contain you faster down the line, or don't be hostile to your neighbor and we'll ramp up our containment now. How attractive is that? China will of course not start being hostile to Russia, in fact if anything this will convince them that the US is even more unhinged and unreasonable that they thought. It's very hard to predict what they'll do... An ideal scenario for China would be to secure peace in Ukraine on terms that are agreeable to all except the US, weakens the transatlantic alliance and unites Eurasia. By the way, objectively speaking this would also be the best scenario for Europe's interests because it stands to reason that a long-term Korea-style divide with Russia would be a complete disaster. President Xi is going to Europe shortly and I am ready to bet he'll argue for something along these lines. But the thing is that he'll be speaking to Europeans who, if anything, are even less reasonable than Americans so I don't think we can be very optimistic about that prospect... The more realistic scenario is that China does nothing and reacts to additional hostile measures against it in ways that weaken the US more than it weakens them. Some sort of Kung Fu move where you use your opponent's strength against them. For instance the US floated the idea of expelling Chinese banks from the global financial system: China, the biggest trading partner of almost all countries, can then say "from now on to trade with us, you need to use our system", which would be a big blow to the US dollar's status as the world's preeminent currency. All in all, we're well and truly in Cold War 2, which is pretty sad. Just like WW1 was really different from WW2, Cold War 2 is different from the first one: this time it's not an ideological competition between 2 blocs, but it is still a war in all respects except a direct military fight between the world's 2 largest great powers, which is what makes it a cold war. The key cause is because the US cannot bear to lose its global hegemony and wants to restore a unipolar order where they call the shots and try to transform the world in their own image... which is the very reason why it's a 100% certainty they won't succeed: to win a cold war you need to convince a significant share of the world that your cause is worthy and this is anything but. The whole world saw what happens when the US achieves unipolarity: insane hubris where they don't hesitate to destroy entire nations and kill millions in the process. No-one wants to get back to that, except maybe a few die-hard vassals in the West. China's cause on the other hand is a multipolar world order, an order where the US simply doesn't call the shots, something a good 80% of the world's countries can get behind. Furthermore China can point to 1,800 years out of the past 2,000 years when it was the world's preeminent power and never tried to submit the whole world: colonialism, transforming the world in their own image or being "the world's policeman" is just not in their DNA. So I think we can safely predict that this transition towards a multipolar world order is unavoidable, in fact we're probably already there. The question now is when will the US stop challenging this reality and start being a constructive actor in this new world as opposed to waging war and sowing conflict everywhere. And I'm afraid we can wait a long time for that... In fact it's already a de-facto characteristic of the new order: it's a multipolar world order with a revisionist power in its midst that wants to restore its former hegemonic imperial status. Quote