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PART I
RADHIKA DESAI: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 15th Geopolitical Economy Hour, the fortnightly show on the political and geopolitical economy of our times. I’m Radhika Desai.
MICHAEL HUDSON: And I’m Michael Hudson.
RADHIKA DESAI: And today we propose to discuss NATO in the aftermath of its recently concluded Vilnius Summit, exploring a variety of questions about how its assault on Russia is faring and the prospects of extending its sphere of operations to what NATO leaders like to call the Indo-Pacific.
RADHIKA DESAI: And in order to do this, on today’s show, we are joined by none other than Pepe Escobar. Many of you will, of course, know who he is.
He’s a Brazilian journalist, geopolitical analyst and author. Pepe, welcome to our show.
PEPE ESCOBAR: It’s a huge honor and pleasure to be with you guys and with this fantastic audience, of course. And let’s rock.
RADHIKA DESAI: All right. Let’s let’s rock. So basically, NATO is a huge topic and it’s surrounded by a considerable amount of smoke and a vast number of mirrors.
So we have to try to understand we have to sort of push through all of this to try to understand what it is. It calls itself a defensive alliance, defensive.
The fact of the matter is it was created as part of the Cold War, which the U.S. launched more or less single handedly before the Second World War was even over. It launched it against its own Second World War ally.
And again, the United States did this, you know, launched the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of this launching of the Cold War. So there is no way in which this war is defensive.
And what’s more, it’s also was an offense against communism, of course, but it has also been an offense against the third world.
Essentially, NATO was also set up as a bit of a rival to the United Nations, which the U.S. liked less and less as it began to include more and more countries from the third world.
Alliance? What sort of an alliance is it in which one about one member seeks to essentially damage and harm other members? That’s what the United States is doing, for instance, to Germany today. That’s what it did to the United Kingdom all those decades ago at the end of the Second World War.
Much is also made of NATO’s unity. In reality, the effort, the mountains of effort required to paper over the cracks that are widening in NATO are, in fact, no longer even enough. And the cracks are showing through.
The North Atlantic? What do you mean North Atlantic? NATO has long abandoned its alleged sphere of operation and it has penetrated more and more outside that sphere, not only within Europe, but is today, of course, as I’ve already said, preparing to penetrate the Indo-Pacific.
One could lengthen this list of the lies that surround NATO. But why don’t we just launch into our conversation? We’ve decided to structure it around a series of questions. So let me just start us off by posing the first one.
The first question we have is simply, where did the Vilnius Summit leave NATO? What are the principal features within the alliance that it exposed?
Maybe we can start with you, Pepe, since you are our guest.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Oh my God. Can I throw a bomb? OK, guys, look, I have had this pleasure of following virtually every NATO summit for the past 15 years or so.
So the evolution or the involution of NATO as a global Robocop has been distinct year after year. In fact, I started calling NATO global Robocop as early as 2010, 2011, 2012, because that was already obvious.
And then when we got under a fog of war, Rasmussen as NATO General Secretary, usually they get a deranged Scandinavian as NATO General Secretary. Now the deranged Scandinavian is, of course, that piece of Norwegian wood, Jens Stoltenberg.
So it’s very, very hot.
I remember when I was in Sweden years ago and I was on a geopolitical roundtable in a university in southern Sweden, when I started talking about Rasmussen, my Swedish audience erupted in anger because they knew, they were postgrad students, they knew very well who Rasmussen was and they said, look, he’s destroying the reputation of Scandinavia as rational actors.
And they knew it very well. Stoltenberg is not as rabid as Rasmussen, but he is sold basically by the people who control NATO, as you know, better, much better than I do, straight from Washington. And obviously those guys at NATO headquarters in Belgium are just following orders coming from Washington.
Stoltenberg is sold as a sort of a relatively polite face of NATO, but the message is the same. And after the start of the special military operations, got even worse.
So anything that comes from the mouth of Stoltenberg, we know that it’s coming from the mouth of the rabid, Straussian neocon psychos in D.C. And they have their Scandinavian guy, you know, just voicing them.
The problem is he’s taken seriously all across Europe. I mean, seriously, Ursula von der Leyen now is the butt of jokes from Spain to Greece and everywhere in between. But Stoltenberg is actually taken seriously. And that’s what makes them even more dangerous.
If you talk to an average citizen, let’s say here in France or in Italy or in Greece or in Germany, they take NATO’s pronouncement seriously. And the NATO 24-7 spin on the war against Russia, which basically says, no, we are not involved. We are not at war with Russia. We are not part of the war.
And then he announces the umpteenth package coming either from the West, from the EU or NATO countries as well against Russia. So the problem is, most people, because of the mainstream media barrage all across Europe, they don’t get into the specifics.
So they really don’t know that NATO is up to their necks and beyond in a war against Russia.
The way Vilnius was covered by European mainstream media was that, no, once again, we are all united, the 27 of us against Russian aggression, the usual.
But no specifics and much, much worse, only very, very sparse mentions of NATO extending the Robocop mandate to the Indo-Pacific and to the South China Sea.
So in fact, what we’re seeing for the past year and a half, let’s put it this way, is that the North Atlantic Organization now has taken over the Indo-Pacific and the South China Sea. So they actually moved to Asia.
So it’s not North Atlantic Organization. It’s Northern Hemisphere, Including the Far East Organization.
But this is not explained, obviously, by, for instance, The Economist, The Financial Times, major newspapers in Italy, Le Monde here in France, etc. So obviously, the average European citizen is absolutely clueless about that.
And the fact that the war, which is being lost dramatically in Ukraine, the narrative has been changing by the Americans, not yet by NATO. But on terms of NATO policy, there is a 4,400 page not-so-secret document at the end of the World News Summit, which categorizes their next steps in Russia, but also their next steps in the Indo-Pacific. And that’s the most worrying part of them all.
And once again, I would say 99% of EU citizens are completely oblivious to all of that.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I think the purpose of NATO from the beginning has always been to promote a unipolar U.S.-centered order. And it began with Europe, because NATO, in effect, has taken over European foreign policy, and even domestic policy. It’s written into the EU constitution.
And certainly, you’ve seen the effect of the war in Ukraine is to make Western Europe a U.S. satellite. It’s cut off the trade with Russian gas and oil and fertilizer and other raw materials, making Europe dependent on U.S. suppliers at much, much higher prices.
So the effect of NATO so far has been to sort of break away Europe from what seemed to be an increasingly close relationship of mutual economic gain between Germany and other European countries, trading and investing with Russia for low-cost raw materials, and with China for low-cost manufacturers.
Well, the U.S. plan in just forcing a military solution in Ukraine has been to break away Russia’s ability to support China, to support Syria, to support Iran and other countries. The whole idea of NATO was to carve away any group that would seek to be independent of the U.S. world order.
And of course, the ultimate aim, as President Biden has said again and again, is China is the number one enemy.
Well, you can’t go against China right now, because it already has so much support from Russia and other countries. So NATO thought, well, how do we isolate China? We first of all have to break away its potential ally in Russia.
And if we have a war in Ukraine, the neocons actually believe that the Russian people would rise up against President Putin and have a regime change, and the regime change would bring another Boris Yeltsin-type Western-oriented character.
Well, the reality has been just the opposite. Hardly surprising, when a country is under attack, like Russian speakers are under attack in eastern Ukraine, well, the tendency of any population is to rally behind the leader.
And that’s why Putin’s approval rating has gone up to 80 percent, much higher than any American or European leader.
So what’s happened is that instead of NATO breaking up China, Russia, and other countries seeking to pursue their own policy, it’s driving them all together out of simply the need to protect their own economies from the U.S. sanctions and from the U.S. plan to break them up.
And when the United States comes right out and says China is our enemy, Russia’s our enemy, and all their allies are enemy, hardly by surprise, the enemies get together.
So the result is that NATO really, instead of isolating the members of the BRICS and the global majority of Eurasia with the global south, they’ve driven them all together.
I don’t think there’s any truth at all in the rumor that the heads of NATO are really working for China’s foreign policy department. I don’t think they’re really in the pay of China’s government to make sure that Western Europe is driving all the other countries together under Chinese and Russian domination.
And I don’t think they’re really working for the Russian State Department, either. But if you think of them as working for Russia and China, you realize suddenly you can explain all of the consequences of what the NATO policy is bringing about.
It’s driving the rest of the world together and being an integrating force for the rest of the world by making an iron curtain, isolating the United States, England, and Western Europe away from the rest of the world, leaving the west of the world, the BRICS and the global majority to make their own new world order.
RADHIKA DESAI: I mean, I think all of these are really interesting points. I mean, if I were to put, just summarize in one word what, where, you know, where Vilnius leaves NATO, I would say that word would be failure.
Because even though NATO has a lot of things going for it, including, you know, governments in places, important capitals like Berlin that are willing to do everything that NATO wants, in fact, NATO is failing to achieve its objectives.
And the key way in which it is failing is, of course, that all the help that has gone to the Ukrainian membership, they have essentially not been, they’re essentially going to fail in the battlefield.
Sanctions, Michael, as you mentioned, have already failed to bring Russia down. Now there’s going to be failure in the battlefield.
And if there is failure in the battlefield, then I think that the divisions within NATO, which are already quite apparent, I mean, the fact of the matter is that the various Eastern European countries wanted to give Ukraine membership or at least some sort of map to membership.
And this was not permitted by Germany for its own reasons, but also by the United States. And President Biden cannot afford to be seen as essentially, you know, increasing the U.S.’s or NATO’s involvement in this war in any way.
So the fact of the matter is that in this it has not succeeded either.
Moreover, the military aid, you know, just think about this, the size of the actual military industrial complex possessed by the NATO countries collectively is enormous.
But the fact of the matter is that still they have been unwilling to a considerable extent, but also unable to supply Ukraine with the quantity and quality of the arms that it needs so that it cannot succeed, could not succeed. And so the so-called counteroffensive is failing.
And that’s the background against which the Vilnius Summit took place. With that background, even though it added Finland and hopes to add Sweden, having overcome President Erdogan’s limitations by offering him vast quantities of money, et cetera.
The fact of the matter is that this alliance, the cracks within it are already showing.
And I also feel that success against Russia is very critical to extending the alliance and its sphere of operations to China, because the fact of the matter is that if they can’t succeed against Russia, there’s definitely, they’re not going to succeed against China.
And what’s more, there was already dissension over Russia. The fact of the matter is that the various NATO members are so deeply involved economically with China that they are not going to, they’re going to be even greater dissensions with essentially targeting China, even though all Washington’s puppets in various European capitals are huffing and puffing to try to achieve this by talking about de-risking and what have you.
People like Ursula von der Leyen are in the forefront of this effort, but I don’t think they’re going to succeed for reasons, I think, Michael, that you also mentioned.
The cost that these countries are going to have to pay for these wars costs not just militarily, but also economically. The consequences of the economic disruptions that it’s going to bring is going to create dissension within these people, is going to create popular discontent. It’s going to destabilize governments.
And what’s more, it’s also going to create dissensions within the elites, because many of them have reasons to continue doing business not only with Russia, but also with China, in particular with China.
So in that sense, I would say that the Vilnius Summit has simply shown the dysfunction of NATO to an even greater extent.
Maybe we can go on to the next question, which is how is the proxy war on Ukraine faring? What does it mean for Biden and his larger strategy of uniting so-called democracies against the so-called autocracies and targeting China?
I’ve kind of already segued into that topic.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Well, I’ve been writing about this stuff for a year and a half, so I hate to repeat myself. But OK, let’s go straight to the point.
NATO’s humiliation, full humiliation, is just around the corner. And compared to it, Afghanistan does not even qualify as a mini Disneyland. Just wait. Because in terms of the counteroffensive, it’s already dead. It lasted three weeks and it’s already dead. And there won’t be a counteroffensive 2.0.
First of all, they have no personnel, qualified personnel. Second, they have no weapons. Third, they are being demilitarized on a daily basis, non-stop.
Because if you follow any good writing in English, of course, if you don’t follow the ones writing Russian or Chinese, it’s understandable in the West.
But if you follow the very good ones writing in English, starting with Andrei Martianov. Andrei Martianov is very funny because technically he’s an Azerbaijani. He was born in Baku, but in the old Soviet Union. But Andrei lives in Western USA.
He writes in English. His blog is excellent. His podcasts are also excellent. And I would say, without a shadow of a doubt, in English, he’s the number one military analyst of what’s really going on in the war.
And we have excellent American analysts like Colonel Douglas McGregor, Scott Ritter, etc. They all, in military terms, they all say the same thing. This thing is dead. This thing is practically over. The thing is how long […] NATO can get away with selling a fiction to a global audience.
People in Germany, France, and Italy, the top three economies here in Europe, are already asking questions. I mean, industrialists, academics, they are not, of course, stigmatized in mainstream media, underground channels, parallel discussions, roundtables of very well-informed people, including intelligence people, French, Italians, etc.
They say, look, there’s got. We need to find a way out of this, but it’s impossible because everything is controlled in Washington by those Straussian neocon psychos.
Even them, not them, even the so-called Biden administration, which the way I’ve been writing for years, it doesn’t exist. What exists is the Biden combo.
Biden is, as we all know, he cannot find his way to the next room. Everybody knows that. So the decisions are taken by the combo.
And among the combo, the visible faces, which makes them even more toxic, are the toxic trio. Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland. But the guys who actually make these decisions, they are in the back. They never show up. So that makes it even more dangerous.
We have an idea of who they are, but they never show up. They don’t need to. The messengers spread the message. And they are trying to change the narrative badly because they know that there’s going to be a massive humiliation just around the corner.
The elections are getting closer and closer. You cannot go to the American public next year and present a NATO humiliation, which is obvious for 88% of the world, as a victory and try to get away with it. It’s absolutely impossible.
People who bother to look at what’s really happening on the ground in the battlefield in Ukraine can see for themselves. So now they’re trying to change the narrative.
And the best example these past few weeks, in fact, these past few days, was Edward Luttwak, which you all know as, let’s say, number one or number two Pentagon advisor for the past 50 years or so.
He gave an interview that is absolutely incandescent, where he’s basically changing the subject to war on China.
So this was, I would say, the official entry of the real war is against China, not in Ukraine, into mainstream media. It’s on YouTube. Everybody can watch it. Soon, if people start watching, soon we’ll have millions of views.
And Edward, as you know, is a very, very clever operator. Even when he doesn’t say it, he’s spelling the whole game, in fact.
Look, William Burns called Naryshkin. William Burns, head of CIA, Naryshkin, head of Russian foreign intelligence. This is true. Burns did call Naryshkin. They have a very important phone conversation, but not exactly what Edward is spinning.
Basically, Naryshkin was trying to explain to Burns, look, if you, CIA, start mounting operations inside the Russian Federation, there are going to be repercussions for you guys. So, you know, go slow.
Edward’s, basically, Edward’s spin was, no, Burns told Naryshkin that Putin and Biden should close a deal.
Putin is not going to close a deal with the Biden administration. Forget it. The Biden administration knows exactly what Russia wants, which is exactly what Russia wanted in December 2021. Indivisibility of security. You guys know this very, very well. In our audience, I’m sure it’s familiar with that.
Those letters that were sent to the Pentagon and the White House and got a non-answer. Also sent to NATO. It’s all about indivisibility of security for Europe and for the post-Soviet space. And at the time, the Americans ignored it.
So now they want to go back to the table and discuss with the Russians. The Russians know very well when they receive a yes, no, or a no, yes, which was the case. So there’s nothing to discuss.
And the Russian foreign ministry, the minister of defense, in putting himself over and over again has said, look, our set of conditions to end the war are there. The Americans know it very well.
We can finish the whole thing with a phone call. They don’t make the phone call that really matters. It’s not Bernstein or Rischke. It’s the White House to Putin. This one is not going to happen anytime soon. But he’s still trying to find a way out.
So if you think that this came straight out of a Kafka novel, yes, it did. And it keeps going.
RADHIKA DESAI: How and when do you think the war might end?
PEPE ESCOBAR: There are two short answers, Radhika. One, with the phone call, the war stops tomorrow. And they all go to a negotiating table somewhere in Finland, in Kazakhstan, in Geneva.
And obviously there will be no agreement because the Americans will refuse to accept indivisibility of security. Everybody knows that. So there is no peaceful solution to this war.
The only solution for this war is a complete humiliation of either side. As we look at the battlefield, we see that the humiliation of NATO is just around the corner, literally.
And it doesn’t matter if you send F-16s in six months or in one year. It doesn’t matter if you have more Storm Shadows from Britain. It doesn’t matter if you send 1,000 Leopards from Germany. It doesn’t matter.
And it’s very, very funny because even Putin himself is saying, look, whatever they send here, it will be incinerated. And he says that casually now. Before that, the Russian Minister of Defense was even trying to be relatively diplomatic.
And now the Russians are even laughing about it because they are annihilating so-called top-of-the-line Western weapons with old Soviet weapons, modified Soviet weapons as well. So is this going on for another three months? It’s very possible.
And there is going to be some sort of Russian, let’s say, crypto-offensive trying to take the whole of the east of Dnieper. They can take over everything.
Another possibility, in the next few months or until early next year, go all the way to Odessa, which is something that every military analyst in Russia was saying since February last year. We have to go all the way to Odessa now, soon, immediately.
So maybe this is going to happen. But the Russian Minister of Defense has different scenarios for what happens after what happened in Bakhmut, which was this World War I thing, absolutely devastating, lasting six or seven months.
But it was a rehearsal to what the Russians might do when they really decide to get into war. So what Putin said a few months ago still applies. We haven’t even started yet. And they haven’t.
Because their best weapons are still in the rear guard. Their top battalions are not part of the fighting yet. They are using their hypersonic missiles sparingly when they have a very specific target like that bunker near Lviv in western Ukraine that they destroyed a few months ago with one Kinzhal penetrating underground.
And then nobody talked about it. The Pentagon didn’t talk about it. The Russian Minister of Defense didn’t talk about it because this was too sensitive. A lot of NATO people were killed in that Kinzhal strike.
So the Russians are fighting with one hand behind their backs. No question. And with velvet gloves. But now, after all these attacks inside the Russian Federation including the second attack against the Kerch Bridge and attacks against civilians in Russia, they are starting to lose their patience.
They have the possibility to increase lethality to any degree you can imagine. They don’t want it for the moment. They always leave a window open in case the Americans decide to start talking.
And that brings us to an extremely complex matter which unfortunately we don’t have time at least today to talk about it, which is divisions at the top in Russia.
There are oligarchs who are pro-ending the war. There are oligarchs who want to extend the war indefinitely because they are making a lot of money out of it. There are pro-EU people very, very close to the Kremlin. And there are the Silovikis and the ultra-nationalists who say no, we should cut off the head of the snake tomorrow in 20 minutes, which they can if they want to.
So there are divisions inside Russia and at the highest levels. There is no division in terms of accomplishing the goals as fuzzy as they are of the special military operation.
Demilitarization of Ukraine is on the way. They did it at least 50% if not more. Demilitarization of NATO is also working because they did it.
Germany, they don’t have shells for one week if they decide to go into a war. Their Leopards are gone, not to mention the other ones.
Which leads us to the most dangerous element in all that, which brings us back to our NATO discussion: the Poles, the rabbit hyenas of Europe. The Poles and the Baltics are cultivated by the Americans as their new strike force considering that the Ukrainian strike force is practically gone
And that would assure the war entering another even more complicated stage and with no end in sight. The possibilities of this thing getting worse of course are endless but this one I would say is the number one.
Subcontracting the next offensive to the Poles with help from other NATO mercenaries. Forget about Ukraine, now it’s going to be Poland independently, not part of NATO because they’re doing this on their own, NATO is not involved.
And then we have a different actor on the Ukrainian battlefield because the Poles, their agenda as all of us know, is to annex Western Ukraine and they think they have a golden opportunity that they never had before in the past few decades to do it.
So I’m sorry if I’m being so nihilistic but.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well you may sound nihilistic but I think what you said Pepe is exactly what was being discussed at Vilnius and NATO. I think all the NATO people are in agreement with you.
What we’re saying is no longer on the outside as a minority view. What you said is the majority view of NATO.
They got together, they realized it, and it’s as if at the Vilnius meeting they said, okay we’re going to bury Ukraine, this is a funeral for Ukraine, we know that we can’t win, the only thing we want to do is.
If there are any tanks and weapons left, let’s use them all up so that Europe will buy a huge bonanza for the American military industrial complex, Raytheon is very happy.
But I think the message at Vilnius the associated meetings at the EU was, we’re finished with Ukraine, we’ve done everything that we set out to do, we’ve bled Russia, great success as you pointed out elsewhere our real enemy now is China.
Now our center is really in the Pacific. Our center is in the China Sea. Specifically, let’s make Taiwan the new Ukraine. Let’s be willing to die for the last Taiwanese. Let’s do to China what we’ve just so wonderfully done to NATO.
We’ve expended everything there, but while we’ve used our tanks and ammunition and armaments in the West now let’s use up our navy, there’s a huge market in building all the ships that a war with a provocation with China will do.
Let’s send some of our ships that China will say well that’s our own territory we’re one country, let’s shift to a naval war in the Pacific now, and that seems to be what they all decided on.
They don’t want to talk about Ukraine anymore, it makes them unhappy. I mean for us it’s saying, ha ha we told you all about it all along.
For them they say, well we did what we could.
And I think you’re right about Poland. In Poland they’re obsessed with the 15th century and the 16th century. When Poland had Lithuania, had many of the Baltic States, had Prussia. All of that. Had part of Ukraine.
They want to recover their lost glory and the leaders of Poland are exactly as you said, and I think NATO isn’t really going to be a part of it, if Poland tries to attack Belarus or even isolate Königsberg.
Somehow NATO’s not going to get involved if Russia retaliates with a slam. You can just remember what happened in World War II to remember that.
I think what you’ve outlined, I think it’s what NATO agrees with
RADHIKA DESAI: Well I mean let me complicate that a little bit, because the thing is that if there were to be any kind of Polish military action of the sort that you’re discussing, it’s going to actually divide NATO quite radically.
There’ll be some powers who’ll be saying, we have to back Poland. This is a fight. And all the rhetoric about freedom and democracy and so on will come out.
But the fact of the matter is beginning with the Germans and a whole lot of others, they’re not going to support, as Michael you were just saying, they’re not going to go along with that. So I think it’s more complicated.
I think also that in terms of extending this to China I really think that military failure of the sort that we all agree the West is facing that NATO is facing is going to give people pause, first of all.
That is to say, can the United States really do, can it really hold up the military end, so to speak? And it can’t. It spends more money on its military than the next however many states combined but still cannot produce weapons of the quantity and quality that even Ukraine needs, let alone the West as a whole will need if it goes to war with China.
So in a sense it’s got an overpaid, pampered military industrial complex that cannot actually produce the weapons, so in that sense.
And earlier I said Biden didn’t want to include Ukraine in NATO or not even give it a road map for electoral reasons, but I think there’s also another reason.
They do not want a failed state in their ranks, because that’s what Ukraine will become soon. So in that sense I would say that the possibility of extending the war to China is much less secure I think.
Also because, even the countries around China who the United States has been trying to divide from China for a long time, they continue to deepen their economic connections, trade relations, investment relations, etc with China.They’re not going to go to war with China in any easy way.
They’re going to be deeply divided just as the European leadership is divided.
In fact all of this kind of nicely segues into our next question, which is how much longer do you think Europe and other US allies sustain the appearance of unity?
Because we know that Europe is paying a big economic cost. The unity that is much doubted has also been a very selective sort of, convenient sort of, unity where every country has sent whatever is convenient for it rather than what is needed in Ukraine.
So how long do you think that even Europe can stay united, with the British pulling in one direction, the eastern states in another direction, Germany and France and Italy in yet another direction? How long can this unity be sustained?
MICHAEL HUDSON: I don’t think it’s a question of countries fighting each other. It’s a question of the business interests fighting the political interests who basically are employees of the United States.
The question is, are international relations going to be determined by economic factors and mutual gains as we all believe with the materialist approach to history, or is it going to be completely non-economic factors, or, as Janet Yellen and her European counterpart said, all trade is risk.
Any trade with China or Russia or the Near East runs a risk of losing national security. Because if you trade with a country, you’re dependent on them, and therefore you should break off the trade with China. You should break off the trade.
Well obviously, breaking off the trade with China and Russia has already led to the collapse of the German steel industry and the industries that use steel and the fertilizer industry and the glass making industry that uses gas.
So the real question is, are European politics going to be based on economic long-term self-interest as we all assumed was the guiding shape of geopolitical arrangements, or is it going to be rejecting your self-interest in terms of national security, meaning, trade with the United States establishes absolute dependence on the United States.
When Janet Yellen the US Secretary of the Treasury and [Von Leyen] you have to base all your trade on national security, that means all trade must be locking in your dependence on US exporters, US oil and gas exporters, now that we are your only suppliers of gas and oil. US farm exports. US computer information technology exports. US communications technology. Rejecting Huawei.
How is it that the European politics is not dominated by the business interests, but by American fantasy that even American interests are not based on the benefits of American computer chip exporters.
You’ve just had President Biden say we’re going to have to give 30 billion dollars to support US chip modernization, but the chip companies are going to have to lose one third of their total market which is China.
And the chip companies have said, wait a minute you’re saying that we’re going to lose our markets and you’re going to try to make us grow again but without a market for our goods because our market is China.
Even the United States is turning away from its economic self-interest to this obsession with we must dominate other countries. This obsession of the neocon to control other countries.
I don’t think something like this has really come across before and those of us who believe in the economic determination of history can’t believe it’s going to go on very long but here we are.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Just complementing what Michael said, it has to do with the astounding mediocrity of the current political elites in Europe.
This is something that, of course, we have these conversations here in Europe, but of course, totally off the record. And you never see a debate like that on the opinion pages of Le Monde or in any nightly newscast.
But German businesses, they are absolutely furious. And they said, look, there are already some sort of revolt that we need to get rid of this government as soon as possible. French interests, more or less the same thing.
When Macron went to visit China recently, the businessman with Macron said, we don’t care what you discuss in terms of politics. We are here to do business with the Chinese, whatever you say.
And in fact, they clinched a lot of very juicy contracts while they were in Beijing.
The Italians, the same thing. The Italians are saying, are you nuts? You want to cut off the Italian partnership in the Belt and Road Initiative in Brie, which is a decision that they’ll have to take until the end of the year, beginning of next year. This is absurd. They’re going to invest in our ports. They’re creating jobs here.
So, you know, there is a revolt in business circles. These are the three economists that really matter in Europe, Germany, France. Everybody else is an extra, you know.
So we can see maybe, I would say, medium to long term, a change in the horizon. Short term, I would say it’s an absolute massive tactical victory by the Americans to cut off the EU, especially Germany, from Russia.
The problem is the people who actually know how business is done, businessmen and industrialists, now they’re starting to get the full picture, not only for the next winter, but for the years ahead.
So the best we should all expect is a change in governments in these three countries that really matter.
In France, it’s not going to happen because, as we know, Macron was recently reelected, even though his popularity is probably less than zero at the moment. There’s no chance there’s going to be a coup d’etat to get rid of le petit roi, the little king.
But French businessmen, they are as furious as their German counterparts. They say, so what do we got left? Are we going to transfer to the US? No. Are we going to transfer to Asia? Maybe.
And obviously, if that happens, the social situation inside France, which is already mega explosive, then it’s going to be total combustion.
And in Germany, the deindustrialization of Germany now is a fact, and the numbers are absolutely horrifying. They basically deindustrialized this year over 30% compared to last year. This is beyond enormous and unimaginable until a few months ago, right?
And obviously, Eastern Europe doesn’t count. In Eastern Europe, they have other ideas. Apart from the Poles, the Romanians soon are going to start saying, ah, we want to recover our lands that now are part of Ukraine.
And the Hungarians are going to say exactly the same thing.
So basically, there will be a giant partition of Western Ukraine with everybody jumping in. So the ramifications of all that are, in terms of political economy and in geopolitical terms, are absolutely horrifying.
And from the point of view of the average EU citizen, which is already being buried by taxes, the average French or Italian taxpayer basically pays 50% of what they earn in taxes. It’s completely absurd.
They don’t get much in return because the social security system in both countries and the other ones is also collapsing. So ends barely meet for most people.
They are starting to make the direct connection of throwing zillions of euros into Ukraine while the social situation inside the EU, as much as inside the US, as you know very well, is deteriorating very fast.
RADHIKA DESAI: And this is so true. And just to go back to something that Michael was saying, you know, Michael, you were talking about how those of us who think that economic interests should determine political and geopolitical actions and so on, that we are somehow being pushed to reassess the basis of the way we think.
But there’s a way of thinking about it. If you think about this in terms of the longer history of imperialism, and I’ve always said that it’s important to recognize that imperialism has been in decline since about 1914.
It’s been a long one. It’s been a slow one. Some of us can’t wait for it to accelerate, but it has been in decline.
And it’s come to the point where the very actions that are necessary to preserve the imperial system are in fact harming the very system on which it is based.
So when you have that sort of, the snake eating its own tail situation, that’s when you begin to see that the contradictions of the system are mounting. And that’s the position, that’s the situation where we are at.
That what the United States needs to do in order to preserve and extend the imperial system and therefore the capitalist system itself is proving harmful to capitalism.
Now, what that means for the future is anybody’s guess. Supposing, you know, we got the kind of government that, the regime change.
So if you got the kind of regime change that Pepe was mentioning and important European capitals, they will then have to go back to something like the approach that they were taking when Merkel made Germany dependent on Russia for its, you know, energy needs and so on and so forth.
You could have something like that.
But then what that has to do is we will see that the capitalist world is going to have to make terms with a world that is, you know, on the one hand socialist in the sense that China is socialist and other socialist powers.
And on the other hand, if not socialist, like Russia, at least not willing to be subordinated to capitalism and therefore to be, to follow neoliberal principles, because neoliberal principles are nothing but subordination to capitalism.
So in that sense, I think that we are looking at part of the reason why this situation looks as complex as it does is because of this very complicated situation of capitalism and imperialism today.
So maybe we have time to at least go into one further question. And that is really, again, this is about the very economic question.
But why do you think the Grain Deal broke down? What is the significance of the breakdown of the Grain Deal?
Because remember, of course, remembering that originally the Grain Deal, you know, the West made a lot of noise about how Ukraine feeds the world and blah blah and so on.
But in reality, the Grain Deal was arrived at in order that the big agribusinesses that are located in Ukraine will be able to export their grain and make a profit. That was the real reason for the Grain Deal.
Now, of course, President Putin has given his own reasons and he’s actually given two sets of reasons. One is, you know, he’s pointed out that the West did not keep its side of the deal.
But he also pointed out that the grain that was coming out of Ukraine was, in fact, not reaching the third world anyway.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Three percent of the grain was reaching poor countries in Africa. You know what? They were discussing this this morning at a Valdai Club session this morning, previous to the Russia-Africa Summit that starts on Thursday.
They were discussing that and they got into detail and they said the Russians were the only ones who actually exposed to the rest of the world a fiction.
Over 40 percent was going to rich EU nations, not the poor EU nations. That’s number one.
Number two, they were using the fact that Odessa port was the center to stockpile weapons in Odessa. Why the Russians are bombing Odessa since the beginning of this week? Because they are bombing exactly this as a stockpiling of weapons.
And number three, they were organizing ways of using the corridors of the Grain Deal to attack the Black Sea fleet and especially Crimea. There you go. Michael, it’s all yours.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Now that you said the whole point, what you said is exactly right.
The grain that Russia had said, we’re producing the grain. We want to use this grain to give to the African countries to consolidate our linkage between Russia, China and the BRICS and the global south, specifically of Africa.
Obviously for them, just as when they built the Aswan Dam in Egypt, for them trade and support was a means of creating national alliances and Europe prevented that.
And as you pointed out, the big agricultural agribusiness companies wanted to make money for the same reason that Willie Sutton said, why do you rob banks? Because that’s where the money is.
So of course they wanted to get paid by Europe instead of giving their product away for free. There’s no percentage of zero that you can really get out of this.
And as you pointed out, Ukraine was trying to use this ostensibly humanitarian grain trade to stockpile weapons and use that sea transport as a means of, how do you attack Crimea? By the sea. That’s how they used a sea torpedo to blow up the bridge to Crimea.
So you’re having exactly this. Russia has decided to demilitarize the Black Sea. Putin has said that if there’s any foreign ship that is not with Russian permission in the Black Sea, that would be treated as an enemy because who else would possibly go to the Black Sea?
There are not going to be insurance companies that are going to guarantee the safety of shipping in a military war zone. So without getting insurance for your sea transport, how are you going to transport grain? That in itself has stopped it.
And Putin had just listed a whole series of criteria that would be necessary for the grain deal to resume.
And that included stopping the EU sanctions against the Russian banks that have to finance the grain deal, stopping all sorts of attacks on Russia, sort of using the grain transport path as a means of actually putting a warship in there to attack Russia.
Essentially, Russia said, you’ll have to demilitarize the Black Sea if you want peaceful grain commerce across the Black Sea.
The US is completely unwilling to do that. Congress will never go along with that. So essentially, the United States has blocked the grain deal.
And it’s using its propaganda in Africa to say, oh, look, Russia is blocking it. That’s why you’re not being fed with the grain.
Who are you going to believe, the Russian reality or the American cover story? That’s what’s being fought out in Africa right now.
And Africa is becoming actually one of the great battlefields in this split between the unipolar US order and the emerging global majority order. And grain is the basis of this.
The foundation of American trade policy since 1945 has been to prevent other countries from growing their own food.
All of the World Bank loans to third world countries in the 50s, 60s and 70s have been for exporting plantation crops and for the US State Department opposing family-based farming to promote plantation crops, especially on lands owned by American exporting interests.
The issue is the whole structure of African and Southern Hemisphere land tenure and whether they’re going to aim at feeding themselves just as the Europeans have fed themselves.
And the issue that you didn’t mention with the grain deal was Ukraine says, all right, let’s try to export our grain by rail to Europe.
Well, the center of European foreign policy, the most important economic aim of creating the common market in the first place was the common agricultural policy to protect French and German and other agriculture.
And the last thing they want is for their farmers to be undersold with cheap Ukrainian grain that will hurt their economic interests. And so they’re European farmers and they have the agricultural policy that is blocking the shipment of Ukrainian grain through Europe.
But apart from the fact that all of the storage facilities, the silos for grain are already being used for European farm grain, there’s nowhere to put that Ukrainian grain. The problem is insolvable from that point of view.
RADHIKA DESAI: Yeah, that’s so true and important, Michael, that you sort of have broadened the picture to put the issue of the grain deal in the larger picture of imperialism and the way it has always operated.
Because all the first world countries, the imperialist countries themselves actually pursue a very strict food security policy.
Meanwhile, they tell third world countries, oh, you shouldn’t worry about food security. You should, as Michael rightly points out, produce the export crops. What are export crops? They are crops that the first world wants.
Why should third world countries produce export crops? Because they exist as far as the third world, as far as first world countries are concerned, to supply cheap things that the West, which is largely non-tropical, cannot produce.
So the third world is supposed to supply us with all those tropical fruits, vegetables, tobacco, cocoa, coffee, tea, whatever it is.
And what’s really also interesting is, you know, people always think of the third world as being unable to feed itself. In reality, there are actually relatively few third world countries that have fallen for the definitely the very real inducements of the United States to not worry about food security.
And besides, they are not rich enough to import a lot of food. So the extent of food dependence of first world countries is actually much greater.
We import a lot more of our food than the average third world country and certainly big third world countries.
And what that food export also does is it keeps inflation low. We are able to, in first world countries, buy things for next to nothing. And this is a big factor in keeping inflation low.
So, yeah, I think this is very important to put the grain deal in the larger picture of imperialism.
Now, I should say we are near to an hour in this show and we still have several questions to discuss. So what I propose is that next week we will come back and discuss the same issue and complete the number of various questions that we were discussing.
So until next week, then we will have when we’ll have the second part of this program on NATO. Thanks, everyone, for watching. Thanks to Pepe for being our guest.
He will be back next week. And, of course, thanks also to Paul Graham, who’s a videographer and all the others who support our show. Thank you very much. And till next time.
MICHAEL HUDSON: If there is a next week.
PART II
RADHIKA DESAI: Hello everyone and welcome to the [15th] Geopolitical Economy Hour, a program that discusses the political and geopolitical economy of our time. I’m Radhika Desai.
MICHAEL HUDSON: And I’m Michael Hudson.
RADHIKA DESAI: And today we have once again Pepe Escobar, roving reporter extraordinaire. Welcome, Pepe.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Thank you. It’s an enormous pleasure to be with you guys again.
RADHIKA DESAI: And today we are going to continue the discussion we started in the last Geopolitical Economy Hour, entitled “NATO Out of Bounds: War Against Russia, War Against China”.
Last time we discussed where the Vilnius Summit had left NATO, and the divisions within the alliance that the summit had exposed; how the proxy war on Russia was faring; and how the Biden project of uniting so-called democracies against so-called autocracies relies so critically on the outcome of this war, which by present indications does not look good for Ukraine, and it does not look good for NATO.
We then went on to discuss how much longer Europe and other US allies could sustain the appearance of NATO unity, which is cracking as we speak, and ended with a discussion of how the grain deal [the Black Sea Grain Initiative] had broken down.
Now that discussion already permitted us to expand our frame out of Europe and to take in the world as a whole, because, as it became very clear in our discussion, you cannot understand the breakdown of the grain deal unless you put it in the larger context of how imperialism has a long and murderous history of attempting to deny food security to most of the world.
So now today we are going to continue that discussion by focusing on the danger of NATO being transformed from a North Atlantic Treaty Organization to a North and South Atlantic and Pacific Treaty Organization, as Biden leads to an ever-widening and deepening hybrid war on China with trade, technology, diplomatic, and military aspects, but which is coming ever closer to some kind of military war.
So once again, we framed our discussion around several questions, so I will just begin by posing the first one:
What is the United States’ wider intention and strategy vis-a-vis China in the so-called Indo-Pacific region?
What do recent events mean for the region? I’m thinking of events such as the visit of high-ranking Chinese and Russian officials to Pyongyang to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the armistice in the Korean War.
I’m thinking of Western hysteria over the recent agreement between China and the Solomon Islands, one of a very large number of Pacific island nations.
The recent announcement of a new package of military aid to Taiwan from the United States, which essentially is going to be done by a kind of presidential decree, using the same military drawdown program that President Biden has been using to fuel the war in Ukraine.
And generally, I’m thinking of rising tensions in the region, thanks to the announcement of AUKUS a couple of years ago, and the reactivation of the so-called Quad alliance, or incipient alliance, whatever you want to call it, between the United States, South Korea, Japan, and India.
And of course, there has been the recent NATO declaration that it considers China a threat.
U.S. strategy is not easy to understand, because, while on the one hand, there seems to be some effort to promote dialogue with the visits of recent high-ranking U.S. officials, such as Antony Blinken and Janet Yellen, while on the other hand, U.S. actions continue to ratchet up tensions across all the fronts.
So, Michael, why don’t you start us off with your views on this matter?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, today is just two years since America was driven out of Afghanistan, and we’re seeing a repeat of the defeat in Ukraine.
So the U.S. and NATO have lost Ukraine, but they want to keep the fighting going because Biden said this is a fight against China that’s going to take two decades, maybe three decades.
So it looks like the Pacific and even the Arctic may become the new U.S. disruption zone.
Now, especially since Russia and China are working with North Korea to develop ports for the new trade from the Pacific via the Arctic to Northern Europe. So the United States is losing militarily, but it looks like it’s going to lose Europe in a few years.
And the American strategic plan since the 1990s was to absorb the Warsaw Pact into NATO. And it’s done that, but now it looks like it’s overplaying its hand. And the cost ultimately may be to lose Western Europe, headed by Germany, France, and Italy.
And we’re already seeing, in the last few days, just since our last broadcast, we’re seeing riots throughout Europe as the economy and employment are declining.
And there’s discussion, where is the German chemical industry, led by the BASF company, going to go? They’ve announced they are not going to make any further capital investments in Germany. They say that they’re being pressured to move their facilities to the United States. And they already have facilities in China.
So where will the German industrial population go when it abandons the country, just like Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania’s population have fallen by about one-third since 1990?
When you look at how this all works out geopolitically, the Baltics and Central Europe are not important economically. Their population is declining.
And only Poland has a military value, because of its dreams of recovering where it was in the 16th century, when it controlled most of Scandinavia and the Baltics.
So the U.S. is pushing the insistence, either you’re with us or against us. And the break that’s coming may move Western Europe into the Russian and SCO – Shanghai Cooperation Organization – orbit.
When they finally make the decision, if they do decide, “Gee, we shouldn’t have lost the trade with Russia. And now we’re being told to stop trading with China. Maybe we shouldn’t have made that”. If they reverse their decision, this is going to be irreversible.
And you could say the same of the Global South countries that are being pressured – and indeed, most of the Global Majority – they’re being forced to choose, either you’re with the U.S., whose industrial economy is shrinking, or you’re with the expanding BRICS+, plus the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
So where are these countries going to realign over the next few years?
The U.S. can keep England as a dependency. And England’s fate is, I think, going to be a warning to what happens to countries that adopt U.S.-style finance capitalism instead of socialist industrialization and public services as a human right.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Michael gave us the big picture, right? I would like to focus on something that happened these past few days, which is enormous, and I would say, for most of the planet, quite unforeseen, which is Russia bringing back North Korea, the DPRK, to the rank of a very important Global South power with enormous reach.
So we have [Russian] Ministry of Defense Sergei Shoigu received like Mick Jagger in Pyongyang. He got a true rock star welcome, the whole thing, including a private audience with Kim Jong-un and obviously the whole leadership of the DPRK.
What leaked, of course, was the possibility of many military agreements and increasing their military collaboration.
What did not leak is the best part of them all, because it’s the geoeconomic part.
What do the Russians really want to do with Pyongyang? They want to integrate Pyongyang with South Korea, with Seoul. And of course, this will mean Russia developing a sort of go-between, diplomacy between both. And they have the possibility to do both, because they are also respected in Seoul.
And something that has already been discussed at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. These discussions, they started at least three or four years ago in Vladivostok. And what they’re all about basically is to build a trans-Korean railway, which is going to connect with the trans-Siberian and connect both Koreas to the Russian far east, and then all the way across Eurasia.
So imagine that you are a Samsung businessman in Seoul. You look at that and say, “Wow, I don’t need to use cargo tankers anymore; I can have direct access to the enormous developing market in the Russian far east, not to mention the whole of Eurasia via Russia, just by building a railway”. Very, very simple.
Which sooner or later, and I would say, with Chinese input, could become a high-speed rail. Considering that the Chinese are already investing in high-speed rail in Russia, and considering that if there is a duplication of the trans-Siberian into a trans-Siberian high-speed rail is going to be built by the Chinese, this trans-Korean railway could also be built with Chinese input, technical input as well.
And financed via a Chinese Silk Road Fund, the BRICS Development Bank, Russian banks, etc. It could be a reorganization of finance, East Eurasia style.
So they were discussing that, of course, and this is going to be re-discussed, and they’re going to get deeper into it at the next Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in early September. So it’s around the corner, literally.
So the fact that this is happening now, it’s very, very important, because this is a sort of a preamble to what they’re going to get into at the next Eastern Economic Forum. So everybody is happy with this arrangement.
North Korea, because they are brought back to the forefront of trade in the parts of Eurasia. The possibility of having some sort of geoeconomic deal between North Korea and South Korea.
Russia, developing the far east and integrating the far east with the Koreas.
And China, of course, because this also integrates this part of Eurasia, this Northern Eurasia framework.
And it’s part of BRICS. It’s part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. And this opens, I would say, this leaves us with the possibility of North Korea sooner or later getting integrated into the Eurasia Economic Union.
And that’s fantastic, because I see that happening in at least two stages.
The first stage, the EAEU strikes a free trade agreement with North Korea, just like the ones they have with Cuba, or with Vietnam in Southeast Asia.
And they are also working with Indonesia to have an EAEU free trade deal with Indonesia. They could also do the same thing with North Korea.
And fantastic, this bypasses US sanctions, because it’s going to be – the EAEU basically, Russia is 80% of the firepower of the EAEU. They can devise a settlement mechanism involving North Korea that bypasses the US dollar completely.
You have expansion of EAEU to Northeast Asia, which is very important. The Chinese are going to love it as well, because they can also, even if they’re not part of the EAEU – don’t forget that Putin and Xi have already said, and the directives are already there – the Belt and Road Initiative, BRI and EAEU, they have to converge.
And this would be a perfect example of convergence between BRI and EAEU.
So that’s why, the way I see this visit by Shoigu as Mick Jagger, it extrapolates it everywhere, geoeconomically and geopolitically. And it’s no wonder that it was not even mentioned, I would say, or barely mentioned in Western mainstream media.
RADHIKA DESAI: That’s absolutely true.
And I mean, the more one thinks about it, the fact of the matter is that it is only a matter of time when the US’s strategy will stop working in the region.
So first of all, I mean, this idea that the United States can extend NATO to the Pacific is not going to wash, because the Pacific region has historically focused on its own economic development.
The Chinese are essentially pitting their own strategy of proposing economic development to the NATO strategy of securitizing everything, and essentially turning everything into a military conflict or a military alliance. We’re going to see the contestation of these two visions in the region.
And I would say, basically, it’s a matter of time before everybody begins to realize that what the United States is doing in Asia, what the United States has been doing around the world, at least since the Second World War, if not before, is essentially, well, the United States says it is providing protection to the world; in reality, the United States has been running a protection racket.
What is a protection racket? A protection racket is to promise to provide security against dangers that you have yourself created, so that your promise to provide security appears credible and attractive.
So, for example, the United States has continued to foment disunity on the Korean Peninsula. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of Koreans, North and South, deeply yearn for some form of unification. There is absolutely no doubt.
And this is attested to by the fact that, periodically, governments come to power that have advanced progress towards unification, but the United States then comes in and disrupts it.
It’s only when Koreans realize this that they will stop voting for those forces. And I think it’s a matter of time.
Similarly, in the case of Taiwan, already we are seeing in the run-up to the elections that are due, I think, in a few months, you have in the appearance, side by side with the KMT that wishes to promote peaceful reconciliation with China, the emergence of a new party that is going to do the same.
This is going to essentially push the DPP out of the picture. So they’re not going to win.
Similarly, also you read in the papers, although Japan has signed, has pronounced a new military policy in recent years that people say should be unthinkable in a country with a pacifist constitution, but in reality you see that the overwhelming majority of the Japanese are not going to join any kind of US-led war against [China over] Taiwan.
And so finally, what I’m really driving at is that the wonderful specifics that you gave about what can happen just in the case of North Korea, this is part of a wider set of pressures that I like to think of as the exertion of the economic magnetism, the economic gravity of China.
And no country can afford not to respond to that. And so we are going to see a shift, but at the same time, in terms of what we can expect to happen in the next few years, maybe even few decades, is an attempt on the part of the United States to stop this inexorable development from occurring.
And you were saying, Michael, that I agree with you, that, at one level, it looks as the United States is looking at a multi-decade war. But we also read in the papers that the United States feels compelled to do something now, because they think that they have up to 2027 before China will become capable of really resisting US forces.
But yeah, I mean, this is a kind of a segue into the next question, which is basically, what can the US expect from its allies?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Japan has sort of a Stockholm Syndrome, and it identifies with the United States because the US bombed it. And despite its export trade opportunities with China, its right-wing government is still willing to lose this market and sacrifice its economy for the United States once again, just as it did in the Plaza and Louvre Accords.
And South Korea is really the key to all of this, partly because it’s so important in ship making, and it’s being pressured to continue cutting back its export of sophisticated ships to China. The Wall Street Journal just had a long report on that.
But if it sees the promise of the Chinese market – and as Pepe has explained, the whole Eurasian market, thanks to the railroad – it’s going to decide, what it is going to choose: the export markets to resolve the military overhead and the threat of North Korea, or is it just going to continue to back the US?
It’ll probably have to tell the US to remove its occupation troops, because I think the Korean War still is legally on. So we may finally see an end of the Korean War that began in 1950.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Your question is what America will do essentially. Just look around and see what they are incapable of doing in several parts of the Global South or the Global Majority.
For instance, Southeast Asia. Well, I lived in [Southeast Asia]; it’s my home. I moved to Southeast Asia in ’94, a long time ago.
So I followed the relationship between the ASEAN 10, the 10 members of Southeast Asia, with Russia, China, India, and the US on the spot.
And nowadays, everybody knows that the number one trade partner of all ASEAN is China.
We also know that the U.S. has more margin of maneuver in some of the Southeast Asian nations than in others.
For instance, Singapore, we usually joke that Singapore is an American aircraft carrier station in Southeast Asia, side by side with Indonesia and Malaysia.
More and more relations between Indonesia and China are being, finally, there was a lot of mutual suspicion during the times of Suharto, of course, and immediately afterwards.
And the Chinese have been very, very clever to explain to Indonesia, “Look, we don’t have any designs on your islands, the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea”. So the Indonesians are more relaxed.
So now they are talking business, for instance, like, you know, Chinese investments, part of the Belt and Road Initiative across Indonesia.
Philippines, we all know, it remains an on-off American colony.
But the Americans, for instance, have absolutely zero penetration in, for instance, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. This is Chinese territory. And these have Belt and Road Initiative projects all over the space, like the absolutely extraordinary high-speed rail that the Chinese built from Yunnan to Vientiane.
I saw that being built in the middle of the forest across the Mekong River. It’s something that only the Chinese are capable of pulling off. And they did in record time on top of it, because the Laos government said, “OK, come here, do everything”, and it’s the way to go.
In Thailand, there’s going to be an extension, because, of course, of foreign interference, because of Thai lobbies fighting among themselves, the Thais haven’t even started to finish their own stretch, you see.
But this proves that Southeast Asia, in terms of Chinese-U.S. relations, it’s a balancing act. But most of these nations know exactly what’s going to happen from now on.
Their number one trade partner is China. And Chinese influence in all of them will continue to be very, very strong, directly and indirectly, via the Chinese diaspora in all of them, what we call the “bamboo internet”, which is strong in all of these nations.
South America: South America, what they basically, against Argentina and Brazil, of course, the Americans have tactical victories.
In case of Argentina, for instance, they forced Argentina to get a loan to pay another IMF loan.
So basically, the plan is to get Argentina to keep begging for IMF loans ad infinitum. So this is plan A. There’s no plan B.
Brazil is much more complicated. But for the moment, it’s a tactical victory, because the margin of maneuver of the Lula government is very, very slim.
And we have the famous list of what you’re going to do, that Jake Sullivan went personally to Brasilia to hand out to the new Brazilian government.
So obviously, Lula inside BRICS has to be very, very careful. Every time that he opens his mouth and he talks about de-dollarization, we see people shrinking in the beltway. So very complicated.
And across Africa, of course, which I’m sure we’re going to discuss, we are watching basically a second wave of decolonization.
And now, finally, the real thing with a new generation of young African patriots in Burkina Faso, in Mali, in Niger, in Gambia.
And of course, with very, very important allies, not only Russia and China outside, but Algeria in the Maghreb, who plainly supports all these new governments in the Sahel area.
So in terms of not only the U.S., but the collective West as a whole, they’re being expelled little by little, with or without AFRICOM, from Africa.
And of course, in West Asia, they still cling to, for instance, Syria.
Everybody seems to forget nowadays, with the war in Ukraine, that one-third of Syria is still occupied by the Americans. And they are plundering oil virtually on a daily or weekly basis, and wheat. And this disappeared completely from the narrative anywhere.
Even in West Asia, the war in Syria is not over. The war in Syria continues, and there is an illegal occupation of one-third of the Syrian territory.
So we have tactical victories. At the same time, we have Hezbollah growing stronger and stronger by the day.
So the Americas are losing terrain everywhere.
[The US has] tactical victories in Europe, of course. They managed to get Germany and the EU separated from Russia. But this is not eternal. This is a tactical victory for the moment. This could change in a matter of a few years only.
And of course, across Eurasia, we all know what’s happening. Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS+, the Greater Eurasia Partnership conducted by Russia, Belt and Road Initiative. We’re going to have a forum in Beijing in October.
This is it. Eurasia now is Eurasia controlled by Eurasians, and without foreign interference.
Of course, we still have attempts at color revolutions.
I’m going back to Central Asia soon. I’m going to see what’s happening in Kazakhstan now. Kazakhstan, they are so uncomfortable; they’re trying to hedge their bets, considering that they suffered a color revolution a year and a half ago. And there are sequels. This thing is not controlled yet.
So it’s a very mixed picture, guys. I think we all agree that, in terms of tactical victories, the Americans have some serious ones. But in terms of the overall strategy, they are losing virtually in every continent.
RADHIKA DESAI: And the very fact that Kazakhstan would be having second thoughts about this is a very important thing. Because from what I understand, of all the Central Asian republics, it is the most pro-Western. It is the most penetrated by American capital, and so on and so forth.
So that’s really fascinating. And you’re absolutely right that the picture is very complex.
But we can see where the undercurrent of history is going. It’s going away from the United States and toward China and Russia and so on.
But at the same time, the undercurrent is one thing. But on the surface, the United States will continue to try and make attempts to block this from happening. There will be vain attempts, but they will be made. People will pay the price for it, et cetera.
But still, if you try to, you know, as you say, the United States’ ability to conduct all this is in danger.
One indication of this, as we’ve discussed in the past, is that the U.S. cannot, you know – today it’s in the news that the U.S. is going to use the drawdown facility that has been created for Ukraine to send weapons to Taiwan.
But the fact of the matter is, what’s also being reported in the U.S. media itself, let alone elsewhere, is that the U.S. ability to produce the sort of arms that are necessary for theater operations today is actually very weak. It is not able to produce.
The United States provides vast quantities of money to its pampered military-industrial complex to produce weapons that are of no use – or they are not sufficient.
You know, they’re very good at producing high-priced, big-ticket items that cannot be used on the battlefield.
Now, this is really a fascinating comment on capitalism, on American-style monopoly capitalism, that you have a pampered military-industrial complex that cannot produce what you need, and you still keep supporting them. So that’s one contradiction.
And of course, there are also many others, you know, within an election campaign about to go into high gear in the United States. The unpopularity of the [Ukraine] war, even in the U.S., will be clear.
Every other day, there is some item in some or the other newspaper saying, “You know, why are we sending so much money to Ukraine when we can invest in the U.S.?”, etc.
So what are the U.S.’s options?
I mean, Michael, you recently wrote a paper in which you said that the United States has lost any capacity to rationally calculate what it ought to do, what strategy will win. Perhaps you can say something about that.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the U.S. chip makers like Intel are protesting very loudly that China represents one-third of their market.
And so if they’re told by the Biden administration to stop selling sophisticated chips to China, then the government is going to be told, well, you’ll have to make up maybe a $50 billion subsidy to us.
And will the U.S. Treasury really be asked to replace the China market? That’s what’s already being debated in Congress.
So if it does that, how is this kind of giveaway going to affect the U.S. presidential and the congressional elections just next year? This is already an issue.
And business donors are not giving money to the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, because they’re wondering what to do.
And on the other hand, you have Donald Trump trying to get votes by being even more anti-China than the Democrats.
So the great unknown is how China is going to respond to the U.S. shooting itself in the foot. Is it going to be willing to turn the tables and retaliate by imposing its own sanctions?
And it has a much stronger ability to impose sanctions on the U.S. than the U.S. has to impose sanctions on China.
And [China] fired a warning shot a week ago by stopping the exports of gallium – it produces 80 percent of the world’s supply – and germanium, which it does 60 percent.
And on August 1st, China just announced that it has limitations on rare earth exports. And rare earths are a key to making the magnetic characteristics that are required for sophisticated chip technology.
So China can simply impose sanctions on trade that doesn’t have much monetary value, but a key technology value, and can limit the trade in raw materials only to its Shanghai Cooperation Organization allies, and say, “Well, look, I’ll provide you with all the materials, and you can make what the United States and Western Europe are no longer able to make, because they don’t have what only we can supply”.
So the question is, when will China’s political mentality decide to actually fight the U.S. type of negative war with sanctions instead of the competitive cost-cutting, high-technology war that economic trade is supposed to fight? That’s the issue.
RADHIKA DESAI: Absolutely. And, you know, as you were talking, Michael, I was reminded of the fact that, of course, sanctions against Russia were supposed to, you know, “reduce the ruble to rubble” and, you know, push the Russian economy back into the stone age and whatnot.
And, of course, if they didn’t win against Russia, they are not going to win against China. We know that, as you say, rightly, that perhaps China should engage a little bit more in the kind of action that it has just undertaken to deny the West important inputs that it needs, important raw materials that it needs.
But even without such restrictions, China is already making U.S. sanctions useless, because it has rapidly accelerated its innovation in chip technology and so on.
And you know that if the Chinese really roll up their sleeves and say we are going to attack this problem, that problem will be solved in relatively short time.
If the Taiwanese can do it, why can’t the Chinese? It’s not you know, the Chinese have been happy to rely on imports since they were easily available. But if they are not, they will develop their own.
So the sanctions are going to boomerang big time vis-a-vis China as well. In fact, in a much bigger way.
And so the thing that becomes very clear is that it’s very unlikely that there’s going to be anything like an Asian NATO.
In fact, given the failure of the war, as I’ve argued before, in Ukraine, the real question will become whether even a European NATO can survive.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Radhika, can I change the subject a little bit? Touching on what Michael just said, it dawned on me that the ultimate form of sanctions against the empire is de-dollarization.
Because if you don’t change the geoeconomic paradigm, nothing’s going to happen in terms of multipolar integration.
So I’d like a little introduction and then I’m going to ask Michael a direct question. Because he’s probably the number one specialist in the world that can give us, without being part of the negotiations, that can give us, OK, what are they planning to do?
It’s about the so-called BRICS new currency. What I learned from BRICS Sherpas is that there won’t be an announcement of a BRICS new currency in South Africa in three weeks, for a number of very complex reasons.
First of all, they don’t have time. Second, their negotiations started only a few months ago. And this is something that I discussed in Moscow; you need five, six, seven years to design a system like that, if not 10 years, and start to implement it and test it with businesses first, and then with nation states.
What is going to happen in South Africa is they’re going to announce an increase in bilateral trade in their own currencies, which is something that they already do. And they are already working on alternative settlements.
So basically, starting with the five BRICS currencies – which significantly, [their names] all start with an “R”. That’s very, very quirky, isn’t it? Obviously, if we use renminbi instead of yuan, so we have renminbi, real, rand, rupee, and ruble.
So we’re going to have the R5 together, organizing an alternative settlement system of payments. And this will be the first step towards multilateral trade in their own currencies, the five.
Don’t forget that we’re going to have BRICS+. So we’re not going to have five; we’re going to have maybe seven, eight, nine, or even 10, depending on the first wave and the second wave of candidates to become parts of BRICS+.
And then expanding multilateral trade with these national currencies. And, of course, building, okay, let’s start designing a system, and let’s try to sell this to our businesses in our individual nations, and then to other ones as well. And that will mean the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Eurasia Economic Union, etc.
The Eurasia Economic Union, they have already started discussing an alternative currency three years ago, at least. And they’re still discussing it. Like, you know, two months ago, [Prominent Russian economist] Sergey Glazyev went to Beijing to discuss this with the Chinese.
Essentially, it’s an extremely complex thing. And, of course, taking into consideration that the Chinese are terrified of American secondary sanctions, especially. So this is all extremely complicated.
So my question to Michael would be, what would be the ideal path in terms of elaborating an alternative payment system inside BRICS first, then expanding to BRICS+, and then selling this system of payments, considering that the Chinese have their own payment system; the Russians have their own payment system; Iran have their own payment system.
So getting these all together, so you can settle trade within this new framework, bypassing the U.S. dollar. And then you’re going to have your big enterprises, your big companies, individual nations say, “Well, this is an excellent deal, fantastic”.
So now if we’re a company in Turkey, we can do business with a Russian company and we use an alternative payment system.
What would be the best way to proceed ahead? And when would we reach a stage where we can actually discuss an alternative currency in terms of bypassing the U.S. dollar and the euro?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, actually, Radhika and I have devoted two programs of this series to just that question. And we pointed out that what people think of when they say BRICS currency is something like a euro that you can use for buying and selling things, either buying steel or spending at the grocery store.
You’re absolutely right. That’s far away, because you need political integration to have that.
But what we’re really talking about, and what the kind of currency that’s being talked about isn’t really a currency; it’s a bank credit, a bank settlement system, very much like the SDRs [Special Drawing Rights] for the IMF, except it won’t be controlled by the U.S.
But most of all, this is what [John Maynard] Keynes supported in [the Bretton Woods Conference in] 1944 with the bancor. It’s a means of settlement only for spending among central banks.
So it’s not a general currency. It’s a means of settling credits among central banks. And the credits are apparently going to be based on the artificial bank currency, tied to the price of raw materials that the member countries all support.
And it’ll be very much like paper gold. Right now, the alternative to holding each other’s currencies or U.S. dollars is gold, because gold is an asset without a liability. It’s just something that you can invest in. But you have to somehow earn the money to buy the gold.
Many countries have left their gold, since the pre-1991 movement devaluation. Countries used to leave their gold with the U.S. Federal Reserve to settle, buy, and sell in the gold market to stabilize their exchange rates. They never asked for their gold back.
Finally, Germany asked a few years ago, and the Fed said, I’m sorry, all your gold is gone. We’ve kept down the price of gold to prevent people from moving away from the U.S. dollar by pledging it to commodity dealers. And we don’t have any gold to give you.
And how much of the world’s gold has been left with the Federal Reserve? We don’t know.
So to avoid the problem of how to really settle new gold, the BRICS bank will create a credit system where all the countries have credit to buy and sell with each other to be settled in their own currency, so that China, for instance, won’t hold too much Argentinian currency – especially since Argentina has just done the currency swap to pay the IMF for its foreign debt that it should have simply wiped out.
So we’re talking about a central bank special currency, not a general spending currency. There are two different things that are often confused in the public discussion.
RADHIKA DESAI: Yeah, and if I may add to that, because – you know, Michael and I have done work on this together in our programs, in a paper that we jointly wrote; and then also, independently, so Michael has done his work in Super Imperialism and so on; and my own work on geopolitical economy, is really, it’s primarily – in the book called Geopolitical Economy – it’s primarily a critique of the US dollar system, which I argue has never worked stably.
So it has always run into crisis. And in order to appear to function, [the dollar system] has required the inflation, particularly after 1971, of very dangerous bubbles of financial activity.
And the reason for that is very simple. You know, the loose talk – which, by the way, includes a lot of academics who engage in loose talk – loose talk of the naturalness of the sterling system and then the dollar system has given everybody to understand that somehow, yes, of course, the currency of the most powerful country should be the world’s currency.
But this is, in fact, as we’ve shown, an extremely unstable situation. It cannot obtain.
And that’s why Keynes in 1944, speaking on behalf of his country – not willing his country to be subject to the external authority of the dollar, knowing that the sterling can no longer perform the role it once used to perform, knowing intimately well why that was so – proposed the bancor.
And essentially this completely separates out the issue of international settlement of imbalances from the ordinary requirements of money within a society.
So within a society, money has to be run in order to create full employment, a productively dynamic, ecologically sustainable currency that will work domestically.
But often the requirements of that may go directly counter to the need to maintain its international value.
And gold, by the way, often people confuse it: gold is not money. When gold is used as money, it shows that there is no money.
Gold is a commodity. You know, Michael said it’s an asset without liabilities, but maybe it’s even more pertinent to say it’s a commodity.
So it’s a bit like, you know, going back to barter. So you give me steel and I’ll give you gold. That’s the exchange of two commodities. It just happens to be a widely accepted commodity. But people have proposed other things.
But essentially, the resort to gold, the Germans and others saying we want our gold back, etc., it’s one of the signs – one of the many signs, by the way – that the American dollar system is not working.
So essentially, the point that I’d like to make, therefore, is what would need to happen? You know, your original question was, you know, how will these currency plans work, etc.?
So I would say that the first step would be to, of course, create a relatively stable system of exchange rates between these – let’s just assume it’s the five Rs.
So let’s say, you know, what is the mutual exchange rate of the five Rs, and to try to stabilize them and so on?
And then, in the long run, you know, this kind of system can work. They can even create a sort of bancor based on the five Rs – although originally Keynes had said, let’s not even not use any currencies; let’s just tie the value of bancor to a basket of a few dozen, most widely traded commodities, because that’s what ultimately matters in international trade.
So you could do that, and maybe you can get there, but you can begin by stabilizing the values.
But then I think the big step would have to be, you would have to try and create relatively balanced trade among all the trading partners.
Why is that? Because, Michael said that we have to ensure that, you know, China does not end up with too much Argentinian currency or whatever, or any one of the five does not end up with too much of the currency of the other.
Because what it shows is that one country buys a lot from another country, but that country, which is exporting a lot, has no use for its export revenues.
Now, that would require a development plan among the holders of the five Rs so that, for example, let’s assume a trade relationship between China and Russia.
Well, China and Russia have to ensure that each would want to buy things with what it earns from the other country. So if it’s absent, then maybe there should be investment and opportunity to develop the capacity to produce the thing.
Because, you see, the genius of Keynes’s arrangement was that it had mechanisms within it to force people, force countries to move towards balance. Surplus countries were equally responsible, as were deficit countries, to try to address imbalances, both in terms of capital flows and in terms of trade.
So once you create those mechanisms, then you create an incentive for, say, if China has too many rubles, then China says, “OK, Russians, we are going to help you develop this productive capacity, so that you can export more of X, Y, Z to us, etc.”.
So I think that’s what needs to be done. And just one final point, Keynes’s genius is really apparent in our time because, just as Keynes said, a stable system should try to eliminate persistent imbalances.
Now, move your eyes to the dollar system. The one thing it primarily relies on is the generation of persistent imbalances, because to provide the world with money on the basis of your persistent trade deficits and the current account deficits with the rest of the world, means that the whole system is reliant on imbalances, which means it is volatile and unstable.
So, as you rightly say, Pepe, this is a very complex thing, and it’s going to take time to work out.
But it won’t be worked out if people are laboring under misapprehension, such as that, you know, we need to create a currency like the euro rather than a currency like bancor.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Just one thing about the dollar. You just mentioned, and everybody who discusses the dollar system talks about how the US has been providing dollars.
In [my book] Super Imperialism, and my work for Arthur Anderson years ago, the US private sector is exactly in balance. Since 1950, year after year, from the Korean War to the Vietnam War, the private sector, trade and investment, is just in balance; it hasn’t provided any extra dollars at all to the world.
The entire US deficit supplying dollars to the world has been military. It used to be called the dollar glut. It was to stop that, that [French] General de Gaulle kept cashing in [dollars for] gold.
What the new system of the BRICS and the five Rs are going to cure is that the credit is not going to be paid by building 800 military bases around the other countries, to lock them into a dependency system.
You’ll have the international payment settlement system demilitarized. That’s the basic aim of all this.
The US dollar system is a militarized system. The dollars are US military spending abroad.
That’s the number one reason for world peace, that the dollar system should be superseded.
RADHIKA DESAI: I agree that in terms of trade, US trade was balanced for a long time, like longer than you might imagine.
But certainly starting in the 1980s, the US trade deficit also made its own contribution to the current [account deficit]. The US trade deficit is today between 3 and 4 percent of US GDP.
MICHAEL HUDSON: No, that’s absolutely fictitious. It’s based on fictitious statistics.
Much of the trade deficit is in oil. When the oil comes in, it’s counted as a trade deficit. But only about 10 percent of the price of this oil is paid in non-dollars. All the oil that’s imported is from US oil companies.
And the offset is the earnings on this, the interest paid, or the cost of producing this oil are all made in the United States.
So you have investment inflows on the capital account and on the income account to offset the fictitious payments of oil imports that don’t involve foreign currency at all.
RADHIKA DESAI: OK, I’m not quite sure what you mean, because the fact of the matter is that the whole point is that the United States pays for this oil in dollars.
But let me just make another further point, which is that, you know, people tend to focus on the US trade deficit, and then they say, “Look, the Chinese are buying so many US treasuries and so they are essentially financing the trade deficit, and so this is a kind of a mutually supportive system” – “Chimerica” and all that.
But in reality, what people forget is that what’s really keeping the dollar system going is not Chinese financing, not Chinese purchases of US treasury securities; what keeps the dollar system going is the vast expansion of financial activity, which goes in both directions.
And so, for example, if you look at the statistics, the financial statistics about all the international capital flows that were going on, the bulk of them being in dollar-denominated assets in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis, the Chinese played hardly any role in it.
The biggest role that was played, the part of the world that was most fully integrated into the US financial system, which was producing these toxic securities that led to the 2008 financial crisis, was Europe.
And therefore, it is no wonder that Europe was the part of the world that suffered the most from the 2008 crisis. The 2008 crisis set the foundation for the 2010 Eurozone crisis, and so on and so forth.
And that is why I really find it important to correct people when they term what happened in 2008 a global financial crisis; there was nothing global about it. It was a North Atlantic financial crisis.
MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s right.
PEPE ESCOBAR: I want to pose a question to both of you. Because I was reminded of something very clever that the Chinese are doing and maybe they are setting an example for the whole Global South.
You know that they have now oil futures being traded at the Shanghai bourse, especially the GCC. It’s fascinating.
So the GCC goes to the Shanghai bourse. They sell their oil futures. The Chinese buy it. They pay yuan.
But then the GCC says, look, we don’t want all that yuan. You know, what are you going to do with so much yuan?
The Chinese said, no problem. You can trade your yuan with gold using the Shanghai exchange, a clearing house, or in Hong Kong if you want.
This is absolutely brilliant. Do you think that this could be expanded to the other BRICS, starting with the other BRICS, and then if we have, for instance, Iran and Saudi Arabia being part of BRICS+, adopting the same mechanism?
RADHIKA DESAI: I think that can work. I would say that, you know, the role of gold, as I see, is always residual.
If all the money in the world were actually backed by gold, we would suffer massive deflation, because there wouldn’t be enough money in the world, because there isn’t enough gold in the world.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Gold only finances international balances, not general activity, as the gold exchange standard, not the gold standard.
And again, the gold is an alternative, the easiest alternative to the dollar, because everybody accepts it.
It’s taken a couple of thousand years, but they finally decided something that they can accept as an alternative.
It’s a transition to the BRICS artificial currency. It’s a transition to something away from gold – the idea of an international currency that is not the embodiment of not the U.S. trade deficit, but U.S. military spending.
RADHIKA DESAI: So then to further add to that, so I would say that essentially, when people buy gold, what they’re saying is they don’t want money; they want a commodity; they want that commodity, etc., an easily tradable commodity, so some kind of asset.
So in that sense, it’s a good idea. You know, the function of gold, I often like to say that the sterling standard in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the sterling exchange standard was often called the gold standard, you know, because sterling was backed by gold.
But two things. Number one, the genius of the system actually lay in creating such wide international acceptability for the sterling that it was rarely exchanged for gold. And the reason and the mechanisms by which this was done, we can talk about it.
But the point is, it was rarely exchanged for gold. Keynes writes in his [book] Indian Currency and Finance, which is actually a primer on the functioning of the international gold standard, the sterling standard. And I’ll come in a minute to why a book on Indian currency and finance should serve as the primer on the gold standard. But let me just finish this point.
He makes the point that the Bank of England had less gold than the Caja of Argentina. And he prided himself on that. And he also used to berate the French for holding gold. He says, look, you don’t need to, et cetera. But that’s a whole other set of questions.
Now, let me come to how the British were able to do this. It’s because they drew – I mean, the so-called gold standard actually had very little to do with gold, except for the fact that gold was the benchmark of the value; the price of gold was the benchmark of the value of sterling, and sterling was occasionally exchanged into gold.
And, you know, in those days, some gold coins did circulate. But that was really a very limited role.
The real foundation of the sterling standard was the surpluses that the British drew from their colonies, chiefly British India, which is why a book on Indian currency and finance, which is really a description of how surpluses were transferred from India to the UK. What were the mechanisms employed in order to do this?
So my point being that that is why this book is a primer on the gold standard. And the real foundation of the gold standard was the surpluses Britain extracted from its colonies, and then exported as capital exports.
To where? To Europe, to North America and Oceania, and to some extent to South Africa – that is to say, to all its settler colonies.
So if you think about it in a different way, Britain drew surpluses from her non-settler colonies – British India, Africa, the Caribbean – and exported them as capital exports to her settler colonies.
This is really, it’s quite a racialized thing, but that is the way it was. It is primarily where the money went.
And so Britain provided the world with liquidity by exporting capital, not by running deficits as the US would do later.
The US had no choice. The US didn’t have colonies which it could squeeze to provide surpluses to export to the rest of the world. So the US had to take a different role.
So to come back to your question, I think that the Chinese strategy of allowing things to be exchanged for gold is a good confidence-building measure.
And, you know, at the moment, the transactions are few enough that it can do so. I mean, ultimately, the system should work so well that it does not need gold.
Now, there again, the question is, if China tried to internationalize its currency on the model of the dollar, it would actually reduce China to the sort of economy the US has, of de-industrializing and aging infrastructure. So it will not do so.
That is why Michael and I, and anyone who thinks about it, always says you should not internationalize your currency in that way, not to any significant extent; instead, you need this kind of artificial currency that will help settle international imbalances.
PEPE ESCOBAR: So you’re right, Radhika. And this is the official position in Beijing. They want to go very, very slow with the internationalization of yuan.
RADHIKA DESAI: Yes, yes, exactly.
So, folks, I should say, you know, we’ve had a really wide-ranging discussion, as usual, absolutely fantastic.
We’re about an hour and we’d like not to go too much over an hour. So let me ask you both to say any closing remarks you want to say.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you’ve been brought back to the point that we’ve been making in part one of this discussion, which is the U.S. sanctions were designed to isolate Russia’s raw materials and China’s information technology and shipmaking.
These are not in the economic interest of America’s allies, or of China’s Asian neighbors, or even the United States.
Europe is being told to buy its oil and gas from the U.S. Korea, and Japan, and Taiwan –
Basically we’re back to the issue of whether trade is going to be economic or national security in nature. And it seems now, given the U.S. military presence, it’s going to be both. It’s going to be economic with national security.
And I think it’s hard to see getting the U.S. using any military leverage at all, given the failure of the NATO tanks and the missiles and the anti-aircraft. And the idea is that basically the U.S. is, the dollar is being rejected.
And at first glance, the thought of the BRICS and the Global Majority emerging may seem outrageous, but it’s no more outrageous than the thought that the Nobel —
I want to make a suggestion that, just as the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Henry Kissinger for destroying Laos and Cambodia and covering Vietnam’s forest with Agent Orange, or Obama was given the Peace Prize for destroying Libya and confiscating its gold that Gaddafi had hoped to use for an African gold-based currency and turning it over, and the final Obama act starting today’s crisis with organizing the pro-Nazi coup in Ukraine, I think that America is trying to force Europeans to believe that war is peace in the same sense that Tacitus described a British chieftain of saying that Rome was making a desert and calling it peace.
But in view of what we’re seeing in the last year and a half, I could imagine President Biden getting this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. It would fit in perfectly. It meets the traditional qualifications of destroying a country, Ukraine.
But actually, there’s another reason which he can get it. Biden and Blinken and their neocon team have driven most of the entire Global Majority together to create an alternative to the U.S.-centered world that has become increasingly one-sided.
And under the Biden administration, the United States is forcing the entire rest of the world, except for its NATO satellites, to create a new economic order. And that’s what we’ve been discussing.
And this new international economic order is on the lines that the United Nations was supposed to be created in the first place, before it was taken over by the U.S.
Self-sufficiency in food production for each country. They won’t have to run a trade deficit to import food, because, just like Russia was able to make itself independent in grain and become a grain exporter, other countries can do the same thing, when they’re freed from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund trying to block it.
The new economic order will be a mixed economy along socialist lines, to uplift the entire economy, at least of the expanded BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
And there will be a focus more on peaceful integration instead of military and financial integration.
So it turns out that the NATO war in Ukraine has turned out to be this grand catalyst for this new world order. And just because this wasn’t Biden’s and Blinken’s original intention doesn’t mean that it’s not the effect in practice.
And remember, [Charles Maurice de] Talleyrand, the French official in the 18th century, said of one policy, “It’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder”. And you could say that that describes American policy perfectly.
But let’s give it credit for this fortuitous blunder that has driven the whole Global Majority together, to make an alternative to the World Bank, an alternative to the IMF, and an alternative to the failed U.S.-centered unipolar order.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Well, I am in touch with a group of Chinese writers and scholars, and they are always absolutely fascinated. And one of them, in fact, Michael was just talking about blunders.
They said, this is the number one blunder in the history of the empire, and they won’t be able to recover. And the Chinese have a little bit of experience with blunders, right?
Well, I would like to finish basically saying that in three weeks we’re going to have the BRICS Summit. So everything that Michael was telling us a little while ago is going to be discussed at the BRICS Summit.
And this is what the Sherpas have been doing these past few weeks. The Sherpas were actually organizing and designing the proceedings, what’s going to happen, the agenda, and the procedures for BRICS Plus, the expansion.
So in three weeks, we’re going to have a geopolitical, geoeconomic earthquake. There’s no question about that. Just to remind all of you, there is a list of potential members of BRICS+.
This is fascinating because these are part of an organization parallel to BRICS called Friends of BRICS. Whenever there is a BRICS Summit, you have Friends of BRICS Summit as well. They interact and they also have their own mini summit.
And this is exactly what happened in South Africa, what, two weeks ago, maximum. I’ll give you the list. Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Comoros, Gabon, and Kazakhstan.
So probably the first tier, the first wave of BRICS+ is going to come from these guys to one, two, three, or four of these. And there’s also Belarus, which was not in Friends of BRICS, but it’s very close to Russia. And Belarus also applied for BRICS.
You will notice that in this list, there’s no Argentina, unfortunately. And this, I think we discussed this in our previous, because Argentina, basically, they were, I would say, forced to withdraw their application toward BRICS. And this, they didn’t know how to explain that in Buenos Aires. But this is what it is at the moment.
So can you imagine if we have just in terms of the brand new world ahead? Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as a member of BRICS.
So we’re going to have BRICS+ directly linked to OPEC+, directly linked to major sources of energy to China, directly linked to that mechanism at the Shanghai bourse of the GCC selling oil. And if you want gold, you can have your gold as well.
So can you imagine this in a matter of two or three days? We’re going to have this thing turning upside down. And then maybe this is the beginning of the new world economic order. Voila.
RADHIKA DESAI: Yeah, absolutely, folks. And so, yeah, let me just wind this down by making just a couple of remarks.
Number one, I think that, you know, you were talking about blunders.
But if you look at the long term historical point of view, the whole project of American hegemony has been a blunder. We are just seeing the latest and ever more desperate blunders of the United States in trying to keep it going.
This has been my argument for a very, very long time. And bringing the matter back to NATO, which was at least formally the subject of our thing, NATO has always, of course, been an instrument of U.S. hegemony.
But if you cast your mind back a couple of decades, you will see that people, very few people really talked about NATO very much. Because U.S. hegemony was much more extensive. NATO was one part of a larger structure of U.S. hegemony.
Now we’ve come to a point where the U.S.’s purchase on world events relies on NATO to such an extent that it has become the mainstay of U.S. power.
And this mainstay of U.S. power was, you know – part of the reason people didn’t talk about it very much is because it was always fractious. There were always tensions between the Europeans and the Americans and so on. So there was not much to see there in terms of U.S. hegemony.
And now that so-called U.S. hegemony has become reliant on reliance on this outfit is really telling, is really telling about how far, how low U.S. power has sunk.
So perhaps with that, I think we should end today’s today’s show. Please look forward to more shows with us. Hopefully, Pepe, we will have you back another time, after these upcoming summits, or something like that, to assess them.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Thank you so much. My pleasure.
RADHIKA DESAI: Thanks very much. And thanks again to our videographer, Paul Graham. And of course, as always, to Ben Norton for hosting our show.
Goodbye, everyone. And see you next time. Bye bye.
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Pushing Russia towards China is indeed bad policy from Not-The-President Biden’s administration.
Trump was trying to repair the relationship between Christian Russia and the Christian U.S. This was sabotaged by the Globalist Deep State during his 1st term. Trump’s 2nd term will end support for Kiev aggression and other problems created by the current Veggie-in-Chief. Russia and the U.S. can have a good relationship if the DNC War Party can be kept at bay.
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The escape of the WUHAN-19 virus, subsequent shutdowns, and supply chain cuts objectively proved one thing — America is overly trade dependant on Asia generally and China specifically.
Purely for internal reasons, America needs to reindustrialize national security sectors. These include raw materials extraction, refining, industrial tools and products, pharmaceuticals, etc. This does not imply isolationism. Non-security goods such as basic clothing, low-tech toys, and decorative headwear will continue to flow from the Asia region.
This is not “targeting” China. There is no reason to believe it is intended to harm the Chinese worker proletariat. It will impact bourgeois CCP members, however these elites only represent a tiny fraction of China’s population.
___
Key is pairing American reindustrialization with gradual decoupling from Asia. America needs to expand the worker base with manufacturing skills. Simultaneously shrinking its FIRE service sector. It took 40+ years to deindustrialize. A steady push back to self reliance will take at least a decade, more likely two.
America thanks the CCP for motivating reindustrialization. Xi provocatively blew the War Horn with materials restrictions on gallium and germanium. While this does not immediately become armed conflict, it is accelerating the needed gradual decoupling. The Defense Production Act is being activated by the Pentagon to counter CCP trade aggression : (1)
More jobs in the U.S. is a good thing for workers. Less dependence on unreliable CCP suppliers is helpful to American citizens. Xi’s folly is a win-win situation.
PEACE 😇
__________
(1) https://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-strategic-germanium-stockpile-no-140406807.html
Russians are asked: Are we winning or losing?
Video Link
Can anyone explain exactly, or closely, or even ‘kind of’, how it is possible for the US to keep China from incorporating Taiwan province back into the mainland? How would the logistics of such a thing happen?
And who else would be on board? Would Japan be willing to fight China, for the DPP? Seriously? What about South Korea? Any interest, there, in helping the US keep China from recovering Taiwan? Australia? It’s hard not to laugh at Australia, I know, but even Australians, as stupid as their leaders are, probably wouldn’t make any moves.
Even the Philippines, trad US toadies, told the US they can’t use their runways to bomb China.
Other than finger wagging, who is going to assist? NATO is bankrupt, and how would they help, even if they wanted to?
Ridiculous.
keeping South Korea might be a real issue. It allows there to be a complex legal justification for China arming the NorKs and getting the US directly involved in a ground conflict in Korea by proxy.
1. I was wondering why the flu went away that year. So the Chinese captured it, but it escaped? Thanks for clarifying.
2. The idea of Chinese proletarians is a stretch. Not to say there aren’t Chinese with little money, or Chinese that wage-work for a living, however from my experience living there, almost all Chinese– line workers to middle management and higher– have embraced the bourgeoise spirit, along with its consumerist foundation. Of course it’s all with ‘Chinese characteristics’, which is what you’d expect. In any case, 19th Century English industrial-derived Marxist terms really don’t apply to modern China.
BTW, Party members are said to be around 7% of the population. Or 100 million people. I wouldn’t call that a ‘tiny fraction’, but you may be rounding down, while I’m rounding up.
3. I agree that it would be a good thing for the US to abandon finance capitalism, as Hudson describes it, in favor of actually making goods, or building infrastructure.
But ‘decoupling’ from China will probably not ‘bring jobs back’. That’s simply low-level wishful thinking. Instead, what was once made in China will be moved to Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and a few other places like Mexico (and further south).
In this context, the idea that if we only cut the China connection, then in a few years time Americans will be able to buy a USA made Craftsman wrench at Sears, with a lifetime warranty? Unrealistic.
To prevent China from a land invasion (by sea), the US is going to have to have a ‘staging’ ground. A carrier force isn’t going to do the trick. And submarine support is limited to nuclear–which no one wants.
If the US can’t count on SK, and Japan, it’s really going to be a tough nut to crack. But any US military attack against China, from either SK or Japanese soil, will open those countries up to Chinese retaliation.
For SK, they also have NK to think about. That is, a NK reaction.
Not that China would unilaterally attack Japan–I don’t believe that. However if they were offered a chance for WW II revenge, my guess is a Chinese response to a US attack from a Japanese base would be swift and brutal. I think the Japanese understand that.
But who knows how such a scenario would work itself out? My guess is that it will simply result in a lot of finger wagging by the West. Then, in a few years, it’s back to same old same old. But I’m not Criswell, and anyone’s guess is as good as mine.
Thank You Mr. Unz for this great website!!
Poland will soon be sending troops into Ukraine and a new European shitstorm will begin!!
Chinee getting fit to fight
I agree with much of what is said here, but one quibble.
As regards the grain deal, the western press – as utterly dishonest and vile as they are – in this one case makes a valid point. Grain is fungible, the issue is not whether Ukrainian grain goes directly to the third world, but whether increases in grain availability reduce global prices.
And of course feeding the third world is utterly pointless. I mean, the Indian population is miserably impoverished, chronic malnutrition to the point of children growing up physically stunted is endemic, the physical standard of living for most people is inferior to late medieval Europe (yes, really). And yet, the Indian government is massively exporting rice! How can that be? Simple: because rice exports ramped up slowly, they did not create a famine, but only limited Indian population growth. Last year India exported about 20 million tons of rice: that didn’t make the Indian people any hungrier, but it only means that India’s population is about 120 million less than it would have been otherwise. Remember, by fate means or foul you can’t do worse than subsistence.
If the Indian government sees no point to feeding the hungry, why should we?
The West trusts its dollar and euro factories, apparently they think they will always have corrupt people to buy from. On the other hand, each group of politicians is only interested in exploiting their time in power as much as possible, thinking that what they have stolen cannot be taken from them.
Reindustrialization that will create jobs is High-IQ industrial policy. Something America has been lacking for some time.
This will include annual step up tariff hikes to drive decoupling. Increase 1-2% per year for 10+ years to slowly modify the marketplace. What % surcharge will price Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. out of the U.S. market for those critical, national security goods?
Sears is dead and Craftsman is no longer a U.S. tradition, so obviously not. Buck Knives is a better example. The bulk of their product is U.S. made. Only the smallest & least expensive models come in from overseas.
Reindustrialization of the American steel industry will make the necessary raw materials more available. CNC machines will do 80%+ of the work preparing the blade or tool. This requires well paid jobs to handle and maintain the automation. Skilled, and thus well compensated, craftsman will then complete the manufacturing. Below is a good example of how America produces rifle barrels.
The goal is not to recreate circa 1960’s manual labour jobs. Those are long gone. The purpose of U.S. reindustrialization is capturing professions that will last for the foreseeable future.
Only low-IQ, hopeless non-thinkers believe American reindustrialization is impossible (or undesirable).
PEACE 😇
Video Link
the russians seem to be softening up odessa. after the grain deal was not renewed they began bombing the ports and facilities around odessa and the ukrainians can read the writing on the wall. they just fired 12 storm shadow missiles at the rail crossing between kherson and crimea, to try and prevent the russians from moving troops and equipment towards odessa. all 12 storm shadow missiles were taken out by russian air defenses, furthering the humiliation to nato and the brits in particular, who spent $3 million apiece on these useless toys. now they will be told to buy tomahawks (notice they’re not giving them those) and the abrahms tanks are for the poles to buy, which is why they were ordered to give their ukranazi brethren, their old soviet tanks.
what the west simply can’t conceive, is that they are not superior and their technology is outdated overpriced crap that has no function on a modern netcentric battlefield, except get poor illegally conscripted ukrainians killed off in droves. in fact they are getting so desperate, they now hold congressional hearings, to threaten the russians with the “alien technology” wunderwaffe now being reverse engineered, with illegally diverted funds. so that’s where all the money went, all this time i thought it was the biden family taking their cut (90% for the big guy). i have even heard rumors that adolf hitler himself has suddenly appeared at langley and emerged from “die glocke”, announcing he had prefected time travel and has returned to finish off those damn russkies.
the west seems to think they can call off the war and sign another meaningless treaty, that they have zero intention of upholding and the gullible russians will believe them once again, while they stock up their armories and prepare their next false flag. the russians tell the world, the war could be stopped with a phone call, as the west pours more blood and treasure into the tarbaby rump of ukraine, which is exactly what the russians want. the original intent of the smo was to disarm ukraine but after the continual escalation by nato, imo the intent has broaden to disarming nato. it won’t be as easy as they think to end this war without a complete capitulation to russian demands, i’m going to enjoy the shit out of that day!
the Poles, the rabbit hyenas of Europe should be ‘rabid’ and hyena should be ‘jackal,’ since the jackal is indigenous to Europe and Churchill first applied that epithet to Poland in 1939
July 31,2023:
Bye-bye Western trained batallion –and 90 trained Nazi fighters
A Ukrainian battalion, trained in the West and equipped for the counteroffensive, has lost nine out of 10 available US-made MaxxPro armored vehicles and lost most of its troops, with only 10 servicepeople of the unit remaining at the forefront, an American daily reported on Sunday, citing a Ukrainian soldier.
The soldier told the newspaper “They were hit by anti-tank fire … The guys did not survive.”
Carriers are so vulnerable to drones and hypersonic missiles that they can’t even be deployed…There is absolutely no way the US can fight a land war against China, thank God!
Even if Putin were dumb enough to sign a treaty with the US, which he isn’t, the rest of the leadership wouldn’t go along….
It is false that a full NATO/US defeat in the Ukraine cannot be presented as “we won!” or even more disingenuously as “mission accomplished”. People in the US have accepted absurdities on a much higher level for generations. Have you been to the “Holocaust Museum” in Washington, D.C.?
Almost a lineal descendent of the Boys Rifle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_anti-tank_rifle
The USMC adopted this beast and used it a lot in the Pacific.
We would move the island like in the TV show “Lost” from a few years back. Perhaps off the coast of CA.
Or maybe we would erect a force field around the island. Remember, we supposedly have captured alien technology.
Putin realistically has only one real option. Push to the Western border of Ukraine (or to the original border of the Russian Empire i.e. including Odessa and lands somewhere to the West of Kiev.
If Adolf Hitler returned from the dead he would support the Russian cause, merely for the fact that to some degree it opposes the Zionist-Globalist Empire and parasitic global Jewry. The Azov Battalion and the like are nothing but a bunch of edgy, degenerate and violent bikers. You forget their beloved Stepan Bandera was put into a concentration camp by Hitler himself and rightfully so.
now think about it brostoevsky, why would the russians want banderstan, glacia, pohololand or what ever you want to call it, please understand that if the poles are dumb enough to roll this trojan horse into their gates, the russians will laugh their balls off. odessa is russian and always will be, the black sea coast to transnistria, will be russian all of the best farmlands will be russian (and free of gmo).
while these a-holes were congratulating themselves at the fabulous coup they had engineered, i said you wait and see, the russians will simply snap off the parts of ukraine they have historic, political, economic and military interests in and the rest will be left to rot. nine years later, i’m even more convinced.
He’d certainly be alarmed that Kiev is ruled by a Jew. I dunno if he’d support Russia though. He’d probably just say he “told you so”.
NATO was never in Ukraine to fail. For those with short memories, the invasion was a Russian war of choice that they declared would be won in 2 days. General Milley disparaged Russian forces by suggesting it would take them 3 days.
A major requirement to do this is capability. Russian troops outside their protective minefields have been smashed.
If Adolf Hitler returned from the dead he would support the Russian cause, merely for the fact that to some degree it opposes the Zionist-Globalist Empire and parasitic global Jewry.
The dictator that hated Russians and Jews would buddy up with a Russian dictator who brags about having close ties to Israel? And also helped his Jewish chef develop a private army? Is that right?
Why don’t you explain exactly how Israel or Global Jewry loses by having Orthodox Russians and Ukrainians kill each other in trenches. Russia at most gets a slice of Ukrainian land covered in dead Slavs and Jews lose because…….. ????
You do acknowledge that Israel gets cheap Russian oil and currently has a budget surplus?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-first-time-in-35-years-israel-posts-budget-surplus-driven-by-higher-tax-revenue
And that they turned down a weapons request from Zelensky?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-refused-us-request-to-transfer-anti-tank-missiles-to-ukraine-report/
Still haven’t heard an explanation on how Israel somehow loses by getting cheap oil. They don’t have to pass sanctions because they can’t buy oil from their Muslim neighbors.
But maybe you can be the first Putin defender to explain all of this. Go ahead please.
Ukrainians are simply cannon fodder. Some people got upset when I named two American lawmakers who bought defense stocks after the Russian operation began. Smedley Darlington Butler said war is a racket.
Washington is also concerned about the industrial policy known as “Made in China 2025.” The strategy partly triggered sanctions. China intends to dominate cutting-edge technologies, climb the manufacturing value chain, and lessen its reliance on foreign markets.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau wanted Germany to become an agricultural, deindustrialized country. The idea was never implemented. NATO, however, is likely to fulfill Morgenthau’s wish through high energy prices and soaring borrowing costs.
Ukrainians are simply cannon fodder.
What are Russians then?
Russian POW describes himself as cannon fodder:
Video Link
American lawmakers who bought defense stocks after the Russian operation began. Smedley Darlington Butler said war is a racket.
Putin has helped make the rich richer and gave US defense industries another decade of profits.
NATO expanded beyond what anyone could imagine in 2021.
But the US is at fault because the dwarf thought he could take Kiev in a weekend?
It’s erroneous to assume that China hopes to “dominate” cutting edge technology when their intention is simply not to be totally reliant on other countries. And it’s sinful to deindustrialize Germany when its people seem able to make the best products in whatever they set their minds on.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
You can become stupider instantly by just reading the title of this article if you’re too prone to swallow “multipolar” bollocks. The Russky/Chinky regime will benefit as much as their terrorist USEUNATO partners from any conflict in Ukraine/Taiwan.
Taking so many Russky/Chinky “vaccine” boosters is severely cutting oxygen supply to Putin/Xi fandom brains.
USA and NATO were engaged and training the Nazi Banderites from 2014 to 2022—8 years –it again shows why these Uke Nazis are bright—a little brighter than the Polish sausage eaters but lower than the American Black and way lower than the American white—
Putin met with African leaders in St. Petersburg in June during which he displayed a draft treaty on Ukrainian neutrality that was drawn up during negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022 – just after the war started.
The draft required Ukraine to enshrine “permanent neutrality” in its constitution. The US, Britain, Russia, China, and France are listed as guarantors.
This draft agreement was signed by the head of the Kiev negotiation team. The Russian Defense Ministry then announced it would “drastically” reduce military activity near the northern cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv, which led to a full Russian withdrawal from the north.
After the Russian military withdrew, Ukraine abandoned the new treaty. See https://news.antiwar.com/2023/06/18/putin-shows-african-leaders-draft-treaty-on-ukrainian-neutrality-from-march-2022/
That is, Russia could have taken Ukraine in short order but once again, just like with Minsk I and II, the lying West stymied peace.
https://sonar21.com/why-is-the-west-so-weak-and-russia-so-strong-the-role-of-human-capital-and-western-education/
Hitler would be alarmed at Kiev having a Jew King.
A few court Jews lurking around a head of state, not alarming. Quite normal for the period.
Hudson: I don’t think something like this has really come across before and those of us who believe in the economic determination of history can’t believe it’s going to go on very long but here we are.
I pointed out how odd it is that Hudson seems to really think economic interests are NOT dominating USA interests, when it’s obvious that the USA military industrial complex (MIC) and Agribusiness and Big Oil and their Wall Street investors are making a fortune selling weapons to the USA Government who then gives them to Ukraine. And the future bonanza of selling weapons and Oil/Gas and Grain to EU countries is on the horizon. And the profit cycle, USA taxpayer to MIC, Agribusiness and Big Oil to campaign contributions to USA politicians who make policy is clear as a bell.
Why does Hudson think economic determinism is NOT at work?????
They left Afghanistan and needed a reason to maintain weapons production and they got it. The MIC kept on winning. And when Ukraine winds down and they aim for China, the MIC and Agribusiness and Big Oil will keep on winning. Surely it’s obvious that both parties have long ago sold their soul to the MIC and the MIC will suck the USA taxpayer and productive system dry until the USA is a dry husk with some worthless tanks and GMO corn and dried up fracking equipment rattling around inside the husk, and otherwise the USA is de industrialized and the water is poisoned and the family farm has disappeared.
Ukraine.
LOL.
The West’s technology is “outdated overpriced crap that has no function on a modern netcentric battlefield “.
Agree with you on that statement. Most Americans think that we are getting close to $850 Billion of value for the $850 Billion we spend on our Department of War. But it’s not even close. There is so much waste and inefficiency in military spending that taxpayers are probably getting closer to $400 Billion of value.
Our news media constantly tells us that Russia’s military spending is comprised by large amounts of corruption. I’m sure there is corruption in Russia’s military spending but it is dwarfed by the corruption in ours. And the results on the Ukraine battlefield show it.
Excellent Discussions; and I’m grateful that PhDs Hudson and Desai clarified the “Settlement Currency” Characteristic so speculators won’t get distracted with the Gold.
Of Course, Gold can be used for Barter and/or “Payment” – e.g., the PetroCN¥-GoldXchg and by shifting custody/ownership of Member-State Inventories.
The BRICS/SCO/SilkRoad Blocks are expanding to include KSA’s SARiyal and UAE’s AEDirham in Member Trading Currencies.
Considering that these Intertwined Trading Blocks include Major Hydrocarbon/AgriFood/MineralOre/RareEarth Commodity Exporters+Consumers, this is going to get very interesting to see how they develop and operate apart from the Western Monetarist Exchanges.
I couldn’t agree more.
Reindustrialisation is totally possible …. when American wages equal that for the rest of the world.
The lower American wages get, the more desirable reindustrialisation will be. While that toaster at Walmart is $20, there will be no desire to work in a factory. Wait till that same toaster is $2000, and there will be long lines of employment hopefuls outside American sweatshops.
Here is to a future world of equality ! …… As we all know, “all men are created equal”.
Escobar is “Off” on KOR. Geopolitical Amateur Hour again with Escobar – he needs to stop rambling his speculations where+when he doesn’t have the working knowledge of a Region.
Not an Analyst – a Journo.
KOR are a Dependency of Murica. So much as their Draft-Dodgers relocate to and live in Murica while Murican GI Joes Stand their Watch at the DMZ and US Bases in KOR.
The Railways through the Koreas aren’t flourishing due to decades long tensions; and Brandon/Twinken are applying their Pressure on Seoul.
Add to that – RUS and CHN are PRK’s Military Allies – the UKRaine and Taiwanese Confrontations may escalate to where PRK may Join the Fray – as they’re still at War versus Murica and KOR. Pyongyang didn’t Arm themselves and survive Sanctions just to be reintegrated on economically disadvantageous terms.
There’s No Way that KOR will reintegrate under RUS Terms; and there’s No Way PRK will integrate under Murica’s Terms.
BTW, PRK have Hypersonics. Probably “Carrier Killer” TBMs too. Their TBMs have the Range to reach Taiwan, Guam, and Hawa’ii. Their Cruise Missiles can reach Taipei. Their ICBMs can reach WashingtonDC, Canberra, and London. They probably have SLBM Carrying Submarines that can make “One-Way and Scuttle” Trips to CONUS.
Annnnndd, PRK have Nuclear Weapons. I’m an ex-US Naval Officer, so I won’t discuss Deployment Strategies and Tactics. Why? Because Murican Veterans are in Harm’s Way – and many may Die because of AUKUS+DPP – I’m not going to give anyone any Ideas.
Since the Panel aren’t Veterans who Served the Cold War in Asia, it’s understandable for them not to see how dangerous the situation really is.
Brandon and his Caretaker Twinken happen to be Draft-Dodging Amateurs – they and their ZioCon Advisors think PRK will remain isolated and put throughout these conflicts.
Because Brandon+Twinken forced Seoul to ship out Artillery Rounds to support Murica’s Proxy-War on UKR, expect RUS to “cooperate” with and support PRK along with CHN.
The DPP are on borrowed time; but Brandon/Rishi just might start something ridiculous like getting AUKUS Subs+Ships to start making Port Calls with Joint Exercises with the Taiwan Island Naval Militia and/or getting AUKUS Troops/Airmen to overtly engage in deploying AUKUS Flagged Combat Aircraft and Armor/Ground Units all over Taiwan.
DPP have been suppressing their opposing minority parties; but are too weak to displace the Mainstream KMT which have already condemned the DPP.
The DPP were always run by Murica’s StateDept/CIA/NED. The Scenario will escalate to “SNAFU ClusterFail” collapsing into a FUBAR’d Crisis where the Regional Fighting begins and Murica usually Run Away as their Schills Collapse.
The CHN_PLA already demonstrated REPEATEDLY that they can surround Taiwan in HOURS and restrict/redirect Air+Sea Access to/from the Island.
AUKUS Assets have been in Taiwan as “Advisors” Training Troops and selling Weapons – it’s going to Piss Off the CPC(Beijing), KMT, and most Taiwan Island Residents if they start seeing BlackWater/Academie, Other MIC Mercs, and AUKUS Flag-Labeled Troops taking on DIRECT OPERATIONAL ROLES with the Taiwan Militia.
This Time – in addition to the ENTIRE Chinese Armed Forces that have their 110Mile-Wide ”Inland Waters”/”Home Territory”/Exclusive Economic Zone Strait “Home Theater Advantage” – they have RUS and PRK ready to put some Hurt upon AUKUS.
In Layman’s Terms – Taiwan is a far worse scenario for Brandon to Stumble Upon. A Hot Engagement will Guarantee PRK joining in – AND Invading KOR for the Win.
Beijing have been playing “Land the Hypersonics/TBMs” on Silhouettes of US AirFields in the Vicinity. Like in UKRaine – they don’t have to be Nukes to cause damages…
The only way the USA can get it started in China is if they get their stooge to declare Taiwan an independent country.
But with half the country being pro Beijing there would probably be a civil war before China ever attacks
If China did attack they probably wouldn’t bomb the country they would just close it off nothing gets into the island nothing leaves .
What would the USA do ? Start attacking Chinese ships and planes ?
China would sink any American ship anywhere close to China and if they use Japan to attack China China has already told Japan they will get Nuked if they allow that .
I would imagine if the Americans use South Korea China would hit South Korea hard and for sure 100% North Korea would take the opportunity to invade the South and would not be surprised if Russia helps out .For sure Vietnam will stay out and just eat popcorn and the Philippines would be nuts to allow the USA fly out of their island.
So USA has a snow ball chance in hell going to war with China but like Ukraine as long as low information Americans think they will win you can’t rule it out
D. McGregor corrected one of his important assessments.
Two days ago, he stated that Ukraine has lost 300,000 to 350,000 soldiers so far, and now he specifies further:
“I have just received aerial surveillance footage of Ukraine showing 123,000 freshly dug graves. Since the beginning of the conflict with Russia, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have lost 400,000 soldiers, and NATO continues to push them into a suicidal offensive.”
According to him, the current counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is a massive failure because it brought nothing to the Kyiv regime.
McGregor accused the West and NATO of forcing Ukrainians to fight in WW II-like conditions, which led to such high casualties:
“We turned Ukraine into a graveyard.” The Ukrainian army has turned into cannon fodder. And we tell them: attack, take a few kilometers of territory, that way you will show NATO and donors that you are still alive. And that is insane, senseless and inhumane.”
The big difference between the US starting a war against Russia and a war against China is that the first noted war is a proxy dust up between Russia and Ukraine (with the hapless Ukies taking every hit even though the US supplies all funding, weaponry, ammunition, global surveillance and intel to wage this war) whereas the looming set-to with China will be a direct conflict between both top-billed contestants. American ships, planes, military bases, air fields, cities and infrastructure such as the grid and electronic communications will receive at least as good as it gives in the exchange. Moreover, most American international trade, commerce and critical supply lines will come to a screeching halt, as most of this derives from China. Any rational person would advise that cretin in the White House to seriously re-think his planned aggressions. There will be no bombing Russian gas pipelines and bridges with impunity in China. Does that fool (or his deluded minions) really believe that America will be better off left ravaged with war damage even if it nominally “wins” this latest totally insane war of choice. Biden would be much better off devoting his time to planning his defense in the coming trial before the Senate.
Haven’t read any other comments yet, but I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if at least half the readership has not made the same point.
NATO is one strange military alliance if there ever was one .
Joining a military alliance only makes sense if it was to lessen a country’s chances of ever having to go to war .
Joining NATO pretty much guarantees that you will be sending off your young men to die somewhere far off in the world they probably couldn’t find on a map
Really what was the point of letting Lithuania,Estonia and Latvia join NATO ?
Those three NATO countries bordering Russia and belligerent towards Russia together do not own even one fighter jet and only have one L39 jet trainer .
How do those countries make NATO stronger answer they don’t
And look how they treat Turkey the second strongest NATO member ?
Turkey has to beg for F16 fighters and are not allowed to buy F35 jets , how is a military alliance supposed to work again?
All these countries that join think they are joining the big club and will be safe but it is the opposite they end up being occupied by Uncle Sam complete cucks as the American soldiers based in those countries get to have those countries females as sex toys .
Seriously bring in thousands of young horny men what do you think they are going to do for fun ?
Look at occupied Japan and South Korea their female population has been subjected to years of rape complete cucks those men in those countries.
Seriously what was Sweden and Finland thinking isn’t it better to be friends with your neighbour instead of belligerent towards them to the point you need foreign soldiers on your soil impregnating your daughters ?
Estonia has to have 800 Canadian soldiers on its soil to protect them how pathetic of a country do you have to be to rely on the Canadian military LOL
He (Hitler) would support Russia because Russia is no longer run by Bolsheviks (Trotsky).
[There is so much waste and inefficiency in military spending that taxpayers are probably getting closer to $400 Billion of value.]
Way too optimistic. A few weeks ago, I saw a presentation by a NASA engineer who compared a piece of equipment which was paid for by NASA at around USD 400 when the same item was purchased by the Pentagon at USD 10,000.
Let us remember that on 9/11, the wing of the Pentagon that was demolished, most probably by a rocket, had more than one hundred auditors investigating a fraud to the tune of two trillion USD. How much more was siphoned off by the MIC since then is anybody’s guess.
When Smedley Butler said that “war is a racket,” one wonders if he meant the whole MIC irrespective of whether it is engaged in war or not.
I believe I read a couple months ago that in the event of War with China the USAF will bomb Taiwan’s semiconductor industry.
Reviewing the Wars in IndoChina and the slaughter in Indonesia 1966 – ’67, the result was the destruction of the Taiwan supporting business class in those Countries.
If that was the U.S. intention from the start, then this is the endgame and people in Taiwan are in the firing line.
What are McGregror’s numbers on Russian dead?
Hudson and Escobar, a double act now? Unz, are they collecting the same money for half the work?
“If all the money in the world were actually backed by gold, we would suffer massive deflation, because there wouldn’t be enough money in the world, because there isn’t enough gold in the world.”
I really get fed up with people saying or writing this when they’re quite often more than happy to write about inflation and the currency production reasons for inflation. If gold is revalued higher there will ALWAYS ‘be enough’ gold.
The draft treaty puts a whole different complexion on things for me.
In the first few days of the war, there was a huge build-up of Russian forces just north of Kyiv. The MsM had us believe that the logjam and heroic Ukraine defense made the Russians withdraw in the face of being slaughtered.
But the existence of a draft treaty shows that Russia was only undertaking a display of force: demonstrating it could take Kyiv any time it wanted. Putin allowed significant Russian casualties while showing he wanted to minimise Ukrainian casualties.
Putin got a signed draft giving Russia the security both they and Ukraine needed – a win/win on Russian terms. So Russia withdrew from the north.
But that isn’t what US arms manufacturers wanted so the West performed historical perfidy by quashing the signed draft thereby unleashing their proxy war.
The result: over 100,000 dead Ukrainians and a whole bunch of deliriously happy US millionaires. The Democrat’s version of maga. Of course they’re in it for as long as it takes.
I’ve read up to here
but I have to pause to comment:
Haw. Remember the old joke?
Q: How many gears does a Polish tank have?
A: One forward and seven in reverse.
According to the CIA Yearbook population figures, Ukraine has[had?] 43mio, Russia has 142mio.
Just as Mme Merkel said, signing Minsk I & II was a ruse to gain time for ‘the West’ to arm & train Ukraine but Russia saw that coming 1.609 km off, and did ditto.
Well, der: Decaying ‘West’ [mainly zusa + uk] corrupted, supported, supplied & trained Ukies 43mio vs. 142mio superb STEM & profi-MIC Russians, what d’yer reckon?
Tip: Read this, if true explains especially zusa but also the rest of the West’s Charge of the Light Brigade direct down the gurgler:
https://sonar21.com/why-is-the-west-so-weak-and-russia-so-strong-the-role-of-human-capital-and-western-education/
Enjoy and rgds
TL;DR. Same suspects that have been held out as authorities in the past, yet have been shown to be wrong at every turn.
In order to survive, the white Western system must parasitize the entire world and although they are not crazy enough to want war, they must seek to intimidate the elites of Western countries and those that still behave like their colonies to keep them obedient.
The discredited song of freedom and democracy can no longer be used as before, nor even the fraud of Christian love because nobody believes any of that and all that remains is to be imposed by terror.
Terrorism is nothing new in the Western arsenal, it has been used without scruples more and more since the 1960s, but it is needed to maintain control of the world economy due to the high costs of a system of international military terror. .
NATO is perpetually searching for a war to justify its existence.
Quote by Pepe Escobar during the first half of the broadcast, with a crucial term highlighted in bold; as I explain below, this quote is an excellent example of George Orwell’s “Doublethink“, straight out of the 1984 playbook:
It is worth noting that whatever this key phrase “indivisibility of security” is supposed to mean is never explained by him. The reason for this is likely because the term is merely a euphemism for a completely unrealistic demand made by Putin prior to the invasion of Ukraine last year, namely to undo NATO’s prior expansion into eastern European countries during more than two decades, which occurred in accordance with prior international agreements, including one in 1997, between Russia and NATO in Paris.
Up until the beginning of the war last year, there had been no new country having joined NATO for five years, with the exception of North Macedonia in 2020. Therefore, it seems rather obvious, that suddenly obsessing about this central demand with such intensity, as Putin did at the beginning of 2022, was only to provide a phony pretext for waging the war that had already been planned for months beforehand, because it was an irrational demand that he knew would never be met, yet seemed to provide a fig leaf, to appeal to poorly informed people. He only pretended to give the impression that he was being reasonable, since this demand, presented as a “red line“, was accompanied by Russia’s hysterical “existential threat” and “at our doorstep” propaganda rhetoric.
Since Putin had publicly announced on March 2, 2018 his desire to re-establish the Soviet Union, if he had the opportunity, it should be clear that the demand of reversing prior NATO expansion was regarded as a means of attaining this opportunity, if NATO would be so stupid to comply with such conditions. This should be easy for anyone to understand when presented with the issues in context. In any case, the US responded by expressing a willingness to discuss nuclear arms issues. After all, it was Russia that was threatening the security of European countries due to its nuclear capable missiles that had been placed in the occupied Königsberg / Kaliningrad region in 2018.
Three weeks before the war began the Manchester / London Guardian provided a brief explanation. It mentioned that this demand had been presented to NATO by the foreign minister on January 28, a few days earlier.
Interestingly, Russia did not ever explain exactly how their “security” was somehow threatened by NATO’s presence in Europe for the past few decades. Since Ukraine’s potential or hypothetical membership was very far off in the future, it could not have been a real issue of immediate concern. Also, a land invasion of Russia was never threatened or planned for, so this notion was a paranoid fantasy. Since the recent NATO summit in Vilnius, Russian propaganda has finally called its own bluff. NATO was characterized as so exceedingly weak – which had even more so been the case two years ago and must have motivated Putin’s gamble to initiate the invasion of Ukraine for other outmoded reasons, Imperialism and Irredentism.
It may be hard for those who parrot official propaganda to make a complete mental switch, by discarding the prior line and adopting the new line that contradicts it. What results from this difficult to make such a sudden transformation is that both self-contradictory concepts are maintained at the same time. Hence, one can now appreciate that Escobar’s quote, above, in five consecutive sentences, is an exemplary exposition of George Orwell’s concept of Doublethink because he presents two contradictory ideas or “beliefs” within just a few seconds of speaking:
If the purported NATO humiliation, due to its weakness, is “just around the corner” then “indivisible security“, as it has been understood, as described above, cannot possibly be a serious and legitimate issue. Lest one forget, Putin can end the war from one day to the next by withdrawing his occupying forces, per UN resolutions.
American policy may not be to win all wars it enters. Recent history shows that since WW2 the U.S. has not won many wars.
What could be the reasons for war if not to win?
Who gains in perpertual war?
In the Ukraine war, more arms are being used. Trade competition from Europe is being eliminated.
China is not helping Russia much.
I believe China’s stragegy to be similar to that of the United States with Europe.
Let the belligerents wear themselves out fighting one anohter. In China’s case, the West vs. Russia. Both China and US are helping their side just enough so they don’t lose but not enough to win.
Apr 5, 2022 The Impact of the War in Ukraine on Food Security | World Bank Expert Answers
Even before the war in Ukraine, food insecurity around the world was rising. Ukraine and Russia account for 29% of global wheat experts and 62% of sunflower oil. This invasion is likely to exacerbate food price inflation in emerging markets and developing economies and impact some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries.
Video Link
JULY 25, 2022 NO FARMERS, NO FOOD, NO LIFE
The world is now facing a man-made food catastrophe. It is reaching crisis levels. Current policies in many parts of the world place a priority on climate change for realizing a green new deal. Meanwhile, such policies will contribute to children dying from severe malnutrition due to broken food systems, with shortages of food and water, stress, anxiety, fear, and dangerous chemical exposure.
https://brownstone.org/articles/no-farmers-no-food-no-life/
…the USAF will bomb Taiwan’s semiconductor industry.
Hence the need to get Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to start producing chips here in the US.
Currently there is a large construction project outside Phoenix to create such a facility. But TSMC recently revealed that they cannot find enough qualified people to install the equipment in the nearly completed buildings, so it will take until 2025 to get things up and running.
So Brandon better not start bombing Taiwan until after that.
Hitler would be alarmed at Kiev having a Jew King.
Not at all when he described Slavic countries as depending on Jewish intellect.
In fact he believed that Slavs were vulnerable to Communism for this reason.
Russia has the larger Jewish population because they were never conquered by the Nazis.
Some Putin defenders here seem to have missed some basic WW2 history lessons and view both Kiev and Odessa as Jewish.
There are more Jews in South L.A. than all of Ukraine.
Moscow has the largest Jewish population of any European city:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-history-of-the-russian-jewish-community/#:~:text=Today%E2%80%99s%20Jewish%20community,and%20Reform%20ones.
In the first few days of the war, there was a huge build-up of Russian forces just north of Kyiv. The MsM had us believe that the logjam and heroic Ukraine defense made the Russians withdraw in the face of being slaughtered.
Has nothing to do with the MSM. The Russian plan to take an airport near Kiev was a complete disaster and is well documented by independent military sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport
The Ukrainians correctly guessed their plan and had artillery ready. Putin actually thought the Ukrainian military would stand down.
The Russian loss would have been much worse if Zelensky had prepared to shell the northern bridge to Belarus as he was advised.
But the existence of a draft treaty shows that Russia was only undertaking a display of force: demonstrating it could take Kyiv any time it wanted.
That is Putin’s new excuse and only his followers like yourself buy it.
He was just sending a 40 mile column to show he could take Kiev but then decided not to after heavy losses? Is that right?
You are saying that leaked plans to take the country in 2.5 weeks are fake? Along with captured POWs that were told to take Kiev? All a grand ruse?
How about the Belarusian doctor who testified that Russian losses were extreme and beyond what his hospital had planned?
You do realize that Putin is mortal and the full truth will eventually come out? Books will be written about their failure to take Kiev. It isn’t some MSM spin.
These euphemisms don’t help. The “straussian neocons” are just the same old stinky Jews that have been warring against their tribal enemies from the beginning. The state department is occupied territory, taken over by an insane infant genital mutilation cult.
Here’s Michael in his own words.
Video Link
JFYI
Patrick Lancaster report from Avdiivka.
Video Link
What we have is a madly inefficient mechanism by which the elite classes plunder the collective resources of our country. We would be much better off simply issuing them a license to steal whatever they want. As it is, sure, they realise some obscene profit from all the weapons sold and utilised by the troops during the war–whether we win or lose, the latter of which seems often the default setting. But prosecuting the war itself imposes an even greater cost in terms of, not just money and raw resources, but also human lives on so many levels, including dead, permanently maimed, psychologically deranged from stress, grief and anomie. Plus there is a snowball effect which destroys not just individuals but entire families affected by the destruction and insanity left behind in the wake of these wars which are conducted basically just to goose business, industry and profit taking.
Modern warfare as constantly planned and executed by the American empire, as if the product of some assembly line, is the ultimate perfection of absolute immoral insanity for the sake of pure naked power and greed. It would be infinitely wiser to simply pay the oligarchs who constitute “the Big Club” some ungodly amount of ransom NOT to build weapons and NOT to make war, rather than actually going through the entire cycle of industrial synthesis of these lethal products, obscene squandering of money, waste of natural resources, poisoning the biosphere with toxic products and waste, and ultimately picking up the pieces left behind by all the countless individual human tragedies.
Use a LITTLE insight in analysing the situation. The reason why Russia and China have acquired the upper hand in these global conflicts is because they dedicate their military budgets to strictly efficient DEFENSE of their countries, not as the key to sucking escalating tranches of cash from their national treasuries and over-burdened taxpayers. Capitalism can actually work for these communist or former communist countries when fraud, deceit and gangsterism is minimized in the system, unlike the US which apparently will never be freed from the likes of the Biden crime family, the Clinton and Obama grifters and the Bush oligarchy. Our legislative “leaders” have orchestrated the theft of even more golden eggs from that beleaguered magic goose. How else did the likes of Pelosi, Feinstein, Hillary, Denny Hastert, Bob Livingston and many others become multimillionaires on their congressional salaries? America’s corruption tax seems to be the largest and most popular means of fund-raising in Washington.
Right👌👍
JFYI
1. As you see, Patrick’s soldier guide/guard speaks fluent English b/c lived in USA.
Decided to leave all, return Russia to enlist.
2. Pitnashka Batt. Commander speaks to Ukraine soldiers re Perchesky Lavra, desecrated by those they fight for, ancestors’ Orthodox graves; history of Borderland.
3. Comment on vdo
“I’m a former US Army infantryman from years ago who despise the foreign policy of my country. My respect, admiration and support goes out to the Russian people for defending their country and way of life from Western aggression.”
Oh … I get it: Ukraine was so demoralized by their massive win that they signed the draft peace treaty giving Russia everything they wanted.
Patrick Lancaster is a known pro-Russian source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Lancaster
He has taken checks from Russian media. He does not want you to see both sides as he claims.
I hope the Ukrainians blow him to bits.
Most of those conscripts will be dead or captured within a month. The Russians aren’t even bothering to rescue the wounded.
Oh … I get it: Ukraine was so demoralized by their massive win that they signed the draft peace treaty giving Russia everything they wanted.
What treaty would you be referring to? Let’s see a source.
China should stop all exports to the West for about 6 months. In 3 months, when the price of practically everything at WalMart triples, the people of the United States and Western Europe would start to understand what is at risk here. Better yet, lets say we have that war with China, and China chooses to hide their military supplies in all those factories that make stuff for Amazon/Walmart/Dollar General/Big Lots/Target/Family Dollar. What are we gonna do, bomb them and make everybody poor all over the Earth? You ready to spend $25 for a used can opener off Facebook marketplace that was $3 new at Dollar General the year before and hope it actually isn’t 90% worn out?
The Left (and I mean the wild left of antifa/BLM/college professors/LGTBQ) haven’t been really inconvenienced yet. When they are, they will turn on the neolibs and neocons much harder and much more physically than the trad right ever even thought of.
Austfailia has a ‘new’ aid policy in the Pacific. It is designed to ‘counter Chinese influence’, of course. So, the Anglosphere ‘Five Eyes’ will now determine who China may have friendly, mutually beneficial, relations with. The racist arrogance is typical of the vermin who comprise our US owned and controlled ‘elites’.
China has recently been ending restrictions on our exports, imposed after years of CONSTANT Sinophobic hatred in our politics and MSM, and clear preparations to join the USA in aggressive war on China. Indeed our north is being turned, bit by bit, into a vast US forward base for that war. Needless to say, our restrictions on Huawei and Chinese investment, will and must stay-White Men do not backtrack, particularly when it is uppity ‘rice niggers’ getting out of line.
actually this is sign, that both you and your “cat” are wrong. as cats are more intelligent than their human servants, both you and your imaginary cat, are obviously shills.
Seeing denialists pretending to ‘care’ about ‘starving children’ is always nauseating, seeing as, now that they have won, and runaway climate destabilisation is upon us, ALL, or very near all, the world’s children are going to suffer horrid and wretched premature deaths.
In a sane world, if one existed, if we had time left, we’d changed agriculture and animal husbandry and grazing to ensure that it could continue for as long as required. We’d end deforestation for animal grazing, we’d end fossil fuel based agriculture, we’d end the chemical assault on life of Monsatan et al, we’d end dumping lakes of nitrogen-rich piss and shit from animal feedlots into our rivers, lakes and seas etc. Of course the denialist psychopaths oppose all that, because the Greens they intend to get rid of, propose it, and it would upset profit expectations.
You need only read one line of this shite to know which Banderite troll vomited it up. How’s your great ‘counter-offensive’ going, Nazi?
how about the minsk agreements the west wiped their ass on? oh, yeah, we were crossing our fingers behind our back, when we signed that.
when the west is forced into a totally humiliating capitulation, don’t be surprised if the russians don’t cross their fingers (or double-cross, as they are orthodox).
don’t worry, australia is completely irrelevant, and will soon be returned to the abbos and kangaroos, that are the rightful owners of the continent.
I haven’t seen the exact number, but you can make an approximate estimate yourself by removing the last (or any other) zero in the Ukrainian number. The problem is that this earlier ratio of war victims has been disturbed, since Ukries, without basic training, can now not even approach Russian soldiers, but remain in minefields or stopped by artillery and aviation.
Perhaps Jay-Jay can give you the exact Russian numbers since he has been tracking and reporting every day for months on the mass deaths of young Russian conscripts sent to the front with only two weeks of basic training.
9 years later you’re just more disconnected from reality.
Whatever MacGregor has said is discounted by the fact that he has been wrong on everything. The man will tell you that what Putin has said wasn’t what Putin said.
The “negotiations” in Turkey never reached the point having a draft anything. Putin offered surrender terms, take it or leave it, and the Ukrainians walked.
India is the World’s largest Democracy—Indians love Modi–India has freedom and human rights. India is Utopia in Asia–
43,000 Nazis dead since April Fool’s Day 2023 —Canada lost 44,109 in WWII ( the Big one fighting Nazis and Japs ) so team Zylenskyy only a 100 away from a new record–many Banderites in Canada…
USA – NATO trained Banderite Nazis for 8 long years 2014-2022 but these are the results?
I think there’s a greater likelihood of armed conflict against China, within North America than over Taiwan.
China is gobbling up Western Canada at a prodigious and historically precedent-setting rate. They buy oilsands companies and mining companies, even though they can’t refine heavy crude and they dig for basically everything at home.
I predict a soft power coup in BC with a million or so sudden immigrants who will show up through Richmond’s airport over a few weeks time and suddenly demand “Canadian” citizenship. The balance is almost in their favor as it is, it won’t take much of a movement of people across a VERY open border.
For shits sake Chinese flights were THE ONLY ONES ALLOWED INTO CANADA during covid! I watched them fly into the airport, this seriously happened! Now forgotten of course but it shows how committed Canada’s government is to a Chinese takeover. They even wrote legislation specifically for Chinese troops to train on our soil! (so far only Salt Spring Island)
Maybe he was wrong, but coincidentally he guessed the numbers correctly. Perhaps he should consider playing Powerball?
The Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) has lost over 43,000 soldiers and over 4,900 units of various weaponry, including 26 aircraft, nine helicopters, and 747 field artillery guns and mortars. My oh my—these figures are mind-numbing–EG: Canada lost 44,109 during WWII –6 years fighting Nazis (Bandarites) and Japs)—Hey during WWII the Nazis and Japs were on the USA’s side????
You are probably right…he would be furious at Washington for blowing up the Russo/German costly project of the essential energy supply for Germany military strength.
You should write a letter to Justin Trudeau expressing your thoughts….
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
Fax: 613-941-6900
Today–he might be busy–taking son to see “Barbie” —–
43,000 Bandera Nazis are now history. Russia sits pat –the Ukes come again and again and again and again—-and get hammered. Soon Zylenskyy will not have any cannon fodder left and will retire.
The West is forming a coalition for the invasion of Ukraine, in which the countries of Eastern Europe – Poland and Lithuania – will play a key role, said D. McGregor.
“That – he warned – is a very dangerous intention because Russia is stronger than ever, and we are not.” We have ceased to be the force we were in 1991. Our army is not in the best condition”.
According to his knowledge, Polish and Lithuanian troops will invade Ukraine, and if they fail to occupy its western part, the USA could come to their aid.
McGregor points out that the Polish-Lithuanian Expeditionary Corps will have the same problems as the Ukrainians, who cannot hide anything from Russian satellite reconnaissance and guidance systems.
The former adviser to the head of the Pentagon particularly emphasizes that Russian systems surpass US military surveillance systems because of their integration.
McGregor also makes the assumption that Washington wants to blame Kiev for the war defeat and “go home” because it does not want to be involved in the total failure in Ukraine:
“There is a desire to divert attention from the inevitable failure, which will become evident in the public space and eventually reach the consciousness of Americans.” Some people in Bayden’s administration are already looking for a way out, saying, “well, listen, we did everything we could, we gave those Ukrainians everything, but they couldn’t do anything, so that’s their problem now.”
McGregor is convinced that the US was wrong to underestimate Russia. With that, Washington simply sacrificed the entire Ukrainian people and is now trying to develop different ways out of the situation.
One of those directions is to cover up the disaster and put the blame for everything on the Ukrainians, after which the US intends to get away with it.
The ‘trade’ is to disguise Chinese support of American’s standard of living they cannot afford via sweat and blood amalgamated by tears.
Re-industrialization needs a lot of sweat and blood hard work amalgamated by tears, the Americans would rather to live off by lying, cheating, stealing, plundering, bombing and killing as the entitlement of the self proclaimed beacon of democracy and freedom as always has been.
It’s easy to realize the dream you’re talking about. Make a mountain of Jewish heads like the Schiff family, the Pelosi, the Soros. But I don’t think you have the courage to do that.
There is a saying “Bribery does not keep people bribed, unless bigger bribes keep coming; or protection fee does not keep business protected, unless bigger protection fees keep coming.” This is a perfect description of the Americans. The Americans have been bribed and paid since WWII, they feel the bigger the threat they give the larger bribes and protection fees they will get in return. For example China has sustained American’s way of life they don’t deserve and cannot afford with sweat and blood since 1980. Russians did the same in addition with their natural resources. But China and Russia are still enemy number one to the Americans.
You have totally misunderstood the Americans. No matter what the rest of the world does for the Americans, the Americans will never be satisfied, nobody can fill the American’s bottomless pit of greed. The Americans always feel the rest of world owes them, and they are the ‘god-fearing’ morally defunct evil ‘puritan’. The Americans will always wage unending global hostilities/wars to quench their never-ending bloodthirsty crusade.
The world only can get peace by putting the Americans on the same path as Romans.
Before the Pearl Harbour incident, the Americans, the British, and the Europeans stood solidly with the Fascist imperialist Japanese. They supplied war materials and technologies to support the Japanese waging war against Chinese in China. The Americans and Europeans even blocked Chinese getting materials and other help in the decades of war against Japanese invasion.
WWII was was nothing but a dog-eat-dog play rough over the monopoly to plunder the rest of the world. Pearl Harbour attack was Japanese attempt to unseat the American top dog seat in the Pacific.
The American has shielded the beastly Japanese war criminals from being prosecuted and hung for the war crimes and crimes against humanity they committed in exchange for the bio-chem warfare data the Japanese collected thru cruelty beyond the possibility of human imagination.
Japanese accumulated their bio-chem warfare data through deliberate targeted bombings, disgusting human experimentation at Unit 731 in Harbin or mutilation and dismemberment, or having their vaginas and rectums skewered with tree branches and iron rods, or their babies bayoneted for practice, or beheading, or experimented on with germs like bubonic plague, malaria, typhoid, syphilis, gonorrhea, or having their blood exchanged with horse blood, or having their limbs exchanged with another person’s, and last but not least, having their bodies cut open without anesthesia. The victims of Japanese barbarism and cruelty are not only Chinese and Korean; they also include American, British, Australian, Dutch and SE Asians.
The American has been rearming the unrepentant war criminal Japanese in their Empire of Chaos project to achieve the global full spectrum dominance. American is the ‘God-fearing’ morally defunct evil ‘inquisitors’, the dark and ugly of the American past is buried far deeper than anybody can image.
The Japs is not only on the USA’s side, they are in fact two side of the same coin.
how about the minsk agreements the west wiped their ass on? oh, yeah, we were crossing our fingers behind our back, when we signed that.
Neither side followed it and it was actually the separatists that pushed for more territory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Donetsk_Airport
when the west is forced into a totally humiliating capitulation, don’t be surprised if the russians don’t cross their fingers (or double-cross, as they are orthodox).
How would the West be forced into capitulation? Ukraine is the one fighting and the Russian military has already been humiliated.
Do you really think a march on Kiev is possible with conscripts? Putin is just trying to get his slice of Donbas so he can raise his “mission accomplished” banner. Which actually means the entire war was a loss for Putin given his original goals. He told us it was primarily about NATO in his invasion speech. Well Finland joined as a result of the invasion and they share more border with Russia than Ukraine.
NATO absolutetly didn’t fail in Ukraine, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
1. They expected Ukraine to fall within a week; it didn’t. They expected the so called limited military operation to end within a month; it didn’t. It’s been now a year and a half. How is that fail for NATO? it’s NOT. It’s a major win.
2. Russia lost its biggest customer to oil and gas. Now Europe will hate Russia for a long time.
3. Russia is wasting billions in equipment, people power and resources. NATO/USA/UK SIMPLY LOVES it. The longer the war drags on, the weaker Russia will become, wasting precious resources. How is that fail for NATO? it’s NOT. It’s a major win.
4. MIC’s rich fat cats are making billions making weapons for Ukraine. Win for them, NOT Russia. How is that fail for NATO? it’s NOT. It’s a major win.
5. Russia lost access to SWIFT. Don’t tell me that didn’t hurt Russa and ordinary people. It did. How is that fail for NATO? it’s NOT. It’s a major win.
6. How many Russian solders lost their lives? We don’t know. We are told how many Ukranains maigh have died, but how many RUssians died that should have lived? How is that fail for NATO? it’s NOT. It’s a major win.
and so on and so on.
China should stop all exports to the West for about 6 months. In 3 months, when the price of practically everything at WalMart triples, the people of the United States and Western Europe would start to understand what is at risk here.
So China needs to take an economic hit to help Russia?
Ending trade with China for 3 months would be great for America. I think it would be in our best interest to find new suppliers.
China has markets with dying cats to keep them fresh. They are not a moral people and they view all Europeans as destined to be secondary to them. The idea of them closing off their American market to stop tank shipments is hilarious. They’ll sell arms to Russia with an IOU before cutting off Wally World and Dollar Tree.
The Left (and I mean the wild left of antifa/BLM/college professors/LGTBQ) haven’t been really inconvenienced yet. When they are, they will turn on the neolibs and neocons much harder and much more physically than the trad right ever even thought of.
LOL you think gay college professors are keeping the arms going?
Both Republicans and Democrats support sending military aid to Ukraine. Most of it is outdated and stockpiled. The bills have already been signed. Ukraine doesn’t have the men for a 5 year war so they have to make it count with the next few shipments. Then there is all the aid from France, Germany and the UK that hasn’t arrived. So even if you flipped the US to neutral there is still the rest of Europe. You’ll just have to wait out the results and grit your teeth as M1s roll into Ukraine.
Personally, I would like to see China decouple for 6 decades.
But I don’t think the West’s understanding of decoupling is the same as that of the Rest (of the world).
At least they buy these resources from Canadians with “good” money.
It’s a pretty sweet deal. …. I steal the land from the First Nations, then I sell itsy bitsy chunks of it to the Chinkies for big bucks.
I like that savvy move very much. Where can I get in on the action?
Videos on YouTube showed American high school kids funded by church “to see China.” They whispered to the camera in the Ürümqi airport waiting hall where were full of people chatting and waiting, they said they could speak loud because they were being watched by the commie, they were afraid of their safety.
Another video showed an American youth driving through the street of Ürümqi, he pointed to buildings said those were concentration camps broadcasted by the West as human right abuse sites.
China opens door to welcome the Americans and foreigners to see China themselves, and hope facts can change people’s misinformed image and knowledge about China, so that we can coexist peacefully together. The Americans abuse Chinese open arm attitude is really heart breaking and depressing.
Not the national security types are crazy, the whole American seems are nuts too.
Video Link
NATO instigated war crimes, crime against peace and crime against humanity in Ukraine is a big win to you?
Shiro Ishii, the beast in charge of Unit 731, was a regular guest in the USA from the ’20s. And he was involved in the US germ warfare assault in Korea in the early 50s.
Did you write earlier for the National Enquirer?
What have you got against the wombats.
You really are a case in point—you must be glued to Fox Nation day and night.
How do you reconcile the loss of 43,000 Uke Nazi Banderites since April 2023 or rather from when the big counteroffensive began after supposedly being delayed to June 1, 2023?
There is only one species stupider than a Kiev Banderite Nazi commander —that is the Ukrainian coyote from Lvov—-“it had three legs chewed off and one in the trap”.
The same analogy ” Go straight ahead –full force — again and again and again and again and again—
Practise makes perfect ???
Strike your head against a steel beam or concrete pillar–it must GIVE —given time???
Zelenskyy then Zero !!!!
A Comedy of Deaths and Debt !!!!
Shiro Isshi was the Big Boss Man of Harbin 731 and oddly enough after being captured by the USA forces was NOT placed on trial and subsequently executed as a War Criminal on solid evidence
BUT
Was paid money ( big Stipend) and transferred to the USA East Coast and put in charge of the facility at Fort Detrick Maryland making biological weapons —–FACT.
Now the goods Shirro’s team were working on were later used in North Korea 1950-1952 –biological weapons–dropped from the USA planes.
One captured USA pilot was presented the full facts and case that he was shot down in the process of dropping biological weapons –at first he claimed and rightly so that his superiors told him he was dropping bombs.
However, when realizing what he had done was indeed dropping biological weapons his response was as follows::
“What the hell am I going to tell my son when I go back home—–that your father is a monster!!”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I wonder what money the whites used to “buy” these resources from the genuine native Canadians?! Marbles?
I am too much a conspiracy theorist about the forthcoming WW3:
a> it will involve Muslims too in a grand scale.
b> all or most nations will experience an internal power struggle from fully fledged civil war to at least riots and extreme violent acts.
c> the advancement of one planetary government and decimation of global human population (but with an emphasis to whites an if possible Christians and if again possible Orthodox) will go forth at full speed.
So it is not exactly as being described by most western contrarians and looks like as this was the grand design from the beginning about a century ago.
What we are looking at is an unprecedented EVIL attack on all HUMANITY by an INVISIBLE (? in 2000 it was terrorism in 2020 it was a virus in 2023 it is the Straussians+rich elites+neocons ?) ENEMY.
In Orthodox Christianity (and what is left of Orthodox Hebrew religion) this enemy is not human, precedes Homo Sapiens and goes by the names: Adversary, Lucifer, Satan, Devil etc)
BUT ONLY when by our ill intended actions GOD permits.
Taiwan isn’t a province, it’s its own country. It developed distinctly from the mainland from the 17th century onwards and is more like how Australia relates to Britain in that it has an indigenous population which was displaced by outside settlers. The Qing dynasty lost control of it in the 19th century and the Communists never claimed it until the late 1940s.
The surrounding countries you mention have zero interest in becoming vassals of the “Middle kingdom” like how it used to be when the Qing empire was still standing.
I think we are typing about two separate things. I’m considering a potential war with China and how to (hopefully) avert it.
JJ,
If the people of the USA understood (really) just how expensive goods would be if China was deeply wounded, with many factories destroyed, THEY would complain to the Administration to not agitate in the South China Sea, and simply request China and Taiwan maintain the status quo between the two. If the US is serious about war with China, they should FORCE all companies to have at least one factory here that can make a little portion of every product line they sold here. They would be made to make perhaps 5% of any product line here (lawnmower, garden hoses, wrenches, blue jeans, whatever). You can copy a machine and make another if you have a working example to be fabricated that actually works. One running production line that makes scissors can be meticulously duplicated, and existing workers could train new workers on how to run the new line quickly and effectively. There is some stuff out there that we flat out don’t make here-at all. 5% doesn’t sound like much, but that would be enough for a small nation of 15 million people, and we could quickly scale up. It’s much easier to copy something than to conceptualize and rebuild from scratch.
I think the lefties, if there was a war with China, would go fucking bezerk when stuff like a toaster or microwave quintupled in price. First there would be massive theft, then added security, then brutal anger from left. You don’t really think the antifa and BLM types give a tinkered damn about Taiwanese chip manufacturing do you? These are people that do not take being inconvenienced with quiet, disappointed resignation like traditional conservatives but openly express anger over little things like microaggressions.
The stage for an antiwar leftist could be set in this way. Joe Biden isn’t actually popular. We could see a Barak Obama-type the Establishment does not approve of be elected, especially a black one. They now are pretty expert on cheating via paper ballots, drop boxes, masks, and poll workers. Every day the Democratic Establishment gets less white. I’d keep this stuff in mind. These people the Dems use for muscle are not neolibs. Once in power, they could ask for the resignations of the intelligence community to be replaced with their own people. What’s the current Establishment gonna do? Call them racists?
I’m always interested to hear,alternative non Western centric PsOV but calling China “socialist” and “anti imperialist” is absurd. It’s the very definition of an empire.
As cited above by Molip: https://www.unz.com/mhudson/nato-failed-in-ukraine-against-russia-now-its-targeting-china/#comment-6093126
Source https://news.antiwar.com/2023/06/18/putin-shows-african-leaders-draft-treaty-on-ukrainian-neutrality-from-march-2022/
Putin showing hardcopy to African leaders: “This draft agreement was initialled by the head of the Kiev negotiation team. He put his signature there. Here it is, …”
From your framing of the question, I think you already know the answer.
But for the benefit of those that are not aware, the island of Manhattan (some know it as New York City) was bought with beads and trinkets.
But this was a relatively “honest” trade. Much of the rest of the continent was simply seized. Whatever other “treaties” were made, were at gun point.
The full name of the UK is “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.
The full name of the US is “The United States of America”.
What is the full name of Taiwan?
When telling a lie, tell a Big Lie, eh ‘Gerry’.
What makes you think that China will suffer much material damage in a war with the USA and its stooges? After the US bases in Austfailia and the Philippines, and Guam are dealt with, and the Seventh Fleet sunk, China will probably spare Hawaii. If the USA wants more, then it’ll be the end of them, and probably the rest of us. The average Yankee psycho really seems to think that China is just another Iraq.
The sheer hilarity of the ‘Russian plot to kill ?elensky’ is priceless. Why would Russia top their secret weapon, the sweaty rat that pisses people off everywhere he slithers.
Michael Hudson believes that there will be no US Reindustrialization.
“Is the US a Failed State?, by Michael Hudson”
unz.com›mhudson/is-the-us-a-failed-state/
Priss already posted that link, this thread is (at time of reading) not too long, so you should have seen that.
However, I agree, having read it a few days ago, that the essay is very correct from what I read and see as an external observer.
I understand most of the acronyms you are using, but not ‘DPP’, and it has too many meanings to work out from a ‘net search. Intended meaning?
Thank you, Ron Unz, for posting transcripts of these important discussions.
Must-reads.
Re “Their number one trade partner is China. And Chinese influence in all of them will continue to be very, very strong, directly and indirectly, via the Chinese diaspora in all of them, what we call the “bamboo internet”, which is strong in all of these nations.”
Two great sources of info on the C hinese diaspora and the history of Chinese influence are Sterling and Peggy Seagrave’s two books, The Soong Dynasty and Lords of the Rim. Very readable and heavily documented.
“At least they buy these resources from Canadians with “good” money.
It’s a pretty sweet deal. …. I steal the land from the First Nations, then I sell itsy bitsy chunks of it to the Chinkies for big bucks.
I like that savvy move very much. Where can I get in on the action?”
The land was stolen by the Hudson’s Bay Company, which is basically the English Crown. Why don’t you take it up with them? Buckingham Palace would love to hear your opinions.
White Canadians were not anything but sharecropper serfs recruited to work the land and prep it for the easy living of African and Asian immigrants, who are not able to de-wild anything as they are soft silky city boys who already are failing at pushing the buttons and stuffing the chairs. The magic dirt theorists have already failed!
Get in on the action! Hahaha the action is long over and the profits do not go to whitie. There are no profits, only debts.
“I wonder what money the whites used to “buy” these resources from the genuine native Canadians?! Marbles?”
The Hudson’s Bay Company didn’t give them shit. They signed them up for assistance through “Indian Affairs” (yes still has that name today in current years because Canada’s bureaucratic institutions are that old). They’ve been broken and destroyed through this “assistance” which they are completely addicted to. They can’t feed themselves, clothe themselves, if it came down to it most of them can’t even hunt or fish anymore.
It’s actually not terribly different than it was centuries ago – most of the First Nations in Canada were slaves to the stronger nations and even back in the 1800s couldn’t feed themselves. The Carrier in North BC were literally starving to death after they were “freed” by whites moving in. They were separated from their Cree masters, and had to be taught how to fish and hunt by imported Cree from Quebec (the Cree occupy a band all across North Canada). Otherwise they were drowning in lakes in their stupid non-canoe circular boats with no paddles that just went where the currents took em.
While you anti-white people fret about what happened to these peoples in the past, the real thing to worry about is their future. When they lost their slave masters some of them lost their traditions such as marrying from other clans to avoid inbreeding. There was a guy on my dad’s crew in Lillooet who was living with his grand-daughter, who was a product of he and his daughter. This is not rare and lots of First Nations are genetically destroyed as it is from inbreeding and FAS.
To say nothing of their future being administered by non-whites who will not feed them and clothe them anymore!
Indian indifference, or Chinese genocide? What awaits them?
But if McGregor’s such a close student of the conflict, why would he only be estimating Ukrainian casualties?
You are obviously the shill.
See how little that advances the discussion?
Because said land is being occupied by Canadians of today.
When one assumes the benefits of Hudsons Bay Company has left to you through the generations, why should one deny its responsibilities?
Did you do any of the de-wilding?
It is strange that in the preceding quoted paragraph, you disassociated yourself with the deeds of your ancestors. Now you cling to their glory when it suits you.
You have to decide for yourself, are you, or are you not the heir of the deeds of your ancestors?
Those idiots talk about US Dollar. They obviously don’t know that there is no US Dollar. What there is is called a Federal Reserve Note, which is a private money and absolutely not covered by gold. You have to believe that it has value but knowing that it doesn’t
It’s fake money produced by such illustrious men like the Rothschild.
They could even make those illustrious people like the talkers to talk about a scam as it would be real.
They just exchange worthless papers.
Really brilliant people.
“Did you do any of the de-wilding?
It is strange that in the preceding quoted paragraph, you disassociated yourself with the deeds of your ancestors. Now you cling to their glory when it suits you.
You have to decide for yourself, are you, or are you not the heir of the deeds of your ancestors?”
I was stating history not clinging to glory.
You have a very serious problem with comprehension, you only see what you want to see and you have never responded honestly to anything I’ve said.
Your whole “deeds of ancestors” garbage is proof that you are brainwashed by Jews and their whole victimhood narrative. When you speak I just picture Jewish diarrhea spewing out. The smell says “Trotsky” and the consistency says “College”
NO ONE CARES
“Because said land is being occupied by Canadians of today.”
And tomorrow it will be occupied by Indians and Chinese. Canada will be minority white very soon, in a couple provinces it probably already is.
This is between you and the browns and yellows.
How strange. I have exactly the same opinion of you.
LOL, you are the one ranting about Whites being victims.
You don’t like “college”?
I don’t know why you keep changing the subject.
About browns and yellows taking over Canada….as you say. “NO ONE CARES.”
So why should anyone care if Whites are displaced from Canada?
What is sauce for the goose, is also sauce for the gander.
“LOL, you are the one ranting about Whites being victims.”
Lie. I stated the fact that we’ll be minority white. I never once claimed I was a victim. THis is the fifth or sixth time you’ve accused me but every single instance is a separate lie. It isn’t helping your credibility.
“About browns and yellows taking over Canada….as you say. “NO ONE CARES.”
So why should anyone care if Whites are displaced from Canada?
What is sauce for the goose, is also sauce for the gander. ”
The people of the Congo might care, or wherever else whites will flock to once someone plants the all-white flag.
You see, white people are capable of re-building civilization.
You and all the other brown peoples are only capable of _aping_ us and using our technology. Like your computer or smartphone or internet so we can have this lovely conversation.
When this place is full of Indians it will just be India. They are tricking themselves into thinking that they’re taking anything. All over the whiteosphere the browns and other peoples are trying to be close to us so they can have what we have. But it is a jewish illusion as they will bring it down to their level – without us there is nothing but the vapor of civilization.
Look at the Islamic world – they can barely maintain what Christian or Zoroastrian civilization built up, and once they lose it (Mongol invasions) they can never get it back.
Even your anti-white inclinations, and your short-sighted convictions that we’ll be displaced or whatever, are huge red flags that you’re just repeating the opinions of white liberals and Jews.
You are incapable of thinking fifteen minutes into the future, where we rebuild and start over – and you are left with nothing but the memory of how technology and toilets and the lights USED to work.
Enjoy your victory. It’s cold in the north. The whites are going to love being in the sunbelt. If such a renewal takes place the writing will be on the wall – and we will need to leave all of you shitstains behind and get off this rock already.
It’s ok the Jews have plans for you I’m sure.
There were so many Jews and Asians in the history of these technologies beginning from the fundamental von Neumann architecture and the arithmetic-logic unit. Here are some significant figures in the history of semiconductors (variations with which demonstrated to be far more sophisticated and superior to the primitive vacuum tubes),
Mohamed M. Atalla: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_M._Atalla
Dawon Kahng: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawon_Kahng
Chih-Tang Sah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chih-Tang_Sah
Simon Sze: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Sze
One could also just simply take a look at https://patents.justia.com/company/ibm, where IBM is among the patent giants of the U.S.. Note the disproportionate representation of Asian and Chinese names.
As a quick supplement,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prolific_inventors
Note that IBM’s most productive “inventor” in its entire history is Chinese. Additionally, the most productive inventor in the history of Qualcomm is also Chinese. One can also notice such names as Silverbrook.
Top inventors today (from the perspective of U.S. patent cultures),
https://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/top/top-inventors-2020/
Lei Zhang
Frederick E. Shelton, Iv
Tao Luo
Jaehung Chun
Yousook Eun
Myongsun Kim
Hyunsun Yoo
Sungkyung Kim
Joogyeom Kim
Charles Howard Cella
Kangguo Cheng
Jason L. Harris
Xiaoxia Zhang
Shan Liu
https://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/top/top-inventors-2021/
Tao Luo
Xiaoxia Zhang
Peter Gaal
Wanshi Chen
Jing Sun
Frederick E. Shelton, Iv
Juan Montojo
Shan Liu
Sony Akkarakaran
Li Zhang
Junyi Li
Kai Zhang
Hongbin Liu
Yan Zhou
Yue Wang
https://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/top/top-inventors-2022/
Tao Luo
Xiaoxia Zhang
Jing Sun
Frederick E. Shelton, Iv
Dawei Zhang
Esmael Hejazi Dinan
Shan Liu
Peter Gaal
Li Zhang
Junyi Li
Yushu Zhang
Seungmin Lee
Kai Zhang
Hongbin Liu
Wanshi Chen
Hanbyul Seo
Yan Zhou
Satoshi Nagata
Yue Wang
LinkedIn profile of IBM’s most productive inventor in its entire history (note that LinkedIn is founded by Chinese persons): https://www.linkedin.com/in/kangguo-cheng-0981152?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
• 19+ years of experience in semiconductor industry including FinFET and FDSOI technologies
• Proven track record of developing and transferring semiconductor technologies from early research to volume production
• Prolific inventor with 2200+ issued US patents
• 100+ peer-referred journal articles and conference presentations, including invited/highlighted presentations at VLSI Symposia and IEDM
• Deep knowledge in semiconductor process integration, device physics, and materials science
• Inspiring and mentoring young engineers/scientist on invention
• A team leader with excellent communication and mentoring skills in highly diverse organizations
• A fast learner on emerging technologies
• IEEE Fellow
My career started in Electronics Engineering.
I know how much technology was exported to Asia. And I know how much of it was pioneered by whites in North America.
Also I know even after that process, how many Chinese spies infiltrate our companies HERE just to try and scoop up the last of any innovations they can steal! Seriously I worked with multiple OBVIOUS spies, we all have. They often don’t hide it and express pride in their allegiances.
Without the Trilateral Commission, industrial giant corporations moving their shit to Asia, and all the dirt uncovered by Anthony Sutton, it’s clear that you would have nothing over there.
1800s China was eerily similar to 1100s China.
Go ahead and keep it all – you won’t be inventing anything new.
When western workers go to China, they steal all data from their laptops.
No one in North America would bother to look for “innovations or “inventions” on the laptop of a Chinaman.
It’s no coincidence the Russian Defense Minister along with a Chinese military delegation went to watch a military parade in Pyongyang. The Joint air patrols that went near South Korea and circumnavigated Japan were another indication
Yeah China itself has already begun outsourcing jobs to the places you named. China just had 11 million college grads last year. They don’t want to sew shirts together in a factory. They don’t even want to assemble phones either. They now have almost fully automated phone factories in China now. Even the newer high speed rail lines are now being built with mostly robots. China is moving up the value chain so the economic warfare tactics of yesteryear won’t work so easily.
Even in South East Asia now they are complaining that young people don’t want to do manual labor anymore. So robots it is. Then it will come down to who has the lower logistics and energy costs. Back in the same conundrum.
“To where? To Europe, to North America and Oceania, and to some extent to South Africa – that is to say, to all its settler colonies.”
Actually Britain exported a huge amount of its cotton textiles—cotton textilers were the driver of its industrial revolution—to Africa. See Sven Berckert, Empire of Cotton.
Plain false garbage. Fujian people moved to Taiwan regularly in the 1500’s. China had to slap back the Dutch who wanted to control Taiwan. When the new Qing dynasty came in it formally made Taiwan a province of China in the late 1600’s. The difference is Mainland migrants and the administration late the natives to themselves. That stayed until the 1890’s when Japan took the island from China. That makes 200 years of actual sovereignty. When Japan lost in WW2 it returned to China. The Chinese Nationalists were forced to retreat on to Taiwan and set up the Chinese Nationalist government of the Republic of China in 1949. The UN acknowledged those nationalists as the rulers of all of China u til the 1970’s when it was voted to recognize the communists in Beijing instead. No separation took place. Take your fake history to the firing range. Formally Taiwan has been part of China longer than the United States has been an independent country.
Last I looked, Taiwan was a lot closer to China than to California.
Or Australia. Or Japan. Etc.
For an interesting account of the history of Taiwan as a part of China, see Seagrave, Lords of the Rim.
The USA has signed agreements with China concerning the status of Taiwan.
That should be the end of the story.
Though if I’m not mistaken weren’t the Lenape people (if that’s the tribe) more under the impression it was more like a seasonal lease?
You really are a case in point—you must be glued to Fox Nation day and night.
I don’t watch Fox News or CNN. All cable news should be an insult to the thinking White man. I can’t stand the commercials let alone the dumbed down fake analysis.
It was Fox that allowed Russian apologist Tucker Carlson a prime time spot so I really don’t see your point. Maybe there is something on Fox Nation that you can share with us.
How do you reconcile the loss of 43,000 Uke Nazi Banderites since April 2023 or rather from when the big counteroffensive began after supposedly being delayed to June 1, 2023?
No one knows the actual losses of either side and in any case it’s called war.
Ukraine has taken losses as they are fighting for their independence from Russia.
The American rebels took losses when they fought for independence from Britain.
Do you get upset on July 4th? Countries have to be paid for in blood.
Those idiots talk about US Dollar. They obviously don’t know that there is no US Dollar. What there is is called a Federal Reserve Note, which is a private money and absolutely not covered by gold. You have to believe that it has value but knowing that it doesn’t
They just exchange worthless papers.
When the war started there were numerous posts on how the dollar is doomed and how the “muti-polar” world is here. No real explanation of why the world would get behind a dictator dwarf and his bloody invasion.
Well the dollar finished ahead of the Ruble which means that anyone who invested against the advice of the “dollar is doomed” and “multi-polar” world crowd made a profit.
But at this point…. the dollar is doomed? Is that right?
As of August 8th, 2023, the dollar is doomed?
Do you think “dollar is doomed” pronunciations were made when Nixon removed the dollar from the gold standard in 1971?
Hitler cited the example of Poland “We armed those treacherous punks because Pilsudski promised Ludenforff a dozen first class divisions but they immediately put the shiv in our back.” I believe this is a direct quote.
Good point, Puss. I will suggest him to put on his boots and harness, take the coroner’s book and calculator, go down to the field and count everything himself.
And the Cairo Declaration:
The West is preparing for the final phase of seizing Kosovo, and Ukraine has joined them.
In the letter they signed together, the heads of diplomacy of the EU, USA and Great Britain ask for a “more critical attitude” towards Serbia. It is emphasized: “Kosovo is a sovereign state and a functioning democracy. That fact should be the basis for our common policy in the current crisis…
The signatories request that “deterrence diplomacy” towards Serbia be considered.
The most prominent signatories are Michael Roth and Bob Menendez. Apart from the German Social Democrat and the American Democrat, the letter also has the signatures of their colleagues from Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The policy of the West towards Serbia is too lenient with regard to Kosovo, according to the heads of the foreign policy committees of the parliaments in Germany, the USA, Britain and other countries. They demand stronger pressure on Serbia. “The West is restrained in its criticism – and that approach no longer works, say the politicians in charge of foreign affairs.
According to their judgement, the West is too lenient towards Serbia. “We ask that the international community draw lessons from our past and ensure that we do not pursue a Belgrade-centric policy in the Balkans,” the letter states.
As the paper assesses, the EU and the USA are pursuing a “lenient policy” towards Serbia out of fear that “Belgrade will join the Russian camp”. “Serbian government does not participate in the sanctions against Moscow,” the text states.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin enjoys sympathy among the Serbian population, while many Serbs reject their country’s full membership in the EU – membership that is not in sight,” the Tagesspiegel paper concludes.
You were literally provided strong evidence on the contrary.
A really vicious racist supremacist baboon, this one. It is good however, because you can almost smell the stench of FEAR of this creature. The race hate and rage will get us all killed, alas.
And, as Sinophobic hatred grows and grows in the West, more and more Chinese will flee to their ancestral home, deepening the West’s fall, and strengthening China’s rise. The West will be Bidenised and Pelosified, while China will soar.
I hope more will return to the PRC and their East-Asian home countries. The U.S. increasingly does not deserve these high-quality STEM human capital. Fortunately, the Anglo-led “China initiative” caused a good number of mature Chinese STEM human capital to return to the PRC, with more to come (Anglo, as opposed to Jewish-led).
Please see my reply on the other thread.
Ciao
I agree. It is basically tricking the naive.
Or just equally divide his time.
Yup and that’s why Ryuku aka Okinawa should have been given independence too. But of course the US had other plans (to try to contain China with military bases)
If Kosovo is a sovereign state then Donbass should have been too! They are such hypocrites. Matter of fact Catalan too… and on and on and on. The hypocrisies are nauseating
@Joe Wong
is that all you can think of? the last 8 years? NATO has been instigating crimes against humanity for literally decades. USA for longer. Gulf of Tonkin was a false flag event that started the Vietnam war. Did anyone did anything about it ? Did USA get sued in International court by Vietnam? NATO attacked Iraq in 1990 and in 2003 based on lies. Did NATO/USA get sued or exposed Infront of international court of law? Di Bush or Bush 2 go to jail?
NO? Then NATO?/USA wins cuz they can disregard international law and have been disregarding international law for decades and nobody UN nor Russia or China has done said anything bout it.
Yes NATO/USa are winning. Do I like it? No. But thats Reality and the facts
I KNOW Reality and Truth are hard to take. Try them though.
You really are a witty genius kitty.
Living by lying, cheating, and killing is inherent in their racial instincts. Haven’t you noticed that from their national totem animal of choice? It’s almost always an eagle, a lofty predator. They instinctively see themselves as predators and all else are preys.
He changed his mind about Kiev early defeat when he realized that Kiev blackmail of Biden is draining US treasury, increasing unsustainable debt, weakening military and speeding up dedollarization. Why to quit these positive happenings with fast victory. How much you pay for gas or bread silly boy?
I like his continued blackmail of Biden – perhaps he is Russian agent.
I agree, the PCR was also very critical of the Russian strategy from day one and felt that they should have finished everything in a week. what if that happened? NATO would be intact and have plenty of weapons, the Germans would still get cheap gas and the Russian market, the Ukrainian Nazis would have calmed down for a few months and were preparing to strike even harder. I said then that in Putin’s place, I would extend the war for at least two years until the Western military, economic and financial and Ukrainian human reserves are exhausted and a new world order is created with BRICS but without dollars.
He changed his mind about Kiev early defeat when he realized that Kiev blackmail of Biden is draining US treasury, increasing unsustainable debt, weakening military and speeding up dedollarization.
Kind of a word salad statement. Not sure of your point.
Ruble dropped again. Putin’s Jewish propagandist went on a big rant about it:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/russian-tv-host-fumes-over-ruble-collapse-theyre-laughing-at-us-abroad/ar-AA1f6lCG
Is that Putin’s 5d chess plan against the dollar at work?
How much you pay for gas or bread silly boy?
Bread is practically free in the US. Are you in Europe or something?
I agree, the PCR was also very critical of the Russian strategy from day one and felt that they should have finished everything in a week. what if that happened? NATO would be intact and have plenty of weapons, the Germans would still get cheap gas and the Russian market, the Ukrainian Nazis would have calmed down for a few months and were preparing to strike even harder.
The plan was to take Ukraine. There was to be no Ukrainian military after taking Kiev.
That is why Putin swore to make LPR and DPR independent states. He was going to take West Ukraine and let puppet states rule the East.
After failing to take Kiev he broke his word and has since made LPR/DPR part of Russian territory.
This is not some 5d chess plan. It’s a failed strategy.
It’s just symptomatic of how subjective you are. I hope you are well rewarded for it.
Can Putin’s strategy be declared a failure? It is obvious that he holds all the cards in his hands. He is not ending the war in Ukraine just for the reasons I have stated. Maybe he did think that the course of the operation would be different in the first month, but for him nothing went wrong, and the overall result will be better than if he had completed it all in a month. You forget the Minsk agreements and several years of waiting for Donbas to be given cultural and linguistic autonomy.
Did the western strategy of buying time for arming and preparing Ukrainian attack on Russia that would immediately follow the western states and that was the goal for which they have been preparing for decades, if not centuries, won?
I would act differently in his place and I believe that his strategy will also converge to my solution. First, Ukraine never existed nor the Ukrainian people. In the begining, there were only two Serbian provinces (in 1750) obtained from Imperial Russia. In the Parliament, Russia should have annulled the decree of Lenin on the allocation of the Donbas to newly formed Ukrainian province, as well as Khrushchev’s allocation of Crimea, but also the tsar’s decree on the separation of Russian territories for the formation of the Ukrainian province.
Back then, there were no Ukrainians, nor their language and separate culture. The solution for Galicia is their total demilitarized autonomy with Russian border guards. They can run a separate economy if they want, have their own police, government and Parliament. If they want to use the benefits of cheaper gas and the Russian market, then they will connect with the Russian economy, and they can do business with West and everyone else if they want.
They would be something similar to Belarus, without borders towards Russia that would guarantee their security. Local Russians would have all the cultural institutions and language there as in any part of Russia and would vote for a local parliament. I believe that over time that part would become more and more integrated into Russia, but that would be decided by their parliament.
Kiev would of course be the capital of some Russian province which could be called, for example, Slavenoserbia (after the name of the beginnings of Ukrainian distinctiveness) or keep the existing Serbian name, Ukraine, obtained after the first Serbian settlements, and would have the same status as Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Sevastopol.
It may not be 5d- but it is Od- chess strategy (Odyssey).
War! One thing both sides can agree on! Isn’t bipartisan co-operation great?
Confirming that you have read it is not the same as agreeing to it. Russia has consistently lied since 2004 on these matters.
Imagine the GALL of a LYING Integrity Initiative troll accusing others of lying. Just another day at GCHQ orifice, eh ‘Philip’.
It’s just symptomatic of how subjective you are. I hope you are well rewarded for it.
You believe it subjective opinion to state that Putin tried taking Kiev and all of Ukraine? Would you like to go ahead and sign your name here that you believe a force involving over 200 helicopters in an attempt at taking an airport near Kiev was all a feint? Along with hundreds of tanks and a 40 mile supply column headed at Kiev that was viewable from space? And that the leaked plans for a complete takeover are also fake? You are saying it is subjective to believe it was a takeover?
It is obvious that he holds all the cards in his hands.
That is delusion. If he held all the cards then we wouldn’t be on day 527 of a 2.5 week “special military operation” that he now refers to as a war.
You forget the Minsk agreements and several years of waiting for Donbas to be given cultural and linguistic autonomy.
I didn’t forget anything. The Minsk agreements were ignored by both sides. LPR/DPR separatists violently tried carving out their own states after the pro-Russian president fled to Russia instead of facing charges. His own pro-Russian party called him a criminal. I can dig up that quote if you would like.
First, Ukraine never existed nor the Ukrainian people.
The Ukrainian people don’t exist? Why is a translator needed for Russians to speak to them?
In the begining, there were only two Serbian provinces (in 1750) obtained from Imperial Russia. In the Parliament, Russia should have annulled the decree of Lenin on the allocation of the Donbas to newly formed Ukrainian province
In the beginning was Kieven Rus which was headed in Kiev. Moscow is a creation of Mongol hordes.
Ukraine declared independence in 1922 which is after Imperial Russia was dissolved by Communists. Imperial Russia did not exist in 1922 as a key Communist goal was to eliminate nationality. Russian nationalism was only brought back by Stalin after Barbarossa.
In 1994 it was Russia that swore to recognize and protect the autonomy of Ukraine as part of the Budapest agreement. The UN has recognized Ukraine as a country since 1922. Putin in 2008 stated that Ukraine is a country and they have no border qualms with them.
So you are saying that the UN, Putin of 2008 and Russia of 1994 are all wrong? Ukraine doesn’t exist?
It may not be 5d- but it is Od- chess strategy (Odyssey)
The Ruble just hit a 16 month low against the dollar. Was that another card play by Putin?
The war started with Putin and his fans declaring that the sanctions won’t work. Was that declaration also a 5d chess feint?
American and british are the most disgusting and most criminal parasite animals that have ever existed.
They are the descendants of drug traders, slave traders, murderers, rapists, scammers and all kind of sewage waste. And they are openly proud of originating from human waste.
They will not never let go of healthy normal nations, as they have ever survived through being parasites on backs of their parasite hosts, who through their entire history have always done all of their work.
We will not submit to these sick parasite animals, that do not have anything of their own. Everything has been taken from healthy and normal people.
It’s the Luciferian/ satanic inhabitants of the City of London & their spawn in the US + godless Democrat Party.
Brits are blind serfs & cannon fodder.
The problem are evil and parasitic genetics of british and american themselves. Through all their history everybody everywhere in the world have known and resisted them. Also indian always said how evil and criminal all of these people are. Its not just some kind of “small evil London elite”. Its all of them. If you let this human waste to your country, this starts to happen, they take maximum use oit of you and they will refuse to leave their established bridgehead position. Their tactic has been falsely virtue signal, bribe, corrupt, blackmail and threat their in to a society. Little by little they start to take control of the country and corrupt it with evil and their degenerated bad genes.
NATO sent military surplus hardware priced at replacement cost to Ukraine and we got around 200k Russian casualties and quite a lot of progress on making sure Russia won’t be a threat again.
The reality is they’ll never sell gas to Europe again, the young people that fled abroad will not return, making their demographic situation even worse and all those billions of aid to Ukraine are actually investments in new gear for NATO (replacing the surplus we’re sending).
NATO’s aid to Ukraine is probably the most efficient military spending we did the past half a century. And they didn’t even get ATACMS and F16s yet. I’m not surprised a Marxist ‘economist’ doesn’t know anything about what’s efficient spending though. Must suck your three day special military operation to steal land didn’t work out. You should listen to Ritter and MacDouglas more, it’s not enough they’ve been wrong for a year and a half now. Lmao
The Americans are so disgusting that all of Russias neighbors would like being parts of NATO. America is also why the Nazis didn’t occupy the USSR, so you should be thankful, you silly vatnik.
Time to decolonize Russia and have them return to the borders of the duchy of Muscovy since you opened the discussion about empires.
If Putin is a fan of referendums organized by foreign militaries, let’s have NATO occupy Kaliningrad and organize a referendum 😉
The reverse also applies btw. Putin doesn’t recognize Kosovo so he shouldn’t recognize the Donbas either. Or his hypocrisy is acceptable because you love to ride his cock, you dumb vatnik? Lol