I found this article to be much less interesting than the comment you linked, because it reads like the authors have bought in too much to the CCP’s brochures. In particular hugely underestimating the problems with their system and overestimating its desirability. In particular with things like it’s collapsing stock market and massive social turmoil.

Also, pragmatic interests always drove alignment more than ideology, even in the Cold War.

It has some good points but ultimately it cracks up over those fundamental points and breaks down.

Taking the moral high ground,
Russia agrees to extend the Ukraine grain deal again

That’s not what the moral high ground menas. Especially when Putin and several of his henchmen were stupid enough to admit they are conducting systematic deportations and de facto ethnic cleansing of the Donbas by way of deporting and Russifying children.

Which is a textbook war crime and has been since the start of the last century.

Rather, this is a matter of practicality. The global economy is not in a great shape already, and a lot of “the Third World” is dependent on Ukrainian cereals. Especially a lot of African and Asian countries that are typically reliable business partners with Moscow and have been willing to at least sit on the fence about it.

Refusing to allow the grains to flow out to them would push those countries into greater and greater instability, and probably force their governments and public’s to care more about Ukraine. And for various reasons that is really, really unlikely to go well for Putin etc. al.

So Putin and co decided this was the lesser problem. Both because it allows them to posture about their “reasonableness” and willingness to negotiate, and because it will minimize the risk of the Third World turning on them just as the first war crimes indictments came down.

Since they can’t prevent it the must accept it. Chto?

Russia agrees to extend the Ukraine grain deal again

Reasonable. I’m sure both Trump and DeSantis approve.

The Western elite’s policies on energy have led to a loss of energy consumption in Europe and the start of a painful deindustrialization in Germany, including threats to its natural-gas dependent, world leading chemical industry. It’s doubtful that addled suggestions for “climate reparations”—essentially a reinvention of Medieval alms for the poor—for minorities as well as less developed countries would be an easy sell among the West’s already beleaguered lower and middle class, who would have to pay for them. This alms-giving approach may appeal to the UN, whose head calls fossil fuel investing “delusional.” Yet developing countries, notes Bjorn Lomborg, get less than 5% of their energy from solar and wind. When World Bank and the IMF block coal, gas, and nuclear plants they are essentially guaranteeing that the poorest countries remain that way.

The much ballyhooed “green” apocalyptic drive to wipe out fossil fuels plays into China’s existing strengths while weakening Western economies. China dominates both the emerging solar and battery markets, and, through alliances with African countries and Asian nations like Indonesia, maintains a strong grip on the world’s supplies of rare-earth elements, critical for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles.

As Western financial institutions and non-profits push against most energy development, China invests in sectors that can generate wealth even in the poorest countries. It has already built a metal park and modern coal power station in autocratic Zimbabwe and hydroelectric dams in quasi democratic Lesotho, with other large infrastructure plants underway in the rest of Africa. At the same time, the Russian state affiliate Rosatom is exporting its nuclear-powered technology for plants in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt, whose El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant will provide power to almost half of its citizens.

Why would developing countries watch the U.S., the UK, and Germany struggling to keep their own factories and homes warm conclude that the West offers a good economic plan for their own development? At the World Economic Forum (WEF) confab in Davos, Switzerland in January, the head of the International Energy Agency insisted that renewables are “the energy of peace. The long-lasting solutions of our energy security go through renewables.” Maybe so, though most developing countries have launched a rush of new coal and natural gas plants in the developing world, while countries like the United Arab Emirates are placing their bets on nuclear power, which is anathema to many Western greens, while also making profits helping Russia evade sanctions.”

This is quite true. The climate crisis agenda is a drive to destroy the middle class in America and stop its rise in developing nations. The developing
nations aren’t buying it. Only by defeating this climate agenda is there any hope for getting the democratic world on our side against aggression like Putin is committing now. It’s as plain as anything can be.

IMO, the Progressives see climate change as their opportunity to install a worldwide system of feudalism – serfs and rulers – kind of like Mao’s China or Stalin’s USSR. A “Greta Game” indeed.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-new-great-game/

Your continued prattling on about Yanukovitch and Russia have left me less than charitable in certain areas.

And of course there is the Iranophilic policies of BHO and Valerie Jarrett that continue to this day, vis a vis Iran’s pursuit of the bomb and Russian involvement in that program. And of course Iran selling drones to Vlad.

But then you are pragmatic.

Not that BHO and Valerie Jarrett had/have a soft spot for the mullahs. Nope, that wouldn’t have played any role on how things have shaken down in the Middle East. Nope. (sarc)