From Gwadar on the Arabian Sea to the Golden Horn in Istanbul, a new geopolitical arc is forming as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey sign the “Mecca Pact.” Meanwhile, from Mumbai on the Arabian Sea to Piraeus in the Aegean, a parallel arc is stretching, with India, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Cyprus, and Greece forming a new […]
Page A3From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 2 September 2026
One outlet offers three fixes for a China policy it says Trump already kneecapped himself.
As it ran on the front
Look, there is nothing inconsistent about running three separate, independently reported strategic assessments on China policy in the same outlet in the same week — that's called range, that's called a marketplace of ideas, that's called — okay, it's called three different writers filing three different pitches, but the point stands.
Take the islands-for-oil piece. Solid realpolitik: trade British territory nobody at this paper actually owns for Argentine oil, apply the proceeds against Iran and China simultaneously, very efficient, very — I want to say elegant, I did say elegant, strike that, it's a plan involving giving away someone else's islands, but strategically it's elegant.…
…(cont) Then there's the tariff piece, which argues the fifty percent tariff on Canada — a close ally, a trading partner, not adjacent to China in any way relevant to a China strategy — actually kneecapped the China policy. Now, our position, and I want to be careful here, our position is that the tariff on Canada is part of a broader — is, in fact, according to our own reporting, the thing that undermined the China policy. So our position is that our policy defeated our policy. That's not a contradiction, that's — give me a second — that's sequencing.
And then the third piece, the 'Islamic NATO,' which we're calling secret leverage against China in a headline, publicly, in a national outlet, which is, by definition, not secret anymore, but the leverage itself survives, we're told — that's just how leverage works.
So to recap the comprehensive, unified China strategy: give away islands, blame an ally whose tariff we imposed on ourselves, and deploy a secret alliance we just announced to everyone. Every piece is correct on its own terms. That they cannot all be the strategy at the same time is a layout issue, not a policy issue. Page one runs the front, page two runs the plan, and if the plan changes between editions, well — that's not incoherence, that's simply three writers being right at once, about three different things, none of which quite touch.
“Same paper can't decide if the play is giving away islands, blaming Canada, or calling in a secret alliance, and all three ran the same week like nobody in the building talks to anybody else. That's not strategy, that's a newsroom throwing ideas at the wall to see which one the base likes. Actual tariffs are already hitting actual supply chains, and the columnists are still arguing over which map to draw.”
“These are three independent strategic assessments, not a contradiction — well, one of them does literally argue the tariff sabotaged the other one's plan, so maybe 'independent' is doing some work there. The range shows depth. That's the position, and I'm sticking to it, mostly.”
The receipts
After trade talks between Canada and the United States broke down in August, the Trump administration announced 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian imports. This latest round of tariffs is a serious strategic mistake, not to mention an economic one. Countries like Canada increasingly perceive the U.S as an erratic and unreliable…
The global energy landscape shifted on its axis with America’s acquisition of Venezuela’s oil reserves, giving Washington control over 65 billion barrels of crude. Yet, true strategic foresight requires looking beyond Caracas to cripple adversaries such as Iran. Flooding the market with South American crude collapses global energy…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.