Another example that our guarantee of global trade is going away. This hardly got reported on.

Why is Billy Baldin in the mountains talking about an oil tanker?

I appreciate Zeihan's perspectives, but I don't always buy into his prognostication across the catalyst.

So China getting into a desperate spot? I'm with him. What they do in their desperation? I'm far less certain than he seems.

Same with Russia & Ukraine. I don't buy that Russia conquering Ukraine = European nuclear war.

I'm not saying he's wrong - just saying I don't share his presented certainty.

Same. I like listening to him, and his point of view.

I actually hope his predictions come true...but after a while, it somewhat becomes 'the boy who cried wolf'. He's been predicting the demise of China for years now, and they seem to be stronger than when he started.

AgGrad99 said:

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Same. I like listening to him, and his point of view.

I actually hope his predictions come true...but after a while, it somewhat becomes 'the boy who cried wolf'. He's been predicting the demise of China for years now, and they seem to be stronger than when he started.

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Seem to be is the key thing. China is a closed society that is tightly controlled and they expend MASSIVE resources on propaganda to the rest of the world. Does that mean that Zeihan is right? Not necessarily, but a lot of things he talks about are just facts that aren't changing. The key to listening to Zeihan is to focus on those facts that you very rarely hear elsewhere and then take the analysis with a grain of salt. If you look at him from that perspective he's great but you just have to be willing to roll your eyes sometimes and remember that he gets paid to consult by not only businesses but the CIA and other governmental agencies.

As for the video the point I was surprised he didn't bring up is that this seems to run counter to how China is trying to play peacemaker and got the Iranians and Saudis to stop fighting. It means the power struggles are very much still alive and China's influence is at best very limited.

The other point is we don't yet know if this is a one off message or a trend and the answer to that is going to be the real impact. One tanker is pretty meaningless but if Iran starts doing this regularly then others will also. That could actually benefit the US if we play it right (or realistically stumble into playing it right considering the idiots in charge). It makes our ability to protect shipping immensely valuable and countries will be faced with a choice of either building their own Navy (which almost none of them can) or giving us major concessions for us to provide that service.

I guess we will see.

Very well said.

The demographic tsunami coming for China can not be denied. This makes them very dangerous.

Quote:

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Seem to be is the key thing.

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Agreed.

But they are aligning themselves in a good position (for them, not us). Their partnerships with Russia (and others), their ability to get some countries off the US Dollar and trading with theirs. And their takeover of Taiwan seems to be a matter of time (which will greatly help their electronic/chip production, and keep them from falling behind).

Again, I like listening to Zeihan, and I hope he's right. I just dont see it quite yet. They do seem to be positioning themselves in way to defend against a lot of the issues he brings up.

Get Off My Lawn said:

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I appreciate Zeihan's perspectives, but I don't always buy into his prognostication across the catalyst.

So China getting into a desperate spot? I'm with him. What they do in their desperation? I'm far less certain than he seems.

Same with Russia & Ukraine. I don't buy that Russia conquering Ukraine = European nuclear war.

I'm not saying he's wrong - just saying I don't share his presented certainty.

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Yeah China isn't going to just shrug their shoulders and say Oh, well, we had a nice run. Russia is going to diversify the Chinese energy supply. I don't think this harms them near to the extend Zeihan says it will.

Feels like he is CIA...pushing lots of disinfo to calm the already distracted American public.

AgGrad99 said:

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Quote:

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Seem to be is the key thing.

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Agreed.

But they are aligning themselves in a good position (for them, not us). Their partnerships with Russia (and others), their ability to get some countries off the US Dollar and trading with theirs. And their takeover of Taiwan seems to be a matter of time (which will greatly help their electronic/chip production, and keep them from falling behind).

Again, I like listening to Zeihan, and I hope he's right. I just dont see it quite yet. They do seem to be positioning themselves in way to defend against a lot of the issues he brings up.

---

I think any country that relies on the Yuan instead of the dollar for currency is either incredibly desperate or incredibly foolish. Never, ever trust the Chinese to be an honest broker in business or to expect them to ever do anything that isn't involving their self interest. We will see though.

I still don't buy the Taiwan invasion being serious because it simply doesn't make sense as to how it could be accomplished numbers wise. I absolutely can see why China will continue to threaten to do so and rattle sabres as it makes them look powerful both internally and externally but actually invading a country as well armed and prepared as Taiwan is and with the allies it has it is insane because at best they have a 10% chance of success and failure would likely mean the end of the CCP. I've laid out the specifics on that on multiple threads in the past and honestly I haven't seen any real argument showing how China can successfully invade a country across 100 miles of water with over a million people in their military using weapons of equal technology. The only way it works is for Taiwan to capitulate and I don't see any way that happens either because capitulating means death for a lot of people, prison for more, and slavery for most of the remainder. It's not like China has been hiding the ball with how they handled Hong Kong or the Uyghurs or how the Cultural Revolution went down. Every person on Taiwan knows what a CCP takeover means.

I do think Zeihan is right though in looking at China as a dying power but a very dangerous one that is willing to do just about anything in order to maintain power including sacrificing hundreds of millions of their own people. We can never underestimate them because they don't look at life the same way we do. One of the biggest mistakes Americans make in particular is trying to project American values to people who aren't American. Much of the world sees life very, very differently than we do and values very different things.

This was a Marshal Islands flagged Suezmax tanker bound for Houston that is owned and operated by companies out of Turkey.

Anything Marshal Islands flagged is essentially American flagged lite. In other words the wal-mart production run of a product because it's cheaper for wal-mart and does the same thing.

not sure why everyone is focusing on the CCP and not the fact that in the last few years Iran has shot down an American UAV in international waters, launched ballistic missiles at our bases in Iraq, launched suicide UAV killing an American contractor like two weeks ago in Syria, they routinely fire missiles at tankers in the gulf or capture them,

and are close to building a nuclear bomb even though every President since GW Bush claimed we would never allow it.

WestAustinAg said:

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Feels like he is CIA...pushing lots of disinfo to calm the already distracted American public.

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His "Ukraine or bust" video sure felt like it had been commissioned. Out of nowhere he drops an uncharacteristic video which lacked his normal voice/style/hedging and says "if the proxy war is lost we're assured European nuclear war!" …just to resume normal messages the following day? I mentally flagged that one as inorganic. His tempering of the China risk feels similarly artificial given his reputation as a purveyor of doom pron…

HumpitPuryear said:

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Get Off My Lawn said:

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I appreciate Zeihan's perspectives, but I don't always buy into his prognostication across the catalyst.

So China getting into a desperate spot? I'm with him. What they do in their desperation? I'm far less certain than he seems.

Same with Russia & Ukraine. I don't buy that Russia conquering Ukraine = European nuclear war.

I'm not saying he's wrong - just saying I don't share his presented certainty.

---

Yeah China isn't going to just shrug their shoulders and say Oh, well, we had a nice run. Russia is going to diversify the Chinese energy supply. I don't think this harms them near to the extend Zeihan says it will.

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One ship means nothing. A broader movement of shipping being taken over or cutting off energy supplies though is something entirely different. It's too soon to tell but the reality is China isn't in control of that either way and it is definitely a major weakness for them. Zeihan is absolutely correct that A)China cannot exist as a modern industrialized country without massive amounts of reliable shipping and B)China has no way of ensuring that A will be in place without the US who is the only country capable of protecting worldwide shipping (and even we have limits).

China's biggest vulnerability is they cannot truly project power militarily. They can do all kinds of fun stuff in terms of finances and propaganda but it's all built on sand. Every agreement they are making and partnership they have in places like Africa or South America or wherever might was well be written in pencil. Any of those countries can just tell China "F You, we are just going to keep your money and property" and there isn't really much China can do about it. That's especially true because the US is likely to be sitting there stirring the pot on the other side and we CAN project power.

There are just a lot of different games going on simultaneously here and any one of them can shift the larger game.

ElKabong said:

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Very well said.

The demographic tsunami coming for China can not be denied. This makes them very dangerous.

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I think people are overemphasizing demographic "problems" (This goes for China and Russia).

So people predict that at worst China's population will have shrunk by 200 million by 2050. So worst case scenario, China will be spreading out a 200 million net loss over 25 years and still have 1.2 billion people before the birth rate evens out. I think China can still manage to tangle with America as the top global power with 1.2 billion people.

And that string of incidents when Trump was president where they were coming alongside with small boats and blowing holes in the side of tankers.

This is part of why I love F16: I can star all of your posts on a topic like this while we may argue without reconciling on a different topic!

I do think there's a way for China to seize Taiwan - but only through a huge cultural retraining to produce the soldiers necessary for a gorilla / insurgency war at scale. So realistically - the opportunity will close long before they'd be prepared to act which gives them functionally almost no chance.

aggie93 said:

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AgGrad99 said:

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Quote:

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Seem to be is the key thing.

---

Agreed.

But they are aligning themselves in a good position (for them, not us). Their partnerships with Russia (and others), their ability to get some countries off the US Dollar and trading with theirs. And their takeover of Taiwan seems to be a matter of time (which will greatly help their electronic/chip production, and keep them from falling behind).

Again, I like listening to Zeihan, and I hope he's right. I just dont see it quite yet. They do seem to be positioning themselves in way to defend against a lot of the issues he brings up.

---

I think any country that relies on the Yuan instead of the dollar for currency is either incredibly desperate or incredibly foolish. Never, ever trust the Chinese to be an honest broker in business or to expect them to ever do anything that isn't involving their self interest. We will see though.

I still don't buy the Taiwan invasion being serious because it simply doesn't make sense as to how it could be accomplished numbers wise. I absolutely can see why China will continue to threaten to do so and rattle sabres as it makes them look powerful both internally and externally but actually invading a country as well armed and prepared as Taiwan is and with the allies it has it is insane because at best they have a 10% chance of success and failure would likely mean the end of the CCP. I've laid out the specifics on that on multiple threads in the past and honestly I haven't seen any real argument showing how China can successfully invade a country across 100 miles of water with over a million people in their military using weapons of equal technology. The only way it works is for Taiwan to capitulate and I don't see any way that happens either because capitulating means death for a lot of people, prison for more, and slavery for most of the remainder. It's not like China has been hiding the ball with how they handled Hong Kong or the Uyghurs or how the Cultural Revolution went down. Every person on Taiwan knows what a CCP takeover means.

I do think Zeihan is right though in looking at China as a dying power but a very dangerous one that is willing to do just about anything in order to maintain power including sacrificing hundreds of millions of their own people. We can never underestimate them because they don't look at life the same way we do. One of the biggest mistakes Americans make in particular is trying to project American values to people who aren't American. Much of the world sees life very, very differently than we do and values very different things.

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I agree with you. But they are making proactive and productive moves globally, with regards to their own interests...even if it turns out to not make a difference in the long run, they're trying.

Regarding Taiwan, I wonder what their allies truly look like. If China goes in, do we actually go to war? That almost assuredly sets off a chain of events we've been trying to avoid for decades.

I hope Zeihan is right. And I hope China is a dying power. But they are making moves to prevent it, and wont go down without a fight (which is what scares me). I fear we won't have the leadership in place to make productive moves of our own (we certainly haven't recently).

Will we start to see foreign flagged takers re-flagged to transit the gulf?

Recall this happened in 1987 when the Kuwait reflagged a bunch of its tankers to US in order to facilitate USN protection in transit.

So if we start to see **** like that being thrown around, it's a good indication the **** is about to come unglued one way or another.

Get Off My Lawn said:

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This is part of why I love F16: I can star all of your posts on a topic like this while we may argue without reconciling on a different topic!

I do think there's a way for China to seize Taiwan - but only through a huge cultural retraining to produce the soldiers necessary for a gorilla / insurgency war at scale. So realistically - the opportunity will close long before they'd be prepared to act which gives them functionally almost no chance.

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Don't disagree with your point and no doubt China has been trying and has spies and insurgents in Taiwan. Taiwan also has spies all over China btw and knows what the CCP is doing (we help them with this as well). Taiwan isn't a foolish country and they know the dangers, they have been preparing for 70 years for this.

As I said I think there is a chance China could pull it off I just think it is no better than 10%. It would be immensely more difficult than Russia taking Ukraine because of the 100 miles of ocean and the level of preparedness of the Taiwanese though and it is also critical for it to work that China succeeds very quickly. A drawn out conflict with Taiwan simply can't work because the moment China invades even if the US doesn't send a single asset into combat they will almost certainly cut off China's shipping and there is almost nothing China can do outside of escalating to a full scale war with the US that they cannot win barring the US trying to actually invade China's mainland.

Like I said, China has a lot to gain by sabre rattling and acting powerful but an actual invasion is a very different scenario.

AgGrad99 said:

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aggie93 said:

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AgGrad99 said:

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Quote:

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Seem to be is the key thing.

---

Agreed.

But they are aligning themselves in a good position (for them, not us). Their partnerships with Russia (and others), their ability to get some countries off the US Dollar and trading with theirs. And their takeover of Taiwan seems to be a matter of time (which will greatly help their electronic/chip production, and keep them from falling behind).

Again, I like listening to Zeihan, and I hope he's right. I just dont see it quite yet. They do seem to be positioning themselves in way to defend against a lot of the issues he brings up.

---

I think any country that relies on the Yuan instead of the dollar for currency is either incredibly desperate or incredibly foolish. Never, ever trust the Chinese to be an honest broker in business or to expect them to ever do anything that isn't involving their self interest. We will see though.

I still don't buy the Taiwan invasion being serious because it simply doesn't make sense as to how it could be accomplished numbers wise. I absolutely can see why China will continue to threaten to do so and rattle sabres as it makes them look powerful both internally and externally but actually invading a country as well armed and prepared as Taiwan is and with the allies it has it is insane because at best they have a 10% chance of success and failure would likely mean the end of the CCP. I've laid out the specifics on that on multiple threads in the past and honestly I haven't seen any real argument showing how China can successfully invade a country across 100 miles of water with over a million people in their military using weapons of equal technology. The only way it works is for Taiwan to capitulate and I don't see any way that happens either because capitulating means death for a lot of people, prison for more, and slavery for most of the remainder. It's not like China has been hiding the ball with how they handled Hong Kong or the Uyghurs or how the Cultural Revolution went down. Every person on Taiwan knows what a CCP takeover means.

I do think Zeihan is right though in looking at China as a dying power but a very dangerous one that is willing to do just about anything in order to maintain power including sacrificing hundreds of millions of their own people. We can never underestimate them because they don't look at life the same way we do. One of the biggest mistakes Americans make in particular is trying to project American values to people who aren't American. Much of the world sees life very, very differently than we do and values very different things.

---

I agree with you. But they are making proactive and productive moves globally, with regards to their own interests...even if it turns out to not make a difference in the long run, they're trying.

Regarding Taiwan, I wonder what their allies truly look like. If China goes in, do we actually go to war? That almost assuredly sets off a chain of events we've been trying to avoid for decades.

I hope Zeihan is right. And I hope China is a dying power. But they are making moves to prevent it, and wont go down without a fight (which is what scares me). I fear we won't have the leadership in place to make productive moves of our own (we certainly haven't recently).

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No doubt they are trying and the stakes are definitely high. I think both the US and China will try very hard to avoid direct conflict. I don't think Taiwan really needs US troops though, they need us to keep selling them weapons and to give them intel. They also need to make sure they have a large amount of supplies built up to sustain a prolonged conflict because China will almost certainly blockade them but I can't imagine they haven't been preparing for those contingencies for a very long time.

As for the global connections as I said the problem is China has no ability to project power so all of those agreements are based on good faith. When I think of a "good faith" agreement between countries like China and Russia or China and Saudi it's hard not to chuckle. Agreements like that only have power so long as they are in both sides mutual interest because the moment they aren't one side will take great pleasure in screwing over the other side. No one actually likes China and China sees no one as their equal because they are an incredibly racist country fundamentally.

China had an existing deal with Russia, which upgraded its northern ports to handle petroleum and also with Saudi, just to diversify its supply. That was the point of the China-backed rapprochement between Saudi and Iran: to provide alternative, low threat sources for petroleum for China.

Peter Z is an alarmist..that's his shtick.

D-Fens said:

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Peter Z is an alarmist..that's his shtick.

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For many things. But for China he's positively bullish on their coming failure. Which isn't alarmism for the US audience.

This vessel was fully financed by pudong bank so they're taking the loss and chevron losing the cargo. 800000 barrels in a big ass tanker is a lot of ****ing money getting pirated by Iran.

What's Iran do with the supertanker and crude is my question? Do they simply send it to China or Europe , sell the crude at discount, and then operate the ship themselves? Seems to me like someone else could turn that around on them pretty quick like if they wanted to. The Indian Navy for example if they were willing to risk war. They are probably best postured to control
Shipping lanes between Iran and China. Maybe they take a cut in exchange for protection?

D-Fens said:

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Peter Z is an alarmist..that's his shtick.

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Have you read the demographic numbers he uses? If that part alone is correct we are in for a fall. Put in the other stuff and it becomes bad. That said he has too much faith in piracy and too little in the protection racket.

The US Navy will gladly protect your oil tankers for 5% of the total value of each load.

Problem solved.

Why wouldn't they? Were there repercussions for the first one?

Iran seizes second Gulf oil tanker in days as US tensions rise

Sanctions-hit Iran seized on Wednesday a second oil tanker in less than a week as tensions rise in the commercially vital Gulf waters.

A fleet of high-speed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) craft surrounded the Greek-owned Niovi as it travelled empty from Dubai to Fujairah, another port in the United Arab Emirates, the US military said.

The Panama-flagged vessel's seizure in the Strait of Hormuz comes six days after a similar incident also in the Gulf, which lies between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula and carries at least a third of the world's seaborne oil.

Iran gonna be doing its part by keeping the 5th Fleet occupied.