Desperate actions

January 31, 2023

Source

by Hugo Dionísio

Something is changing on Mount Olympus and it is leaving in tatters the union of tendencies connected to the U.S.-state falconry. To understand and predict the actions of the political elite that commands, through their transnational mandataries, our destinies, implies knowing what one of the most important US defense think tanks reflects and publishes. This research leads us to an entity that rarely appears in the “informative” moments of the North Atlantic press: the RAND Corporation.

RAND’s best-known moment with regard to the conflict in Eastern Europe is signaled by the publication of the report “Extending Russia – Competing from Advantageous Ground”. This report contains the entire menu of malfeasance that, in the claims made public and repeated by the US power summit, would lead to a fulminating defeat of the political, economic, and military power of the Russian Federation.

The analysis expressed publicly, by the various political actors, was that the Russian Federation was nothing more than “a gasoline bomb with nuclear weapons,” a “paper tiger” with a GDP equal to that of Holland, and a people gagged by a “mad dictator” who remained in power only through “authoritarianism” and “repression”.

Based on an analysis whose information seemed to substantiate such political positions, the RAND report advocated a type of intervention, some of which were well reported – others not so well reported – in the official press. This was the case with the attempted “colored” revolutions made in CIA in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian countries, which, together with Georgia and Moldova, would probably be “promoted” and “supported” to the condition of an actual Ukraine. The Russian Federation, having to meet all the fires, some because they would become proxy armies (like Ukraine), others turned into bases of destabilizing operations launched by the CIA, would eventually “extend” itself until it broke into pieces and collapsed, putting an end to the current threat. Even without this partition, a point could always be reached where, after the destruction of the incumbent political power, a more docile “regime” would be installed, pointing to a more “advantageous position on the ground.”

Given to be known only in 2019, we are forced to note that this strategy had long been in preparation, especially since the Russian president lost hope that he could count on a Western “partnership” and announce the end of the unipolar world. Fact is, the report has a logical connection with the 2018 National Defense Strategy (US national defense strategy).

At any rate, this strategy points to the “Yugoslavization” of the Russian Federation. The truth is that the constant itinerary of this work has been followed almost scrupulously by the U.S. security and defense establishment: “colored” revolutions; states transformed into proxy armies; communication and disinformation campaigns; destabilization and sabotage operations; economic sanctions and embargoes. A menu of fulminating “democratic” activities on the rise!

And why is it important to talk about this today? It is important because in the last few days a new paper from the RAND corporation was published, but this time in reverse, a study entitled “Avoiding a Long War U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict.”

If the previous works pointed to the goals that Anthony Blinken, Biden, Nuland and Kirby have so often trumpeted, namely, a long-lasting conflict that would exhaust Russian energies so that the obstacle could be removed by force if necessary, the study published this time points to the realization of a cost-benefit ratio between the costs and risks resulting from a long war with Moscow and the benefits that the U.S. can derive from a trajectory that is expected to escalate and could result in a direct confrontation.

Something has changed and in what ways. First it was triumphalism and threat destruction, now a long conflict brings risks and costs that prevent the US from focusing on more pressing priorities. Where do we stand? At first it was intended, precisely, a long-lasting conflict… Now, not only does it carry costs and risks, but it seems to be Russia itself that is more comfortable with the foreseeable extension of the conflict in time, to the point of appointing Gerasimov as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, envisaging more than one theater of operations simultaneously (RAND pointed to the bilateral Polish possibility).

According to the site http://www.moonofalabama.org , one of the best sources on US foreign policy, the publication of this study does not come by chance, but after an attempt by the US Chief of Staff, Mark Milley, to promote an internal debate on possible peace negotiations with Biden. Having lost the battle in the White House, and unable to persuade Biden, as he only listens to Nuland, Blinken and Sullivan (the hawks on duty), he opted for the public display of his claim, calling for the start of negotiations first and, perhaps, leading to the publication of this study later.

The problem is, as Tyler Durden writes in one of today’s best opinion sites http://www.zerohedge.com , in his article “The most egregious Mistake”, going back and reversing the direction of US policy in this matter is simply not an option. The White House has taken the entire West in such a direction and speed of triumphalism, arrogance and “egregious” imbecility that there is no going back or reversal possible without a total defeat of the official narrative and the consequent eternal shame. Hence, these efforts by Mark Miller should result in very little, except the deepening of internal fractures, which may be positive. The fact is, there are already people who intend to step out of this path to the abyss.

Now, unlike the various writings on the subject, which tend to explain the impossibility of reversing the direction of the current suicidal strategy, with the sectarianism of the official narrative, which only offers certainties and unequivocal results, according to which, initially, this strategy did not result from a necessity but from a choice, translated into the so-called “egregious error”, I, personally, tend to consider that it was not an “error”, nor even less a choice, but rather, an act of desperation.

The alternative – American – narrative to the official current says that the outlined strategy represented an existential threat for Russia, but not for the United States. For the US, it would be possible to take other paths than that of creating this conflict.

In my view, this is a condescending position that devalues the feelings of urgency that resulted from the catastrophic analysis (never made public) that many have probably made of the state of American hegemony. The fact is that while the US has spent 8 trillion dollars on the war on terror, channeling all its diplomatic, economic and military efforts into it… What have Russia and China done?

While the U.S. used the pretext of terrorism (which they themselves have so often fomented and used as a weapon against political opponents – Syria, for example) to dominate the world’s largest oil reserves (in the Middle East), sidelining other natural resources, which today are important (such as lithium, for example), China developed its infrastructure, industry, army and, above all, its international trade platform, today known as the Belt and Road Initiative. During this period, the global south was able to experience a new form of “soft power”, which instead of demanding privatizations, dollarization of the economy, and reformulation of the political system in the manner that was most convenient, of which the IMF and the World Bank were the proxies on duty, the integration into the BRI only requires that the projects facilitate trade between countries (hence the infrastructure). In exchange for natural resources, these countries – instead of Western corporations and “investment” translated into the purchase of public companies – receive schools, hospitals, 4G and 5G networks, ports, airports, bridges, and the bigger and more challenging the better.

Not even the propaganda of the “debt trap”, well known to the IMF and the association treaties with the USA, prevented more than 120 countries from joining this network. Meanwhile and in the same period of time, Russia was able to get back on its feet from the neoliberal nightmare of the 1990s, recovering its industry and, above all, its self-esteem and national pride. A mortal sin in the eyes of the white house. Eurasian integration (EUEA), international cooperation (BRICS) and infrastructure (INSTC) projects have been made that circumvent US influence across the seas, which helps shield the economies of the countries involved.

While this multipolar world was being born in the beards of the most arrogant and sectarian hawks, the military industrial complex focused its attentions on the war on terror. Our news reports at the time, instead of Ukraine, began and ended with suicide bombings and time bombs. Until…

When information about this world began to emerge in the form of hard data, panic began to set in. It was around the time of 2017/18. Of course, from my perspective, this panic cannot be confessed. Its externalization began to emerge through Euromaidan, pressure and destabilization on less aligned Latin American nations, with the arrest of Lula da Silva and other national leaders with whose policies the white house was not comfortable. Gradually we saw U.S. foreign policy shift back toward dominance of natural resources and markets and less toward terrorism. They even “abandoned” the Middle East, leaving only the Zionist and Kurdish watchdogs. It was the time of the news that opened and closed with Venezuela.

However, this reversal of course already denoted, in my opinion, a kind of race against time. Time that had to be won.

Faced with the continuous loss of ground, we have reached the time of Covid (which according to many is a White House “card”, provoked or opportunistic, we shall see in due time) and the construction of a military strategy that has been elected as the last of the means – far from being remote – to “contain” China, recently classified as an “existential threat”. The confrontation in the Pacific would pass through the creation of an Eastern NATO, baptized AUKUS. In this strategy, the obstacles that could tip the balance in favor of the enemy had to be removed. That obstacle is the Russian Federation. The conclusion of a true strategic alliance between the Russian Federation and China shows that the leaders of these two countries no longer have any illusions about the real intentions of the United States. The more they are together, the greater their protection and the greater the threat to the United States.

This is where the “Ukrainian” option comes in! The strategy of extending Russia until it left was not an option. It was a desperate action. Absolutely! And why?

I say this not only because of what I mentioned earlier and the urgency that the elite leaders of the Transnational Corporations (the backbone of the U.S. Empire) must have felt at the information that was reaching them. At this stage, it must be said that the “failure” of the Chinese strategy played a part in this desperation. For the corporate elite who control the political power in the US, the economic “opening” of China would certainly lead (I don’t know what science they based their opinion on) to the destruction of the Communist Party’s power and the installation of a neo-liberal type government. Hong Kong will have already been a forced step, as these folks believed that the process would be more or less “natural”, resulting in a “USSR” type collapse, this time in China. But no… By around 2018 it was already being said in the white house that they would have to learn to live with China as it was. There would be no new “Tiananmen” in sight.

For the transnational corporate elite there is no cooperation. There is domination. After all, that is the fuel and the adrenaline of empire. Anyone’s. But back to Eastern Europe, why do I say that the Ukrainian choice was desperate?

First it was forced. And it was forced because it resulted from the failure of people like Navalny and other neoliberal puppets, who should have been able to produce an attrition of United Russia’s power. The preferred option is always the one that involves the internal deconstruction and submission of the adversary. Failing this, the only option left is the military one. The military is the component in which the United States still considers itself superior.

The RAND report pointed to a set of “tasks” that should be accomplished in order to achieve the goal of “extending Russia” and thus achieve a “more advantageous position on the ground. Has that desideratum been achieved? No, not by a long shot.

First, the “color” revolutions in Belarus and Kazakhstan failed. Not only did they fail to remove their respective rulers, they worsened their situation on the ground by strengthening Russia’s power over those countries (the respective governments “saved” by it). Second, they failed the sanctions from 2014 onward by not destroying the Russian economy. Worse, they gave the country an ability to live with the West’s sanctions. The sanctions were “the” development opportunity, the missing pretext to move from an economy based solely on resource extraction, to an industrial, in some cases cutting-edge and full-cycle economy, i.e., with key sectors sovereign and shielded against sabotage maneuvers, from the outside. Third, Georgia did not take the bait and set itself up as a proxy army, failing the plan of creating several battlefronts. Out of all this the Russian Federation came out stronger.

While the outward discourse, for ideological and strategic reasons, continued to be that of the “fuel station,” the actions denoted only desperation. The very instrumentalization of the Minsk agreements, agreements sanctioned by the UN, as a way to gain time to arm Ukraine, totally discredited the West in the eyes of the global south. Anyone who deceives like this, a country like Russia, by relying on a process like the Minsk one, is capable of anything.

The fact that they managed to “convince” a country to sacrifice itself for the sake of the power of another, basing this “convincing” on the establishment of a neo-Nazi doctrine, recovering Bandera (directly responsible for the death of millions of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews), based on xenophobia, racial and cultural hatred, leading that country to a coup d’état perpetrated by forces comparable to the SS, and making all these people look like martyrs and heroes, and even removing the Azov battalion from the list of extremist organizations… It was another stab in the back of the confidence of a world composed of nations whose memories have not yet been erased and who know what bad things fascism and Nazism brought them. This same world also knows the decisive contribution that the USSR – and Russia, for that matter – made in the 20th century to the defeat of colonialism and to the national liberation of the majority of humanity.

It was also about liberation from the clutches of Western imperialism and colonialism. From the same West that used plunder as a moment of primitive appropriation of wealth, that allowed it to first achieve development, and then used it to further subjugate the plundered. No, this world no longer trusts the West. This world is not the same world that the corporate media claims to be with Zelinsky.

The official discourse denied all this reality and sold an illusion, according to which, Ukraine, with the help of the powerful NATO, would win, without appeal or aggravation, a war of attrition against Russia. Of course, the victory would be so resounding that the attrition would not even begin, for at the first sanctions, power would fall to the street. Even the thousands of Russian agents the CIA has in its pocket weren’t able to pull it off. Power not only fell but strengthened, demonstrating that the proud nation that, being harried from without, turns on itself is yet to be born. RAND’s assumptions kept getting further and further from being true.

According to the imbecility resulting from the superiority complex of Western elites, a country with 3% of global GDP would not stand a chance against the mighty G7/NATO/US. Which says a lot about the GDP method as a way of characterizing an economy. As “old man” Marx explained, only labor produces wealth and only the transformation of matter into something with use value translates that wealth. This is the “real economy” of which Martyanov speaks so much. Unlike the speculative and ultra-financialized economy of the West, Russia has a real economy, which produces things with use value. With “real” use value, without which we cannot live, unlike an iPhone or a Chanel perfume. In fact, the global south has been gradually discovering that it has the resources, the technology and the wealth to have a real economy. And it doesn’t need the West for that. It is the West that cannot live without the global south, not the other way around. The global south has figured it out, and so has the US.

Seeing this, and watching the deplorable spectacle that is the constant confiscation of sovereign amounts deposited in dollars or euros, which the West, at the behest of the US, steals so much, today we are witnessing a movement away from the dollar…

In this, too, we have much despair, such as the process that led to the “installation” of a Guaido in Venezuela or the successive attempts at a “colored” revolution in Iran. In both cases, the two countries saw their reservations “frozen” in the G7/NATO/EU space. If this move by itself had already put many countries on their guard, since it was no longer only the “communist” Cuba and the People’s Republic of Korea, this time, the freezing and intended confiscation of Russian reserves clearly pushed the panic button. Any country, regardless of size, if it does not accept submission, is subject to confiscation of everything it has in currencies of the collective West.

The result? The result is BRICS+ and the basket of currencies, the proposal for a Latin American currency between Brazil and Argentina, the return to gold, cryptoyuan and the multiplication of exchanges in national currencies, as is already happening between the Eurasian countries, Iran, China, India, Turkey and Russia, recently joined by Pakistan, or the case of Saudi Arabia and China. The challenge seems to be simple: escape the “cursed” currencies, but without appearing to do so urgently, lest everything fall into place.

This result was obvious and has been predicted so many times over the past decade. Even in unsuspecting channels from the point of view of neoliberal ideology like Bloomberg or Politico. But not even these warnings have deterred the suicidal arrogance and prepotency that results from 500 years of Western racial supremacy.

Today, after Annalena Berbock confirmed to us that we have been dragged into a war, without any democratic background discussion and public reflection, except for endless hours of “slava Ukraini” propaganda in the corporate media; such a war also starts from an underestimation of the military and industrial capabilities of the Russian federation itself. If we read the report made by the Congress a couple of years ago about the military capabilities of the Russian Federation, we would see that the general conclusion was something like: a lot of weapons, but unsophisticated, with precision problems and outdated in relation to the U.S. But this is not the story told by the more than 7,500 tanks shot down, the more than 300 planes, more than 200 helicopters and, most important of all, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, mainly of soldiers (Zaluzhny reportedly told the Pentagon that there were 232,000, CIA sources say 305,000, and Chinese intelligence is already talking about 500,000 to 680,000). Whether it is the smallest or the smallest, especially when compared to the Russian losses, it gives us a catastrophic idea of the disproportion of forces. We are indeed witnessing a process of demilitarization and denazification.

With this background, the sending of tanks was discussed, in another episode of “wonder weapons”. But this time, and after the others did not have the desired effect, the US no longer wants to throw more arms sales deals on the back burner, as happened with the “wonderful” HIMAR or M777. Send their Abrahms tanks there and soon the number of sales would drop. So, let the Germans send their Panzer-Gepard there. Sholz didn’t want to? When I heard him say that he would only send them if… I immediately thought, “he still hasn’t received the non-refusable request from Biden and friends”. It didn’t take a day for pictures of the tanks to appear on their way to Poland, even before the public announcement. This is the Germany of today: a cluster of Teutonic identity riders mounted on unicorns, wearing pink armor, and holding sunflowers instead of swords. How sad!

Be that as it may, a spring campaign is being prepared in which, to defend the USA, another 100,000 forcibly recruited Ukrainian soldiers will be sacrificed in the name of Bandera (the videos of people being caught in the streets, in shopping malls, hiding from the police… are multiplying at breakneck speed)!

Having already guaranteed the defeat of the offensive (come on… a country like FR would rather sacrifice millions of its best children than submit to some Western empire), the US is already preparing for the next desperate maneuver. Playing Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Meanwhile follow the so far frustrated attempts at “colored” revolution (the others are learning how to disarm the CIA’s NGO army), to get more candidates for the post of “ukraine” in the pacific.

The RAND study points precisely to this “priority”. One more that will lead to actions whose prerequisites are not verified and, therefore, doomed to failure. But as someone, from the US, said some time ago: “there are no more good options”. Only the desperate ones. It reminds one of the last days of the Reich with its search for the “wonder weapons”.

But if the rest of the world has already seen the scenes of the next chapters, here in NATO territory, the corporate media is still in delusional mode, according to which, the world is a US backyard and the collective West is the civilizational reference… It’s like the cliché “Ukraine is winning the war”.

It will be my pleasure to watch a whole crowd of newsmen, analysts, politologists, and other charlatans doing the pin-up… and saying “no one saw this coming”!

Isn’t that what they always do? In a sign of desperation?

And some people still believe in them!

Hugo Dionísio’s Telegram:

https://t.me/canalfactual

De-dollarization: Slowly but surely

1 Jan 2023

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

What unites China and Russia in a trade/currency warfare against the US is the fact that they both oppose a unipolar world over a multipolar world.

It has been almost a year since the war in Ukraine began. Since then, talk of de-dollarization has picked up speed. Even prominent mainstream economists Galbraith (2022) and Eichengreen (2022) have joined the bandwagon, but they do not see an avalanche that could unseat the dollar yet, and rightly so, but as argued here, they do so for the wrong reasons.

Across the board, the mainstream peddles the point that the US financial market has depth that no other market has, and therefore, the dollar is irreplaceable. That is true for the moment. Where else can financial wealth be placed safely, traded and cashed in quickly other than the US market. I emphasized safely because such a market was not safe for confiscated Russian assets and it is proving to be unsafe for any would-be customer whose politics do not align with US imperial designs. Thus, the issue of depth and safety have subjective twists to them. Moreso, the occurrence of Russian asset seizure by Europe and the US begs the question: the financial market is deep for whom? 

Money, it ought to be remembered, is a social convention. It serves a function as a medium of exchange/reserve, as well as a savings medium. Money is also an idea (a form) with an aura whose very allure is to reproduce the social conditions for the creation of more money, through credit of course. Like all conventions, money also holds by some form of consensus. Any currency has to be recognized as value and it attains a status as a symbolic power by the knowledge people hold about it as both means of transaction and a social form. Of all the monies in circulation around the world, the dollar is unusual in the sense that it derives its legitimacy from the knowledge that the dollar is secure from many people of different nationalities around the globe.

The dollar and dollar instruments, like treasuries and bonds, are assumed risk-free. Pension funds for instance, which ensure against old age poverty, scramble to lodge in dollar assets that are set to grow and not lose but gain much value over time. People acknowledge that the dollar is a universal medium of exchange and savings, and such acknowledgment is the source of the power of the dollar. However, such common knowledge, which is the substance of dollar power, must also be constantly produced and reproduced. For that, there are theories that fit the bill.

For instance, instead of theorizing that money depends on real production capabilities, fiat money is said to depend on a capitalism of futurity and a tradability of debt. Although the US accounts for less than 20 percent of world output (production’s worth’, faith in the depth of its financial market and its credibility in the future as a state account for it covering the credit necessary for much of global transactions and savings.

Still, theories are pretty much ideological tools that show or hide some desired aspects of reality in order to serve the interests of different social groups. So, while it is true that the US nominally holds less than 20 percent of global output, much of global output depends on the US’ control of strategic resources and global chokepoints. These are delivered by the demonstrative power of its many military bases and capacity to destruct its foes.

As one can readily see, if the capacity to destruct and to infuse instability abroad are counted as production, then it is obvious that the US accounts for much more in production than the merely 20 percent it registers in its national accounts as GDP. Such a megalithic process is the true substance of the knowledge that upholds the dollar as the world reserve currency. It is this knowledge, reproduced on a global scale by the capacity to destruct, which is the real reason for the deep knowledge that props up the deep US financial market, as opposed to some hallucinatory moneyed economy whose debts are tradable, and it is the erosion of that capacity that is heralded by the rise of the multipolar world when Russia began its de-Nazification of Ukraine campaign. Changing that power structure behind the depth of US finance changes the acknowledgment that the US dollar is the sole undisputed universal currency on account of the universal power of the US. How so?

The resilience of Russia’s economy

When the Central Bank of Russia announced it pegged its national currency to gold, just a month after the conflict erupted, many saw the move as a blow to the dollar status quo – especially for the EU bloc, which heavily relied on Russia for supplies of cheap LNG. For them, it was out of the question to pay for oil in rubles. “We will not be blackmailed by Russia” to pay for gas in rubles, said Germany’s Finance Minister, Robert Habeck. In March 2022, US lawmakers introduced a bill to sanction Russian gold and then the EU followed suit. By June 2022, the Group of 7 agreed to implement a full-scale ban on the Russian gold market, completely sanctioning Moscow from exporting gold. By placing an embargo on Russia’s gold exports, freezing Russian assets and blocking Russian banks from using SWIFT, the West believed it could pressure Moscow. These sanctions against Russia threw Russia out of the dollar loop and were de-dollarizing Russia. The West was partially de-dollarizing the world by imposing more sanctions.  

Even though the sanctions did weaken the ruble at first, it did not take too long for the currency to rebound since many of the commodities Russia produces such as gas, wheat and fertilizers are priced in the ruble. In the span of ten months, the Ruble went from a volatile position in March to a stable currency by September. The ruble still stands stronger than pre-war levels, and as Russia keeps carrying out trade activities with third countries via new monetary channels, the situation of the ruble only serves to forecast that the crisis in Europe will exacerbate further and further. If anything, the fact that Russia still manages despite the sanctions proves that there is more to production estimated in dollar GDP to measure the real worth of an economy and its currency. It has become apparent that the commodity control-based standard of the dollar equally applies to the Ruble, which accounts for significant shares of wheat and oil. 

Furthermore, Russia’s new MIR payment system, which parallels SWIFT and MasterCard, said that by the end of September it issued more than 161 cards worldwide. By November, Russia decided to take a step further and called on all state members of the BRICS+ alliance to consider the possibility of establishing a single gold trade system. And just very recently, reports revealed that Russia was beginning to test international payments in digital currencies with companies. Unlike Iraq and Libya, and Venezuela, Russia is bigger and has proven resilient, especially with support from China. 

Getting ‘at’ China

Besides the vast amounts of money spent on financing Kiev, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself admitted that the war in Ukraine was a war ‘for’ the US. When he delivered an address at a joint session at the US Congress in December, he warned that if Russia were to win the war, the world order established by the US post-WWII would inevitably crumble – with it, the hegemony of the dollar. With China’s economy surpassing the US in real terms and commanding much of global production and trade, the possibility of an alternative financial system is around the corner – unless of course the balance of forces tilts in favor of the US as it defeats Russia in Ukraine and extends its hegemony to the Eurasian corridor.  

So what does the US really want with Russia? It wants Russia fragmented and China choked. China, Russia’s de facto ally, has been de-dollarizing its economy over the past decade. But that doesn’t necessarily imply both countries form ‘a bloc’ per se. Both Russia and China remain distinct governments with distinct policies and distinct ideologies. What really unites them in this trade/currency warfare is the fact that they both oppose a unipolar world over a multipolar world. They both want to develop at their own pace, their own way, without the interference of neoliberal or imperialist elements. In that sense, the conflict in Ukraine has a lot to do with China.

Even the most recent Pentagon defense strategy admits that Russia is not as threatening as China is, which it dubs as “the greatest security challenge for the US.” When that report was issued in October 2022, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that China “is the only competitor out there with both the intent to reshape the international order, and increasingly, the power to do so, while Russia on the other hand “can’t systematically challenge the US over the long term. But Russian aggression does pose an immediate and sharp threat to our interests and values.” Unlike the West, it took only seven decades for China to establish itself as a global superpower that has carried out the biggest poverty alleviation project in history.  It established such a record without enslaving or geocoding the planet and the environment.

Another important feature of the Chinese economy is the fact that it easily absorbs technologies from abroad and it’s good at meeting the standards of foreign markets. It’s a leading pioneer in a panoply of sectors which include space exploration, financial developments, medical advances, green technologies, urban construction, and military innovations. China’s economy is also relatively insulated from external shocks and capital flight by its non-convertible currency. It draws down on its massive currency reserves denominated in dollars – mainly US government debt – and invested in US treasury bonds, to protect against any short-term capital flow and to preserve the competitiveness of its own currency at times of crises. 

What really bothers the West is the fact that China was not only able to propel its entire population to higher standards of living, but it also assisted others in doing so. Through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China promoted infrastructural ventures in some of the world’s poorest economies in a way that complemented their productive assets in facilitating productivity, growth, and economic mobility. The Asian country has defied neoliberalism both as an ideology and as an economic policy by upholding its own brand of socialism based on “Chinese characteristics”.

As part of its commitment to the internationalism of Mao Zedong, China through the demonstration effect, exported that model based on an anti-imperialist and nationalist mode of development to countries of the Global South. Being the world’s largest trading country, the world’s largest exporter, and one of the world’s largest holders of US debt, China never forced anyone to borrow from it in order to financially enslave them and/or to finance its war effort. Adding all this to China’s defiance of abiding to western sanctions against Russia, and you will have Sino-Western relations hitting an all-time low – particularly in light of accusations that China helped Russia circumvent the effects of sanctions. 

Given the developmental trajectory of China’s growth, which is detached from militarism and built on a working-class-led resistance, it is rather an arithmetic certainty that China will never morph into a war-mongering nation. It simply does not depend on war to grow. Moreover, having itself been the target of imperialism for centuries is enough to suggest that China in no way intends to pursue such an agenda – but rather strives to resist it, as it always did. Its very existence as a powerful socialist nation is antithetical to the ideological, financial, and military dominance of the post-WW2 Western order.

This only adds to the reasons why the US has been recently waging a series of provocations against China, both economically and politically. On the economic front, the US constrained China from exporting semiconductors to western markets and suspended the transfer of chip technologies to China. It also plans to cut Huawei’s access to US banks over allegations that the company is engaged in “economic espionage” against the US. On the political front, there was the whole Taiwan fiasco which was short-lived after Tsai Ing-wen was humiliatingly defeated in Taiwan’s last election. 

China retaliates

At some point, it is only natural for China to retaliate. To strike back at the financial hegemon by decreasing the global demand for US dollars is one such measure of retaliation. China’s de-dollarization strategy can basically be summed up as follows: creating trade payment systems based on the national currencies of trading partners, dumping US treasuries, and breaking the petrodollar system while buying massive amounts of gold. 

It may be recalled that China stores a considerable portion of its surplus in US Bonds. The standard idea of weaponizing bonds is often reiterated in what pundits dub the ‘nuclear option’, a theory that supposes China could sell off all of its treasuries in an attempt to destabilize the American economy. But then again that seems like a mythical alternative, which is likely to harm everyone including China. The potential flooding of the global exchange market with billions of dollars of American debt may cause the price of US treasury bonds to decrease and reciprocally interest rates to increase. The interest rates on US treasury bonds are the benchmark for borrowing throughout the global economy. So, in case they are abruptly raised, this may precipitate another global slowdown. 

China, as well as others, seek a reasonable solution to the US debt problem and a transfer to a more representative multi-polar currency and world-saving medium. At some point in the past, China held $3 trillion in US debt. In October 2022, it recorded treasury holdings to a 12-year low below the $1 trillion mark. It has been slowly ridding itself of being indebted to the US in the US’s own currency.

Over fears that china will endure a fate similar to that of Russia, that it will lose all its assets and dollars in case tensions increase, China has resorted to converting its bonds into real assets and proceeded by investing them in the third world as a counter-hegemonical strategy. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is the gateway to transform US-denominated money capital into real capital. Whereas US imperialism is about the incapacitation and disempowerment of the developing world, the Chinese funded BRI, which turns Chinese saved US dollars into third world plans and equipment, turns US bonds into weapons against the US. 

Breaking the petrodollar system

While reducing transactions in dollars diminishes global demand for the dollar, China and others with trade surpluses need to save in US treasuries for lack of alternatives. Analytically, an alternative to the US savings instruments from a multi-currency saving bond is not difficult to envisage. In fact that is what John Maynard Keynes proposed at Bretton-wood in 1944, but the proposal was declined by the US. The alternative muti-national savings instrument would come as natural outcome of shifting balance of forces globally, especially as the principal strategic commodity, oil, becomes denominated in currencies other than dollars.

Xi’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia is one step towards provisioning an alternative oil payment system. The visit amounted to a diplomatic offensive and was hailed as a landmark event on the strengthening of Sino-Arab ties as on December 20, 2022, the Chinese head of state attended the first ever China-Arab state summit and delivered a key speech “underscoring the importance of carrying forward the spirit of China-Arab friendship featuring solidarity and mutual assistance, equality and mutual benefit, inclusiveness and mutual learning, and jointly building a China-Arab community with a shared future in the new era.”

The move is clearly aimed at disrupting the petrodollar system, which has for the past 50 years upheld the US dollar as the sole currency to purchase oil. As is already known, the dollar-priced oil system is what redeemed the departure of the US from the gold standard in 1971. Being a source of energy upon which life depends, and a strategic commodity that accounts for about 20% of the global trade volume, having dollars is a prerequisite for an economy’s survival, and pricing the oil in dollars keeps the dollar high in demand. The more the US prints dollars to meet expanding trade demand, the more it could live off the rents of dollar seigniorage, or the ability to buy real assets from abroad with the credit it issues. No other empire in history enjoyed such privilege.

The modern imperial tributary system is that the US lends money in its own currency, and in return, it usurps the wealth produced by other nations. So when China says it wants to purchase oil using the Yuan and initiate separate deals, this means it is planning to lessen the global demand for the dollar, therefore lessen the capacity of the US to issue global credit, and hence, lessen its imperial rents.  

Gold is ok, but only partially

China has been hoarding much gold. It now has the highest gold reserves. For the first time since 2019, the central bank of China announced it increased its gold reserves with the purchase of 32 tons of gold in November, bringing the total up to 1980 tons amounting to $111.65 billion. Needless to say, the gold standard cannot supplant a fiat money system already based on commodities and production capabilities. However, having gold in addition to developing its own development bank and international lending institutions and payment system, China further securitizes its finance.  

Thus, gold demand in China is high because traders and investors consider the commodity as a buffer against extreme fluctuations and an effective store of value. The Chinese government monitors carefully the amount of gold that is brought in and out of the country. Being the biggest gold producer, China safeguards much of its gold production for itself. In addition, China intentionally uses the price arbitrage to get traders to purchase more gold from abroad. Most of that gold was purchased from the West, particularly the UK and the US, where gold is traded at a cheaper price. However, gold primacy alone is insufficient to create the acknowledgment of depth similar to that enjoyed by the US market.

Once more, that confidence in the dollar market is reproduced daily by the power of the US over strategic commodity channels around the world. The US is heir to the European colonial system and its control emerges from the transference between its physical and ideological powers. Therefore, gold alone is possibly only a gateway to dislodging a dollar system based on strategic commodity control.

The alternative to the US financial market is in the making

China has inked separate agreements, especially with Russia, with the aim of purchasing energy with a non-dollar currency. Though the de-dollarization of trade channels may achieve some results, one cannot deny the fact that the world still needs an alternative universal savings medium. On paper, designing a bond whose guarantors are the major powers is not a difficult task; however, such a task, if it were to materialize, undercuts the financial rents of US and US-associated elites.

A real de-dollarization requires a shift in the geopolitical context and an erosion of the consensus around the dollar. The war in Ukraine and the collapse of Europe augur the loss of the US and its dollar primacy. Unlike twentieth-century wars that caused the retreats of Europe to the benefit of the US, the current regression of Europe vis-à-vis Russia and China, also weakens the US. The case may be that the European working class, being more so a clone of capital than its antithesis, continues to self-harm at the behest of its bourgeoisie. It is then that the alternatives to the dollar and, more importantly, its bonds begin to take shape.

With 65 trillion dollars in off-balance sheet debts, and a CDO and Repo market rife with moral hazard, the chances of a major collapse are all too ominous. The transition will be gruesome given the fragile financial architecture. A smooth US debt workout is a must since the US is a huge net debtor in its own currency, which happens to be the world’s savings medium. Yet, the world must part with a system that pawns the future of man and nature by the power of the gun for the interests of so few. China and Russia have taken the bold decision to de-dollarize, to de-financialize wars and pollution and such must be the alternative for humanity.

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The Most Important Question (Andrei Martyanov)

December 29, 2022

Please visit Andrei’s website: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/ and support him here: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=60459185

The Complete Destruction of Ukraine is Unavoidable (Douglas Macgregor)

December 09, 2022

‘Samarkand Spirit’ to be driven by ‘responsible powers’ Russia and China

The SCO summit of Asian power players delineated a road map for strengthening the multipolar world

September 16 2022

Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Pepe Escobar

Amidst serious tremors in the world of geopolitics, it is so fitting that this year’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) heads of state summit should have taken place in Samarkand – the ultimate Silk Road crossroads for 2,500 years.

When in 329 BC Alexander the Great reached the then Sogdian city of Marakanda, part of the Achaemenid empire, he was stunned: “Everything I have heard about Samarkand it’s true, except it is even more beautiful than I had imagined.”

Fast forward to an Op-Ed by Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev published ahead of the SCO summit, where he stresses how Samarkand now “can become a platform that is able to unite and reconcile states with various foreign policy priorities.”

After all, historically, the world from the point of view of the Silk Road landmark has always been “perceived as one and indivisible, not divided. This is the essence of a unique phenomenon – the ‘Samarkand spirit’.”

And here Mirziyoyev ties the “Samarkand Spirit” to the original SCO “Shanghai Spirit” established in early 2001, a few months before the events of September 11, when the world was forced into strife and endless war, almost overnight.

All these years, the culture of the SCO has been evolving in a distinctive Chinese way. Initially, the Shanghai Five were focused on fighting terrorism – months before the US war of terror (italics mine) metastasized from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond.

Over the years, the initial “three no’s” – no alliance, no confrontation, no targeting any third party – ended up equipping a fast, hybrid vehicle whose ‘four wheels’ are ‘politics, security, economy, and humanities,’ complete with a Global Development Initiative, all of which contrast sharply with the priorities of a hegemonic, confrontational west.

Arguably the biggest takeaway of this week’s Samarkand summit is that Chinese President Xi Jinping presented China and Russia, together, as “responsible global powers” bent on securing the emergence of multipolarity, and refusing the arbitrary “order” imposed by the United States and its unipolar worldview.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pronounced Xi’s bilateral conversation with President Vladimir Putin as “excellent.” Xi Jinping, previous to their meeting, and addressing Putin directly, had already stressed the common Russia-China objectives:

“In the face of the colossal changes of our time on a global scale, unprecedented in history, we are ready with our Russian colleagues to set an example of a responsible world power and play a leading role in order to put such a rapidly changing world on the trajectory of sustainable and positive development.”

Later, in the preamble to the heads of state meeting, Xi went straight to the point: it is important to “prevent attempts by external forces to organize ‘color revolutions’ in the SCO countries.” Well, Europe wouldn’t be able to tell, because it has been color-revolutionized non-stop since 1945.

Putin, for his part, sent a message that will be ringing all across the Global South: “Fundamental transformations have been outlined in world politics and economics, and they are irreversible.” (italics mine)

Iran: it’s showtime

Iran was the guest star of the Samarkand show, officially embraced as the 9^th member of the SCO. President Ebrahim Raisi, significantly, stressed before meeting Putin that “Iran does not recognize sanctions against Russia.” Their strategic partnership will be enhanced. On the business front, a hefty delegation comprising leaders of 80 large Russian companies will be visiting Tehran next week.

The increasing Russia-China-Iran interpolation – the three top drivers of Eurasia integration – scares the hell out of the usual suspects, who may be starting to grasp how the SCO represents, in the long run, a serious challenge to their geoeconomic game. So, as every grain of sand in every Heartland desert is already aware, the geopolitical pressure against the trio will increase exponentially.

And then there was the mega-crucial Samarkand trilateral: Russia-China-Mongolia. There were no official leaks, but this trio arguably discussed the Power of Siberia-2 gas pipeline – the interconnector to be built across Mongolia; and Mongolia’s enhanced role in a crucial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) connectivity corridor, now that China is not using the Trans-Siberian route for exports to Europe because of sanctions.

Putin briefed Xi on all aspects of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, and arguably answered some really tough questions, many of them circulating wildly on the Chinese web for months now.

Which brings us to Putin’s presser at the end of the summit – with virtually all questions predictably revolving around the military theater in Ukraine.

The key takeaway from the Russian president: “There are no changes on the SMO plan. The main tasks are being implemented.” On peace prospects, it is Ukraine that “is not ready to talk to Russia.” And overall, “it is regrettable that the west had the idea to use Ukraine to try to collapse Russia.”

On the fertilizer soap opera, Putin remarked, “food supply, energy supply, they (the west) created these problems, and now are trying to resolve them at the expense of someone else” – meaning the poorest nations. “European countries are former colonial powers and they still have this paradigm of colonial philosophy. The time has come to change their behavior, to become more civilized.”

On his meeting with Xi Jinping: “It was just a regular meeting, it’s been quite some time we haven’t had a meeting face to face.” They talked about how to “expand trade turnover” and circumvent the “trade wars caused by our so-called partners,” with “expansion of settlements in national currencies not progressing as fast as we want.”

Strenghtening multipolarity

Putin’s bilateral with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi could not have been more cordial – on a “very special friendship” register – with Modi calling for serious solutions to the food and fuel crises, actually addressing the west. Meanwhile, the State Bank of India will be opening special rupee accounts to handle Russia-related trade.

This is Xi’s first foreign trip since the Covid pandemic. He could do it because he’s totally confident of being awarded a third term during the Communist Party Congress next month in Beijing. Xi now controls and/or has allies placed in at least 90 percent of the Politburo.

The other serious reason was to recharge the appeal of BRI in close connection to the SCO. China’s ambitious BRI project was officially launched by Xi in Astana (now Nur-Sultan) nine years ago. It will remain the overarching Chinese foreign policy concept for decades ahead.

BRI’s emphasis on trade and connectivity ties in with the SCO’s evolving multilateral cooperation mechanisms, congregating nations focusing on economic development independent from the hazy, hegemonic “rules-based order.” Even India under Modi is having second thoughts about relying on western blocs, where New Delhi is at best a neo-colonized “partner.”

So Xi and Putin, in Samarkand, for all practical purposes delineated a road map for strengthening multipolarity – as stressed by the final  Samarkand declaration  signed by all SCO members.

The Kazakh puzzle 

There will be bumps on the road aplenty. It’s no accident that Xi started his trip in Kazakhstan – China’s mega-strategic western rear, sharing a very long border with Xinjiang. The tri-border at the dry port of Khorgos – for lorries, buses and trains, separately – is quite something, an absolutely key BRI node.

The administration of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in Nur-Sultan (soon to be re-named Astana again) is quite tricky, swinging between eastern and western political orientations, and infiltrated by Americans as much as during the era of predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s first post-USSR president.

Earlier this month, for instance, Nur-Sultan, in partnership with Ankara and British Petroleum (BP) – which virtually rules Azerbaijan – agreed to increase the volume of oil on the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline to up to 4 million tons a month by the end of this year. Chevron and ExxonMobil, very active in Kazakhstan, are part of the deal.

The avowed agenda of the usual suspects is to “ultimately disconnect the economies of Central Asian countries from the Russian economy.” As Kazakhstan is a member not only of the Russian-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), but also the BRI, it is fair to assume that Xi – as well as Putin – discussed some pretty serious issues with Tokayev, told him to grasp which way the wind is blowing, and advised him to keep the internal political situation under control (see the aborted coup in January, when Tokayev was de facto saved by the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO]).

There’s no question Central Asia, historically known as a “box of gems” at the center of the Heartland, striding the Ancient Silk Roads and blessed with immense natural wealth – fossil fuels, rare earth metals, fertile agrarian lands – will be used by the usual suspects as a Pandora’s box, releasing all manner of toxic tricks against legitimate Eurasian integration.

That’s in sharp contrast with West Asia, where Iran in the SCO will turbo-charge its key role of crossroads connectivity between Eurasia and Africa, in connection with the BRI and the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

So it’s no wonder that the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, all in West Asia, do recognize which way the wind is blowing. The three Persian Gulf states received official SCO ‘partner status’ in Samarkand, alongside the Maldives and Myanmar.

A cohesion of goals

Samarkand also gave an extra impulse to integration along the Russian-conceptualized Greater Eurasia Partnership  – which includes the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) – and that, just two weeks after the game-changing Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) held in Vladivostok, on Russia’s strategic Pacific coast.

Moscow’s priority at the EAEU is to implement a union-state with Belarus (which looks bound to become a new SCO member before 2024), side-by-side with closer integration with the BRI. Serbia, Singapore and Iran have trade agreements with the EAEU too.

The Greater Eurasian Partnership was proposed by Putin in 2015 – and it’s getting sharper as the EAEU commission, led by Sergey Glazyev, actively designs a new financial system, based on gold and natural resources and counter-acting the Bretton Woods system. Once the new framework is ready to be tested, the key disseminator is likely to be the SCO.

So here we see in play the full cohesion of goals – and the interaction mechanisms – deployed by the Greater Eurasia Partnership, BRI, EAEU, SCO, BRICS+ and the INSTC. It’s a titanic struggle to unite all these organizations and take into account the geoeconomic priorities of each member and associate partner, but that’s exactly what’s happening, at breakneck speed.

In this connectivity feast, practical imperatives range from fighting local bottlenecks to setting up complex multi-party corridors – from the Caucasus to Central Asia, from Iran to India, everything discussed in multiple roundtables.

Successes are already notable: from Russia and Iran introducing direct settlements in rubles and rials, to Russia and China increasing their trade in rubles and yuan to 20 percent – and counting. An Eastern Commodity Exchange may be soon established in Vladivostok to facilitate trade in futures and derivatives with the Asia-Pacific.

China is the undisputed primary creditor/investor in infrastructure across Central Asia. Beijing’s priorities may be importing gas from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and oil from Kazakhstan, but connectivity is not far behind.

The $5 billion construction of the 600 km-long Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan (Pakafuz) railway will deliver cargo from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean in only three days instead of 30. And that railway will be linked to Kazakhstan and the already in progress 4,380 km-long Chinese-built railway from Lanzhou to Tashkent, a BRI project.

Nur-Sultan is also interested in a Turkmenistan-Iran-Türkiye railway, which would connect its port of Aktau on the Caspian Sea with the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.

Türkiye, meanwhile, still a SCO observer and constantly hedging its bets, slowly but surely is trying to strategically advance its own Pax Turcica, from technological development to defense cooperation, all that under a sort of politico-economic-security package. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did discuss it in Samarkand with Putin, as the latter later announced that 25 percent of Russian gas bought by Ankara will be paid in rubles.    

Welcome to Great Game 2.0

Russia, even more than China, knows that the usual suspects are going for broke. In 2022 alone, there was a failed coup in Kazakhstan in January; troubles in Badakhshan, in Tajikistan, in May; troubles in Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan in June; the non-stop border clashes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (both presidents, in Samarkand, at least agreed on a ceasefire and to remove troops from their borders).

And then there is recently-liberated Afghanistan – with no less than 11 provinces crisscrossed by ISIS-Khorasan and its Tajik and Uzbek associates. Thousands of would-be Heartland jihadis have made the trip to Idlib in Syria and then back to Afghanistan – ‘encouraged’ by the usual suspects, who will use every trick under the sun to harass and ‘isolate’ Russia from Central Asia.

So Russia and China should be ready to be involved in a sort of immensely complex, rolling Great Game 2.0 on steroids, with the US/NATO fighting united Eurasia and Turkiye in the middle.

On a brighter note, Samarkand proved that at least consensus exists among all the players at different institutional organizations that: technological sovereignty will determine sovereignty; and that regionalization – in this case Eurasian – is bound to replace US-ruled globalization.

These players also understand that the Mackinder and Spykman era is coming to a close – when Eurasia was ‘contained’ in a semi-disassembled shape so western maritime powers could exercise total domination, contrary to the national interests of Global South actors.

It’s now a completely different ball game. As much as the Greater Eurasia Partnership is fully supported by China, both favor the interconnection of BRI and EAEU projects, while the SCO shapes a common environment.

Yes, this is an Eurasian civilizational project for the 21^st century and beyond. Under the aegis of the ‘Spirit of Samarkand.’

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Asia’s future takes shape in Vladivostok, the Russian Pacific

September 08, 2022

by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Sixty-eight countries gathered on Russia’s far eastern coast to listen to Moscow’s economic and political vision for the Asia-Pacific

The Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok is one of the indispensable annual milestones for keeping up not only with the complex development process of the Russian Far East but major plays for Eurasia integration.

Mirroring an immensely turbulent 2022, the current theme in Vladivostok is ‘On the Path to a Multipolar World.’ Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, in a short message to business and government participants from 68 nations, set the stage:

“The obsolete unipolar model is being replaced by a new world order based on the fundamental principles of justice and equality, as well as the recognition of the right of each state and people to their own sovereign path of development. Powerful political and economic centers are taking shape right here in the Asia-Pacific region, acting as a driving force in this irreversible process.”

In his speech to the EEF plenary session, Ukraine was barely mentioned. Putin’s response when asked about it: “Is this country part of Asia-Pacific?”

The speech was largely structured as a serious message to the collective west, as well as to what top analyst Sergey Karaganov calls the “global majority.” Among several takeaways, these may be the most relevant:

• Russia as a sovereign state will defend its interests.
• Western sanctions ‘fever’ is threatening the world – and economic crises are not going away after the pandemic.
• The entire system of international relations has changed. There is an attempt to maintain world order by changing the rules.
• Sanctions on Russia are closing down businesses in Europe. Russia is coping with economic and tech aggression from the west.
• Inflation is breaking records in developed countries. Russia is looking at around 12 percent.
• Russia has played its part in grain exports leaving Ukraine, but most shipments went to EU nations and not developing countries.
• The “welfare of the ‘Golden Billion’ is being ignored.”
• The west is in no position to dictate energy prices to Russia.
• Ruble and yuan will be used for gas payments.
• The role of Asia-Pacific has significantly increased.

In a nutshell: Asia is the new epicenter of technological progress and productivity.

No more an ‘object of colonization’ 

Taking place only two weeks before another essential annual gathering – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand – it is no wonder some of the top discussions at the EEF revolve around the increasing economic interpolation between the SCO and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

This theme is as crucial as the development of the Russian Arctic: at 41 percent of total territory, that’s the largest resource base in the federation, spread out over nine regions, and encompassing the largest Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on the planet, linked to the free port of Vladivostok. The Arctic is being developed via several strategically important projects processing mineral, energy, water and biological natural resources.

So it’s perfectly fitting that Austria’s former foreign minister Karin Kneissel, self-described as “a passionate historian,” quipped about her fascination at how Russia and its Asian partners are tackling the development of the Northern Sea Route: “One of my favorite expressions is that airlines and pipelines are moving east. And I keep saying this for twenty years.”

Amidst a wealth of roundtables exploring everything from the power of territory, supply chains and global education to “the three whales” (science, nature, human), arguably the top discussion this Tuesday at the forum was centered on the role of the SCO.

Apart from the current full members – Russia, China, India, Pakistan, four Central Asians (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan), plus the recent accession of Iran – no less than 11 further nations want to join, from observer Afghanistan to dialogue partner Turkey.

Grigory Logvinov, the SCO’s deputy secretary general, stressed how the economic, political and scientific potential of players comprising “the center of gravity” for Asia – over a quarter of the world’s GDP, 50 percent of the world’s population – has not been fully harvested yet.

Kirill Barsky, from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, explained how the SCO is actually the model of multipolarity, according to its charter, compared to the backdrop of “destructive processes” launched by the west.

And that leads to the economic agenda in the Eurasian integration progress, with the Russian-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) configured as the SCO’s most important partner.

Barsky identifies the SCO as “the core Eurasian structure, forming the agenda of Greater Eurasia within a network of partnership organizations.” That’s where the importance of the cooperation with ASEAN comes in.

Barsky could not but evoke Mackinder, Spykman and Brzezinski – who regarded Eurasia “as an object to be acted upon the wishes of western states, confined within the continent, away from the ocean shores, so the western world could dominate in a global confrontation of land and sea. The SCO as it developed can triumph over these negative concepts.”

And here we hit a notion widely shared from Tehran to Vladivostok:

Eurasia no longer as “an object of colonization by ‘civilized Europe’ but again an agent of global policy.”

‘India wants a 21st Asian century’

Sun Zuangnzhi from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) elaborated on China’s interest in the SCO. He focused on achievements: In the 21 years since its founding, a mechanism to establish security between China, Russia and Central Asian states evolved into “multi-tiered, multi-sector cooperation mechanisms.”

Instead of “turning into a political instrument,” the SCO should capitalize on its role of dialogue forum for states with a difficult history of conflicts – “interactions are sometimes difficult” – and focus on economic cooperation “on health, energy, food security, reduction of poverty.”

Rashid Alimov, a former SCO secretary general, now a professor at the Taihe Institute, stressed the “high expectations” from Central Asian nations, the core of the organization. The original idea remains – based on the indivisibility of security on a trans-regional level in Eurasia.

Well, we all know how the US and NATO reacted when Russia late last year proposed a serious dialogue on “indivisibility of security.”

As Central Asia does not have an outlet to the sea, it is inevitable, as Alimov stressed, that Uzbekistan’s foreign policy privileges involvement in accelerated intra-SCO trade. Russia and China may be the leading investors, and now “Iran also plays an important role. Over 1,200 Iranian companies are working in Central Asia.”

Connectivity, once again, must increase: “The World Bank rates Central Asia as one of the least connected economies in the world.”

Sergey Storchak of Russian bank VEB explained the workings of the “SCO interbank consortium.” Partners have used “a credit line from the Bank of China” and want to sign a deal with Uzbekistan. The SCO interbank consortium will be led by the Indians on a rotation basis – and they want to step up its game. At the upcoming summit in Samarkand, Storchak expects a road map for the transition towards the use of national currencies in regional trade.

Kumar Rajan from the School of International Studies of the Jawaharlal Nehru University articulated the Indian position. He went straight to the point: “India wants a 21st Asian century. Close cooperation between India and China is necessary. They can make the Asian century happen.”

Rajan remarked how India does not see the SCO as an alliance, but committed to the development and political stability of Eurasia.

He made the crucial point about connectivity revolving around India “working with Russia and Central Asia with the INSTC” – the International North South Transportation Corridor, and one of its key hubs, the Chabahar port in Iran: “India does not have direct physical connectivity with Central Asia. The INSTC has the participation of an Iranian shipping line with 300 vessels, connecting to Mumbai. President Putin, in the [recent] Caspian meeting, referred directly to the INSTC.”

Crucially, India not only supports the Russian concept of Greater Eurasia Partnership but is engaged in setting up a free trade agreement with the EAEU: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, incidentally, came to the Vladivostok forum last year.

In all of the above nuanced interventions, some themes are constant. After the Afghanistan disaster and the end of the US occupation there, the stabilizing role of the SCO cannot be overstated enough. An ambitious road map for cooperation is a must – probably to be approved at the Samarkand summit. All players will be gradually changing to trade in bilateral currencies. And creation of transit corridors is leading to the progressive integration of national transit systems.

Let there be light

A key roundtable on the ‘Gateway to a Multipolar World’ expanded on the SCO role, outlining how most Asian nations are “friendly” or “benevolently neutral” when it comes to Russia after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine.

So the possibilities for expanding cooperation across Eurasia remain practically unlimited. Complementarity of economies is the main factor. That would lead, among other developments, to the Russian Far East, as a multipolar hub, turning into “Russia’s gateway to Asia” by the 2030s.

Wang Wen from the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies stressed the need for Russia to rediscover China – finding “mutual trust in the middle level and elites level”. At the same time, there’s a sort of global rush to join BRICS, from Saudi Arabia and Iran to Afghanistan and Argentina:

“That means a new civilization model for emerging economies like China and Argentina because they want to rise up peacefully (…) I think we are in the new civilization age.”

B. K. Sharma from the United Service Institution of India got back to Spykman pigeonholing the nation as a rimland state. Not anymore: India now has multiple strategies, from connecting to Central Asia to the ‘Act East’ policy. Overall, it’s an outreach to Eurasia, as India “is not competitive and needs to diversify to get better access to Eurasia, with logistical help from Russia.“

Sharma stresses how India takes SCO, BRICS and RICs very seriously while seeing Russia playing “an important role in the Indian Ocean.” He nuances the Indo-Pacific outlook: India does not want Quad as a military alliance, privileging instead “interdependence and complementarity between India, Russia and China.”

All of these discussions interconnect with the two overarching themes in several Vladivostok roundtables: energy and the development of the Arctic’s natural resources.

Pavel Sorokin, Russian First Deputy Minister of Energy, dismissed the notion of a storm or typhoon in the energy markets: “It’s a far cry from a natural process. It’s a man-made situation.” The Russian economy, in contrast, is seen by most analysts as slowly but surely designing its Arctic/Asian cooperation future – including, for instance, the creation of a sophisticated trans-shipment infrastructure for Liquified Natural Gas (LNG).

Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov made sure that Russia will actually increase its gas production, considering the rise of LNG deliveries and the construction of Power of Siberia-2 to China: “We will not merely scale up the pipeline capacity but we will also expand LNG production: it has mobility and excellent purchases on the global market.”

On the Northern Sea Route, the emphasis is on building a powerful, modern icebreaker fleet – including nuclear. Gadzhimagomed Guseynov, First Deputy Minister for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, is adamant: “What Russia has to do is to make the Northern Sea Route a sustainable and important transit route.”

There is a long-term plan up to 2035 to create infrastructure for safe shipping navigation, following an ‘Arctic best practices’ of learning step by step. NOVATEK, according to its deputy chairman Evgeniy Ambrosov, has been conducting no less than a revolution in terms of Arctic navigation and shipbuilding in the last few years.

Kniessel, the former Austrian minister, recalled that she always missed the larger geopolitical picture in her discussions when she was active in European politics (she now lives in Lebanon): “I wrote about the passing of the torch from Atlanticism to the Pacific. Airlines, pipelines and waterways are moving East. The Far East is actually Pacific Russia.”

Whatever Atlanticists may think of it, the last word for the moment might belong to Vitaly Markelov, from the board of directors of Gazprom: Russia is ready for winter. There will be warmth and light everywhere.”

Welcoming speech of the Russian Minister of Defence at the opening of 10th Moscow Conference on International Security

August 17, 2022

The opening of the 10th Moscow Conference on International Security took place at Avangard Centre for Military and Patriotic Education of Youth within the framework of ARMY 2022 IMTF. The Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Shoigu, addressed the participants of the event:

Ladies and gentlemen!

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the 10th Moscow Conference on International Security.

This conference comes at a time of radical change in global and regional security. The unconditional dominance of the US and its allies is a thing of the past. On February 24, 2022, the start of the special military operation in Ukraine marked the end of the unipolar world.

Multipolarity has become a reality. The poles of this world are clearly defined. The main difference between them is that some respect the interests of sovereign states and take into account the cultural and historical particularities of countries and peoples, while others disregard them. There have been numerous discussions on this topic during previous sessions of the Moscow conference.

In Europe, the security situation is worse than at the peak of the Cold War. The alliance’s military activities have become as aggressive and anti-Russian as possible. Significant US forces have been redeployed to the continent, and the number of coalition troops in Eastern and Central Europe has increased manifold.

It is important to note that the deployment of additional NATO Joint Force formations on the bloc’s “eastern flank” had already started before the start of the special military operation in Ukraine.

NATO has dropped its masks. The aggressive nature of the bloc was no longer concealed by the wording of the coalition’s purely defensive orientation. Today, the alliance’s strategic planning documents enshrine claims to global dominance. Alliance’s interests include Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific Rim.

In the West’s view, the established system of international relations should be replaced by a so-called rules-based world order. The logic here is simple and ultimatumatic. Either the alliance’s “democratic partner” candidate loses sovereignty and becomes supposedly on the “right side of history”. Or it is relegated to the category of so-called authoritarian regimes, against which all kinds of measures, up to and including coercive pressure, can be used.

Given that the Conference is attended by heads of defence agencies and security experts from different regions of the world, I would like to highlight some aspects of the special military operation in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, the Russian military is being confronted by combined Western forces that run the leadership of that country in a hybrid war against Russia.

The supply of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine is being stepped up, and training of the Ukrainian army is being carried out. Huge financial resources are transferred to maintain the viability of the nationalist regime.

The actions of Ukraine’s armed forces are planned and coordinated by foreign military advisers. Reconnaissance data is supplied from all available NATO sources. The use of armaments is supervised by Western specialists.

NATO’s efforts are aimed at prolonging the agony of the Kiev regime. However, we know for a fact that no one in NATO has any doubt that the goals of the Russian leadership’s special military operation will be achieved, and that plans to strategically and economically weaken Russia are failing. The dollar has not reached the ceiling of 200 roubles, as predicted by the US president, the Russian economy has stood firm.

The special military operation has dispelled the myth of “super-weapons” supplied to Ukraine by the West, which are capable of fundamentally changing the situation on the front. Initially, they were talking about deliveries of Javelin anti-tank systems, some kind of “unique” drones. Lately, the Westerners have been promoting the role of super-weapons with HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems and long-range howitzers. However, these weapons also grind to a halt in battle. They did not make a significant impact. The Russian weapons, for their part, have proved their best qualities in combat.

We are taking a close look at trophy weapons from the West. The features and their specific qualities are taken into account in order to improve the way combat operations are conducted and the effectiveness of Russian armaments.

The supply of NATO weapons to Kiev means that Western countries are responsible for their inhumane use and for the deaths of civilians in Donbass and in the liberated territories. Ukrainian armed forces operations are planned in Washington and London. Not only are the coordinates of the targets to be attacked provided by Western intelligence, but the input of this data into weapons systems is conducted under the full control of Western specialists.

Kiev’s role in the West’s combat approach has been reduced to supplying manpower, which is seen as expendable. This explains the huge loss of personnel in Ukraine’s armed forces and territorial defence formations.

So far, the real figures of dead soldiers and mobilised so-called territorial defence forces have been concealed by the Kiev leadership.

In time, however, this information will become public. The testimonies of POWs of AFU allow us to form a realistic picture of what is happening on the other side of the front. The dismissive attitude towards the loss of foreign soldiers reinforces the thesis that NATO has purely selfish interests in Ukraine. Clearly, Britain’s colonial experience as the main sponsor of the Kiev regime has come in very handy for London in dealing with the current leadership in Kiev.

Against this background, speculation is spreading in the media about the alleged use of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in the special military operation or the readiness to use chemical weapons. All of these information gibberish are lies.

From a military point of view, there is no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine to achieve its goals. The main purpose of Russian nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack. Its use is limited to extraordinary circumstances as defined in the Russian guideline documents, which are open to public inspection.

The allegations about the possible use of chemical weapons in Ukraine are also absurd. Let me remind you that, unlike the US, such weapons were completely destroyed in our country back in 2017 as part of our international obligations. Meanwhile, poisoning provocations have become the hallmark of Western-sponsored so-called civil society organisations such as the White Helmets in Syria.

The information provocations are aimed at distracting attention from the facts discovered in Ukraine that US experts have conducted banned military and biological research.

Currently, a significant amount of data has been accumulated and is regularly made available to the general public. Work will continue in this direction.

US military-biological activities in Ukraine are not exceptional. Pentagon-controlled laboratories have been established and operate in many post-Soviet, Asian, African and Latin American countries. Local authorities generally have no control over research carried out on their premises that poses a lethal threat to the local population. The consequences of epidemics, I believe, were felt by all during the period of the fight against the spread of coronavirus.

I would like to focus separately on the humanitarian aspects of the special military operation. Compliance with the Geneva Conventions on the rules of war has always been and remains the focus of commanders at all levels. Since the beginning of the operation, orders have been issued stipulating the procedures to be followed by soldiers in dealing with civilians and enemy prisoners of war.

In the territories liberated from nationalists, the troops are actively involved in the delivery of humanitarian aid, the restoration of infrastructure and the maintenance of law and order. This was the case in Syria, in Nagorno-Karabakh, and it is also the case in Donbass.

On humanitarian issues, there has been fruitful cooperation with the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross. We are grateful for the constructive, depoliticised cooperation of the leaders and staff of these organisations who interact with us. In particular, under the auspices of the UN and with Turkey’s active role, the difficult problem of grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports was resolved. The Red Cross specialists carry out an important mediation mission in relation to captured soldiers.

NATO has recently initiated a new phase of alliance enlargement, with Sweden and Finland joining the military bloc. The claim that the reason for this was the Russian special operation is untrue.

The practical rapprochement between these countries and the alliance has been ongoing for many years. In fact, the regional association NORDEFCO (Committee for Nordic Defence Cooperation) is a northern affiliate of NATO and serves as a cover for these countries’ participation in joint military training activities.

Of course, the official involvement of Helsinki and Stockholm in NATO’s strategic planning and the possible allocation of territory to these states for deployment of strike weapons will change the security environment in the Baltic region and the Arctic and will require a reconsideration of approaches to defence of Russian territory.

Certain conclusions have already been reached and are enshrined in the updated Maritime Doctrine approved by the President of the Russian Federation on July 31. Work will continue in this area.

The reinforcement of the NATO military grouping on the “eastern flank” completes the degradation of the trust and arms control mechanisms that emerged in Europe during the Cold War. A few years ago, experts proposed that the European experience should be used to build confidence-building measures, in particular in the Pacific Rim. Now, of all the “baggage” of the Euro-dialogue, only the idea of bloc confrontation is exported to Asia, which has not brought anything positive to security in Europe.

Today, no one remembers the US destruction of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Limitation Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. Although previously these agreements were crucial for disarmament and confidence-building.

Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was conceived as a platform for dialogue and consideration of different views, has become a generator of anti-Russian narratives.

Vienna Document 2011 remains formally in force, but there are no prospects for practical implementation. In the absence of trust between the parties, the verification mechanism effectively becomes a source of intelligence, which is not in the spirit of this agreement.

The situation with regard to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty is also complicated. The agreement remains in force until 2026. On the Russian side the commitments are fulfilled, the declared levels of carriers and warheads are maintained within the established limits.

U.S. claims that Russia must earn the right to continue dialogue with the U.S. do not resist criticism. Arms control is a two-way street.

The result is only achievable if the interests and commitment of all participants are balanced. I believe that the Russian experience of interaction with the West in the field of disarmament shows that the so-called rules-based peace it promotes does not involve the implementation of treaty obligations in the traditional sense. This fact needs to be taken into account when entering into agreements, especially in the field of security and arms control.

Western opposition to the consolidation of a multipolar world, along with Europe, is most active in the Asia-Pacific region, where the US has begun to dismantle the existing ASEAN-based system of regional cooperation. This started with the announcement of the AUKUS initiative by the US, Australia and the UK. Plans to expand this partnership to include new regional partners have not been concealed. AUKUS is merging with NATO, which in turn claimed a dominant role in the Asia-Pacific region at the June summit. This is despite the fact that all NATO countries are thousands of miles away from the region.

On 2 August, the Russian Federation marked the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s entry into the war with Japan, the occasion for which was Tokyo’s militarist policy. The defeat of Japanese forces in the Far East effectively sealed the end of World War II and provided the start for the liberation of the peoples of Asia from colonial oppression. The assistance of the USSR was of key importance. We remember and are proud of the legacy of our ancestors, including those who laid the foundation for military cooperation between Russia and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

Another dangerous regional trend is the AUKUS focus on developing a nuclear submarine fleet in Australia. The implementation of this plan would have a complex negative impact on global and regional security, creating the conditions for undermining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

The US claims that nuclear-powered submarines are needed in Australia ostensibly to offset China’s growing naval capabilities. This logic in fact replicates the actions of the US in justifying its exit from the Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missile Treaty. The collapse of this agreement was also motivated by the need to offset Russian and Chinese efforts to develop missiles with a range allegedly prohibited by the treaty.

In the global context, the appearance of a nuclear-powered fleet in Australia will provide an excuse for other states to begin developing similar armaments. Pandora’s box will be opened, the global nuclear arms race will resume.

AUKUS has the potential to develop into a politico-military alliance. It cannot be excluded that NATO’s experience with joint nuclear planning and joint “allied” nuclear exercises will also be transferred to the region. The technical basis for this is already being laid by the active promotion of US-made aircraft. The participation of nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states in joint exercises on the use of nuclear weapons is contrary to obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Transferring nuclear training from Europe will blow up the region.

Although it can be assumed that this is precisely the purpose of the US. The provocative landing in Taiwan of a third person of the US bureaucratic hierarchy is another move to destabilise the situation.

Block-less, equal interaction in the region is an achievement that should not be lost due to externally imposed phobias and attempts to counter a multipolar world.

Mechanisms for interaction and dialogue with extra-regional partners are created and are proving their relevance and effectiveness. First and foremost is the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ and Partners’ Meeting, the so-called “ADMM-Plus” format. Its diverse activities focus on security issues of relevance to the Asia-Pacific region.

In addition, there is positive experience of cooperation within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, of implementing mutually beneficial projects on a bilateral basis.

As before, we are ready to share our experience of combat training, in particular during the Vostok-2022 strategic exercise to be held in the near future.

Despite significant successes in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East, the threat of international terrorist groups taking over the initiative remains. The Syrian military, in cooperation with allies and partners and with the support of the Russian Aerospace Forces, continues to suppress spikes in terrorist activity. We see a particular danger in using the Kurdish factor to unsettle the situation in Syria.

The engagement of the guarantor countries in the Astana format remains virtually the only legal and effective mechanism to address security concerns in Syria. We welcome the increased engagement between the Syrian leadership and the Arab world. Overcoming contradictions created by outside forces is possible and necessary.

The role of the military in building trust between countries is an important element in the search for political solutions. We expect that the Moscow conference will be one of the rallying points for the stabilisation of the situation in the Near East.

After the rapid withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan, the situation in the Central Asian region remains extremely tense. Afghanistan’s new leadership faces serious military and economic challenges. The legacy of two decades of alliance troop presence is a disappointing one. As a result, there remains a high level of terrorist danger in the region.

The security problems of Central Asia can only be solved by coordinated action by all the countries and international organisations concerned. For our part, we will continue to support our Collective Security Treaty Organisation allies in enhancing the capabilities of national armed forces.

It is important to keep the topic of Afghanistan on the agenda of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation discussions. Russia, China, India, Iran and Pakistan together could make a significant contribution not only to stabilising the region, but also to preventing the threat from spreading beyond its borders.

The security of each region, despite the general trends of a multipolar world, has its own peculiarities.

For Africa, the specificity lies in the desire of the countries of the collective West to return to the order and rules of engagement typical of the colonial period. Neo-colonialism is imposed through military pressure on governments of sovereign countries and support for separatist and terrorist movements. A case in point is Libya, where statehood has still not been restored after the NATO invasion. Another example is the situation in West Africa, where European troops have been deployed on the pretext of combating terrorism. For decades, these EU missions had been fighting terrorists, training national security forces, until they recognised the utter failure of their own efforts.

I would like to point out that African governments and leaders are holding their own, as they call it, in the context of a multipolar world, to pursue their own agenda of independence, sovereignty, economic development and defence capabilities.

The Russian Ministry of Defence is seeking to expand cooperation with African countries in the field of military and military-technical cooperation. Interest in the participation of national teams and delegations from Africa in the Army International Games and the “ARMY 2022” IMTF has increased significantly. It is very encouraging that prominent military commanders from our friendly states – Burundi, Cameroon, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, Uganda, Chad, Ethiopia and the Republic of South Africa – are present in this hall today. We appreciate your support and intend to increase cooperation on mutually beneficial projects.

Latin America today faces serious security challenges because of the American desire to maintain influence in the region under the provisions of the so-called Monroe Doctrine. Liberal values, whose adherence is seen by the US as agreeing to live in a world based on their rules, in fact mask the true objective – to build up a military presence by blocking the possibility of sovereign development of states.

U.S. policy focuses on deterring engagement by countries in the region with any other pole of power outside Washington’s control. The purpose of this policy is to involve the region in a confrontation with Russia and the PRC, to destroy traditional ties and to block new forms of cooperation in the military and military-technical spheres.

Anti-Russian information campaigns are launched in Latin America, hiding the truth about the causes and course of the special military operation in Ukraine. Analogies can be drawn to the British actions during the conflict in the Falkland Islands. What is happening in the Western media today with the coverage of the Russian special military operation was also happening when the media was chorally broadcasting only one point of view – that of London.

The question arises: are such policies in the fundamental interest of the countries of the region? The answer is clear – no. We hope that during the discussions at the conference we will hear assessments of the situation in Latin America from our partners from Venezuela and Nicaragua.

The Tenth Moscow Conference on International Security has a special importance for the Russian Ministry of Defence as organiser of the forum for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the conference is taking place during the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine. Despite attempts of the US and NATO to isolate Russia once again, your participation in the forum is a visible confirmation that these plans have collapsed. We appreciate your support.

Secondly, a multipolar world is the reality of today. The transition from dominance by a single global leader to several centres of gravity is not an easy one. However, this creates real conditions for the development of sovereign states.

Thirdly, the role of military agencies is changing in the new realities. The military not only guarantees a secure environment for economic development, but through military cooperation it builds predictability and trust between countries.

Finally, this is the tenth anniversary conference, which allows for a kind of review of what has been achieved over the years. It is important to observe how the priorities of the discussions have changed, and which conclusions and recommendations from the forum have been put into practice over the years. A short historical overview, prepared by Russian experts, can be viewed on the monitors between plenary sessions.

I wish you all good health and interesting contacts and discussions during your stay in Moscow.

Thank you for your attention.

source: https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12433677@egNews (which is blocked by western freedom loving democracies, so you need a VPN to access it!)

The power troika trumps Biden in West Asia

The presidents of Russia, Iran, and Turkey convened to discuss critical issues pertaining to West Asia, with the illegal US occupation of Syria a key talking point

July 20 2022

Photo Credit: The Cradle

Oil and gas, wheat and grains, missiles and drones – the hottest topics in global geopolitics today – were all on the agenda in Tehran this week.

By Pepe Escobar

The Tehran summit uniting Iran-Russia-Turkey was a fascinating affair in more ways than one. Ostensibly about the Astana peace process in Syria, launched in 2017, the summit joint statement duly noted that Iran, Russia and (recently rebranded) Turkiye will continue, “cooperating to eliminate terrorists” in Syria and “won’t accept new facts in Syria in the name of defeating terrorism.”

That’s a wholesale rejection of the “war on terror” exceptionalist unipolarity that once ruled West Asia.

Standing up to the global sheriff

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his own speech, was even more explicit. He stressed “specific steps to promote the intra-Syrian inclusive political dialogue” and most of called a spade a spade: “The western states led by the US are strongly encouraging separatist sentiment in some areas of the country and plundering its natural resources with a view to ultimately pulling the Syrian state apart.”

So there will be “extra steps in our trilateral format” aimed at “stabilizing the situation in those areas” and crucially, “returning control to the legitimate government of Syria.” For better or for worse, the days of imperial plunder will be over.

The bilateral meetings on the summit’s sidelines – Putin/Raisi and Putin/Erdogan – were even more intriguing. Context is key here: the Tehran gathering took place after Putin’s visit to Turkmenistan in late June for the 6^th Caspian summit, where all the littoral nations, Iran included, were present, and after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s travels in Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, where he met all his Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) counterparts.

Moscow’s moment

So we see Russian diplomacy carefully weaving its geopolitical tapestry from West Asia to Central Asia – with everybody and his neighbor eager to talk and to listen to Moscow. As it stands, the Russia-Turkey entente cordiale tends to lean towards conflict management, and is strong on trade relations. Iran-Russia is a completely different ball game: much more of a strategic partnership.

So it’s hardly a coincidence that the National Oil Company of Iran (NIOC), timed to the Tehran summit, announced the signing of a $40 billion strategic cooperation agreement with Russia’s Gazprom. That’s the largest foreign investment in the history of Iran’s energy industry – badly needed since the early 2000s. Seven deals worth $4 billion apply to the development of oil fields; others focus on the construction of new export gas pipelines and LNG projects.

Kremlin advisor Yury Ushakov deliciously leaked that Putin and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in their private meeting, “discussed conceptual issues.” Translation: he means grand strategy, as in the evolving, complex process of Eurasia integration, in which the three key nodes are Russia, Iran and China, now intensifying their interconnection. The Russia-Iran strategic partnership largely mirrors the key points of the China-Iran strategic partnership.

Iran says ‘no’ to NATO

Khamenei, on NATO, did tell it like it is: “If the road is open for NATO, then the organization sees no borders. If it had not been stopped in Ukraine, then after a while the alliance would have started a war under the pretext of Crimea.”

There were no leaks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) impasse between the US and Iran – but it’s clear, based on the recent negotiations in Vienna, that Moscow will not interfere with Tehran’s nuclear decisions. Not only are Tehran-Moscow-Beijing fully aware of who’s preventing the JCPOA from getting back on track, they also see how this counter-productive stalling process prevents the collective west from badly needed access to Iranian oil.

Then there’s the weapons front. Iran is one of the world’s leaders in drone production: Pelican, Arash, Homa, Chamrosh, Jubin, Ababil, Bavar, recon drones, attack drones, even kamikaze drones, cheap and effective, mostly deployed from naval platforms in West Asia.

Tehran’s official position is not to supply weapons to nations at war – which would in principle invalidate dodgy US “intel” on their supply to Russia in Ukraine. Yet that could always happen under the radar, considering that Tehran is very much interested in buying Russian aerial defense systems and state of the art fighter jets. After the end of the UN Security Council-enforced embargo, Russia can sell whatever conventional weapons to Iran it sees fit.

Russian military analysts are fascinated by the conclusions Iranians reached when it was established they would stand no chance against a NATO armada; essentially they bet on pro-level guerrilla war (a lesson learned from Afghanistan). In Syria, Iraq and Yemen they deployed trainers to guide villagers in their fight against Salafi-jihadis; produced tens of thousands of large-caliber sniper rifles, ATGMs, and thermals; and of course perfected their drone assembly lines (with excellent cameras to surveil US positions).

Not to mention that simultaneously the Iranians were building quite capable long-range missiles. No wonder Russian military analysts estimate there’s much to learn tactically from the Iranians – and not only on the drone front.

The Putin-Sultan ballet

Now to the Putin-Erdogan get together – always an attention-grabbing geopolitical ballet, especially considering the Sultan has not yet decided to hop on the Eurasia integration high-speed train.

Putin diplomatically “expressed gratitude” for the discussions on food and grain issues, while reiterating that “not all issues on the export of Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea ports are resolved, but progress is made.”

Putin was referring to Turkiye’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, who earlier this week assured that setting up an operations center in Istanbul, establishing joint controls at the port exit and arrival points, and carefully monitoring the navigational safety on the transfer routes are issues that may be solved in the next few days.

Apparently Putin-Erdogan also discussed Nagorno-Karabakh (no details).

What a few leaks certainly did not reveal is that on Syria, for all practical purposes, the situation is blocked. That favors Russia – whose main priority as it stands is Donbass. Wily Erdogan knows it – and that’s why he may have tried to extract some “concessions” on “the Kurdish question” and Nagorno-Karabakh. Whatever Putin, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev may really think about Erdogan, they certainly evaluate how priceless is to cultivate such an erratic partner capable of driving the collective west totally bonkers.

Istanbul this summer has been turned into a sort of Third Rome, at least for expelled-from-Europe Russian tourists: they are everywhere. Yet the most crucial geoeconomic development these past few months is that the western-provoked collapse of trade/supply lines along the borders between Russia and the EU – from the Baltic to the Black Sea – finally highlighted the wisdom and economic sense of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INTSC): a major Russia-Iran-India geopolitical and geoeconomic integration success.

When Moscow talks to Kiev, it talks via Istanbul. NATO, as the Global South well knows, does not do diplomacy. So any possibility of dialogue between Russians and a few educated westerners takes place in Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the UAE. West Asia as well as the Caucasus, incidentally, did not subscribe to the western sanctions hysteria against Russia.

Say farewell to the ‘teleprompter guy’

Now compare all of the above with the recent visit to the region by the so-called “leader of the free world,” who merrily alternates between shaking hands with invisible people to reading – literally – whatever is scrolling on a teleprompter. We’re talking of US President Joe Biden, of course.

Fact: Biden threatened Iran with military strikes and as a mere supplicant, begged the Saudis to pump more oil to offset the “turbulence” in the global energy markets caused by the collective west’s sanction hysteria. Context: the glaring absence of any vision or anything even resembling a draft of foreign policy plan for West Asia.

So oil prices duly jumped upward after Biden’s trip: Brent crude rose more than four percent to $105 a barrel, bringing prices back to above $100 after a lull of several months.

The heart of the matter is that if OPEC or OPEC+ (which includes Russia) ever decide to increase their oil supplies, they will do it based on their internal deliberations, and not under exceptionalist pressure.

As for the imperial threat of military strikes on Iran, it qualifies as pure dementia. The whole Persian Gulf – not to mention the whole of West Asia – knows that were US/Israel to attack Iran, fierce retaliation would simply evaporate with the region’s energy production, with apocalyptic consequences including the collapse of trillions of dollars in derivatives.

Biden then had the gall to say, “We have made progress in strengthening our relations with the Gulf states. We will not leave a vacuum for Russia and China to fill in the Middle East”.

Well, in real life it is the “indispensable nation” that has self-morphed into a vacuum. Only bought-and-paid for Arab vassals – most of them monarchs – believe in the building of an “Arab NATO” (copyright Jordan’s King Abdullah) to take on Iran. Russia and China are already all over the place in West Asia and beyond.

De-Dollarization, not just Eurasian integration

It’s not only the new logistical corridor from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Astrakhan and then, via the Caspian, to Enzeli in Iran and on to Mumbai that is shaking things up. It’s about increasing bilateral trade that bypasses the US dollar. It’s about BRICS+, which Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are dying to be part of. It’s about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which formally accepts Iran as a full member this coming September (and soon Belarus as well). It’s about BRICS+, the SCO, China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) interconnected in their path towards a Greater Eurasia Partnership.

West Asia may still harbor a small collection of imperial vassals with zero sovereignty who depend on the west’s financial and military ‘assistance,’ but that’s the past. The future is now – with Top Three BRICS (Russia, India, China) slowly but surely coordinating their overlapping strategies across West Asia, with Iran involved in all of them.

And then there’s the Big Global Picture: whatever the circumvolutions and silly schemes of the US-concocted “oil price cap” variety, the fact is that Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela – the top powerful energy-producing nations – are absolutely in sync: on Russia, on the collective west, and on the needs of a real multipolar world.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Russia and China haven’t even started to ratchet up the pain dial

July 13, 2022

by Pepe Escobar and posted with the author’s permission

The Suicide Spectacular Summer Show, currently on screen across Europe, proceeds in full regalia, much to the astonishment of virtually the whole Global South: a trashy, woke Gotterdammerung remake, with Wagnerian grandeur replaced by twerking.

Decadent Roman Emperors at least exhibited some degree of pathos. Here we’re just faced by a toxic mix of hubris, abhorrent mediocrity, delusion, crude ideological sheep-think and outright irrationality wallowing in white man’s burden racist/supremacist slush – all symptoms of a profound sickness of the soul.

To call it the Biden-Leyen-Blinken West or so would be too reductionist: after all these are puny politico/functionaries merely parroting orders. This is a historical process: physical, psychic and moral cognitive degeneration embedded in NATOstan’s manifest desperation in trying to contain Eurasia, allowing occasional tragicomic sketches such as a NATO summit proclaiming Woke War against virtually the whole non-West.

So when President Putin addresses the collective West in front of Duma leaders and heads of political parties, it does feel like a comet striking an inert planet. It’s not even a case of “lost in translation”. “They” simply aren’t equipped to get it.

The “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” part was at least formulated to be understood even by simpletons:

“Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield, well, what can I say, let them try. We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian – this is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. But it looks like it’s all coming to this. But everyone should know that, by and large, we haven’t really started anything yet.”

Fact. On Operation Z, Russia is using a fraction of its military potential, resources and state of the art weapons.

Then we come to the most probable path ahead in the war theater:

“We do not refuse peace negotiations, but those who refuse should know that the longer it drags, the more difficult it will be for them to negotiate with us.”

As in the pain dial will be ratcheted up, slowly but surely, on all fronts.

Yet the meat of the matter had been delivered earlier in the speech: “ratcheting up the pain dial” applies in fact to dismantling the whole “rules-based international order” edifice. The geopolitical world has changed. Forever.

Here’s the arguably key passage:

“They should have understood that they have already lost from the very beginning of our special military operation, because its beginning means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the World Order in the American way. This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world – a world based not on selfish rules invented by someone for themselves, behind which there is nothing but the desire for hegemony, not on hypocritical double-standards, but on international law, on the true sovereignty of peoples and civilizations, on their will to live their historical destiny, their values and traditions and build cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality. And we must understand that this process can no longer be stopped.”

Meet the trifecta

A case can be made that Putin and Russia’s Security Council are implementing a tactical trifecta that has reduced the collective West to an amorphous bunch of bio headless chickens.

The trifecta mixes the promise of negotiations – but only when considering Russia’s steady advances on the ground in Novorossiya; the fact that Russia’s global “isolation” has been proved in practice to be nonsense; and tweaking the most visible pain dial of them all: Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

The main reason for the graphic, thundering failure of the G20 Foreign Ministers summit in Bali is that the G7 – or NATOstan plus American colony Japan – could not force the BRICS plus major Global South players to isolate, sanction and/or demonize Russia.

On the contrary: multiple interpolations outside of the G20 spell out even more Eurasia-wide integration. Here are a few examples.

The first transit of Russian products to India via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) is now in effect, crisscrossing Eurasia from Mumbai to the Baltic via Iranian ports (Chabahar or Bandar Abbas), the Caspian Sea, and Southern and Central Russia. Crucially, the route is shorter and cheaper than going through the Suez Canal.

In parallel, the head of the Iranian Central Bank, Ali Salehabadi, confirmed that a memorandum of interbank cooperation was signed between Tehran and Moscow.

That means a viable alternative to SWIFT, and a direct consequence of Iran’s application to become a full BRICS member, announced at the recent summit in Beijing. The BRICS, since 2014, when the New Development Bank (NDB) was founded, have been busy building their own financial infrastructure, including the near future creation of a single reserve currency. As part of the process, the harmonization of Russian and Iranian banking systems is inevitable.

Iran is also about to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the upcoming summit in Samarkand in September.

In parallel, Russia and Kazakhstan are solidifying their strategic partnership: Kazakhstan is a key member of BRI, EAEU and SCO.

India gets even closer to Russia across the whole spectrum of trade – including energy.

And next Tuesday, Tehran will be the stage for a crucial face-to-face meeting between Putin and Erdogan.

Isolation? Really?

On the energy front, it’s only summer, but demented paranoia is already raging across multiple EU latitudes, especially Germany. Comic relief is provided by the fact that Gazprom can always point out to Berlin that eventual supplying problems on Nord Stream 1 – after the cliffhanger return of that notorious repaired turbine from Canada – can always be solved by implementing Nord Stream 2.

As the whole European Suicide Spectacular Summer Show is nothing but a tawdry self-inflicted torture ordered by His Master’s Voice, the only serious question is which pain dial level will force Berlin to actually sit down and negotiate on behalf of legitimate German industrial and social interests.

Rough and tumble will be the norm. Foreign Minister Lavrov summed it all up when commenting on the Declining Collective West Ministers striking poses like infantile brats in Bali to avoid being seen with him: that was up to “their understanding of the protocols and politeness.”

That’s diplo-talk for “bunch of jerks”. Or worse: cultural barbarians, as they were even unable to respect the hyper-polite Indonesian hosts, who abhor confrontation.

Lavrov preferred to extol the “joint strategic and constructive” Russian-Chinese work when faced with a very aggressive West. And that brings us to the prime masterpiece of shadowplay in Bali – complete with several layers of geopolitical fog.

Chinese media, always flirting with the opaque, tried to put its bravest face ever depicting the over 5-hour meeting between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Secretary Blinken as “constructive”.

What’s fascinating here is that the Chinese ended up letting something crucial out of the bag to slip into the final draft of their report – obviously approved by the powers that be.

Lu Xiang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences went through previous readouts – especially of “Yoda” Yang Jiechi routinely turning Jake Sullivan into roasted duck – and stressed that this time Wang’s “warnings” to the Americans were “the sternest one in wording”.

That’s diplo-code for “You Better Watch Out”: Wang telling Little Blinkie, “just look at what the Russians did when they lost their patience with your antics.”

The expression ”dead end” was recurrent during the Wang-Blinken meeting. So in the end the Global Times had to tell it like it really is:  “The two sides are close to a showdown.”

“Showdown” is what End of Days fanatic and Tony Soprano wannabe Mike Pompeo is fervently preaching from his hate pulpit, while the combo behind the senile “leader of the free world” who literally reads teleprompters actively work for the crashing of the EU – in more ways than one.

The combo in power in Washington actually “supports” the unification of Britain, Poland, Ukraine and The Three Baltic Midgets as a separate alliance from NATO/EU – aiming at “strengthening the defense potential.” That’s the official position of US Ambassador to NATO Julian Smith.

So the real imperial aim is to split the already shattering EU into mini-union pieces, all of them quite fragile and evidently more “manageable”, as Brussels Eurocrats, blinded by boundless mediocrity, obviously can’t see it coming.

What the Global South is buying

Putin always makes it very clear that the decision to launch Operation Z – as a sort of pre-emptive “combined arms and police operation”, as defined by Andrei Martyanov – was carefully calculated, considering an array of material and socio-psychological vectors.

Anglo-American strategy, for its part, lasers on a single obsession: damn any possible reframing of the current “rules-based international order”. No holds are barred to ensure the perpetuity of this order. This is in fact Totalen Krieg – featuring several hybrid layers, and quite worrying, with only a few seconds to midnight.

And there’s the rub. Desolation Row is fast becoming Desperation Row, as the whole Russophobic matrix is shown to be naked, devoid of any extra ideological – and even financial – firepower to “win”, apart from shipping a collection of HIMARS to a black hole.

Geopolitically and geoeconomically, Russia and China are in the process of eating NATOstan alive – in more ways than one. Here, for instance, is a synthetic road map of how Beijing will address the next stage of high-quality development via capital-driven industrial upgrading, focused on optimization of supply chains, import substitution of hard technologies, and “invisible champions” of industry.

If the collective West is blinded by Russophobia, the governing success of the Chinese Communist Party – which in a matter of a few decades improved the lives of more people than anyone, anytime in History – drives it completely nuts.

All along the Russia-China watchtower, it’s been not such a long time coming. BRI was launched by Xi Jinping in 2013. After Maidan in 2014, Putin launched the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015. Crucially, in May 2015, a Russia-China joint statement sealed the cooperation between BRI and EAEU, with a significant role assigned to the SCO.

Closer integration advanced via the St. Petersburg forum in 2016 and the BRI forum in 2017. The overall target: to create a new order in Asia, and across Eurasia, according to international law while maintaining the individual development strategies of each concerned country and respecting their national sovereignty.

That, in essence, is what most of the Global South is buying. It’s as if there’s a cross-border instinctual understanding that Russia-China, against serious odds and facing serious challenges, proceeding by trial and error, are at the vanguard of the Shock of the New, while the collective West, naked, dazed and confused, their masses completely zombified, is sucked into the maelstrom of psychological, moral and material disintegration.

No question the pain dial will be ratcheted up, in more ways than one.

• Letter from Faina Savenkova: To my friends from America
• The international political debacle proves that the unipolar system is crumbling
• Arms for victory over Russia? No, for their resale!
• Michael Hudson: The End of Western Civilization – Why It Lacks Resilience, and What Will Take Its Place
• The Russians got the US M777 Howitzer.

The Judgement of the Nations

July 12, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

A frequent topic among both contributors and commentators on this site is the discussion as to whether the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine will take a few months or a few years. It is a common question and there are different opinions. Let me say now that I am not qualified even to speculate on this, let alone have an opinion. I do not know the answer and I suspect that many highly-placed people in the military and among politicians do not know the answer either.

In any case why is an answer to this question so important? Originally, this was not a war, but a limited Operation, still involving a small proportion of the Russian Armed Forces. Had Russia wanted to occupy the Ukraine with massive military violence, in German, with a ‘Blitzkrieg’, in American, with ‘shock and awe’, with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of victims, all could have been done in a couple of weeks. However, this is not Hollywood. That was not the aim.

The clear aim was to free the Russian part of the Ukraine and to demilitarise and denazify the rest, so it would no longer present a threat to the Russian World. Obviously, doing this meant not just winning the genodical war which the backers of the Kiev regime had begun in 2014, but also doing it, causing the smallest number of victims among the Russian and Allied military and Ukrainian civilians as possible, and at the same time doing the least amount of damage to civilian infrastructure as possible.

Pictures showing huge damage to civilian infrastructure, especially in Mariupol and Donetsk, show above all the enormous amount of damage done by NATO-backed Kiev regime bombardments over the last eight years. It was clear to Russian military and political planners that the Operation would take at least months, perhaps years, as the whole of the Kiev Armed Forces had been digging in here for eight years. Russia knew that in order to win a war, you have to win the peace afterwards.

It was no good doing like the Americans did in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, destroying infrastructure, making the people hate you and then, once you realise that you have lost, running away, leaving chaos and misery. The Russian authorities also knew that since NATO had already de facto declared war on Russia in 2014, the Operation to liberate the Ukraine through denazification and demilitarisation would further activate their war effort and provoke many more ‘sanctions’. Now that the Operation has become a NATO war against Russia, much as expected, it is all the more difficult to forecast the future.

Many missed the point. The Special Military Operation is not where it is at. The Ukraine is only the location, the battlefield, and the Kiev junta are only the actors on the stage, puppets. This is not primarily a battle of the military and their technologies, although they are very important, this is above all a battle of world views and ensuing realities. This battle is political and economic, spiritual and moral. Why else did the Johnson regime ban the Russian Orthodox Patriarch from visiting the UK?

Here we understand President Putin’s words of 7 July 2022 before Russian parliamentarians that Russia ‘has not even started anything in earnest in the Ukraine yet’, that the military operation in the Ukraine signifies ‘a cardinal break with the US world order, the beginning of the transition from the liberal globalism of US egocentricity to the reality of a multipolar world….the march of history is unstoppable and the attempts of the West to foist its New World Order on the world are doomed to failure’.

Whatever happens militarily in the Ukraine over the coming months, and much will happen, there are other stories, which are ultimately far more important. There was tiny Lithuania’s attempt to blockade the Russian Kaliningrad enclave, which has already failed. There was the toppling of the bankrupt UK’s Prime Minister, who wanted to wage a war without money, there was the assassination of the former Japanese Prime Minister by forces unknown, there was the occupation of the Presidential Palace in Colombo in Sri Lanka by a hungry crowd facing huge inflation and national bankruptcy.

Then there is the incipient collapse of the euro, already reaching parity with the dollar, as Europe grinds to a halt without Russian energy. There is the possible coming collapse of the dollar as the world dedollarises, under Russian impetus. There is mighty Germany’s attempt to survive without Russian oil and gas, which is already failing. There is much more that is being hidden from the populations of the Western world by worried elites – strikes, protests and the breakdown of social cohesion.

It is now July. In eight weeks’ time the weather cools. In sixteen weeks’ time winter begins. Wait until the panic begins and the palaces of leaders of the Western world also fall to hungry crowds facing huge inflation and national bankruptcy in European and North American Capitals. There may not be just a few deaths, as when the Washington Presidential Palace fell on 6 January 2021, but mass violence and fire. Wait until Chinese troops liberate Taiwan, as they will do at the right moment when the US is off guard, too busy with its own immense problems. Then shall begin the Judgement of the Nations.

Western Europe appears to go through a cycle of Judgement every 500 years or so. Round about the Year 500 (pedants mention the Year 476), Western Rome fell to the Barbarians, followed by great disruption and bloodshed. Round about the Year 1000 (pedants mention the Year 1054), there began Roman Catholicism, followed by its imperialist invasions, crusades and inquisitions. Round about 1500 (pedants mention 1517) there began Protestantism, followed by persecution of women (‘witches’) and ‘wars of religion’, both in Continental Europe and in Britain and Ireland under Cromwell. And now, round about the Year 2000 (will pedants mention the Year 2022?), there begins another Judgement.

For us, where we are, closely linked to the Ukraine, the war began already in early 2021. But that will be a story to tell another time.

Why don’t the African cosmos support the West in its sanctions war against Russia?

July 06, 2022

Source

By José Francisco Lumango

The answer may not be simple. But the memory of European colonisation in Africa, and its harmful effects, are still visible despite the independence of its states, may be a reasonable way of understanding it. An African adage teaches that “One should never forget the lessons learned in times of pain”, which seems to be the source of inspiration for the African cosmos – the set of entities that formally and materially hold the power relations in Africa – not to forget the tragic consequences of European colonisation, to protect their independence and not repeat the errors of the past. Without being simplistic or too complex, the answer to the question in question may have several reasons:

1. Historical memory of colonisation and the struggle for national liberation: Russia, heir to the Former USSR, supported ideologically, politically, economically, and militarily the national liberation struggles of several African countries, which after the achievement of independence, followed the communist model as the basis of their political, social and economic construction. Even though they later adopted Western capitalism, the mentality of the African cosmos is still of Soviet influence, because it was there that most of them did their military and political training and received economic support to finance the liberation wars to put an end to Western colonisation, with direct and indirect help from Cuba as an intermediary in some cases. The cold war between the USA and NATO against the USSR led to civil wars in African countries to conquer the spaces of influence. After the fall of the Berlin wall and the resurgence of Russia, Westerners looked at the situation as an absolute victory. Despite this, the African cosmos has not forgotten colonisation, the interference of Western countries in their internal affairs, and the rigged processes of massive indebtedness of their economies as a way of controlling their strategic natural resources.

2. Recent memory of wars at the beginning of the 21st century: Beyond colonial issues, the African cosmos has been following since 2001 the behaviour of the West (US, NATO, and EU) in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, sweetened by the Arab Springs, attempted coups in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tunisia, Egypt, etc., without forgetting the massacre in Rwanda and the war in Somalia and Yemen. These wars and coups have destroyed thousands of human lives, social infrastructure, jobs, etc. It was a catastrophe for the entire continent and nearby territories like South East Asia. The existing wars in Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, Mali, Mozambique, DRC, Ethiopia, etc, allow the African cosmos, even those with strong ties to the West like Morocco, for example, not to act frontally against Russia, a fact verified in the recent votes of the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council which suspended it. The expulsion of French forces by the military junta in Mali and their replacement by the Russians through the Wagner group, like the construction of a port for the Russian Nave Arms on the Sudanese Red Sea coast, could be a revealing symptom.

3. The damaging memory of Western unipolarity and the chance for a global multipolar alternative power: For Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, the Ukrainian war is a civil war within Slavic civilisation, through several wars within it: economic-financial, propaganda-media, cultural, biological, radiological, and military war. It is a hybrid war that has ended with globalisation, as confirmed by Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock. For Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, it is not a question of total deglobalisation, but of economic-financial, cybernetic-digital, energy, and commercial deglobalisation. The West was no longer interested in economic-financial globalisation because they lost the battle against China, and cybernetic-digital globalisation (software, etc.) was won by the Indians. This bipolarity also involves the division of the UN Security Council into two blocs: the first composed of the US, UK, France (G7/NATO), and the second of Russia and China (Shanghai Group and BRICS). This situation led to an operational dysfunction of the WTO and led to the resignation of its previous Director General, Roberto Azevedo. In this sense, Jalife-Rahme quotes Philipe Stephens’ article “The world is marching back from globalisation”, where he states that “The US does not see a vital national interest in maintaining an order that transfers power to rivals”. Thus, according to Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, “Everything that is not globalised becomes balkanised”. Thus, the end of globalisation, especially the economic-financial one, as dictated by Larry Fink, will inevitably entail its balkanisation, through two regional blocs, i.e. de-globalisation and bipolar trans-meta-regionalisation, on one side the G7/NATO and EU, and on the other side the BRICS/Shanghai Group and Eurasian Union.

The de-globalisation said by Larry Fink is “neoliberal de-globalisation”, which occurs through the gradual paralysis of global supply chains, which are founded on the reduction of operating costs through outsourcing (relocation of companies) and downsizing (lowering labour costs to increase shareholder profits and value companies in capital markets), according to Alfredo Jalife-Rahme. The African cosmos believes that if Russia, even with nuclear weapons, a continental country with Eurasian tradition, which supplies almost 40% of energy resources and other strategic raw materials to the West, is treated this way, what will become of African countries, which are visibly weaker in military terms? The destruction of Libya for trying to sell oil in Euro and rejecting the USD may be indisputable proof.

The meddling of the West in Africa, beyond colonisation, needs no introduction. The wars and coups d’état in Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Sudan, the Central African Republic, the civil war in Angola and other conflicts are facts that remain in the collective memory of the African cosmos. If the colonial memory was tragic, the expressive and aggressive interference of the West in the African cosmos is breaking any remaining trust, for historical reasons (over 400 years of colonisation), by unfair competition in the exploitation of natural resources, the massive interference in internal affairs by the IMF in the financing of road and housing infrastructures, etc., and the attempt to incorporate western values aggressively through sanctions and blackmail, even if these values do not correspond to the African historical-epistemic and gnosiological cosmogony.

4. China and Russia as a financial and military alternative for the existential survival of African countries in a multipolar world in the medium and long term: The African cosmos observes with concern and caution everything that Western leaders do against Russia as a result of the technical-military operation in Ukraine, regardless of the causes, which by common sense is perceived since 2014. The reason for this concern lies in the fact that whenever the West finds itself in crisis or politically, geostrategically, and economically cornered, it uses internal or external wars as a way out, a can be seen in the Roman wars, the colonisation of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the Napoleonic wars, the First and Second World Wars. Faced with the circumstances, the African cosmos shows resistance towards sanctions against Russia, abstaining from votes at the UN, in official pronouncements, that is, maintaining certain strategic neutrality, despite the gigantic Western pressure, forcing them to choose a side as if they were still vassals or colonised. It is not that the African cosmos agrees in its entirety with Russia’s technical-military operation in Ukraine, insofar as, there is a history of invasions in Africa carried out by Westerners, Arabs, Persians, and Ottomans. The main concern is the need for an economic-financial and military alternative to the West for its own existential survival, and to protect itself from possible aggressive interference in the long term, when strategic reserves of Western raw materials reach their limit. The way the West behaved during the Covid19 Pandemic in the context of vaccine distribution policies, by buying in advance almost 80% of all vaccines in production in the world, leaving poor countries without vaccines even to buy for a certain period, and changing their position only when they realised that, the non-global distribution of the vaccines prolonged the pandemic, led to the creation of the COVAX system by the WHO, after harsh criticism from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, stating that, “The growing gap between the number of vaccines offered in rich countries and those administered through COVAX is becoming “more grotesque by the day”. And how could it be otherwise, the gesture of Russia and China in the swift distribution of vaccines and protective medical supplies was taken into account by the African cosmos at the time of decision making. As is well known, China’s economic and Russia’s military presence in Africa is seen as an alternative guarantee to what the West is offering. Since 2002, while the West was distracted with its eternal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Arab Spring, Syria, Libya, etc., China entered Africa in silence, massively funding road infrastructure projects etc., without interference in internal affairs, through the adoption of the “Win-Win” strategy.

Russia, on the other hand, has become the main military alternative, accounting for 49% of total arms exports to Africa by 2020, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) database, to avoid internal conflicts and protect itself from external interference. Paul Stronski confirms that “The rulers of many African countries look to Moscow from Soviet-era links, and Moscow takes advantage of this and manages to maintain its influence. In the case of Algeria [and Angola], this is done by writing off old debts. Sometimes Russia also makes generous promises, assuring that it will build workshops or facilities for manufacturing or maintenance.

The African cosmos serenely realises that a defeat of Russia in Ukraine will lead the world to a more aggressive, self-centred and militarised Western unipolarisation and the weaker countries will have no alternative for survival and existential resistance. The fear of perishing and becoming a colonial space again seems to be more important to the strategists of the African cosmos than Western values about democracy, neoliberalism, capitalism, etc. For the African cosmos, its course and future depend on the economic-financial cover of China and the military cover of Russia, so that there is a certain balance in its relations with the West.

And it considers the situation of Russia and Ukraine as an internal issue between brothers of the same homeland linked historically, culturally, linguistically, and religiously. But it does not mean that it wants a radical change in its strategic relations with the West. It is only a preventive measure of existential survival.

The way the West treats Ukrainian refugees compared to what has been done with African refugees arriving via the Mediterranean and from the Canary Islands via the Atlantic has not been forgotten, as have the Punic wars between Rome and Carthage and the destruction of Libya. These historical events may justify the fear of the African cosmos in resisting in the face of Western pressure to give up its strategic relations with Russia and China.

This neutrality and strategic ambiguity serve to prevent a geostrategic and existential risk for sovereign and independent countries in the medium and long term. And, according to an African adage “When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers”. Thus, the African cosmos realises that it is grass in this war of titans, and Ukraine only as a geostrategic, geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geofinancial singularity of the hegemonic power struggle between Eurasia and the West. So that may have been the reason they refrained from the sanctions war against Russia, for the lessons learned from their tragic experiences, old and recent, of their relations with the West.

The African cosmos does everything it can to avoid being the grass in the conflict at hand, promoted by the West since 2014, through the coup d’état against Viktor Yanukovich, and the failure to implement the Minsk I and II agreements. Soon, it seems that the African cosmos uses the proverbial philosophy of its ancestors to avoid entering into another’s war, even though it is already feeling the side effects of the increase in the prices of wheat, fertilizers, oil, gas, etc., and the risk of probable retaliations, for disobedience of political guidelines, by the West.

The claim by Macky Sall, President of Senegal and Chairperson-in-Office of the African Union on his recent visit to Russia, in demanding the West remove sanctions affecting Africa’s food security is, without doubt, a clear and unequivocal demonstration of this position. ”

Sitrep Operation Z: SloMo Collapse

July 01, 2022

Source

By Saker Staff

Let us deal with Snake Island first as the level of noise is unbelievable.

Snake Island in the Black sea will remain under Russian naval and air control. Russian Politician Alexei Chernyak.

End of story

Russia can take that piece of serpentine rock and missile it to non-existence but they’ve just used a rock to remove the Ukraine’s biggest impediment (lie) about the paltry amount of wheat in the ships still unable to make passage. Now the supposed ‘international order’ have no more excuses and the Ukraine must demine their naval mines. But always remember, we’re dealing with the Empire of Lies!

For this one, we will look at the bigger world first, and then we will go on to the ramparts.

A reminder: What is this all about?

A Biden advisor says that US drivers will pay a gas premium for as long as it takes, because:

“This is about the future of the liberal world order and we have to stand firm.” https://t.me/IntelRepublic/1516

Liberal world order is code for the rules-based international order which is code for a single pole of power in our world.  In other words, they understand on some level that they are fighting for their existence as the ultimate ruler.

In sharp contrast, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – Minsk, June 30, 2022

The future world order is at stake. We will go back to the origins and observe in practice the UN Charter principles, above all the principle of sovereign equality of states, or else the world will be plunged into chaos for a long time. Our choice is clear: We stand for unconditional respect for international law. We will uphold this position together with our Belarusian allies and our other numerous like-minded partners who share these approaches, which was confirmed during the recent BRICS summit and in the final documents adopted at this summit.

Russia and the multi-polar world are getting stronger day by day.  Let’s take a look at how the mighty are falling:

EU Circus

We posted a Douglas MacGregor clip recently with the heading: Its collapsed

There is little to be said here and we can only depict this with a cartoon or two.  The number of cartoons generated by this circus exceeded all expectations.  Everyone was cartooning!

NATO – Crisis of Existence and another announcement of Wunderwaffe

The Chinese friends report on the NATO split:

“On the issue of the Russia-Ukraine conflict alone, there are different demands among Western countries, as Germany, France and Italy want to stop the war as soon as possible, and the US is calling on all NATO countries to make a common cause against Russia. Wang Shuo, a professor at the School of International Relations of Beijing Foreign Studies University, believes that in this situation, many European countries are questioning whether NATO can solve the crisis in Ukraine. If it cannot work, what’s the point of NATO’s existence? At the moment when Europeans believe that NATO needs to play a role, it proved itself disunited and incompetent, another sign of NATO’s existential crisis.”

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202206/1269395.shtml

And on the NATO document:

Zhao Lijian: The NATO 2022 Strategic Concept has misrepresented facts and distorted the truth. In this document, NATO once again wrongly defined China as posing “systemic challenges”. It smeared China’s foreign policy and pointed fingers at China’s normal military posture and defense policy. The document seeks to stoke confrontation and antagonism and smacks heavily of Cold War mentality and ideological bias. China is gravely concerned over this and firmly opposes it.

Here is our message for NATO: hyping up the so-called “China threat” will lead nowhere. NATO must immediately stop its groundless accusations and provocative rhetoric against China, abandon the outdated Cold War mentality and zero-sum game mindset, renounce its blind faith in military might and misguided practice of seeking absolute security, halt the dangerous attempt to destabilize Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and act in the interest of security and stability in Europe and beyond.

The Baltic States no longer believe in NATO.

Latvia and Estonia decided to buy air defense systems for joint defense.

“The NATO Summit gave a clear signal that assistance will be provided to those who are ready to defend themselves,” Estonian Defense Minister Laanet said. The initiative to develop regional defense was also supported by his Latvian counterpart Pabriks. “We are working on developing our own capabilities,” he stressed.

Finland states it will NOT extradite its citizens to OTHER countries UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES – Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto.

So, already Turkey’s pre-condition to Finland entering the NATO bloc is falling apart. Perhaps The Sultan knows that this may not happen at all.  This is what it looks like: Finland and Sweden have not joined NATO yet, and there is a long process ahead, says Erdogan. According to him, the signatures at the Madrid summit do not mean the end of the work to eliminate Ankara’s concerns. Turkey wants to see in practice what the decisions reached will mean.

Scholz (for what he is worth) at this very same NATO meet, got scared and quickly urged not to hinder the transit of Russian goods to Kaliningrad.  He wants to reduce the tensions in the  Baltic region.  The most interesting is that Politico reports this.  But then, he wants to set the rules according to some rules-based international order concept that he seemingly thinks he is entitled to promulgate on the spot.

“Transit rules should be established taking into account the fact that we are dealing here with traffic between two parts of Russia,” he said at the NATO summit in Madrid.

And he also tumbles the sanctions:

“In the case of Kaliningrad, an exception should be made from anti-Russian sanctions”, Scholz stressed.

Politician and former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis urges (https://ria.ru/20220701/lafazanis-1799505196.html)

Greece to conclude a strategic alliance with Russia and to lift sanctions, because “Europe is hit hard by the sanctions. Europe has shot itself.”

And then, Germany Seizes Gazprom LNG Tankers which belonged to the Russian energy giants German subsidiary – Gazprom Germania.  And Russia in the form of Gazprom turns up the Pain Dial by turning off the gas faucet to the company, and key gas retailers in Germany and the UK suddenly stare as the bottom of the tank becomes visible.

So, given the extracts from the last few days through the EU Circus and NATO’s announcement of Wunderwaffen, can you see clearly that they are telling only big stories. These weapons may not materialize, and most know it. Besides, if Russia does not destroy them, she buys them.

Arms trade on the line of contact and indirect deliveries of military equipment from Europe to Russia by Ukrainians

In the context of the news (https://t.me/vzglyad_ru/57577) about the transfer of another six units of CAESAR self-propelled guns by France to Ukraine, we want to talk a little about how things are with the arms trade on the line of contact.

We already wrote that two CAESAR self-propelled guns went to the Russian side for a ridiculous 120 thousand dollars. At the same time, Ukrainian negotiators initially requested $1 million for the launcher.

How it looks technically in practice:

• Negotiations are underway through special forces on the possibility of acquiring one or another model of foreign equipment;
• Since this whole thing is taking place on the line of contact, control over specific types of weapons and military equipment received from the West is rather conditional there: the most you can count on is a relatively timid commander and rather zealous representatives of the SBU, who will not give a damn about reputational losses of Ukraine in case of loss of foreign equipment;
• The Russian side acts as a picky buyer who does not need outdated weapons and military equipment: everything that is needed was obtained by undercover intelligence and so on. Local Ukrainian businessmen are trying to cash in and somehow sell the RF Armed Forces what they have. As a result, the deals go through, but are guided by the Russian side, at the same time, only by the expediency of maintaining contacts with the enemy;
• In the line of special forces, they agree on the organization of a massive artillery raid on a certain already empty square to divert attention while the actual transfer of equipment is carried out;
• The Russian side has already expressed interest in acquiring HIMARS. They asked for more ammo.
• To the Russian side, we repeat, such deals provide an opportunity to maintain working contacts with the Ukrainian side, which in the future will allow solving much more pressing issues. On the Ukrainian side, there is a great desire not to fight and earn money.

So that is one of the deals with the wunderwaffe.  Here is another:

Some watcher of Ukrainian channels report that Ukrainian General Staff asked Zelensky in the role of the President to please please stop requesting 777 howitzers and NLAW anti-tank systems, which quickly fail or do not function at all.

(The telegram channel where I found this, notes .. hahahahah fucking Wunderwaffe)

Xi Jinping’s current visit to Hong Kong for its 25^th anniversary since its handover from the Brits, speaks volumes. As well as Mr. Putin’s planned visit to the upcoming G20. The fact that these two leaders are now traveling outside of their countries must show that something has changed. Either the risk of Covid is now such that they can take it, or the security environment has changed so that their security staff considers such visits as an acceptable risk.

Europe is slowly curtailing payments to Ukrainian refugees.  Poland no longer pays for food and accommodation for Ukrainian refugees, with exception of pregnant women, disabled people, and families with many children.

These are convincing arguments that the EU is breaking and NATO is cracking.

To the ramparts we go

Russian Defense Ministry announces successful advance into Lisichansk, Lugansk region, with Russian and allied forces taking control of the Lisichansk oil refinery as well as other key districts in the city, as Ukrainian forces said to be in disorganized retreat.

Sergei Kiriyenko visited the Kharkov region. Such a visit is considered a sign that Putin has made a decision that the region, now Kharkiv, and formerly Zaporozhye and Kherson will be annexed to Russia. The issuance of Russian passports has started and the formation of administration is in progress.  Russia takes full responsibility for such a region. The Russian flag is forever if Kiriyenko, who is responsible specifically for domestic politics, has been there.

This lovely photo was taken in the Lugansk region.

Once the passports flow, and the banks open, Russia is there: The first branch of Promsvyazbank, one of the largest Russian state banks, has opened in Kherson and already there is a bunch of people in line:  https://t.me/EurasianChoice/16207

The Kyiv regime is trying to hide the defeat of the Ukrainian troops in Severodonetsk and present the flight of the UAF militants from the Lysychansk direction as a tactical retreat.

Detail as usual comes in many forms and thank you to the commentators who regularly post different takes.  Be aware we’re coming from the fog of Lisichansk, so, don’t believe everything that every Tom, Dick, and Harry pronounce.  Always confirm with the Russian MoD report.    We still like Military Summary.  I would suggest you take in the last report of yesterday before you look at today’s first report.  The reason for that is that he mentions at the end some of those that he works with.

Payback is in progress for the total hack of all Russian sources as the SMO started.

XakNet Team (https://t.me/xaknet_team) hackers hacked the website of the Ukraine is Our Home TV channel. Now the anthem of Russia is played there.

Earlier (https://t.me/rt_russian/117872), they said that they had gained access to the systems of Ukrainian energy companies of the DTEK group.

And today (https://t.me/intelslava/32332), the Killnet (https://t.me/+a3ATRboVqh05MWNi) group brought down the website of the US Federal Tax Payment System.

Enjoy the discussion.  This sitrep will stay up until it gets too full of comments and then we will refresh.

Exile on Main Street: The Sound of the Unipolar World Fading Away

June 22, 2022

The future world order, already in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states. The ship has sailed. There’s no turning back.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Let’s cut to the chase and roll in the Putin Top Ten of the New Era, announced by the Russian President live at the St. Petersburg forum  for both the Global North and South.

The era of the unipolar world is over.

The rupture with the West is irreversible and definitive. No pressure from the West will change it.

Russia has renewed with its sovereignty. Reinforcement of political and economic sovereignty is an absolute priority.

The EU has completely lost its political sovereignty. The current crisis shows the EU is not ready to play the role of an independent, sovereign actor. It’s just en ensemble of American vassals deprived of any politico-military sovereignty.

Sovereignty cannot be partial. Either you’re a sovereign or a colony.

Hunger in the poorest nations will be on the conscience of the West and euro-democracy.

Russia will supply grains to the poorer nations in Africa and the Middle East.

Russia will invest in internal economic development and reorientation of trade towards nations independent of the U.S.

The future world order, already in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states.

The ship has sailed. There’s no turning back.

How does it feel, for the collective West, to be caught in such a crossfire hurricane? Well, it gets more devastating when we add to the new roadmap the latest on the energy front.

Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, in St. Petersburg, stressed that the global economic crisis is gaining momentum not because of sanctions, but exacerbated by them; Europe “commits energy suicide” by sanctioning Russia; sanctions against Russia have done away with the much lauded “green transition”, as that is no longer needed to manipulate markets; and Russia, with its vast energy potential, “is the Noah’s Ark of the world economy.”

For his part Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller could not be more scathing on the sharp decline in the gas flow to the EU due to Siemens’ refusal and/or incapacity to repair the Nord Stream 1 pumping engine: “Well, of course, Gazprom was forced to reduce the volume of gas supplies to Europe by 20%+. But you know, prices have increased not by 20%+, but by several times! Therefore, I’m sorry if I say that we don’t feel offended by anyone, we are not particularly concerned by this situation.”

If this pain dial overdrive was not enough to hurl the collective West – or NATOstan – into Terminal Hysteria, then Putin’s sharp comment on possibly allowing Mr. Sarmat to present his business card to “decision-making centers in Kiev”, those that are ordering the current shelling and killing of civilians in Donetsk, definitely did the trick:

“As for the red lines, let me keep them to myself, because this will mean quite tough actions on the decision-making centers. But this is an area that shouldn’t be disclosed to people outside the military-political leadership of the country. Those who deserve appropriate actions on our part should draw a conclusion for themselves – what they may face if they cross the line.”

Baby please, stop breaking down

Alastair Crooke has masterfully outlined  how the collective West’s zugzwang leaves it lumbering around, dazed and confused. Now let’s examine the state of play on the opposite side of the chessboard, focusing on the BRICS summit this Thursday in Beijing.

As much as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and ASEAN, now it’s time for a reinvigorated BRICS to step up its game. In conjunction, these are the key organizations/instruments that will be carving the pathways towards the post-unipolar era.

Both China and India (which between them were the largest economies in the world for centuries before the brief Western colonial interregnum) are already close and getting closer to “the Noah’s Ark of the world economy”.

The G20 – hostages of the Michael Hudson-defined FIRE scam that is the core of the financialized neoliberal casino – is slowly fading away, while a potential new G8 ramps up: and that is directly connected to BRICS expansion, one of the key themes of this week’s summit. An expanded BRICS with a parallel G8 configuration is bound to easily overtake the Western-centric one in importance as well as GDP by purchasing power parity (PPP).

BRICS in 2021 already added Bangladesh, Egypt, the UAE and Uruguay to its New Development Bank (NDB). In May, at Foreign Ministry-level debates, Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Thailand were added to the 5 BRICS members. Leaders of some of these nations will be connected to the Beijing summit.

BRICS plays a completely different game from the G20. They aim for the grassroots, and it’s all about slowly “building trust” – a very Chinese concept. They are creating an independent Credit Rating Agency – away from the Anglo-American racket – and deepening a Currency Reserves Arrangement. The NDB – including its regional offices in India and South Africa – has been involved in hundreds of projects. Time will tell: one day the NDB will make the World Bank superfluous.

Comparisons between BRICS and the Quad, a U.S. concoction, are silly. Quad is just another crude mechanism to contain China. Yet there’s no question India treads on tightrope walker territory, as it’s a member of both BRICS and Quad, and made a vastly misguided decision to walk out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the largest free trade deal on the planet – opting instead to adhere to the American pie-in-the-sky Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).

Yet India, long term, skillfully guided by Russia, is being steered to find essential common ground with China in several key issues.

BRICS, especially in its expanded BRICS+ version, is bound to increase cooperation on building truly stable supply chains, and a settlement mechanism for resources and raw material trade, which inevitably has to be based in local currencies. Then the path will be open for the Holy Grail: a BRICS payment system as a credible alternative to the weaponized U.S. dollar and SWIFT.

Meanwhile, a torrent of bilateral investments from both China and India in the manufacturing and services sector around their neighbors is bound to lift up smaller players in both Southeast Asia and South Asia: think Cambodia and Bangladesh as important cogs in a vast supply wheel.

Yaroslav Lissovolik had already proposed a BEAMS concept as the core of this BRICS integration drive, uniting “the key regional integration initiatives of BRICS economies such as BIMSTEC, EAEU, the ASEAN-China free trade agreement, Mercosur and SADC/SACU.”

It’s only (BRICS) rock’n roll

Now Beijing seems eager to promote “an inclusive format for dialogue spanning all the main regions of the Global South via aggregating the regional integration platforms in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America. Going forward this format may be further expanded to include other regional integration blocks from Eurasia, such as the GCC, EAEU and others.”

Lissovolik notes how the ideal path from now on should be “the greater inclusivity of BRICS via the BRICS+ framework that allows smaller economies that are the regional partners of BRICS to have a say in the new global governance framework.”

Before he addressed the St. Petersburg forum on video, President Xi called Putin personally to say, among other things, that he’s got China’s back on all “sovereignty and security” themes. They also, inevitably, discussed the relevance of BRICS as a key platform towards the multipolar world.

Meanwhile, the collective West plunges deeper into the maelstrom. A massive national demonstration of trade unions this past Monday paralyzed Brussels – the capital of the EU and NATO – as 80,000 people expressed their anger at the rising and rising cost of living; called for elites to “spend money on salaries, not on weapons”; and yelled in unison “Stop NATO.”

It’s zugzwang all over again. The EU’s “direct losses”, as Putin stressed, provoked by the sanctions hysteria, “could exceed $400 billion a year”. Russia’s energy earnings have hit record levels. The ruble is at a 7-year high against the euro.

It’s a blast that arguably the most powerful cultural artifact of the entire Cold War – and Western supremacy – era, the perennial Rolling Stones, is currently on tour across a “caught in a crossfire hurricane” EU. On every show they play, for the first time live, one of their early classics: ‘Out of Time’.

Sounds much like a requiem. So let’s all sing, “Baby baby baby / you’re out of time”, as one Vladimir “it’s a gas, gas, gas” Putin and his sidekick Dmitry “Under My Thumb” Medvedev seem to be the guys really getting their rocks off. It’s only (BRICS) rock’n roll, but we like it.

أفكار غربية مِن خارج الصندوق: روسيا هي مَن يكسب الحرب

 الخميس 23 حزيران 2022

وليد شرارة

خلال الأشهر الماضية، أعرب عدّة مسؤولين أميركيين وغربيين عن اقتناعهم بأن الحرب في أوكرانيا ستكون طويلة. آخر هؤلاء هو الأمين العام لحلف «الناتو»، ينس ستولتنبرغ، الذي دعا من واشنطن، بعد لقائه الرئيس الأميركي، جو بايدن، في الثاني من الشهر الحالي، الغرب إلى الاستعداد لحرب استنزاف مديدة في هذا البلد. عكس هذا الاقتناع في الواقع توجّهاً غربياً للسعي لتحويل أوكرانيا إلى «أفغانستان جديدة» بالنسبة إلى روسيا، من أجل إضعافها وإلحاق هزيمة بها، كما جرى مع الاتحاد السوفياتي السابق. يتساءل بعض المراقبين «الخبثاء» عن «العقل الفذّ» الذي يقف خلف مثل هذه الاستراتيجية. ارتبط «الفخّ الأفغاني» باسم زبيغنيو بريجنسكي، أحد كبار الاستراتيجيين الأميركيين، ومستشار الأمن القومي للرئيس الأميركي آنذاك، جيمي كارتر. أراد بريجنسكي، البولوني الأصل والشديد العداء للسوفيات، الانتقام لهزيمة فيتنام عبر إلحاق أخرى شبيهة بها بموسكو في بلاد الأفغان. جميع حروب أميركا الكبرى في النصف الثاني من القرن العشرين، بمعزل عن نتائجها الفعلية، أدارها أصحاب خبرة لا يستهان بهم في الشؤون الاستراتيجية والدولية كهنري كيسنجر وروبرت ماكنمارا وجورج بوش الأب وجيمس بايكر، وآخرين. مَن هو «السيد» أو «السيدة» أوكرانيا، كما يلقَّب عادةً المكلّفون بالإشراف على ملفّ محدّد في الإدارات الأميركية، في فريق بايدن؟ هل هو جايك سوليفان، مستشار الأمن القومي، أو أنتوني بلينكن، وزير الخارجية، أو فيكتوريا نولاند، مساعدة وزير الخارجية للشؤون السياسية، أو غيرهم؟ أقلّ ما يمكن أن يقال بالنسبة إلى نتائج الحرب بعد أكثر من 100 يوم على اندلاعها، ولتداعياتها الاستراتيجية والاقتصادية الإجمالية، هو أنها مخالفة، ومتناقضة في العديد من المجالات، مع «التوقّعات» الأميركية والغربية.

لم تمنع المواجهة المحتدمة في أوكرانيا، فلاديمير بوتين، من التأكيد، في الخطاب الذي ألقاه أمام «منتدى بطرسبرغ الاقتصادي الدولي»، أن العالم الأحادي القطب قد انتهى، على رغم المحاولات المضنية لإحيائه، وأن الثقة في العملات العالمية تقوّضت كرمى للطموحات والأوهام الجيوسياسية التي عفا عليها الزمن. قد يكون الأنكى بالنسبة إلى بايدن وفريقه هو مشاطرة شخصيات أميركية وازنة لمِثل هذه الاستنتاجات، والإعلان عنها في مداخلات علنية ومقالات، ما يسهم في المزيد من إضعاف الإجماع الداخلي حول سياسات هذا الفريق. التداعيات الكارثية لحروب أفغانستان والعراق الكارثية على الموقع الدولي لواشنطن، لم تشفها من إدمانها على الحروب المباشرة، أو تلك التي تُخاض بالوكالة، ظنّاً منها أنها ستوقف انحدارها. وعلى الرغم من أن أصواتاً بارزة، محسوبة تاريخياً على المؤسسة الحاكمة، أو أخرى معارضة، كبرنت سكوكروفت، مستشار الأمن القومي لبوش الأب، أو بريجنسكي المذكور سالفاً، أو إيمانويل والرشتاين، حذّرت مراراً من مغبّة المضيّ في هذا النهج، فإن صنّاع القرار المتتالين لم يكترثوا لتحذيراتهم.

عن شخصيات شاركت بقوة في الحرب الباردة ضدّ الاتحاد السوفياتي، وأدّت إحداها، والمقصود هنري كيسنجر، دوراً حاسماً في استكمال تطويقه عبر هندسة صفقة استراتيجية مع الصين نجحت في استمالتها إلى واشنطن ضدّه. عارض كيسنجر، في كلمته أمام «منتدى دافوس» الأخير، الهدف الأميركي من الحرب، والذي أفصح عنه وزير الدفاع، لويد جونسون، والمتمثّل في إضعاف روسيا، معتبراً أن «المفاوضات يجب أن تبدأ خلال الشهرَين المقبلين قبل أن تؤدي الحرب إلى اضطرابات وتوترات لن يكون من السهولة بمكان التغلّب عليها. ومن الأفضل أن يكون الهدف هو العودة إلى الوضع السابق على اندلاعها»، أي الموافقة على تقديم أوكرانيا تنازلات لروسيا، عبر التخلّي عن أراض لها. وهو طالب القادة الغربيين بعدم «الانجراف في مزاج اللحظة» ، وبإجبار أوكرانيا على التفاوض.
محارب آخر من زمن الحرب الباردة، وهو غراهام فولر، أدلى بدلوه في النقاش الدائر حالياً. وفولر، لِمن لا يعرفه، عمل لمدّة 27 عاماً مع المخابرات المركزية ووزارة الخارجية الأميركية، وهو عُيّن من قِبل الوكالة نائباً لرئيس المجلس الوطني للاستخبارات في 1986. فولر متخصّص في الشؤون الشرق أوسطية والروسية، وخبير في الحركات الإسلامية، ويُحسب أنه من دعاة «انفتاح» واشنطن عليها، وكان لدراساته ومقالاته الكثيرة عن هذا الموضوع تأثير أكيد على اتخاذ قرار الحوار معها من قِبل إدارات أميركية متعاقبة. هو رأى، في مقال على مدوّنته بعنوان «بعض الأفكار الجادة عن ما بعد الحرب في أوكرانيا»، أنه «على العكس من البيانات الانتصارية لواشنطن، فإن روسيا هي مَن يفوز في الحرب، وأوكرانيا مَن يخسرها. أما بالنسبة إلى خسائر موسكو الطويلة الأمد، فهي قابلة للنقاش. العقوبات الأميركية ضدّها اتّضح أن مفاعيلها كارثية على أوروبا أولاً. الاقتصاد العالمي يتباطأ، والعديد من البلدان النامية تعاني من نقص في المواد الغذائية وقد تتعرّض لخطر مجاعات واسعة… ستندم أوروبا الغربية على اليوم الذي انقادت فيه بشكل أعمى خلف الولايات المتحدة للتورّط في حرب ليست أوكرانية – روسية، بل أميركية – روسية تُخاض بالوكالة حتى آخر أوكراني». وهو يشير إلى أن مصادرة الموجودات الروسية في البنوك الغربية تحفّز بقيّة العالم على إعادة النظر في الاعتماد الحصري على الدولار كعملة احتياطية: «لقد بات تنويع الأدوات الاقتصادية الدولية مطروحاً، وهو سيُضعف موقع واشنطن الاقتصادي المهيمن سابقاً، واستخدامها الأحادي للدولار كسلاح». ويختم فولر لافتاً إلى أن الشراكة المتعاظمة بين موسكو وبكين هي الرهان المستقبلي لروسيا، التي تمتلك «علماء لامعين، ووفرة في مصادر الطاقة والمعادن النادرة، والتي سيكون فيها لقدرات سيبيريا الزراعية أهمية فائقة في ظلّ الأزمة البيئية. الصين لديها الرساميل والأسواق والقوة الإنتاجية للمساهمة في بناء شراكة طبيعية معها في أوراسيا».

جوزف ستيغليتز، أحد كبار اقتصاديّي «البنك الدولي» سابقاً، والناقد المعروف للعولمة النيوليبرالية، لم يشارك في الحرب الباردة، غير أنه لا يكنّ ودّاً خاصاً لروسيا. هو رأى في مقال بعنوان «كيف يمكن أن تخسر الولايات المتحدة الحرب الباردة الجديدة»، أن من الأفضل للولايات المتحدة، التي تبدو جادّة في منافستها للصين على الريادة العالمية، أن تركّز على إعادة ترتيب بيتها الداخلي. هي لا تريد أن تُزاح عن موقعها المهيمن، لكن الأمر حتمي، لأن عدد سكان الصين 4 أضعاف عدد سكانها، ولأن اقتصاد الأولى ينمو بوتيرة أسرع بثلاث مرّات من سرعة نموّ اقتصادها. الأسوأ بنظر ستيغليتز، هو فقدان واشنطن صدقيّة نموذجها وجاذبيته أمام بقيّة شعوب الكوكب، بسبب حروبها العدوانية، واستشراء العنصرية والفوارق الاجتماعية في داخلها. وقد كشفت الأزمة المالية والاقتصادية في 2008 وجائحة «كورونا» هشاشة نموذجها، وكذلك انتخاب دونالد ترامب والانقسام السياسي الذي نجم عنه ومحاولة «الكابيتول» الانقلابية عند خسارته الانتخابات في 2021. هي ليست مؤهّلة لإعطاء الدروس وقيادة جبهات عالمية ضدّ الصين، «التي لم تعط دروساً، لكنها قدّمت للبلدان النامية بنى تحتية حيوية بالنسبة إليها».
قد لا تلقى هذه الآراء آذاناً صاغية بين صنّاع القرار في واشنطن، لكنها ستجد اهتماماً بين النخب وفي أوساط الرأي العام، وخاصة مع اشتداد التضخّم والأزمة الاقتصادية – الاجتماعية المرشّحة للتفاقم، والوثيقة الصلة بتداعيات الحرب في أوكرانيا. أصبحت أغلبية الأميركيين وبقيّة شعوب العالم تعرف أن المحافظين الجدد هم المسؤولون عن تسارع الانحدار الأميركي بسبب السياسات التي أوصوا بها، وهم سيهتمّون بلا شك بمعرفة «العقل المدبّر» للحرب على روسيا، والتي لم تنجم عنها حتى اللحظة سوى الخسائر.

هل اقتربت الحرب العالميّة الثالثة؟

الثلاثاء 21 حزيران 2022

العميد د. أمين محمد حطيط

كان لافتاً ما جاء في كلام قائد الجيش البريطاني الى جنوده غداة تعيينه في منصبه الجديد و»تنبيههم» لا بل «إنذارهم» بأنهم سيجدون أنفسهم قريباً في خضمّ حرب عالمية ثالثة بدأت تتوالد عناصر اندلاعها بسرعة منذ اللحظة التي اندلعت فيها نار حرب برية في أوروبا لأول مرة منذ العام ١٩٤١، تحذير او تنبيه يطلقه المسؤول العسكري البريطاني في لحظات أوروبية وغربية وعالمية حساسة وحرجة وفي ظلّ مشهد أوروبي عملاني بدأ بالتشكل مع بدء العملية العسكرية الروسية الخاصة في أوكرانيا، مشهد يوحي تشكله بأنه يسير في غير الاتجاه الذي أراده أو شاءه المحور الانكلوساكسوني بقيادة أميركا ودفع أوروبا والحلف الأطلسي لاعتماده نهجاً وسلوكاً في مواجهة روسيا، فهل يصدق القائد الإنكليزي وينفجر الوضع الدولي حرباً عالمية ثالثة؟

في البدء لا يمكن لأحد أن يجادل في مسألة اتساع دوائر التوتر والاحتكاك في العالم، ولا يمكن أيضاً إغفال ما نجم على الصعيد الدولي من قواعد ومفاهيم جديدة بعد الحرب الكونية التي استهدفت سورية وأعقبت الانسحاب الأميركي الفوضوي من أفغانستان والأهمّ بعد الصورة التي ارتسمت دولياً اثر العملية الروسية الخاصة في أوكرانيا.

وإنّ مراجعة موضوعية شاملة لخريطة الاشتباك او النزاع الدولي تشي بأنّ منسوب التوتر العالمي بات في مستوى متقدّم بعد أن فشل الغرب بقيادة أميركية في تحقيق أهدافه التي اعتمدها وأعلنها منذ انحلال الاتحاد السوفياتي، ذاك الانحلال الذي أنهى الحرب الباردة لصالح أميركا التي خرجت منها منتصرة بغير كلفة تذكر، انتصار جعلها ترفع سقف طموحها وتتطرف في سياستها لتظهر كما قال رئيسها بوش الابن «بأنّ الرب اختارهم ليحكموا العالم ويسيروا به وفقاً للإرادة الإلهية». قول ترجم قاعدة جديدة في القانون الدولي أطلقتها أميركا واعتمدتها ضمناً الأمم المتحدة تقول بـ «الحق في التدخل الدولي الإنساني» الذي يستبيح سيادة الأمم والدول والشعوب، وتفرض أميركا إرادتها لأنها كما ادّعى رئيسها تترجم الإرادة الإلهية.

بيد أنّ أميركا ومعها الغرب الأطلسي عجزا عن تحقيق أهدافهما رغم ما اعتمدا في سبيلها من استراتيجيات متعددة بدءاً بـ «القوة الصلبة» مروراً بالقوة الناعمة، وصولاً الى القوة الناعمة الذكية والقوة الإرهابية المركبة، كلّ هذه الوجوه في استعمال القوة لم تؤدّ إلى إرساء النظام العالمي الأحادي القطبية، لا بل حدث شيء نقيض تمثل أولاً في الشرق الأوسط بقيام محور المقاومة الذي منع المحور الآخر من تحقيق أهدافه، وبشكل خاص أفشله في كلّ من سورية واليمن، وتبلور ثانياً في الجرأة الروسية في إطلاق العملية الخاصة في أوكرانيا والتي لها خصوصية تهز هيبة الأطلسي وفعاليته.

لقد أرادت أميركا ومعها الحلف الأطلسي الذي تحوّل بالسلوك العملي من حلف دفاعي، كما ينصّ ميثاق إنشائه الى تكتل عسكري هجومي عدواني تستعمله أميركا لتنفيذ سياساتها الاستعمارية وطموحاتها العدوانية ضدّ الدول والشعوب. أرادت أميركا أن تجرّ روسيا الى حرب تستنزف فيها قدراتها وتكسر هيبتها وتشلّ اقتصادها وتشطبها عن المسرح الدولي باعتبارها دولة من الصف الأول لتحوّلها الى دولة شبه إقليمية عاجزة محاصرة، فردّت روسيا بعمل عسكري مدروس يدفع عنها الخطر ويجنّبها الوقوع في الفخّ الذي نصبته أميركا لها في أوكرانيا.

لقد عرفت روسيا كيف تستغلّ الظرف الدولي وتتعامل مع نتائج الحروب الأميركية في العالم وبخاصة الحرب الكونية التي استهدفت سورية وعجزت أميركا عبرها عن إسقاط الدولة او تفكيكها أو جعلها في الموقع الذي تريده، عرفت روسيا كيف تقتنص الفرصة لتظهر قدرتها على المواجهة وشجاعتها في القرار وعدم تهيّبها أو خوفها من التهويل الغربي، ووضعت خطة التعامل مع التهديد الأطلسي من الباب الأوكراني تمكنها من العمل المسيطر عليه، وتمنع انزلاقها بعيداً الى حيث يريد العدو، وها هي بعد أربعة أشهر من بدء العملية وعلى أبواب نهاية المرحلة الثانية منها تستطيع، أيّ روسيا، أن تدّعي وبموضوعية أنها أنجزت معظم ما ذهبت الى تحقيقه هناك والأخطر مما في الأمر أنها فضحت العجز الغربي، وأسّست لواقع دولي لا يناسب في شيء أحلام أميركا وأتباعها من شركاء أو حلفاء.

لقد شكلت نتائج العملية الروسية الخاصة في أوكرانيا حتى الآن صفعة للغرب وجعلته يعاني مما هدف الى دفع روسيا الى المعاناة منه، يعاني من الاستنزاف المتعدّد الوجوه، ومن الاختلال في دورته الاقتصادية، والتصدّع في علاقاته البينية حتى تشكل على الأقلّ محوران فيه المحور الانكلوساكسوني الذي يدعو الى إطالة أمد الحرب في أوكرانيا وإحداث بؤر توتر جديدة أيضاً مع التهويل بالحرب العالمية الثالثة، ومحور لاتيني جرماني يقرّ بالنتائج السلبية عليه للأزمة الأوكرانية وبعجزه عن الاستمرار في تغذية الصراع وتقديم المساعدات لأوكرانيا لمواجهة روسيا، ويدعو للتسليم بهذا الواقع والذهاب الى التفاوض الذي ينهي الحرب بعد الاستجابة للمصالح الأمنية والاستراتيجية الروسية.

ورغم واقعه غير المريح فإنّ المحور الغربي الانكلوساكسوني يرى انّ الأزمات الدولية تفرخ كالفطر وانّ حرباً عالمية ثالثة بات لا بدّ منها لحسم النزاعات وإرساء استقرار المنتصر في الحرب كما فعلت الحرب الثانية نوعاً ما، لكن هذا المحور الذي يهوّل بالحرب تلك ينسى او يتناسى انّ ظروف المواجهة العالمية لم تعد تخدم أهدافه في ظلّ متغيّرات أساسية ثلاثة تحكم أيّ مواجهة مستقبلية، أولها تنامي نزعة المقاومة القوية الفاعلة لدى الدول والشعوب المناهضة للغرب، وثانيها كسر احتكار الغرب لمصادر التسليح، وثالثها عجز الغرب عن التحكم بمصادر الطاقة العالمية. متغيّرات يقود الأخذ بها الى القول بعدم مصلحة الغرب في أيّ حرب ثالثة لأنها إذا وقعت لن تفضي رغم ما ستحدثه من تدمير هائل مع إمكانية تحوّلها الى مواجهات نووية، لن تفضي الى انتصار الغرب فيها.

وعليه نقول انّ بؤر التوتر الدولية رغم تعدّدها وتكاثرها من تايوان شرقاً الى الشرق الأوسط غرباً وأوكرانيا شمالاً مع ما يحتمل ظهوره من الجديد منها، فإنها تبقى دون مستوى القدرة على إحداث حرب عالمية ثالثة في ظلّ المتغيّرات الثلاثة التي ذكرت؛ ويضاف إليها التراجع الحادّ في الوضع الاقتصادي الدولي بشكل عام والوضع الأوروبي والأميركي بشكل خاص، لذلك نرى انّ البديل للحرب الثالثة هو النزاعات المتفرّقة والمتزامنة التي تتبادل التأثير دون أن تتطوّر الى صراع واسع يشمل المعمورة تحت عنوان حرب عالمية ثالثة. وانّ التحذير البريطاني الانكلوساكسوني جاء للتهويل وإظهار القوة والجهوزية وهما غير موجودين في عالم الحقيقة الفعلية الغربية.

وعلى هذا الأساس لن نستغرب كما لا نستبعد انفجاراً ميدانياً هنا او اندلاع نار هناك خاصة في قارات العالم القديم الثلاث، ولا نستبعد صراعاً أو حرباً محدودة على الطاقة او المياه او الغذاء لكن كلّ ذلك سيبقى تحت سقف السيطرة المعقولة، لأنّ الدول الأقوى عسكرياً في العالم والتي تملك السلاح النووي وتهدّد باستعماله حفاظاً على وجودها تعلم أيضاً حقائق ثلاث أوّلها حجم التدمير الهائل المتبادل في أيّ حرب عالمية شاملة، تدمير قد يكون من طبيعة الإفناء للبعض، وثانيها العجز عن الحسم وفقاً لإرادة المهاجم، وثالثها العجز عن السيطرة على دورة الاقتصاد العالمي. ومع استبعاد هذه الحرب والقول بتواصل النزاعات المتفرّقة لا بدّ من الانتباه الى انّ الخاسر في الشأن هو الذي كان يطمح للسيطرة الشاملة وسيجد نفسه في نهاية المطاف يفقد الجزء الأكبر منها مع تقدّم الدول والشعوب الصاعدة التي تكتب تاريخاً مناقضاً لتاريخ الاستعمار بوجهيه القديم والحديث.

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*أستاذ جامعي ـ باحث استراتيجي.

World War 3 for dummies

June 18, 2022

Source

By Gaius Baltar

Some knowledgeable people, apparently including the Pope, are beginning to suspect that there may be more going on in the world than just the war in the Ukraine. They say that World War 3 has already started and things will get worse from now on. This can be difficult to determine while we are participating in the unfolding events and do not have the benefit of the historical perspective. It is doubtful that people back in 1939 realized that they were looking at the start of a major worldwide conflict, although some may have suspected it.

The current global situation is in many ways like a giant jigsaw puzzle where the general public only sees a tiny part of the complete picture. Most don’t even realize that there may be more pieces and don’t even ask these simple questions: Why is all this happening and why is it happening now?

Things are more complicated than most people realize. What they see is the evil wizard Vladimir Saruman Putin invading innocent Ukraine with his orc army – for absolutely no reason. This is a simplistic view, to say the least because nothing happens without a reason. Let’s put things in perspective and see what is really going on – and why the world is going crazy before our eyes. Let’s see what World War 3 is all about.

The pressure cooker

The West (which we can define here as the US and the EU and a few more) has been maintaining pressure on the entire world for decades. This does not only apply to countries outside the West, but also to Western countries which strayed from the diktats of the West’s rulers. This pressure has been discussed widely and attributed to all kinds of motives, including neocolonialism, forced financial hegemony, and so forth. What is interesting, particularly during the last 20 years, is which countries have been pressured and what they do not have in common.

Among the pressured countries we find Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, Serbia, Thailand, and Iran to mention a few. There have also been recent additions, including India and Hungary. In order to understand why they have been pressured, we need to find out what they have in common. That’s not easy since they are extremely different in most ways. There are democracies and non-democracies, conservative and communist governments, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist countries, and so on. Still, many of them are very clearly allied. One must ask why conservative and religious countries such as Russia or Iran would ally themselves with Godless communists in Cuba and Venezuela.

What all these countries have in common is their desire to run their own affairs; to be independent countries. This is unforgivable in the eyes of the West and must be tackled by any means necessary, including economic sanctions, color revolutions, and outright military aggression.

The West and its NATO military arm had surrounded Russia with hostile countries and military bases, armed and manipulated Ukraine to be used as a hammer against it, and employed sanctions and threats. The same thing was and is happening in Asia where China is being surrounded by all means available. The same applies to all the Independents mentioned above to some extent. In the past 10 years or so the pressure has increased massively on the Independents and it reached almost a fever pitch in the year before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

During the year before the Ukraine war, the US sent its diplomats around the world to tune up the pressure. They were like a traveling circus or a rock band on a tour, but instead of entertainment, they delivered threats: buy this from us and do what we tell you or there will be consequences. The urgency was absolute and palpable, but then came the Ukraine war and the pressure went up to 11. During the first month of the war, the entire West’s diplomatic corps was fully engaged in threats against the ‘rest of the world’ to engineer the isolation of Russia. This didn’t work, which resulted in panic in political and diplomatic circles in the US and Europe.

All this pressure through the years, and all the fear and panic when it didn’t work, are clearly related to the events in the Ukraine. They are a part of the same ‘syndrome’ and have the same cause.

The debt dimension

There have been many explanations for what is going on and the most common is the fight between two possible futures; a multipolar world where there are several power centers in the world, and a unipolar world where the West governs the world. This is correct as far as it goes, but there is another reason which explains why this is happening now and all the urgency and panic in the West.

Recently the New Zealand tech guru Kim Dotcom tweeted a thread about the debt situation in the US. According to him all debt and unfunded liabilities of the US exceed the total value of the entire country, including the land. This situation is not unique to the US. Most countries in the West have debt that can only be paid back by selling the entire country and everything it contains. On top of that, most non-western countries are buried in dollar-denominated debt and are practically owned by the same financiers who own the West.

During the last few decades, the economy of the US and Europe has been falsified on a level that is difficult to believe. We in the West have been living far beyond our means and our currencies have been massively overvalued. We have been able to do this through two mechanisms:

1. The first one is the reserve status of the dollar and the semi-reserve status of the euro which have enabled the West to export digital money and receive goods in return. This has created enormous financial power for the West and enabled it to function as a parasite on the world economy. We have been getting a lot of goods for free, to put it mildly.
2. The second falsification mechanism is the increase in debt to a level where we have essentially pawned everything we own, including our houses and lands, to keep up our living standards. We own nothing now when the debt has been subtracted. The debt has long since become unserviceable – far beyond our ability to pay interests on – which explains why the interest rates in the West are in the neighborhood of zero. Any increase would make the debt unserviceable and we would all go formally bankrupt in a day.

On top of all this, the falsification has created artificially strong currencies in the West which has boosted their purchasing power for goods priced in non-western currencies. These mechanisms have also enabled the West to run bloated and dysfunctional service economies where inefficiencies are beyond belief. We have giant groups of people in our economies that not only create no value but destroy value systematically. What maintains the West’s standard of living now is a small minority of productive people, constant debt increase, and parasitism of the rest of the world.

The people who own all this debt actually own everything we think we own. We in the West own nothing at this point – we only think we do. But who are our real owners? We know more or less who they are because they meet every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos along with the western political elites who they also happen to own.

It is clear that our owners have been getting increasingly worried, and their worries have been increasing in sync with the increased pressure applied by the West on the rest of the world, particularly the Independents. During the last Davos meeting, the mood was bleak and panicked at the same time, much like the panic among the western political elites when the isolation of Russia failed.

What is about to happen

The panic of our owners and their politicians is understandable because we have come to the end of the line. We can no longer keep up our living standards by debt increase and parasitism. The debt is reaching beyond what we own as collateral and our currencies are about to become worthless. We will no longer be able to get free stuff from the rest of the world, or pay back our debt – let alone pay interest on it. The entire West is about to go bankrupt and our standard of living is about to go down by a massive percentage. This is what has our owners panicked and they see only two scenarios:

1. In the first scenario most countries in the West, and everything and everyone within them, declare bankruptcy and erase the debt by diktat – which sovereign states are able to do. This will also erase the wealth and political power of our owners.
2. In the second scenario, our owners take over the collateral during the bankruptcy. The collateral is us and everything we own.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which scenario was chosen. The plan for the second scenario is ready and being implemented as we speak. It is called ‘The Great Reset’ and was constructed by the people behind the World Economic Forum. This plan is not a secret and can be examined to a certain degree on the WEF website.

The Great Reset is a mechanism for the seizing of all debt collateral which includes your assets, the assets of your city or municipality, the assets of your state, and most corporate assets not already held by our owners.

This asset seizure mechanism has several components, but the most important are the following four:

1. Abolishment of sovereignty: A sovereign (independent) country is a dangerous country because it can choose to default on its debt. The decrease in sovereignty has been a priority for our owners and various schemes have been attempted such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The most successful scheme is undoubtedly the European Union itself.
2. The down-tuning of the economy: The western economy (and indeed the global economy) must be tuned down by a very significant percentage. This down-tuning is necessary because the western economy is massively falsified now and must be taken down to its real level – which may be as low as half of what it is now – or more. The slow takedown has also the purpose of avoiding a sudden crash that would cause massive social unrest which would be a threat to our owners. A controlled takedown is therefore preferable to an uncontrolled crash. This controlled takedown is already happening and has been going on for quite some time. Many examples can be mentioned of this takedown, including the EU and US energy policy which is designed to sabotage the western economy, and the obvious attempts at demand destruction during and after the epidemic, including the fairly bizarre logistical problems which suddenly came out of nowhere.
3. Asset harvesting (you will own nothing and be ‘happy’): All assets that can be considered to be collateral to our private and collective/public debt will be taken over. This is a clearly stated aim of the Great Reset but it is less clear how this would be carried out. Total control of western governments (and indeed all governments) would seem to be necessary for this. That precondition is closer than one might think because most western governments seem to be beholden to Davos at this point. The process will be sold as necessary social restructuring because of an economic crisis and global warming and will result in a massive decrease in living standards for regular people, although not the elites.
4. Oppression: A great many people will not like this and an uprising is a likely response, even if the takedown is done gradually. To prevent this from happening, a social control mechanism is being implemented which will erase personal freedom, the freedom of speech, and privacy. It will also create absolute dependence of the individual on the state. This must be done before the economic takedown can be completed or there will be a revolution. This mechanism is already being implemented enthusiastically in the West as anybody with eyes and ears can see.

Russia, China, and other Independents

How do Russia and China, and the war in Ukraine, factor into all of this? Why all the pressure from the West throughout the years and why all this panic now? Part of the reason for the pressure on the Independents, particularly Russia and China, is simply that they have resisted western hegemony. That is enough for getting on the West’s naughty list. But why the increased pressure in recent years?

The reason is that Russia and China cannot be subjugated through bankruptcy and their assets harvested. They do not have much debt in western currencies which means that the people who own the West through debt do not currently own Russia and China (like they own the West and the indebted ‘third world’) and cannot acquire them through debt. The only way to acquire them is through regime change. Their governments must be weakened by any means, including economic sanctions and military means if necessary -thus the use of Ukraine as a battering ram for Russia and Taiwan for China.

Subjugating Russia and China is an existential issue for our Davos owners because when they take the western economy down, everything else must go down too. If the western economy is taken down and a large economic block doesn’t participate in the downfall, it will be a disaster for the West. The new block will gain massive economic power, and possibly unipolar hegemony of sorts, while the West descends into a feudal Dark Age and irrelevance. Therefore the entire world must go down for the Great Reset to work. Russia and China must be subjugated by any means, as well as India and other stubborn nations.

This is what has fueled the situation we now find ourselves in and will fuel the continuation of World War 3. The western owner-elites are going to war to keep their wealth and power. Everyone who resists must be subjugated so they can follow the West into the planned Great Reset Dark Age.

The reason for the current panic among western elites is that the Ukraine project isn’t going as planned. Instead of Russia being bled on the battlefield, it is Ukraine and the West that bleed. Instead of the Russian economy crashing resulting in Putin’s replacement by a Davos-compatible leader, it is the West’s economy that is crashing. Instead of Russia being isolated, it is the West that is being increasingly isolated. Noting is working, and to top it all off, Europe has given the Russians the means and motive to destroy the European economy by partly shutting down its industry. Without Russian resources, there is no European industry, and without industry, there are no taxes for paying for unemployment benefits, pensions, all the refugees, and pretty much everything else which holds European societies together. The Russians now have the ability to engineer an uncontrolled crash in Europe which is not what Davos planned. An uncontrolled crash might see Davos’s heads roll, literally, and that is causing fear and panic in elite circles. The only solution for them is to move on with World War 3 and hope for the best.

What to do

The Great Reset of the world economy is the direct cause of World War 3 – assuming that is what is going on. What can be done about this? From inside the West, little can be done. The only way is to somehow remove Davos from the equation, but that is most likely not going to happen for two reasons: The first one is that the Davos great resetters are too entwined in the western economy and politics. Davos is like an octopus with its arms and suckers inside every country’s elite circles, media, and government. They are too entrenched to be easily removed. The second reason is that the western population is too brainwashed and ignorant. The level of their brainwashing is such that a large part of them actually want to become poor – although they use the word ‘green’ for ‘poor’ because it sounds better. There are, however, some indications that there may be divisions within western elites. Some of them, particularly within the US, may be resisting the primarily Europe-designed Great Reset – but whether this opposition is real or effective remains to be seen.

However, outside the West, there are certain measures that can be taken and must be taken. Some of those measures are drastic and some of them are being done as we speak. Among the measures are the following:

1. The Independents, led by Russia, China, and India, must create a block to isolate themselves from the radioactive West. This isolation must not only be economic, but also political and social. Their economic systems must be divorced from the West and made autonomous. Their cultures and history must be defended against western influences and revisionism. This process appears to be underway.
2. The Independents must immediately ban all western sponsored institutions and NGOs in their countries, regardless of whether they are sponsored by western states or individuals. Furthermore, they must ban all media receiving western sponsorship and strip every school and university of western sponsorship and influence.
3. They must leave all international institutions up to and possibly including the United Nations because all international bodies are controlled by the West. They must then replace them with new institutions within their block.
4. They must, at some point, declare the dollar and the euro currencies non grata. That means that they should declare default on all debts denominated in these currencies, but not other debts. This will most likely come at a later stage but is inevitable.

This will create a situation where the West will descend into darkness without pulling others down with it – if we manage to escape the nuclear fire.

President Putin: St Petersburg International Economic Forum Plenary session

June 18, 2022

Ed Note:  This transcript is not fully complete but we post it because of the renewed DDoS attacks on Russian infrastructure.  When it is complete, we will do an update.   (Mr Putin was on top form with an excellent, even exhaustive and detailed economic tour de force for Russia, and then of course for the sane world, or our Zone B).

Pepe Escobar created a very high-level summary:

THE NEW ERA

Top Ten Breakdown – as announced by Putin

• The era of the unipolar world is over.
• The rupture with the West is irreversible and definitive. No pressure from the West will change it.
• Russia has renewed its sovereignty. Reinforcement of political and economic sovereignty is an absolute priority.
• The current crisis shows the EU is not ready to play the role of an independent, sovereign actor. It’s just an ensemble of American vassals deprived of any politico-military sovereignty.
• Sovereignty cannot be partial. Either you’re a sovereign or a colony.
• Hunger in the poorest nations will be on the conscience of the West and Euro-democracy.
• Russia will supply grains to Africa and the Middle East.
• Russia will invest in internal economic development and reorientation of trade towards nations independent of the US.
• The future world order, currently in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states.
• The ship has sailed. There’s no turning back.

A further summary from RT rounds it out:  https://www.rt.com/russia/557346-putin-spief-speech-takeaways/

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http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68669

President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also took part in the session. President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping and President of the Arab Republic of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi addressed the session via videoconference.

The theme this year is New Opportunities in a New World.

* * *

Plenary session moderator Margarita Simonyan: Good afternoon, or almost evening.

As you may know, we had a minor technical issue. Thankfully, it has been dealt with quickly. We are grateful to those who resolved this.

We are also grateful to the audience.

We are grateful to our leader, President Vladimir Putin, for traditionally fitting this forum into his schedule so that he can tell us about economic prospects and other plans.

We are grateful to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for attending our forum. We know that it is not an easy thing to do. Thank you for supporting our forum and our country. We really appreciate this.

We will have a lot of questions today. You may not like some of them, and I may not be happy to ask some of them. We would be much happier to speak only about good things, but this is impossible today.

Mr President, I would like to ask you to take the stand and to tell us what lies in store for us all. Thank you.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much. President Tokayev, friends and colleagues,

I welcome all participants and guests of the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

It is taking place at a difficult time for the international community when the economy, markets and the very principles of the global economic system have taken a blow. Many trade, industrial and logistics chains, which were dislocated by the pandemic, have been subjected to new tests. Moreover, such fundamental business notions as business reputation, the inviolability of property and trust in global currencies have been seriously damaged. Regrettably, they have been undermined by our Western partners, who have done this deliberately, for the sake of their ambitions and in order to preserve obsolete geopolitical illusions.

Today, our – when I say “our,” I mean the Russian leadership – our own view of the global economic situation. I would like to speak in greater depth about the actions Russia is taking in these conditions and how it plans to develop in these dynamically changing circumstances.

When I spoke at the Davos Forum a year and a half ago, I also stressed that … the era of a unipolar world order has come to an end. I want to start with this, as there is no way around it. This era has ended despite all the attempts to maintain and preserve it at all costs. Change is a natural process of history, as it is difficult to reconcile the diversity of civilisations and the richness of cultures on the planet with political, economic or other stereotypes – these do not work here, they are imposed by one centre in a rough and no-compromise manner.

The flaw is in the concept itself, as the concept says there is one, albeit strong, power with a limited circle of close allies, or, as they say, countries with granted access, and all business practices and international relations, when it is convenient, are interpreted solely in the interests of this power. They essentially work in one direction in a zero-sum game. A world built on a doctrine of this kind is definitely unstable.

After declaring victory in the Cold War, the United States proclaimed itself to be God’s messenger on Earth, …without any obligations and only interests which were declared sacred. They seem to ignore the fact that in the past decades, new powerful and increasingly assertive centres have been formed. Each of them develops its own political system and public institutions according to its own model of economic growth and, naturally, has the right to protect them and to secure national sovereignty.

These are objective processes and genuinely revolutionary tectonic shifts in geopolitics, the global economy and technology, in the entire system of international relations, where the role of dynamic and potentially strong countries and regions is substantially growing. It is no longer possible to ignore their interests.

To reiterate, these changes are fundamental, groundbreaking and rigorous. It would be a mistake to assume that at a time of turbulent change, one can simply sit it out or wait it out until everything gets back on track and becomes what it was before. It will not.

However, the ruling elite of some Western states seem to be harbouring this kind of illusions. They refuse to notice obvious things, stubbornly clinging to the shadows of the past. For example, they seem to believe that the dominance of the West in global politics and the economy is an unchanging, eternal value. Nothing lasts forever.

Our colleagues are not just denying reality. More than that; they are trying to reverse the course of history. They seem to think in terms of the past century. They are still influenced by their own misconceptions about countries outside the so-called “golden billion”: they consider everything a backwater, or their backyard. They still treat them like colonies, and the people living there, like second-class people, because they consider themselves exceptional. If they are exceptional, that means everyone else is second rate.

Thereby, the irrepressible urge to punish, to economically crush anyone who does not fit with the mainstream, does not want to blindly obey. Moreover, they crudely and shamelessly impose their ethics, their views on culture and ideas about history, sometimes questioning the sovereignty and integrity of states, and threatening their very existence. Suffice it to recall what happened in Yugoslavia, Syria, Libya and Iraq.

If some “rebel” state cannot be suppressed or pacified, they try to isolate that state, or “cancel” it, to use their modern term. Everything goes, even sports, the Olympics, bans on culture and art masterpieces just because their creators come from the “wrong” country.

This is the nature of the current round of Russophobia in the West, and the insane sanctions against Russia. They are crazy and, I would say, thoughtless.They are unprecedented in the number of them or the pace the West churns them out at.

The idea was clear as day – they expected to suddenly and violently crush the Russian economy, to hit Russia’s industry, finance, and people’s living standards by destroying business chains, forcibly recalling Western companies from the Russian market, and freezing Russian assets.

This did not work. Obviously, it did not work out; it did not happen. Russian entrepreneurs and authorities have acted in a collected and professional manner, and Russians have shown solidarity and responsibility.

Step by step, we will normalise the economic situation. We have stabilised the financial markets, the banking system and the trade network. Now we are busy saturating the economy with liquidity and working capital to maintain the stable operation of enterprises and companies, employment and jobs.

The dire forecasts for the prospects of the Russian economy, which were made in early spring, have not materialised. It is clear why this propaganda campaign was fuelled and all the predictions of the dollar at 200 rubles and the collapse of our economy were made. This was and remains an instrument in an information struggle and a factor of psychological influence on Russian society and domestic business circles.

Incidentally, some of our analysts gave in to this external pressure and based their forecasts on the inevitable collapse of the Russian economy and a critical weakening of the national currency – the ruble.

Real life has belied these predictions. However, I would like to emphasise that to continue being successful, we must be explicitly honest and realistic in assessing the situation, be independent in reaching conclusions, and of course, have a can-do spirit, which is very important. We are strong people and can deal with any challenge. Like our predecessors, we can resolve any task. The entire thousand-year history of our country bears this out.

Within just three months of the massive package of sanctions, we have suppressed inflation rate spikes. As you know, after peaking at 17.8 percent, inflation now stands at 16.7 percent and continues dropping. This economic dynamic is being stabilised, and state finances are now sustainable. I will compare this to other regions further on. Yes, even this figure is too much for us – 16.7 percent is high inflation. We must and will work on this and, I am sure, we will achieve a positive result.

After the first five months of this year, the federal budget has a surplus of 1.5 trillion rubles and the consolidated budget – a surplus of 3.3 trillion rubles. In May alone, the federal budget surplus reached almost half a trillion rubles, surpassing the figure for May 2021 more than four times over.

Today, our job us to create conditions for building up production and increasing supply in the domestic market, as well as restoring demand and bank financing in the economy commensurately with the growth in supply.

I mentioned that we have taken measures to reestablish the floating assets of companies. In most sectors, businesses have received the right to suspend insurance premiums for the second quarter of the year. Industrial companies have even more opportunities – they will be able to delay them through the third quarter as well. In effect, this is like getting an interest-free loan from the state.

In the future, companies will not have to pay delayed insurance premiums in a single payment. They will be able to pay them in equal installments over 12 months, starting in June next year.

Next. As of May the subsidised mortgage rate has been reduced. It is now 9 percent, while the programme has been extended till the end of the year. As I have mentioned, the programme is aimed at helping Russians improve their housing situation, while supporting the home building industry and related industries that employ millions of people.

Following a spike this spring, interest rates have been gradually coming down, as the Central Bank lowers the key rate. I believe that that this allows the subsidised mortgage rate to be further cut to 7 percent.

What is important here? The programme will last until the end of the year without change. It means that our fellow Russians seeking to improve their living conditions should take advantage of the subsidy before the end of the year.

The lending cap will not change either, at 12 million roubles for Moscow and St Petersburg and 6 million for the rest of Russia.

I should add that we must make long-term loans for businesses more accessible. The focus must shift from budget subsidies for businesses to bank lending as a means to spur business activity.

We need to support this. We will allocate 120 billion rubles from the National Wealth Fund to build up the capacity of the VEB Project Financing Factory. This will provide for additional lending to much-needed initiatives and projects worth around half a trillion roubles.

Colleagues,

Once again, the economic blitzkrieg against Russia was doomed to fail from the beginning. Sanctions as a weapon have proved in recent years to be a double-edged sword damaging their advocates and architects just a much, if not more.

I am not talking about the repercussions we see clearly today. We know that European leaders informally, so to say, furtively, discuss the very concerning possibility of sanctions being levelled not at Russia, but at any undesirable nation, and ultimately anyone including the EU and European companies.

So far this is not the case, but European politicians have already dealt their economies a serious blow all by themselves. We see social and economic problems worsening in Europe, and in the US as well, food, electricity and fuel prices rising, with quality of life in Europe falling and companies losing their market edge.

According to experts, the EU’s direct, calculable losses from the sanctions fever could exceed $400 billion this year. This is the price of the decisions that are far removed from reality and contradict common sense.

These outlays fall directly on the shoulders of people and companies in the EU. The inflation rate in some Eurozone countries has exceeded 20 percent. I mentioned inflation in Russia, but the Eurozone countries are not conducting special military operations, yet the inflation rate in some of them has reached 20 percent. Inflation in the United States is also unacceptable, the highest in the past 40 years.

Of course, inflation in Russia is also in the double digits so far. However, we have adjusted social benefits and pensions to inflation, and increased the minimum and subsistence wages, thereby protecting the most vulnerable groups of the population. At the same time, high interest rates have helped people keep their savings in the Russian banking system.

Businesspeople know, of course, that a high key rate clearly slows economic development. But it is a boon for the people in most cases. They have reinvested a substantial amount of money in banks due to higher interest rates.

This is our main difference from the EU countries, where rising inflation is directly reducing the real incomes of the people and eating up their savings, and the current manifestations of the crisis are affecting, above all, low-income groups.

The growing outlays of European companies and the loss of the Russian market will have lasting negative effects. The obvious result of this will be the loss of global competitiveness and a system-wide decline in the European economies’ pace of growth for years to come.

Taken together, this will aggravate the deep-seated problems of European societies. Yes, we have many problems as well, yet I have to speak about Europe now because they are pointing the finger at us although they have enough of their own problems. I mentioned this at Davos. A direct result of the European politicians’ actions and events this year will be the further growth of inequality in these countries, which will, in turn, split their societies still more, and the point at issue is not only the well-being but also the value orientation of various groups in these societies.

Indeed, these differences are being suppressed and swept under the rug. Frankly, the democratic procedures and elections in Europe and the forces that come to power look like a front, because almost identical political parties come and go, while deep down things remain the same. The real interests of people and national businesses are being pushed further and further to the periphery.

Such a disconnect from reality and the demands of society will inevitably lead to a surge in populism and extremist and radical movements, major socioeconomic changes, degradation and a change of elites in the short term. As you can see, traditional parties lose all the time. New entities are coming to the surface, but they have little chance for survival if they are not much different from the existing ones.

The attempts to keep up appearances and the talk about allegedly acceptable costs in the name of pseudo-unity cannot hide the main thing: the European Union has lost its political sovereignty, and its bureaucratic elites are dancing to someone else’s tune, doing everything they are told from on high and hurting their own people, economies, and businesses.

There are other critically important matters here. The worsening of the global economic situation is not a recent development. I will now go over things that I believe are extremely important. What is happening now does not stem from what happened during recent months, of course not. Moreover, it is not the result of the special military operation carried out by Russia in Donbass. Saying so is an unconcealed, deliberate distortion of the facts.

Surging inflation in product and commodity markets had become a fact of life long before the events of this year. The world has been driven into this situation, little by little, by many years of irresponsible macroeconomic policies pursued by the G7 countries, including uncontrolled emission and accumulation of unsecured debt. These processes intensified with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when supply and demand for goods and services drastically fell on a global scale.

This begs the question: what does our military operation in Donbass have to do with this? Nothing whatsoever.

Because they could not or would not devise any other recipes, the governments of the leading Western economies simply accelerated their money-printing machines. Such a simple way to make up for unprecedented budget deficits.

I have already cited this figure: over the past two years, the money supply in the United States has grown by more than 38 percent. Previously, a similar rise took decades, but now it grew by 38 percent or 5.9 trillion dollars in two years. By comparison, only a few countries have a bigger gross domestic product.

The EU’s money supply has also increased dramatically over this period. It grew by about 20 percent, or 2.5 trillion euros.

Lately, I have been hearing more and more about the so-called – please excuse me, I really would not like to do this here, even mention my own name in this regard, but I cannot help it – we all hear about the so-called ‘Putin inflation’ in the West. When I see this, I wonder who they expect would buy this nonsense – people who cannot read or write, maybe. Anyone literate enough to read would understand what is actually happening.

Russia, our actions to liberate Donbass have absolutely nothing to do with this. The rising prices, accelerating inflation, shortages of food and fuel, petrol, and problems in the energy sector are the result of system-wide errors the current US administration and European bureaucracy have made in their economic policies. That is where the reasons are, and only there.

I will mention our operation, too: yes, it could have contributed to the trend, but the root cause is precisely this – their erroneous economic policies. In fact, the operation we launched in Donbass is a lifeline they are grabbing at to be able to blame their own miscalculations on others, in this case, on Russia. But everyone who has at least completed primary school would understand the true reasons for today’s situation.

So, they printed more money, and then what? Where did all that money go? It was obviously used to pay for goods and services outside Western countries – this is where the newly-printed money flowed. They literally began to clean out, to wipe out global markets. Naturally, no one thought about the interests of other states, including the poorest ones. They were left with scraps, as they say, and even that at exorbitant prices.

While at the end of 2019, imports of goods to the United States amounted to about 250 billion dollars a month, by now, it has grown to 350 billion. It is noteworthy that the growth was 40 percent – exactly in proportion to the unsecured money supply printed in recent years. They printed and distributed money, and used it to wipe out goods from third countries’ markets.

This is what I would like to add. For a long time, the United States was a big food supplier in the world market. It was proud, and with good reason, of its achievements, its agriculture and farming traditions. By the way, this is an example for many of us, too. But today, America’s role has changed drastically. It has turned from a net exporter of food into a net importer. Loosely speaking, it is printing money and pulling commodity flows its way, buying food products all over the world.

The European Union is building up imports even faster. Obviously, such a sharp increase in demand that is not covered by the supply of goods has triggered a wave of shortages and global inflation. This is where this global inflation originates. In the past couple of years, practically everything – raw materials, consumer goods and particularly food products – has become more expensive all over the world.

Yes, of course, these countries, including the United States continue importing goods, but the balance between exports and imports has been reversed. I believe imports exceed exports by some 17 billion. This is the whole problem.

According to the UN, in February 2022, the food price index was 50 percent higher than in May 2020, while the composite raw materials index has doubled over this period.

Under the cloud of inflation, many developing nations are asking a good question: why exchange goods for dollars and euros that are losing value right before our eyes? The conclusion suggests itself: the economy of mythical entities is inevitably being replaced by the economy of real values and assets.

According to the IMF, global currency reserves are at $7.1 trillion and 2.5 trillion euros now. These reserves are devalued at an annual rate of about 8 percent. Moreover, they can be confiscated or stolen any time if the United States dislikes something in the policy of the states involved. I think this has become a very real threat for many countries that keep their gold and foreign exchange reserves in these currencies.

According to analyst estimates, and this is an objective analysis, a conversion of global reserves will begin just because there is no room for them with such shortages. They will be converted from weakening currencies into real resources like food, energy commodities and other raw materials. Other countries will be doing this, of course. Obviously, this process will further fuel global dollar inflation.

As for Europe, their failed energy policy, blindly staking everything on renewables and spot supplies of natural gas, which have caused energy price increases since the third quarter of last year – again, long before the operation in Donbass – have also exacerbated price hikes. We have absolutely nothing to do with this. It was due to their own actions that prices have gone through the roof, and now they are once again looking for somebody to blame.

Not only did the West’s miscalculations affect the net cost of goods and services but they also resulted in decreased fertiliser production, mainly nitrogen fertilisers made from natural gas. Overall, global fertiliser prices have jumped by over 70 percent from mid-2021 through February 2022.

Unfortunately, there are currently no conditions that can overcome these pricing trends. On the contrary, aggravated by obstacles to the operation of Russian and Belarusian fertiliser producers and disrupted supply logistics, this situation is approaching a deadlock.

It is not difficult to foresee coming developments. A shortage of fertiliser means a lower harvest and a higher risk of an undersupplied global food market. Prices will go even higher, which could lead to hunger in the poorest countries. And it will be fully on the conscience of the US administration and the European bureaucracy.

I want to emphasise once again: this problem did not arise today or in the past three or four months. And certainly, it is not Russia’s fault as some demagogues try to declare, shifting the responsibility for the current state of affairs in the world economy to our country.

Maybe it would even be nice to hear that we are so powerful and omnipotent that we can blow up inflation in the West, in the United States and Europe, or that we can do things to throw everything into disorder. Maybe it would be nice to feel this power, if only there were truth in it. This situation has been brewing for years, spurred by the short-sighted actions of those who are used to solving their problems at somebody else’s expense and who have relied and still rely on the mechanism of financial emission to outbid and draw trade flows, thus escalating deficits and provoking humanitarian disasters in certain regions of the world. I will add that this is essentially the same predatory colonial policy as in the past, but of course in a new iteration, a more subtle and sophisticated edition. You might not even recognise it at first.

The current priority of the international community is to increase food deliveries to the global market, notably, to satisfy the requirements of the countries that need food most of all.

While ensuring its domestic food security and supplying the domestic market, Russia is also able to scale up its food and fertiliser exports. For example, our grain exports in the next season can be increased to 50 million tonnes.

As a priority, we will supply the countries that need food most of all, where the number of starving people could increase, first of all, African countries and the Middle East.

At the same time, there will be problems there, and not through our fault either. Yes, on paper Russian grain, food and fertilisers… Incidentally, the Americans have adopted sanctions on our fertilisers, and the Europeans followed suit. Later, the Americans lifted them because they saw what this could lead to.

But the Europeans have not backed off. Their bureaucracy is as slow as a flour mill in the 18th century. In other words, everyone knows that they have done a stupid thing, but they find it difficult to retrace their steps for bureaucratic reasons.

As I have said, Russia is ready to contribute to balancing global markets of agricultural products, and we see that our UN colleagues, who are aware of the scale of the global food problem, are ready for dialogue. We could talk about creating normal logistical, financial and transport conditions for increasing Russian food and fertiliser exports.

As for Ukrainian food supplies to global markets – I have to mention this because of numerous speculations – we are not hindering them. They can do it. We did not mine the Black Sea ports of Ukraine. They can clear the mines and resume food exports. We will ensure the safe navigation of civilian vessels. No problem.

But what are we talking about? According to the US Department of Agriculture, the matter concerns 6 million tonnes of wheat (we estimate it at 5 million tonnes) and 7 million tonnes of maize. This is it, altogether. Since global production of wheat stands at 800 million tonnes, 5 million tonnes make little difference for the global market, as you can see.

Anyway, Ukrainian grain can be exported, and not only via Black Sea ports. Another route is via Belarus, which is, incidentally, the cheapest way. Or via Poland or Romania, whichever you prefer. In fact, there are five or six export routes.

The problem is not with us, the problem is with the adequacy of the people in control in Kiev. They can decide what to do, and, at least in this particular case, they should not take their lead from their foreign bosses, their masters across the ocean.

But there is also the risk that grain will be used as payment for arms deliveries. This would be regrettable.

Friends,

Once again, the world is going through an era of drastic change. International institutions are breaking down and faltering. Security guarantees are being devalued. The West has made a point of refusing to honour its earlier commitments. It has simply been impossible to reach any new agreements with them.

Given these circumstances and against the backdrop of mounting risks and threats, Russia was forced to go ahead with the special military operation. It was a difficult but necessary decision, and we were forced to make it.

This was the decision of a sovereign country, which has еру unconditional right to uphold its security, which is based on the UN Charter. This decision was aimed at protecting our people and the residents of the people’s republics of Donbass who for eight long years were subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime and the neo-Nazis who enjoyed the full protection of the West.

The West not only sought to implement an “anti-Russia” scenario, but also engaged in the active military development of Ukrainian territory, flooding Ukraine with weapons and military advisers. And it continues to do so now. Frankly, no one is paying any attention to the economy or well-being of the people living there, they just do not care about it at all, but they have never spared money to create a NATO foothold in the east that is directed against Russia and to cultivate aggression, hatred and Russophobia.

Today, our soldiers and officers, as well as the Donbass militia, are fighting to protect their people. They are fighting for Russia’s future as a large, free and secure multiethnic country that makes its own decisions, determines its own future, relies on its history, culture and traditions, and rejects any and all outside attempts to impose pseudo-values steeped in dehumanisation and moral degradation.

No doubt, our special military operation goals will be fulfilled. The key to this is the courage and heroism of our soldiers, consolidated Russian society, whose support gives strength and confidence to the Russian Army and Navy and a deep understanding of the truth and historical justice of our cause which is to build and strengthen Russia as a strong sovereign power.

My point is that sovereignty cannot be segmented or fragmented in the 21^st century. The components of sovereignty are equally important, and they reinvigorate and complement each other.

So, what matters to us is not only the defence of our political sovereignty and national identity, but also strengthening everything that determines our country’s economic, financial, professional and technological independence.

The very structure of Western sanctions rested on the false premise that economically Russia is not sovereign and is critically vulnerable. They got so carried away spreading the myth of Russia’s backwardness and its weak positions in the global economy and trade that apparently, they started believing it themselves.

While planning their economic blitzkrieg, they did not notice, simply ignored the real facts of how much our country had changed in the past few years.

These changes are the result of our planned efforts to create a sustainable macroeconomic structure, ensure food security, implement import substitution programmes and create our own payment system, to name a few.

Of course, sanction restrictions created many challenges for the country. Some companies continue having problems with spare parts. Our companies have lost access to many technological solutions. Logistics are in disarray.

But, on the other hand, all this opens up new opportunities for us – we often talk about this but it really is so. All this is an impetus to build an economy with full rather than partial technological, production, human and scientific potential and sovereignty.

Naturally, it is impossible to resolve such a comprehensive challenge instantly. It is necessary to continue working systematically with an eye to the future. This is exactly what Russia is doing by implementing its long-term plans for the development of branches of the economy and strengthening the social sphere. The current trials are merely resulting in adjustments and modifications of the plans without changing their strategic orientation.

Today, I would like to talk about the key principles on which our country, our economy will develop.

The first principle is openness. Genuinely sovereign states are always interested in equal partnership and in contributing to global development. On the contrary, weak and dependent countries are usually looking for enemies, fuelling xenophobia or losing the last remnants of their identity and independence, blindly following in the wake of their suzerain.

Russia will never follow the road of self-isolation and autarky although our so-called Western friends are literally dreaming about this. Moreover, we are expanding cooperation with all those who are interested in it, who want to work with us, and will continue to do so. … They make up the overwhelming majority of people on Earth.

I will not list all these countries now. It is common knowledge.

I will say nothing new when I remind you that everyone who wants to continue working or is working with Russia is subjected to blatant pressure from the United States and Europe; it goes as far as direct threats. However, this kind of blackmail means little when it comes to countries headed by true leaders who know the difference between their own national interests, the interests of their people – and someone else’s.

Russia will build up economic cooperation with these states and promote joint projects. At the same time, we will certainly continue to cooperate with Western companies that have remained in the Russian market despite the unprecedented arm-twisting – such companies exist, too.

We believe the development of a convenient and independent payment infrastructure in national currencies is a solid and predictable basis for deepening international cooperation. To help companies from other countries develop logistical and cooperation ties, we are working to improve transport corridors, increase the capacity of railways, transshipment capacity at ports in the Arctic, and in the eastern, southern and other parts of the country, including in the Azov-Black Sea and Caspian basins – they will become the most important section of the North-South Corridor, which will provide stable connectivity with the Middle East and Southern Asia. We expect freight traffic along this route to begin growing steadily in the near future.

But foreign trade is not our only priority. Russia intends to increase scientific, technological, cultural, humanitarian and sports cooperation based on equality and mutual respect between partners. At the same time, our country will strive for responsible leadership in all these areas.

The second principle of our long-term development is a reliance on entrepreneurial freedom. Every private initiative aimed at benefiting Russia should receive maximum support and space for implementation.

The pandemic and the more recent events have confirmed how important flexibility and freedom are in the economy. Russian private businesses – in tough conditions, amid attempts to restrain our development by any means – have proved they can compete in global markets. Private businesses should also be credited for Russia’s adaptation to rapidly changing external conditions. Russia needs to ensure the dynamic development of the economy – naturally, relying on private business.

We will continue to reduce administrative hurdles. For example, in 2016–2018, we imposed a moratorium on routine audits of small businesses. Subsequently, it was extended through 2022. In 2020, this moratorium was extended to cover mid-sized companies. Also, the number of unscheduled audits decreased approximately fourfold.

We did not stop at that, and last March, we cancelled routine audits for all entrepreneurs, regardless of the size of their businesses, provided their activities do not put people or the environment at high risk. As a result, the number of routine audits has declined sixfold compared to last year.

Why am I giving so many details? The point is that after the moratorium on audits was imposed, the number of violations by entrepreneurs – this was the result – has not increased, but rather it has gone down. This testifies to the maturity and responsibility of Russian businesses. Of course, they should be offered motivation rather than being forced to observe regulations and requirements.

So, there is every reason to take another radical step forward, that is, to abandon, for good and on a permanent basis, the majority of audits for all Russian businesses, except on risky or potentially dangerous activities. Everyone has long since understood that there was no need to check on everyone without exception. A risk-oriented approach should be at work. I ask the Government to develop the specific parameters of such a reform in the next few months.

There is another very sensitive topic for business, which has also become important today for our national security and economic resilience. To reduce and bring to a minimum all sorts of abuse and loopholes to exert pressure on entrepreneurs, we are consistently removing loose regulations from criminal law that are applied to economic crimes.

Last March, a law was signed, under which tax-related criminal cases against entrepreneurs shall only be brought before a court by the tax service – there is no other way. Soon a draft law will be passed on reducing the statute of limitations for tax-related crimes and on rejecting lawsuits to initiate criminal proceedings after tax arrears have been paid off.

Working comprehensively, although prudently, we need to decriminalise a wide range of economic offenses, for instance, those that punish businesses without a licence or accreditation. This is a controversial practice today because our Western partners illegitimately refuse to provide such licenses.

Our own agencies must not single-handedly make our businesses criminally liable for actually doing nothing wrong. The problem is this, and small businesses understand it very well – if a licence has expired, and Western partners refuse to extend it, what are businesses to do, wrap up operations? By no means, let them work. State oversight should continue, but there should be no undue interference in business.

It also makes sense to think about raising the threshold of criminal liability for unpaid customs duties and other such taxes. Additionally, we have not for a long time reconsidered the parameters of the terms ‘large’ and ‘very large’ economic loss for the purposes of economic offences despite inflation accruing 50 percent since 2016. The law now fails to reflect the current realities and needs to be corrected.

We need to reconsider the conditions for detaining entrepreneurs and for extending preliminary investigations. It is no secret that these practices have long been used inappropriately.

Businesses have been forced to cease operations or go bankrupt even before the investigation is over. The reputation of the owners and of the brand name suffers as a result, not to mention the direct financial loss, loss of market share and jobs.

I want to ask law enforcement to put an end to these practices. I also ask the Government and the Supreme Court to draft appropriate legislation before October 1 of this year.

In addition, at the Security Council, a special instruction was given to look into criminal cases being opened without later proceeding to court. The number of such cases has grown in recent years. We know the reasons. A case is often opened without sufficient grounds or to put pressure on individuals. We will discuss this in autumn to take legislative action and change the way our law enforcement agencies work.

It goes without saying that regional governments play a major role in creating a modern business environment. As is customary during the St Petersburg Forum, I highlight the regions that have made significant progress in the National Investment Climate Rankings compiled by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives.

There have been changes in the top three. Moscow and Tatarstan have remained at the top and were joined by the Moscow Region which, in a span of one year, went from eighth place to the top three. The leaders of the rankings also include the Tula, Nizhny Novgorod, Tyumen, Novgorod, and Sakhalin regions, St Petersburg and Bashkortostan.

Separately, I would like to highlight the regions that have made the greatest strides such as the Kurgan Region, which moved up 36 spots; the Perm Territory and the Altai Territory, up 26 spots; Ingushetia, up 24 spots; and the Ivanovo Region which moved up 17 spots.

I want to thank and congratulate our colleagues in the regions for their good work.

The federal government and regional and municipal governments should focus on supporting individual business initiatives in small towns and remote rural communities. We are aware of such stories of success. That includes developing popular software and marketing locally produced organic food and environmentally friendly products nationwide using domestic websites.

It is important to create new opportunities, to introduce modern retail formats, including e-commerce platforms, as I mentioned above, and to cut the logistics, transportation and other costs, including by using upgraded Russian Post offices.

It is also important to help small business employees, self-employed individuals and start-up entrepreneurs acquire additional skills and competencies. Please include corresponding measures tailored specifically to small towns and rural and remote areas as a separate line in the national project for promoting small and medium-sized businesses.

Today I would like to address our officials, owners of large companies, our business leaders and executives.

Colleagues, friends,

Real, stable success and a sense of dignity and self-respect only come when you link your future and the future of your children with your Fatherland. We have maintained ties with many people for a long time, and I am aware of the sentiments of many of the heads and owners of our companies. You have told me many times that business is much more than just making a profit, and I fully agree. It is about changing life around you, contributing to the development of your home cities, regions and the country as a whole, which is extremely important for self-fulfilment. There is nothing like serving the people and society. This is the meaning of your life and work.

Recent events have reaffirmed what I have always said: it is much better at home. Those who refused to hear that clear message have lost hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in the West, in what looked like a safe haven for their assets.

I would like to once again say the following to our colleagues, those who are both in this audience and those who are not here: please, do not fall into the same trap again. Our country has huge potential, and there are more than enough tasks that need your contribution. Invest here, in the creation of new enterprises and jobs, in the development of the tourism infrastructure, support schools, universities, healthcare and the social sphere, culture and sport. I know that many of you are doing this. I know this, but I wanted to say it again.

This is how the Bakhrushin, Morozov, Shchukin, Ryabushinsky, Akchurin, Galeyev, Apanayev, Matsiyev, Mamontov, Tretyakov, Arsanov, Dadashev and Gadzhiyev families understood their noble mission. Many Russian, Tatar, Buryat, Chechen, Daghestani, Yakutian, Ossetian, Jewish, Armenian and other merchant and entrepreneurial families did not deprive their heirs of their due share, and at the same time they etched their names in the history of our country.

Incidentally, I would like to note once again that it remains to be seen what is more important for potential heirs: money and property or their forefathers’ good name and service to the country. The latter is something that cannot be squandered or, pardon my language, wasted on drink.

A good name is something that will always belong to your descendants, to future generations. It will always be part of their lives, going from one generation to another, helping them and making them stronger than the money or property they might inherit can make them.

Colleagues,

A responsible and well-balanced macroeconomic policy is the third guiding principle of our long-term development. In fact, this policy has largely enabled us to withstand the unprecedented pressure brought on by sanctions. Let me reiterate that this is an essential policy in the long term, not just for responding to the current challenges. We will not follow in the footsteps of our Western colleagues by replicating their bitter experience setting off an inflation spiral and disrupting their finances.

Our goal is to ensure robust economic growth for years to come, reducing the inflation burden on our people and businesses and achieving the mid- and long-term target inflation rate of four percent. Inflation was one of the first things I mentioned during my remarks, so let me tell you this: we remain committed to this target of a four-percent inflation rate.

I have already instructed the Government to draft proposals regarding the new budget guidelines. They must ensure that our budget policy is predictable and enables us to make the best use of the external economic conditions. Why do we need all this? To put economic growth on a more stable footing, while also delivering on our infrastructure and technological objectives, which provide a foundation for improving the wellbeing of our people.

True, some international reserve currencies have set themselves on a suicidal path lately, which is an obvious fact. In any case, they clearly have suicidal intentions. Of course, using them to ‘sterilise’ our money supply does not make any sense. Still, the principle of planning one’s spending based on how much you earn remains relevant. This is how it works, and we understand this.

Social justice is the fourth principle underpinning our development. There must be a powerful social dimension when it comes to promoting economic growth and business initiatives. This development model must reduce inequality instead of deepening it, unlike what is happening in other countries. To be honest, we have not been at the forefront when it comes to delivering on these objectives. We have yet to resolve many issues and problems in this regard.

Reducing poverty and inequality is all about creating demand for Russian-made products across the country, bridging the gap between regions in terms of their capabilities, and creating new jobs where they are needed the most. These are the core economic development drivers.

Let me emphasise that generating positive momentum in terms of household income growth and poverty reduction are the main performance indicators for government agencies and the state in general. We need to achieve tangible results in this sphere already this year, despite all the objective challenges we face. I have already assigned this task to the Government.

Again, we provide targeted support to the most vulnerable groups – pensioners, families with children, and people in difficult life situations.

Pensions are indexed annually at a rate higher than inflation. This year, they have been raised twice, including by another 10 percent on June 1.

The minimum wage was also increased by 10 percent at the same time, and so was the subsistence minimum – a reference figure used to calculate many social benefits and payments – accordingly, these benefits should also grow, increasing the incomes of about 15 million people.

In recent years, we have built a holistic system to support low-income families with children. Women are entitled to state support from the early stages of pregnancy and until the child reaches the age of 17.

People’s living standards and prosperity are the most important demographic factors; the current situation is quite challenging due to several negative demographic waves that have recently overlapped. In April, less than a hundred thousand children were born in Russia, almost 13 percent less than in April 2020.

I ask the Government to continue to keep the development of additional support measures for families with children under review. They must be far-reaching and commensurate with the magnitude of the extraordinary demographic challenge we are facing.

Russia’s future is ensured by families with two, three and more children. Therefore, we need to do more than provide direct financial support – we need to target and direct the healthcare system, education, and all areas that determine the quality of people’s lives towards the needs of families with children.

This problem is addressed, among other approaches, by the national social initiatives, which regional teams and the Agency for Strategic Initiatives are implementing together. This autumn, we will assess the results of their work, review and rank the Russian regions by quality of life in order to apply the best experiences and practices as widely as possible throughout the country.

Prioritising the development of infrastructure is the fifth principle underlying Russia’s economic policy.

We have scaled up direct budget spending on expanding transport corridors. An ambitious plan for building and repairing the federal and regional motorway core network will be launched next year. At least 85 percent of the roads are to be brought up to code within the next five years.

Infrastructure budget lending is a new tool that is being widely used. The loans are issued for 15 years at a 3 percent APR. As I mentioned before, they are much more popular than we originally thought. The regions have multiple well-thought-out and promising projects that should be launched at the earliest convenience. We will look into how we can use this support measure. We debated this issue last night. What I am saying is that it is a reliable tool.

Upgrading housing and utilities services is a separate matter with a backlog of issues. The industry is chronically underinvested to the tune of 4.5 trillion rubles. Over 40 percent of networks need to be replaced, which accounts for their low efficiency and big losses. About 3 percent of the networks become unusable every year, but no more than 2 percent get replaced, which makes the problem even worse every single year.

I propose consolidating resources and launching a comprehensive programme for upgrading housing and utilities, and synchronizing it with other infrastructure development and housing overhaul plans. The goal is to turn the situation around and to gradually reduce the number of dated networks, just like we are doing by relocating people from structurally unsafe buildings or fixing roads. We will discuss in detail housing and utilities and the construction complex with the governors at a State Council Presidium meeting next week.

On a separate note, I propose increasing resources to fund projects to create a comfortable urban environment in small towns and historical settlements. This programme is working well for us. I propose allocating another 10 billion rubles annually for these purposes in 2023–2024.

We will allocate additional funds for renovating urban areas in the Far Eastern Federal District. I want the Government to allocate dedicated funds to this end as part of the programmes for infrastructure budget lending and housing and utilities upgrading, as well as other development programmes.

Promoting comprehensive improvements and development for rural areas is a top priority for us. People who live there are feeding the country. We now see that they are also feeding a major part of the world, so they must live in comfort and dignity. In this connection, I am asking the Government to allocate additional funding for the corresponding programme. Export duties on agricultural produce can serve as a source of funding here. This is a permanent source of revenue. Of course, there can be fluctuations, but at least this ensures a constant flow of revenue.

On a separate note, I suggest that we expand the programmes for upgrading and modernising rural cultural centres, as well as regional theatres and museums by allocating six billion rubles for each of these projects in 2023 and 2024.

What I have just said about cultural institutions is something that people are really looking forward to, something they really care about. Let me give you a recent example: during the presentation of the Hero of Labour medals, one of the winners, Vladimir Mikhailov from Yakutia, asked me directly for help with building a cultural centre in his native village. This was during the part of the ceremony where we meet behind closed doors. We will definitely do this. The fact that people are raising this issue at all levels shows that they are really eager to see these projects implemented.

At this point, I would like to make a sidenote on a topic that is especially relevant now, since we are in early summer, when Russians usually take their summer vacations.

Every year, more and more tourists want to visit the most beautiful corners of our country: national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and nature reserves. According to available estimates, this year this tourist flow is expected to exceed 12 million people. It is essential that all government bodies, businesses and tourists are well aware of what they can and cannot do in these territories, where they can build tourism infrastructure, and where such activity is strictly prohibited because it endangers unique and fragile ecosystems.

The draft law governing tourism in special protected territories and regulating this activity in a civilised manner is already in the State Duma.

In this context, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that we must figure out in advance all the relevant estimates and ensure that the decisions are well-balanced. We need to be serious about this.

I would like to place special emphasis on the need to preserve Lake Baikal. In particular, there is a comprehensive development project for the city of Baikalsk, which must become a model of sustainable, eco-sensitive municipal governance.

This is not just about getting rid of the accumulated negative environmental impacts from the Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill, but about setting a higher standard of living for the city and transforming it into a signature destination for environmental tourism in Russia. We need to rely on the most cutting-edge technologies and clean energy when carrying out this project.

Overall, we will be developing clean technology to achieve the goals we set in the environmental modernisation of production facilities, and to reduce hazardous emissions, especially in large industrial centres. We will also continue working on closed-loop economy projects, green projects and climate preservation. I spoke about these issues in detail at this forum last year.

Consequently, the sixth cross-cutting development principle that consolidates our work is, in my opinion, achieving genuine technological sovereignty, creating an integral system of economic development that does not depend on foreign institutions when it comes to critically important components. We need to develop all areas of life on a qualitatively new technological level without being simply users of other countries’ solutions. We must have technological keys to developing next-generation goods and services.

In the past years, we have focused a lot of attention on import substitution, succeeding in a range of industries, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, defence production and several others.

But I should stress that there is a lot of discussion in our society about import substitution. And it is not a cure-all nor a comprehensive solution. If we only imitate others when trying to replace foreign goods with copies, even if very high-quality ones, we may end up constantly playing catch-up while we should be one step ahead and create our own competitive technologies, goods and services that can become new global standards.

If you remember, Sergei Korolyov did not just copy or locally upgrade captured rocket technology. He focused on the future and proposed a unique plan to develop the R-7 rocket. He paved the path to space for humankind and in fact set a standard for the entire world, for decades ahead.

Proactively – this is how founders of many Soviet research programmes worked at the time. And today, building on that groundwork, our designers continue to make progress and show their worth. It is thanks to them that Russia has supersonic weapons that do not exist in any other country. Rosatom remains the leader in nuclear technology, developing our fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers. Many Russian AI and Big Data solutions are the best in the world.

To reiterate, technological development is a cross-cutting area that will define the current decade and the entire 21^st century. We will review in depth our approaches to building a groundbreaking technology-based economy – a techno economy – at the upcoming Strategic Development Council meeting. There is so much we can discuss. Most importantly, many managerial decisions must be made in the sphere of engineering education and transferring research to the real economy, and the provision of financial resources for fast-growing high-tech companies. We will also discuss the development of cross-cutting technologies and progress of digital transformation projects in individual industries.

To be clear, of course it is impossible to make every product out there, and there is no need for that. However, we need to possess critical technologies in order to be able to move swiftly should we need to start our own production of any product. This is what we did when we quickly started making coronavirus vaccines, and most recently launched the production of many other products and services.

For example, after dishonest KamAZ partners left the Russian market, their place was taken by domestic companies, which are supplying parts for traditional models and even advanced mainline, transport and heavy-duty vehicles.

The Mir card payment system has successfully replaced Visa and MasterCard on the domestic market. It is expanding its geography and gradually gaining international recognition.

The St Petersburg Tractor Plant is another case in point. Its former foreign partner stopped selling engines and providing warranty maintenance. Engine builders from Yaroslavl and Tutayev came to the rescue and started supplying their engines. As a result, the output of agricultural equipment at the St Petersburg Tractor Plant hit a record high in March-April. It did not decrease, but hit an all-time high.

I am sure there will be more positive practices and success stories.

To reiterate, Russia possesses the professional, scientific and technological potential to develop products that enjoy high demand, including household appliances and construction equipment, as well as industrial and service equipment.

Today’s task is to scale up the capacities and promptly get the necessary lines up and running. One of the key issues is comfortable work conditions for the businesses as well as the availability of prepared production sites.

I ask the Government to submit key parameters of the new operating guidelines for industrial clusters by the autumn. What is critical here?

First – financing. The projects launched in these clusters must have a long-term credit resource for up to ten years at an annual interest rate below seven percent in rubles. We have discussed all these issues with our economic agencies as well. Everyone agreed, so we will proceed.

Second – taxation. The clusters must have a low level of relatively permanent taxes including insurance contributions.

Third – supporting production at the early, kick-off stage, forming a package of orders including subsidising the purchases of ready products by such enterprises. This is not an easy issue but I think subsidies may be required. They are needed to ensure the market. We just have to work it out.

Fourth – simplified administration including minimal or no inspections as well as convenient customs monitoring that is not burdensome.

Fifth, and probably the most important – we need to set up mechanisms of guaranteed long-term demand for the new innovative products that are about to enter the market. I remind the Government that such preferential terms and respective industrial clusters must be launched as early as January 1, 2023.

On a related note, I want to say that both new and already operating points of industrial growth must attract small businesses and engage them in their orbit. It is crucial for entrepreneurs, for small entities to see the horizon and grasp their prospects.

Therefore, I ask the Government together with the SME Corporation [Federal Corporation for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises] and our biggest companies to launch an instrument for long-term contracts between companies with state participation and SMEs. This will ensure demand for the products of such enterprises for years ahead whereas suppliers can confidently undertake commitments to launch a new manufacturing facility or expand an existing one to meet that order.

Let me add that we have substantially shortened the timeframe for building industrial sites and eliminated all the unnecessary burdensome procedures. Still, there is much more we can do here. We have things to work on, and places to go from here. For example, building an industrial facility from the ground up takes anywhere from eighteen months to three years, while the persistently high interest rates make it harder to buy suitable land plots.

Given this, I suggest launching industrial mortgages as a new tool for empowering Russian businesses to quickly start making all the products we need. What I mean are preferential long-term loans at a five-percent interest rate. Companies planning to buy new manufacturing space will be entitled to these loans. I am asking the Government to work out all the details with the Russian banking sector so that the industrial mortgage programme becomes fully operational soon.

Friends,

Changes in the global economy, finances and international relations are unfolding at an ever-growing pace and scale. There is an increasingly pronounced trend in favour of a multipolar growth model in lieu of globalisation. Of course, building and shaping a new world order is no easy task. We will have to confront many challenges, risks, and factors that we can hardly predict or anticipate today.

Still, it is obvious that it is up to the strong sovereign states, those that do not follow a trajectory imposed by others, to set the rules governing the new world order. Only powerful and sovereign states can have their say in this emerging world order. Otherwise, they are doomed to become or remain colonies devoid of any rights.

We need to move forward and change in keeping with the times, while demonstrating our national will and resolve. Russia enters this nascent era as a powerful sovereign nation. We will definitely use the new immense opportunities that are opening up for us in this day and age in order to become even stronger.

Thank you for your attention.

Margarita Simonyan: Thank you, Mr President.

I would very much like to say that after such exhaustive remarks and such an exhaustive analysis, we have nothing left to talk about, because you have answered all the questions. Still, some questions remain, and we will certainly ask them.

And now I would like to ask President Tokayev to come over here and share with us his perspective on the processes taking place in his country, in our country, and in relations between our countries and in the world.

Thank you.

President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev: President Putin,

forum participants,

I congratulate everyone on a significant event – the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum. I thank President Putin for the invitation and for the warm and cordial welcome in the cultural capital of Russia.

Over the past quarter of a century, the St Petersburg Forum has deservedly gained respect as a prestigious expert platform and occupies a worthy place among other world discussion platforms.

Today, we are meeting in rather extraordinary circumstances – I am referring to the elevated political and economic turbulence. The global upheavals caused by the pandemic and the rising geopolitical tensions have led to a new reality. Globalisation has given way to an era of regionalisation, with all its inherent advantages and disadvantages. Be that as it may, the process of reformatting traditional economic models and trade routes is accelerating.

The world is changing rapidly – unfortunately, in most cases it is not for the better. Inflation in many countries is breaking ten-year records, global economic growth is slowing down, and competition for investment and resources is intensifying.

There are constraining factors for economic growth such as climate change, growing migration flows, and faster technological change. We certainly pay attention to these processes.

Speaking about the new reality, it is important to bear in mind the rapidly changing structure of the international order – even the seemingly stable East-West, North-South vectors of interaction are shifting. It is important for the countries in our region not only to find the right answers to all these challenges, but also to try to make the most of them. Therefore, we have to consistently reach our full potential for cooperation within the Eurasian Economic Union. The project to link Eurasian integration with China’s One Belt, One Road initiative is relevant here.

As you know, Kazakhstan is now implementing large-scale political and economic reforms. Their goal is to reset public administration and build a fair, new Kazakhstan. We are working to ensure that there is a correlation between economic growth and rising living standards for our people. We want to achieve sustainable development of trade and economic ties, open new production lines, support the growth of human capital, and make investments.

As part of our large-scale effort to modernise the country, we are drafting new rules of the game in the economy without glaring monopolies and rampant corruption. Our priority is to support businesses and improve the business climate with a view to providing the utmost protection for the rights of investors, and promoting stability and predictability. We will continue meeting all of our commitments to our traditional partners. Kazakhstan will continue building an inclusive, fair society without social inequality.

I believe that to ensure sustainable development of all countries of the region, it is necessary to determine new horizons of cooperation and create new growth points in our economies. Along with this, we must always remember the very important task of ensuring international and regional security.

In this context, I would like to draw your attention to the following points.

The first task, as I have already mentioned, is to strengthen the capacity of the Eurasian Economic Union. This task remains relevant for us. The aggregate size of the economies of its members exceeds $2 trillion. This is an enormous market with free movement of goods, capital, services and workforce. At any rate, this is what it should be.

Despite the pandemic and geopolitical upheavals, cooperation in the EAEU continues to grow stronger. Last year, its trade reached a record $73 billion, which is a third higher than last year.

Russia has been and remains Kazakhstan’s key economic partner in the EAEU. Last year, our trade went up by almost a third to exceed $24 billion. These are record figures for us. The dynamics remains positive this year as well. Our trade increased by over 12 percent in the first quarter of 2022.

I believe that, considering the new reality, it would be appropriate and useful to develop an innovative trade strategy within the Eurasian Economic Union. Instead of imposing counter-sanctions, which, frankly, are unlikely to be productive, a more proactive and flexible trade policy should be pursued covering the Asian and the Middle Eastern markets. Kazakhstan could be instrumental in its role of a buffer market.

Overall, the ultimate success of Eurasian integration largely, if not massively, depends on our effective common trade strategy. Kazakhstan and Russia can break new ground in industrial cooperation.

We have a special plan, a programme for industrial cooperation in the new circumstances. Investors from Russia will be provided with industrial sites complete with infrastructure, and a favourable investment climate will be created for them. As a matter of fact, this is already being done.

The full unlocking of our countries’ agricultural potential is particularly important in these circumstances. According to the FAO [the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations], Russia and Kazakhstan are global leaders in terms of available agricultural land. This fact is of particular importance in light of declining global food security. According to the UN, the number of malnourished people will go from 270 million to 323 million this year.

Providing people with high-quality and safe food remains a priority and a factor in maintaining internal stability.

To create a reliable food system, it is important to implement innovative solutions and advanced technologies, as well as to cut food losses.

Approaches to ensuring food security should be developed at the national level and within regional associations, including the EAEU with account taken of the interests of all state participants. Achieving declared goals in this extremely important area is unlikely without coordinated work.

In other words, fighting skyrocketing inflation and food shortages is our common challenge, which will remain a priority in the foreseeable future, because it directly concerns the well-being of our people. Our countries’ potential makes it possible to consistently and fully supply our markets with the necessary foods, as the President of Russia convincingly demonstrated today.

Secondly, I believe that it is essential that we continue expanding trade and economic cooperation with third countries. Kazakhstan is proactively involved in integration processes, and has always stood for mutually beneficial cooperation with other international organisations.

As far as I know, there has been much interest on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia’s initiative to build a Greater Eurasian Partnership. This concept consists of offering regional organisations a platform for creating a common space of equal cooperation. It is for this reason that Kazakhstan continues to have a positive outlook on the effort to build the Greater Eurasian Partnership.

This year, Kazakhstan chairs the Commonwealth of Independent States. Over the years, this structure has built up a positive track record despite all the geopolitical challenges, which proves that multilateral dialogue tools are effective.

I believe that the CIS is perfectly suited for serving as a foundation for this megaproject. I am referring to Greater Eurasia, or the Greater Eurasian Partnership. It can encompass the SCO, ASEAN, and the Eurasian Economic Union as its integral elements.

Over the next decade, China, India, as well as countries in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, which have traditionally been friendly to us, can become major investors in the economies of our region.

China has already emerged as Kazakhstan’s main economic and foreign trade partner. This country invested in our economy more than $22 billion over the past 15 years. For this reason, strengthening our multilateral cooperation with China is a very important goal for our country.

Of course, the economy matters today just as much as political considerations. I believe that we have to promote business-to-business ties and build new transport and logistics corridors. Today, we treat these matters as our top priorities when meeting with people from Russia and other interested nations.

There is a lot of potential for combining our efforts to develop a pool of breakthrough innovation and technology projects, as well as uninterrupted transportation and logistics chains. At the end of the day, this will create new economic growth opportunities for our countries.

Thirdly, Kazakhstan maintains its unwavering commitment to international efforts to combat climate change. We will be consistent in our efforts to promote green investment and carry out corresponding projects. Environmental problems are global in nature, affecting almost all countries without exception, including Kazakhstan.

Last year, our farmers had serious problems due to a draught that was triggered by low rainfall and low water level in rivers. The cross-border Ural River is in critical condition. We call it Zhayyq on our territory.

I believe we should tackle such problems together when faced with such long-term challenges to the sustainable development of our states. I think we should give serious thought to the prospects of introducing the principles of closed-loop or circular economy. We are working to reduce the GDP’s energy-output ratio, expand the renewable energy sector and reduce transit losses in this area.

The similarity of our economies, industrial infrastructure ties between our two countries and geography as such are prompting us to pool efforts in this strategically important area as well. I hope that together we will manage to draft effective approaches and specific measures for tangible progress in this field.

Fourthly. High quality human resources and constructive inter-cultural dialogue are a reliable source of economic growth. As part of the UN-proclaimed International Decade for the Rapprochement of Cultures, we will continue our policy of preserving the cultural diversity of our country and promoting international dialogue between civilisations.

In September our capital will host yet another congress of world and traditional religions. We welcome the participation of religious figures from Russia in this forum. Practically all of them confirmed their participation.

Kazakhstan is actively reformatting the system of its higher education with the participation of leading foreign universities, including Russian ones. The deepening of international academic ties has special significance for promoting the traditions of bilateral cooperation.

I am convinced that the successful implementation of a number of joint educational and cultural initiatives will allow us to make a tangible contribution to the steady economic advance of our country.

Participants of the forum,

Kazakhstan proceeds from its firm conviction that Eurasia is our common home and that all countries on our continent should closely cooperate in the community. We are confident that the building of a peaceful, stable and economically strong Eurasia will become a major factor of sustainable development and inclusive growth on a global scale.

I am convinced that this prestigious discussion venue that unites top class experts has great potential in searching for constructive ideas aimed at normalising the international situation and recovering the positive dynamics of the world economy.

Thank you for your attention.

Margarita Simonyan: Thank you very much, President Tokayev.

Eurasia is indeed our common home. We all want this home to be safe and prosperous through God’s help and our mutual efforts.

And now we will turn to Africa. We have a video address from President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Can we have it on the screens, please? Thank you.

President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi: In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful,

President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin,

Ladies and gentlemen,

At the outset, allow me to extend to His Excellency, President Vladimir Putin, my sincere congratulations on the silver jubilee of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Since 1997, when it has been held for the first time, the forum has become a leading platform for the business community and a remarkable economic event that seeks to discuss the key economic issues facing emerging markets and the world.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The Arab Republic of Egypt, as a guest country, will be part of this year’s session of the forum, which marks the 25th anniversary of its launch, thus confirming the distinguished level that Egyptian-Russian economic relations have reached over the recent years.

This year’s forum is being held amid unprecedented political and economic challenges of a strategic nature. We hope that the outcomes of the forum will contribute to finding effective solutions to these challenges in a way that mitigates the impact of the global economic crisis and its negative repercussions on many countries in the world, especially the economies of emerging countries, takes the concerns and interests of all parties into account, and achieves the security and tranquility of peoples.

This would be achieved through long-term political understandings that open the way for the growth of the global economy, especially in the wake of the severe coronavirus pandemic, which has cost our societies many victims and considerable money and resources, thus making us keen to avoid any slowdown in the global economy.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let me use this opportunity to reiterate that the Arab Republic of Egypt values its firm, historic friendship relations with the Russian Federation, and values the tangible progress the two countries’ relations have been witnessing over the past years in a multitude of vital sectors, for the two countries’ economies and the prosperity of the two peoples.

The Arab Republic of Egypt and the Russian Federation have been engaged over the past years in the implementation of mega and ambitious projects that serve our countries and respond to the aspirations of our peoples to realise more economic progress.

The most prominent of these are: the project for the establishment of the Dabaa nuclear power plant, which comes within the context of the Egyptian State’s strategy to expand national projects for the use of new and renewable sources of energy.

Another project is the establishment of the Russian Industrial Zone in the Economic Zone of the Suez Canal, which is meant to become an important platform for industry in Africa.

This is in addition to cooperation between the two countries to upgrade the Egyptian railway network and other joint ventures that realise the benefit of the two peoples.

Ladies and gentlemen,

You must be aware that the exceptional events that have been taking place in the Arab Republic of Egypt over the past decade had their immense impact on the overall economic situation in the country. The Egyptian people stood up to surmount this crisis by supporting a clear vision, based on investing in the Egyptian citizen and developing his capabilities.

Therefore, Egypt Vision 2030 was launched to reflect the state’s long-term strategic plan to achieve the principles and goals of sustainable development, with its economic, social and environmental dimensions.

Based on this vision, the Government of Egypt has modernised its legislative structure to enable Egypt to attract more foreign investment. This qualified Egypt to become the top destination for attracting foreign investments in Africa and one of the few countries in the world capable of achieving a growth rate of up to 3.3 percent in 2021, despite the negative challenges posed by the spread of COVID-19 and their impact on the global economy. We expect the Egyptian economy to grow by 5.5% during the current fiscal year. The country’s non-petroleum exports also increased during 2021 to reach $32 billion.

Egypt has also succeeded, within the framework of its strategy to increase its capabilities, to implement mega agricultural projects that are aimed at increasing agricultural land by almost 2 million feddans.

This is in addition to the mega projects Egypt is implementing in the fields of transport, by expanding thousands of kilometers of roads and upgrading Egypt’s transport system by introducing new projects. Those include the high-speed rail that will constitute a means to link the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, thus boosting and facilitating international trade.

Adding to this are the mega industrial projects and the numerous projects in the field of clean energy production, which have been established in Egypt at a rapid pace over the past period.

Despite the previously-mentioned national efforts, Egypt’s actions and efforts to achieve progress were hit recently by economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The world was partially recovering from its effects and repercussions, when it was hit again by a great economic crisis that cast a shadow over growth rates and negatively affected states’ budgets, reflecting on the rise of fuel prices and the decline in the value of the national currencies in the face of hard currencies. This is in addition to the disruption in supply chains, the emergence of the food crisis, as well as the irregular movement of civil aviation. This sector is connected with vital fields of the Egyptian economy, primarily tourism and insurance.

Addressing this crisis, which has an international character, requires international efforts and collaboration among all parties in order to get matters back to their normal state, particularly the movement of maritime traffic and the regularity of supply chains, particularly foodstuff, such as grain and vegetable oil.

This also requires working toward restoring calm and stability at the international level, in order to mitigate the impact of this economic crisis on the peoples, who seek peace and development.

I also call on all companies participating in this forum and others to take advantage of this huge opportunity that is provided by investing in Egypt in all fields.

I would not miss, before concluding my speech, thanking the people of Saint Petersburg, this brave city throughout history, which at the same time represents an icon for culture and openness on the outside world.

Finally, I would like, once again, to thank His Excellency, President Vladimir Putin, for his kind invitation for Egypt to participate in this forum as a guest of this round, wishing the forum and the participants all success and blessings and wishing our friendly countries more constructive cooperation, prosperity and progress. We pray God Almighty to spread peace and stability across the world and to spare our peoples the scourge of war and its economic and social impact by giving priority to the language of dialogue, understanding and co-existence.

Thank you.

Margarita Simonyan: We are grateful to the President of Egypt. I think that the people of the host city should be especially pleased to hear his warm words about St Petersburg.

We have just a little time left before the discussion begins. They say anticipation increases desire.

We will now listen to an address by President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping.

President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping (retranslated): President Putin, ladies and gentlemen, friends,

I am delighted to have this opportunity to address the plenary session of the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum, which I attended in person three years ago.

In February this year, President Putin visited China and attended the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. We had a detailed exchange of views, following which we reached a vital agreement on expanding our comprehensive practical cooperation and implementing the concept of global governance based on joint consultations, joint participation and joint use.

Cooperation between China and Russia is currently ascending in all spheres. Our bilateral trade reached $65.8 billion over the first five months of this year. We can expect to attain new records by year-end. This is evidence of the high resilience and ingenious potential of Chinese-Russian cooperation.

The world is entering a new period of turbulence and transformation amid the ongoing radical changes and the coronavirus pandemic. There is an obvious trend of anti-globalism, a growing divide between the South and the North, and a weakening of cooperation drivers in the area of development, which could plunge the erratically reviving global economy into a deep recession and create unprecedented challenges to the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

According to ancient Chinese words of wisdom, a clever man sees a seed of crisis in every opportunity and an opportunity in every crisis. Danger and opportunity always go together. By overcoming danger, you get opportunity. Strength lies in confidence. The more there are difficulties, the more important it is to remain confident.

During last year’s session of the UN General Assembly, I proposed a Global Development Initiative, which was positively received and supported by a number of international organisations, including the UN, and about a hundred countries.

Today, at a time when the international community is ever more interested in achieving more equitable, sustainable and secure development, we should seize opportunities, meet challenges head-on, and work on the implementation of the Global Development Initiative to build a shared future of peace and prosperity.

First, we need to create conditions for development. It is important that we follow true multilateralism, respect and support all countries’ pursuit of development paths suited to their national conditions, build an open world economy, and increase the representation and voice of emerging markets and developing countries in global economic governance with a view to making global development more balanced, coordinated and inclusive.

Second, we need to strengthen development partnerships. It is important that we enhance North-South and South-South cooperation, pool cooperation resources, platforms and networks of development partnerships, and scale up development assistance in order to forge greater synergy for development and close the development gap.

Third, we need to advance economic globalization. It is important that we enhance the coordination of development policies and international rules and standards, reject attempts at separation, supply disruption, unilateral sanctions and maximum pressure, remove trade barriers, keep global industrial and supply chains stable, tackle the worsening food and energy crises, and revive the world economy.

Fourth, we need to pursue innovation-driven development. It is important that we unlock the potential of innovation-driven growth, improve the rules and institutional environment for innovation, break down barriers to the flow of innovation factors, deepen exchanges and cooperation on innovation, facilitate deeper integration of science and technology into the economy, and make sure the fruits of innovation are shared by all.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends,

The fundamentals of the Chinese economy are its strong resilience, enormous potential and long-term sustainability, which remain unchanged. We have full confidence in China’s economic development. China will continue to promote high-quality development, promote openness with firm resolve, and pursue high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.

China stands ready to work with Russia and all other countries to explore development prospects, share growth opportunities, and make new contributions to deepening global development cooperation and building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Thank you.

Margarita Simonyan: Thank you, Mr President.

Coming to learn Chinese wisdom and some of Chinese sagacity is always a good thing, especially now that Chinese wisdom might come in useful for the entire world.

Mr President, I would like to show you something that I have brought with me especially. It is juice, and it used to be so nicely coloured. It does not matter what sort of juice it is; you cannot even see the brand here, although it is a popular one. And now – do you see? A small picture and the rest is white. Why is that? And this is happening on a massive scale.

Because we ran out of paint. The producer of paint for such packaging has left Russia, and the producer of the packaging also announced that they are leaving. I bought this two weeks ago, and soon this will disappear. As a result, we will have to pour it into bottles or three-litre glass jars, like it was in my childhood, unless we discover that we do not produce bottles either.

There are conflicting opinions on this. You have touched upon this issue today. Some of the participants – a considerable part, maybe even the majority – came here by Sapsan trains. Some say “We will swap Sapsans for Chinese trains, they are even better,” since Siemens has gone. Others say “We will learn to make them ourselves.” Let me remind you that we launched our own high-speed trains in 1984, I think they were called ER200. I was four years old, did not go to school yet, but we already had high-speed trains – but we do not have them any longer. It is sad, isn’t it?

And there are also people who say that no, we cannot replace all that, we can use Sapsan trains for another couple of years and then we will just give up high-speed railways, which means we will step back from what we got used to. And it is like this with everything: telephones, computers, everything we got used to. This is a very sad, I would even say heartbreaking plan.

Maybe there is a different plan?

Vladimir Putin: Whenever any decisions are taken, the key issues must be to singled out. What is key for us? Being independent, sovereign and ensuring future-oriented development both now and for the future generations? Or having packaging today?

Unless we have sovereignty, we will soon have to buy everything and will only produce oil, gas, hemp fibre, saddles and sell rough logs abroad.

It is inevitable. I have already said so in my speech: only sovereign countries can expect to have a sovereign future. That does not mean, however, that we need to plunge back into a situation of 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

Regarding packaging. I do not think it is such a complicated thing that either our partners from other countries can replace, who will be pleased to occupy this market sooner or later, or we will be able to make ourselves.

Margarita Simonyan: You do not see it, but President Tokayev is nodding his head: they will probably be able to replace it.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev: Absolutely, this is not a problem.

Vladimir Putin: Of course, we will able to replace it.

The question is about a totally different matter. We keep talking about import substitution. In my speech here I also said – and I will just add a couple of words so as not to take too much time while answering only one question.

The issue is not about import substitution, the issue is to establish our own capabilities based on progress in education, science and new promising schools of engineering. We will always be given packaging materials and other simple things, event telephones and smartphones. What we have never been given and never will be is critically important technologies. We have never been given them before even though we had problem-free relations with our Western partners in the previous decades. This is the problem.

And when we begin to stand up for our rights, we are immediately slapped with some sanctions and restrictions; this is what the problem is all about. Therefore, we must commit ourselves to that and have the capacity to reproduce critically important technologies on the basis of what I mentioned. And with that base we will always be able to manufacture the goods you mentioned: packaging materials, telephones and smartphones. If we realise that and keep focusing on solving fundamental issues, we will resolve everything else without a problem.

Let me reiterate: others are already coming to that place – those who produce the packaging materials, those who produce the paints. We are also starting to produce paints and other consumer goods as well as goods employed in industry in a broader sense. We can make anything – I have absolutely no doubt about that.

Obviously, some things will be lost, other things will be made on a new basis, much more advanced – the way it happened earlier. Therefore, when we talk about import substitution, we will substitute something while other things will have to be done on a totally new promising basis of our own making.

Margarita Simonyan: Thank you. President Tokayev, would you like to add anything?

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev: I think everything is clear here, and judging by President Putin’s extremely interesting speech, we can understand that he is thinking in the categories of historical perspective, so to say.

Margarita Simonyan: As always.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev: And juice packaging has no place here.

Indeed, it is a small problem, nature abhors a vacuum: others will come who will be producing juice packaging that is just as good, and local producers will appear.

The issue is about something else. In particular, I said in my speech about the importance of Eurasian cooperation, about the importance of uniting efforts to resolve unexpected problems. I think we will arrive at the result we are seeking on this road.

To be continued.

حراس الهيكل يقاتلون القهقرى وبحرنا يرسم قوس النصر…

الخميس 16 حزيران 2022

 محمد صادق الحسيني

«لن نقاتل عنكم بعد اليوم ولدينا الكثير ما نفعله لإعادة تأهيل خزائن مجمع الصناعات الحربية وبيوت المال النفطية والغازية لشركاتنا.»

هذا ما سيقوله بايدن الشهر المقبل حين يزور الكيانين المتهالكين «الإسرائيلي» والسعودي.

لن تكون المنظومة التي سيطلق ورشتها اليانكي الأميركي هجوميّة أبداً، بل دفاعية بكلّ معنى الكلمة.

هي محاولة سدّ المنافذ والمسارب التي بدأت تتسلل الى البيت «الإسرائيلي» الغارق في التيه، والبيت السعودي الأعمى!

وكيسنجر في حديثه الصحافي الأخير لم يتحدث عن الحرب أبداً مثلما فسّر البعض، بل إنّ ما قصده من عبارة تحوّلات كبرى تنتظر منطقتنا ليست سوى خرائط النفط والغاز الجديدة التي ستكون نحن من يحدّد شكلها وهي التي سترسم حدود البلدان من الآن فصاعداً وليست الجيوش التقليدية.

إنها معركة إرادات ومقاومات ومعارك من نوع جديد يمكن وصفها بالضربات بين المعارك والحروب وليست حروب جيوش جرارة تفرز حرباً عالمية، كما يهوّل البعض!

وما قرأه كيسنجر كان بعين الخبير المخضرم للنظام العالمي الجديد الذي سيقلب النظام العالمي الحالي على عقبيه من قلب تضاريس بلاد العرب بعد كلّ الهزائم التي تلقاها خلال عقد من الزمان في الكرّ والفرّ عندنا ويتوّج اليوم بالهزيمة الكبرى المرتقبة له في أوكرانيا.

نعم من بحر عكا وبحر صور لبحر بانياس وبحر اللاذقية سيتمّ تظهير الفشل الأميركي وسيتبيّن للعالم أنّ ساكن البيت الأبيض لم يعد شرطيّ العالم، بعد أن تهشمت صورته في أكثر من معركة على بوابات عواصم محورنا المقاوم وسواحل مدننا وبلداتنا من بوابات الشام الى أسوار بغداد وتخوم صنعاء، ومن هرمز الى باب المندب ومن البصرة الى الناقورة…

لا يخطئنّ أحد التقدير بأنّ المعركة الحالية سواء تلك التي ستدار في المضائق والأحواض النفطية والغازية عندنا او تلك التي تدار حالياً في أعالي البحار عند أصدقائنا الروس والصينيين أنها معركة هجومية أميركية…

أبداً ليست كذلك، إنها معركتهم الدفاعية الأخيرة وهم يتجهون بتسارع شديد نحو قعر جهنّم كما يصفهم الصينيون في ردهات مطابخ قرارهم.

 انها المعركة التي نحن من يمسك بتلابيبها ونحن الذين فيها في حالة هجوم استراتيجي حتى وانْ كنا نعيش أعلى درجات الضغوط وشظف الحصارات الاقتصادية!

صدقوني انهم يقاتلون القهقرى رغم كلّ استعراضات القوة والضربات الإيذائية هنا وهناك…

 انهم يقاتلون بشراسة تكتيكية لتقليل أثمان الانسحاب الاستراتيجي، وتقسيط تكاليف خسائر حروبهم الإقليمية الفاشلة وآخرها تلك التي خاضوها عند بوابات الشام والعالميّة ضدّ أصدقائنا وآخرها تلك التي يخوضونها حالياً في أوكرانيا.

لو كانوا في حالة موازين قوى تصبّ لصالحهم لم يتردّدوا لحظة واحدة لإرسال جيوشهم الجرارة الى بلادنا وقاموا بقصف وتدمير واحتلال مدننا وبلداتنا وجعلوا الموازين عاليها سافلها، لكنهم عاجزون ولا يملكون إلا التسليم بموازين القوى التي باتت لغير صالحهم بكلّ الحسابات.

إنها حسابات إقطاعيّات أوروبا وأميركا التي ترسم ذلك بدقة متناهية للحكومات الحارسة للهيكل العام للشركات المتعددة الجنسية وهي التي توجّههم بهذا الاتجاه او ذاك.

وليست الحكومات في واشنطن وباريس ولندن وغيرها من عواصم المتروبول الا أدوات تنفيذية عند آلهة السلاح والنفط والغاز والمال الحرام!

 للأسف طبعاً فإنّ الأغلب الأعمّ من الناس في العالم، انما يظنّ أنّ أميركا، وبالتالي ألمانيا واليابان، وبقية الدول الأوروبية، هي دول كبيرة راسخة، ولديها مؤسساتها الدستورية والقانونية، وجيشها وشرطتها وما الى ذلك،

وانّ فيها حكومات تحافظ على مصالح شعوبها، وأمن أوطانها ومستقبلها، وبقية الأسطوانة المعتادة التي نسمعها من كبار المحللين والكتاب العاملين لديهم…

وهو غش واحتيال وخداع بات مكشوفاً، لمن ألقى السمع وهو بصير، بعد المواجهة الروسية الأطلسية الأميركية في أوكرانيا، خصوصاً مع اشتعال حروب الطاقة ومجمعات الصناعات الحربية.

بنظرة واقعية إجمالية ثبت بالدليل والبرهان إنّ هذه الجغرافية الحكومية الغربية ما هي إلا إقطاعيات من العصور الوسطى، تعود للملك، وحاشيته من الأرستقراطيين والنبلاء، والناس عبيد مملوكة لهم، تعمل باليوميّة، لصالح بضعة أوليغارشيات، في تلك المصانع والمزارع والمناجم والمحاجر والشركات وآبار البترول إلخ…

بينما صار واضحاً لدينا الآن أنّ الشركات العالمية التي ظهرت على سطوح جغرافيا القتال أمثال بوينغ ولوكهيد ورايثون وجنرال اليكتريك وأمازون ومايكروسوفت وبنك إنجلترا وبنك الاحتياطي الفيدرالي ووول استريت ليست شركات حكومية تعود لهذه الدول الكبيرة…

أبداً ليس كذلك، إنها في الحقيقة ليست سوى شركات متعددة الجنسية تعود لبضعة أفراد من بيوت المال العالمية، وهذه الحكومات «الجبارة» مثل حكومة ماكرون وبوريس جونسون وترامب بالأمس وبايدن اليوم ليست سوى حارس يحرس هذه الأموال لأصحابها الأوليغارش.

وإذا كنا نظنّ انّ المنظمات العالمية مثل مجلس الأمن ومنظمة الصحة العالمية والبنك الدولي وصندوق النقد الدولي ومنظمة العدل ومنظمة التجارة الحرة وما يسمّى بالمجتمع الدولي، انما هي منظمات دولية تعمل لأجل شعوب العالم ورفاهيته وأمنه وصحته فنحن مخطئون ايضاً…

لقد اتضح للقاصي والداني الآن بأنها هي الأخرى ليست سوى مجرد حارس مصالح تلك الشركات العالمية المتعددة الجنسيات، ايّ انها مثلها مثل «بلاك واتر» وأمثالها، كلّ ما هنالك أنها تتمظهر بملابس مدنية وياقات بيضاء ويلبس مدراؤها قفازات ناعمة تخفي عن الرأي العام قبضاتها الحديدية وأسلحتها الرشاشة المغطاة بشكل جيد تحت معاطفها ومجملة بربطات عنق ملونة.

هيكلهم يتلاشى رويداً رويداً والعالم يتغيّر بسرعة لصالحنا.

بعدنا طيّبين قولوا الله…

• مسيّرات تستهدف محيط «التّنف»

بين تراكم القوة وسياسة الإشغال تغيّرت معادلات كثيرة

الأحد 12 حزيران 2022

 حسين مرتضى

يُقال إنّ في السياسة لا توجد معادلات ثابتة، وإنّ المعادلات السياسية تتبدّل وفق المعادلات الميدانيّة، وكلّ تلك المعادلات ترتبط بالمشهد السياسي على مستوى المنطقة والإقليم والعالم.

في التحليل السياسي نجد بأنّ العالم انتقل من مرحلة القطب الواحد إلى مرحلة تعدّد الأقطاب، وهناك محوران رئيسيان حالياً على الساحة الدولية.

قد تشتبك الملفات السياسية والميدانية وتزداد تعقيداً وفق التطورات الأخيرة، وهنا نؤكد أنّ هناك تطوّراً لافتاً في عدد من الملفات أبرزها الملف النووي الإيراني واللافت فيه أن تعود الوكالة الدولية بتقاريرها الفنية حول البرنامج النووي الإيراني إلى نقطة البداية في الوقت الذي اعتقد الكثير من المتابعين والمراقبين خلال الأشهر الماضية أنّ الاتفاق النووي قد حُسم أمره، وأنّ التوقيع هو مسألة ساعات فقط بعد سلسلة من الاجتماعات واللقاءات التي عُقدت بين إيران والدول الأوروبية وبمشاركة الإدارة الأميركية من خلف الجدران.

بشكل مفاجئ تمّ تجميد الملف النووي الإيراني كما تجمّدت الكثير من الملفات في المنطقة، في وقت استمرّ فيه كيان الاحتلال «الإسرائيلي» بتنفيذ عدة عمليات اغتيال منها ما تمّ تنفيذه داخل طهران، بالإضافة الى الاستعداد ضمن مناورات جوية وغيرها تحاكي واقع تنفيذ ضربة عسكرية للجمهورية الإسلامية الإيرانية.

لا نريد هنا أن نتحدث كثيراً عن الملفات الأخرى لا إنْ كان ما له علاقة باللقاءات والاجتماعات الإيرانية السعودية والتي خفت وتيرتها مؤخراً. ولا على صعيد العدوان على اليمن والهدنة الكاذبة التي لم تغيّر من معاناة أهل اليمن شيئاً، وصولاً الى الواقع الميداني السياسي على الساحة السورية والذي برزت فيه محاولة تحريك المنطقة الجنوبية والمنطقة الشمالية إضافة إلى تسخين المنطقة الشرقية بهدف خلط الأوراق على الساحة السورية في ظلّ الواقع السياسي الجديد المرتبط بالملف الروسي ـ الأوكراني.

لكن ما يمكن ان نقوله هنا انطلاقاً من بعض المعطيات، هل ستبقى سياسة تراكم القوة هي العامل الأساس في خلق التوازن في المنطقة؟ او انّ الاعتماد على قاعدة جديدة ردعية تعطي رسائل يكون مفعولها فورياً ومؤثراً أكثر؟ أعتقد أنه من المهمّ في مكان ما أن تتبدّل هذه القاعدة وان تتغيّر قواعد الاشتباك إنْ كان هذا الاشتباك مع الأميركي مباشرة او حتى مع كيان الاحتلال وما بينهما من دول هي أدوات للسياسات الأميركية في المنطقة، قاعدة تراكم القوّة يمكن ان تتعرّض في لحظة ما لنكسة أو هجوم يُفقد المحور هذه المعادلة بينما معادلة الإشغال غير المباشر وحتى المباشر في بعض المرات تصبح الأهمّ في فرض الكثير من هذه المتغيّرات والمعادلات، وحتى لا تبقى سياسة امتصاص الصدمات تحت قاعدة تراكم القوّة يجب ان يكون هناك في المرحلة المقبلة وليست بالبعيدة العمل باستراتيجية علنية يفهم من خلالها العدو أنّ هناك معادلة جديدة سيتمّ اعتمادها والعمل بها وعليك أن تستعدّ وتترقّب…

The Future to the Back

June 02, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

‘For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places’.

Words recorded by Matthew in his Gospel, chapter 24, verse 7, April 33

‘It is Russia that is now at the forefront of the clash of civilisations’.

Boris Mezhuyev, Professor of Russian Philosophy at the VIII Russian Philosophical Congress in Moscow, 26 May 2022

We were promised the future. That of globalism. This was one in which the whole world would become ever more prosperous, though nobody would become as prosperous as the already prosperous elite of the Western world. So those living off a dollar a day would live off two dollars a day and those living off 10,000 dollars a day would live off 20,000 dollars a day. Sounds fair? And all this in a world where all would have the chance, if they wished, to dress like Americans, watch Hollywood films, eat at MacDonalds and drink coffee at Starbucks, that is, to live in a unipolar world, the only pole being the USA. And this world would by 2100 have reached its maximum population of perhaps 11 billion, up from today’s nearly 8 billion.

Then came some annoying people who pointed out that not everyone can live like that, even 8 billion of us, let alone 11 billion, in a world of finite resources and a warming climate (regardless of whether that warming was manmade or not).

And then there came covid (regardless of whether that was manmade or not) and some people of all races died from it. And then came some very annoying people who pointed out that if there is one pestilence, there can be another and another, far, far worse, like the American/Kansas flu of 1918-1920. Unlike covid, this killed perhaps 60 million, ten times more than covid, on a planet with a population less than a quarter of today’s, so was 40 times more lethal. And so, they concluded, anything people do is infinitely fragile, here today, gone tomorrow, and all our much-vaunted vast technology is useless against a mere tiny microbe. The balloon of arrogance was rather punctured.

And then, after pestilence, there came war in the Ukraine and the increasing realisation that actually the future that we were being promised, or rather, that was being imposed on us, was not one that we wanted. There had been just too many injustices down the centuries, not least inside Europe and caused by Europe outside Europe. Such were the ‘World Wars’, that is, the European Wars which Europe exported worldwide. What sort of future can you build, if it is built on the bones of the hundreds of millions of victims of genocide and injustice down the ages? And then came some even more annoying people who pointed out that not everyone wants to live according to that unipolar model. We do not want to be the slaves of Antichrist. And as we do not want that, then to defend Russia is actually to defend the world.

And so the future that had been proposed to us has gone to the back of our minds.

And so now we have to think about the future that we do want, in the front of our minds.

First of all, we know what we do not want. In the words of Sergei Lavrov in his interview with RT Arabic in Moscow on 26 May 2022:

‘Instead of delivering on their obligations under the UN Charter and honouring, as is written in this charter, the sovereign equality of states and abstaining from interfering in their domestic affairs, the West churns out ultimatums every day, issuing them through their ambassadors or envoys….blatantly blackmailing ….The reaction of Arab countries and almost all other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America that we are seeing shows that these countries do not want to disregard their national dignity, running errands, in a servile manner, for their senior colleagues. This situation is yet another example of colonial thinking….It is wrong and regrettable, and flies in the face of the historical process, which objectively shows that a multipolar world is now taking shape’.

What does this mean, politically, economically and socially?

Firstly, politically we think that in the future every country, people, culture and religion should be respected. That does not mean that we will agree with each other, that there are no differences, it means that we accept the differences of others in freedom, but that we in no way feel obliged to follow other ways. In other words, our relations should be those of good neighbours, live and let live is what we do. We are not superior and narcissistic busybodies who carry out Blairite ‘humanitarian interventions’ in the sovereign rights of others, arrogantly trying to enforce our domination on the deluded pretext of do-gooding. Because we respect ourselves, so we respect others.

Secondly, economically we think that trade between different countries is normal, following the law of supply and demand, but that in the future all trade should be sustainable. Free trade very often becomes the law of the jungle. Free trade has to be regulated, to avoid exploitation, profiteering and the impoverishment of those countries which have fewer resources and advantages. Justice must reign in all international trading relations.

Thirdly, socially, we think that social justice for all in every country is essential. We realise that if you gave a million dollars each to twenty individuals, very quickly you would find that one had ten million dollars and that others had nothing. People are different. It is therefore part of the role of the State to provide some kind of safety net for the weak, without demotivating them from work, and also making sure that those who become rich do not abuse their wealth in order to obtain tyrannical power and commit injustices like gangsters. Money should be a tool to do good. Sadly, often it is not. We no longer want to live in a world in which there are massive gaps between rich and poor. The word ‘oligarch’ has been associated with Russia, only not the Russia we knew, but with the westernised and corrupt Russia of Yeltsin, which is now disintegrating. There will always be richer and poorer, yes, there will always be such. But why should there be multimillionaires, billionaires and even centibillionaires? There is something wrong with such a world, when at the same time there are so many desperately poor.

This is not an ideology, this is not an ism, it is a balance. If you press down on one end of a seesaw without a counterweight on the other end, there is no balance, no possible play. When the world is out of balance, disasters, especially wars, come. This is what has happened in the Ukraine. Retrieve the balance and all will work better. This is what the phrase ‘a multipolar world’ means, a balanced world.

So, the unipolar future to the back. And forward to the multipolar future.