Category Archives: Eurasian Axis

Will U.S. ‘Interests’ Become Sacrificed on Altar of New Indo-Pacific Strategy? By Matthew Ehret

Posted on February 5, 2023 | 1 comment

Will the U.S. do any better with its Indo-Pacific strategy than its done with its Eurasian strategy? The question almost answers itself. From Matthew Ehret at strategic-culture.org:

The Anglo-American foreign policy hawks imagine that the world is yearning to be liberated from Beijing’s nefarious agenda to end poverty

As the trans-Atlantic world is pulled into the vortex of a McCarthyite nightmare with a renewed wave of anti-Russian and now anti-China hysterics, a wave of new “Asia Pacific” doctrines have emerged across captured states… I mean “member” states throughout NATO.

Starting with the February 2022 American ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’, similar anti-China programs have popped up left and right with one principled target in mind: eliminate the threat of China through every tool available.

By early June 2022, the UK announced its own branding of the Asia Pivot remixed into the oddly named ‘Indo-Pacific Tilt’ which focuses less on the liberal eco-friendly language of the EU and devotes itself entirely to vastly increasing its military presence in China’s backyard.

After NATO’s June 2022 Madrid Summit officially designated China as ‘a systemic rival’, Canada’s foreign ministry announced its own Indo-Pacific Strategy in November 2022 followed by an absurd 26 page program published in January 10, 2023 outlining the details of Canada’s new role in the Pacific (which will be the subject of a subsequent report).

On January 25, 2023 NATO’s ironically named ‘Science for Peace and Security Program’ launched a new ‘cooperative initiative on the Indo-Pacific, followed by a January 30, 2023 Atlantic Council Indo-Pacific Security Initiative focused on dealing with “China’s growing threat to the international order”. The same day the Atlantic Council unveiled this new doctrine, an American intelligence spook named Markus Garlauskas was named the program’s new director.

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Posted in Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

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A tale of two worlds, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on February 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

One world is based on debt and fiat currencies, the other world is moving towards production and gold. Which shall prevail? From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

In the war between the western alliance and the Asian axis, the media focus is on the Ukrainian battlefield. The real war is in currencies, with Russia capable of destroying the dollar.

So far, Putin’s actions have been relatively passive. But already, both Russia and China have accumulated enough gold to implement gold standards. It is now overwhelmingly in their interests to do so.

From Sergey Glazyev’s recent article in a Russian business newspaper, it is clear that settlement of trade balances between members, dialog partners, and associate members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) optionally will be in gold. Furthermore, the Russian economy would benefit enormously from a decline in borrowing rates from current levels of over 13% to a level more consistent with sound money.

To understand the consequences, in this article the comparison is made between the western alliance’s fiat currency and deficit spending regime and the Russian-Chinese axis’s planned industrial revolution for some 3.8 billion people in the SCO family. China has a remarkable savings rate, which will underscore the investment capital for a rapid increase in Asian industrialisation, without inflationary consequences.

With a new round of military action in Ukraine shortly to kick off, it will be in Putin’s interest to move from passivity to financial aggression. It will not take much for him to undermine the entire western fiat currency system — a danger barely recognised by a gung-ho NATO military complex.

Introduction

In the geopolitical tussle between the old and new hegemons, we see the best of strategies and the worst of strategies, where belief is pitted against credulity. It is the season of light and the season of darkness, the spring of hope and the winter of despair…

Recalling some of Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines from his Tale of Two Cities to describe the current state of global politics sums up the potential of a new industrial revolution throughout Asia and much of the rest of the under-developed world (the best of times), compared with the western alliance abetted by its military arm, NATO, which is determined to suppress the plans for the new hegemons at its own peoples’ expense (the worst of times). Ironically, the nations which will benefit most from the western alliance’s proxy war are those which align themselves with its enemies. 

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Posted in Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Energy, Eurasian Axis, Geopolitics, Governments, History

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Russia’s intentions are clarifying, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on January 27, 2023 | 1 comment

The Russians have a not-so-secret weapon that would devastate the U.S.: back the ruble with gold. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

We have confirmation from the highest sources that Russia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) are considering using gold for pan-Asian trade settlements, fully replacing dollars and euros.

In an article written for Vedomosti, a Moscow-based Russian newspaper published on 27 December, Sergey Glazyev, a prominent economic adviser to Vladimir Putin who is heading up the Eurasian Economic Union committee charged with devising a replacement for dollars in trade settlements sent a very clear signal to that effect. It appears he will drop earlier plans to design a new commodity-linked trade currency because it has been superseded.

Furthermore, increasing numbers of nations have joined or have applied to join the SCO as dialog members, including Saudi Arabia and other important Gulf Cooperation Organisation members. The economic benefits of discounted energy, China’s investment capital, and sound money are the ingredients for a new, Asia-wide industrial revolution, while the economies of the western alliance sink under rising prices, rising interest rates, collapsing financial markets, and collapsing currencies.

While it will mark the end of the road for the western alliance and its fiat currencies, Putin must be careful not to take the blame. Now that the alliance is racking up tanks and other equipment for the Ukrainians, they are actively promoting a new battle, with NATO getting almost directly involved. It is that action which will drive up commodity prices, undermine western financial markets, undermine government finances, and ultimately collapse their currencies. 

Putin is likely to use NATO’s impetuous action in defence of Ukraine as cover for securing Russia’s future as an Asian superstate, which will be the west’s undoing.

Introduction

We forget, perhaps, that from 1 March 1950 the Soviet rouble was on a gold standard at 4 roubles 45 kopecks for 1 gram of pure gold until 1961, when Khrushchev devalued it and refixed it to the dollar. Stalin had been a signatory to the Bretton Woods agreement but refused to join it and make the rouble subservient to the dollar as its intermediary for a gold standard.

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Posted in Banking, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Energy, Eurasian Axis, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Money

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The 2023 War – ‘Setting the Theatre’ by Alastair Crooke

Posted on January 13, 2023 | 1 comment

The Ukraine-Russia war is the focal point of a war that already encompasses much of the rest of the world. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The China-Russia axis are lighting the fires of a structural insurrection against the West across much of the Rest of World. Its fires are aimed at ‘boiling the frog slowly’

A top US Marine General, James Bierman, in a recent interview with the Financial Times, explained in a moment of candour how the US is “setting the theatre” for possible war with China, whilst casually admitting as an aside, how US defence planners had been busy inside Ukraine years ago, “earnestly preparing” for war with Russia — even down to the “pre-positioning of supplies”, identifying sites from which the US might operate support, and sustain operations. Simply put, they were there,readying the battle space for years.

No surprise really, as such military responses flow directly from the core US strategic decision to actuate the 1992 ‘WolfowitzDoctrine’ that the US must plan and preemptively act, to disable any potential Great Power — well before it reaches the point at which it can rival or impair US hegemony.

NATO today has progressed to war with Russia in a battlespace, which in 2023, may or may not stay limited to Ukraine. Simply put the point is that the shift to ‘War’ (whether incremental or not) marks a fundamental transition from which there is no going back to ab initio — ‘war economies’ in essence, are structurally different to the ‘normal’ from which the West began, and to which it has grown accustomed over recent decades. A war society — even if only partly mobilised — thinks and acts structurally differently from peacetime society.

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China Cements its Position in the Middle East, by Judith Bergman

Posted on January 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

It’s real simple. Most nations prefer mutually beneficial exchange (offered by China) over bullets, bombs, bribery, and bombast (offered by the U.S.). From Judith Bergman at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Saudi Arabia is now not only one of China’s most important suppliers of energy, but the kingdom is also an important link in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — a gigantic global development project to enhance China’s global influence from East Asia to Europe by making countries worldwide increasingly dependent on China. Under the BRI, China has signed cooperation agreements with 20 Arab countries.
  • China is also Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner — an arrangement that extends to military cooperation….
  • Biden took a longstanding ally, Saudi Arabia, and, by repeating that he would make the kingdom a “pariah nation,” created an adversary. “For an American president to be silent on the issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am,” Biden said. The same concern for human rights has not seemed to bother him, however, when it comes to China or Iran, whose record on human rights is at least as bad as Saudi Arabia’s, if not worse.
  • China jumped in to fill the vacuum.
  • Xi Jinping has made no secret of his wishes to “replace America as the global superpower” economically, militarily, diplomatically and technologically by 2049. The United States might be “well poised to lead,” but is it leading?

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Posted in Business, Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, War

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How General Soleimani Kick-Started The Multipolar World, by Pablo Escobar

Posted on January 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Talk about blowback. From Pablo Escobar at zerohedge.com:

The consensus among future historians will be inevitable: the 2020s started with a diabolic murder.            

Baghdad airport, January 3, 2020, 00:52 a.m. local time. The assassination of Gen.QassemSoleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic RevolutionGuards Corps (IRGC), alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi, by laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles launched from two MQ-9 Reaper drones, was, in fact, murder as an act of war.

This act of war set the tone for the new decade and inspired my book Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism, published in early 2021.

The drone strikes at Baghdad airport, directly approved by the pop entertainer/entrepreneur then ruling the Hegemon, Donald Trump, constituted an imperial act engineered as a stark provocation, capable of engendering an Iranian reaction that would then be countered by, “self-defense”, packaged as “deterrence”.

The proverbial narrative barrage spun to saturation, ruled it as a “targeted killing”: a pre-emptive op squashing Gen. Soleimani’s alleged planning of “imminent attacks” against US diplomats and troops.No evidence whatsoever was provided to support the claim.

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Posted in Crime, Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics, War

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Bye Bye 1991-2022, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on January 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

It would be a lot easier to share Pepe Escobar’s enthusiasm for Eurasion axis governments and their many projects if every one of those governments didn’t disregard human rights. The projects are state driven and within the countries, individuals are the property of the state. (Yes, the same can be said of the West, which is why the West is falling apart.) Nevertheless, Escobar has some perceptive comments about both East and West. From Escobar at strategic-culture.org:

The hard work starts now. Welcome to the New Great Game on crack, Pepe Escobar writes.

2023 starts with collective NATO in Absolutely Freak Out Mode as Russian Defense Minister Shoigu announces that Russian Navy frigate Admiral Gorshkov is now on tour – complete with a set of Mr. Zircon’s hypersonic business cards.

The business tour will encompass the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, and of course include the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire’s former Mare Nostrum. Mr. Zircon on the prowl has absolutely nothing to do with the war in Ukraine: it’s a sign of what happens next when it comes to frying much bigger fishes than a bunch of Kiev psychos.

The end of 2022 did seal the frying of the Big Ukraine Negotiation Fish. It has now been served on a hot plate – and fully digested. Moscow has made it painfully clear there’s no reason whatsoever to trust the “non-agreement capable” declining superpower.

So even taxi drivers in Dacca are now betting on when the much- vaunted “winter offensive” starts, and how far will it go. General Armageddon’s path ahead is clear: all-out demilitarization and de-electrification on steroids, complete with grinding up masses of Ukrainians at the lowest possible cost to the Russian Armed Forces in Donbass until Kiev psychos beg for mercy. Or not.

Another big fried fish on a hot plate at the end of 2022 was the 2014 Minsk Agreement. The cook was no other than former chancellor Merkel (“an attempt to buy time for Ukraine”). Implied is the not exactly smokin’ gun: the strategy of the Straussian/neo-con and neoliberal-con combo in charge of U.S. foreign policy, from the beginning, was to unleash a Forever War, by proxy, against Russia.

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Why BRI Is Back with a Bang in 2023, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on January 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

The Eurasian axis the U.S. is trying to thwart becomes increasingly interconnected and increasingly strong. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

The year 2022 ended with a Zoom call to end all Zoom calls: Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping discussing all aspects of the Russia-China strategic partnership in an exclusive video call.

Putin told Xi how “Russia and China managed to ensure record high growth rates of mutual trade,” meaning “we will be able to reach our target of $200 billion by 2024 ahead of schedule.”

On their coordination to “form a just world order based on international law,” Putin emphasized how “we share the same views on the causes, course, and logic of the ongoing transformation of the global geopolitical landscape.”

Facing “unprecedented pressure and provocations from the west,” Putin noted how Russia-China are not only defending their own interests “but also all those who stand for a truly democratic world order and the right of countries to freely determine their own destiny.”

Earlier, Xi had announced that Beijing will hold the 3rd Belt and Road Forum in 2023. This has been confirmed, off the record, by diplomatic sources. The forum was initially designed to be bi-annual, first held in 2017 and then 2019. 2021 didn’t happen because of Covid-19.

The return of the forum signals not only a renewed drive but an extremely significant landmark as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in Astana and then Jakarta in 2013, will be celebrating its 10th anniversary.

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Systems Dynamics Follow Their Own Rules – and Not Groupthink, by Alasdair Crooke

Posted on January 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

What happens when reality refuses to follow the rules. The decline and fall of the American empire is offering a concrete demonstration. From Alasdair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

While America’s cultural and economic ascendency is portrayed as an End of History ‘normal’, it represents an obvious anomaly, Alastair Crooke writes.

Toward the end of his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), “[Yale Historian] Paul Kennedy expressed the then-controversial belief that great power wars were not a thing of the past. One of the main themes of Kennedy’s history was the concept of overstretch – that is to say, that the relative decline of great powers often resulted from an imbalance between a nation’s resources and its commitments”, writes Professor Francis Sempa.

Few in the western Ruling Class even accept that we have reached such a point of inflection. Like it or not, however, great power combinations are fast rising across the globe. U.S. influence already is shrinking back to its Atlanticist core. This shrinkage is not simply a matter of resources vs commitments; that is too simplistic as an explanation.

Metamorphosis is occurring both as the result of the exhaustion of the political and cultural dynamics which powered the previous era, as much as is energised by the vitality of new dynamics. And by ‘dynamics’ is meant too, the exhaustion and coming demise of underlying mechanical financial and cultural structures which in, and of, themselves are moulding the new politics and culture.

Systems follow their own rules – the rules of physical mechanics too – as in, what happens when a further grain of sand is added to a complex, unstable sand pile. Thus, unlike in politics, neither human opinion, nor election outcomes in Washington, will necessarily have the capacity to mould the next era – any more than the opinion of Congress alone can reverse a cascade in a financial sand pile – if big enough – by pouring more sand grains on its top.

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Posted in Collapse, Economy, Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Government, Imperialism, Propaganda, War

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2022… The Year That Marked the End of America’s Hegemony, by the Strategic Culture Editorial Board

Posted on January 1, 2023 | 1 comment

The war in the Ukraine will mark the end of the American empire. From the Strategic Culture Editorial Board at strategic-culture.org:

The war in Ukraine has dominated the past year. Other global crises of soaring energy and food costs are collateral damage from the conflict in Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine has dominated the past year. Other global crises of soaring energy and food costs are collateral damage from the conflict in Ukraine.

The conflict is not simply a localized one in the center of Europe on Russia’s doorstep involving a reactionary anti-Russian regime in Kiev. The conflict represents a historic showdown between the United States and its allies in the NATO military alliance it leads, and Russia. The showdown has been a long time coming.

It didn’t have to happen in this violent, atrocious way.

Russia had long warned the United States and its NATO partners that the expansion of the alliance towards Russia’s borders was an unacceptable strategic security threat. Moscow’s warnings went unheeded year after year.

Almost one year ago, Russia offered a last-ditch diplomatic way to avoid conflict by appealing for a comprehensive security treaty, one based on the previously accepted principle of “indivisible security”. That diplomatic initiative was dismissed out of hand by Washington and its European allies.

Moscow had repeatedly warned that it would not accept the further militarization of the NeoNazi-espousing Kiev regime. Eight years of low-intensity war against Russian-speaking people in former Southeast Ukraine had to stop. Ukraine’s militarization by NATO and its touted membership of the alliance was Russia’s red line. It was the United States and its NATO partners who chose to cross that line. In that case, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to take military-technical measures. The military defanging of the Kiev regime that began on February 24 was the result.

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