Ray Dalio put up his thoughts on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on his blog, where he focused on the bigger picture. I found it very helpful to step back and think about what it means to our world now, especially when compared to mindlessly scrolling on news or Reddit.
In particular, he stated the most important questions are whether China will use the opportunity to establish a better position for the electronic Yuan. He didn’t think it’s likely, but he didn’t really elaborate why:
Most interesting are the questions related to using the Chinese currency and its clearing system (most importantly the development and increased usage of the e-CNY and the reduction in US sanction powers via its control over SWIFT).
He also writes:
There are five major kinds of competitions or wars that exist between countries:
Trade/economic wars
Technology wars
Geopolitical wars
Capital wars
Military wars
These competitions or wars reward the winners and penalize the losers, which reinforce their strengthenings or their weakenings.
When the last on the list, the military wars happen, then all four of the other wars are already “applied full-on and weaponized”. In terms of the capital wars, though, Putin will have to rely on China to support them since Russia is not strong enough. Will this happen? From what I can see, China needs more soft power going into war with Taiwan, and they probably will start from a negative credit in the world credibility bank if they support Russia now.