If Vladimir Putin was smart and only "half as smart" as our self-proclaimed phony ex-President thinks he is, he would be leaning Westward rather than Eastward.  Putin only looks smart when he has someone leaning on him, but these days, no one is leaning on him.  He is on an island (Mother Russia) all alone. 

China only makes sense for Putin if someone like El Trumpo is in power in the United States.  With El Trumpo in power Putin doesn't have to lean West because the West would lean towards him.  But those days are long gone, never to be seen again.  (I cross my fingers and knock on wood, but i do believe that is true).

Without anyone leaning on him, Putin must lean on someone himself, and so far he has chosen the wrong partner to lean on.  A smart man would understand this.  A really smart man would suck it up and change his stripes.

Mother Russia is in trouble.  Leaning on Xi Jinping for support is like opening your house to a bunch of snakes then locking the door.  What does China need from Putin that it could not take on its own?  Nothing.  Mother Russia's economy is based primarily on oil, which lies mostly stationed in the somewhat isolated eastern area of Russia, right next door to China.  

China could take those oil fields without a whimper.  Russia's military is so weak that its main strategy in Ukraine today is to use attrition to win a peace agreement.  Russia can simply afford to lose more soldiers than Ukraine can because of the population differences between the two countries.  How do you think that same strategy would work against China?

Xi Jinping is a genius compared to Vladimir Putin.  Xi has nothing to lose and everything to gain by sweet-talking Vladimir.  The reverse does not hold true.

Now if Putin was a real genius, the first thing he would do is make peace with the West.  He would remove all his troops from Ukrainian soil and then, here is the big one, he would submit a request to join NATO.  It's the only way that Mother Russia can remain whole.  NATO would protect Mother Russia's oil fields.  Europe and the United States would welcome Mother Russia into its economic stronghold.   Russia would benefit like never before.  It might sound silly, but Mother Russia would even become an important contributor to world peace. 

It doesn't even take a genius to see the logic in the above.

Globanomics now and forever.

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ps.  boy, i had another one of those bad "work dreams" last night--this one again involving my brother.  I have had enough, especially since i haven't worked for almost 25-years now and i have never worked for my brother (thank god).  I hope this is just house-cleaning, but i want it to stop.

ps2.  i find myself also having a lot of mixed emotions about my Sunday sermons.  My advice, is to just take them for what they are--a partial brain dump as i keep trying to figure things out.  I wish i was half the person of my thoughts.