So my tweet yesterday caused a third of you to lose your mind… and start throwing topographic maps of Ukraine in my face... Allow me to elaborate on why the Russian “special operation” is a haphazard military operation at best, and a ballet performance at the Bolshoi at worst.
Here is a map of the infamous Schlieffen Plan. One main thrust into Northern France by the German Empire along four axes. Note the lack of spearheads anywhere else on French territory. No thrust into Alsace, for example.
Here is an (overly simplified) map of Operation Barbarossa. Three main thrusts along a front much wider than what Russians are dealing with in Ukraine. Can someone please send me a topographic map? #sarcasm
Someone mentioned Vietnam yesterday. Well here is a map of the Tet Offensive. Looks pretty straightforward to me! One main supply route with multiple off ramps for attacks.
Napoleon invasion of Russia? You guessed it! Pretty straightforward… single thrust to Moscow. (His retreat was pretty straightforward to!)
The Allied invasion of Sicily? For sure there were amphibious landings across the entire island, right? Wrong. Just essentially two major locations in the South.
The Fall of France in 1940? Germans must have updated the Schlieffen Plan and made it more complicated? Right? Wrong again. Just straight shot to Paris. Didn't even bother about anything else.
Let’s go back in time and see if there is a different lesson there. Hannibal’s route into Rome? Pretty straight forward! Oh but invading flat-as-a-pancake Ukraine is more complicated in 2022 than CROSSING THE FREAKING ALPS IN THIRD CENTURY BC??
So.. the map below is not of an invasion. It’s performance art. Russia thought they could showcase their military prowess with an artistic rendition of a military operation.
Throughout military history, the lesson learned time and again is that you don’t salami slice your forces 8-10 ways. You create a spearhead and go for the JUGULAR.
You think the Russian military doesn't regret NOT focusing the attack on Kiev and Kharkiv? Instead, they ignored common wisdom by slicing ~160,000 troops 12-14 ways. Why? So they could film some cool amphibious landings in Mariupol and show it on Первый канал?
Speaking of the amphibious assault on Mariupol… am I the only one who thinks this landing looks eerily similar to DeAndre Jordan's role on the Lakers? WHY ARE YOU AMPHIBIOUSLY LANDING IN A CITY YOU HAVE SURROUNDED?! WHY ARE YOU SIGNING AN AGING CENTER WHEN NOBODY PLAYS BIGS!?
So no. Ukraine’s topography does not explain why Russia decided to throw away the playbook and attack from 74 (#estimate) different directions.
Russia's overestimation of their capabilities does. They have dulled their “tip of the spear” and will (and are) suffering losses as a result. Anyone who has ever played a game of RISK would know better.
Shout out to SNL for getting it… and for dragging my Lakers in the process. #notbitteratall
Why does any of this matter for the markets? I am not sure but I feel like the war outcomes are now very binary. Either Moscow proclaims victory really fast, or this drags out forever. No in between.
Hit me with the topographic maps at your own peril...
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This is a 🧵on the state of America's relationship with globalization in light of Trump's potential pivot towards 1980s-style resolution to the now six year trade war with China, as articulated in the @Bloomberg interview on October 15.
If President Trump had one superpower, it would be to "sniff out" the median voter preferences on the most important issue of the moment. In 2016, he outmaneuvered Secretary Clinton on trade, forcing her to abandon the TPP deal in her campaign rhetoric -- a deal she obviously negotiated!
Trump leaned into the arguments made by the long-time critics of US trade policy, particularly that of Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer's epic 2010 testimony to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission formed the pillar of Trump's own campaign.
The media is going to spend the next several weeks obsessing over President Biden's replacement. This will drown out what I think was a pretty important signal from President Trump's nomination speech in Milwaukee. Allow me to elaborate...
There was a LOT in there that we could focus on. But I think that the two most important parts -- that received exactly ZERO media attention (and please, prove me wrong!) -- were the bit on China and Iran.
There is a lot of criticism of 🇩🇪 military readiness. Even (ESPECIALLY?) my good German friends are highly critical. However, everyone who thinks 🇩🇪 would get rolled in a war with 🇷🇺 should read the op-eds and analyses of 🇺🇦 war readiness pre-2014. It was much much wrose!
The reality is that Ukrainian military - as unprepared, corrupt, undermanned, and under-provisioned as it was in 2014 - did a half decent job against Russian-backed militia in Donbas. They held back the assault on Mariupol in 2014-2015. Russia did not conquer all of Donbas!
And then... over the next 7-8 years, clearly 🇺🇦 military got to a point where it could resist a frontal 🇷🇺 attack. And no, not thanks to JUST Western help. In the early days of Russian invasion, other than supply of Javelins and some intel help, 🇺🇦 did this on its own.
I hope that everyone is having a great ending to the year 2023! As you are taking it easy and mulling over the past 12 months, I thought it was a good time for a 🧵about geopolitics and finance.
When most investors think about how geopolitics and markets intersect, their unit of analysis is most often EVENTS. Something “geopolitical” – i.e., not macroeconomic, policy, or financial – occurs and one must, as an investor, react to it.
One way to react to a geopolitical event as an investor is to seek out ways in which the market has mispriced its impact on the macro fundamentals. For example, war between Israel and Hamas will endanger the global supply of oil and thus we should be long energy.
@INArteCarloDoss And by the way, this was exactly the lesson that American households learned from the 1970s. Savings rate went on a 35 year decline after that inflationary era. We learned to love credit as being a "saver" means you're an idiot when inflation is high.
@INArteCarloDoss Lo and behold, American households seem to be re-leveraging.
@INArteCarloDoss My favorite repost here is "Ahh but Marko, you're too rich and don't know poor people... they're out of cash and struggling." This is mostly 1%ers telling me that, so I laugh. When you're poor and you cannot afford any of the Middle Class goods... why the hell WOULD YOU SAVE?
This entire weekend, I've been wondering what Russia's Renaissance Man / Tupac Fan / "Managed Democracy" Tsar (#irony) Vladislav Surkov thinks about the Prigozhin coup. He apparently gave an interview to political strategist Alexey Chesnakov.
Me being a stickler for primary material, I had my team listen to the whole interview on Telegram and translate it for the masses. Here are some of the best excerpts not covered in the above summary.