It’s just political realignment. When the US is strong, we support the USSR. When the USSR is strong and threaten our interest, we support the US to keep the Soviet ambition in check.

Play both sides and coming out on top have always been China’s strategy to defend its national sovereignty as a weak nation since independence. We only have two allies: the People’s Liberation Army and Navy.

The fact is that we’ve won - you can’t say that about the USSR. To win, you have to get rid of that idealist fantasy and willingto play dirty when it comes down it.

According to the documentary Top Gun: Maverick, they’re just practicing low altitude bombing run against Iranian nuclear facilities while evading Iranian SAM sites. We’re at the point where one of Tom Cruise’s proteges crashed and died from bird strikes. This story is going to end with Tom Cruise stealing an Iranian F-14 and flying out of there, killing two (obviously Russian) “5th generation fighters” (that suspiciously resemble Su-57) along the way.

At least that’s the story the New York Times would print.

Still too early to tell (with unforeseen blowbacks and all), but the most significant events over the past couple weeks outside of the Middle East, with the Fed lowering rate and China opening up its capital market to invite foreign investors to save its economy (the stock and property market, clearly the most important part of the economy), I think the US-China front will be stable for a while.

Meanwhile, the US will absolutely use this brief opportunity to screw the Middle East.

This is why nukes are the only options left for the US.