There are those on the alt-left who I have heard calling out the current war with Russia as a “fake war” (it might have been a joke?) and they point to incidences where Russia and the West collaborate and are following the same globalist agenda. In some senses yes, war is a racket, as Smedley Butler put it. However, it’s key right now to have a more rounded understanding of East/West relations. Something our Western leaders could do with.
It’s not that I’m accusing this group on the alt-left of saying they’re all in it together. It’s just they focus their attention on the supranational elites and how they are manipulating geo-global politics to their own ends, but perhaps by doing so they downplay the players on the ground who, when all’s said and done, are the ones playing the game.
It could well be said that the Cold War bankrupted both parties, it’s just the Soviet Union fell first.
Motivation
China
Firstly, China. China are in the business of doing business.
They are patient and at this moment in time are not willing to rock the boat with their geo-political opponent in Washington. They are quietly building their stockpiles of gold against an inevitable debt default by the US. Despite being competitors with the US and with Trump’s trade war against China which involved putting up trade barriers and tariffs, many multinational companies have moved to China over the last few decades to take advantage of what China can offer in terms of cheap skilled labour. American consumers benefit from the low cost consumer goods which they purchase from China in massive quantities. Our current lives are intertwined with China, in a world where practically everything we now own was made in China.
The US needs China to buy US Treasury bonds to help finance its $34 trillion of government debt and this is what is putting the upwards pressure on interest rates. The highly important benchmark 10 year US treasury bond has recently gone back over 4%.
If in the future we will own nothing is it because China won’t be selling it’s products to us anymore – or at least as cheaply?
War With China?
I don’t think China wants a war.
However in response to increased US troop levels in the Pacific and US rumblings over Taiwan (remember Nancy Pelosi’s visit) they have responded in kind by building up their own bases in the South China Sea. Just last month a pro-independence government was elected in Taiwan.
Nonetheless, at this moment in time the US and Europe are China’s largest market and they want peace to continue to sell their products. China’s export orientated economy is heavily dependent on Western consumers. To that end China not only co-operates with the West but is often the leader in globalist agenda setting.
Russia
Next, Russia. The salient point about Russia and China is that they both desire peaceful co-existence with the West.
That’s always been the objective for many decades. To appease the West and pursue the desire for peaceful co-existence they have tried to accommodate the West. Stalin was always on the back foot from his rise to absolute power in 1929. Stalin abandoned the idea of world revolution and declared the idea of socialism in one nation. On numerous occasions in the 1920s and 1930s he ordered communist parties in various countries to refrain from overthrowing capitalism. The most famous example being in Spain during the revolutionary upheavals of 1936-37. He even disbanded the Communist International in 1943 to appease his British and American allies.
The Russian Threat
In the West we have been brought up with the false idea of a Russian threat to invade central and western Europe and take over parts of the developing world. Look at the missile crisis in Cuba which arose in 1962 because the US put missiles first in Turkey and Russia responded in turn. We should also note that it was Khrushchev that backed down, not the US with President Kennedy being prepared for nuclear war if Russia didn’t back down.
It’s true West and East have co-operated in many fields, such as space travel. They have been onboard with UN Agenda 30 for example and the Covid-19 jabs of which both countries had their own versions. Both West and East are pursuing some version of Central Bank Digital Currencies. These things reflect that they do have things in common, namely a desire to control and manage their populations.
NATO
On the game board that is geo-politics Russia can only regard NATO as a threat.
It has consistently moved closer to its borders despite US assurances in the late 1980s this was not going to be the case. Russia applied to join NATO but was refused entry. It has been the US who has been meddling in Ukrainian affairs since 1991. From 2008 to 2014 they poured in about $6 bn to fund the pro-western opposition in Ukraine through Washington fronts such as the National Endowment for Democracy. This opposition movement of Ukrainian ultra nationalists, including Neo-Nazis, was provocative to Russia in the extreme and violently overthrew the elected government of Victor Yanukovich during January/February 2014.
I would venture that this obsession with the expansion of NATO was a foolish mistake. It became a principle that couldn’t be renounced. The war with Russia could have been easily avoided because, seen from the correct perspective, Russia did not/does not want war or any kind of hostile confrontation with the collective West. I know that runs counter to Western propaganda from state leaders and the press. Indeed the US thought;
Here is an opportunity for a nice little war with Russia. We will not be involved. No American lives will be lost. Let the Ukrainians do all the fighting. We will give them arms and money. Wonderful modern arms. And we will give them a chance to win.
The Russians are weak. The Russian generals are useless. The Russians haven’t got modern weapons like us.
Russia tried to negotiate non-violent means to end the civil war that broke out in Ukraine as a result of the US backed coup. It has since been admitted by former German Chancellor Merkel and former French President Hollande that the peace talks (the Minsk agreements 1 and 2 of 2014-15) were not serious attempts at achieving peace in Ukraine. Instead, they were only stalling for time in order to build and train up Ukraine’s military.
Russia tried to present their grievances of US espionage and bioweapon production to the UN but they were denied this diplomatic route. Putin has admitted he may have made a mistake by not annexing the DPR and LPR at the start of the civil war in Ukraine in 2014. This reveals Putin still hoped he could negotiate with the West. We need to understand Russia’s core belief that they can co-exist peacefully with the West. Despite slavishly following all the dictates of the global elites in respect of their agenda to create a new world order.
In actual fact developments on the board are creating a new world order. I have no such delusions that this will be any better. It’s true that China have been willing participants in shaping this ‘new world order’. Nonetheless China is not the US. Somethings will change. Some things as they say are baked in the cake. When the US does eventually default the West will experience an immiseration that could well exceed that which Russia underwent with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It could well be said that the Cold War bankrupted both parties, it’s just the Soviet Union fell first.
One could argue this stance by Russia has been interpreted as weakness by the West creating a situation in which they vastly underestimated the enemy. Encapsulated as ‘weakness invites aggression’. This was further embedded when Putin made some mistakes in the early part of the war. However, with Putin learning from these mistakes the West are now having to reassess the situation.
Try as they might Russia’s impending victory can’t be recast as some sort of stalemate, let alone victory. Yet still the neo-cons representing the big arms manufacturers and the money launderers want to press on with the war.
To meet this supposed threat from Putin the US and NATO are now demanding governments commit more money on arms. The recent collapse of Ukrainian front lines since the Russian capture of the fortified city of Adveeka has led President Macron of France to suggest that Western troops must be sent to Ukraine to prevent its army collapsing. The rest of NATO including the US has ruled this out thankfully.
One thing to note, money spent on war armaments etc, is not just wasted money, but inflationary. Prices are set to continue to rise despite the deflationary effects of technology. However, money spent on war well literally just goes up in smoke. Not to mention the rampant criminality, as displayed by Zelensky himself siphoning money to private accounts, foreign properties and diamond jewellery.
With one war possibly coming to an end soon, although the Russians seem to be in no particular hurry, we have a new front opened up. The actions of the Israeli state has spilled into Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and finally at the real target of US imperialism – Iran. There’s no direct conflict as yet, but cyber attacks have been conducted against the Iranians and the US fired on a group of mourners for the Iranian General killed by Trump.
The hypocrisy stinks. Whilst Putin has been accused of unsubstantiated war crimes in Ukraine and the ICJ called for a ceasefire. The South Africans have taken detailed accounts of war crimes taking place in Gaza and they have done barely anything, asking the Israeli state to kill fewer civilians.
It demonstrates how so many International bodies are currently under the influence of the US. It is currently the world number one! Yet the reality is that its power is shrinking. Biden grew up in the Cold War and is obsessed with a deep hatred of Russia. For a long time, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was vulnerable. Putin turned that around and in my view the support Russia gave to Assad in Syria was evidence that the Russians had gained superiority in the air. Neither has Assad gone, nor has Putin.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter
Now even the Houthis are proving to be a much tougher and fiercer opponent for the US. The US now admits that its bombing campaign of the Houthis has not prevented further attacks on Western shipping in the Red Sea. This could prove to be another mistake. Further bombing Iran could create a situation where other ME countries unite against the US, their populations already incensed over Palestine.
It is also important to note that there are many countries now reorientating themselves towards Russia/Iran/China. The growing number of countries which have joined or plan to join BRICS is evidence of this. Take Saudi Arabia, once a key ally of the US has seen the new crown prince MBS deal a huge blow to American influence in his country and has formed an alliance with Putin by joining BRICS. Following their lead other Middle Eastern countries have also been orienting themselves away from the West. Looking across the world Russia is not as isolated as the West portrays them to be.
Another example is India who refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Americans must have been horrified that Modi recently visited Putin in Moscow. Before 2022 India barely imported any oil from Russia. Now Russia is India’s largest supplier of oil to the chagrin of the West.
When China and Russia talk about a new rules based order based on international law with one set of rules they are focusing now on the big picture. Which is that the US empire is imploding. The days of the dollar as the world’s leading currency are drawing to a close. In my view, despite the appearance of the BRICS+ it will be China, the world’s workshop, that will inherit the mantle of the next new global super power. It will indeed be a New World Order, a new Bretton Woods for the 21st century. Just don’t get your hopes up that it will be any better then what we have now.
We all know it’s going to be a year of elections. Just this week in the UK George Galloway standing on a platform of pro-Palestine decimated all the other candidates combined. Also the liberals in the US and Europe can’t believe that Trump has returned. They don’t understand that he has tapped into a certain vein in his demagogy, attacking the establishment, the fat cats in Washington. There’s no question that he’s struck a note. I expect a change of government in my country, but the policies won’t change. I won’t be voting, and it’s not down to apathy, it’s down to a total loss of faith in the system. As events unfold, especially in Ukraine and the Middle East, that total loss of belief so necessary for propaganda will erode at an ever accelerating rate. Much as the people at the end of the Soviet Union laughed at the idea that Pravda in anyway shape or form presented the truth.
I could be talking it up too much but I believe that the collapse of the US dollar will be the biggest story of the 21st century. It will change the world fundamentally in ways we cannot even conceive of yet.
