MCViewPoint

The only reason an extended military conflict in Ukraine is possible is because it has been instigated and perpetuated by the United States. Without the endless and growing torrent of weapons and other supplies, 

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1510064917524758532.html

Andy Mok, Center for China and Globalization

The U.S. is engaging Russia in three wars. Let me discuss them in increasing order of importance and the likely repercussions on the U.S.-led global order. 

2/ The first is the military war taking place on the ground in Ukraine. Then there is the propaganda war taking place at Western media outlets like CNN and on social media platforms like Twitter. 

3/ Finally, and most significantly, there is the economic war which may accelerate the destruction of the US-led power structure that has dominated the world since the end of World War II. 

4/ The only reason an extended military conflict in Ukraine is possible is because it has been instigated and perpetuated by the United States. Without the endless and growing torrent of weapons and other supplies, 

5/ such as Stingers, Javelin missiles, Switchblade drones and the years-long surreptitious military training and likely intelligence support provided by the U.S. and its enablers in Europe, even an abbreviated military conflict in Ukraine would be unlikely. 

6/ Instead, there is widespread destruction, loss of life and growing refugee crisis that are directly and inescapably caused by U.S. intervention. But as tragic as this is, the military war is the least significant from a geopolitical perspective. 

7/ Concurrent with the military war is the propaganda war. Led by CNN and other corporate media stenographers for the U.S. government, there are two angles of attack. 

8/ The first attack claims Russia’s military operation in Ukraine is an unprovoked attack that is failing. The second attack vector is that U.S. and its Western European enablers are indivisibly allied against Russia, and world stands with these so-called defenders of freedom. 

9/ However, neither is true. Regarding the first line of attack, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger and John Mearsheimer have all warned against crossing Russian redlines in Ukraine. 

10/ But these warnings have been either inadvertently or deliberately ignored. Also, some military analysts have compared the Russian action favorably with the Nazi blitzkrieg, which is hailed as an example of a rapid and successful military offensive. 

11/ Regarding the second vector of attack, what is ignored or downplayed are the number of countries that do not support U.S.-led sanctions against Russia. 

12/ These countries include not only China but India, Iran and several other geopolitically significant nations. Indeed, from the nations of OPEC to South Asia, Africa and even Latin America, Russia has many more friends than Western media is letting on. 

13/ And this leads me to the third war, the economic one, which I believe will be most significant. The sanctions imposed on Russia are unprecedented and are meant to shock and awe the country’s President Vladimir Putin into submission. 

14/ However, they are not working as intended and have set forces in motion that may accelerate the destruction of American primacy in the global order. 

15/ As such, it brings to mind something then-U.S. President Barack Obama is alleged to have said about Joe Biden, “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to eff things up.” Specifically, freezing Russian central bank assets have shown the world 

16/ that not only is the U.S. an unreliable political actor that can engage in 180-degree policy shifts driven by the four-year presidential election cycle but that its stewardship of the global financial system is not only suspect but now demonstrably untrustworthy. 

17/ Russia’s demand for payment in rubles for its energy may only be the beginning of the flight away from the dollar. The loss of dollar hegemony will be both catastrophic for the U.S. and a cause for celebration in much of the rest of the world. 

18/ Europe imported 5.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from Russia in 2021. Disruption of these supplies and even significant prices increases will be disastrous for Europe, especially as the year progresses and cold weather returns. 

19/ And this may be the seismic fault line that shatters unity of U.S.-led coalition against Russia in irrevocable ways.

Specifically, Germany may publicly debate whether its economic fortunes are better aligned with Russia rather than under the boot of American “leadership.” 

20/ Again, the U.S.-led sanctions have unleashed forces that may ultimately undermine U.S. interests far more than its instigation of the conflict in Ukraine was intended to solve. 

21/ In summary, it is not at all clear Russia is losing these three wars. In fact, there are signs this latest US-instigated conflict may be another strategic defeat like Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. But Ukrainian conflict may be one with far longer lasting damage to US.

End 

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Could we be returning to an age of hardship? Real material hardship, I mean, not the kind of hardship that people delight to imagine themselves suffering from in order to give significance to their otherwise humdrum lives. For years, my financial adviser has been telling me that my old age is secure, but I never really believed him. The value of assets can melt away like snow in sunshine, and in certain cases assets can even become liabilities. War, inflation, economic depression, confiscatory taxes: There is no such thing as economic security. 

https://www.takimag.com/article/a-new-age-of-hardship/

Never has the contrast between the scale of world events and my own little personal concerns been so great. While millions flee bombardment, and the world economy faces implosion, with all the hardship that such an implosion will inevitably bring in its wake, I do my exercises, twice a day for twenty minutes, to avoid the muscular stiffness and joint pains that a certain minor illness from which I have begun to suffer would otherwise cause. Furthermore, I anxiously taste the fish soup that I have just made to test whether it has enough salt (God forbid it should have too much, that would be an irrecoverable disaster). My life is composed of such pettinesses. 

Of course, it wouldn’t help anyone very much if I desisted from my daily round. The bombardments and the fleeing would go on regardless. I learned, or taught myself, this lesson in personal insignificance early in my life when I was a horrible little child. I was told that I should eat up the food on my plate because there were hungry children in Africa. How, I asked, would it help them if I ate up? The potato left on my plate divided between the hungry children, even if it could be delivered to them, which seemed to be doubtful, would assuage their hunger not at all. 

I realized only decades later that I was told to eat up not to help the children in Africa, but because I should not take the food on my plate for granted. It is difficult for people who have never known shortage to imagine it. But this was not explained to me at the time, and so I was pleased with my own smart reply. 

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Essentially, this is what hardcore power politics is all about. Medvedev was not bragging when he said the era of a single reserve currency is over. The advent of a resource-based global reserve currency means, in a nutshell, that 13% of the planet will not dominate the other 87% anymore.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/03/31/meet-the-new-resource-based-global-reserve-currency/

Pepe Escobar

A new reality is being formed: the unipolar world is irrevocably becoming a thing of the past, a multipolar one is taking shape

It was something to behold. Dmitri Medvedev, former Russian President, unrepentant Atlanticist, current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, decided to go totally unplugged in an outburst matching the combat star turn of Mr. Khinzal that delivered palpable shock and awe all across NATOstan.

Medvedev said “hellish” Western sanctions not only have failed to cripple Russia, but are instead “returning to the West like a boomerang.” Confidence in reserve currencies is “fading like the morning mist”, and ditching the US dollar and the euro is not unrealistic anymore: “The era of regional currencies is coming.”

After all, he added, “no matter if they want it or not, they’ll have to negotiate a new financial order (…) And the decisive voice will then be with those countries that have a strong and advanced economy, healthy public finances and a reliable monetary system.”

Medvedev relayed his succinct analysis even before D Day – as in the deadline this Thursday established by President Putin after which payments for Russian gas by “unfriendly nations” will only be accepted in rubles.

The G7, predictably, had struck a (collective) pose: we won’t pay. “We” means the 4 that are not large Russian gas importers. “We”, moreover, means the Empire of Lies dictating the rules. As for the 3 that will be in dire straits, not only they are major importers but also happen to be WWII losers – Germany, Italy and Japan, still de facto occupied territories. History does have a habit of playing perverted tricks.

Denial didn’t last long. Germany was the first to break – even before industrialists from Ruhr to Bavaria staged a mass revolt. Scholz, the puny Chancellor, called Putin, who had to explain the obvious:  payments are being converted into rubles because the EU froze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves – in a crass violation of international law.

With Taoist patience, Putin also expressed hope this would not represent a deterioration in contract terms for European importers. Russian and German experts should sit down together and discuss the new terms.

Moscow is working on a set of documents defining the new deal. Essentially, that spells out no rubles, no gas. Contracts become null and void once you violate trust. The US and the EU broke legally biding agreements with unilateral sanctions and on top of it confiscated foreign reserves of a – nuclear – G20 nation.

The unilateral sanctions made dollars and euros worthless to Russia. Hysteria fits won’t cut it: this will be resolved – but under Russia’s terms. Period. The Foreign Ministry had already warned that refusal to pay for gas in rubles would lead to a serious global crisis of non-payments and serial global-level bankruptcies, a hellish chain reaction of blocked transactions, freezing of collateral assets and closures of credit lines.

What will happen next is partially predictable. EU companies will receive the new set of rules. They will have time to examine the documents and make a decision. Those that say “no” will be automatically excluded from receiving direct Russian gas shipments – all politico-economic consequences included.

There will be some compromise, of course. For instance, quite a few EU nations will accept to use rubles and increase their gas acquisitions so they may resell the surplus to their neighbors and make a profit. And some may also decide to buy gas on the go on energy exchanges.

So Russia is not imposing an ultimatum on anybody. The whole thing will take time – a rolling process. With some sideway action as well. The Duma is contemplating the extension of payment in rubles to other essential products – such as oil, metals, timber, wheat. It will depend on the collective voracity of the EU chihuahuas. Everyone knows that their non-stop hysteria may translate into a colossal rupture of supply chains across the West.

Bye bye oligarchs

While the Atlanticist ruling classes have gone totally berserk but still remain focused on fighting to the last European to extract any remaining, palpable EU wealth, Russia is playing it cool. Moscow has been quite lenient in fact, brandishing the specter of no gas in Spring rather than Winter.

The Russian Central Bank nationalized foreign exchange earnings of all major exporters. There was no default. The ruble keeps rising – and is now back to roughly the same level before Operation Z.  Russia remains self-sufficient, food-wise. American hysteria over “isolated” Russia is laughable. Every actor that matters across Eurasia – not to mention the other 4 BRICS and virtually the whole Global South – did not demonize and/or sanction Russia.

As an extra bonus, arguably the last oligarch capable of influence in Moscow, Anatoly Chubais, is gone. Call it another momentous historical trickery: Western sanction hysteria de facto dismembered Russian oligarchy – Putin’s pet project since 2000. What that implies is the strengthening of the Russian state and the consolidation of Russian society.

We still don’t have all the facts, but a case can be made that after years of careful evaluation Putin opted to really go for broke and break the West’s back – using that trifecta (imminent blitzkrieg on Donbass; US bioweapon labs; Ukraine working on nuclear weapons)  as the casus belli.

The freezing of foreign reserves had to have been forecasted, especially because the Russian Central Bank had been increasing its reserves of US Treasuries since November last year. Then there’s the serious possibility of Moscow being able to access “secret” offshore foreign reserves – a complex matrix built with Chinese insider help.

The sudden switch from dollars/euros to rubles was hardcore, Olympic-level geoeconomic judo. Putin enticed the collective West to unleash its demented hysteria sanction attack – and turned it against the opponent with a single, swift move.

And here we all are now trying to absorb so many in-synch game-changing developments following the weaponization of dollar assets:  rupee-ruble with India, the Saudi petroyuan, co-badged Mir-UnionPay cards issued by Russian banks, the Russia-Iran SWIFT alternative, the EAEU-China project of an independent monetary/financial system.

Not to mention the master coup by the Russian Central Bank, pegging 1 gram of gold to 5,000 rubles – which is already around $60, and climbing.

Coupled with No Rubles No Gas, what we have here is energy de facto pegged to gold. The EU Chihuahuas and the Japanese colony will need to buy a lot of rubles in gold or buy a lot of gold to have their gas. And it gets better. Russia may re-peg the ruble to gold in the near future. Could go to 2,000 rubles, 1,000 rubles, even 500 rubles for a gram of gold.

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