Joachim Hagopian, a West Point graduate and former US Army Officer analizes his country's propensity for going to war (222 out of its 239 years) and reports an event that took place last week unnoticed by both MSM and independent sources: British royalty Prince William was sent to China to quietly sign a deal to become a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) "...a sign that the powers of Europe are seeking a non-violent resolution to its regional conflict that carries the devastating potential of triggering World War III."

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Global Shift in the Balance of Power Is Moving from West to East
Posted by Joachim Hagopian on March 19, 2015

A major recent event last week largely went unnoticed by both MSM and independent news sources alike.

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By Joachim Hagopian

The British are apparently jumping ship away from the US dollar/petrodollar in an overt effort to align itself more closely with the BRICS alliance as it seeks a new standard international currency.

For several years Russia, China, Brazil, India and South Africa (BRICS) have been preparing the world for its transition from USD standard international currency to its own alternative-in-the-making. America’s so called mother country England has seen the writing on the wall and knows the global balance of power is rapidly tilting in favor of where the sun always rises in the emerging East.

The European central banking cabal from the City of London, a separate and private political and financial entity apart from the rest of both London and England, sent British royalty Prince William to China to quietly sign a deal to become a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

This surprising new development is a clear indication that the royal Bank of England is placing its financial bet and future on China and the East as its rock solid anchor. Much of the world has been looking to move away from and abandon the longtime global financial stronghold of the US Federal Reserve, its World Bank and US dollar standard. A US official feebly chastised UK in the Financial Times:

We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power.

More consternation arose when Germany, France and Italy have additionally made overtures in the same direction. This worldwide trend spells utter defeat for Obama and his disastrous foreign policy.

After Washington’s been exerting strong-armed pressure on Australia as its key allied partner supporting its failing Asian pivot designed to check China’s growing regional and global dominance in the Pacific Asian market, Australia is now also looking to follow suit accepting and embracing China’s lead.

According to international investor and entrepreneur Simon Black, the US is experiencing major economic blowback after two plus decades of aggression as the only global superpower:

… After years of endless wars, spying, debt, money printing, bailouts, and insane regulations, the rest of the world has had enough. And they’re looking for an alternative.

Enter the China led BRICS alliance and its New Development Bank and now China’s other investment bank entry AIIB. Simon takes liberty in his interpretation of Britain and Europe’s bold rebellion after decades relegated to being a mere puppet of the US Empire: “Look, you have $18.1 trillion in official debt, you have $42 trillion in unfunded liabilities, and you’re kind of a dick. I’m dumping you.”

Perhaps some Americans may feel a bit betrayed and unsettled by our longtime strongest global allies one by one seemingly abandoning the US dollar and American Empire in its reckoning time of need.

If these geopolitical and economic trends are examined beyond their face value though, the changes occurring now may reflect much more significant, deeper changes than a mere alteration of standard international currency (as impactful as that will likely be for the US). These deep rooted fundamental changes have everything to do with the major global shift now taking place where the West’s ruling power elite itself is losing to the emerging global power rising in the East.

The latest act of bold economic defiance breaking rank with US Empire interests mirrors last month’s bucking trend that Europe exercised when putting the skids on the US campaign for sending heavy armaments to Ukraine and pushing for war against Russia.

The fact is Europe and especially Germany depend on natural gas from Russia and the US imposed sanctions on Russia hurt Europe even more than Russia. That along with wanting to avoid war in their own backyard has nations like Germany and France softening their hardline, US pushed anti-Russian posturing.

Several weeks ago German and French leaders attended meetings in Mink, Belarus to negotiate a peaceful way out of the escalating violence in Eastern Ukraine between the government forces in Kiev and the ethnic Russian separatists seeking autonomy in the Donetsk and Lugansk region.

In the same way Netanyahu attempted to fan the war flames against Iran, the same day Germany and France were gathering in Minsk to meet with Putin and Ukraine leaders, Secretary of State Kerry showed up in Kiev mouthing the same worn out lie of “Russian aggression” in a transparent feeble attempt to sabotage the Minsk talks. Again, the tie-in is the Israeli-US crime cabal constantly at work every chance they get peddling and promoting more global violence, death and war.

For over a year now Washington’s war drums have been beating louder for NATO to join forces with Ukraine, pressuring Europe to submit as it always has in going along with its permanent war agenda, all the while falsely demonizing Russia’s President Putin with outrageous propaganda lies and nonstop false flags not unlike the WMD lies against Hussein in 2002-3 Iraq.

But in a rare gesture of independence, unwilling to start a war so close to home against nuclear powered Russia that Europe relies heavily as a critical source for its natural gas consumption, the powers of Europe are seeking a non-violent resolution to its regional conflict that carries the devastating potential of triggering World War III.

Meanwhile, NATO Supreme Commander US Air Force General Philip Breedlove fashions himself to be a Dr. Strangelove incarnate, making repeated bogus claims and lies of Russian army presence inside Eastern Ukraine in a vain yet persistent attempt to foment war. Having such a deluded and deceitful warmonger in charge of the NATO nuclear arsenal poses a calamitous threat to the entire world.

Yet his commander-in-chief Obama has chosen not to relieve him of command. Instead German leaders have openly criticized Breedlove and the European Union wants to replace NATO with its own continental army. This very public geopolitical conflict over such widely differing Western approaches toward Ukraine seriously undermine American Empire’s global influence and power, again underscoring simultaneous developments around the world that indicate consistent across the boards US foreign policy failures and from the broader context, a rapid US decline as the sole global hegemonic superpower.

Putin advisor Sergei Glazyev nailed it when he said:

The war has been provoked to destroy the Russian World, to draw Europe into it, and to surround Russia with hostile countries. Unleashing this world war, America is trying to deal with its own internal problems.

Current economic turmoil reverberating in Japan is in large part due to the notorious corruption of the Abe government that may soon have additional problems to contend with once accusations over a fraudulent past elections get fully exposed.

Abe has been a subservient tool used by the same international crime syndicate controlled by subversive Israeli-American forces. As such, Japan will also be moving away from the USD/West geopolitics and very likely pivoting toward China and a Pacific alliance that excludes the US Empire finding itself increasingly isolated on the outs.

Though incumbent Prime Minister Netanyahu is the apparent winner in today’s Israeli election, the despot had to claw and fight for his political life to survive another day. Recent revelations that he’s been a Russian spy surfaced right after his disgraceful debacle in front of the Israeli captured US congressional audience on Capitol Hill two weeks ago and then came the despicable treasonous display of 47 Republican senators threatening letter to Iran.

Bibi’s days of hate, war and paranoia are numbered as the ugly truth about his evildoing will continue to unfold that will soon bring him down. Showing his true evil colors right to the end, the day before the election Netanyahu once again reminded the world that an autonomous Palestinian state will never come to pass while on his watch.

Within the last couple weeks other mysterious events suggesting some cataclysmic, behind-the-scenes development included the apparent disappearance of Vladimir Putin for 11 consecutive days, fueling speculation from an internal political coup to possible sickness and/or death to witnessing the birth of his child at the bedside of his girlfriend in Switzerland.

Because so many monumental breaking stories and developments seem to abound every week, Putin’s normally high profile lifestyle would naturally generate even higher profile speculation over his abrupt, extended disappearance. Of course it begs the question asking if it’s merely coincidental with these other earth-shaking events or very much related.

For years the CIA and US Empire have been hard at work in nations from Eastern Europe through the Caucasus to Central Asia all the way to China courting the favor of corrupt dictators and supporting coups promoting anti-Russo-Sino US puppet governments along the entire corridor bordering Russia and China. Despite such Obama’s plan after the 2008 Russian-Georgia conflict was to a reset relations with Russia.

But with last year’s US-induced Ukrainian coup and Russia’s annexation by consensual vote of Crimea that “reset” plan went out the window. In 2011 Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed the economic alliance of the Eurasian Union. Meanwhile, recognizing the strategic importance of the land bridge between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Putin has made inroads strengthening ties with the three South Caucasus nations.

Putin enticed Armenia to also join the Eurasian Union and has mediated hostilities between Armenia and oil rich Azerbaijan while seeking to repair and realign with Georgia that previously leaned toward the West. US Empire has largely failed to gain a foothold in this part of the world.

Other key geopolitical developments that have been ongoing for some time center in such remote places as western China’s mineral and oil-rich Xinjiang Province. With the powerful US Navy patrolling and to a great extent controlling Pacific waters in conjunction with Obama’s flop of an Asian Pacific pivot, the geopolitics chessboard strategy to hem the two adversarial giants in with hostile neighbors has generally backfired.

Furthermore, the US was not prepared for Russia and China to suddenly renew an ultra-close economic, political and military bond that would effectively counter US Empire’s hegemonic aggression. They promptly signed a $400 billion oil-gas pipeline deal that will span a landlocked pathway, thereby foiling the US plan to seal off the China’s energy access via the Pacific.

Hence, Moslem populated Xinjiang Province that is the proposed pipeline passage route has become a highly contentious target where the West and CIA in particular have been funding and supporting a separatist movement and acts of terrorism as a disruptive interdiction tactic. Overall this covert strategy has failed.

The Western cabal controlled crime syndicate led by the likes of kingpin Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu financed and supported by the likes of multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson and the Saudi royal family along with congressional henchman and ISIS friend Senator John McCain and the rest of his treasonous Republicans, the rogue US intelligence agency the CIA and NATO’s General Breedlove are all bent on plunging the US Empire-NATO forces into World War III on multiple warfronts at every global hotspot – Ukraine, Syria, Iran, the Caucasus all the way eastward to China’s Xinjiang Province and northward to the oil-rich Arctic against the forces of the two most powerful nations of the East – Russia and China.

As a desperate last ditch attempt to retain its many centuries of Rothschild-Rockefeller power and dominance, these evil-minded, megalomaniacal psychopaths know that their hitherto unchallenged global control and strength that have bankrupted and nearly destroyed the planet is fast slipping away. So they seem all the more erratically resolute in seeking revenge by taking the entire earth down with them.

The truth about the horror and destruction these Western oligarchs have conspired and caused worldwide for centuries cannot even be fathomed. They have ensured a permanent state of war (in the US alone 93% of its 239 years) right up to the present Bush crime family-neocon fabrication of the “war on terror,” then under Obama this last year alone wrongly plunging America into another dangerous cold war with Putin’s Russia, and dozens of tragic false flag events like 9/11 designed to demonize Moslems into becoming the instantaneous post-Communist designated enemy of the twenty-first century with the US-Saudi-Israeli creation of al Qaeda/ISIS. These dark malevolent forces of evil that have propagated so much misery and suffering on humanity for so long are finally at last being exposed like never before.

The Western oligarch agenda to inflict a globalized system of absolute totalitarian fascist police state NWO control on every nation and people on earth trapped in hopeless debtor bondage may just be running into a brick Eastern wall as clear losers in the ongoing economic/currency war.

Despite the constant jabbing of Putin and his Russian bear in vain attempts to manipulate him to react with military force in eastern Ukraine and despite the failed overt assault in the form of US Empire’s Asian pivot designed to close in and isolate China from the rest of Pacific Asia, ironically it’s the United States that finds itself increasingly alone as the longtime global village bully that’s finally met its match about to get its comeuppance.

The smarter, economically stronger forces emerging from the East are winning the power war potentially without even firing a single shot against Western oppressors. Hopefully peace will prevail and the international crime syndicate that has long controlled the West will be deposed of as the murderous traitors to both peace and humankind.

As a necessary qualifier, actual real life tends toward shades of gray far more than black and white. Undoubtedly elements of corruption and evil lurk behind all the most powerful nations in both the West and the East. But the forces of China and Russia appear to be seeking a far more rational, humane and even peaceful resolution to the West-instigated West vs. East geopolitical military showdown sinisterly orchestrated by the international crime cabal’s global agenda of polarization, militarization, privatization and unsustainable, insurmountable debt-driven feudalism based on pure theft, deception, exploitation, impoverishment and pervasive planetary destruction.

Seeking to avoid the inevitable bloodbath that would result from world war and possible nuclear annihilation of all life forms on earth, the East appears to be seeking to avert such global disaster by ensuring that this ongoing war is won by successfully transitioning to an international currency backed once again by the gold standard.

The Western central banking cabal consisting of the Bank of England and other European central banks, America’s Federal Reserve Board, its World Bank and International Monetary Fund along with the Israeli-US government crime cabal all stand to ultimately be stripped of their absolute power that have the entire world drowning in debt, crushing destabilization and impoverished despair. But now a light at the end of the tunnel at least is shining a little brighter.

Paul Craig Roberts is interviewed by a Russian magazine on Washington's plan for Ukraine and his American audience..

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PCR Interviewed by the Russian analytical magazine Political Education.

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February 5, 2015 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

PCR Interviewed by the Russian analytical magazine Political Education. English language translation of original Cyrillic.

http://www.lawinrussia.ru/node/328645

Russian Interview 2-04-15

What is your viewpoint about the situation in Donbass region? Could you give us some prognosis of further development of the Ukrainian conflict?

For centuries Ukraine was part of Russia and then the Soviet Union.  When the Soviet Union collapsed, Washington insisted on breaking Ukraine apart from Russia.  This separation was required both by the Brzezinski doctrine and by the neoconservative doctrine of US world hegemony. 

The creation of an independent Ukrainian state did not in itself succeed in breaking Ukraine from Russia.  The southern and eastern provinces are inhabited by Russians. There is much intermarriage, with relatives in both countries. And long integration within Russia had integrated the Ukrainian economy with Russia. Also, these historic connections resulted in favorable economic standing for Ukraine in trade with Russia.

When the Washington-financed and orchestrated “Orange Revolution” failed to deliver Ukraine into Washington’s hands, Washington spent $5 billion dollars over the next decade cultivating and grooming Ukrainian politicians and creating Washington-funded NGOs capable of organizing mass protests in Kiev. 

When Russia used diplomacy to block Washington’s planned invasion of Syria and bombing of Iran, Washington realized that a New Russia had appeared, beyond Washington’s control, that was capable of blocking Washington’s intentions. Consequently, suddenly Washington’s focus shifted from the Middle East to Russia.  The groomed Ukrainian politicians were assembled.  The NGOs put the demonstrators in the streets.  The democratically elected Ukrainian government was overthrown, and Washington’s chosen puppets were put in office as per the intercepted telephone call between Victoria Nuland the US ambassador in Kiev.

Now Russia has an Ukrainian problem, brought to Vladimir Putin courtesy of Washington.

Washington hoped that its grab of Ukraine would result in Russia being evicted from its naval base in Crimea, but this hope was frustrated by the Crimean people, who voted overwhelmingly to reunite with Mother Russia. This enabled Russia to retain its warm water port.

The Russian provinces of eastern and southern Ukraine made the same vote and request, but the Russian government refused the request. Possibly the Russian government was under too much pressure from the West.  Alternatively, perhaps the Russian government hoped to retain a Russian population within Ukraine in order to regain a political lever over Kiev. It is not in Russia’s or Ukraine’s interest for there to be conflict between the two.

Statements from Washington’s puppet government in Kiev about killing Russians and prohibiting the official use of the Russian language, together with the destruction of Soviet war memorials in memory of the Red Army’s liberation of Ukraine from Hitler’s Wehrmacht, made the Russian populations of Ukraine feel threatened.  These threatened people organized military forces to defend themselves from the attacks from Kiev and formed independent republics. So far the Kiev forces have been unable to subdue the so-called “break-away provinces.”

In my opinion, the Russian government believed that Europe had more sense and more independence from Washington than it possesses. Russia thought that Europe would want to avoid the conflict that Washington was preparing for them and, therefore, would be reassured by the Russian government’s refusal of the break-away provinces’ requests and Russia’s lack of provocative action. Russia is not the problem, Putin kept telling the European vassals of Washington.

As it turned out, Europe is more firmly under Washington’s thumb than the Russian government realized.  European politicians are even willing to harm the interests of their own countries in order to serve Washington.

The Russian government now understands that Europe lacks political independence.  Putin has publicly acknowledged this fact. This improved understanding of the situation that Russia faces requires a rethinking of the situation in Ukraine.

Of the break-away provinces to unite with Russia, civil war in Ukraine is almost certain.  Washington is already moving to arm and to train the weak and disorganized Ukrainian military.  The longer Russia waits, the more formidable will be the opponent that Washington creates for Russia.  Moreover, Washington might move missile bases into Ukraine, both offensive nuclear missiles and anti-ballistic missile defensive missiles that reduce the credibility of Russia’s nuclear forces.

The longer Russia tolerates the extreme propaganda against Russia, setting Russia up as a threat to the West, while Russia is surrounded with more powerful and threatening US and NATO military bases, the harder it will be for Russia to retain an independent policy and its sovereign existence.

Washington is determined to prolong civil war in Ukraine. Russia should frustrate this intention by accepting the requests of the break-away provinces for unity with Russia. Once the Russian government accepts the break-away provinces, a continuation of war means war with Russia. Europe will follow Washington a long way, but not into war with Russia. However, Europe can be gradually eased into war with Russia, which is why Washington intends to prolong the conflict in Ukraine.

In my opinion, Russia can stop the civil war immediately by accepting the requests for unification or declaring that the provinces are under Russian protection. Perhaps the model is Russia’s success in South Ossetia.

How the US mass media covers the military conflict in the East of Ukraine?

The US print and TV media do not mention that the Russian peoples in eastern and southern Ukraine are under military attack from the US puppet government in Kiev, resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians. The reports in the presstitute Western media are that Russian tank columns and Russian troops have invaded Ukraine and are in the process of annexing the eastern and southern regions. Americans are told that Putin wants to restore the Soviet Empire. Polls show that 63% of the US population believes the anti-Russian propaganda and regards Russia as a threat to the US and Europe. The cold war has been restarted in a way that could result in a hot war and the end of life on earth.

There are even reports that Russia is preparing to invade the Baltics and Poland. The hysteria is being whipped to a high pitch. The new head of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack, has declared the English language Russian TV program RT to be a terrorist organization comparable to Boco Haram and the Islamic State.

Consequently, Washington is sending tanks, military aircraft, and troops to “defend the Baltics”. Washington is working to incorporate both Georgia and Ukraine into NATO so that the next time Georgia assaults South Ossetia Russia cannot repel the assault unless Russia is willing to go to war with NATO and the US.

Americans have forgot all about the “Muslim threat”. Now it is the “Russian threat”. The Russians are the new enemy that will guarantee massive profits for the military/security complex. Nothing is more important to Americans than money, and Russia is the excuse needed to bleed the taxpayers for the money to “resist Russian aggression”.

How do you assess the current political situation in Greece? Do you admit the possibility of strengthening of the cooperation between Russia and Greece, if we take into account the current political situation in the world?

The way the Western financial system works is this: the private banks get governments into more debt than they can service. John Perkins, one of those responsible, explains the process in his book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”. Read it and you will understand American inequity. Once a country is indebted more than it can pay, in comes the International Monetary Fund. The IMF tells the country, don’t worry we will protect your credit reputation by lending you the money to pay your creditors. 

However, the IMF money is not a gift.  It is a loan, and the “rescued country” has to repay the IMF loan by cutting social pensions and social services such as health care, by throwing people out of their government jobs, by lowering the minimum wage, and by selling off valuable public assets such as ports, municipal water companies, and national park lands, such as the protected Greek islands, to clients of the creditor banks.

In other words, the indebted country is looted in order to protect its credit rating.
This is the way Western Capitalism works. It is a looting mechanism described in idealistic language by neoliberal economists and libertarians, mentalities that also flourish in Russia.

No country would agree to the conditions if it were independent. However, under the dollar payments system, no country is independent except the US. Countries are propagandized to believe that they are cut off from credit unless they agree to being looted by the clients of their creditor banks.

This is the way Western financial capitalism works.

The problem for Greece is that the conditions imposed on Greece are so extreme as to produce depression. The IMF/EU “adjustment program” imposed on Greece has resulted in economic collapse. The simple fact is that the austerity program drives down the economy, thus worsening the burden of the debt.

Faced with this challenge, Greeks voted in a new government, but the new government is one with 36% of the vote, a larger vote than its various rivals, but not a convincing majority that allows Greece to stand up to its creditors and to the EU, which is using the “sovereign debt crisis” to destroy the remaining sovereignty of the individual member countries of the EU.

As I explain in my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, Greece is the test case for establishing two new principles:  One is that creditors are not responsible for over-lending or for making bad loans.  Instead, the people of the indebted country are responsible.  The other is that the tendency of governments to over-borrow means that the EU government takes over their fiscal policy and makes the tax and spend decisions for the EU member countries. In other words, European countries are to be ruled from Brussels just as the 50 American states, despite the US Constitution, are ruled by Washington. If the EU and the private banks decide that they will not accept any renegotiation of the debt conditions from Greece and that the only issue is pay up or else, the new Greek government has the alternative of applying to the BRICS for financial support.

If Greece is faced with Western intransigence, Greece’s alternative is to leave, or be kicked out of, the EU, the euro, and NATO and to ally with support offered by Russia and the BRICS. Intransigence on the part of the EU and Greece’s creditors could result in Greece turning to Russia and the BRICS.  If this were to happen, other EU member countries, such as Italy, Spain, and Portugal, which are threatened with the same horrific consequences of austerity, could also turn to the BRICS. The consequence would be to unravel, the EU, the euro, and NATO, a highly desirable outcome in terms of peace and justice.

Clearly, Russia has handed Greece the trump card.  But does the new Greek government dare to play it?  From Iran through Africa, South America, and Indonesia, leaders of governments who have diverged from Washington’s policy have been overthrown or assassinated. Stephen Kinzer’s book, The Brothers, provides case studies of the overthrow of governments by CIA Director Allen Dulles and US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.  The US even tried to overthrow Chavez in Venezuela whose electoral support was far higher than the new Greek government.

Does the US government face the credibility gap from the American society? If so what measures should be undertaken to overcome this internal political situation?

The American people show conflicting signs. Polls show that there is very little support for President Obama and for the Congress. The majority of the population is disgusted. The question is: what precisely is the public disgusted about, because polls also show that the public, or 63% of it, has accepted the anti-Russian, anti-Putin propaganda put out by Washington and the Western media. 

So this is a paradox. Americans know that the US government lied to them about Saddam Hussein, Libya, Assad of Syria, Afghanistan and the Taliban, Iranian nuclear weapons and a long list of other things. Yet, despite this awareness, the American people have accepted the latest lie that Russia is a threat.

The US does not have an independent media. The print and TV media serve as a Ministry of Propaganda for Washington and the powerful private interests, such as Wall Street, the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, the extractive industries (energy, mining, timber), and agribusiness (Monsanto). For an American to be informed requires much time spent visiting Internet sites and learning which are reliable and accurate. Few Americans, pressed as they are to earn enough to pay their bills with many working two or three part-time jobs, simply have not the time or energy to devote to being informed. 

How do you see the future of the European Union? Do you admit the possibility of the new alignment of political forces in the world and subsequent establishment of the new world order?

The “new world order” means different things to different people. The neoconservatives who control US foreign policy are determined that the ONLY world order is Washington’s hegemony over the world. No other “world orders” are permissible. The question that the world faces is whether this determination on the part of neoconservatives to dominate the planet results in nuclear war that destroys us all. Washington under neoconservative leadership and control is the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced.

Possibly, Western economic collapse and/or a successful reorganization of economic life by the BRICS and associated countries can curtail Washington’s appetite for power as Washington’s power goes into decline. If so, the world could enjoy an era of peace and prosperity. It really depends on how clever Russia, China, and allied nations are at remaking the world.

How the American audience reacts to your works/viewpoints/articles/statements and so on? Whether such political views get a big response in the American society?

On a scale of 1-10, my website has a viewer ranking of 6, which is the highest ever attained by a one-person website. Only large institutions, such as Harvard University and Amazon.com are found among the higher ranking. Moreover, a large number of other websites, both large and small, reproduce my columns. Additionally, my columns are translated into many languages. The translations about which I am informed are Chinese, Russian, German, French, Danish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, and Czech.

I receive many interview requests from alternative media within the US and from foreign countries and many requests to travel to foreign countries to speak at conferences. 

Although I seem to be one of the most well known “public intellectuals”, only a small percentage of the US population knows who I am. The same was true when I was one of the principle members of the Reagan administration. For the most part, the Americans are an insouciant people. Their grasp of the world in which they live is very limited, and it is this failure that dooms them.

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Here uber economist Paul Craig Roberts is interviewed for his views of Washington’s pressure on Russia and where it all may end. PCR responded that western financial institutions, e.g., the World Bank, IMF, and SWIFT currency transfer bank have been exploitive of the rest of the world, which therefore may soon abandon them. Asked what may happen to Russia, PCR explains that the “stupid” people running Washington have unknowingly invited all manners of “black swans,” i.e., unexpected events of large magnitude and grave consequences. For example Russia could retaliate for pressure on the ruble by delaying payment of its debts to European banks in 2015, which would promptly crash virtually all of them. Alternately, Russia may buy gold on the paper-gold COMEX and demand payment in bullion, as is anyone’s right. And if they are ever refused, COMEX (representing 80 times more paper gold than its supposed bullion bank) would crash, whereupon the demand for (and dollar price of) gold bullion would sky rocket. Another thing Russia could do would be to use its dollar holdings to buy up all the western world’s (greatly devalued) rubles and subsequently demand that any one dealing with Russia must either buy revalued-in-dollars rubles or be members of the BRICS countries, which would pay with their own currency at mutually agreed exchange rates. Finally, although PCR doesn’t think he would do it, Putin could announce that Russia will no longer sell energy to NATO, which would result in its instant disintegration as a military threat.

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 Original Here

Today Dr. Paul Craig Roberts warned King World News that the Russians are going to unleash what he called the "ultimate black swan" against the West.  Dr. Roberts also discussed how a terrifying series of events would then bring the Western financial system to it knees as the banking system completely collapses.

Dr. Roberts:  “I was listening to the news today and there were all these self-righteous people just happy as all get out that they had finally stomped Russia into the ground and ‘Russia is now finished,’ and Russia was broken and ‘would soon be an American vassal state where it belongs.'  And I was listening to this rot and got to thinking, ‘How can people be so utterly stupid?’  But they are, and they are just as stupid in Washington.

And in the meantime, as part of this process, Eric, we may see Russia unleash black swans that bring down the Western house of cards….

Blogger's Note: There is an audio interview associated with this which could not be embedded here.  So you must click the link below to play it.  The photo below the link is an image of the functional audio that you will find at the new site.

http://kingworldnews.com/dr-paul-craig-roberts-12-20-14/

You will also find Doctor Roberts' very impressive curriculum vite here.

This is an excellent article on an event of global importance that has probably not been mentioned in the US "mainstream media," having the motto "All the news fit to print ...if permited by Washington." The only problem with this article is a large number of imaginative terminologies, which I translate as follows: Washington consensus = "international financial system"; vengeful Empire of Chaos = US foreign policy; the epitome of financial speculation = American vulture funds; Masters of the Universe = US financial speculation, vulture funds and hegemony; casino capitalism speculation "model" = US capitalism; Panopticon = armor and weapons; neoliberalism = leading to global totalitarianism; hegemonic Masters of the Universe gang = US and its European vassals

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OpEdNews Op Eds 7/15/2014 at 23:27:06

BRICS against Washington consensus

By Pepe Escobar (about the author)     Permalink

                                                                                       Headlined to H3 7/15/14

opednews.com

Cross-posted from Asia Times

BRICS establish $100 Billion Development Bank
to cut out Western dominance (image by YouTube)

The headline news is that this Tuesday in Fortaleza, northeast Brazil, the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) fights the (Neoliberal) World (Dis)Order via a new development bank and a reserve fund set up to offset financial crises.

The devil, of course, is in the details of how they'll do it.

It's been a long and winding road since Yekaterinburg in 2009, at their first summit, up to the BRICS's long-awaited counterpunch against the Bretton Woods consensus -- the IMF and the World Bank -- as well as the Japan-dominated (but largely responding to US priorities) Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The BRICS Development Bank -- with an initial US$50 billion in capital -- will be not only BRICS-oriented, but invest in infrastructure projects and sustainable development on a global scale. The model is the Brazilian BNDES, which supports Brazilian companies investing across Latin America. In a few years, it will reach a financing capacity of up to $350 billion. With extra funding especially from Beijing and Moscow, the new institution could leave the World Bank in the dust. Compare access to real capital savings to US government's printed green paper with no collateral.

And then there's the agreement establishing a $100 billion pool of reserve currencies - the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), described by Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov as "a kind of mini-IMF." That's a non-Washington consensus mechanism to counterpunch capital flight. For the pool, China will contribute with $41 billion, Brazil, India and Russia with $18 billion each, and South Africa with $5 billion.

The development bank should be headquartered in Shanghai -- although Mumbai has forcefully tried to make its case (for an Indian take on the BRICS strategy, see here)

Way beyond economy and finance, this is essentially about geopolitics -- as in emerging powers offering an alternative to the failed Washington consensus. Or, as consensus apologists say, the BRICS may be able to "alleviate challenges" they face from the "international financial system." The strategy also happens to be one of the key nodes of the progressively solidified China-Russia alliance, recently featured via the gas "deal of the century" and at the St. Petersburg economic forum.

Let's play geopolitical ball

Just as Brazil managed, against plenty of odds, to stage an unforgettable World Cup -- the melting of the national team notwithstanding -- Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping now come to the neighborhood to play top class geopolitical ball.

The Kremlin views the bilateral relation with Brasilia as highly strategic. Putin not only watched the World Cup final in Rio; apart from Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, he also met German chancellor Angela Merkel (they discussed Ukraine in detail). Yet arguably the key member of Putin's traveling party is Elvira Nabiulin, president of Russia's Central Bank; she is pressing in South America the concept that all negotiations with the BRICS should bypass the US dollar. Emphasis the blogger.

Putin's extremely powerful, symbolic meeting with Fidel Castro in Havana, as well as writing off $36 billion in Cuban debt could not have had a more meaningful impact all across Latin America. Compare it with the perennial embargo imposed by a vengeful Empire of Chaos.

In South America, Putin is meeting not only with Uruguay's President Pepe Mujica -- discussing, among other items, the construction of a deepwater port -- but also with Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and Bolivia's Evo Morales.

Xi Jinping is also on tour, visiting, apart from Brazil, Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela. What Beijing is saying (and doing) complements Moscow; Latin America is viewed as highly strategic. That should translate into more Chinese investment and increased South-South integration.

This Russia-China commercial/diplomatic offensive fits the concerted push towards a multipolar world -- side by side with political/economic South American leaders. Argentina is a sterling example. While Buenos Aires, already mired in recession, fights American vulture funds -- the epitome of financial speculation -- in New York courthouses, Putin and Xi come offering investment in everything from railways to the energy industry.

Russia's energy industry of course needs investment and technology from private Western multinationals, just as Made in China developed out of Western investment profiting from a cheap workforce. What the BRICS are trying to present to the Global South now is a choice; on one side, financial speculation, vulture funds and the hegemony of the Masters of the Universe; on the other side, productive capitalism -- an alternative strategy of capitalist development compared to the Triad (US, EU, Japan).

Still, it will be a long way for the BRICS to project a productive model independent of the casino capitalism speculation "model," by the way still recovering from the massive 2007/2008 crisis (the financial bubble has not burst for good.)

One might view the BRICS's strategy as a sort of running, constructive critique of capitalism; how to purge the system from perennially financing the US fiscal deficit as well as a global militarization syndrome -- related to the Orwellian/Panopticon complex -- subordinated to Washington. As Argentine economist Julio Gambina put it, the key question is not being emergent, but independent.

In this piece, La Stampa's Claudio Gallo introduces what could be the defining issue of the times: how neoliberalism -- ruling directly or indirectly most of the world -- is producing a disastrous anthropological mutation that is plunging us all into global totalitarianism (while everyone swears by their "freedoms").

It's always instructive to come back to Argentina. Argentina is imprisoned by a chronic foreign debt crisis essentially unleashed by the IMF over 40 years ago - and now perpetuated by vulture funds. The BRICS bank and the reserve pool as an alternative to the IMF and World Bank offer the possibility for dozens of other nations to escape the Argentine plight. Not to mention the possibility that other emerging nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran and Turkey may soon contribute to both institutions.

No wonder the hegemonic Masters of the Universe gang is uneasy in their leather chairs. This Financial Times piece neatly summarizes the view from the City of London -- a notorious casino capitalism paradise.

These are heady days in South America in more ways than one. Atlanticist hegemony will remain part of the picture, of course, but it's the BRICS's strategy that is pointing the way further on down the road. And still the multipolar wheel keeps rolling along.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His regular column, "The Roving Eye," is widely read. He is an analyst for the online news channel Real News, the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.  He argues that the world has become fragmented into "stans" -- we are now living an intestinal war, an undeclared global civil war. He has published three books on geopolitics, including the spectacularly-titled "Globalistan: How the Globalised World Is Dissolving Into Liquid War". His latest book is "Obama Does Globalistan."

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT, a TomDispatch regular, and the originator of "Pipelineistan," refering to existing and contemplated countries that are now and/or hoping to later carry oil and gas to the rest of Asia as well as to ports where these critical energy sources can be exported to the rest of the world. He begins by raising the specter haunting Washington's intention to achieve world hegemony, namely, the "unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass -- at the expense of the United States."

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Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Who's Pivoting Where in Eurasia?

Posted by Pepe Escobar at 4:49pm, May 18, 2014.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.

The Birth of a Eurasian Century
Russia and China Do Pipelineistan
By Pepe Escobar

HONG KONG -- A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass -- at the expense of the United States.

And no wonder Washington is anxious.  That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian counterweight to NATO; inside the G20; and via the 120-member-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Trade and commerce are just part of the future bargain.  Synergies in the development of new military technologies beckon as well. After Russia’s Star Wars-style, ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense anti-missile system comes online in 2018, Beijing is sure to want a version of it. Meanwhile, Russia is about to sell dozens of state-of-the-art Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters to the Chinese as Beijing and Moscow move to seal an aviation-industrial partnership.

This week should provide the first real fireworks in the celebration of a new Eurasian century-in-the-making when Russian President Vladimir Putin drops in on Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.  You remember “Pipelineistan,” all those crucial oil and gas pipelines crisscrossing Eurasia that make up the true circulatory system for the life of the region.  Now, it looks like the ultimate Pipelineistan deal, worth $1 trillion and 10 years in the making, will be inked as well.  In it, the giant, state-controlled Russian energy giant Gazprom will agree to supply the giant state-controlled China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) with 3.75 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day for no less than 30 years, starting in 2018. That’s the equivalent of a quarter of Russia’s massive gas exports to all of Europe. China’s current daily gas demand is around 16 billion cubic feet a day, and imports account for 31.6% of total consumption.

Gazprom may still collect the bulk of its profits from Europe, but Asia could turn out to be its Everest. The company will use this mega-deal to boost investment in Eastern Siberia and the whole region will be reconfigured as a privileged gas hub for Japan and South Korea as well. If you want to know why no key country in Asia has been willing to “isolate” Russia in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis -- and in defiance of the Obama administration -- look no further than Pipelineistan.

Exit the Petrodollar, Enter the Gas-o-Yuan

And then, talking about anxiety in Washington, there’s the fate of the petrodollar to consider, or rather the “thermonuclear” possibility that Moscow and Beijing will agree on payment for the Gazprom-CNPC deal not in petrodollars but in Chinese yuan. One can hardly imagine a more tectonic shift, with Pipelineistan intersecting with a growing Sino-Russian political-economic-energy partnership. Along with it goes the future possibility of a push, led again by China and Russia, toward a new international reserve currency -- actually a basket of currencies -- that would supersede the dollar (at least in the optimistic dreams of BRICS members).

Right after the potentially game-changing Sino-Russian summit comes a BRICS summit in Brazil in July. That’s when a $100 billion BRICS development bank, announced in 2012, will officially be born as a potential alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as a source of project financing for the developing world.

More BRICS cooperation meant to bypass the dollar is reflected in the “Gas-o-yuan,” as in natural gas bought and paid for in Chinese currency. Gazprom is even considering marketing bonds in yuan as part of the financial planning for its expansion. Yuan-backed bonds are already trading in Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and most recently Frankfurt.

Nothing could be more sensible for the new Pipelineistan deal than to have it settled in yuan. Beijing would pay Gazprom in that currency (convertible into rubles); Gazprom would accumulate the yuan; and Russia would then buy myriad made-in-China goods and services in yuan convertible into rubles.

It’s common knowledge that banks in Hong Kong, from Standard Chartered to HSBC -- as well as others closely linked to China via trade deals -- have been diversifying into the yuan, which implies that it could become one of the de facto global reserve currencies even before it’s fully convertible. (Beijing is unofficially working for a fully convertible yuan by 2018.)

The Russia-China gas deal is inextricably tied up with the energy relationship between the European Union (EU) and Russia. After all, the bulk of Russia’s gross domestic product comes from oil and gas sales, as does much of its leverage in the Ukraine crisis. In turn, Germany depends on Russia for a hefty 30% of its natural gas supplies. Yet Washington’s geopolitical imperatives -- spiced up with Polish hysteria -- have meant pushing Brussels to find ways to “punish” Moscow in the future energy sphere (while not imperiling present day energy relationships).

There’s a consistent rumble in Brussels these days about the possible cancellation of the projected 16 billion euro South Stream pipeline, whose construction is to start in June.  On completion, it would pump yet more Russian natural gas to Europe -- in this case, underneath the Black Sea (bypassing Ukraine) to Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Greece, Italy, and Austria.

Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have already made it clear that they are firmly opposed to any cancellation.  And cancellation is probably not in the cards.  After all, the only obvious alternative is Caspian Sea gas from Azerbaijan, and that isn’t likely to happen unless the EU can suddenly muster the will and funds for a crash schedule to construct the fabled Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, conceived during the Clinton years expressly to bypass Russia and Iran.

In any case, Azerbaijan doesn’t have enough capacity to supply the levels of natural gas needed, and other actors like Kazakhstan, plagued with infrastructure problems, or unreliable Turkmenistan, which prefers to sell its gas to China, are already largely out of the picture. And don’t forget that South Stream, coupled with subsidiary energy projects, will create a lot of jobs and investment in many of the most economically devastated EU nations.

Nonetheless, such EU threats, however unrealistic, only serve to accelerate Russia’s increasing symbiosis with Asian markets. For Beijing especially, it’s a win-win situation. After all, between energy supplied across seas policed and controlled by the U.S. Navy and steady, stable land routes out of Siberia, it’s no contest.

Pick Your Own Silk Road

Of course, the U.S. dollar remains the top global reserve currency, involving 33% of global foreign exchange holdings at the end of 2013, according to the IMF. It was, however, at 55% in 2000. Nobody knows the percentage in yuan (and Beijing isn’t talking), but the IMF notes that reserves in “other currencies” in emerging markets have been up 400% since 2003.

The Fed is arguably monetizing 70% of the U.S. government debt in an attempt to keep interest rates from heading skywards. Pentagon adviser Jim Rickards, as well as every Hong Kong-based banker, tends to believe that the Fed is bust (though they won’t say it on the record). No one can even imagine the extent of the possible future deluge the U.S. dollar might experience amid a $1.4 quadrillion Mount Ararat of financial derivatives.  Don’t think that this is the death knell of Western capitalism, however, just the faltering of that reigning economic faith, neoliberalism, still the official ideology of the United States, the overwhelming majority of the European Union, and parts of Asia and South America.

As far as what might be called the “authoritarian neoliberalism” of the Middle Kingdom, what’s not to like at the moment? China has proven that there is a result-oriented alternative to the Western “democratic” capitalist model for nations aiming to be successful. It’s building not one, but myriad new Silk Roads, massive webs of high-speed railways, highways, pipelines, ports, and fiber optic networks across huge parts of Eurasia. These include a Southeast Asian road, a Central Asian road, an Indian Ocean “maritime highway” and even a high-speed rail line through Iran and Turkey reaching all the way to Germany.

In April, when President Xi Jinping visited the city of Duisburg on the Rhine River, with the largest inland harbor in the world and right in the heartland of Germany’s Ruhr steel industry, he made an audacious proposal: a new “economic Silk Road” should be built between China and Europe, on the basis of the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe railway, which already runs from China to Kazakhstan, then through Russia, Belarus, Poland, and finally Germany. That’s 15 days by train, 20 less than for cargo ships sailing from China’s eastern seaboard. Now that would represent the ultimate geopolitical earthquake in terms of integrating economic growth across Eurasia.

Keep in mind that, if no bubbles burst, China is about to become -- and remain -- the number one global economic power, a position it enjoyed for 18 of the past 20 centuries. But don’t tell London hagiographers; they still believe that U.S. hegemony will last, well, forever.

Take Me to Cold War 2.0

Despite recent serious financial struggles, the BRICS countries have been consciously working to become a counterforce to the original and -- having tossed Russia out in March -- once again Group of 7, or G7. They are eager to create a new global architecture to replace the one first imposed in the wake of World War II, and they see themselves as a potential challenge to the exceptionalist and unipolar world that Washington imagines for our future (with itself as the global robocop and NATO as its robo-police force). Historian and imperialist cheerleader Ian Morris, in his book War! What is it Good For?, defines the U.S. as the ultimate “globocop” and “the last best hope of Earth.” If that globocop “wearies of its role,” he writes, “there is no plan B.”     

Well, there is a plan BRICS -- or so the BRICS nations would like to think, at least. And when the BRICS do act in this spirit on the global stage, they quickly conjure up a curious mix of fear, hysteria, and pugnaciousness in the Washington establishment. Take Christopher Hill as an example. The former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and U.S. ambassador to Iraq is now an advisor with the Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting firm deeply connected to the White House and the State Department. When Russia was down and out, Hill used to dream of a hegemonic American “new world order.”  Now that the ungrateful Russians have spurned what “the West has been offering” -- that is, “special status with NATO, a privileged relationship with the European Union, and partnership in international diplomatic endeavors” -- they are, in his view, busy trying to revive the Soviet empire. Translation: if you’re not our vassals, you’re against us.  Welcome to Cold War 2.0.   

The Pentagon has its own version of this directed not so much at Russia as at China, which, its think tank on future warfare claims, is already at war with Washington in a number of ways. So if it’s not apocalypse now, it’s Armageddon tomorrow. And it goes without saying that whatever’s going wrong, as the Obama administration very publicly “pivots” to Asia and the American media fills with talk about a revival of Cold War-era “containment policy” in the Pacific, it’s all China’s fault.

Embedded in the mad dash toward Cold War 2.0 are some ludicrous facts-on-the-ground: the U.S. government, with $17.5 trillion in national debt and counting, is contemplating a financial showdown with Russia, the largest global energy producer and a major nuclear power, just as it’s also promoting an economically unsustainable military encirclement of its largest creditor, China.

Russia runs a sizeable trade surplus. Humongous Chinese banks will have no trouble helping Russian banks out if Western funds dry up. In terms of inter-BRICS cooperation, few projects beat a $30 billion oil pipeline in the planning stages that will stretch from Russia to India via Northwest China. Chinese companies are already eagerly discussing the possibility of taking part in the creation of a transport corridor from Russia into Crimea, as well as an airport, shipyard, and liquid natural gas terminal there. And there’s another “thermonuclear” gambit in the making: the birth of a natural gas equivalent to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries that would include Russia, Iran, and reportedly disgruntled U.S. ally Qatar.

The (unstated) BRICS long-term plan involves the creation of an alternative economic system featuring a basket of gold-backed currencies that would bypass the present America-centric global financial system. (No wonder Russia and China are amassing as much gold as they can.) The euro -- a sound currency backed by large liquid bond markets and huge gold reserves -- would be welcomed in as well.

It’s no secret in Hong Kong that the Bank of China has been using a parallel SWIFT network to conduct every kind of trade with Tehran, which is under a heavy U.S. sanctions regime. With Washington wielding Visa and Mastercard as weapons in a growing Cold War-style economic campaign against Russia, Moscow is about to implement an alternative payment and credit card system not controlled by Western finance. An even easier route would be to adopt the Chinese Union Pay system, whose operations have already overtaken American Express in global volume.   

I’m Just Pivoting With Myself

No amount of Obama administration “pivoting” to Asia to contain China (and threaten it with U.S. Navy control of the energy sea lanes to that country) is likely to push Beijing far from its Deng Xiaoping-inspired, self-described “peaceful development” strategy meant to turn it into a global powerhouse of trade.  Nor are the forward deployment of U.S. or NATO troops in Eastern Europe or other such Cold-War-ish acts likely to deter Moscow from a careful balancing act: ensuring that Russia’s sphere of influence in Ukraine remains strong without compromising trade and commercial, as well as political, ties with the European Union -- above all, with strategic partner Germany. This is Moscow’s Holy Grail; a free-trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which (not by accident) is mirrored in China’s dream of a new Silk Road to Germany.

Increasingly wary of Washington, Berlin for its part abhors the notion of Europe being caught in the grips of a Cold War 2.0. German leaders have more important fish to fry, including trying to stabilize a wobbly EU while warding off an economic collapse in southern and central Europe and the advance of ever more extreme rightwing parties.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Obama and his top officials show every sign of becoming entangled in their own pivoting -- to Iran, to China, to Russia’s eastern borderlands, and (under the radar) to Africa. The irony of all these military-first maneuvers is that they are actually helping Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing build up their own strategic depth in Eurasia and elsewhere, as reflected in Syria, or crucially in ever more energy deals. They are also helping cement the growing strategic partnership between China and Iran. The unrelenting Ministry of Truth narrative out of Washington about all these developments now carefully ignores the fact that, without Moscow, the “West” would never have sat down to discuss a final nuclear deal with Iran or gotten a chemical disarmament agreement out of Damascus.

When the disputes between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea and between that country and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyou islands meet the Ukraine crisis, the inevitable conclusion will be that both Russia and China consider their borderlands and sea lanes private property and aren’t going to take challenges quietly -- be it via NATO expansion, U.S. military encirclement, or missile shields. Neither Beijing nor Moscow is bent on the usual form of imperialist expansion, despite the version of events now being fed to Western publics.  Their “red lines” remain essentially defensive in nature, no matter the bluster sometimes involved in securing them.

Whatever Washington may want or fear or try to prevent, the facts on the ground suggest that, in the years ahead, Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran will only grow closer, slowly but surely creating a new geopolitical axis in Eurasia. Meanwhile, a discombobulated America seems to be aiding and abetting the deconstruction of its own unipolar world order, while offering the BRICS a genuine window of opportunity to try to change the rules of the game. 

Russia and China in Pivot Mode

In Washington’s think-tank land, the conviction that the Obama administration should be focused on replaying the Cold War via a new version of containment policy to “limit the development of Russia as a hegemonic power” has taken hold. The recipe: weaponize the neighbors from the Baltic states to Azerbaijan to “contain” Russia. Cold War 2.0 is on because, from the point of view of Washington’s elites, the first one never really left town.

Yet as much as the U.S. may fight the emergence of a multipolar, multi-powered world, economic facts on the ground regularly point to such developments.  The question remains: Will the decline of the hegemon be slow and reasonably dignified, or will the whole world be dragged down with it in what has been called “the Samson option”?

While we watch the spectacle unfold, with no end game in sight, keep in mind that a new force is growing in Eurasia, with the Sino-Russian strategic alliance threatening to dominate its heartland along with great stretches of its inner rim. Now, that’s a nightmare of Mackinderesque proportions from Washington’s point of view.  Think, for instance, of how Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser who became a mentor on global politics to President Obama, would see it.

In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski argued that “the struggle for global primacy [would] continue to be played” on the Eurasian “chessboard,” of which “Ukraine was a geopolitical pivot.” “If Moscow regains control over Ukraine,” he wrote at the time, Russia would “automatically regain the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.”

That remains most of the rationale behind the American imperial containment policy -- from Russia’s European “near abroad” to the South China Sea. Still, with no endgame in sight, keep your eye on Russia pivoting to Asia, China pivoting across the world, and the BRICS hard at work trying to bring about the new Eurasian Century.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT, and a TomDispatch regular. With a chapter on Iran, he is a contributing editor to The Global Obama: Crossroads of Leadership in the 21st Century. Follow him on Facebook.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook and Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars -- The Untold Story.
Copyright 2014 Pepe Escobar

Back when Ronald Reagen termed the Soviet Union "the evil empire," Paul Craig Roberts was his Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for policy. Now in the 21st Century Roberts sees the US as the evil empire and hopes that Russia will realize this in time to avert a nuclear World War III on the centenial of WW I.

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Washington Drives The World To War — Paul Craig Roberts

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April 14, 2014 | Original Here                                              Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Washington Drives The World To War

Paul Craig Roberts

The CIA director was sent to Kiev to launch a military suppression of the Russian separatists in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine, former Russian territories for the most part that were foolishly attached to the Ukraine in the early years of Soviet rule. 

Washington’s plan to grab Ukraine overlooked that the Russian and Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine were not likely to go along with their insertion into the EU and NATO while submitting to the persecution of Russian speaking peoples.  Washington has lost Crimea, from which Washington intended to eject Russia from its Black Sea naval base. Instead of admitting that its plan for grabbing Ukraine has gone amiss, Washington is unable to admit a mistake and, therefore, is pushing the crisis to more dangerous levels.

If Ukraine dissolves into secession with the former Russian territories reverting to Russia, Washington will be embarrassed that the result of its coup in Kiev was to restore the Russian provinces of Ukraine to Russia.  To avoid this embarrassment, Washington is pushing the crisis toward war.

The CIA director instructed Washington’s hand-picked stooge government in Kiev to apply to the United Nations for help in repelling “terrorists” who with alleged Russian help are allegedly attacking Ukraine. In Washington’s vocabulary, self-determination is a sign of Russian interference. As the UN is essentially a Washington-financed organization, Washington will get what it wants.

The Russian government has already made it completely clear some weeks ago that the use of violence against protesters in eastern and southern Ukraine would compel the Russian government to send in the Russian army to protect Russians, just as Russia had to do in South Ossetia when Washington instructed its Georgian puppet ruler to attack Russian peacekeeping troops and Russian residents of South Ossetia. 

Washington knows that the Russian government cannot stand aside while one of Washington’s puppet states attacks Russians.  Yet, Washington is pushing the crisis to war.

The danger for Russia is that the Russian government will rely on diplomacy, international organizations, international cooperation, and on the common sense and self-interest of German politicians and politicians in other of Washington’s European puppet states.

For Russia this could be a fatal mistake. There is no good will in Washington, only mendacity. Russian delay provides Washington with time to build up forces on Russia’s borders and in the Black Sea and to demonize Russia with propaganda and whip up the US population into a war frenzy.  The latter is already occurring. 

Kerry has made it clear to Lavrov that Washington is not listening to Russia. As Washington pays well, Washington’s European puppets are also not listening to Russia. Money is more important to European politicians than humanity’s survival.

In my opinion, Washington does not want the Ukraine matters settled in a diplomatic and reasonable way. It might be the case that Russia’s best move is immediately to occupy the Russian territories of Ukraine and re-absorb the territories into Russia from whence they came. This should be done before the US and its NATO puppets are prepared for war. It is more difficult for Washington to start a war when the objects of the war have already been lost. Russia will be demonized with endless propaganda from Washington whether or not Russia re-absorbs its traditional territories. If Russia allows these territories to be suppressed by Washington, the prestige and authority of the Russian government will collapse. Perhaps that is what Washington is counting on.

If Putin’s government stands aside while Russian Ukraine is suppressed, Putin’s prestige will plummet, and Washington will finish off the Russian government by putting into action its many hundreds of Washington-financed NGOs that the Russian government has so foolishly tolerated.  Russia is riven with Washington’s Fifth columns.

In my opinion, the Russian and Chinese governments have made serious strategic mistakes by remaining within the US dollar-based international payments system. The BRICS and any others with a brain should instantly desert the dollar system, which is a mechanism for US imperialism. The countries of the BRICS should immediately create their own separate payments system and their own exclusive communications/Internet system. 

Russia and China have stupidly made these strategic mistakes, because reeling from communist failures and oppressions, they naively assumed that Washington was pure, that Washington was committed to its propagandistic self-description as the upholder of law, justice, mercy,and  human rights.

In fact, Washington, the “exceptional, indispensable country,” is committed to its hegemony over the world. Russia, China, and Iran are in the way of Washington’s hegemony and are targeted for attack.
 
The attack on Russia is mounting.

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