Category Archives: Eurasian Axis

America’s Real Adversaries Are Its European and Other Allies, by Michael Hudson

Posted on February 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

The U.S. government does not want to see Europe drawn into the Russian-Chinese Eurasian orbit. From Michael Hudson at unz.com:

The U.S. aim is to keep them from trading with China and Russia

The Iron Curtain of the 1940s and ‘50s was ostensibly designed to isolate Russia from Western Europe – to keep out Communist ideology and military penetration. Today’s sanctions regime is aimed inward, to prevent America’s NATO and other Western allies from opening up more trade and investment with Russia and China. The aim is not so much to isolate Russia and China as to hold these allies firmly within America’s own economic orbit. Allies are to forego the benefits of importing Russian gas and Chinese products, buying much higher-priced U.S. LNG and other exports, capped by more U.S. arms.

The sanctions that U.S. diplomats are insisting that their allies impose against trade with Russia and China are aimed ostensibly at deterring a military buildup. But such a buildup cannot really be the main Russian and Chinese concern. They have much more to gain by offering mutual economic benefits to the West. So the underlying question is whether Europe will find its advantage in replacing U.S. exports with Russian and Chinese supplies and the associated mutual economic linkages.

What worries American diplomats is that Germany, other NATO nations and countries along the Belt and Road route understand the gains that can be made by opening up peaceful trade and investment. If there is no Russian or Chinese plan to invade or bomb them, what is the need for NATO? What is the need for such heavy purchases of U.S. military hardware by America’s affluent allies? And if there is no inherently adversarial relationship, why do foreign countries need to sacrifice their own trade and financial interests by relying exclusively on U.S. exporters and investors?

These are the concerns that have prompted French President Macron to call forth the ghost of Charles de Gaulle and urge Europe to turn away from what he calls NATO’s “brain-dead” Cold War and break with the pro-U.S. trade arrangements that are imposing rising costs on Europe while denying it potential gains from trade with Eurasia. Even Germany is balking at demands that it freeze by this coming March by going without Russian gas.

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Are warnings about an ‘imminent Russian invasion of the Ukraine’ any more than a deep state intelligence operation? From Strategic Macro

Posted on February 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

We may get the definitive answer to the question above in 25 to 30 years. From Strategic Macro at strategicmacro.com:

I think what is happening overall is brinkmanship by a number of parties, which is not uncommon in geopolitics, and it is unlikely anything significant happens.

But lets discuss the interests of different parties in each state:

Ukrainian interests
There are interest groups in Ukraine that want Nord Stream 2 sanctioned as it going live in June 2022 would end $3bn of transit revenues that the Ukraine government gets. The oligarchs in the Ukraine owe a lot of their wealth to milking the state budgets. Then there are Neo-Nazi militias that were folded into the military without much ‘re-eduction’ who dream of taking Donbass region back and like to wear WWII Galician division insignia.

So we had a Ukraine forces build up last Feb/ March then a climb down (NS2 was supposed to go live last summer but a German court said the legal structure was not compliant and needed to be changed and then reapproved) now is the last gamble before it goes live. Ukraine built up forces in Oct and used newly received Nato weapons, such as a TB2 drone to strike 15kms behind the ceasefire line. (https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/ukraine-uses-bayraktar-tb2-drone-in-combat-for-first-time/) They also crossed the ceasefire line and attacked two small villages with an armoured column. There are daily ceasefire violations of 100-1000 events that the OSCE record in a daily report published on the OSCE website. Here is a video of a Ukraine journalist firing a howitzer towards the area. They generally try and shell utilities to make the area as unliveable as possible but also routinely injure and kill civilians.

https://www.donbass-insider.com/2021/11/29/ukrainian-journalist-yuri-butusov-films-himself-firing-a-152mm-howitzer-at-russian-occupiers/

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China Gives Oomph to Russia’s ‘Nyet’ on NATO, by Ray McGovern

Posted on February 1, 2022 | 1 comment

Russia is a formidable military power in its own right. Ally it with China, and you’ve got an alliance with which you don’t want to mess. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Fourteen years ago today, when then-ambassador to Russia William Burns, in an IMMEDIATE cable titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines,” reported Moscow’s warning that NATO membership for Ukraine would cross a red line, the Russians could do little more than grouse. Enter from left stage Chinese President Xi Jinping last year with the shot of adrenalin Putin needed to make “Nyet” stick.

Today’s acrimony at the UN Security Council provides the latest sign of Russia’s no-holds-barred chutzpah regarding the U.S. on Ukraine, with the words of Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia. U.S. UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield had accused Russia of “actions [that] strike at the very heart of the UN Charter.”

Nebenzia retorted that the U.S. is “whipping up tensions and provoking escalation.” As for invading Ukraine, Nebenzia addressed the US ambassador with these words: “You are almost pulling for this … You want it to happen. You’re waiting for it to happen, as if you want to make your words become a reality.”

Burns and Lavrov

No one is better placed to discern the significance of this change of tone than ex-ambassador Burns, who is now-CIA Director. In his Feb. 1, 2008 cable citing Lavrov’s admonitions, Burns reported that the NATO membership issue “could potentially split Ukraine in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” Burns added: “NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains an emotional and neuralgic issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine.”

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The Globalist Reset Agenda Has Failed – Is Ukraine Plan B? By Brandon Smith

Posted on January 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

Brandon Smith reiterates a point SLL has made repeatedly: our presumptuous rulers are nowhere near as bright as they like to think. From Smith at alt-market.us:

There are people in the liberty movement that attribute FAR too much intelligence to the global power elites, to the point that they seem to think the globalists are always planning “ten steps ahead.” The funny thing about planning ten steps ahead though is that if anything goes wrong with steps 1-9 then getting to step number 10 will be impossible and you just wasted a whole lot of energy on an elaborate plan that ended up going nowhere. The globalists are NOT the smartest people around; not even close. They aren’t even all that effective when their plans actually function and there are no surprises. Their ideas fail constantly.

There is only one reason that centralizing criminals have not been brought down, and that is because no one has ever targeted them directly. Every time there is a governmental shake up or rebellion or mass movement for change people target “the system”; they blame the system for all our problems (or they blame a handful of political puppets) and they seek to add a fresh coat of paint or change some of its basic functions, but the men behind the curtain always end up back behind the curtain. The problem is never “the system”, it’s the people running and influencing the system while enjoying the comfort of the shadows.

Here is how the globalists seem to operate the best that I can tell – They aim a fist full of darts at a board and throw as hard as they can and whatever sticks is what sticks. When a plan does stick, well the globalists appear to be brilliant, don’t they? In reality they were just throwing around schemes blindfolded and half of those schemes landed in the gutter. The problem is that while the globalists are fumbling around in the dark searching for a plan that works they can do a lot of damage and draw a lot of attention.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Medicine, Military, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny, War

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Iran-Russia Hit Maximum Strategy, by Pepe Esobar

Posted on January 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

A lot of countries on the receiving end of U.S. hostility are making common cause together. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

Three ain’t a crowd: The Iran-Russia summit this week, concurrent with RIC military drills in the Sea of Oman, in advance of a Xi-Putin meeting in two weeks, suggests a rapidly-advancing strategic vision for the three Eurasian powers.

The official visit to Russia by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, at the invitation of Vladimir Putin, generated one of the most stunning geopolitical pics of the 21st century: Raisi performing his afternoon prayers at the Kremlin.

Arguably, more than the hours of solid discussions on geopolitical, geoeconomic, energy, trade, agriculture, transportation and aerospace dossiers, this visual will be imprinted all across the Global South as a fitting symbol of the ongoing, inexorable process of Eurasian integration.

Raisi went to Sochi and Moscow ready to offer Putin essential synergy in confronting a decaying, unipolar Empire increasingly prone to irrationalism. He made it clear at the start of his three hours of discussions with Putin: our renewed relationship should not be “short-term or positional – it will be permanent and strategic.”

Putin must have relished the torrents of meaning inbuilt in one of Raisi’s statements of fact: “We have been resisting the Americans for more than 40 years.”

Yet, much more productive, was “a document on strategic cooperation” between Iran and Russia that Raisi and his team presented to Russian officials.

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Eurasia’s Ring of Fire, by Alfred McCoy

Posted on January 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

The U.S. has lost it’s long-running struggle to control the center of the world. From Alfred McCoy at tomdispatch.com:

 

Eurasia’s Ring of Fire

The Epic Struggle over the Epicenter of U.S. Global Power

Throughout 2021, Americans were absorbed in arguments over mask mandates, school closings, and the meaning of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Meanwhile, geopolitical hot spots were erupting across Eurasia, forming a veritable ring of fire around that vast land mass.

Let’s circle that continent to visit just a few of those flashpoints, each one suffused with significance for the future of U.S. global power.

On the border with Ukraine, 100,000 Russian troops were massing with tanks and rocket launchers, ready for a possible invasion. Meanwhile, Beijing signed a $400 billion agreement with Tehran to swap infrastructure-building for Iranian oil. Such an exchange might help make that country the future rail hub of Central Asia, while projecting China’s military power into the Persian Gulf. Just across the Iranian border in Afghanistan, Taliban guerrillas swept into Kabul ending a 20-year American occupation in a frantic flurry of shuttle flights for more than 100,000 defeated Afghan allies.

Farther east, high in the Himalayas, Indian Army engineers were digging tunnels and positioning artillery to fend off future clashes with China. In the Bay of Bengal, a dozen ships from Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, led by the supercarrier USS Carl Vinson, were conducting live gunnery drills, practice for a possible future war with China.

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The Not-Ultimatum, by Observer R

Posted on January 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

The U.S. no longer has the economic or military power to maintain itself as the dominant global power, but the U.S. power structure is not ready to accept that truth. From Observer R at thesaker.is:

The documents issued by Russia in December 2021 (the so-called “Not-Ultimatum), concerning modifications to the security architecture in Europe, have created a considerable sensation in the diplomatic and military worlds. Russia politely requested that NATO confine its activities to its location as of 1997, and keep out of the former Warsaw Pact territory. This was to abide by the promises that the United States made to the Soviet Union at the time that the Soviets agreed to disband the Warsaw Pact. Both the United States and NATO responded negatively to the initiative, but agreed to hold negotiations with Russia during the week of January 11-14, 2022.

During the negotiation period many commentators have opined that the intellectual quality of the US official statements and the US think-tank products could be improved. Perhaps all is not lost, however, as at least some US officials have grasped the changes in Russian weapons and the Russian economy that make it necessary to sit down and do serious talking. For example, the top US general has announced that the world has moved from a unipolar setup to a multipolar one, and that the US is now only one of the poles, the others being China and Russia. The US general has engaged in “deconfliction” talks with the top generals of China and Russia—presumably to try and ward off any mistakes that could wind up frying the world to a crisp. In addition, the head of the CIA has allowed the CIA Fact Book to be published publicly showing that China and Russia are much higher-ranked in GDP than most politicians and pundits in the US give them credit for. China is significantly out in front, and Russia is sixth and closing in on fifth place. Finally, a former First Lady and Secretary of State has written that the massive US aircraft carriers are to a large extent obsolete and that the F-35 fighter jet does not live up to expectations. There is a widespread feeling that the US is behind the Russians in hypersonic weapons, air defense, and probably electronic warfare also.

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China has been a failure at hegemony, so let’s just chill, by John Mueller

Posted on January 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

China may be even worse at the hegemony game than the U.S. From John Mueller at responsiblestatecraft.org:

From the foundering Belt & Road Initiative to its so-called ‘wolf warrior’ strategy, Beijing is just not the threat we make it out to be.

Many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment and elsewhere are sounding an alarm over concerns that, as China develops, it will become the dominant power in its region, a “hegemon” that will have too much “influence” there and do damage to U.S. security interests. For example, in 2017 the National Intelligence Council opined that “geopolitical competition” was on the rise and the Chinese sought “to exert more sway over their neighboring regions and promote an order in which U.S. influence does not dominate.”

Accordingly, as it is often suggested, military hardware must be deployed to somehow keep that from happening.

However, to a degree, we already know what Chinese “hegemony” looks like. Over the last decade, China has established a major military and especially economic presence, and it has tried to convert this condition into influence. These experiments in hegemony — China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which has stressed construction loans to countries across Eurasia, and its rather belligerent “wolf diplomacy” antics — have substantially foundered and have, if anything, proved to be counterproductive. The experience does not bode well for future efforts, and it does not justify alarm.

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After Kazakhstan, the Color Revolution Era Is Over, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on January 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

Russia and the Central Asian states are on to the U.S. and Europe’s regime change game and have apparently devised effective strategies against it. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

The year 2022 started with Kazakhstan on fire, a serious attack against one of the key hubs of Eurasian integration. We are only beginning to understand what and how it happened.

On Monday morning, leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) held an extraordinary session to discuss Kazakhstan.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev framed it succinctly. Riots were “hidden behind unplanned protests.” The goal was “to seize power” – a coup attempt. Actions were “coordinated from a single center.” And “foreign militants were involved in the riots.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin went further: during the riots, “Maidan technologies were used,” a reference to the Ukranian square where 2013 protests unseated a NATO-unfriendly government.

Defending the prompt intervention of CSTO peacekeeping forces in Kazakhstan, Putin said, “it was necessary to react without delay.” The CSTO will be on the ground “as long as necessary,” but after the mission is accomplished, “of course, the entire contingent will be withdrawn from the country.” Forces are expected to exit later this week.

But here’s the clincher: “CSTO countries have shown that they will not allow chaos and ‘color revolutions’ to be implemented inside their borders.”

Putin was in synch with Kazakh State Secretary Erlan Karin, who was the first, on the record, to apply the correct terminology to events in his country: What happened was a “hybrid terrorist attack,” by both internal and external forces, aimed at overthrowing the government.

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Why Russia Is Ready to Check-Mate the U.S. and Its Western Empire, by Finian Cunningham

Posted on January 12, 2022 | Leave a comment

Russia is not going to allow the U.S. and Great Britain to realize their long-held ambition and dominate Eurasia. Russia is strong enough to prevent it, and teamed with China is strong enough to prevent them from exercising much influence at all. From Finian Cunningham at strategic-culture.org:

The Western empire-builders are weakened and exposed in the eyes of their own populations and thus are disarmed politically to pursue confrontation.

Author and commentator Alex Krainer explains in the following interview why Russia is now strong enough to take a definitive stand against the United States and its Western empire-builders. This is the wider historical context for high-level negotiations being conducted this week between Russia and the U.S. and NATO in which Moscow has asserted red lines for its national security.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S.-led Western powers became deluded with arrogant entitlement. As Krainer points out, the Western empire-builders presumed to have the right to wage wars and flout international law. For much of the past three-decade period, Russia was too weak economically and politically to challenge this reckless aggression. But now it has grown strong enough to “check-mate the empire’s global ambitions”. This is why war or regime change in Russia has become an obsessive goal for the U.S. and Western partners. It accounts for the relentless sanctions, Russophobia and surge in tensions over Ukraine and more recently Kazakhstan.

Russia is perceived as an obstacle to Western control over the strategically vital Eurasian continent. The prize of Eurasia has long been coveted by Western imperialists, from the British Empire’s Sir Halford Mackinder to the U.S. strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski. As Krainer notes, it was this imperial calculation by the Anglo-American capitalists that led to the building up of Nazi Germany as a bludgeon to destroy the Soviet Union and purportedly to give the empire-builders global hegemony. This imperial machination led to World War II and the greatest conflagration in human history with as many as 85 million dead. The Soviet Union and China accounted for more than half of the death toll.

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