Geopolitical Superpowers: Shaping Global Trade and Warfare's Shocking Future
THERE GOES THE GLOBAL SOUTH…
By now you’ll have heard all about the turmoil in Niger. It isn’t just Niger to be fair. If you pay attention, it is ALL of the French colonial territories now getting uppity. My friend Alex Krainer (aka the Naked Hedgie) wrote a must read article on the topic: The Business of Freedom and Democracy.
Alex digs into some of the background behind the conflict, and I agree 100% with what he has to say. Further to his article, we see the zeitgeist across Northern Africa. They are decidedly sick of Western powers.
Then there is this…
Russia just told ECOWAS, the Western-led military alliance in West Africa, not to intervene in Niger. Clearly Russia and China are the rapidly emerging geopolitical superpowers as the US and Europe see continually waning influence.
Could Wagner have been involved to disrupt the Western-led status quo?
Maybe. Maybe not, but certainly this war will be fought on multiple fronts. To think otherwise flies in the face of historical precedent as well as basic military strategy. What better way to hit the West via a visibly weak France, than to cut off their main uranium supplier while simultaneously disrupting the Francophone dominion within West Africa.
Skipping northwards… Could this also have anything to do with Sweden, who have been supplied uranium via the Frogs after Russian uranium became… ahem… sanctioned?
Uranium mining is set to return to mainland Europe as the region seeks alternatives to Russian nuclear fuel and Sweden pushes to treble its atomic energy capacity, the country’s climate minister has said.
I don’t know if one led the other, but certainly with the visible de-industrialization of Europe and Germany in particular being so visible, the Swedes have likely hitched up their thermal leggings and said to themselves, “Hey, we need to get us some energy independence here.”
Sweden, it is worth pointing out, imports nuclear energy from… deep breath…. the Frogs.
And guess who the Frogs are going to prioritise when supply is insufficient? Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.
Anyhoot, there are multiple reasons to make the case for uranium, and as such, we continue to be boring old farts… and keep holding our positions.
Meanwhile…
Back to the whole African issue we began with in this section, here are the African countries that have signed military agreements with Russia.
Continuing with the global bifurcation now well underway and looking at trade…(because trade flows are a strong predictor of political and military alliances).
Russia-UAE trade ‘skyrocketing’ – Bloomberg
Economic cooperation between Russia and the United Arab Emirates has been on the rise despite Ukraine-related Western sanctions on Moscow, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
The outlet cited the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as saying that the flow of Russian oil and precious metals into the emirates have recently soared while microchips and civilian drones were being supplied to Moscow.
The report also quoted Goldman Sachs’ Jared Cohen as stating that the UAE is profiting from its position as a “geopolitical swing state.”
Apart from soaring exports, the UAE has also been gaining popularity as a financial haven for wealthy Russians. The Gulf state hosts more than 4,000 Russian companies and is currently in talks with Moscow over a free-trade agreement between the UAE and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union.
The UAE is poised to attract the biggest share of private wealth this year as Russian capital seeks a new home, according to a recent report published by Henley & Partners.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov has stated that the UAE is on course to become one of Russia’s 20 top economic partners due to the rapid growth of trade and cooperation in recent months. The Gulf country has become a key destination for Russian gold since Western governments closed their markets as part of their sanctions on Moscow.”
It’s almost as if we told you this was going to happen years ago. The only downside now is that real estate is up some 146% since we pointed this out, but to be honest, even though we may get some pullback, this is a massive trend which I frankly don’t see stopping anytime soon.
As mentioned last week, the global South is increasingly done with the West. The statements from African leaders make it clear that they fully understand the relationship between them and the West, and they now see an opening and opportunity to exit that relationship. They all have watched Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria to name a few. And now, of course, they see the total destruction of Ukraine. That all must look as appealing to them as contracting a venereal disease.
Consider the following as a snapshot of the propaganda that Westerners are subjected to on a daily basis.
Sadly, many (or maybe even most) don’t even see it as propaganda. The brainwashing is so complete, and the enslavement of their minds is so thorough. Hapless, willfully ignorant, and destined to what tends to come to any society that is so easily led. In other words, they will be led. To where, we will all find out.
In any event, all of this bodes very, very well for an environment of broken and breaking supply chains, geopolitical tensions, and higher opex and capex for business, not to mention the factoring of political risk. Any one of these factors would be significant in itself, but we’ve got all of them, which means stagflation, and stagflation is bullish for commodities. Just sayin’!
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- Chris MacIntosh
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