black & white
Phriendly Pheverdream 77.7
My fellow Phrens,
Geopolitics are not black and white.
Some discussions are taking place in the twitterspheres and discord domains about the desire to remove Russia from the SWIFT system as retribution for their invasion of Ukraine. It seems that many EU countries agree with this, and it’s being held up by Germany, Italy and the USA.
This is a mistake. It’s obvious people and countries want Russia to suffer. Phon/ongod is not sympathetic to Russia, even with sturdy child bearing wife of Russian descent. To remove Russia from SWIFT will hurt them for sure. It will also be devastating for the economies of many EU countries. Russia is basically one big energy producer. That’s all it has optimized for. It makes the oil and gas, builds the shipping yards and ports, and sends that stuff out to the EU. They don’t have a prolific service economy, they don’t export many other things of value, its really just a big gas station. Now you want to tell the gas station you use every single day that haha, we’re getting rid of the way we pay you???
At the margin, geopolitics is contested through attrition of willpower. When you sanction one country you should try to harm them at a much higher clip than you’re harming yourself. There’s some prisoner dilemma shit going on here.
We’re facing record high inflation and already messed up supply chains. Day one of Sleepy Joe’s presidency he canceled the domestic keystone pipeline and greenlit the Russian pipeline. Now you want to remove the ability for Russia to ship out energy to the world? Yea its going to hurt Russia, but its going to be devastating at the pump for all EU and US consumers.
What domestic costs are you willing to incur to harm your enemy? Will you subject your citizens to 2x or 5x cost of fuel just to hurt Russia? What does this force Russia to do? China be eyeing Taiwan, and has been infiltrating their airspace. Maybe the Ukraine invasion gives China the greenlight to make a move on Taiwan. Mayhaps Russia recognizes China’s legitimacy in this move. Maybe your desire to cut Russia off of SWIFT just creates a prosperous common cause for Russia and China to develop a new settlement system.
Xi is not Gadaffi. China is not Libya. The CCP will not fall to color revolutions or CIA-armed insurgents. If they desire to build a new settlement system that will use Rubles or Yuan rather than USD then, well…the United States is screwed. The US’ main export is greenbacks. America doesn’t produce anything anymore. It consumes cheap goods made all around the world, especially China. Pushing your enemy to the point where their only logical next step would immensely and irreparably harm you economy is a silly endeavor.
Geopolitics is not simple. Smoothbrains prefer to parrot a single perspective that the talking heads on the screens feed into their mind. This stuff is complicated—there is always a give and take.
Maybe look at this perspective; all this focus on Russia, Ukraine, China, Taiwan is allowing MSM to not report on record inflation, supply chain crises and disastrous domestic policy. There are larger games at play than any one person could ever understand. Think for yourself. Step away from the screens and try to form your own mental model of the world without being told what you should think. Phon/ongod finds it helpful to do this on goatback, but to each their own.
phon/ongod out.