A planned staged show of unity collapsed disastrously into chaos, with diplomatic and economic shock waves rolling out of D.C. and across the globe. After a brief pause and no possibility of a signed agreement for Ukrainian minerals, Zelenskyy was asked to leave by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, once an advocate for the Ukrainian President.
“The free world needs a new leader”
How bad was the reaction from long-time allies? “Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, quoted in Bloomberg. “It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”
As the headline in the international Economist magazine summed it up: Europe’s Nightmare Is Here: They Have to Fight Putin Without the US
Shocked leaders across Europe quickly and publicly declared their continued support for the beleaguered Ukrainian President. Urgently trying to contain the fallout, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, hosted the emergency security summit on Sunday, March 2 with several national leaders across the European Bloc.
Unrestrained confirmation bias
Unchecked social media exploded in the wake of the disastrous Oval Office and its unprecedented quasi-diplomatic bar fight. Harsh divisive lines were drawn on platforms everywhere, with unattributed memes and “experts” calling their shots on what really happened.
Several opine that President Trump envisions raw power linkage between existing nuclear and economic powers of Russia and China. He specifically seeks to decouple Russia from China, a “no limits friendship” that includes China funding the grinding Russia war.
What’s really on deck?
As the Europeans find themselves shoved into a position of political irrelevance, serious concerns grow over continued Russia-China economic and military collaboration.
Is this public world-power slugfest of words masking something far more ominous? Is a foundation unknowingly being aided and abetted by the current Presidential administration that could set the stage for the cryptic biblical Thērion described in Revelation 17, a powerful, attractive and savage entity?
Why is the President so interested in Canada and Greenland? Among other reasons, with the Arctic rapidly warming up, the possibly of a more cost-effective alternative to the Suez Canal warms up with it. Ships transiting across new sea lanes in the Arctic Circle can potentially reducing transit times between Europe and Asia from by nine days. If forecasts are correct, the Arctic sea lane – together with fresh claims of passage by Chinese vessels – may benefit as early as 2030 by an ice-free summer.
What does this mean? With supply chain issues in waterway access and availability of rare minerals to sustain global tech manufacturing (including items like the device you’re reading this on), such shifting developments hold world-changing portent.
Two colossal special economic zones rise on the eastern shores of Russia and China that can open new dynamic ports on the Sea of Japan with deep-water drafts for ocean-going ships. The formerly contested Bolshoy Ussuriyski Island in far east Russia (called Heixiazi Island in China) is today the site of a new major joint development project that can foster an international transport corridor. Such access would help relieve the loss of Russia’s European markets, which are largely presently closed because of American-dollar-backed sanctions.
$2 trillion in tax havens
For well over a decade, massive corporations and the uber-rich have sheltered income across the globe in veiled tax havens, artificially reducing their tax liability on immense profits and cash flow. With few exceptions, major Fortune 500 corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Disney, Intel, Johnson & Johnson and more have sheltered cash in offshore accounts.
Will Presidential reforms capture and re-introduce these offshore funds back into a sputtering American economy (especially if Trump-imposed tariffs ignite fresh inflation and squeeze American consumers)? Will a possible reduction in burgeoning deficits – sealed further by the extension of the previous Trump tax cuts – be achieved through the closing of tax haven permanent investments in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore, the British Virgin Islands, and Cayman Islands?
Retrocession?
As U.S. consumers express alarm over economic uncertainty (and the possible contraction of U.S. GDP as early as the next quarter of 2025), long-time Stanford strategist Edward Luttwack opines yes on X/Twitter: “There really is a painless way of increasing tax revenues without depressing economic activity: force the retrocession of money parked in tax heavens to national jurisdictions, starting with the US.”
And what about the emerging potential of a BRICS currency supplanting the dollar as global currency? (more to come on that issue).
No dates, no prognostications in this column. But events gather steam. And deserve examination.
“A new era of barbarity”
“A new era of barbarity has begun,” declared German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Berlin on March 1. “An era of barbarity in which the rules-based international order and the rule of law must defend themselves more than ever before against the power of the mighty.”
Time to brace for impact?