In Every Direction, Existential Instability

China

China is investigating its top general, Zhang Youxia, close to Xi, for suspected serious violations of discipline and law. This follows a series of comparable cases. Zhang is the senior of the two vice chairs of the Central Military Commission, China’s top military body which is chaired by Xi. AP today cites a China expert as concluding that “Xi Jinping has completed one of the biggest purges of China’s military leadership in the history of the People’s Republic.”

The Defense Ministry announced the measures Saturday. No details of the supposed offenses have been supplied. An anti-corruption drive has resulted in punishment for more than 200,000 officials since 2012. Since that year at least 17 Generals from the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, have been removed. The top military commission will operate with only one of six members active and Xi at the top as chair.

The scale of the anti-corruption drive at least raises questions as to the stability of the Chinese authority structure. Rumors that Zhang may have shared nuclear secrets raise concerns as to whether China’s nuclear security has been compromised. This in turn has a potential impact on its relations with Russia and western assessments of Chinese strength.

China Response on Venezuela

On a more robust note for China, Larry Johnson on Sonar21 has alighted on a RT report of China’s actions since the kidnapping of Maduro and China’s conclusion that the U.S. is making control of Venezuelan oil a tool to curb China’s presence in South America.

In response, according to Johnson’s account and explanation of the RT story, China’s Politburo has promised an “integrated asymmetric response,” in whose first phase the People’s Bank of China has announced the temporary suspension of all transactions in US dollars with companies that have ties to the US defense sector. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics are confronted with the freezing of all transactions with China. The State Grid Corporation of China, which controls the world’s largest power grid, announced the technical review of all of its contracts with U.S. suppliers of electrical equipment. The China National Petroleum Corporation, the world’s largest state-owned oil company, announced the strategic reorganization of its global supply routes. This means the lifting of oil supply contracts with US refineries worth 47 billion dollars a year. This oil, previously delivered to the east coast of the US, has now been diverted to India, Brazil, South Africa and other partners in the Global South. The China Ocean Shipping Company, which controls about 40 percent of global maritime transport capabilities, conducted a so-called optimization of operational routes, meaning Chinese cargo ships have begun to avoid the use of American ports: Long Beach, Los Angeles, New York and Miami, which rely on Chinese maritime logistics for their supply chains, suddenly lost 35 percent of their normal container traffic – a disaster for Walmart, Amazon, Target, and others. These companies, which rely on Chinese ships for the import of products manufactured in China into American ports, saw their supply chains partially collapse within a few hours. The Chinese cross-border interbank payment system (CIPS) announced that it would expand its operational capacity to include any global transaction that the Washington-controlled SWIFT system wants to circumvent. That means China has provided a fully functional alternative to the Western financial system. In the first 48 hours after commissioning, transactions worth 89 billion dollars were settled. Central banks from 34 countries opened operational accounts in the Chinese system, which means an accelerated de-dollarization of one of the most important sources of funding in the US.

Larry Johnson further comments:

“CIPS is a potentially very powerful new tool in the BRICS financial infrastructure that is developing before our eyes. The fact that SWIFT is relying on ancient technology — i.e., ancient in the sense that it is non-digital and is nothing more that an out-dated closed email system that was relevant in the 1990s but is now being eclipsed by the digital age.

The US attempt to use tariffs as a political bludgeon to coerce countries to change their politics is enabling the more rapid development of financial infrastructure that the US cannot control. Trump and his dinosaur advisors are still laboring under the delusional that the US and the dollar reserve system are irreplaceable. There are several facts that most in the US fail to grasp: 1)more countries are dumping dollars and buying precious metals while doing trade in their respective currencies, 2) the US is over leveraged as its debt spirals out of control and no quick solution to re-industrialize the US.”

Venezuela

On the specific question of Venezuela, we should indeed still be in a state of shock over the US kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife and outraged not just by the deed itself but by the relative passivity of the rest of the world in relation to the deed.

Furthermore, not nearly enough attention is being paid to Trump’s claims as to the deployment of unusual weapons on the occasion of the US invasion and war crime which took place on January 3rd this month, and, in particular to sonic weapons that reportedly disabled weapons and knocked out security forces. If these reports have merit - and note that they are Trump’s claims, supported, apparently, by witnesses and participants - we should be assessing much more carefully the perils that face those who resist imperial aggression and their tactics elsewhere. What might the impacts be of their deployment in Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Iran, for example, or Ukraine, or Russia or even Canada?

Optimists see in the figure of the acting President, Delcy Rodriguez, some scope for hope. She does indeed come across as a highly intelligent operator, and her latest proposal for talks with the opposition (which might have come across a great deal more savvy had they been proposed by Maduro before the decapitation strike) could demonstrate a pathway to a new and less problematic era for Venezuela.

She has recently declared that Caracas would no longer accept “orders from Washington,” but these words are undermined by the conciliatory actions of her government in the releasae of political prisoners (up to 600) and the advanced far-reaching reforms to the oil sector that will benefit US oil giants (these proposed reforms to the Hydrocarbons Law would open the sector fully to private investment).

Whether her appeal for dialogue with the political opposition to secure stability should be seen in the context of defiance or that of conciliation is the question.

Ukraine

Nobody should be surprised that talks over the past few days in Moscow and in Abu Dhabi have apparently borne little fruit, but there are some reasons to think that there may be deeper shifts occurring beneath the news cycle.

First of all, we should note Zelenskiy’s continuing rejection of territorial concessions, even to relinquishing Ukrainian positions in those parts of the Donbass which are still controlled from Kiev. The most that Zelenskiy ever seems to consider in real terms is a ceasefire that, in his perspective, would precede a peace agreement (talks for which would surely founder on Zelenskiy’s continuing obduracy on everything else) whereas Russia (which even persuaded Trump of this at Putin’s meeting with Trump in Anchorage on August 15) insists that a peace settlement should precede a ceasefire.

Recent effusions of great optimism from the likes of Witkoff and Kushner as to how “close” they are to securing a peace settlement rest, exclusively and therefore absurdly, on how far the US agrees with Ukraine and, therefore, with Europe. Nobody seems even to care about whether whatever is agreed is remotely acceptable to Russia (it generally isn’t). Zelenskiy now claims that there has been agreement with the US as to the US providing “security guarantees” against the possibility of further Russian agression following a peace settlement.

I have not seen this confirmed by the US. Nor is it clear, precisely, what these guarantees entail and it is almost certain that whatever they do entail will be unacceptable to Russia. Part of the game that is being played here is that Zelenskiy is boosting the prospects of a proposal for an $800 billion fund for the recovery of Ukraine following a peace settlement. He may not expect, he may not even want peace (in fact, he doesn’t, because peace means elections and the end of Zelenskiy). But the idea of this peace fund is that it should be raised from private funds (and there are rumors that under certain conditions - highly improbable, in my estimation - the fund would further benefit from the infusion of frozen Russian assets).

If the US agrees to security guarantees, then some investors might imagine that the climate for investment in Ukraine would greatly improve, and some investors might be willing to invest in Project Ukraine on the promise that eventually there will be an enduring peace and that Ukraine will benefit from an $800 billion restoration fund.

In other words, the mere offer of security guarantees for Ukraine from the US together with the offer of future funding for rebuilding would facilitate the raising of pro-Ukrainian funds today. And Zelenskiy very badly needs funding: there is not nearly as much coming from either the US and Europe as there used to be, the Ukrainian economy is taking another hit to both imports and exports as a result of the effective Russian blockade of Odessa, the country experiences devastating energy cuts (no amount of pain for Ukrainians seems to budge Zelenskiy) and there are impacts of a demographic catastrophe as a result of military losses. Ukraine’s own defense minister has reported a total of 200,000 army desertions and draft-dodging by two million Ukrainians.

The idea for an estimated $800 billion postwar reconstruction and prosperity fund for Ukraine emerged from a joint proposal by the United States and the European Commission, as revealed in documents shared with EU leaders in January 2026. The 10-year, 18-page plan focuses on mobilizing public and private investment, loans, and grants to secure Ukraine’s economic recovery and fast-track EU accession. The proposal was developed by US and EU officials, with the European Commission (led by Ursula von der Leyen) targeting a “prosperity plan” post-full-scale invasion. The $800 billion is intended to rebuild infrastructure, boost the economy, and ensure long-term stability, acting as part of a potential 20-point peace plan. The $800 billion proposal is distinct from a 2025 proposal for an “€800 billion” EU defense rearmament plan, often called “ReArm Europe,” also proposed by Ursula von der Leyen.

Few participants to this conversation both to ask themselves what kind of security guarantees Russia needs to be confident that Europe will not use the post-peace period for continuing to re-arm both Ukraine and Europe, and to provoke and through covert operations (much beloved and advocated by the new leader of MI6 which has contributed so much to the continuing conflict) attack Russia.

The talks in Abu Dhabi, whose trilateral teams are mainly recruited from the intelligence services of the countries involved, have so far proved relatively fruitless. But of course there is a good argument that meetings are better than no meetings, and that constant interaction can contribute to the formation of improved understanding and trust (except, of course, when they are used as a form of distraction to weaken an opponent for the purpose of launching an unprovoked and murderous attack - as happened in June 2024 when Israel and the US attack Iran in the midst of ongoing US-Iranian negotiations).

In the case of Abu Dhabi, it is not unimportant that besides the trilateral discussions focusing on such matters as the possibility of a Ukrainian withdrawl from the Donbass there is also a separate conversation ongoing spearheaded by Dmitriev and Witkoff about the normalization of relations and trade between the US and Russia. It is quite plausible, therefore, that these two separate channels of dialogue might have crossover implications so that, for example, Russia might make a concession that one would not otherwise expect in one forum, in order to achieve a benefit in the other forum.

Certainly there needs to be a trilateral (US, Russia and Ukraine), if not a quadralateral (US, Russia, Ukraine, Europe) encounter, but perhaps the most important is the bilateral conversation between the US and Russia - first, because at this level the US cannot so easily pretend to the role of innocent mediator between two naughty school-children, the origin of Mark Rutte’s unfortunate “Daddy” remark about Trump, since the US is the prime instigator, funder and combatant in this war through technology, money and intelligence. Second of all, because what Russia and the world most urgently requires is a new security architecture - for Europe, certainly but, just as urgently, for EurAsia and the world in general. Ukraine is a very small component in all of that.

BUT, and it is a big BUT, there is a real danger here that Putin’s weakness - a craving to be treated as a big boy by the big boys or, rather, by THE big boy (US), makes him vulnerable to distraction by the display of glitter that we can expect of the billionaire class that rules the US. This will take the form of trade and financial deals between the US and Russia that may have their specific independent benefits but will ultimately give the US too much leverage over Russia and distract Russia from its historically annointed role as the midwife, in partnership with China, of a more equitable, safer and enduring world in place of the feudal tribute-collecting throwback that Trump most immediately represents, a vulnerability that may worry and weaken China and the BRICS.

This dynamic could be favorably influenced by a more aware and more progressive Europe. But even though the US has no trouble talking with Russia, the only way in which the current generation of European leaders can bring themselves to attempt any kind of influence on Moscow is by parleying with Ukraine how to get the US back into the war with Russia, a war they cannot afford (this was very explicitly confirmed by Mark Rutte today) yet to which they feel committed if they are to protect their reputations and priviliged class status.

The consequences of all this are worse than catastropic: Europe has conjured out of nothing the very threat it pretends to fear - that it might ultimately, give it a generation, have to succumb to a junor partnership with Russia in place of its highly toxic and humiliating partnership with the US. Granted, it did find a voice, finally, over the Greenland saga. But nothing has been said yet that would rule out a return by Trump to this ambition in the very near future (Richard Wolff opines that the main reason Trump wants Greenland is so that Europe can’t have it), accompanied by extended threats to Iceland and to Canada where Mark Carney’s rather humble and limited trade agreement with China and his revealing critique at Davos of the “rules-based international order” notwithstanding, shows that an aggressive US has relatively little to fear. For Europe, as Glenn Diesen noted over the weekend, it is case of trying to patch up a marriage when the other parnter, the US, has already sued for divorce.

Another area of potential crossover is Trump’s Board of Peace where, if Western media sources are to be trusted (a very big “if,” of course), Putin seems to be on the brink of agreeing to purchase membership and even of allowing some of the Russian assets frozen in the US to be used to help in the reconstruction of Gaza. If this is the direction Putin is going it appears to be a very serious misjudgment, compounding Russia’s (and China’s) error in not using its veto against the BoP in the UNSC last November. The BoP may ostensibly be about Gaza, but in blunt reality it is about exploiting the sad and embarrassing impotence of the UN as a pretext to foist on the world an organization chaired and controlled by Trump (or his annointed successor) and whose executive committe is made up principally of wealthy white men for the purpose of deciding which countries the US considers it needs to invade. (Oh, and yes, there will be another committee for Gaza: expect a Kushner revisioning of Dubai and Palestinian bones poking up from under the golden beach). Putin will be endorsing or colluding with Israel’s genocide; losing the respect of those countries of the Global South that still have any of their own; kow-towing to Trump; angering his own people; reinforcing “greater Israel.”

National Defense Stratey

The NDS released by the Trump administration on January 23, 2026, marks a major shift in U.S. military priorities toward homeland defense, Western Hemisphere dominance (it identifies Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Gulf of Mexico as key terrain to be controlled and defended), deterring China in the Indo-Pacific, and demanding greater burden-sharing from allies- signaling a ‘peace through strength’ approach amid evolving global threats. The US stance is now deterrence by denial, particularly along the First Island Chain, although there is no explicit mention of Taiwan. The goal is to prevent regional hegemony by any other power, by making aggression infeasible. One commentator thinks it foretells a large restructuring of US forces in Korea. Taiwan is not specifically mentioned. Another says that the objectives of defending the US homeland and deterring China sit at the top of the priorities while everything else, including Europe, is secondary. Just as a declining Roman empire told ancient Britain in 400 AD that it needed to pay for its own defense, the new strategy says that Europe must handle Europe (and Moscow - which is now just a “manageable adversary”), South Korea must handle North Korea, Middle Eastern partners must handle Iran. US support remains, but, in the words of the European Policy Center, it is “selective, incentivised, and contingent on performance rather than promises” (EPC). The US must restore its industrial base to the levels of World War 2 and the Cold War.

Syria, Iran, Somalia, Kurdistan and China

Reports suggest that Kurdish forces have suffered heavy reverses in north-east Syria and that the US has effectively abandoned the Kurds and the Kurdish SDF to their fate at a time when the prospects for Kurds in Turkey have reached a generational low. The US has decided to smother its favor upon former terrorist HTS-leader Jolani or al-Sharaa, Syria’s new, illegal ruler. In withdrawing from northeast Syria, the US is returning to Syria the natural agricultural and oil wealth that the US took from Assad to bring down the Assad government, in addition to its imposition of the harsh Caesar Act sanctions that made it impossible for the Assad government to rebuild Syria following Assad’s victory (supported by Russia and Hezbollah) in the war imposed upon it by the CIA and the Gulf powers of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, of course, Qatar. The new Syria will be a US/Israeli/Turkish bulwark edging up on a weak Iraq and, the main prize, Iran - which could be invaded any time now by the US build-up of naval and military force in the Gulf. Militant Kurds will withdraw to Iraq and perhaps even migrate to northern Iran where their presence will be welcomed by the US as an additional destabilizing force.

However, Jamal Abdulahi reports that Saudia Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have refused to allow the US and Israel access to their airspace, while facing off against the US, UAE and Israel in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. When Saudi Arabia recently bombed the Southern Transition Council in Mukall, Yemen they destroyed a UAE weapons stockpile, leading to the collapse of the STC and withdrawal of the UAE. Further, the Saudis, who have recently allied both with Pakistan and Egypt, are dismantling the Rapid Support Force, which Abdulahi describes as the UAE’s vanguard in its destabilization of Sudan, allowing the Sudanese army to return to Khartoum, and putting pressure on secessionist leaders in Somalia, now in the Saudi camp.