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Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "CaspianReport" channel.

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@BluffyMoo As for Taiwan, it'll be naval operation that occurs in China's backyard - directly in range of all of its assets, not just its navy but its airforce, missiles and parts of its army too. All of which dwarf everything from all those nations save for the US and South Korea - and South Korea won't be able to do much cos of North Korea.
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"They could have done that 20 years ago" - they did. Africa's first investors weren't Chinese, but western (and I mean even after the colonial period). They turned away from it because it was largely a disaster (look up the IMF's Structural Adjustment Programs for an example of this). But also, stop downplaying African agency - they aren't dumb. As a matter of fact it uses both western and Chinese financing - largely for different purposes, as suits their expertise. While you wring your hands over Chinese infrastructure projects - a space the west itself abandoned - look at where they get their funding for social spending i.e. the west. They use China for infra for two reasons - it's what China does well and they sorely need (bleeding heart liberals would like to believe schools are the only thing a nation needs lol, that is not even remotely true), and China doesn't dictate domestic policy to them for its loans (while the US hems and haws over the odd asset seizure, this is the flip side of that - rather than seize assets the West literally undermines sovereignty of the whole nation by using its financing to dictate policy to them).
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@ilan_nahshon It is a Jewish state. They themselves practically admit it cos the whole reason the one-state solution isn't acceptable to them is cos of the fear of the Jews being outnumbered by the Arabs. Them having non-Jewish minorities doesn't change what it is. Even the many Islamic states have non-Muslim minorities. The point is Israel is open dedicated to the Jews always holding the reins of power of the state.
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@kameronjones7139 You don't have an argument so there is no point in continuing the conversation. Touche.
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200k troops is not enough to control Ukraine, which suggests that they never intended to make it a part of Russia. They most likely had more limited goals, and will pull out (possibly to new borders) once those goals are achieved. In terms of annexation, the most likely areas are Donbass and the territory to the north of Crimea upto the river (so as to secure Crimean water supply which the Ukrainians were denying them uptil now) and maybe the southern coast of the Black Sea, NOT all of Ukraine. Maybe Ukraine will even be federalized, who knows?
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@revolution94ful War doesn't have to mean full nuclear war. A conflict over Taiwan for instance is expected to be a limited naval engagement, while a war with India would likely be a limited border war. Just cos both sides have nukes doesn't mean they'll use them. And that's already happened fyi - the Kargil war with Pakistan was between two nuclear armed states, and yet no nukes were fired in it.
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Btw, your relationship with Pakistan goes much further back than just the Afghan war. Ordinary Americans may not know nor care about that, but here in the region we know it well. For that matter your relationship with Afghanistan also goes much further back - indeed you're half the reason that country imploded all those decades ago in the first place (the other half being the USSR).
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@minhluong4596 The subject here is geopolitics. If they don't specialize in geopolitics, then they aren't competitors to Caspian Report. Which means you don't know anyone better than Caspian Report on YT.
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@MaskofPoesy Bruh, your taste is just that. For him, it's literally the money he needs to eat. It doesn't really harm anyone, so get over it.
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It's not gonna be completed until 2038 lol. While it will function at a reduced capacity even before that, it's not gonna pay for itself anytime soon. Keep in mind insurance costs in Iraq are quite a bit higher too, due to the instability.
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It isn't his line, in fact it never is. He just never provides attribution, even though the quotes are often quite well known.
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@stefandinu6389 The US being untouched is meaningless lol, as WW2 wasn't even taking place in North America. Russia faced the worst of WW2, and emerged a superpower by the end. Europe meanwhile saw itself collapse from it despite having a globe spanning empire to back it up. The US just sat pretty across the ocean.
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@danielbowman7226 Yeah, how did India figure in that list? It's fought five full-scale wars since its independence and the US contributed to none of them.
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@LaFonteCheVi If so, why don't you let the Chinese worry about that? Instead of saber-rattling all the time. The comment you responded to was itself simply a reversal of another, which both did not mention Xi and which you tellingly seemed to have no problem with.
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@jamielonsdale3018 Ordinary Scots weren't happy with it, hell plenty of Englishmen were unhappy about it too. It was the Scottish nobility that united the two, the sentiment between the peoples didn't flip one bit.
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@kameronjones7139 Since when was Korea, Greece or Turkey America? Again you're confusing your hegemony with your state, as the Pentagon is also wont to do.
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Yeah and guess which major foreign hegemony reduced them to this...
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@Ilyak1986 The nation that's been to war most since WW2 is the US, not Russia or Iran. The nation with the highest death toll in military interventions abroad this century is also the US. The nation that's never been held to account for any of that is...also the US. The UN is ineffective, but the biggest exemplar of its ineffectiveness is actually the US.
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@Ilyak1986 Lol. The nation with the highest body count is somehow irrelevant to the question of holding nations to account. Your choice of Iran is especially telling, as there's FAR bigger cases of rights violations elsewhere. What makes Iran stand out? Nothing really, apart from it happens to be an enemy of the US. That seems to be your real criteria here. It's also childish to imagine political power has anything to do with moral standing. Hence why the US is powerful despite its record. By your naive criterion Costa Rica or Bhutan would be the most powerful nations on Earth. They aren't, never have been and likely never will be. Power doesn't work that way.
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The US has intervened in Eurasia more often than either of these two have. Hell China's last war ended in 1979, the US' in 2021.
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@hitenshah821 They mostly aren't his quotes tho. Almost all of them are quotes of other people that he's re-using where appropriate.
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@andreiharkov5110 By that logic, technically the Russians won in Afghanistan too. Their army was dominant and the cities firmly under control. They were even busily building the nation up. But they just couldn't settle the peace in the countryside. Same as America. If we count the Russians leaving as a loss, so is America leaving.
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To be fair to China, the one-child policy wasn't some wacky idea. Back when it was adopted, population panic was in vogue in the West too (in many communities today it still is) complete with support for stringent countermeasures, and China's burgeoning numbers were at the heart of it. It was just that this was one problem the West wasn't responsible for (which is also why it's still such a popular clarion call today) and so the steps to combat were encouraged in places like China as well as India and much of Africa. What economists and demographers have since learned is that such draconian measures typically backfire i.e. do more harm than good - the West was able to comfortably learn that lesson merely theoretically since it never needed the changes to begin with, while places like China are now learning it the hard way. Population alarmism has been an albatross around the worlds' neck ever since Thomas Malthus first put forward the idea, and so far has never actually been borne out.
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It's hardly just oppressive regimes that do that. The democratic equivalent just passes the bill on to future govts.
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Why would they need to? China is still growing, even if a bit slower. And boosting domestic consumption has always been on the Chinese agenda - they don't like being too dependent on exports (especially to America) either. All this does is force them to expedite that shift. Meanwhile, the US isn't doing itself any favors with these tariffs - even the companies are just going to relocate to SE Asia rather than America, and the US leader responsible for pushing this agenda the hardest is likely to run out of time far sooner than Beijing will.
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@samthesuspect Battles? Lol. Do you think war is some sort of game people enter just to see who can kill the most people for the sake of it? Wars are launched for strategic (either political or economic or both) goals, and the US has failed to achieve its strategic goals on plenty of occasions. You even alluded to two of them in your comment, and since you mentioned Vietnam earlier, that's another one. Also here's a little tidbit that might enlighten you a bit, given your earlier comment that assumed the region was salivating at the chance to fight China for you. Did you know that only around a tenth of Taiwanese actually support an immediate declaration of independence? Yep, that's according to their own surveys. Is that cos they actually love China? No, it's cos they're being pragmatic. Support for Taiwan being fully recognized as independent is MUCH higher in the west, particularly America, than it is in Taiwan itself. Cos, like with so many of the US' conflicts, it doesn't have to live with the consequences, BUT THEY DO. For Americans it's easy - they can wax eloquently to themselves about being champions of freedom while also putting down their main rival at little risk to themselves. It's all upside. Even the possible disruption in chip supply chains is something they're trying to negate. That isn't the picture for Taiwan, or indeed for any of the nation's in the region, including my own. The US can sit pretty behind its massive blue walls, double sided port access and plentiful natural resources (oh, did you think America is successful just cos of the strength of the American spirit? Lol) and be relatively unaffected by any of the messes it causes elsewhere in the world. The people actually living there aren't so lucky. And they know it. Yet another reason why you staying far away in the Malacca Stait makes you look cowardly - it shows you're not even willing to risk the lives of your soldiers, given you're already risking little else. Oh and btw, the US has never fought a military peer since I think the war of 1812. The whole Cold War it never fought the Soviets directly, and was dragged into both world wars unwillingly. Hell there were people in Japan itself who doubted they could win a prolonged war with the US, hence the lightning strike attack they used to end it quickly. By contrast we have, and on our own. Hell we've even fought a nuclear armed state already. We lost one but won the other four. You fought a bunch of much weaker states and got tossed out by a bunch of guerrillas, ending with the govts. you fought to overthrow taking power, which is widely recognized as a loss. We don't rely on the West, and neither does Vietnam
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@tomgjgj Trump is merely building on (and, admittedly, also building further) the foundations of his predecessors - both Obama and Bush greatly strengthened, and used, the power of the presidency. The establishment doesn't like it only cos he doesn't follow decorum i.e. he isn't discreet in how he throws his weight around. In that sense, he's better (even if he's terrible) - better a naked demagogue than the 'politically astute' bs people like these authors usually prefer. They speak of 'norms', what they really mean is 'tact'.
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Ppl please stop responding to iqbal. He's been posting that same rant under several of Shirvan's vids just to stir the pot. It doesn't even contain any arguments. Don't feed the troll.
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@Scranny It doesn't make sense for any nation to have nukes. And Israel already has one of the most powerful conventional militaries in the region, as well as the backing of the reigning global superpower. They don't need nukes as well. Hell, Israeli nukes is the reason why Iran even launched its nuclear program in the first place.
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@chronikhiles Methinks you have a very rose-tinted view of early Youtube. The man needs to eat, just ignore the sponsor and enjoy the free video.
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Freed by the Allies, then suffered a civil war (that also featured foreign meddling, like everywhere else during the Cold War), finally started rebuilding, then got excited to join the EU but didn't qualify and so tricked their way in thanks to good old Goldman Sachs 'help', couldn't devalue their currency anymore now that it was the Euro, crashed horribly in 2008, and so now right back to the good old days of international financier domination and austerity.
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@vanrensburgsgesicht Yeah, there's even some people who were honest about it. Like the British Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, who freely admitted that he'd have been tried as a war criminal had the allies lost. So here's another (in)famous one-liner in the spirit of that: "The strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must." - Thucydides
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@bannedeverywhere 'korean dudes there wanted wifes and girlfriends' - but did the women want husbands and boyfriends? And I don't mean very rich or famous husbands and boyfriends. Can't work if only one side wants a partner.
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@MajinLiveTV Peter Zeihan is a sellout who traded in a respectable career in academia (back when he wrote books like Accidental Superpower) for a new career preaching America's infallibility to adoring American fans. He left the more critical environment he began his career in for a much easier to please crowd of non-experts to become a celebrity.
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@answerman9933 Bigtime US pastor it seems.
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There have been govt. programs to address all those issues all over the world, including in Korea. None of them worked. It's never been about how tough life is. The poor have the toughest lives of all, and yet they have the most children. While the super rich have the easiest of lives, and yet tend not to have any more children for it.
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@randomyoutubecommentersecu7639 You calling them 'savages' says a lot, and none of it to your credit.
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@fahimrind9714 Where did you get your 100 million+ deaths figure from lol? The Black Book of Communism? Lmao! Almost all of China's deaths, which are less than 100 million, come from Mao's time over half a century ago. Since then they've had just a few thousand deaths, mostly from Tiananmen Square (3000 - 10000, and that's not a Chinese figure), while having raised well over 800 MILLION people (and that's a WB figure) out of absolute poverty despite starting from penury. They also haven't been to war in decades, and those wars they did into all those years ago (Tibet, India, Vietnam, etc.) have far lower death tolls than most western wars (the Sino-Vietnam War, for instance, lasted a month and killed about 60,000 on both sides, while the American one lasted nearly two decades and killed over 3 million!). The numbers, at least from the last half century, are not on your side. And if you have to resort to attacking a half century old dead man, you've already conceded you yourself have sucked ever since.
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@dana8503 Err...China has a larger navy than the US already, albeit with less range, and has peppered the area with anti-ship defenses. Even the US' own generals have expressed misgivings about fighting China in their own backyard.
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That would not sit well with Brussels. Not at all...
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"A Confederation of African States would be a good thing" - that's just the African Union by another name.
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@francisedward8713 Actually neither Ukraine nor Russia started this mess, America did. They just couldn't stay in their lane. And they're going to be involved again when it comes to the eastern Pacific soon. Funny how that doesn't involve Russia or Ukraine or even Europe, but America is still in the middle of it. Wherever the conflict, America is still at the heart of it.
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@wlee9888 I'm FROM one those damn neighbours, Mr. Yankie. We've even actually fought a war with China. I rather think I've a feeling for China's aggression better than you do. And I didn't say China isn't aggressive, I said the US puts it to shame. Which modern history backs up. The difference is over what, and how it's treated. China has straightforward territorial issues similar to most other nations on Earth, and is condemned for putting even a toe out of line (tbf, most nations are condemned for aggression). The US doesn't even have territorial integrity issues, has the literally safest borders anyone could ask for, yet STILL manages to get into more wars than anyone else, and thousands of miles away from its homeland (one of the only nations in history to do that regularly, and the others are all former colonial powers), over mere geopolitical and/or ideological alignment usually dressed up in moralistic excuses (where I come from, we've heard plenty about the 'white man's burden', so I'm less than impressed by its modernized incarnations), and worst of all actually manages to sell that so that it actually gets away with its wars with not just a lack of punishment or repercussions but even still gets to put itself on a moral pedestal. China doesn't need any more condemning as it already gets plenty, it's the US that's lacking in that regard. A nation going to war is one thing, but there's nothing more infuriating than one that always pretends it's on a holy crusade for the greater good. And that's a big part of American culture, go look up 'American Civil Religion' on Wikipedia, and note the 12th Tenet of it. Fact is China hasn't been to war in decades, America is even now in several and yet look who the narrative is against.
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@infinidominion It's not that simple actually. For instance I've had comments disappeared that was then able to post just by splitting one large comment into many smaller ones. No change to the text, just separating it into smaller chunks. I think they're using some dumb AI as their mod.
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@MoralistaDefinitivo Not really. He's unusual, and so some world leaders weren't sure how to deal with him. But that's a short term advantage. His overall style of nakedly transactional foreign relations is also similarly short-sighted. Almost none of what he gains benefits the US in the long-term, and he's sacrificing a lot of long run good relations to get it (case in point being relations with Europe). Trump isn't smart, just brash. And people like Putin especially can easily deal with that (he's got practice from dealing with Chechnya all these years).
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@nataliamundell6266 India is NOT rich. It has a GDP per capita comparable to sone African nations, which was even lower in the past. India WAS rich once however, literally comprising a quarter of the world economy. Guess who came in and destroyed all that..
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They don't have an endgame, cos this is all basically to keep one man out of jail. The longer it goes, the longer he stays free.
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@Jondiceful China denies loans too, and in fact they've been scaling down their foreign loans for nearly a decade now. They've also renegotiated and/or written off many loans (both the How China Lends report, as well as another report by the Rhodium Group, have looked at hundreds of Chinese loans and found little backing for your narrative). The difference between them and the IMF is less about not caring about creditability, but rather not coming with strings attached - that's WHY these nations like Chinese loans more than IMF ones. Chinese loans are pure business loans - you borrow and repay. IMF loans come with conditions for restructuring your entire economy in line with their vision (look up the Structural Adjustment Programs to learn more on this) - and that 'vision' has often turned out to be terrible economic advice for the local population.
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@plendafuture7451 Giving credit to the original always matters. By not doing so he's presenting himself as wiser and more poetic than he really is.
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@damian4926 "Recently India cancelled massive weapons order from Russia and began talks with US, I wonder why" - stop using us to fuel your self-serving narrative. We've fought half a dozen wars with Russian weapons, all but one of them against US weapons, and won. Their weapons have served us well and we have no plans to dump our Russian arsenal anytime soon.
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