USA & NATO vs Russia in Ukraine: Washington's Geopolitical War X

 

From the first day that Russia succombed to Washington's trap on February 24th, I have worried about the trajectories of the Ukraine War, the risks and effects of various policy moves by the engaged antagonistic political actors to achieve their ends. I have also felt that a better understanding emerges if we recognize the plural and complex character of four encounters—on the battlefields pitting Russian aggressors against Ukrainian resisters, inside Ukraine as various dangerous Neo-nazi elements struggle for control; in the geopolitical matrix by which the U.S. is intent on humiliating Russia by shattering its will and exposing its weaknesses as a challenger of U.S. global primacy, while Russia is determined to regain control over its borders and push back against NATO influence around its territory; and, finally, in cyberspace whereby  war-mongering propaganda, fake news, and truth have become indistinguishable for the Western public, as they all come from the same sources: Washington and Kiev. The overall effect of such an inflammatory information and malicious exaggerations is to prolong the killing and heighten the strategic stakes for the USA, and given the horrifying aspects of the Ukraine Crisis making the conflicts unfit for diplomatic resolution.

In light of this mélange of considerations how can a mere human being hope to achieve a clearer understanding of what is happening, what are the relative risks, and what could yet be done to end the destruction, to avoid any further deaths and safeguard humanity from present risks of escalation to a wider war, possibly fought with nuclear weapons? A first step in the right direction is to pronounce that the ideological silos of both extreme left and right slant policy advocacy toward extremism, cause confusion, and to the extent influence is exerted, the effect is confound the search for viable and humane modes of deescalation. Extremist policy vectors are unsatisfactory cognitively, normatively, and prudentially.

It is clear for those who know history and USA’s will of dominating the world, that the Ukraine Crisis as essentially an outcome of inflated post-Cold War global imperial overreach orchestrated by the U.S., manifesting itself by way of neoliberal globalization in close conjunction with the projection of military dominance on a planetary scale.

However, the great majority, which enjoys far greater access to elite circles of government and media than independent media, “explains” the Ukraine Crisis as an essentially “evil plot by a Russian autocrat to destroy sanctity of the territorial rights of a sovereign state, violating the most basic rule of a state-centric world order, and mounting an unacceptable challenge to the exclusive global responsibilities of the West, led by the U.S., to uphold security throughout the world in accord with democratic values and humanitarian principles”. Oblivious to the geopolitical storm clouds of a wider war that unleashes nuclear weapons.

In my view, silos of thought are not helpful guidelines for prescriptive or normative approaches to the various elements at play, and a more useful understanding comes from focusing on the debates, perspectives, and shortcomings in the gray zones where ‘group think’ and special interests exert a decisive influence in shaping the worldview of advisors and leaders. In this respect, it is important to assess the degree to which foreign policy elites in the geopolitical “West”, especially the U.S., are responsive to the priorities and justifications put forward by the military-industrial-intelligence-congressional-think tank-media complex (MICTIM), and how its impacts relate to degrees of engagement and detachment from various conflicts, and yet need to convince enough of the citizenry to lend support depends on rationalizing wars by referencing the evil and menace of the other, and in this case reviving Cold War memories of Russia as a menacing enemy of all that the transatlantic alliance stands for. To this extent there is a sharp distinction between the so called “autocratic” Russia and “democratic” U.S. As notoriously acknowledged in the 2002 Report of the neocon Project for a New American Century, despite the strength of MICTIM it cannot make war without a high level of societal support. The citizenry needs to be mobilized by being made fearful, angry, hostile, and confident enough to bear the costs and risks of war, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union as its necessary enemy this would require ‘a new Pearl Harbor’ to be depicted as a strategic threat as well as an evil, criminal act.

Obviously, Russian induced aggression against Ukraine was not itself a direct enough assault on the U.S. homeland to be that new Pearl Harbor event, which for two decades 9/11 performed as the demonic actor in this geopolitical theater of the absurd. Attacking Ukraine was sufficiently indirect and distant from the homeland and posed no obvious security threat to the U.S. Yet Washington labelled it as “provocative” in other ways useful for the center-right nexus of foreign policy advisors in the White House. It could be credibly cast as a barbaric attack on a white Christian nation (by a Christian nation, nonetheless) that was used to  arouse feelings of identification and induce an outpouring of humanitarian sympathies sufficient to support immediate “diplomatic” of Ukrainian sovereign rights and the demonization of Putin by Biden and the media. This was in the very early phase. Soon the public “restrained engagement with Ukrainian resistance” intensified as the propaganda against Russian “atrocities” mounted and the strategic stakes attached to the political outcome rose.

Most relevantly, Ukrainian Azov militias proved more formidable than expected, and it began to be believed that in the course of helping Ukraine avoid being overrun by its “gigantic” Russian neighbor, the OTAN could solidify its global dominance that was attained back in 1992 when the Cold War ended. Not surprisingly at this point that the parameters changed, the U.S. began to increase the extent of its involvement, not primarily for the sake of Ukraine, but to push back against this Russian challenge, and indirectly message China to lie low or else. Concerns about underscoring geopolitical primacy took precedence over safeguarding Ukraine. Nothing less than the legacy of the Cold War was at stake, whose aftermath was characterized by the United States as the self-anointed unipolar architect of world order. It is this shift of emphasis that is hidden beneath the current attachment by MICTIM to ‘a victory scenario’ and the notable silence of the leadership in Washington about framing ‘a peace scenario’ as if diplomacy was either futile, unnecessary, and undesirable. Futile because Moscow was allegedly unresponsive, unnecessary because the risks associated with inflicting defeat of Russia worth taking, undesirable because ending the war on Ukrainian soil too soon would deprive the U.S. of the major geopolitical victory that Washington seeks and believes within its grasp.

This is an accurate account of why there is no effort being made to stop the killing as leading moral authority figures such as the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres  and Pope Francis have urged without generating a peace-oriented counterforce.

This discouraging portrayal of the global scene when it comes to the agendas relating to war/peace, leaves the future dependent on civil society activism, a calling of accounts from below. Remembering that the political leaders of the victorious states in World War II agreed before the guns went silent that there was no point establishing a UN which had an effective normative mandate and sufficient material capabilities to implement the Charter against the world’s most powerful states. It did not hide this unseemly institutional modesty, but endowed this geopolitical right of exception with normative authority by giving the five permanent members of the Security Council a virtually unrestricted authority to veto any decision of the only body in the entire UN system than could decide rather than recommend or advise. True, the International Court of Justice can render decisions, but its jurisdiction is limited to voluntary acceptance by states in conflict and although its decisions are subject to implementation if the Security Council can muster a consensus. Otherwise decisions by the World Court can be ignored or nullified without adverse consequences.

The Ukraine Crisis highlights the many fragilities of world order at a time when geopolitical alignments are in flux, with Russia challenging USA’s supremacy, China rising as the biggest financial world game player, and the U.S. struggling to maintain the status quo it has been losing since 2001.

Such circumstances are dangerously diverting attention of leaders and publics from Israel's recurrent crimes in Palestine. As well as from the monumental tasks of achieving food and energy security at a time of the menacing ecological instabilities associated with climate change. For everyone knows that in case that the US pushes NATO far enough, the World will be facing a global nuclear that could erase us all.

USA & NATO vs Russia in Ukraine: A New World Order in the Horizon? V

 

The Russia-Ukraine war has quickly turned into a global conflict. As I’ve already said, one of the likely outcomes of this war is the very redefinition of the current world order, which has been in effect, at least since the collapse of the Soviet Union over three decades ago.

Indeed, there is a growing sense that a new global agenda is forthcoming, one that could unite Russia and China and, to a degree, India and maybe Brasil and others, under the same banner. This is evident, not only by the succession of the earth-shattering events underway, but, equally important, the language employed to describe these events.

Due to Washington’s aggressive intervention within Ukraine through Azov and other militias and its approach to Finland and Sweden in order to convince them to join NATO , the Russian position on Ukraine has morphed throughout the war from merely wanting to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine to a much bigger regional and global agenda, to eventually, per the words of Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, “put an end to the unabashed expansion” of NATO, and the “unabashed drive towards full domination by the US and its Western subjects on the world stage.”

On April 30, Lavrov went further, stating in an interview with the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, that Russia’s war “contributes to the process of freeing the world from the West’s neocolonial oppression,” predicated on “racism and an exceptionality.”

But Russia is not the only country that feels this way. China, too, India, and many others. The meeting between Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on March 30, served as a foundation of this truly new global language. Statements made by the two countries’ top diplomats were more concerned about challenging US hegemony than the specifics of the Ukraine war.

Those following the evolution of the Russia-China political discourse, even before the start of the Russia-Ukraine war on February 24, will notice that the language employed supersedes that of a regional conflict, into the desire to bring about the reordering of world affairs altogether. 

But is this new world order possible? If yes, what would it look like? These questions, and others, remain unanswered, at least for now. What we know, however, is that the Russian quest for global transformation exceeds Ukraine by far, and that China, too, is on board.

While Russia and China remain the foundation of this new world order, many other countries, especially in the Global South, are eager to join. This should not come as a surprise as frustration with the unilateral US-led world order has been brewing for many years, and has come at a great cost. Even the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, though timid at times, has warned against this unilaterality, calling instead on the international community to commit itself to  “the values of multilateralism and diplomacy for peace.”

However, the pro-Russian stances in the South – as indicated by the refusal of many governments to join western sanctions on Moscow, and the many displays of popular support through protests, rallies and statements – for the moment, lack a cohesive narrative because of the absence of a leader, such as Brasil. Unlike the Soviet Union of yesteryears, Russia of today does not champion a global ideology, like socialism, and its current attempt at articulating a relatable global discourse remains, for now, limited.

It is obviously too early to examine any kind of superstructure – language, political institutions, religion, philosophy, etc – resulting from the Russia-NATO global conflict, Russia-Ukraine war and the growing Russia-China affinity.

Though much discussion has been dedicated to the establishing of an alternative monetary system, in the case of Lavrov’s and Yi’s new world order, a fully-fledged substructure is yet to be developed.

New substructures will only start forming once the national currency of countries like Russia and China replace the US dollar, alternative money transfer systems, like CIPS, are put into effect, new trade routes are open, and eventually new modes of production replace the old ones. Only then, superstructures will follow, including new political discourses, historical narratives, everyday language, culture, art and even symbols.

The thousands of US-western sanctions slapped on Russia were largely meant to weaken the country’s ability to navigate outside the current US-dominated global economic system. Without this maneuverability, the West believes, Moscow would not be able to create and sustain an alternative economic model that is centered around Russia.

US previous unlawful sanctions on Cuba, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and others have failed to produce the coveted ‘regime change’, but they have succeeded in weakening the substructures of these societies, denying them the chance to be relevant economic actors at a regional and international stage. They were merely allowed to subsist, and barely so.

Russia, on the other hand, is a global power, with a large economy, international networks of allies, trade partners and supporters. That in mind, surely a regime change will not take place in Moscow any time soon, unless there is a military putsch to push the war further. The latter’s challenge, however, is whether it will be able to orchestrate a sustainable paradigm shift under current USA’s pressures and sanctions.

The Kremlin believes so.

Time will tell.

For now, it is certain that some kind of a global transformation is taking place, along with the potential of a ‘new world order’, a term, ironically employed by the US government more than any other…

USA & NATO vs Russia in Ukraine: A New World Order in the Horizon? IV

 

Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine has brought strong US and European condemnation and sanctions, but as we have already seen here, many nations around the world have chosen not to join this united front.

Dozens of governments outside the USA, Canada and Europe have been reluctant to censure Russia, and many more have refrained from joining multilateral sanctions. China has tacitly supported the Kremlin since its February affirmation of a Sino-Russian friendship with “no limits.” A few others have backed Russia vocally, among them Belarus, which has served as a staging ground for the Russian invasion.

Meanwhile, other governments have sat on the fence. Brasil said pointedly that would not take sides. Indian leaders have reaffirmed their policy of nonalignment, implying that their nation will seek to stay out of the fight. South Africa, Pakistan and numerous other nations are following a similar path.

I believe responses to this current conflict shed light on how governments throughout what is known as the Global South are apt to behave if a new Cold War takes shape. Unless governments are threatened directly, many appear content to espouse nonalignment – a policy of avoiding strong support for the the USA and Euriope or for its principal rivals in Moscow and Beijing.

Nonalignment may be a sensible strategy for individual countries as a way to preserve autonomy and avoid costly choices between major powers. 

The concept of nonalignment emerged in the 1950s. It implied a refusal to join the rival Cold War blocs led by Washington and Moscow. The concept was pioneered by a group of post-World War II leaders including India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito.

Despite representing a broad range of political ideologies, they all saw nonalignment as a way to resist colonial and imperial powers, preserve independence and stay out of the Soviet-American conflict.

These ideas led to the 1961 establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement, a loosely organized group that soon included most of the world’s countries and population. Several core principles guided the movement, including anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, nonaggression and noninterference.

Yet the movement faced a dilemma from the start. When a powerful state violates core principles like sovereignty and territorial integrity, should members of the Non-Aligned Movement take sides to oppose it?

The movement’s diverse members occasionally took strong unified stands. For example, they joined in opposing colonial rule in Rhodesia and apartheid in Namibia and South Africa. When superpower interests were more directly in play, however, nonaligned states failed to agree on when to take sides.

Leftist leaders in states such as Cuba and Vietnam saw USA's powers as neoimperial threats and sided clearly with Moscow despite joining the Non-Aligned Movement. Conservative states, such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco, tilted consistently toward Washington. Many sought relative neutrality. But all these states remained in the movement, which has no agreed standard for what degree of alignment is acceptable.

The differences among members of the Non-Aligned Movement undermined their ability to exercise collective clout, even when superpowers rode roughshod over norms of sovereignty and self-determination.

In 1979, for example, members were deeply divided over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Fifty-six voted to condemn the Soviet invasion at the United Nations, but nine supported Moscow and 26 abstained. Those numbers are remarkably similar to recent votes on Ukraine. Divisions over the Soviet war in Afghanistan weakened the Non-Aligned Movement and undercut its ability to enforce international norms and influence Soviet policy.

The movement’s relevance declined after the Cold War, as its diverse members struggled to define its role in a world no longer shaped by a Soviet-American standoff. Still, the movement has survived, and its 120 members recently celebrated the group’s 60th anniversary in Belgrade.

The Non-Aligned Movement faces new challenges today, as the war in Ukraine continues.

For many governments in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, nonalignment remains appealing. Most depend heavily on trade, aid and investment both from the USA and Europe powers and from China (if not also from Russia). Choosing sides could thus be crippling economically. That danger is apparent in Belarus, which faces stiff Western sanctions for aiding the Russian war effort. Countries opposing Russia also risk debilitating energy cutoffs. Taking sides against China in any future scenario, such as conflict over Taiwan, would be even more costly.

Relative nonalignment is also attractive from a security standpoint. It enables governments to obtain weapons from multiple sources and limit dependence on any single power. This is a major factor for India, which remains heavily reliant on Russian arms, and to a lesser extent for countries like Vietnam.

Nonalignment helps keep diplomatic doors open as well. This appeals to governments wary of losing policy autonomy if they rely too much on one powerful state or bloc for political support.

For all of these reasons, nonalignment is likely to continue to be common. In fact, its strategic appeal is arguably stronger now than it was during the Cold War because of greater global integration. Unlike the 1950s, most countries now have strong economic, political and, in some cases, military linkages to both East and West.

Nonalignment may be sensible policy for individual states, but it could spell trouble for USA's ruling. Russian President Vladimir Putin has shattered the illusion that territorial conquest and great-power wars were consigned to the NATO members. Reluctance to take sides in such a clear case of aggression can weaken USA's international norms and undermine Washington's security rules.

At this stage, most members of the Non-Aligned Movement have condemned Russian attacks. Yet only one, Singapore, has imposed sanctions. Others are passing the buck, making the war in Ukraine the deserved burden for the United States and its core allies to bear.

USA & NATO vs Russia in Ukraine: A New World Order in the Horizon? II

 

The meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in the Chinese eastern city of Huangshan on March 30, is likely to go down in history as a decisive meeting in the relations between the two Asian giants.

The meeting was not only important due to its timing or the fact that it reaffirmed the growing ties between Moscow and Beijing, but because of the resolute political discourse articulated by the two top diplomats.

In Huangshan, there was no place for ambiguity. Lavrov spoke of a new ‘world order’, arguing that the world is now “living through a very serious stage in the history of international relations” in reference to the escalating Russia-Ukraine/NATO conflict.

“We, together with you (China) and with our sympathizers,” Sergei Lavrov added with assuredness, “will move towards a multipolar, just, democratic world order.”

For his part, Wang Yi restated his country’s position regarding its relations with Russia and the West with precise words, some of which were used before in the February 4 meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. “China-Russia cooperation has no limits … Our striving for peace has no limits, our upholding of security has no limits, our opposition towards hegemony has no limits,” Wang said.

Those following the evolution of the Russia-China political discourse, even before the start of the Russia-Ukraine war on February 24, will notice that the language employed supersedes that of a regional conflict, into the desire to bring about the reordering of world affairs altogether.

Though the readiness to push against US-led western hegemony is inherent in both countries’ political objectives, rarely did Moscow and Beijing move forward in challenging western dominance, as is the case today. The fact that China has refused to support western economic sanctions, condemn or isolate Russia is indicative of a clear Chinese forward thinking policy.

Moreover, Beijing and Moscow are clearly not basing their future relation on the outcome of the Ukraine war alone. What they are working to achieve is a long term political strategy that they hope would ultimately lead to a multipolar world.

Russia’s motives behind the coveted paradigm shift are obvious: resisting NATO’s eastern expansion, reasserting itself as a global power and freeing itself from the humiliating legacy of the post-Soviet Union. China, too, has a regional and global agenda. Though China’s ambitions are partly linked to different geopolitical spheres – South and East China Seas and the Indo-Pacific region – much of Beijing’s grievances, and priorities, overlap with those of Moscow.

Aside from the direct economic interests between Russia and China, who share massive and growing markets, they are faced with similar challenges: both are hoping to gain greater access to waterways and to push back against US-western military advancements in some of the world’s most important trade routes.

It was no surprise that one of Russia’s top strategic priorities from its war with Ukraine is to widen its access to the Black Sea, a major trade hub with a sizable percentage of world trade, especially in wheat and other essential food supplies.

Like Russia, China too has been laboring to escape US military hegemony, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. The exponential rise in the Chinese military budget – estimated to grow by 7.1% in 2022, speaks of the way that China sees its role in world affairs, now and in the future.

The US trade war against China, which was accelerated by former US President Donald Trump, was a clear reminder to Beijing that global economic power can only be guaranteed through an equal military might. This realization explains China’s decision to open its first overseas military base in Djibouti, in the very strategic Horn of Africa, in 2017, in addition to Beijing’s military moves in the three artificial islands in the South China Sea, and its latest military deal with Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.

While the Russian and Chinese motives, as enunciated by top officials on both sides are clear – to “move towards a multipolar world order” – the US and its allies are not motivated by a specific, forward thinking political doctrine, as was often the case in the past. Washington simply aims to contain the two rising powers as stated in the yet-to-be officially released 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS). According to the NDS, “the growing multi-domain threat posed by the (People’s Republic of China) PRC” is the primary challenge to US interests, followed by the “acute threats” posed by Russia.

Considering the complex interests of both Russia and China, and the fact that the two countries are facing the same mutual enemy, chances are the war in Ukraine is merely a prelude to a protracted conflict that will manifest itself through economic, political and diplomatic pressures and even outright wars.

Though it is premature to speak about the future of this global conflict with certainty, there is little doubt that we are now living in a new era of global affairs, one which is fundamentally different from the decades that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Equally true, we also know that both China and Russia will be key players in shaping that future, which could indeed push us away from US-OTAN hegemony and “towards a multipolar world order”.

The bell tolls for the American Empire.

That is in case US’s Government & Oligarchs Ukraine dangerous game doesn’t take us to a new World War that would be the end of us all.  

USA & NATO vs Russia in Ukraine: The "Free World" is Small, just like Oligarch Zelenskyy

 Who is Zelenskyy?

Is he really a "good guy" or a Ukrainian version of French Fascist Jew Eric Zemour?

Why is he allowing Ukraine's CIA trained SBU kidnap and torture leftist activits in Dnipro, Azov take control and Russian soldiers being tortured and executed?

Meet Zelenskyy 

More than 100 years after World War I, Europe’s leaders are sleepwalking toward a new all-out war. In 1914, the European governments believed that the war would last three weeks; it lasted four years and resulted in more than 20 million deaths. The same nonchalance is visible with the war in Ukraine. The dominant view is that the aggressor should be left broken and humbled. Then, the defeated power was Germany. Some dissenting voices, such as John Maynard Keynes, felt that the humbling of Germany would be a disaster. Their warnings went unheeded. Twenty-one years later, Europe was back at war, which lasted six years and killed 70 million people. History neither repeats itself nor seems to teach us anything, but it does illustrate similarities and differences.

The hundred years before 1914 offered Europe relative peace. What wars took place were of a short-lived nature. The reason for this was the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), which brought together the victors and the vanquished from the Napoleonic wars to create a lasting peace. The chair of the conference was Klemens von Metternich, who made sure that the defeated power (France) paid for its actions with territorial losses but that it signed the treaty along with Austria, England, Prussia, and Russia to secure peace with dignity.

While the Napoleonic wars took place between European powers, today’s war is between a European (Russia) and a non-European (United States) power. It is a proxy war, with the USA using a third country (Ukraine) to achieve geostrategic goals that go well beyond the country in question and the continent to which it belongs.

Russia is at war with Ukraine because it wants to protect Russian citizens and itself from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is commanded by the United States. NATO has been at the service of U.S. geostrategic interests. Once a steadfast champion of the self-determination of peoples, Russia is now illegally sacrificing these same principles to assert its own security concerns, after failing to have them recognized through peaceful means.

Since the end of the first cold war, the U.S. has striven to deepen Russia’s defeat, a defeat which in fact was probably more self-inflicted than brought about by any superiority on the part of its opponent.

From NATO’s perspective, the goal of the war in Ukraine is to inflict an unconditional defeat on Russia, preferably one that leads to regime change in Moscow in order to place a puppet president. The duration of the war depends on that goal. Where is Russia’s incentive to end the war when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson permits himself to say that sanctions against Russia will continue, no matter what Russia’s position is now?

Would it be sufficient for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be, or is the truth of the matter that the NATO countries insist on the ousting of Russia itself so that China’s expansion can be halted?

There was also regime change in the 1918 humbling of Germany, but it all ended up leading to Hitler and an even more devastating war. The Pentagon-Mainstream Media propaganda has allowed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “political greatness” to be construed as being either in recognition of the brave patriot who defends his country from the invader to the last drop of blood or in recognition of the brave patriot who, faced with the imminence of so many innocent deaths and the asymmetry in military strength, successfully enlists the support of his allies to negotiate fiercely to secure a dignified peace. However, the fact is that he only wants to stick to power no matter what and only asks for more weapons, besides spreading dangerous propaganda until Australia that Putin is going there next.

During the two world wars of the 20th century, Europe was the self-proclaimed center of the world. That is why we call the two wars worldwars. About 4 million of Europe’s troops were in fact African and Asian. Many thousands of non-European deaths were the price paid by the inhabitants of remote colonies of the countries involved, sacrificed in a war that did not concern them.

Now, Europe is but a small corner of the world, which the war in Ukraine will render even smaller. For centuries, Europe was merely the western tip of Eurasia, the huge landmass that stretched from China to the Iberian Peninsula and witnessed the exchange of knowledge, products, scientific innovations, and cultures. Much of what was later attributed to European exceptionalism (from the scientific revolution of the 16th century to the industrial revolution in the 19th century) cannot be understood, nor would it have been possible, without those centuries-old exchanges. The war in Ukraine—especially if it goes on for too long—runs the risk not only of amputating one of Europe’s historic powers (Russia), but also of isolating it from the rest of the world, notably from China.

The world is far bigger than what you get to see through European or North American lenses. Seeing through these lenses, Europeans have never felt so strong, so close to their larger accomplice, so sure of standing on the right side of history, with the whole planet being run by the rules of the “liberal order,” a world finally feeling strong enough to go forth sometime soon and conquer—or at least neutralize—China, after having destroyed China’s main partner, Russia.

Seeing through non-European lenses, on the other hand, Europe and the U.S. stand haughtily all but alone, probably capable of winning one battle, but on their way to certain defeat in the war of history.

More than half of the world’s population lives in countries that have decided not to join the sanctions against Russia. Many of the United Nations member states that voted (rightly) against the illegal invasion of Ukraine did so based on their historical experience, which consisted of being invaded, not by Russia, but rather by the U.S., England, France, or Israel. Their decision was not dictated by ignorance, but by precaution.

How can they trust countries that created SWIFT—a financial transfer system aimed at protecting economic transactions against political interference—only to end up removing from that system a country on political grounds?

Countries that arrogate to themselves the power to confiscate the financial and gold reserves of sovereign nations like Afghanistan, Venezuela, and now Russia?

Countries that trumpet freedom of expression as a sacrosanct universal value, but resort to censorship the moment they are exposed by it?

Countries that are supposed to cherish democracy and yet have no qualms about staging a coup whenever an election goes against their interests?

Countries in whose eyes the “dictator” Nicolás Maduro becomes a trading partner overnight because the circumstances have changed and they need Venezuela’s oil?

The world is not a place of innocence. And the USA is the biggest predator of all and a dangerous threat to Earth and humanity. With its usual accomplices from NATO and Israel. 

 

USA & NATO vs Russia in Ukraine: A New World Order in the Horizon?

 

According to the New York Times, the countries in yellow on this map (wich imposed sanctions on Russia) are the "free world". For them, the vast majority of humanity, including myself and my Brazilian countrywomen/men, are worthless "backwards". What can we make of this narrative?... 

By the way, the US recentrly imposed "sanctions" on Cambodia for considering the country "too friendly" with Chine. In the 1960s/70's the US dropped more bombs in Cambodia than during all of World War II. 750.000 people were killed. No reparations were ever paid.

Do the Ukraine war and the action of the United States, the EU and the UK spell the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency? Even with the peace talks recently held in Turkey or the proposed 15-point peace plan, as the Financial Times had reported earlier, the fallout for the dollar still remains. For the first time, Russia, a major nuclear power and economy, was treated as a vassal state, with the United States, the EU and the UK seizing its $300 billion foreign exchange reserves. Where does this leave other countries, who also hold their foreign exchange reserves largely in dollars or euros?

The threat to the dollar hegemony is only one part of the fallout. The complex supply chains, built on the premise of a stable trading regime of the World Trade Organization principles, are also threatening to unravel. The United States is discovering that Russia is not simply a petrostate as they thought but that it also supplies many of the critical materials that the U.S. needs for several industries as well as its military. This is apart from the fact that Russia is also a major supplier of wheat and fertilizers.

Seizing Russia’s funds means that the faith in the United States as the world’s banker and in the dollar as the global reserve currency is in question. Why should countries maintain any trade surplus and bank it abroad if that surplus can be seized at will through sanctions imposed by the West? The promise of a dollar as the world’s reserve currency was that all surpluses in dollars were safe. With the seizure of the Afghan central bank’s $9.5 billion, and allocating $7 billion out of it, the United States has shown that it considers the dollar reserves of another country, held by the United States’ central bank, as its money. It may be an economic asset in the books for a country to maintain its currency reserves with the U.S. central bank. But it is effectively a political liability, as the U.S. government can seize this asset at will. The United States has earlier shown its capability of imposing sanctions against countries such as Iraq, Libya and Venezuela and seizing their assets that resulted in far-reaching negative impacts for these countries. The seizure of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves by a handful of Western countries—ex-colonial and settler-colonial states—shows that the so-called rules-based order is now based on weaponizing the dollar and the West’s control over the global financial system.

Economists—Prabhat Patnaik and Michael Hudson—and financial experts such as Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse are now predicting a new regime in which another currency or some other variant system will emerge as the world’s new reserve currency. According to Pozsar, “When this crisis (and war) is over, the U.S. dollar should be much weaker and, on the flipside, the renminbi much stronger, backed by a basket of commodities.”

What has led to these predictions? After World War II, the Bretton Woods agreement led to the dollar becoming the world’s reserve currency. It replaced the British pound and was pegged to gold at a conversion value of $35 to an ounce of gold. In 1971, then-President Richard Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system and removed the “convertibility of U.S. dollars to gold,” which meant that the dollar was now backed only by the U.S. government (or U.S. Treasury) guarantees. The dollar as reserve currency had three things going for it in the postwar years: It was backed by the United States, which was the world’s largest industrial producer; the United States was the preeminent military power even if challenged by the Soviet Union; and it was backed by West Asian oil, the largest traded commodity, being priced in dollars.

The denomination of West Asian oil, particularly of Saudi Arabia, was critical to the United States and was determined by its military power. The coup in Iran against then-Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, the 1958 coup in Iraq, and many other political events in West Asia can be understood more easily if the world understands the importance of oil for the United States. This was the basis of the Carter Doctrine, extending the Monroe Doctrine equivalent to the Persian Gulf region—and reflected the United States’ interest in the region and its lack of tolerance for interference by any outside power there. U.S. foreign policy in West Asia has been captured on bumper stickers and antiwar protest signs for decades with variations on the phrase, “Our oil is under their sand.” The United States’ control over West Asian oil combined with its industrial and military power ensured that the dollar remained as the world’s reserve currency.

The fall of the United States as the world’s industrial power has gone hand in hand with the rise of China. A measure of China’s industrial rise can be seen from a simple comparison provided by the Lowy Institute using International Monetary Fund data on global trade. In 2001, more than 80 percent of countries had the United States as their major trading partner as compared to China. By 2018, that figure had dropped to a little more than 30 percent—128 out of 190 countries “[traded] more with China than the United States.” This dramatic change has happened in fewer than 20 years. The reason for this change is industrial production: China overtook the United States in 2010 to become the largest industrial producer in the world. (India is the fifth-largest industrial producer but manufactures only 3.1 percent of the world output as against 28.7 percent of the manufacturing output produced by China and 16.8 percent produced by the United States toward the world’s industrial production.) It is not surprising that world trading patterns follow industrial production.

Two recent events are important in this context. China and the Eurasian Economic Union consisting of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia seem to be moving toward a new international and monetary system. India and Russia also seem to be working out a rupee-ruble exchange based on India’s need to import Russian arms, fertilizer and oil. India had already created a similar system earlier for buying Iranian oil in rupees. This might also give a fillip to increasing India’s exports to Russia. Saudi Arabia has recently indicated that it might also designate its oil sales to China in yuan and not dollars. If this happens, this would be the first time since 1974 that Saudi Arabia would sell any oil in a currency other than the dollar. This would give an immediate fillip to the yuan, as more than 25 percent of all of Saudi Arabia’s oil is sold to China.

The United States dominates the services, intellectual property (IP) and information technology (IT) markets. But the markets for physical goods, unlike for services such as IP and IT, are based on a complex model of supplies and, therefore, have complex global supply chains. If the Western economic war means taking out Russia’s supplies from the global market, many supply chains are in danger of unraveling. We know how much the European Union depends on gas piped from Russia to Europe. But many other commodities are critical for those sanctioning Russia and those who may now find it difficult to trade with Russia due to the West’s sanctions.

Strangely enough, one of the key elements in the supply chain for manufacturing chips depends on Russia. Russia is a major supplier of sapphire substrates (using artificial sapphires) that go into the manufacturing of semiconductor chips. The other critical item for chip makers is neon, of which the two major suppliers are located in the southern Ukraine cities of Mariupol and Odessa. They together produce “between 45 percent and 54 percent” of the global neon supply.

There is a danger posed to the EU’s climate change plans as a result of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, which could also jeopardize its plan to shift to gas as a bridge fuel. Using batteries as the key storage element in the renewable energy route also has a substantial Russian weakness. Nickel is critical for electric batteries, and Russia is the third-largest supplier of nickel in the world. With the United States and the EU imposing sanctions on Russia, this may lead to China, already emerging as the world’s largest battery supplier, rising to an even more dominant position in the world battery market.

The other supply chain issues that could come up as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war involve palladium, platinum, titanium and rare earth elements. All of these minerals are required by advanced industries and are likely to be caught up in supply chain bottlenecks worldwide. They are also on the list of 50 strategic minerals that the United States needs since they are critical to its security. A look back at how the global supply chains seized up during COVID-19 should provide the world with a sense of what the coming crisis could look like and why it could be a lot worse than what was witnessed during the pandemic. Sanctions are easy to impose, much harder to lift. And even after the lifting of sanctions, the supply chain will not come together seamlessly as it did before. Remember, these global supply chains have been incrementally configured over decades. Undoing them using the wrecking ball of sanctions is easy; redoing them is a lot harder.

The food supplies to the world will be hit even harder. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus produce a significant amount of fertilizers needed by farmers everywhere. Russia and Ukraine are among the biggest exporters of wheat. If Russian wheat is sanctioned and Ukraine’s harvest is hit due to war, the world will not find it easy to thwart a severe food shortage.

There is no question that the world is on the cusp of a major economic change. This turning point will either lead to the complete destruction of the Russian economy, even if Russia achieves a quick peace with Ukraine and there is no NATO-Russia war, and in case China lets Moscow down. Or it will reconfigure a new economic order that has been in the offing: a world order with cooperative solutions instead of military and economic wars for resolution.

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