Showing posts with label Multipolarity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Multipolarity. Show all posts

Monday, May 13, 2024

Welcome to the UNIT - The De-Dollarization Bombshell | Pepe Escobar

Welcome to the UNIT – a concept that has already been discussed by the financial services and investments working group set up by the BRICS+ Business Council and has a serious shot at becoming official BRICS+ policy as early as in 2025.

  » The UNIT is a new form of international currency that can be issued 
in a de-centralized way, and then recognized and regulated at national level.  «

[...] The Global Majority has had enough of the centrally controlled monetary framework put in place 80 years ago in Bretton Woods and its endemic flaws: chronic deficits fueling irresponsible military spending; speculative bubbles; politically motivated sanctions and secondary sanctions; abuse of settlement and payment infrastructure; protectionism; and the lack of fair arbitration. In contrast, the UNIT proposes a reliable, quick and economically efficient solution for cross-border payments. The - transactional - UNIT is a game-changer as a new form of international currency that can be issued in a de-centralized way, and then recognized and regulated at national level.

  » Decoupling money from politics will undoubtedly offer unique opportunities 
for fair trade and investments across the globe removing economic bypasses created by 
political power plays and irresponsible fiscal and monetary policies.  «

The strength of the UNIT, conceptually, is to remove direct dependency on the currency of other nations, and to offer especially to the Global Majority a new form of apolitical money - with huge potential for anchoring fair trade and investments. It is indeed a new concept in terms of an international currency - anchored in gold (40%) and BRICS+ currencies (60%). It is neither crypto nor stablecoin. [...] The endgame is that everyone, essentially, may use the UNIT for accounting, bookkeeping, pricing, settling, paying, saving and investing.

 

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Wednesday, May 8, 2024

The US is in Decline and Desperate Need to Modernize | President of Mexico

After a report from the US State Department about the allegedly poor human rights situation in Mexico, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) launched a counterattack. He warned Washington that there was no government in the world that had the right to interfere in the politics of another nation. Only the USA has repeatedly claimed such special rights in the past. AMLO pronounced: "Mexico will not tolerate such interference. Mexico will never be a protectorate or a colony of another country. Mexico is a free, independent and sovereign country."

  » That's just how they are. They are stagnant and ossified in decadence.
They are in decline and desperately need to modernize. 
The US must change their arrogant interventionist foreign policy.  «
 Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of Mexico - April 24, 2024.

AMLO condemned US funding of so-called NGOs
- such as terrorist groups and drug cartels - that attack Mexico's legitimate government and its courts. It is above all the USA that should not lean too far out of the window when it comes to human rights: "Imagine if we would announce that the USA are violating human rights, political rights and freedoms, that the Statue of Liberty would be an empty symbol just because they have a presidential candidate who is constantly being dragged into court. How they want to talk about human rights when they are pouring billions of dollars into wars that result in the deaths of innocent people around the world? Why don't they release Assange? Where is the freedom? "

"United States governments are meddling in the internal politics of other countries for at least two centuries. And it is not only giving opinions of good conduct as if they were the judge of the world. They are also intervening militarily in countries with governments not subject to the interests of the United States. That's the story. They used to appoint and remove presidents as they pleased. That is the history of the people of Latin America. Well, in our history they invaded us twice. The first time they forced the Mexican government to sign the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty, that is: we lost half of our territory and nine of the fifty US federal states belonged to Mexico. We have not forgotten US Invasions. We have insisted a lot and we will continue to do so: The US must change their arrogant interventionist foreign policy."
 
» Cancel NAFTA. Ditch the dollar. Re-issue the Mexican gold peso. Join the BRICs. « For now these topics are official diplomatic taboos still. But chained to a sinking ship, the US' biggest trading partner becomes increasingly fed up with the inflation-dollar fraud, the drug-war-pandemic-genocide economy and the insane migration industry of its northern neighbor.

"
How come they allocate so much money to war? Why they do not allocate funds to care for their young people who are suffering from drug use; unfortunately, 100,000 young people die every year from fentanyl use. But that's just how they are. And we shouldn't be surprised. That is how it has been historically. That indicates that they are stagnant, and ossified in decadence. They are in decline and desperately need to modernize."

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Friday, March 22, 2024

500 Years of Western Dominance - What Comes Next | Glenn Diesen

Felix Abt: A great European religious war and the first pan-European conflict over superpower status came to an end in 1648. After 30 years of devastating wars and chaos, especially on German soil, with millions of deaths and shattered economies, the Peace of Westphalia brought a new, rules-based order to Europe, as the Western political class would call it today. This included the inviolability of borders and non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign and equal states; it is regarded as a milestone in the development toward tolerance and secularization. How did this affect the new powers that emerged afterward and their quest for hegemony?

Glenn Diesen: The lesson from the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was that no one power could restore order based on hegemony and universal values, as the other states in Europe would preserve their own sovereignty and distinctiveness by collectively balancing the most powerful state. This was evident when Catholic France supported Protestant Sweden to prevent the dominance of the Catholic Habsburgs. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 gave birth to the modern world order, in which peace and order depend on a balance of power between sovereign states. The Westphalian system prevents hegemony as other states collectively balance the effort of an aspiring hegemon to establish economic and military dominance, and universal values are rejected to the extent they are used to reduce the sovereignty of other states.

» The Westphalian system prevents hegemony. « 
The 1648 peace treaty between the parties in the Thirty Years' War established the Westphalian system.
 
The principle, known as the Westphalian principle of sovereignty, prohibits interference in the internal affairs of another state, and every state is equal before international law, regardless of its size. Thus, every state has sovereignty over its territory and its internal affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers. But when the European colonial powers used violence to impose their will on other continents, they violated this ideal. Was this the beginning of this principle’s demise?
 
The Westphalian system should in principle be based on sovereign equality for all states. However, it originated as a European security order that later laid the foundation for a world order. Under the original Westphalian system, the Europeans claimed special privileges and the principle of equal sovereignty for states did not apply to everyone. Sovereignty was deemed to be a right and a responsibility assigned to civilized peoples, a reference to the Europeans as white Christians. The international system was divided between the civilized and the barbarians. There was one set of rules for the Europeans in the civilized garden, and another set of rules when the Europeans engaged with the so-called despotic barbarians in the jungle. The interference in the internal affairs of other peoples and the development of vast empires was framed as the right and the responsibility of civilized states to guide the barbaric peoples towards universal values of civilization. This responsibility to govern other peoples was termed the white man’s burden and the civilizing mission.

 » The gardeners have to go to the jungle. «
Josep Borrell's universal mission.

In our current era, we have abandoned the civilized-barbarian divide, but we have replaced it with a liberal democracy-authoritarian divide to legitimize sovereign inequality. The West can interfere in the domestic affairs of other states to promote democracy, invade countries to defend human rights, or even change the borders of countries in support of self-determination. This is the exclusive right and a responsibility of the West as the champions of the universal values of liberal democracy. As the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell explained:
The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us.

International law in accordance with the UN Charter defends the principle of sovereign equality for all states. The so-called
rules-based international order is based on sovereign inequality, which introduces special privileges under the guise of universal liberal democratic values. For example, the West’s recognition of independence for Kosovo was a breach of international law as it violated the territorial integrity of Serbia, although it was legitimized by the liberal principle of respecting the self-determination of Kosovo Albanians. In Crimea the West decided that self-determination should not be the leading principle, but territorial integrity. The US refers to liberal democratic values to exercise its exclusive right to invade and occupy countries such as Iraq, Syria and Libya, although this right is not extended to countries in the jungle.  

» The so-called “rules-based international order” is based on sovereign inequality, 
which introduces special privileges under the guise of universal liberal democratic values. «
In 1945 fifty countries established the United Nations System. With the help of this supra-national governance
system the Anglo-Frankish-Zionist-Dönmeh-Wahhabi-Takfiri elites of the UK, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the US and
some others, expected to secure their hegemonies beyond the foreseeable demise of traditional colonialism
The Bretton Woods conference, World Bank, IMF, nuclear bombing of Japan, dividing Korea 
and creating the State of Israel in Palestine are early show cases of what Pax Americana and UN are all about.

[...] The Ukrainian conflict is essentially an extension of American geopolitics, which aims to carry out Mackinder’s aforementioned stanza, He who rules Eastern Europe rules the world. What are your thoughts about it?

Preventing Germany and Russia from controlling Eastern Europe means that much of the Eurasian continent becomes landlocked. US control over Eastern Europe implies that Russia can not bridge Europe and Asia, but rather becomes an isolated land-locked region at the dual periphery of Europe and Asia.

Brzezinski outlined the strategy for developing and preserving US global primacy, which relies on the age-old wisdom of divide-and-rule. Brzezinski wrote that the US must
prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together. Historically, the British and the Americans have worked to prevent Germany and Russia from coming together as it would form an independent pole of power. Hegemony requires conflict between Germany and Russia, as Germany becomes a dependent ally and Russia is weakened. This logic is also applied to why it is beneficial to perpetuate tensions between the Arabs and Iran, or between China and its neighbors. The US has been very concerned about the economic integration between the Germans and Russians, which is why the US was so hostile to the Nord Stream pipelines and most likely was behind the attack on these pipelines. 
 
 Anka Feldhusen, a fine example of a German Neonazi apparatchik of the 21st century.
March 22, 2023.
 
 Wehrmacht 2.0 south of Kiev. 
There will be hell to pay.
March 22, 2024.


The problem is that the world is no longer Western-centric and by pushing Russia away from Germany, the US has pushed Russia towards China – a technological and industrial power much greater than Germany. In the mid-19th century, the British fought against Russia in the Crimean War with the explicit purpose of pushing Russia back into Asia, where it would remain technologically and economically backward and stagnant. NATO’s war in Ukraine is a repeat of the efforts to push Russia back into Asia, although this time Asia is much more dynamic than the West. The failure of the West to adjust our grand strategy to this new reality has been a mistake of immeasurable proportions. We have not subordinated Russia, rather we ended Russia’s 300-year-long Western-centric policies in which Moscow looked to the West for modernization.

What is driving this stunning anti-Chinese obsession in the United States against a country that upholds the principle of non-interference in other countries, that used its mighty navy only for trade and not for gunboat politics when it was a superpower in the past, and that follows the millennia-old concept of “Tianxia” (天下), which literally means “everything under heaven”, that is, an inclusive world full of harmony for all?

China does not threaten the US, but it threatens US dominance as the foundation for the unipolar world order established after the Cold War. The US is currently attempting to weaken China through economic warfare, convincing its allies to decouple from the Chinese economy, and knocking out Russia in Ukraine as a vital partner of China. If the US fails to achieve its objectives, then it will likely stoke conflicts between China and its neighbors to make the neighbors more dependent and obedient, and also create instability for the Chinese that will bleed it of resources. The ideal would be greater tensions between India and China, as India would have to make itself more reliant on the US and it would be an important ally to weaken China. If all fails, then the US could also fight an indirect war through a proxy similar to the way they are using Ukrainians to fight Russia – by for example pushing for Taiwan’s secession. Besides securing its supply chains and building a military for deterrence, China should prioritize resolving its disputes with India as any friction with China can be exploited.

» This is a Westphalian system with Eurasian characteristics. « 
Since 2009 BRICS is establishing a Multipolar World Order based on Westphalian principles and controlled by the 
Eurasian great powers China, India and Russia. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined BRICS
on January 1, 2024. To date 15 more countries have formally applied to join.

Finally, in your new book you say that a new Westphalian world order is reasserting itself, albeit with Eurasian characteristics. Can you explain this in more detail?

We are returning to a Westphalian system based on a balance of power between sovereign states. However, the former Westphalian system was based on sovereign equality among the Western powers while the barbarians or despots outside the West were not deemed to be qualified for the responsibility of sovereignty. It was a dual system of collective hegemony of the West, with sovereign equality between the Western states. In the new Westphalian system, there are several powerful states that are not Western, with China as the leading economy in the world. The Eurasian powers such as China, Russia, India and others are developing the economic foundations for this system with new technologies, transportation corridors and financial instruments. The Eurasian powers are more prepared to include the Global South as sovereign equals. The Eurasian powers reject the so-called rules-based international order based on sovereign inequality, as Western dominance should not be legitimized by a civilized-barbarian or liberal democracy-authoritarian divide.

The Western powers over the past centuries have had an inclination for dominance and empire by controlling limited maritime corridors. Russia’s Eurasianism in the 19th century was a hegemonic strategy by dominating the Eurasian landmass through land corridors, although under the multipolar distribution of power the Russians do not have the capability or intentions to pursue hegemony. Instead, Eurasian integration entails moving from the dual periphery of Europe and Asia, to the center of a new Eurasian construct. Even China as the leading power does not have the capability or intention to pursue hegemony. Countries like Russia are content with China being the leading power, although they would not support China if it demanded dominance and hegemony. The Chinese demonstrate that they are not attempting to limit Russia’s economic connectivity with other states to make itself the only center of power. In the Global Civilization Initiative, the Chinese are also advocating for respecting civilizational differences and that all states have their own path to modernity, which implies that China is not claiming to represent universal values that legitimizes interference into the domestic affairs of other states. The West assumed that the Russia-China partnership was a marriage of convenience and that they would clash over influence in Central Asia, but this never happened because neither side demanded hegemony. Instead of sabotaging each other’s relations with the region, China and Russia harmonized their interests in Central Asia. China, Russia, India and other Eurasian powers have different visions and interests in terms of Eurasian integration, but they all need each other to realize their goals and pursue prosperity. Hegemony is not an option. This is a Westphalian system with Eurasian characteristics.

Quoted from:
 

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Tuesday, March 5, 2024

On Realism and War with China | John Mearsheimer

Lex Fridman: The communication gap between China and the United States seems to be much greater than that of what was the former Soviet Union and the United States.
 
Mearchiavelli,
Machiavelli's revenant.
 
John Mearsheimer: It’s an interesting question. A lot of people describe the Cold War as an ideological competition above all else.
Communism versus liberal democracy or communism versus liberal capitalism, whatever. I actually don’t believe that. The Soviets were realists to the core. Stalin was a realist par excellence, and ideology did not matter much in Stalin’s foreign policy. And if you look at Soviet foreign policy after World War II, throughout the Cold War, they were realists to the core. And in those days the Americans were realists. Sure, a lot of liberal ideology floating around out there, but the Americans were realists. One of the reasons we avoided a shooting match between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1989 was because both sides understood the basic balance of power logic.
 
The US-China competition is somewhat different. But first of all, the Chinese are realists to the core. I’ve spent a lot of time in China. I am basically a rock star in China. The Chinese are my kind of people. They are realists. They speak my language. It’s the United States that is no longer very realist. American leaders have a very powerful liberal bent and tend not to see the world in realist terms.
 
That’s fascinating. So the Chinese are pragmatic realists and think of the world as a competition of military powers?
 
Yeah, you are actually right. And I think we will avoid war. The problem with the Americans is, it’s not just their liberalism. It’s the possibility that we will pursue a rollback policy. During the Cold War the American grand strategy towards the Soviet Union was: containment, containment, containment. We now know from the historical record that the United States was not only pursuing containment. We were trying to rollback Soviet power to put it bluntly. We were trying to wreck the Soviet Union. And I would not be surprised moving forward with regard to China if the United States pursues a serious rollback policy.
 
So you’re saying throughout history the United States was always pursuing rollback policies? 

Look, you don’t respect the power of other nations. You fear the power of other nations.
 
Will there be a war with China in the 21st century?
 
I don’t know. But my argument is yes, there will be war with China
 

Thursday, February 22, 2024

After Biden's latest Insult Putin still endorses Biden's Reelection

» This is the last existential threat. It is climate. We have a crazy son of a bitch like that guy Putin and others and we always have to worry about nuclear conflict, but the existential threat to humanity is climate, « US President Joe Biden told a small group of influential campaign donors yesterday in San Francisco. Last night the Russian leader responded.

  » Biden is a more experienced person
he's predictable, he's an old-school politician. «

Putin did not resort to petty name-calling. Instead he was stating that he was  still right about preferring Biden over Trump and that Biden's fit of temper was actually appropriate as it helps Biden's reelection:
» He can't say 'Vlad, good job. Thanks, you helped me a lot.' We understand what's happening domestically in the US, « Putin said. 
 
 
February 21, 2024.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Western Europe could become the new Ukraine | Timofey Bordachev

The real causes of major armed conflicts such as world wars are always linked to socio-economic factors. For the naturally cautious German nation to become a bunch of cannibals, it first had to sink into the economic misery and moral oppression of the 1920s. Before that, demographic growth and the unresolved social problems of industrialization created the necessary mass of people willing to kill and die on the fields of the First World War.
 
 » Both the Minister for Economic Affairs and the Minister of Finance have come to the conclusion
that Germany is no longer sufficiently competitive. It is inconceivable that this will not lead to political changes. «
Christian Lindner, German Minister of Finance, Feb 12, 2024.

In any case, any great aggression against neighbors has required a very large number of poor and morally degenerate people. This is roughly what happened to Ukraine during the 30 years of its failed statehood. In other words, the ability of the Western Europeans to unleash armed aggression against us depends on how their own affairs are going.

This is why, from the Russian point of view, it is now of the utmost importance to observe what is happening in the Western European economies. The irrational policy of sanctions against Russia and the partial breakdown of trade and economic relations between us have already led to serious losses for their business sectors. Added to this are the accumulated domestic problems, competition from American and Chinese companies, and the general recession in the global economy.
 
» Ukraine must win this war. If Putin had his way, this would only be the beginning. « 
 
For example, one of the Western news agencies recently published a story about how large manufacturing companies, industry leaders, are leaving Germany in search of more favorable locations and investment conditions. Other major Western European states are going through their own worrying processes. If these economic difficulties begin to erode the established model, the mood of the citizenry may change.

We do not know exactly how Western Europeans will react to the deterioration of their material situation and how long it will take. It is quite likely that the world will not see the practical consequences of this economic decline for another 20-30 years. What is more, we cannot say with certainty that the behavioral algorithms of its inhabitants will be exactly the same as in the first half of the 20th century. History does not repeat itself, which makes thinking about events by analogy a rather dead-end way of understanding what is happening.

Friday, January 5, 2024

The Rest against the West │ Samuel P. Huntington

The central axis of world events will be conflict between Western and non-Western civilizations, conflict between the West and the Rest. The Rest has now three options:
 
The Rest against the West.
  • Surrender and submission
  • Isolation and protection of sovereignty and values. The costs are very high. Only few pursue this option.
  • Protection and defense of values and sovereign institutions through constant development of economic-military power and through cooperation and alliance with the West's other enemies.
Reference:
 
 Projection from Bharat.

Benjamin Netanyahu, 1990.
 
The man who ruined all the US’s illegitimate plots in West Asia:
Qasem Soleimani, Major General, Commander of 41st Tharallah Division of Kerman Quds Force (1957-2020).

»
The world is witnessing an asymmetrical confrontation between two opposing sides, which has displayed the peak of brutality as well as desperation on one side and innocence along with heroic resistance on the other side. With a broader look at the years of confrontation and conflict between Global Arrogance and its vassals in West Asia on the one hand, and the Resistance Front and popular forces on the other hand, there remains no doubt that the astonishing work by Hamas and the residents of Gaza in Palestine are the domino effect of successive defeats of the hegemons and global colonialism in the region. «

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Sunday, December 31, 2023

The Concept of Distributed Heartland │ Alexander Dugin

The fight to rule Heartland – by Sea Power from without, or in Heartland itself from within – is the main formula of geopolitical history, the very essence of geopolitics. Geopolitics is the battle for Heartland. All schools of geopolitics are founded upon and proceed from this model [...] Just as the multi-polar world arises, so does a contradiction. If we take into consideration only one Sea Power and one Heartland, then when it comes to speaking of a multi-polar world, Russia cannot possibly be the only Heartland. Russia cannot achieve a multi-polar world on its own. In the very least, multipolarity entails four or five of the most important poles in the world. Russia could be the center of this multi-polar world or only one of its poles. But Russia cannot be the only Heartland.
 
 » It is surprising that at the bottom of our politics we always find theology. «
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Les confessions d'un revolutionnaire, 1849.

[...] Over the course of numerous discussions, conferences, speeches, lectures, and articles, I have come to the conclusion that it is high time to introduce the notion of an apportioned, or “distributed Heartland.” To this end, I think it is important to attentively examine the German geopolitics of the 1920-’30’s, which proclaimed Germany to be the European Heartland. Of interest to us is not so much Germany itself as the very possibility of considering an additional Heartland [...] A Chinese Heartland is an altogether different question. China, after all, is Rimland, a coastal zone. If we recognize China as bearing the status of a Heartland, then we are recognizing China as an independent strategic space. If we qualify China as Heartland, then we are emphasizing the conservative aspect of China – China as Land Power. But if China declares itself to be a Heartland against Russia, just as Hitler’s Germany declared itself to be the heart of Eurasia against Soviet Russia, then conflict will immediately arise.

If Russia retains the status of an independent pole, then this “distributed Heartland” acquires a completely different meaning. Then it is possible to consider such Heartlands as a Russian Heartland, as in all traditional geopolitical maps as the “geographical pivot of history”, and a European Heartland. We also arrive at considering a Chinese Heartland, and this means that we consider China as a traditional, conservative, independent, and sovereign state as it is today – and it will only become more so in the future. In the very least, it is important to reconcile the Chinese Heartland with the Russian Heartland, and partially even the European Heartland. But even this is insufficient to constructing a multi-polar world. We necessarily have to consider an Islamic Heartland (covering the historical spaces of at least 3-4 empires, stretching from Turkey to Pakistan). The concept of a distributed Heartland can further be expanded to India, and projected onto Latin America and Africa as well.

As follows, there should be an American Heartland in the multi-polar system. We have become too accustomed to thinking in the terms of classical geopolitics that the US and Anglo-Saxon world can only be Sea Power. In a multi-polar world, America will not be able to play this role, its global maritime range will naturally be reduced, thereby changing the very nature of America. As follows, an American Heartland should arise which, in a multi-polar system, should not be seen exclusively as in opposition to other Heartlands. The vote for Trump represented the contours of this American Heartland. If we begin to conceive of Heartland as a distributed type of culture associated with the reinforcement of conservative identity, then “Make America Great Again” is the thesis of an American Heartland. Stop being a Sea Power, and you will be great again.

[...] Distributed Heartland is the imperative of the new geopolitical model, of multi-polar geopolitics. I think that this concept deserves very serious cogitation, pondering, and description. There should be a number of conferences, or an even entire volume devoted to this inevitable question. The efficacy of this concept of distributed Heartland is, in my opinion, extremely important, insofar as the construction of a multi-polar world now demands clearer and more precise roadmaps.

 
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