Team USA would be well into the mid game.

I have been hearing lots of talk about Iran and it has been singularly focused on Iran as if they just popped up out of dormancy and need to to be taken care of.

When in fact the chess game transitions into the end game…..that is really what team USA is position itself force to defeat Team Chine.

The opening and midgame phases of this chess match it to do everything Team USA can to financially damage and choke them out from energy supply to weaken them as much as possible prior to reaching the third phase.

No more shadow fleet contraband oil. No more Venezuela oil, possibly no more Iranian Oil……. The Chinese must be sweating bullets now and are looking at their outcome of taking on the USA in 2028 or 2029 as an impossibility now. No oil, Free falling economy and no proxies to split the military forces up.

China may have to put off invading Taiwan for decades.

the dark fleet is very much alive and well. what makes you believe otherwise?

Why do you have SA lumped in with Russia and China?

They're one of our best allies these days.

GeorgiAg said:

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Gaeilge said:

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Why do you have SA lumped in with Russia and China?

They're one of our best allies these days.

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San Antonio.

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NO we ain't!!

Gaeilge said:

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Why do you have SA lumped in with Russia and China?

They're one of our best allies these days.

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Generally talking about areas. The cartels have been working with Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. Again just another proxy that could cause distraction's during a conflict with China.

sts7049 said:

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the dark fleet is very much alive and well. what makes you believe otherwise?

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They are alive and well, but they are not topping off in Venezuela and other European nations are aggressively going after that. Bottom line there is less oil making it to China.

China is sitting back, watching us burn through our missile stockpiles, isolating ourselves from our NATO friends, and studying our current capabilities. They're loving this.

LOYAL AG said:

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Jeeper79 said:

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China is sitting back, watching us burn through our missile stockpiles, isolating ourselves from our NATO friends, and studying our current capabilities. They're loving this.

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That's an incredibly simplistic view that ignores everything but missiles. China isn't interested in a kinetic war with us particularly now that we've cut off the oil flowing from their two most loyal suppliers. Even if we pretend they're more emboldened by us using large amounts of weapons they simultaneously know they have no oil except yet which we let them have. The past three months have shown the world China can't help you if you get cross with the U.S. There's no way to spin that as good for China.

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Chinese imports from Venezuela and Iran combined make up about 20% of China's total imports. So about 15% of their total oil consumption. This is expensive but not crippling.

I do believe there are broader dynamics at play, along those lines, OP.

I expect that getting Iran to assert formal control over the Strait of Hormuz and smash GCC members' civilian infrastructure in the region is the short-term destination for this part of the chess board (with Kharg Island knocked offline long-term). If China were to go after Taiwan, this would be the endpoint anyway (well, except maybe with the GCCs acquiescing to Chinese control if we're 1/3 of the world away). You can bet Iran would happily trigger these events at the worst possible moment for us vis-a-vis our armed forces backing up Taiwan. Better to do it now, on our terms, while we have 1+ years to reload, and obliterate demand for Chinese exports in the meantime. Also renewing the consummated hatred between GCC and Iran makes for a stiffer medium-term regional balance.

AIUI China is headed for demography-driven collapse, and their window to seize Taiwan will be fairly brief, <10 years. And Turkey is destined for regional dominance in the Middle East in that same timeframe. So we don't need a configuration that will hold for decades & decades; just long enough until China's too far gone to threaten Taiwan.

Jeeper79 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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Jeeper79 said:

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China is sitting back, watching us burn through our missile stockpiles, isolating ourselves from our NATO friends, and studying our current capabilities. They're loving this.

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That's an incredibly simplistic view that ignores everything but missiles. China isn't interested in a kinetic war with us particularly now that we've cut off the oil flowing from their two most loyal suppliers. Even if we pretend they're more emboldened by us using large amounts of weapons they simultaneously know they have no oil except yet which we let them have. The past three months have shown the world China can't help you if you get cross with the U.S. There's no way to spin that as good for China.

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Chinese imports from Venezuela and Iran combined make up about 20% of China's total imports. So about 15% of their total oil consumption. This is expensive but not crippling.

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I'm aware they buy from more than those two. It hasn't been three days since it came out they were buying from us. Why? Because they have to.

You're missing the bigger picture though I didn't do a good job explaining it. Two oil rich nations chose to align with China and eventually we got tired of the drugs and violence emanating from those nations so we removed their leadership. What did China do to help their "friends"? Nothing. Why? Because they can't.

For the past several years China has been trying their best to convince a segment of the world that they're a rival to the U.S. and that absurd notion has been proven false in a quarter. China isn't capable of rivaling us militarily and everyone now knows it. In 90 days the world has been reminded that we run the world and if you get cross with us there's nobody that can save you. That's most definitely not a win for the Chinese.

Now, K2 makes an interesting argument about our diminished ability to defend Taiwan due to how much munitions we've used in Iran and that may be true for a period of time. But what China now knows is if they move in Taiwan their oil will be cut off. That's still a massive loss for them. Deterrence is the best policy regarding China and Taiwan and they now know we'll act in a swift and decisive manner if provoked.

Bottom line is China's aspirations were about much more than Taiwan and those aspirations have been shown to be unobtainable by what we've done with Venezuela and Iran.

Yeah, but mean tweets...

My position continues to be that by mitigating threats early that (Hamas/Hezbollah in South America), shadow fleet, Iran and Cuba the USA and its allies can be focused solely on China to stop any expansion plans that currently have. China's growing footprint in Venezuela, and other SA countries will have one less political distraction domestically.

Now for Iran and its proxies…….when the time comes for China to push for Taiwan and all of the waters in between Vietnam, Philippines and upwards to Japan, the Chinese economy could in a state of collapse. Their economy is fragile. It makes the decision to wage war harder if your country currency doesn't buy much and its citizens are starving to death.

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. But here is the rub, it accounts for less than 1 percent of global oil production due to mismanagement and U.S. sanctions. If the China/Venezuela relationship was allowed to mature, through cooperation with China the production rate would only increase from 400,000bpd and could supply lots more oil to China. I am certain this disruption alone is blowing up Chinese financial forecasts and causing them great angst.

China could be able to source similar blends of crude oil from countries like Canada, and Iraq, albeit at higher prices that some analysts assert could be "unsustainable" for some Chinese refiners.

As for Iran; last year, China's Iran purchases averaged 1.48 million bpd, or about 14.6 per cent of China's imports, according to Kpler.

Now look at the disruption Iran is currently causing. Shutting down the SoH, flinging ballistic missiles that they weren't supposed to have, organized cells to apply asymmetrical attacks on USA and it weaker allies. If you are properly preparing to counter chines aggression you have to take Iran of the table. Even without regime change and stopping all attacks. Iran cannot re-establish itself in time to support Chinas aggression against the USA and its allies.

As for Sanction oil and the dark fleet, a report was recently given to Congress and the following high lighted points were addressed. Seized shadow fleet tankers delivered 69.3 million barrels of sanctioned crude to China, valued at nearly $4 billion, before U.S. interdiction.

China exploited Western sanctions to become the buyer
of last resort for discounted crude. Beijing has built a layered evasion architecture that protects sanctioned oil trade at the two points where Western enforcement is designed to bite hardest: the origin of the cargo and the settlement of origin. China built the shadow fleet's command-and-control system. Shadow fleet vessels create a cyber enforcement gap. Shadow fleet vessels carry Chinese and Russian military and intelligence personnel among their crews. From this sanctioned crude, China assembled a massive strategic
petroleum reserveroughly 1.2 billion barrels by early 2026. China needs to be put in a position to suck down those petroleum reserves, while trying to keep their economy going, keeping employment up, to feed the citizens and to fund a military.

We deny them adequate oil and gas now, it will time out nicely that the downstream effects will help to disrupt plans for expansion.

Jeeper79 said:

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China is sitting back, watching us burn through our missile stockpiles, isolating ourselves from our NATO friends, and studying our current capabilities. They're loving this.

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LOL. Yes. They love that 40% of their oil consumed daily is caught up in the mess that is VZ and Iran.

Jeeper79 said:

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China is sitting back, watching us burn through our missile stockpiles, isolating ourselves from our NATO friends, and studying our current capabilities. They're loving this.

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Isolating ourselves from useless militaries?

Venezuela and Iran are both proxy battles with China.

More and more the world is becoming bilateral. Two camps of countries....those that support US and W Europe and those that support China/Russia.

Ukraine was wavering and it was made to align with the US/Europe. Russia disliked that. Africa has been moving to China/Russia. So was S America. Some of that is rolling back to the west. Venezuela just moved over to the US. Iran is being moved to neutral or maybe even fully to the US side.

But all of this is about China trade, AI/Data Centers and key minerals and lastly Taiwan. Trumps need to negotiate from a position of strength. China and US meet next month to discuss all of these topics and perhaps develop a new world order with regard to trade, energy and Taiwan.

Trump, to his credit, has strengthened our hand. But China and the other axis nations aren't going to sit down and take his orders.

LOYAL AG said:

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Jeeper79 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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Jeeper79 said:

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China is sitting back, watching us burn through our missile stockpiles, isolating ourselves from our NATO friends, and studying our current capabilities. They're loving this.

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That's an incredibly simplistic view that ignores everything but missiles. China isn't interested in a kinetic war with us particularly now that we've cut off the oil flowing from their two most loyal suppliers. Even if we pretend they're more emboldened by us using large amounts of weapons they simultaneously know they have no oil except yet which we let them have. The past three months have shown the world China can't help you if you get cross with the U.S. There's no way to spin that as good for China.

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Chinese imports from Venezuela and Iran combined make up about 20% of China's total imports. So about 15% of their total oil consumption. This is expensive but not crippling.

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I'm aware they buy from more than those two. It hasn't been three days since it came out they were buying from us. Why? Because they have to.

You're missing the bigger picture though I didn't do a good job explaining it. Two oil rich nations chose to align with China and eventually we got tired of the drugs and violence emanating from those nations so we removed their leadership. What did China do to help their "friends"? Nothing. Why? Because they can't.

For the past several years China has been trying their best to convince a segment of the world that they're a rival to the U.S. and that absurd notion has been proven false in a quarter. China isn't capable of rivaling us militarily and everyone now knows it. In 90 days the world has been reminded that we run the world and if you get cross with us there's nobody that can save you. That's most definitely not a win for the Chinese.

Now, K2 makes an interesting argument about our diminished ability to defend Taiwan due to how much munitions we've used in Iran and that may be true for a period of time. But what China now knows is if they move in Taiwan their oil will be cut off. That's still a massive loss for them. Deterrence is the best policy regarding China and Taiwan and they now know we'll act in a swift and decisive manner if provoked.

Bottom line is China's aspirations were about much more than Taiwan and those aspirations have been shown to be unobtainable by what we've done with Venezuela and Iran.

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And then you factor their multiple defense tech failures in the last couple of months as well. Xi had to put down a coup within his own ranks and removed all but one of his senior staff during the coup. Those guys are all dead now. They also stopped reporting a lot of their metrics during COVID because they didn't want the world to know how much of a complete mess their country is.

Regarding your last sentence, China put out statements right before our VZ operation telling us that they were going to do whatever they want in the Western Hemisphere to undermine us and that we couldn't stop them. Sure, then we took out Maduro.

I've been saying this from the beginning that this is all related and a larger move by Trump to manipulate the new world order in our favor. Hell, this has been predicted by geopoliticists for over a decade now before Trump even became POTUS the first time. I listened to a Q&A with Sir Alex Younger and Ash Carter at least five years ago where they talked about this exact bi-polar world that we were gong to end up in.

Which would be the US fortifying the Western Hemisphere and building out Fortress America and continue to run Western Ideology and then China would run things in the East. None of this is new and anyone that rises up a level and looks at this strategically will see that.

The chess analogy makes absolute zero sense. It assumes each player has the same pieces. We have the ability to pretty much wipe the other teams pieces off the board if we decide too.

harge57 said:

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The chess analogy makes absolute zero sense. It assumes each player has the same pieces. We have the ability to pretty much wipe the other teams pieces off the board if we decide too.

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Probably, but maybe not all at all once. Even the U.S. military can get stretched thin. An ongoing conflict in Iran would hinder our ability to defend Taiwan if China took the opportunity to.

harge57 said:

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The chess analogy makes absolute zero sense. It assumes each player has the same pieces. We have the ability to pretty much wipe the other teams pieces off the board if we decide too.

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You must not play chess

FCBlitz said:

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harge57 said:

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The chess analogy makes absolute zero sense. It assumes each player has the same pieces. We have the ability to pretty much wipe the other teams pieces off the board if we decide too.

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You must not play chess

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LOL,

Maybe playing chess when you can just take the queen and both rooks from your opponent before even starting the game.

Science Denier said:

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FCBlitz said:

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harge57 said:

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The chess analogy makes absolute zero sense. It assumes each player has the same pieces. We have the ability to pretty much wipe the other teams pieces off the board if we decide too.

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You must not play chess

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LOL,

Maybe playing chess when you can just take the queen and both rooks from your opponent before even starting the game.

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BINGO!

I was speaking to the over game.

The opening game
The middle game
The end game.

You don't play chess with the strategy to take pieces. You play an opening, or counter an opening and then play through…..pieces are taken when blunders are made.