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Vladivostok was recently required to be called 符拉迪沃斯托克 on Chinese maps. China claiming that territory back one way or another does seem to be likely.
You're probably thinking of 海参崴.
In September China released a new map using the old Chinese name (Sea Cucumber Bay) rather than the transliterated Vladivostok.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/chinas-standard-map-is-a...
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> Russians don't seem to be having trouble running this war at all They’re fighting like a ragtag African army, not a modern combined-arms one. Their latest air-defence systems which they once peddled for half a billion dollars each are being taken out by old American kit. The front lines barely budged while Ukraine was rationing arms; Russia is quite literally liquidating its economy and demography for Pyrrhic gains…
I like your optimism but this time around "the West" is a de-industrialized society and if China stops selling tiny electric motors the drone warfare will be lost as the west can't produce this stuff. Everything is made in China, the factories are there even if the west holds rights and patents etc. The west is services heavy but there's little this expertise can do anything about blowing up people and vehicles.
American manufacturing is at an all-time high [1]. Are you conflating manufacturing employment with power?
> if China stops selling tiny electric motors the drone warfare will be lost as the west can't produce this stuff
Uh, I’m fairly deep into drone manufacturing in America. This is multi-level nonsense.
One: you’re confusing quadcopters with military drones, whose motors aren’t tiny and often aren’t motors but turbofans.
Two: we produce lots of electric motors and turbofans. In the case of the former, not at China’s scale, though far more autonomously (and thus easier to scale up if needed). In the case of the latter, far better and similarly quickly after adjusting for effective yield.
As a US taxpayer I don’t particularly like this. We rely on being the world’s reserve currency, and many things get more expensive, e.g., serving government debt. In 2000-2001 we were able to effectively bully three countries that were talking about moving away from the US dollar, but I am not sure if that works now. I have a lot of personal theories how my country can best cope with future geopolitical adjustments.…
forgoing foreign bases and limiting the US military presence to domestic only is such a ludicrous take that I'm willing to bet would have you laughed out of any room discussing defense.
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Atta boy for Beijing but Russians don't seem to be having trouble running this war at all. They still get their precision machinery and simply eat M instead of McDonalds. Stuff getting expensive is no different than the west really. Slightly worse living standards can destroy the western democracies as they shift to extremist politics but has no effect on Russian leadership.
> Atta boy for Beijing but Russians don't seem to be having trouble running this war at all. You're really not looking closely. In the beginning they were invading with tanks. Now they send Chinese golf carts and mopeds to the front to power the meat grinder.
Seems kinda wild that it took 2 years post the big sanctions for this to happen?
Also because Russia already had $50 billion stuck in Indian Rupee they cannot use. So they now use CNY of course, but even now a lot of exports still gonna be sold for USD.
As a US taxpayer I don’t particularly like this. We rely on being the world’s reserve currency, and many things get more expensive, e.g., serving government debt. In 2000-2001 we were able to effectively bully three countries that were talking about moving away from the US dollar, but I am not sure if that works now. I have a lot of personal theories how my country can best cope with future geopolitical adjustments.…
It's mentioned in the article, but the reaction to the sanctions seem fairly severe? Russian banks went down en masse, the spread of foreign currencies was larger than the official numbers, and people were queuing outside the banks to withdraw money. Of course, the Russian narrative is that this will hurt the west more than it will hurt Russia...
Huh? In what world?
> the Russian narrative
Dont say such things after saying stuff like you just did above. You people live in such a delusional false reality propagated by your establishment that its worse than 2003. Ukraine is 'winning' despite losing, Russia is sinking despite becoming the 4th largest economy and having major increase in real wages, US economy is 'doing fine' even as the number and size of the sunken US banks eclipse 2008.
China is gonna keep buying up Russia for pennies on the dollar. I wouldn't be shocked if we start seeing actual territory switch from Russia to China in the next few years.
See the Zhenbao island dispute, a Chinese land grab with changes up to 2008: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
How isn't "the West" shooting themselves in the feet with these sanctions when Russia is able to get the war stuff through Turkey/Kyrgyzstan etc when not able to buy and sell civilians stuff? Also, the Dollar and Euro can have effect on the Russian economy and tracked for intelligence only if they are used. I wonder if this will be considered a great blunder, looking back in few years. Forcing worlds most energy and…
what damage do you really think this does to "the West"? the lack of access to cheap Russian energy is the only thing I can think of, and that's a dependency better resolved now than punted to the future. had Europe never grown dependent on it, we might have entirely prevented the current situation to transpire
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I don’t argue with your main points except to question if it is worth the money now. I was in the defense industry for 25 years, and my comments above are just my opinions on what is in the best interests of the US taxpayer today in 2024. I am questioning the value of having 800 military bases in foreign countries in 2024. What was once a good idea may not be worth the money and resources now. What does the US give u…
If you really were in the defense industry for 25 years and you're making takes like that, I can only imagine you never worked on anything of consequence. This is like saying you worked in tech for 25 years and don't get what the big deal is about version control or CI/CD. Or at least that you have no idea how your business makes money or what your users want your code for. Explainable for a new hire, but for a 25-ye…
My friend, times change, and we need to re-evaluate the world situation, and what is in our best interests. Someone in this thread mentioned England’s reach of power. I am not an expert on history but I think England did a fairly good job of disengaging from being the world’s hegemony. It seems like we need to calculate our own exit strategy sometime, and hopefully several years from now.