 Xi and Putin had been meeting yesterday and today, the meeting, I think over the weekend. Russia and China, those are fascinating meetings. Fascinating meetings, I'm sure. I mean, here's Putin who is losing a war in Ukraine, a war he should have won in a week and expected to win in a week. It's a year later and, you know, 200,000 Russians down dead and injured and clearly losing Finland. Turkey and Hungary just approved Finland to join NATO, so Finland would definitely join NATO, much longer border than Ukraine has with Russia. Suddenly Russia has a northern NATO member and NATO has a much longer border with Russia than it ever had before. At the same time, Sweden will see what happens. Probably Sweden won't happen before the elections in Turkey in May. I think at that point they'll vote Sweden in. Another end, Xi, who I think feels pretty good, just elected basically for lifetime and as a dictator of China, China's economy seems to be rebounding, you know, not significantly but rebounding. Russia's economy is a complete mess, a complete and utter disaster. Russia doesn't manufacture really anything. China manufactures to the world, is the manufacturer of the world. China has real innovation and real tech and actual progress. Russia is decadent and behind and can barely produce the weapons it needs for the border it can't. I mean, one is an economy to equal the size of the American economy. The other is a shrinking economy with a shrinking population. Both the shrinking population with Russia has been shrinking for a while and is accelerating. China's only started shrinking. You know, one wonders how the conversation went. Clearly Xi has the upper hand. Xi is in the driver's seat. He can decide how much help to give Putin and how much help not to give Putin. He can calibrate the debate. He has all the cards. He has all the cards and the real question is, and I don't know the answer to this, the real question is how is he using those cards and for what purpose? I would also note that Xi is using a lot of this. We saw his getting the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. But Xi is using all this to emphasize, I think, to the United States. This is more of a signaling to the United States than anything. The United States, if you want a Cold War, you are on. Game on. I'm going to do this from a position of power. I'm going to create my own coalition. I have a standing in the world that is significant. The United States, I think the signal here is clear that from Xi's perspective, the United States is a decaying, a shrinking power. China is the rising power on the horizon with rising influence in the world. And he is trying to signal to the Biden administration that you guys are weak, you guys are irrelevant, and you guys better think twice about your aggressive moves against us because of who and what I am. This is all thanks to Biden's weakness, but it really started with Trump and Trump basically groveling before Putin. And then really admiring Xi and launching a stupid, strategically stupid attempt to go after China. It's a sign of weakness in America for a long time. It's not like Obama was strong. Obama was weak. Russia was weak in China. They're all weak, and the Chinese know this. I think, ultimately, China is weak as well, just like Russia was. But that requires real thinking to figure that out. And Xi is playing to the West's fears. And he's going to leverage this in the next few years as much as he can to establish himself globally and to emphasize the weakness of the West. And if you think the Chinese don't follow just the absurdities of and the childishness and the pathetic nature of American politics and the tribalism, America, from every perspective, if you're out of the country looking in, it looks like a pathetic country that has pathetic politicians, that has no leadership, that is clearly in decline. Clearly in decline as much as... And Xi is going to capitalize on that. People admire America, people respect America, people want to come to America, people love America, they love what America represents. But when they look at what actually is happening, they look at the behavior of our politicians and our political elites. It is truly horrific. Somebody said, I don't give Russia's perspective. Because Russia's perspective is wrong. And Russia's perspective is not based on facts, not based on reality. It's based on mysticism. And I've talked about this a lot. I've talked a lot about the Russia's perspective. Just read or watch Dugan and read and watch Putin. And there's no there, there's no positive there, there's no value there. And look, Russia is without question. The Russia and the Putin administration are declining powers. And this is an attempt somehow to salvage their decline, both as a country and as a regime, the Putin regime. It's an attempt to somehow, you know, somehow make Russia relevant again on the world stage. And they have, but now their weakness is even more evident to the world. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to IranBookShow.com slash support. I go to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. 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