Fortress North America

 

Greenland, Canada, the U.S. and Mexico Comprise North America

North America, which stretches from Alaska in the West to Mexico in the South and Greenland in the North and East, is a land mass that enjoys remarkable advantages:

• Wide oceans to the East and West providing protection against invasion.
• The world's largest proven reserves of fossil fuels.
• A population of almost 500 million individuals.
• A high literacy rate.
• The world's greatest basic research institutions.
• Ample bank reserves and highly liquid public markets.
• A low population density of only 21 people per square kilometer.
• Climate that ranges from tropical forest in the South to arctic tundra in the North.
• Massive boreal forests.
• Ample arable land.
• The world's largest reservoirs of fresh water.
• The longest coastline in the world (over 95,000 miles in total).
• Proven reserves of every critical mineral adequate for all forecast demand for the foreseeable future.

In other words, if North America were forced by world events to cut off trade with other economies it could survive with few dislocations. Areas where dislocations would occur are the following:

• Cutting edge microprocessors, which are mostly fabricated in Asia.
• Critical minerals such as cobalt and lithium, which are largely imported now.
• Solar panels, which are largely imported now.
• Clothing, which is mostly fabricated in Asia.

How can we mitigate these potential dislocations? By using a combination of tariffs, tax credits and other incentives we can increase the production of chips, critical minerals, solar panels, and clothing in North America.

On the chips front, the good news is that a lot is already happening. The 2022 Chips & Science Act appropriated $52.7 billion to boost research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States. In March 2025 the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced an additional $100 billion in planned investments in U.S. manufacturing capacity, above the $50 billion they have already committed to spend. South Korea's Samsung, another advanced chip fabricator, is taking advantage of $4.7 billion in incentives to build a massive fab in Taylor Texas. The U.S. company Intel is building a massive new state-of-the-art plant in Ohio. The Chinese company Foxconn is currently building an assembly plant in Mexico to assemble NVidia's GB200 super-chips, which are critical for artificial intelligence learning.

Regarding critical minerals, like Cobalt, the picture is not as clear. Between the United States and Canada, there are over a million metric tons of reserves. However, less than 1% of the global production comes from North America currently. The majority of the world's production comes from countries like Congo, where lax or non-existent environmental regulations allow the industry to grow unfettered. Cobalt production generates large amounts of wastewater which is expensive to treat properly. In order to properly incentivize North American production of cobalt more action is necessary. Regarding lithium, North America also holds ample reserves, with almost 15 million metric tons available in the United States and Canada. However, North America produces only a tiny fraction of the world's demand for the mineral, for many of the same reasons as apply to cobalt. Clearly, further action is required on this front to ensure that North America is capable of producing the amount of cobalt, lithium and rare earth minerals that would be needed in the event that foreign sources of supply were cut off.

Through focused industrial policy, China has evolved to become the largest supplier of solar panels to the world. Solar panels are critical to provide a complete mix of energy and lacking adequate North American manufacturing capacity is a liability and security risk. Fortunately, all the raw materials needed to produce solar panels (silicon, aluminum, glass, copper and silver) are in ample supply in North America, so the main obstacles are economic. This is an area where tariffs and tax credits can be put to effective use to incentivize additional North American production capacity.

Regarding the supply of clothing, the news is promising. The United States has ample productive capacity of fabrics and threads, and Mexico has ample labor for the final assembly. However, even cheaper labor in Asia has undercut this industry, but tariffs can be put to effective use to make North American clothing more competitive in the marketplace.

North America sits in an enviable position on the world stage. However, as recent political upheaval shows, there are trade issues that must be addressed before this unified market can function properly. Most importantly, for the tariff structure that will incentivize the construction of new North American productive capacity to work, the tariffs applied to imports into Canada, the United States, and Mexico from nations outside of North America MUST BE UNIFORM. The unified market can be free of internal duties, but the duties for commodities entering the bloc must be the same, regardless of which member country is the importer.

North America is not just a powerful trading bloc, but it is also a powerful security bloc. For North American free trade to properly function, there must be control of the borders to properly regulate the flow of migrants and contraband, which is currently not the case. It is the responsibility of each member nation to protect its borders and to restrict undocumented migration and the passage of illegal substances or other types of contraband. In particular, the illegal trade in Fentanyl which is put into counterfeit pain pills with deadly results, must be stopped. Mexico in particular must crack down internally on the drug cartels that engage in this deadly trade.

Hopefully, the enormous value of preserving and investing in the greatest economic union the world has ever seen will be understood and the challenges it faces met.

En español

América del Norte, que se extiende desde Alaska en el oeste hasta México en el sur y Groenlandia en el norte y el este, es una masa de tierra que goza de ventajas notables:

• Océanos amplios al este y al oeste que brindan protección contra invasiones.
• Las mayores reservas comprobadas de combustibles fósiles del mundo.
• Una población de casi 400 millones de personas.
• Una alta tasa de alfabetización.
• Las mayores instituciones de investigación básica del mundo.
• Amplias reservas bancarias y mercados públicos altamente líquidos.
• Una baja densidad de población de sólo 21 personas por kilómetro cuadrado.
• Un clima que varía desde los bosques tropicales en el sur hasta la tundra ártica en el norte.
• Enormes bosques boreales.
• Amplia tierra cultivable.
• Las mayores reservas de agua dulce del mundo.
• La costa más larga del mundo (más de 95.000 millas en total).
• Reservas comprobadas de todos los minerales críticos adecuadas para toda la demanda prevista para el futuro previsible.

En otras palabras, si América del Norte se viera obligada por los acontecimientos mundiales a cortar el comercio con otras economías, podría sobrevivir con pocas dislocaciones. Las áreas en las que se producirían dislocaciones son las siguientes:

• Microprocesadores de última generación, que se fabrican principalmente en Asia.
• Minerales críticos como el cobalto y el litio, que ahora se importan en gran medida.
• Paneles solares, que ahora se importan en gran medida.
• Prendas de vestir, que se fabrican principalmente en Asia.

¿Cómo podemos mitigar estas posibles dislocaciones? Mediante una combinación de aranceles, créditos fiscales y otros incentivos, podemos aumentar la producción de chips, minerales críticos, paneles solares y prendas de vestir en América del Norte.

En el frente de los chips, la buena noticia es que ya se está haciendo mucho. La Ley de Chips y Ciencia de 2022, que asignó 52.700 millones de dólares para impulsar la investigación y la fabricación de semiconductores en los Estados Unidos. En marzo de 2025, la Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company anunció 100.000 millones de dólares adicionales en inversiones planificadas en capacidad de fabricación estadounidense, por encima de los 50.000 millones que ya se han comprometido a gastar. El surcoreano Samsung, otro fabricante de chips avanzados, está aprovechando incentivos por 4.700 millones de dólares para construir una enorme fábrica en Taylor, Texas. La empresa estadounidense Intel está construyendo una enorme planta de última generación en Ohio. La empresa china Foxconn está construyendo actualmente una planta de ensamblaje en México para ensamblar los superchips GB200 de NVidia, que son fundamentales para el aprendizaje de la inteligencia artificial.

En cuanto a los minerales críticos, el panorama no es tan claro. Entre Estados Unidos y Canadá, hay más de un millón de toneladas métricas de reservas. Sin embargo, menos del 1% de la producción mundial proviene actualmente de América del Norte. La mayor parte de la producción mundial proviene de países como el Congo, donde las regulaciones ambientales laxas o inexistentes permiten que la industria crezca sin trabas. La producción de cobalto genera grandes cantidades de aguas residuales que son caras de tratar adecuadamente. Para incentivar adecuadamente la producción norteamericana de cobalto es necesario tomar más medidas. En cuanto al litio, América del Norte también posee amplias reservas, con casi 15 millones de toneladas métricas disponibles en Estados Unidos y Canadá. Sin embargo, América del Norte produce sólo una pequeña fracción de la demanda mundial de este mineral, por muchas de las mismas razones que se aplican al cobalto. Claramente, se requieren más acciones en este frente para asegurar que América del Norte sea capaz de producir la cantidad de cobalto, litio y tierras raras que se necesitaría en caso de que se cortaran las fuentes de suministro extranjeras.

Mediante una política industrial enfocada, China ha evolucionado hasta convertirse en el mayor proveedor de paneles solares del mundo. Los paneles solares son fundamentales para proporcionar una combinación completa de energía y la falta de una capacidad de fabricación adecuada en América del Norte es un riesgo de responsabilidad y de seguridad. Afortunadamente, todas las materias primas necesarias para producir paneles solares (silicio, aluminio, vidrio, cobre y plata) están en abundancia en América del Norte, por lo que los principales obstáculos son económicos. Este es un área en el que los aranceles y los créditos fiscales se pueden utilizar de manera efectiva para incentivar una mayor capacidad de producción en América del Norte.

En cuanto al suministro de prendas de vestir, las noticias son prometedoras. Estados Unidos tiene una amplia capacidad productiva de telas e hilos, y México tiene abundante mano de obra para el ensamblaje final. Sin embargo, la mano de obra más barata en Asia ha socavado esta industria, pero los aranceles pueden utilizarse de manera eficaz para hacer que la indumentaria norteamericana sea más competitiva en el mercado.

América del Norte ocupa una posición envidiable en el escenario mundial. Sin embargo, como lo demuestra la reciente agitación política, hay cuestiones comerciales que deben abordarse antes de que este mercado unificado pueda funcionar adecuadamente. Lo más importante es que, para que funcione la estructura arancelaria que incentiva la construcción de nueva capacidad productiva en América del Norte, los aranceles aplicados a las importaciones en Canadá, Estados Unidos y México DEBEN SER UNIFORMES. El mercado unificado puede estar libre de aranceles internos, pero los aranceles para las mercancías que ingresan al bloque deben ser los mismos, independientemente de qué país miembro sea el importador.

América del Norte no es sólo un poderoso bloque comercial, sino también un poderoso bloque de seguridad. Para que el libre comercio norteamericano funcione adecuadamente, debe haber control de las fronteras para regular adecuadamente el flujo de migrantes y contrabando, lo que actualmente no es el caso. Es responsabilidad de cada nación miembro proteger sus fronteras y restringir la migración indocumentada y el paso de sustancias ilegales u otros tipos de contrabando. En particular, se debe detener el comercio ilegal de fentanilo, que se utiliza en analgésicos falsificados y que tiene resultados letales. México, en particular, debe tomar medidas enérgicas a nivel interno contra los cárteles de la droga que participan en este comercio letal.

Es de esperar que se comprenda el enorme valor de preservar e invertir en la mayor unión económica que el mundo haya visto jamás y se afronten los desafíos que enfrenta.

An Arab Riviera

 

Now that the Gaza War is winding down the hard work is set to begin.

President Trump has waded into the debate and proposed a "Riviera of the Middle East" in the Gaza Strip.

I agree that we face a unique, historic opportunity to rebuild Gaza into a prosperous, luxurious destination for world travelers to the benefit of the Gazans.

Here is my plan:

• Form a coalition between the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the UAE to finance the reconstruction and administer the territory.
• Quickly construct temporary housing for Gazans and their families where they can live during the reconstruction.
• Employ the Gazans and others to work on the reconstruction.
• Establish the principle of non-violence and disarmament to prevent future extremist violence, to be enforced by military police from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and UAE, and by military contractors.

This plan will provide safety, security and prosperity for the Gazans for generations to come.

Because of the troubled history and the distrust that exists between the Gazans and the Israelis, it is critical that the security be guaranteed by the US/Saudi/UAE coalition and that the administration and management of the territory be handled by this coalition.

While this may be viewed as a disenfranchisement of the Gazans, it is the only way to avoid allowing extremism to rise again, leading to another cycle of violence.

Time to Bring the War in Ukraine to an End

 

The Republican U.S. Senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance has publicly stated that the time has probably come to negotiate an armistice to end the War in Ukraine.

I agree with him. The opportunity for Ukraine to gain the upper hand came and went this summer and the front line has barely moved. Russia is deeply entrenched, they have access to a much larger fighting force, and the Russian economy has proven to be much more resilient than many expected. If Ukraine persists in seeking to regain all the territory seized by the Russians, they risk losing the entire country.

What might this armistice look like? First of all, Ukraine needs security guarantees from NATO and economic guarantees from the EU. For these reasons I support Ukrainian accession to both organizations. The Russians must repay Ukraine for the death and destruction inflicted in their illegal military operation, and the sanctions regime against Russia must continue until that debt is satisfied.

Will it be possible to negotiate an agreement with Russia that provides Ukraine with all the guarantees that it needs? I believe that it is possible. Russia has achieved is main military objective, which was to secure their claim to the Crimean Peninsula. The Ukrainians have only lost regions that have been historically pro-Russian (with certain crucial exceptions, such as in the area around Mariupol). And, both the EU and NATO largely favor Ukrainian membership, even though there do exist certain prominent detractors such as Orban in Hungary. 

What might happen if Ukraine continues to fight to a stalemate with Russia without a negotiated peace agreement? There are many possible outcomes, but a few seem salient:

• Western support for Ukraine wanes and the tide of war shifts to the Russians.
• Ukrainian domestic support for the war wanes and the tide of war shifts to the Russians.
• Putin dies and is replaced by members of his party who are even more hawkish than he, leading to more war and a higher probability of the use of nuclear weapons.
• Putin dies and is replaced by a more centrist government that returns the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk to Ukraine in exchange for Ukrainian recognition of Russia's claim to Crimea.

Of these four possible outcomes, only one is favorable to the Ukrainians and the West. It should be pointed out that the Ukrainians have prosecuted this war honorably and admirably. If the new borders of Ukraine are redrawn along the current lines of engagement the Ukrainians should feel no shame.

Hamas Needs to Lay Down Their Arms NOW

After launching their suicidal, murderous and self-defeating incursion into Israel (dubbed the “Al Aqsa Flood”), Hamas fighters have continued to fight the Israelis by any means at their disposal, even as Gaza crumbles around them. 

Their resistance is futile. If their aim is to continue antagonizing Israel until every square meter of the Gaza Strip is pulverized, then they are achieving that goal. But why would Hamas want to see Gaza in ruins and many thousands of women and children dead?

Informal analysis of Al Jazeera coverage shows that the Arabic-language feed offers footage of Hamas guerrilla fighters sporting Go Pro cameras poking their heads out to launch RPGs against IDF targets, and the English-language feed offers footage of the injuries that result from IDF responses to Hamas attacks. In other words, Al Jazeera is providing a message of "glorious resistance to the occupiers" to their Arab audience and a message of human suffering to their Western audience. These two messages cannot be separated, since the violent uprising in Gaza precipitated the IDF bombardment and subsequent invasion and every subsequent violent action by Hamas seems guaranteed to trigger a disproportionate reaction by the IDF.

Why is Hamas all but guaranteeing the complete destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants? Hamas seems to be desperately trying to draw neighboring countries into the fight to trigger a wider Middle East war. However, apart from increased activity by Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon and attacks by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, no other Middle East country has shown even the least inclination to wade into the conflict, which is quite understandable. Lebanon, Syria, and to a lesser extent Iran are all in the midst of severe economic crises. In Lebanon this is the result of serious economic mismanagement and the failure of democratic institutions. In Syria it is the result of the ongoing civil war, and in Iran it is the result of international sanctions.  While it is true that there may be a tipping point beyond which the anguish in the Muslim world grows so great that all instincts for self-preservation are cast aside and a wider war erupts, the longer the conflict goes on the less likely the outcome becomes.

While Hamas prays for a wider war, Gaza is getting pulverized, and its inhabitants buried under the rubble. As long as Hamas is able to resist the IDF the Israelis will not let up. Before every last Hamas fighter achieves martyrdom, I estimate that well over 100,000 non-combatants will be dead and the Gaza Strip will be completely uninhabitable. The "Al Aqsa Flood" has drowned Gaza in blood.

For that reason, I believe that the best course of action is for Hamas to lay down their arms and negotiate a cessation of the violence so that a process of healing and reconstruction can begin for a Gaza Strip that is demilitarized and free from violence. 

We Need to Hold Israel to a Higher Standard

 

According to the organization Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since the start of its large-scale war on 7 October, equivalent to two nuclear bombs.

The actions of Hamas militants on October 7th were horrific war crimes as is the Israeli Defense Force's (IDF) massive bombing campaign, which is killing and maiming huge numbers of non-combatants, including over 4,000 children according to the Hamas Health Ministry, numbers that have been independently corroborated by UN observers. Numbers that will inevitably rise as the bodies of victims trapped under the rubble of their homes are counted.

However, Hamas is a terrorist organization with no political legitimacy (there hasn't been an election in Gaza in over a decade) led by fanatics sworn to violence, while Israel is a liberal democracy that ratified the Geneva Convention. Western Democracies have every right, and indeed an obligation, to hold Israel to a high standard in terms of their respect of human rights and in their protection of non-combatants in the war zone.

Quite clearly, Israel has not taken into adequate consideration the risks to women and children of their bombing campaign in which they are ostensibly targeting Hamas militants and their network of subterranean tunnels.

However, as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (who led Israel on a previous expedition into Gaza) recently pointed out, it is impossible to reach Hamas from the air. Hamas is sheltering in a deep and extensive network of subterranean tunnels that bombs cannot easily reach, so the bombs only serve to destroy the buildings and kill the people living above the tunnels. The IDF, knowing this fact, have persisted in their bombing campaign with a seeming capricious and arbitrary plan whose tenor very early on seemed more rooted in rage and vengeance than in any legitimate military objective. The selection of targets has been hard to understand for outside observers. For example, the IDF recently demolished three blocks of luxury high-rise towers in a middle-class section of Gaza City. It seems as if the IDF is identifying assets linked to the Hamas leadership and targeting those for destruction.

All of this is regrettable. The Palestinians have long accused the Israeli Government of a disregard for human rights and Israeli prosecution of this war is causing countries all over the world, including countries like Spain who are allies of Israel, to call for a break with Israel. I fear that the damage to Israel's reputation and prestige in the world will last for decades after this struggle is over.

Apart from having responded faster to the Hamas incursion on October 7th, what could Israel have done differently? I have formulated an action list that I would have advised Israel to undertake:

• On Day One, secure the Egyptian border by entering Gaza in the South at Kerem Shalom and by sea near the Gaza/Egypt border, creating a secure zone along the border under Israeli control (to include the city of Rafah, population 160,000) in order to control who and what gets in, and more importantly who gets out, with the objective of preventing the escape of Hamas leadership and preventing them from rearming.
• Continue to supply Gaza with water, electricity, food and medical supplies, making it clear to the Gazans that they are not the enemy.
• Take time to mourn and bury the dead, time in which Israel can consolidate global public opinion in their favor and prepare the global consciousness for the coming conflict.
• Construct large refugee camps in the zone in Southern Gaza annexed at the outset of the conflict.
• Open up the camps to women, children and the elderly, focusing first on refugees from Gaza City.
• Enter the Gaza Strip in two locations: from the east between Khan Younis and Gaza City and from the north near the Erez Crossing. (This is how the IDF have initiated the land invasion of Gaza).
• Moving from north to south, and using artillery and air support as needed, root out the entire Hamas tunnel infrastructure with the goal being the complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip (this operation is currently underway).
• Remain in Gaza until a pan-Arab security force, led by Egypt, can be readied to take over security responsibilities.

It is regrettable that there has been so much destruction and death in Gaza. Revenge cannot and must not be a public policy, even if biblical. cultural and historical mores call for it (Exodus 21:23-27). The United States failed Israel, failed the Palestinians and failed the World by not talking down Israel from the edge when the rage and anger was at a crescendo. The Gazans (and Hamas alongside them) are trapped like fish in a barrel. There was no reason to move hastily. The operation could have been executed in a way that had the least effect on the Gazans, the greatest effect on Hamas, and the best reputational outcome for Israel in the eyes of the World.

Xinjiang Sanctions Hurt the Uyghurs

 

The U.S. sanctions on products produced in the Xinjiang Region will not be effective and will tend to harm the Uyghurs more than the Han Chinese.

Xinjiang is over 50% Uyghur and Uyghurs produce the majority of the goods there.

Sanctions against products manufactured in Xinjiang using "slave labor" will have a generally depressive effect on demand for all products produced in the region, not just those produced in prison camps.

Therefore, the worst impact will be on the Uyghur majority in Xinjiang and will only have a slight effect on Han Chinese generally.

The repressive policies in Xinjiang come out of Beijing and Beijing should be held responsible.

If sanctions are to be used, they should be on Chinese exports generally, not exports from the Xinjiang Region specifically.

Other policies should be studied that might be of assistance to the Uyghurs.

However, we should temper our expectations, particularly when we consider the abject failure of international efforts to free Tibet, which is a region bordering Xinjiang that is also subject to severe Chinese persecution and control.

Expand NATO to Include Russia

 

This is about as friendly as it got in Geneva.

While the United States and Europe have grown since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Russia has steadily gotten smaller and weaker, such that Moscow now commands 76% of the geographic area, 51% of the population, and only 26% of its former gross national product. This puts Russian somewhere between Mexico and Nigeria in terms of overall population and somewhere between Kazakhstan and Panama in terms of per capita GDP.

What Russia has in abundance are nuclear warheads (#1), geographic area (#1) and proven oil reserves (#8).

But, the clock is ticking on Russia, because many of those warheads date back to the Cold War and will soon be unreliable (and are exorbitantly expensive to upgrade), the Russian population is ageing and shrinking, the Russian economy is stagnant and in forty or fifty years future fossil fuels will become an anachronism, making all those reserves virtually worthless.

Vladimir Putin must be acutely aware of this predicament. It seems to me that he may yearn for the Soviet heydays when Russian power rivaled that of the United States. However, those days are long past, and unlikely to ever return. Today, Russia wields the purchasing power of the State of New York, which is not the hallmark of of a global superpower (no offence intended toward New Yorkers, of course, who similarly yearn for superpower status).

Geopolitically, the world is fast approaching a tipping point, where the center of the world, in terms of economic and military power, is shifting closer and closer to Beijing. Russia, literally and figuratively, straddles this divide. If Putin wants to see Russian greatness restored in his lifetime, does he hitch his cart to the economic engine of China or does he soften his tone and seek alliances with the West?

At the present, Putin seems to be eyeing China. For example, in December of 2020, Russian and Chinese heavy bombers flew a training mission that included a brief incursion into Japanese and South Korean defense zones, prompting the scrambling of jet fighters from both countries. In September 2020 China participated with Russia in massive military exercises in the Caucasus region of southern Russia. Most recently, in the lead-up to the Geneva summit, Russia conducted naval maneuvers near Hawaii while Chinese warplanes repeatedly invaded Taiwanese airspace.

So, is it too late to swivel the Russian gaze back toward the West? What can the U.S. and NATO offer Russia in exchange for an alliance and a lasting peace? Can we finally bury the skeletons of the Cold War and move toward denuclearization? Will Russia ally itself with the West as a bulwark against Chinese hegemony?

The problem lies in what fundamentally links Russia and China: authoritarianism. Authoritarian leaders do not like to share power within their sphere of influence. Authoritarian leaders can work with other authoritarian leaders without having to endure the constant, annoying buzzing of human rights groups protesting this or that abuse of human rights. Authoritarian leaders take pleasure when other authoritarians annex land and expel people (as long as it isn't their land or their people, of course). Authoritarian leaders seek to work with other leaders whose power is absolute in order to have confidence that their secret agreements won't be subject to the vagaries of the next election cycle.

So, at least from the perspective of two authoritarian leaders, Xi and Putin seem to be a match made in heaven, and what can the U.S. and NATO possibly offer to lure Russia into the fold?

It all depends upon Vladimir Putin and what he, in his heart of hearts, values most. Does Putin value the interests of the Russian people over the desire to see Russia command respect on a global scale, even if that respect has to be coerced at the point of a tactical nuclear warhead?

Unfortunately, the prospects of bringing Putin around to our way of seeing things doesn't look very good on that front, either. If you analyze Putin's domestic political strategy, he is certainly not seeking any sort of consensus of political views. He is actively involved in a war against progressive values and is accelerating the debasement of Russian democratic institutions. Putin is effectively a fascist dictator (think Stalin without Marx) seeking to rid the nation of "undesirables" and coalesce the population into a force that will do his bidding without question. In Stalin's time as many as 20 million "undesirables" perished during a period referred to as the "Great Purge" (out of a population of 168 million at the time, or more than one person in ten). Under Putin's leadership, Stalin's image in Russia has seen a tremendous resurgence. Today, 45% of Russians have a positive view of Stalin, a man who was the greatest genocidal megalomaniac the world has ever seen. Putin believes that Stalin was a man of "good intentions" and that the 20 million who died was a sacrifice that was justified by the country's great goals at the time.

So, it seems fairly clear that Putin's management style isn't necessarily a good fit for roundtable discussions with the leaders of the great Western democracies, as the failed summit in Geneva served to prove. But, what is Vladimir Putin's end game? It seems that he is starting to follow the North Korean playbook, another autocratic nation with nuclear weapons that periodically engages in bad behavior to try and keep itself relevant in a world that is literally racing ahead of it. If Putin seems poised to bet everything on China, what could China be possibly promising him in return?

It is starting to become clear that China is looking to escalate existing confrontations beyond the breaking point, particularly in the case of Taiwan and the South China Sea. Their actions in these areas, when combined with their brazen abrogation of the "Handover Treaty" that protected civil rights in Hong Kong and the consolidation of power around Xi, point to a probing and testing of Western resolve that seems to inevitably lead to the occupation of Taiwan and the full-scale exploitation of energy resources in the South China Sea. Either of these actions would lead to a break with the West and the imposition of strict sanctions against China which would effectively shut off oil from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. However, China has been slowly but surely transitioning from Saudi oil to Russian oil, up from 11% in 2014 to over 16% today, and is prepared to import more. When China decides to seize Taiwan they will be solely dependent on Russia, Iran and Malaysia for their oil supplies. Additionally, China dramatically accelerated their oil stockpiling when COVID-19 made oil cheap and are adding additional storage tank capacity at the rate of over 100 million additional barrels per year. In other words, China is preparing to lose access to its Saudi pipeline and will depend on its stockpiles, Russia and Iran for its supply.

Putin, on the other hand, would be in a position to demand a significant premium over market oil prices if China were become almost solely dependent upon him for oil. With China being the largest oil consumer in the world, this would be quite the choice customer to command.

So, the answer seems to be that Russia is allying itself with China in anticipation of the reunification of Taiwan with Mainland China and the geopolitical shock waves that this will create, in the interest of profiting mightily by supplying energy to China.

How did we get into this situation in the first place? When NATO won the Cold War and the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States and Russia had a unique opportunity to forge peace out of the fallen Iron Curtain. However, instead of working with Russia to develop their economy, build a democracy and to integrate economically with the West (like we had done at great expense with Germany and Japan post WWII), the United States and Europe virtually turned their back on Russia, gloating in their victory and instead focusing on helping the Soviet satellite states break away and gain their footing. Over this time massive Soviet-era industries were privatized and fell into the hands of the cronies of Boris Yeltsin for pennies on the dollar, financed by loans from European banks. These oligarchs are who now run Russia, with Putin overseeing everything. Instead of helping Russia to develop an evolved system of government they were left, essentially, to their own devices and Russia devolved in something akin to a Mafia State.

On the military front, NATO never altered it mission from one of containing Russia, even when the idea of containing Russia had become quaint at best and ridiculous at worst. Apart from its ability to launch a nuclear attack, Russia posed no real threat to the West. Toward the end of the Soviet Empire, the size of its military began to shrink dramatically, which only accelerated after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, Russia has 15,000 tanks versus the 55,000 that it had in 1990. In spite of knowing that Russia was a mere shadow of its former Soviet self, NATO kept its gunsights trained on Moscow.

I mentioned earlier that Russia, on a per capita basis, is not a wealthy country. Can you imagine if you were a Russian in 2010, earning less than $10K per year and having wealthy neighbors like Germany ($41K/yr) performing war games and continually expanding those war games into countries that were former members of the Soviet Bloc, right up to your borders?

How about when you, as a Russian, try to build a pipeline to export natural gas to Europe, only to have the United States oppose the project every step of the way on security grounds based on Cold War logic? Would you be made to feel that NATO and the United States wished to be your friends or were, in fact, rivals and antagonists?

I think you understand where I am going with this. Russia is in something of a sorry state for a country of its size and rich history, and that in and of itself is a difficult pill to swallow for the Russians. NATO needs to acknowledge this and reach out to Russia to facilitate solutions to some of their most enduring problems such as an extreme overdependence on energy production, weak governmental institutions and poor social cohesion (including the highest rate of alcoholism in the world and a declining life expectancy). We should be trading MORE with Russia, not less. We should be providing humanitarian aid and social services to Russia. We should be figuring out how to bring Moscow into Europe where it belongs.

If the NATO can openly admit to its mistakes and convince Russia to trust it we will pull an important leg out from under China's expansionist ambitions and will facilitate a free and modern Russia to the benefit of the European continent and the world.

If Putin agrees, of course.