THIS IS HOW THE NEXT WORLD WAR BEGINS

We’re now at severe risk of entering the opening stages of the next world war. The world at a civilizational level is now repeating the financial, economic, and structural cycles that led to the last two. If there is to be another world war, it begins like this.

I’m hesitant to speak to you openly anymore. You can sense it. My words are too often misinterpreted by lesser minds. I’m weary of it. When I say that “we are at risk,” that is what I mean. We are speaking of probabilities and possibilities. Please understand the nuance before you read what I am going to write.

Very, very few people understand what I am now going to teach you.

The last world war broke out this way. Germany was the world’s largest debtor nation (and we’ll leave aside the fact for now that many modern nation-states didn’t yet exist.) It owed reparations for the First World War to France and England. Which it couldn’t repay. As a result, it’s economy stagnated, went into hyperinflation, and Weimar Germany became Nazi Germany.

Perhaps you already glimpse the parallels I’m about to recount.

“Imbalances” triggered the last world war. Not in trade, but in capital. Germany was the world’s largest debtor, and it couldn’t repay its debts, which led to economic ruin, that in turn, caused to it to turn to violence, expansionism, as a source of growth. Here laid the seeds of fascism. Fascism is an economic problem in the beginning, a violent solution, which isn’t my discovery, but that of Keynes, who reinvented finance and economics, not to mention laid the foundations of the modern world. We’ll discuss that another time. Think of the Nazis stripping everything from corpses.

Now let’s fast forward to today.

America is the world’s largest debtor, by a very long way. As so many times in history before it, it is turning to violent expansionism. That’s predictable, given America’s long run economic stagnation—real incomes are at Great Depression era levels now as a share of the economy (yes, that’s a fact, and like I said, I tire of quibbling over facts with unlearned minds.)

America’s President has already sown the seeds of expansionism in many, many ways. From Greenland to Canada. But these were mere beginnings and bagatelles. The prize he appears to have his eyes on is to control the world’s oil supply.

Why is that?

China is often painted as America’s “enemy.” America needs an enemy. Societies often do, for the sake of cohesion and order. The truth though is that China is hardly America’s enemy. America is doing a fine job of destabilizing itself, with nobody’s help.

What China is is America’s largest creditor. Or among them, at any rate. The extent of its holdings of American debt are unknown, because they are held by “entities,” not just the state itself. What’s certain, though, is that China and America are caught in precisely the same set of imbalances that Germany and France plus England were exactly a century ago.

Please understand how crucial that is. If it seems eerie, it is. Here we see history repeating itself with brutal mercilessness.

This is what the war on Iran is about. Control of the world’s oil. Trump himself has said it openly many times. “Wouldn’t it be great if we took the oil?” I paraphrase. I’m sure you’ve heard the words by now.

Why does this matter?

Because China is the world’s largest importer of oil. It imports oil to the degree of 75% of its consumption. That means three quarters of its economy depend on imported oil. China is the world’s second largest oil consumer. Guess who the first is? America, of course.

So. Here we have a situation of financial imbalances, precisely repeating history from a century ago: the world’s largest debtor, versus its largest creditor. Only the names have changed in this story. The plot, theme— and perhaps even the conclusion—have not.

America’s President has decided that the best way to revive a moribund economy is to control the world’s oil. The trade wars didn’t work. They were too lightweight to accomplish the task. If one controls the world’s oil supply, then one has “leverage” over China. And Trump is a figure who is always looking for “leverage,” and it should also be said that this is a very American way of thinking.

(Can you even define leverage, which is why I put it in quotes? What is it? A way to blackmail, to force, to punish, to control. Americans understand what it is without ever even having had to think about it.)

Now we approach the path to world war.

Trump controls the world’s oil. How does China respond? It has one obvious response. It invades Taiwan. Because then it controls the world’s microchips.

The world is now a thing of chokepoints. It is a neck to be suffocated and snapped.

How does this game end?

Trump, it’s true, can bring China to its knees, by controlling the world’s oil supply. Even at the margins, through effectively controlling 25-30% of it. That’s why China’s Premier, recently, has called for a new energy system for the world. He’s worried, and in China’s ruling classes, panic must be setting in now.

Here is “leverage.” With it, he can try to force China to give him what he wants, which is basically money. It’s what he always wants, and in this case, he’s been open about China “investing” more in America, which is funny, an oxymoron, because if you have to force it, it’s not exactly an investment, LOL, is it? Here, Trump is trying to rebalance the imbalances now looming over the world like a terrible spectral figure from history.

But China can equally bring the world to its knees, in many, many ways, Especially America. It can dump American bonds, as we should all know by now, setting off a chain reaction that begins with a stock market crash, and ends with bank failures that make 2008 look like a nice day in the park.

That’s only the beginning. If it seizes control of the world’s microchips, the global economy as we know it comes to an end. Without oil, we are back in the Stone Age. Without microchips, we are back at the Iron Age, perhaps.

The pattern here is easy to see from this far away. Let me now summarize it so you can see it clearly. Trump controls the world’s oil supply, in war after war, to suffocate China. China is hardly likely to just accept this, and retaliates, by seizing the world’s microchips. And perhaps it’s remaining sources of other critical resources, like rare earths. And it ignites a capital war which plunges America into chaos.

Does all that sound unlikely? Or likely? I won’t remind you how many of my predictions have come true. That’s needless if you understand the above.

We will make a great deal of money from this. As we have been doing. That’s regrettable. All the money in the world isn’t worth one moment, one glimmer, of human civilization. Money is only worth what you can buy with it. In the world we are in now, that is less and less by the hour.

We are talking about risk here, remember. I’m not saying there is “going to be” a world war. I am saying that if you understand history well, and know it seriously, then we appear to be entering the beginning stages of one. Only time can tell if it proceeds the way the last two did. What we can say now is this: if a world war was to be beginning before our eyes…

Financially, economically, strategically, civilizationally…

It would look exactly like this.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy)