The backstory of this article is that Russia was planning a gas pipeline under the Black Sea to arrive in Greece and from there move up the Balkans serving nearly everyone all the way up to Vienna. Everyone was happy about that. But then came Washington’s lies demonizing Russia by falsely claiming that Putin had attacked Ukraine. This mischief was followed by sanctions that hurt the EU much more than Russia. Then the US forced Bulgaria to block the Russian pipeline. Still it could have gone through Greece and Macedonia, but the U.S. responded that in that event Russia would have to pay a toll for all of the gas delivered by Russians in Europe. Undaunted, Putin made a deal with Turkey (a NATO nation!) to bring the pipeline just outside the border from Greece, so if there ever was to be such a toll it would be paid by Europeans. To solve that problem, Washington decided that the time had come to stop the Russian pipeline by overthrowing the government of Macedonia …with the results that you can read about below!

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Guest Column by Thierry Meyssan–The Failure of the US Coup in Macedonia

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May 26, 2015 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Washington’s Coup In Macedonia Was Blocked

Thierry Meyssan reports on the failure of Washington’s armed overthrow of the Macedonian Government.
Originally published here: http://www.voltairenet.org/article187685.html

Macedonia has just neutralised an armed group whose sponsors had been under surveillance for at least eight months. By doing so, it has prevented a new attempt at a coup d’État, planned by Washington for the 17th of May. The aim was to spread the chaos already infecting Ukraine into Macedonia in order to stall the passage of a Russian gas pipeline to the European Union.



May 26, 2015: On the 9th of May, 2015, the Macedonian police launched a dawn operation to arrest an armed group which had infiltrated the country and which was suspected of preparing a number of attacks.

The police evacuated the civilian population before launching the assault. The suspects opened fire, which led to a bitter firefight, leaving 14 terrorists and 8 members of the police forces dead. 30 people were taken prisoner. There were a large number of wounded

Not a terrorist act, but an attempted coup d’État

The Macedonian police were clearly well-informed before they launched their operation. According to the Minister for the Interior, Ivo Kotevski, the group was preparing a very important operation for the 17th May (the date of the demonstration organised by the Albanophone opposition in Skopje).
The identification of the suspects has made it possible to determine that they were almost all ex-members of the UÇK (Kosovo Liberation Army) [1].

Among them were :

• Sami Ukshini, known as « Commandant Sokoli », whose family played a historic rôle in the UÇK. 

• Rijai Bey, ex-bodyguard of Ramush Haradinaj (himself a drug trafficker, military head of the UÇK, then Prime Minister of Kosovo. He was twice condemned for war crimes by the International Penal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia, but was acquitted because 9 crucial witnesses were murdered during the trial).

• Dem Shehu, currently bodyguard for the Albanophone leader and founder of the BDI party, Ali Ahmeti. 
• Mirsad Ndrecaj, known as the « NATO Commandant », grandson of Malic Ndrecaj, who is commander of the 132nd Brigade of the UÇK.

The principal leaders of this operation, including Fadil Fejzullahu (killed during the assault), are close to the United States ambassador in Skopje, Paul Wohlers.

Paul Wohlers is the son of US diplomat Lester Wohlers, who played an important part in Atlantist propaganda, and directed the cinematographic service of the U.S. Information Agency. Paul’s brother, Laurence Wohlers, is presently an ambassador in the Central African Republic. Paul Wohlers himself, an ex-Navy pilot, is a specialist in counter-espionage. He was the assistant director of the United States Department of State Operations Center (in other words, the service for the surveillance and protection of diplomats).

To eliminate any doubt about the identity of the operation’s sponsors, the General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, intervened even before the assault was over – not to declare his condemnation of terrorism and his support for the constitutional government of Macedonia, but to paint a picture of the terrorist group as a legitimate ethnic opposition : « I am following the events in Kumanovo with deep concern. I would like to express my sympathy to the families of those who were killed or wounded. It is important that all polititcal and community leaders work together to restore order and begin a transparent investigation in order to find out what happened. I am calling for everyone to show reserve and avoid any new escalation of violence, in the intersts of the nation and also the whole region. » You would have to be blind not to understand.

In January 2015, Macedonia foiled an attempted coup d’état organised for the head of the opposition, the social-democrat Zoran Zaev. Four people were arrested, and Mr. Zaev had his passport confiscated, while the Atlantist press began its denunciation of an « authoritarian drift by the régime ».

Zoran Zaev is publicly supported by the embassies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Holland. But the only trace left of this attempted coup d’état indicates the responsibility of the US.

On the 17th May, Zoran Zaev’s social-democrat party (SDSM) [2] was supposed to organise a demonstration. It intended to distribute 2,000 masks in order to prevent the police from identifying the terrorists taking part in the march. During the demonstration, the armed group, concealed behind their masks, were supposed to attack several institutions and launch a pseudo-« revolution » comparable to the events in Maidan Square, Kiev.

This coup d’État was coordinated by Mile Zechevich, an ex-employee of one of George Soros’ foundations.

In order to understand Washington’s urgency to overthrow the Macedonian government, we have to go back and look at the gas pipeline war. Because international politics is a huge chess-board on which every move by any piece causes consequences for all the others.

The gas war

The United States have been attempting to sever communications between Russia and the European Union since 2007. They managed to sabotage the projet South Stream by obliging Bulgaria to cancel its participation, but on the 1st December 2014, to everyone’s surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a new project when he succeeded in convincing his Turkish opposite number, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to sign an agreement with him, despite the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO [3]. It was agreed that Moscow would deliver gas to Ankara, and that in return, Ankara would deliver gas to the European Union, thus bypassing the anti-Russian embargo by Brussels. On the 18th of April 2015, the new Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsípras, gave his agreement that the pipeline could cross his country [4] . As for Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, he had already conluded discrete negotiations last March [5]. Finally, Serbia, which had been a partner in the South Stream project, indicated to the Russian Minister for Energy Aleksandar Novak, during his reception in Belgrade in April, that Serbia was ready to switch to the Turkish Stream project [6].

To halt the Russian project, Washington has multiplied its initiatives : 
 in Turkey, it is supporting the CHP against President Erdoğan, hoping this will cause him to lose the elections; 
 in Greece, on the 8th May, it sent Amos Hochstein, Directeur of the Bureau of Energy Ressources, to demand that the Tsípras government give up its agreement with Gazprom; 
 it plans – just in case – to block the route of the pipeline by placing one of its puppets in power in Macedonia; 
 and in Serbia, it has restarted the project for the secession of the small piece of territory – Voïvodine – which allows the junction with Hungary [7].

Last comment, but not the least: Turkish Stream will also supply Hungary and Austria, thus ending the alternative project negotiated by the United States with President Hassan Rohani (against the advice of the Revolutionary Guards) for supplying them with Iranian gas [8].

Thierry Meyssan French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

Notes
[1] « L’UÇK, une armée kosovare sous encadrement allemand », par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 15 avril 1999.


[2] Le SDSM est membre de l’Internationale socialiste.


[3] “How Vladimir Putin Upset NATO’s Strategy”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 13 December 2014.


[4] “Möglicher Deal zwischen Athen und Moskau: Griechenland hofft auf russische Pipeline-Milliarden”, Von Giorgos Christides, Der Spiegel, 18. April 2015.


[5] “Геннадий Тимченко задержится на Балканах. Вместо South Stream “Стройтрансгаз” построит трубу в Македонии”, Юрий Барсуков, Коммерсант, 12 марта 2015 r.


[6] «Énergie : la Serbie souhaite participer au gazoduc Turkish Stream», B92, 14 avril 2015.


[7] “Brussels’s Next Balkans Ersatz State: Vojvodina”, by Wayne Madsen, Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia), Voltaire Network, 7 March 2015.

[8] “Behind the anti-terror alibi, the gas war in the Levant”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 3 October 2014.

Translation – Pete Kimberley

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Roving correspondent for Asia Times, Pepe Escobar, predicts the coming year for Russia, China, Iran, the EU, and what he terms the Empire of Chaos, aka the US. The primary loser will be the EU because of its kowtowing to the wishes of the Empire of Chaos. For no just reasons, both Iran and Russia are now subject to Western sanctions. While the US mainstream media claim that Russia is suffering, Russia's sale of its energy -- or sophisticated military gear -- may decline, yet will bring in the same amount of rubles -- given that the ruble has also declined. Because the EU is doing everything it can to cut itself off from its most stable supply of hydrocarbons, Moscow is redirecting energy to China and the rest of Asia. What a gift for Beijing!

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OpEdNews Op Eds 1/2/2015 at 17:21:59

2015 Will Be All About Iran, China and Russia

By Pepe Escobar (about the author)     Permalink 

opednews.com                    Headlined to H2 1/2/15                  Original Here

Reprinted from Sputnik

The Russia-China-Iran alliance is the future.
(image by YouTube)

Fasten your seat belts; 2015 will be a whirlwind pitting China, Russia and Iran against what I have described as the Empire of Chaos.

So yes -- it will be all about further moves towards the integration of Eurasia as the US is progressively squeezed out of Eurasia. We will see a complex geostrategic interplay progressively undermining the hegemony of the US dollar as a reserve currency and, most of all, the petrodollar.

For all the immense challenges the Chinese face, all over Beijing it's easy to detect unmistakable signs of a self-assured, self-confident, fully emerged commercial superpower. President Xi Jinping and the current leadership will keep investing heavily in the urbanization drive and the fight against corruption, including at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Internationally, the Chinese will accelerate their overwhelming push for new "Silk Roads" -- both overland and maritime -- which will underpin the long-term Chinese master strategy of unifying Eurasia with trade and commerce.

Global oil prices are bound to remain low. All bets are off on whether a nuclear deal will be reached by this summer between Iran and the P5+1. If sanctions (actually economic war) against Iran remain and continue to seriously hurt its economy, Tehran's reaction will be firm, and will include even more integration with Asia, not the West.

Washington is well-aware that a comprehensive deal with Iran cannot be reached without Russia's help. That would be the Obama administration's sole -- and I repeat -- sole foreign policy success. A return to the "Bomb Iran" hysteria would only suit the proverbial usual (neo-con) suspects. Still, by no accident, both Iran and Russia are now subject to Western sanctions. No matter how it was engineered, the fact that stands is that the current financial/strategic oil price collapse is a direct attack against (who else?) Iran and Russia.

That derivative war

Now let's take a look at Russian fundamentals. Russia's government debt totals only 13.4% of its GDP. Its budget deficit in relation to GDP is only 0.5%. If we assume a US GDP of $16.8 trillion (the figure for 2013), the US budget deficit totals 4% of GDP, versus 0.5% for Russia. The Fed is essentially a private corporation owned by regional US private banks, although it passes itself off as a state institution. US publicly held debt is equal to a whopping 74% of GDP in fiscal year 2014. Russia's is only 13.4%.

The declaration of economic war by the US and EU on Russia -- via the run on the ruble and the oil derivative attack -- was essentially a derivatives racket. Derivatives -- in theory -- may be multiplied to infinity. Derivative operators attacked both the ruble and oil prices in order to destroy the Russian economy. The problem is, the Russian economy is more soundly financed than America's.

Considering that this swift move was conceived as a checkmate, Moscow's defensive strategy was not that bad. On the key energy front, the problem remains the West's -- not Russia's. If the EU does not buy what Gazprom has to offer, it will collapse.

Moscow's key mistake was to allow Russia's domestic industry to be financed by external, dollar-denominated debt. Talk about a monster debt trap which can be easily manipulated by the West. The first step for Moscow should be to closely supervise its banks. Russian companies should borrow domestically and move to sell their assets abroad. Moscow should also consider implementing a system of currency controls so the basic interest rate can be brought down quickly.

And don't forget that Russia can always deploy a moratorium on debt and interest, affecting over $600 billion. That would shake the entire world's banking system to the core. Talk about an undisguised "message" forcing the US/EU economic warfare to dissolve.

Russia does not need to import any raw materials. Russia can easily reverse-engineer virtually any imported technology if it needs to. Most of all, Russia can generate -- from the sale of raw materials -- enough credit in US dollars or euros. Russia's sale of its energy wealth -- or sophisticated military gear -- may decline. However, they will bring in the same amount of rubles -- as the ruble has also declined.

Replacing imports with domestic Russian manufacturing makes total sense. There will be an inevitable "adjustment" phase -- but that won't take long. German car manufacturers, for instance, can no longer sell their cars in Russia due to the ruble's decline. This means they will have to relocate their factories to Russia. If they don't, Asia -- from South Korea to China -- will blow them out of the market.

Bear and dragon on the prowl

The EU's declaration of economic war against Russia makes no sense whatsoever. Russia controls, directly or indirectly, most of the oil and natural gas between Russia and China: roughly 25% of the world's supply. The Middle East is bound to remain a mess. Africa is unstable. The EU is doing everything it can to cut itself off from its most stable supply of hydrocarbons, prompting Moscow to redirect energy to China and the rest of Asia. What a gift for Beijing -- as it minimizes the alarm about the US Navy playing with "containment" across the high seas. 

Still, an unspoken axiom in Beijing is that the Chinese remain extremely worried about an Empire of Chaos losing more and more control, and dictating the stormy terms of the relationship between the EU and Russia. The bottom line is that Beijing would never allow itself to be in a position where the US could interfere with China's energy imports -- as was the case with Japan in July 1941 when the US declared war by imposing an oil embargo, cutting off 92% of Japanese oil imports.

Everyone knows a key plank of China's spectacular surge in industrial power was the requirement for manufacturers to produce in China. If Russia did the same, its economy would be growing at a rate of over 5% per year in no time. It could grow even more if bank credit was tied only to productive investment.

Now imagine Russia and China jointly investing in a new gold, oil and natural resource-backed monetary union as a crucial alternative to the failed debt "democracy" model pushed by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street, the Western central bank cartel, and neoliberal politicians. They would be showing the Global South that financing prosperity and improved standards of living by saddling future generations with debt was never meant to work in the first place.

Until then, a storm will be threatening our very lives -- today and tomorrow. The Masters of the Universe/Washington combo won't give up their strategy to make Russia a pariah state cut off from trade, the transfer of funds, banking and Western credit markets and thus prone to regime change.

Further on down the road, if all goes according to plan, their target will be (who else?) China. And Beijing knows it. Meanwhile, expect a few bombshells to shake the EU to its foundations. Time may be running out -- but for the EU, not Russia. Still, the overall trend won't be altered; the Empire of Chaos is slowly but surely being squeezed out of Eurasia.

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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."

Paul Craig Roberts' intro: "The cost to Europe of complying with Washington’s sanctions against Russia has reached the breaking point: If this report is correct it sounds like the Russians have had enough of the dumbshits in Washington and Washington’s dumbshit vassals in Europe. Russia says: the natural gas no longer goes through Ukraine. It goes to Turkey. If Europe wants it, Europe can build the pipeline from Turkey. Perhaps Europe will freeze to death this winter and nothing will be left of Washington’s puppet state empire. Then Washington would have to stand alone as a war criminal aggressor without European cover."

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Russia Cuts Off Ukraine Gas Supply To 6 European Countries

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/14/2015 20:30 -0500

           

Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian state energy giant Gazprom to cut supplies to and through Ukraine amid accusations, according to The Daily Mail, that its neighbor has been siphoning off and stealing Russian gas. Due to these "transit risks for European consumers in the territory of Ukraine," Gazprom cut gas exports to Europe by 60%, plunging the continent into an energy crisis "within hours." Perhaps explaining the explosion higher in NatGas prices (and oil) today, gas companies in Ukraine confirmed that Russia had cut off supply; and six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas. The EU raged that the sudden cut-off to some of its member countries was "completely unacceptable," but Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller later added that Russia plans to shift all its natural gas flows crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey; and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak stated unequivocally, "the decision has been made."
As Bloomberg reports,

Russia plans to shift all its natural gas flows crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey, a surprise move that the European Union’s energy chief said would hurt its reputation as a supplier.

The decision makes no economic sense, Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission’s vice president for energy union, told reporters today after talks with Russian government officials and the head of gas exporter, OAO Gazprom, in Moscow.

Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural gas supplier, plans to send 63 billion cubic meters through a proposed link under the Black Sea to Turkey, fully replacing shipments via Ukraine, Chief Executive Officer Alexey Miller said during the discussions. About 40 percent of Russia’s gas exports to Europe and Turkey travel through Ukraine’s Soviet-era network.

Sefcovic said he was “very surprised” by Miller’s comment, adding that relying on a Turkish route, without Ukraine, won’t fit with the EU’s gas system.

Gazprom plans to deliver the fuel to Turkey’s border with Greece and “it’s up to the EU to decide what to do” with it further, according to Sefcovic.

Which, as The Daily Mail reports, has led to a major (and imminent) problem for Europe...

Russia cut gas exports to Europe by 60 per cent today, plunging the continent into an energy crisis 'within hours' as a dispute with Ukraine escalated.

This morning, gas companies in Ukraine said that Russia had completely cut off their supply.

Six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas shipped via Ukraine today, in a sharp escalation of a struggle over energy that threatens Europe as winter sets in.

Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments from Russia through Ukraine.

*  *  *
As Bloomberg goes on to note, Gazprom has reduced deliveries via Ukraine after price and debt disputes with the neighboring country that twice in the past decade disrupted supplies to the EU during freezing weather.

“Transit risks for European consumers on the territory of Ukraine remain,” Miller said in an e-mailed statement. “There are no other options” except for the planned Turkish Stream link, he said.
“We have informed our European partners, and now it is up to them to put in place the necessary infrastructure starting from the Turkish-Greek border,” Miller said.
Russia won’t hurt its image with a shift to Turkey because it has always been a reliable gas supplier and never violated its obligations, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters today in Moscow after meeting Sefcovic.
“The decision has been made,” Novak said. “We are diversifying and eliminating the risks of unreliable countries that caused problems in past years, including for European consumers.”

*  *  *

*  *  *

"They [the Russians] have reduced deliveries to 92million cubic metres per 24 hours compared to the promised 221million cubic metres without explanation," said Valentin Zemlyansky of the Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz.
"We do not understand how we will deliver gas to Europe. This means that in a few hours problems with supplies to Europe will begin."

*  *  *
Check to you Europe (i.e. Washington)... Because it's getting might cold in Europe...

(and bear in mind the consequences of cold, pissed off Europeans in the past).

The Reader Supported News, with thousands of readers but less than a hundred supporters, may have scooped all its rivals with this: How a nuclear war with Russia may be averted by a Russia/Germany pact. Human existence may continue afterall, no thanks to the U.S. government's full court press to bring on nuclear armageddon. Hallelujah!

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Russia's president Vladimir Putin talks to German chancellor
Angela Merkel in front of the Kurhaus resort in Wiesbaden,
Germany,in October 2007.(photo: Frank Augstein/AP)

 

Crimea: Can Merkel Still Strike a Deal With Putin?

By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News                                                                                                          Original Here

01 August 14

Even as Washington and its sycophants were pushing Europe “to stand up” against Russia, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian president Vladimir Putin were reportedly engaged in secret negotiations to resolve the current crisis over Ukraine.

          The downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 – whoever did it, and whether by accident or design – put any deal-making on ice. But sources have told The Independent that “Merkel’s deal” is still on the table, with negotiations expected to begin once the official Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) investigation of the downed aircraft has been completed.

         “She needs to solve the dispute because it’s in no one’s interest to have tension in the Ukraine or to have Russia out in the cold,” said one insider. “No one wants a new Cold War.”

          If only that were true.

         Though the German government has officially denied the negotiations, “Merkel’s deal” appears concrete and specific.

• Germany and other nations to follow would recognize Putin’s annexation of Crimea, an admittedly hard nut for Washington and others to swallow.


• Moscow would pay Kiev $1 billion to compensate for rent the Russians used to pay for basing its warm-water fleet in the Crimean port of Sebastopol.


• Moscow would agree not to meddle in Ukraine’s trade with the EU and withdraw its financial and military support for pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine.


• The oligarchs in Kiev would devolve greater powers to the pro-Russian rebels and give up any attempts to join NATO.


• Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom would give Kiev a long-time contract for the supply and pricing of natural gas.

          Together, these provisions would stabilize the border between Russia and Ukraine, boost Ukraine’s troubled economy, and reduce the threat of energy shortages in both Ukraine and the EU. But, most important, “Merkel’s deal” would preempt a wider war with its threat of nuclear annihilation.

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          A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."

         Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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.

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Copyright 2014 Pepe Escobar