China's Brushback Pitch Against NATO

A Warning From China 

In a post last month ("Stopping The Sleep Walk Into World War III"), we mentioned Ron Unz's idea for how Russia could reestablish deterrence against NATO in light of recent escalations. 

Now, it looks like China has stepped in with its own attempt to deter NATO, as Balaji Srinivasan lays out in the X thread below. Before we get to that, a brief reminder of who Srinivasan is, for those who may be unfamiliar with him.

Srinivasan has bachelors, masters, and PhD degrees from Stanford in electrical engineering, as well as another masters from Stanford in chemical engineering. He cofounded a genetics startup, became a general partner in one of Silicon Valley's top venture capital firms, and was the first CTO of Coinbase. He's also something of a political theorist as the author of The Network State. 

Now on to his thread. 

The full text of that second post reads, 

Further context is that Belarus just joined SCO, which is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It's similar to BRICS, but is more focused on Eurasia and Central Asia.

In terms of the meaning of it, China is being passive aggressive about the exercise. But Belarus is much more explicit:

At a press briefing on Friday, Vladimir Kupriyanyuk, the deputy head of the general staff of Belarus’s armed forces, said that the joint exercise [with China] was a response to “the aggressive foreign policy of the West towards the Union State of Belarus and Russia.”

Anyway, seems like an important escalation. Some links below.

1. https://en.apa.az/europe/china-belarus-start-joint-military-drills-near-polish-border-442249
2. https://tvpworld.com/79192505/chinabelarus-joint-military-training-starts-near-polish-border
3. https://www.politico.eu/article/china-bealrus-polish-border-nato-summit-drill-ukraine-russia-war-defense-aggression-fight-ministry/

Srinivasan also linked to this post, by the British economist Philip Pilkington:

A Hope For De-Escalation

President of Hungary Viktor Orbán, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of EU, has been the lone Western leader engaging in high-level shuttle diplomacy between Kiev, Moscow, and Beijing. 

And he is of course friends with the once and possibly future President of the United States, Donald Trump. 

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