Dear Reader,

The Russia-Ukraine war continues to dominate the headlines. Many people are wondering what Putin’s real goals are. What is his endgame?

General Sir Richard Shirreff, former deputy supreme commander of NATO Europe and one of our SIC 2022 speakers, believes that Putin wants to essentially annihilate Ukraine as a state.

Jacob Shapiro, director of Geopolitical Analysis at Cognitive Investments, agrees. “Putin sees Ukraine as completely illegitimate,” he said in a recent interview with Ed D’Agostino. “He has said over and over again that there is no such thing as Ukraine; this is all Russia... Anywhere he thinks there is a majority Russian population, he feels like he has a political ideology that makes him want to go and assert Russian control over it.”

Jacob will have much more to say on the topic at our virtual SIC 2022. He is one of several geopolitical experts we invited, among them my old friend George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures. George is Jacob’s former mentor and employer, and one of the top foreign policy specialists in the world. (Click here to see the full list of over 50 SIC speakers.)

George has wowed SIC attendees for years with his on-point analysis. There simply can’t be a conference without him.

We’ll also have experts for our annual China panel, among them Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter and co-founder of CBS MarketWatch.

Then there’s panelist Emily de La Bruyère, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), who has pioneered novel data collection and analysis tools tailored to Beijing’s strategic and institutional structures.

And finally, Louis Gave, co-founder of Gavekal Research, who lived and did business in Hong Kong for many years.

That’s a lot of geopolitical brain power… and looking at the current state of affairs, I say we need it.

Click here to join us for this pivotal conference in a year when “normal” has truly gone out the window.

Your always keeping one eye on the global picture analyst,

John Mauldin
Co-Founder, Mauldin Economics