Comments by "Carey\x27s Corner" (@careylymanjones) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1.  @liveinsea1  Yes, because China is utterly dependent on imported, oil. 2/3 of China's oil comes from either Vladivostok or the Persian Gulf, by tanker. The Chinese Navy is utterly incapable of escorting those tankers safely. Tankers from Vladivostok must pass by Tsushima Island. The straits flanking Tsushima island are just 50 miles across, easy range for antishipping missiles. Tankers are big, slow, targets, and double hulls are no substitute for armor. No oil would get past Tsushima Island. The Persian Gulf is 6,000 miles from China. The vast majority of China's naval ships are small, short-ranged frigates, corvettes, and torpedo/missile boats, designed to operate in the China Sea. Within the China Sea, they are quite formidable, but they don't have the range to project power beyond the First Island Chain. If China's long-ranged navel vessels were to sortie beyond the range of China's land-based air and missile coverage, they would be quickly be engaged and destroyed by 4-5 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. With 2/3 of its oil supply gone, China's economy collapses. Half of China's remaining oil would have to go to the farms, to avoid famine. At least half of what is left would go to keeping the lights on. And the remaining fraction is insufficient to support military operations. You seem to be operating under the assumption that the US would engage in a land war with China. The only land front China could open would be South Korea. The South Korean Army is quite good, Korea's terrain is quite defensible, and as I explained above, China would be short of fuel to engage in offensive operations. No, America would fight holding actions, where needed, and concentrate on strangling China logistically. Without imported oil, aluminum, and copper, all of which China gets by ship, China cannot maintain a war. It could not provide the fuel its army needs, and it probably couldn't maintain production of military equipment. And of course, none of that considers the damage that economic sanctions by America's allies would cause. It's doubtful that any of the Persian Gulf nations, with the possible exception of Iran, would even sell oil to China. And once Iran was reminded just how vulnerable Kharg Island is, I doubt that they'd sell oil to China, either.
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  2.  @liveinsea1  Have you considered the effect that economic sanctions by America's allies would have on China. It's doubtful that the Persian Gulf nations would even sell oil to China, if we insisted that they not do so. Even Iran would be reluctant to make Kharg Island a target, by selling oil to China. Is China going to nuke the world, just because the Arabs refuse to sell them oil? I doubt that very much. China has nuclear weapons. And if China is determined to commit suicide, by using them, no one can stop it. But mutual assured destruction is a two-edged weapon that cuts the hand that wields it.
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  3. You see, it's a big club. We ain't in it. Whenever wages start to rise, the government lets in a flood of illegal immigrants and cuts tariffs to drive wages down. Trump broke that pattern, and the result was record low unemployment and almost 5% real wage gains for workers in the bottom quartile, more than Obama and Dubya, put together. And the Establishment of both parties opposed Trump at every turn. They'd rather have a senile old crook than someone who kept them from ripping off the lower classes.
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  4. There is more than one way to skin a bear. Russia has a bunch of Turkic minorities (Chechens, Tatars, Kazaks, etc.) that will soon be the majority. If some country, say Turkey were to start quietly arming Russia's Turkic peoples, how would Russia deal with it? Nuke their own territory to kill the rebels? Nuke Turkey? Turkey, I would remind you, is a NATO member. Maybe not a very GOOD NATO member, but Article V applies, nonetheless. NOBODY wants to be in a position where their defense is nukes or nothing. Russia already HAS that situation with regards to China, and it doesn't want the same situation on its western front, too.
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  5. "Infantry wins battles. Logistics wins wars." - Gen. John J. Pershing In a war with the US, China's logistics are COMPLETELY fv¢ked. China gets half of its oil from the Persian gulf, and another 10% from Russia via tanker. All of that goes away, either through sanctions or commerce raiding.
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  6. "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. " - U.S. Constitution, Article II Congress has to approve funding, but the President runs the executive branch. Executive branch officials who do not comply with the President's lawful orders CAN be fired. And with DOGE going through all the agencies' books, it's much harder for the bureaucrats to rebel against Trump. Regarding Trump's political capital, he's gotten pretty much ALL of his cabinet pics confirmed by a closely divided Senate. This indicates that the GOP Establishment has decided (with CONSIDERABLE encouragement from the Republican Party base) to follow Trump's lead. They aren't doing this because they suddenly fell in love with Trump. They're doing it because Trump won the election decisively, and polls show that about 70% of Americans agree that Trump is doing what he said he'd do. They also see polls showing Trump has higher approval ratings in his first month than he had in his entire first term. Trump spent his four out of power years studying what went wrong and correcting his mistakes. Comparing Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0 is like comparing Windows ME (generally considered the worst Windows version ever) with Windows 7 (generally considered the best Windows version). Instead of relying on GOP. insiders for personnel recommendations, he assembled a team of cabinet nominees who were skeptical, to put it mildly, about business as usual. His alliance with Elon Musk has identified billions of misspent dollars, particularly from USAID, which seems to have been a government slush fund for a variety of leftist policies that the American people don't like. Musk's threat to recruit and fund primary challenges to disloyal Republicans in the House and Senate has gotten them much more firmly behind Trump's agenda. Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can't even get four Republican senators to join him in opposing Trump And one last point I'd like to reiterate. Trump 1.0 faced semi-open rebellion from the bureaucracy. Trump 2.0 has DOGE watching the bureaucracies' computer systems. This gives him a window into their day-to-day operations he didn't have, before. He can tell whether money is going where it's supposed to. And he can tell when it's going where it's NOT supposed to. He has a team of cabinet secretaries who are skeptical about business as usual, instead of Trump 1.0's motley collection of "good ole boys" determined to maintain the status quo.
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  7. It was reported at the time, but nobody made a big deal about it, because the media companies didn't want to piss off the Chinese government and get their entertainment divisions banned in China.
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  8. Make Austria-Hungary Great Again!
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  9. India's Navy is capable of dealing with raggedy-assed pirates, and it could be a really sharp stick up China's @ss, if the two ever got into it, for real.
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  10. Political commentators are probably in trouble. ChatGPT writes better than most of them, and with a human editor to clean up the copy, a webiste could churn out commentary on all current topics with just a handful of actual people. Imagine the political pundit class, all working at MickeyD's asking if you want fries with your order? Oh, wait, MickeyD's going fully automated. I guess it's food stamps for them.
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  11. If the prison is bad enough, criminals will fight to the death, rather than surrender and be sent there. This will help further streamline the system.
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  12. The Internet has allowed voices other than the Establishment-approved media to be heard. If politicians cannot answer criticism of their policies without calling their critics Fascists, they're doing it wrong. The Soviet Union had tightly-controlled media which spouted the party line. How'd that work out for them?
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  13. What usually happens to third-parties in the US is that one of the major parties will address the new party's issues and steal their thunder. That didn't happen with immigration, in the US, which is how we got Trump.When the "respectable" politicians refuse to deal with a problem, voters look outside the establishment. The American Establishment has NO ONE to blame but themselves, for the rise of Donald Trump.
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  14. A special-ops team, launching drones, inside of Russia, is a pretty poor target for a nuke. "We had to nuke it, to save it." sounds just as stupid, in Russian, as it did when Peter Arnett made it up, during the Vietnam War. Russian rules for nukes bar using nukes on targets OUTSIDE OF RUSSIA, except in response to a nuclear attack on Russia. Nuking Kiev, for example would be WAY outside the rules. Nuking an invasion force, on Russian soil, is permitted. If, for example, Poland invaded, and was driving towards Moscow, it would be permissible (and expected) for Russia to respond with tactical nuclear weapons. It's been common knowledge for decades, that if China were to invade Siberia, they would be nuked.
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  15. Actually, he did talk about checking China's claimed exports against other countries' recorded imports. Those stats are collected by the various countries' governments. If ONE country says it imported less than China says it exported, it doesn't necessarily prove anything. But if a bunch of countries report fewer imports than China claims to have exported, it's far more likely that the Chinese are cooking the books.
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  16. Will the EU adapt or die? Yes. Next question.
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  17. You say that like it's a Bad Thing. Europe needs a wake-up call. America is TIRED of carrying Europe. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, it was necessary. It hasn't been necessary in over 30 years.
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  18. Energy independence tends to lower energy prices. Low energy prices tend to create broad-based prosperity. People don't spend as much of their paychecks at the gas pump. Store prices are lower, because shipping is cheaper. The establishment doesn't WANT broad-based prosperity. They want to be kings, or at least nobility, lording it over masses of peasants. Our entire system is rigged to keep the Big Guys on top and Little Guys down. Progressive taxation makes it hard to amass enough wealth to become financially independent. Regulations favor large companies, with battalions of lawyers to navigate them, over small start-ups. Public schools are crappy, allowing those who can afford private schools to give THEIR children advantages over the hoi polloi.
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  19.  @KevinLyda  If you're already through college, public schools are MUCH worse now, than they were when we were in them. Lower energy prices DO reduce the prices of other goods. Unless you produce EVERYTHING you use, you benefit from cheaper gas prices, because they make it cheaper to ship stuff. If this is difficult for you to understand, maybe your school wasn't as good as you thought. Generating part of your energy needs gives you at least some insulation against price shocks. But unless you drive an EV and generate ALL the electricity to charge it, FJB's energy policies are still costing you money. Gas is twice what it was, under Trump, and it would be higher, if FJB weren't draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to mask the effects of his policies.
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  20.  @GC-kw1gq  Neither will handing Ukraine over to Putin.
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  21. Short-haul water transport is more expensive, if goods must be moved any significant distance, either to the source port or from the destination port. The unloading, loading, unloading, and loading eats up any efficiency of water transport. Water is great for long-haul. For short-haul, not so much.
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  22. Peter has already talked about this. Globalists went to China in search of cheap labor. Chinese labor ain't cheap anymore. It's 15 times what it was in 2000. That's like an American who was making $30,000/year having his wages increase to $450,000/year. The Globalists are ALREADY bailing on China, for India and Mexico. Even Apple is spending half a billion to build a factory in India. Throw in the fact that China's response to Covid made Trump's mishandling of the pandemic look godlike, and China isn't even a RELIABLE supplier, anymore. As the Globalists leave China and build up Mexico and India, they will be able to undercut Chinese prices. Cheaper labor and more functional governments tend to do that. India and Mexico also have cheaper energy than China. The more companies decouple from China, the less painful it becomes to punish China. Punishing China is good politics, in the US, because China IS asshoe. Punishing Chinese exports will make decoupling easier, which in turn, will make punishing China easier. At some point, we will effectively close the US market to Chinese exports. As there is no other country with the consumer market the US has, there is no other country able to make up for lost Chinese sales. Chinese factories will close, and China's economy will shrink, possibly to the point where China will no longer be able to import the oil it needs to be an industrial power. Globalists made China a world power. Globalists are in the process of unmaking China.
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  23. And so, they forged the weapon of their own destruction.
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  24. Russia has a bunch of Turkic minorities (Tatars, Kazaks, Chechens, etc.) that will soon be a majority. If they rise against their Russian masters, will Russia nuke its own territory? And nobody wants to be in a strategic situation where it's nukes or surrender. Not if there's ANY other choice.
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  25.  @mkdmitry  Perfectly adequate, for a partisan force waiting by the side of the road. Blow the lead truck and the tail truck, and hose the cabs of the rest down with machine guns. Now the partisans are resupplied with food and ammo, courtesy of the Russians.
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  26.  @Pause_café_Avec_Dr_Djon  Globalism, as we know it, did NOT exist. Great Powers had exclusive trading networks with THEIR colonies, but it wasn't world-wide. The problem with trying to continue it, without the USN, is that the rest of the world's navies simply aren't up to the job. China's Navy doesn't have the reach. It's an overgrown Coast Guard. Britain and France aren't up to the job, either. They've downsized way too far.
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  27.  @arekkusub6877  Consumption is driven by young people starting out in life. They buy houses. They buy cars. IF they have kids, they buy lots of stuff for them. Retirees, not so much. They're on fixed incomes. They generally hang on to their savings with both hands, because they don't have enough income to rebuild them.
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  28. It certainly would, if FJB would release some longer-ranged missiles to Ukraine.
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  29.  @elinope4745  Prigozhin didn't kill himself!
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  30. Peter is a NeverTrumper. He's a Globalist, and Globalists hate Trump as few nominally human beings can. Trump took away their cheap foreign labor, and made them pay American workers American wages. It was INTOLERABLE!
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  31. You can't move nearly the volume of cargo that way. Do you think the Russians built the bridge because they just happened to have a bunch of steel and concrete lying around, and had nothing better to do with it? They built the bridge because the ferries WEREN'T adequate.
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  32.  @Bayard1503  China's "huge fleet" is an overgrown Coast Guard. 85% of China's naval vessels don't have the range to sail 1,000 miles, without refueling. It has two ski-jump Admiral Kuznetsov-class clones, and one proper CATOBAR carrier, Fujian. The Kuznetsov-clones don't have the range to reach the Persian Gulf, w/o refueling. Not sure about Fujian's range. However, Fujian carries no AWACS aircraft, leaving it vulnerable, beyond land-based air support.
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  33.  @Thanksforaskingme  Japan made trade deals with BOTH Trump AND Biden. They weren't particularly GOOD deals, from Japan's perspective. But some deal beats no deal. Japan learned the VERY hard way, that it's better to be America's friend than its enemy.
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  34. Russia and China, the Military-Industrial Complex's favorite boogeymen, are in a demographic death spiral, and probably won't be a threat in another 10-15 years, at least if we keep Russia from conquering Ukraine. That will REALLY crimp their style, far more than imported oil will.
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  35. If you think FJB is hoarding oil to ensure America's security, I have some bottomland to sell you. Just don't ask what it's on the bottom of.
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  36. Using a technique SINCE the 1880s has given us time to examine it, refine it, and compare it to other techniques. That's long enough to establish what the dangers are, and how to avoid them.
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  37. The US has grown steadily less globalist. Globalism got its start as a means of containing the Soviet Union, which has been gone for 30 years. Globalism has been a good deal for the American investor class, AND NOBODY ELSE. In the last 8 Presidential elections, the winner has been the less globalist candidate. Clinton beat Bush I and Dole. Dubya beat Algore and Kerry. Obama beat McCain and Romney. Trump beat Hillary, Biden "beat" Trump. Americans are tired of sending good manufacturing jobs to China and getting McJobs and cheap Chinese crap from Walmart, in return. They're tired of sending American soldiers and sailors in harm's way, so CEOs can afford to buy a third yacht. The world keeps telling America to fv¢k off. They won't like it, when we do.
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  38. "Crazy stuff" like not insulting Putin while trying to negotiate with him? "Crazy stuff" like reminding Zelenskyy (and Europe) that beggars can't be choosers? If Europe had taken Trump seriously, during his first term, and gotten its house in order, it would be in MUCH better shape, now. But too many American presidents coddled you for entirely too long (at least 30 years). You're like a baby who never learned to eat solid food.
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  39. And wind turbines maintain themselves. The blades NEVER wear out. ROTFLMAO! And let's not forget the environmental costs of mining the metals for the batteries they need to provide power after sundown, and when the wind isn't blowing, or it's cloudy. You wanna turn Africa into a toxic waste dump? Because that's what mining that much cobalt and nickel will do. But I guess Africa doesn't count, cos it's halfway around the world.
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  40.  @gregkelly2145  The helicopter will arrive safely if Allah wills it. And if He DOESN'T will it, whatchagonnado?
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  41. If Exxon has hard to get federal permits, the smart thing to do would be to produce their basic quantities of oil from the federally permitted lands, and use easily added private lands to handle surges in production. Your board of directors doesn't sound particularly intelligent.
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  42.  @ragingmonk6080  If I have a choice of several areas where I have permits, I'd rather use the harder to get "federal" for my base production, before the feds could change their minds and cancel my permits. For "extra" oil, over and above my base production, I'd go where it's easy to get permits, because I need THAT oil quickly, to respond to market moves.
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  43. Peter can ALWAYS be counted on to present the Establishment view. He is an unabashed Globalist, who mourns Globalism's imminent demise, because it made his corporate clients lots of money.
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  44. And maybe NATO should obliterate the Russian Army. Knock down the air defenses and let the A-10s fly. Highway of Death III. Be careful what you ask for, you might not like the retaliatory strike.
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  45. In the western part of the state, yes. The eastern part of OK has plenty of water. Lots of reservoirs.
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  46. Peter's already on record about the unlikelihood of any currency displacing the dollar. Nobody wants the Yuan. It's a scam currency.
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  47. Poor Peter. Calling Trump a Fascist didn't work. Calling Trump a megalomaniac didn't work. So now he's calling Trump a Peronist. Peter, get your meds adjusted, please.
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  48.  @ScottsGuitar  Russia may well limp away with a chunk of Ukraine, but they've been shown to be a toilet paper tiger. The Mighty Russian War Machine™ is a total fraud. If Russia didn't have nukes, NOBODY would care about them.
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  49. Fired federal workers can replace illegal immigrants. Learn to pick.
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  50.  @johola  Insults to their customer base. Specifically, referring to their customers as "fratty". Their most recent ad portrays their customers as too stupid to climb into a hammock without falling.
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