What do all the countries Washington wants to go to war with have in common? Not terrorism, oil.

What Washington doesn’t like is that these countries are developing alternatives to paying for oil in dollars. Gold backed alternatives.

Once the world bails on the dollar the dollar sinks like a rock.

The US position is a familiar one. Let US win your hearts and minds or we will burn your village down. The US can never seem to make that strategy work.

https://internationalman.com/articles/the-real-reason-the-deep-state-hates-russia-and-what-it-means-for-gold/

by International Man

For years, the Deep State in the US—the permanently entrenched bureaucracy that runs the show no matter which party is in power—has labelled Russia “public enemy number one.”

To help us better understand the situation we’re turning to Doug Casey’s friend, Mark Gould.

Mark is an executive for a company in the oil industry, also working on several media projects. He also has 30 years of experience in Russian telecommunications as co-founder of CTC Media (previously NASDAQ:CTCM); and afterwards pioneering digital compression for TV (the core technology for video streaming) on the Soviet Satellite system, Moscow Global. Mark currently lives in Moscow.

International Man: Naturally, Americans have a lot of misconceptions about Russia. And that’s what we want to help clear up today. The importance of Russia to world affairs is simply too important to ignore or to not understand properly.

Also, this perception gap about Russia could be key to finding interesting investment opportunities—particularly in the natural resources space—that are off the radar of the mainstream financial media.

John McCain used to call Russia a gas station masquerading as a country. This is a childish and overly simplistic characterization. Others in the US media and government have made similar comments. What does the mainstream image of Russia get wrong?

Mark Gould: The US perspective is stuck in the 1960s and even earlier, going back to the 19th century.

Russia is a unique society. It’s a normal place, operating under its own rules and customs. Viewing it through the prism of the Soviet past is not concurrent with present realities. Russia is an independent state that has its own concerns, people, leaders, and problems just like America does. And the people are patriotic and so is the president.

Russia is charting its own path. It doesn’t want to be under the thumb of the IMF or the World Bank…

If you go back in history a little bit, you can get the Russian perspective on gold.

The Russian ruble has always been backed by gold. It’s not a new idea. And Russia has more reserves in gold that backs the currency than almost any other country.

Russia is also the world’s largest producer of oil; it’s the second largest producer of natural gas; it’s number two in sunflower oil.

Kicking Russia out of SWIFT or doing anything like that would be basically cutting off your nose to spite your own face. The US government would be complete idiots to do that.

Money is an idea backed by confidence, and gold has held that for many years for many people and for many countries.

Russia is hedging its bets. It’s building its own trade alliances. For example, recently Russia signed a deal with Huawei, the Chinese company that’s been banned from American markets.

International Man: Russia has been building alternatives to Western-dominated systems. This includes measures to protect itself from sanctions involving the US financial system, an alternative to the SWIFT system, alternative trade deals with other BRICS countries, the Eurasian Economic Union, and integration with China’s New Silk Road program. Where do you see this trend going?

Mark Gould: Well I think it’s going to continue.

Russia is building alliances; who doesn’t? To expect Russia not to look after its own economic self-interest is absurd. It’s the same thing the US or the UK or France or Indonesia do…

Be seeing you