Mar 202023
 
 March 20, 2023  Posted by at 5:40 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Jacob Lawrence Struggle: From the History of the American People, Panel 10 1954

Andrew Korybko:

The impending trifurcation of International Relations will result in the formation of three de facto New Cold War blocs: The US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the informally Indianled Global South. Intrepid readers can review the preceding hyperlinked analysis to learn more about the grand strategic dynamics behind this latest phase of the global systemic transition, while the present one will elaborate on those connected to the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership in particular.

These two Eurasian Great Powers had already closely aligned their foreign and economic policies far before Russia was forced to commence its special operation in Ukraine last year after NATO clandestinely crossed its red lines there and refused to diplomatically resolve their security dilemma. This was due to their shared multipolar vision, which in turn resulted in Moscow synchronizing its Greater Eurasian Partnership (GEP) with Beijing’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI).

The purpose behind doing so was to supercharge multipolar processes across the supercontinent with a view towards making International Relations more democratic, equal, just, and predictable a lot sooner than even the most optimistic observers could have expected. None of this was driven by anti-Western animosity either since both of them envisaged the EU and US playing pragmatic roles in this emerging world order, which is proven by their proactive engagement of each over the years.

Russia expected that it could diplomatically resolve its security dilemma with the US over NATO’s expansion simultaneously with encouraging it and the EU to get Kiev to implement the Minsk Accords, thus ending the then-Ukrainian Civil War and optimizing trans-Eurasian trade. Meanwhile, many EU countries joined BRI and China even clinched an investment pact with the bloc, all while seeking to diplomatically resolve its own security dilemma with the US and work out a new trade deal with it.

Had the US formulated its grand strategy with mutually beneficial economically driven outcomes in mind instead of remaining under the influence of Brzezinski’s zero-sum divide-and-rule teachings, then everything could have been much different. That declining unipolar hegemon could have responsibly carved out a comfortable niche in the new era of globalization that Russia and China were jointly seeking to pioneer, thus ensuring that the global systemic transition smoothly moved towards multipolarity.

Regrettably, liberalglobalist members of the US’ military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) continued to believe that Brzezinski’s geostrategic schemes could successfully reverse the aforesaid transition and thus indefinitely retain their country’s dominant position in International Relations. This explains why they subsequently sought to “contain” Russia and China at the same time by worsening regional disputes instead of reciprocating those two’s efforts to peacefully resolve them.

The decision was eventually made to prioritize Russia’s “containment” over China’s with the expectation that the first would either strategically capitulate to NATO’s blackmail campaign or quickly collapse due to sanctions if it resorted to military force for defending its red lines in Ukraine, thus making China’s successful “containment” a fait accompli in that scenario and therefore preserving the US’ hegemony. Where everything went wrong was that the West never prepared for a protracted conflict in Ukraine.

Russia proved much more resilient in all respects than the Golden Billion expected, ergo why they’re panicking that the over $100 billion that they’ve already given to their proxies in Kiev isn’t anywhere near enough for defeating that Eurasian Great Power. The New York Times admitted last month that the sanctions failed just like their “isolation” campaign did, while the NATO chief recently declared a “race of logistics” and the Washington Post finally told the truth about just how poorly Kiev’s forces are faring.

Amidst the past year of international proxy hostilities that the West itself provoked, the globalized system upon which China’s grand strategy depended was unprecedentedly destabilized by their unilateral sanctions regime that’s responsible for the food and fuel crises across the Global South. This influenced President Xi to seriously consider a “New Détente” with the US, which he initiated during last November’s G20 Summit in Bali after he met with Biden and a bunch of other Western leaders.

To be absolutely clear, this well-intended effort wasn’t meant to reverse any of the multipolar progress that China was responsible for over the past decade but purely to pursue a series of mutual compromises aimed at establishing a “new normal” in their ties so as to restore stability to globalization. In other words, it was about buying time for the world’s top two economies to recalibrate their grand strategies, ideally in the direction of working more closely together for everyone’s sake.

Their talks unexpectedly ended in early February, however, after the black swan event that’s known as the balloon incident. This saw anti-Chinese hardliners in the US suddenly ascend to policymaking prominence, thus dooming the “New Détente”, which resulted in China recalibrating its approach to the NATO-Russian proxy war to the point where President Xi, Foreign Minister Qin, and Ambassador to the EU Fu all concluded that it’s part of the US’ anti-Chinese “containment” strategy.

Under these newfound circumstances, the US consolidated its successfully reasserted hegemony over the EU by getting Germany to go along with Washington’s very strongly implied threats that the Golden Billion will sanction China if it decides to arm Russia should Moscow require such aid as a last resort. In response, China felt compelled to consolidate its strategic partnership with Russia to the point of turning it into an entente, hence the purpose of President Xi’s trip to work out the finer details of this.

Just like these two Great Powers earlier synchronized Russia’s GEP and China’s BRI, so too are they now poised to synchronize the first’s Global Revolutionary Manifesto with the second’s global initiatives on development, security, and civilization. This prediction is predicated on the articles that Presidents Putin and Xi published in one another’s national media on the eve of the latter’s trip to Moscow, which confirms that they intend to cooperate more closely than ever before.

Observers can therefore expect the Sino-Russo Entente to solidify into one of the world’s three premier poles of influence as a result of the Chinese leader’s visit, thus making it a milestone in the New Cold War over the direction of the global systemic transition. The worldwide struggle between this pole and the Golden Billion will intensify, especially in the Global South, which will reinforce India’s importance in helping fellow developing states balance between both and thus bring about true tripolarity.

 

 

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Mar 042023
 
 March 4, 2023  Posted by at 1:05 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


Robert Capa Capucine, French model and actress, on a balcony, Rome 1951

Andrew Korybko:

The global systemic transition’s impending evolution towards tri-multipolarity could see the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the de facto Indian-led Global South becoming the most prominent poles in International Relations, below which would be rising powers and regional groups. All actors would balance one another by multi-aligning within and between their respective levels, which might result in stabilizing global affairs much more than the prior unipolar and bi-multipolar orders did.

International Relations are hurtling towards tripolarity at an astounding pace as a result of the dramatic events that unfolded over the past year and especially the last month. Those readers who haven’t closely been following this megatrend might be taken aback by this assessment, hence the need for them to review the following analyses that’ll place everything into its appropriate context. After listing them, they’ll then be summarized for convenience before explaining what might soon come next:

The “New Détente”

To oversimplify the confluence of these complex trends, the US prioritized containing Russia in order to facilitate its containment of China, ergo the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict that it provoked via Moscow’s ongoing special operation there. Throughout the course of the NATO-Russian proxy war that followed, the US successfully reasserted its unipolar hegemony over the EU while destabilizing the globalized system upon which China’s grand strategy depends, thus giving it an edge over Beijing.

This in turn prompted President Xi to initiate an attempted “New Détente” during mid-November’s G20 Summit in Bali, during which time he hoped that China and the US could eventually reach a series of mutual compromises aimed at establishing a “new normal” in their ties. The purpose behind doing so was to delay the end of the bi-multipolar world order within which these two superpowers exerted the most influence over International Relations, which was challenged by India’s rise over the past year.

India’s Game-Changing Influence

That South Asian state became a globally significant Great Power during this time as a result of its masterful balancing act between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the jointly BRICS– & SCO-led Global South of which it’s a part. Its kingmaker role in the New Cold War between them over the direction of the global systemic transition enabled the rest of the Global South to rise in India’s wake, thus revolutionizing International Relations by accelerating the emergence of tri-multipolarity.

The aforementioned sequence of events imbued the Sino-American “New Détente” with a sense of urgency since both superpowers had self-interested reasons for regaining joint control of these processes, though their attempted rapprochement was unexpectedly derailed by the balloon incident. The resultantly renewed influence of hardline factions over policymaking that occurred in the aftermath of that incident abruptly ended their incipient talks and placed them on the trajectory of intense rivalry.

China’s Grand Strategic Recalculations

In parallel with the abovementioned development, NATO declared that it’s in a so-called “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia, which implied that it’ll redouble its military support to Kiev even at the expense of meeting its own members’ minimum national security needs. Should that bloc succeed in making a breakthrough along the Line of Control (LOC), then it could catalyze the worst-case scenario of Russia’s “Balkanization” if those disadvantageous military-strategic dynamics spiral out of control.

Both President Putin and his predecessor Medvedev recently warned about that possibility, which remains unlikely for now but still can’t be discounted, thus contributing to China’s gradual recalibration of its approach to the NATO-Russian proxy war when coupled with the end of the “New Détente”. This directly led to the People’s Republic seriously considering the dispatch of lethal aid to its strategic partner in order to offset that worst-case scenario, thus prompting sanctions threats from the West.

“The Great Trifurcation”

In the event that China feels forced by NATO to aid Russia in such a way and the Golden Billion imposes sanctions against it in response, then it’s expected that a US-initiated Chinese-European “decoupling” along the lines of the prior US-initiated Russian-European one could potentially follow. Reuters’ exclusive report on Wednesday citing four unnamed US officials and other sources extended credence to the preceding scenario by revealing that the Golden Billion is indeed discussing multilateral sanctions.

Should those two developments take place – China arming Russia and then being sanctioned by the Golden Billion in a way that provokes their “decoupling” (whether gradual or instantaneous) – then International Relations would enter a period of tri-multipolarity characterized by the prominence of three poles that exert the most influence over global affairs, but whose influence nevertheless wouldn’t be absolute since it’ll be kept in check to an extent by rising powers and regional groups.

The Tri-Multipolar World Order

The three expected poles are the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the de facto Indian-led Global South that’ll likely continue informally assembling into a new Non-Aligned Movement (“Neo-NAM”). Within the last-mentioned will reside rising powers like BrazilIranSouth Africa, and Turkiye, among others, alongside regional groups like the African Union (AU), ASEAN, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Each of these three categories of actors – the three poles as well as the rising powers and regional groups that sit below the former in this informal international hierarchy – are expected to balance one another by multi-aligning within and between their respective levels. India’s role will be the most important of them all since it’s poised to facilitate trade between the Golden Billion and the Sino-Russo Entente in the event that their potential “decoupling” is taken to an extreme, which can’t be ruled out.

India’s Kingmaker Role

Furthermore, India’s earlier virtual hosting of the Voice Of Global South Summit positioned this civilization-state as the center of gravity for its fellow developing peers, which bolsters the likelihood that the Neo-NAM will continue informally assembling around it. From there, India can promote its own financial, technological, and other platforms in order to provide Global South states with a neutral third choice between the Golden Billion and the Sino-Russo Entente’s respective ones in the New Cold War.

Those rising powers and regional groups that participate within the unofficially Indian-led Neo-NAM could also develop their own platforms too, but India’s might become the standard for facilitating engagement between them at their early stages. In parallel, global fora like the UN and G20 will no longer have much significance other than functioning as talking clubs, while interests-driven and regional groups will replace their prior role in promoting tangible cooperation between countries.

Concluding Thoughts

The global systemic transition’s impending evolution towards tri-multipolarity could see the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the de facto Indian-led Global South becoming the most prominent poles in International Relations, below which would be rising powers and regional groups. All actors would balance one another by multi-aligning within and between their respective levels, which might result in stabilizing global affairs much more than the prior unipolar and bi-multipolar orders did.

Background Briefings

* 7 October 2021: “Towards Bi-Multipolarity

* 16 December 2021: “The Neo-NAM: From Vision To Reality

* 15 March 2022: “Why Did The U.S. Prioritize Containing Russia Over China?

* 26 March 2022: “Russia Is Waging an Existential Struggle in Defense of Its Independence & Sovereignty

* 22 May 2022: “Russia, Iran, And India Are Creating A Third Pole Of Influence In International Relations

* 6 June 2022: “India Is The Irreplaceable Balancing Force In The Global Systemic Transition

* 20 June 2022: “Towards Dual-Tripolarity: An Indian Grand Strategy For The Age Of Complexity

* 5 August 2022: “The Russian Foreign Ministry Comprehensively Explained The Global Systemic Transition

*  1 October 2022: “The Ukrainian Conflict Might Have Already Derailed China’s Superpower Trajectory

* 29 October 2022: “The Importance Of Properly Framing The New Cold War

* 19 November 2022: “Analyzing The US-Chinese-Russian-Indian Interplay In The Global Systemic Transition

* 29 November 2022: “The Evolution Of Key Players’ Perceptions Across The Course Of The Ukrainian Conflict

* 14 December 2022: “India’s Principled Neutrality Reaps Grand Strategic Dividends

* 28 December 2022: “The Five Ways That The US Successfully Reasserted Its Hegemony Over Europe In 2022

* 1 January 2023: “The New York Times Tried To Throw Shade On India’s Global Rise

* 7 January 2023: “India’s Global South Summit Is The Most Important Multilateral Event In Decades

* 11 January 2023: “Exposing Western Media’s Narrative Agenda In Spinning The Sino-American New Détente

* 4 February 2023: “The Chinese Balloon Incident Could Decisively Shift China’s & The US’ ‘Deep State’ Dynamics

* 14 February 2023: “NATO’s Self-Declared ‘Race Of Logistics’ Confirms The Bloc’s Military-Industrial Crisis

* 26 February 2023: “China Compellingly Appears To Be Recalibrating Its Approach To The NATO-Russian Proxy War

* 28 February 2023: “Just How Drastically Would The World Change If China Armed Russia?

* 1 March 2023: “Global Fora Like The UN & G20 Are Gradually Losing Their Importance

* 1 March 2023: “Germany Is Lying: Chinese Arms Shipments To Russia Wouldn’t Violate International Law

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

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Feb 162023
 
 February 16, 2023  Posted by at 5:36 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


Cy Twombly Fifty Days at Iliam: Like a Fire that Consumes All before It 1978

Andrew Korybko has more time to write articles than I do these days. And I must transfer his Word files to my own editor. Not obvious. What can I say? I don’t like Bill Gates. Plus, I need to find a new apartment here in Athens,  a perfectly affordable place until recently, where now real estate agents seem to think they live in Manhattan. It just takes so much time… Andrew:

Andrew Korybko:

Speculation has been swirling over the past month about why the US-led West’s Golden Billion so decisively shifted its “official narrative” about the Ukrainian Conflict from prematurely celebrating Kiev’s supposedly “inevitable” victory to seriously warning about its potential loss in this proxy war. This took the form of related remarks from the Polish Prime Minister, President, and Army Chief as well as the US’ Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after which the New York Times admitted that the sanctions failed.

The reason why they decided to so decisively shift the “official narrative” was because NATO’s military-industrial crisis, which the New York Times warned about last November and was then touched upon by Biden’s Naval Secretary last month, finally became undeniable. Putting all prior speculation about this to rest, NATO’s Secretary-General declared a so-called “race of logistics” against Russia on Monday precisely on this pretext and thus confirmed the bloc’s crippling military-industrial crisis.

According to the transcript of Jens Stoltenberg’s pre-ministerial press conference that was shared by NATO’s official website ahead of his meeting with this anti-Russian alliance’s Defense Ministers, he said the following of relevance to this subject:

“It is clear that we are in a race of logistics. Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel, and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield.

 

 Ministers will also focus on ways to increase our defence industrial capacity and replenish stockpiles. The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting Allied stockpiles. The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defence industries under strain.

 

For example, the waiting time for large-calibre ammunition has increased from 12 to 28 months.

Orders placed today would only be delivered two-and-a-half years later. So we need to ramp up production. And invest in our production capacity.

 

 Well, this is an issue we started to address last year, because we saw that an enormous amount of support for Ukraine, the only way to deliver that was to dig into our existing stocks. But of course, in the long run, we cannot continue to do that we need to produce more, to be able to deliver sufficient ammunition to Ukraine, but at the same time, ensure that we have enough ammunition to protect and defend all NATO Allies, every inch of Allied territory.

 

 Of course, in the short run, the industry can increase production by having more shifts, by using existing production facilities more. But really to have a significant increase, they need to invest and build new plans. And we see a combination both of utilizing existing capacity more and also by making decisions to invest in increased capacity. This has started but we need more.

 So what I said was that the current rate of ammunition consumption is higher, bigger than the current rate of production. That’s a factual thing. But since we have been aware of that for some time, we have started to do something. We’re not just sitting there idle and watching this happening.  

 And of course the industry has the capability to increase the production also short term, sometimes this on some non-used or not utilized capability there. But even when you have a factory running, you can have more shifts. You can even work during weekends.

 

 So yes, we have a challenge. Yes, we have a problem. But problems are there to be solved and we are addressing that problem and we have strategies to solve it both in the short term and also longer term to as a mobilized defense industry. And if there’s anything NATO Allies, and our economies and our societies have proved over decades, is that we are dynamic, we are adaptable, we can change when needed.

 

 And let me also add, of course this is –the challenge of having enough ammunition is also a big challenge for Russia. So it just shows that this is a war of attrition, and the war to attrition becomes a battle of logistics and we focus on the logistical part of the defence capacity, defence industry capacity to ramp up production.”

As proven by Stoltenberg’s press conference, there should thus be no doubt that NATO is experiencing an unprecedented military-industrial crisis, which is responsible for reshaping its members’ narratives and overall strategy towards the Ukrainian Conflict.

This self-declared “race of logistics”, which he also described as a “war of attrition”, first of all proves that the bloc wasn’t prepared for waging a prolonged proxy war against Russia otherwise they’d have preemptively retooled their military-industrial complexes accordingly. The New York Times’ recent admission that the anti-Russian sanctions are a failure also suggests that NATO completely miscalculated in this respect by expecting Russia to collapse as a result of those restrictions, which didn’t happen.

These two factors add crucial context to why the Golden Billion’s “official narrative” about the conflict so decisively shifted over the past month. They simply can’t sustain the pace, scale, and scope of their armed assistance to Kiev, especially not after their much-ballyhooed sanctions failed to catalyze Russia’s economic collapse or at the very least give their proxy an edge in this “race of logistics”/”war of attrition”. As a result, they were forced to change how they present this conflict to their people.

Most tellingly, the Polish President didn’t rule out the scenario of Kiev making territorial concessions to Russia in his recent interview with Le Figaro, which he said should solely be that country’s choice to make and not anti-war Republicans’. Even Stoltenberg let slip during his latest press conference that “we must continue to provide Ukraine with what it needs to win. And to achieve a just and sustainable peace”, which also didn’t include his usual explicit condemnation of the territorial concession scenario.

That selfsame “just and sustainable peace”, according to the Jerusalem Post’s Dave Anderson, can actually be achieved by Kiev finally giving up its territorial claims. In his opinion piece about how “Ukraine can win against Russia by giving up land, not killing troops”, which was coincidentally published on the same day as Stoltenberg’s press conference, he argued that this swift resolution of Ukraine’s territorial disputes with Russia could result in its accelerated admission to NATO.

That outcome would thus sustainably ensure its security, thereby representing a victory over Russia, at least according to Anderson’s view. In the broader context of this analysis and in particular the interpretation of Stoltenberg’s remarks from his latest press conference, his article can thus be seen as the latest contribution to decisively shifting the “official narrative” about the Ukrainian Conflict in the direction of preconditioning the Western public to accept some sort of “compromise” with Russia.

All of this, the reader should be reminded, is occurring because of NATO’s military-industrial crisis hamstringing its members’ capabilities to sustain their bloc’s pace, scale, and scope of armed assistance to Kiev. Their “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” against Russia is obviously trending towards Moscow’s favor after that Eurasian Great Power proved that it truly has the wherewithal to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of its special operation in spite of the Golden Billion’s unparalleled sanctions against it.

If someone still remained in denial about the existence of NATO’s military-industrial crisis in spite of Stoltenberg’s surprisingly candid admission on Monday, then they should also be made aware of Politico’s exclusive report that was published on the same day, which reinforced his claim. Four unnamed US officials told this outlet that their country can’t send Kiev its requested “Army Tactical Missile Systems” (ATACMS) because “it doesn’t have any [of them] to spare”.

This revelation should thus serve as the proverbial “icing on the cake” proving that NATO is in the midst of such a serious military-industrial crisis right now that its US leader itself can’t even afford to spare important munitions that could give its proxies in Kiev the edge that they so desperately need right now. What’s so stunning about this strategic dynamic is that the combined military-industrial capabilities of the bloc’s two and a half dozen countries can’t compete with their single Russian adversary’s.

That insight in turn shows just how mighty Russia’s military-industrial complex is that it’s still capable of sustaining the same pace, scale, and scope of the ongoing special operation in Ukraine despite the sanctions against it while 30 Golden Billion countries can’t collectively do the same. Should its rumored full-scale offensive transpire, then it’s likely to deal a deathblow to NATO’s proxies due to Russia’s edge in this “race of logistics”/”war of attrition” and thus force them to finally cede their disputed regions.

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Feb 092023
 


Anthony Van Dyck Self portrait with sunflower 1632

 

 

More from Andrew Korybko on a interesting theme: how the sanctions on Russia created a whole new energy supply line.

 

 

Andrew Korybko:

 

Indian media revealed in mid-January that their country had been processing and re-exporting discounted Russian oil to the West, including the US, in a move that discredited the spirit of that de facto New Cold War bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions. Most observers brushed off those reports since they went against their worldview wherein it was taken for granted that the US-led West’s Golden Billion wouldn’t ever relieve pressure on Russia by having India serve as the middleman in their oil trade.

According to an expert quoted by Bloomberg in their latest report titled “Oil’s New Map: How India Turns Russia Crude Into The West’s Fuel”, “India’s willingness to buy more Russian crude at a steeper discount is a feature, not a bug, in the plan of Western nations to impose economic pain on Putin without imposing it on themselves.” Another one was cited as saying that “US treasury officials have two main goals: keep the market well supplied, and deprive Russia of oil revenue.”

That other expert added that “They are aware that Indian and Chinese refiners can earn bigger margins by buying discounted Russian crude and exporting products at market prices. They’re fine with that.” This insight from Bloomberg, which is held in high regard as one of the world’s premier business outlets, completely shifts the paradigm through which observers interpret the energy dimension of the Golden Billion’s anti-Russian sanctions.

The “official narrative” up until this point was that they were aimed bankrupting the Kremlin in the hopes that it would immediately stop its ongoing special operation and perhaps even “Balkanize” if the desired economic collapse catalyzed uncontrollable socio-political processes like during the late 1980s. The New York Times recently admitted that the anti-Russian sanctions failed, however, pointing to reputable evidence that this targeted state’s economy has stopped contracting and even began to grow.

In the face of these “politically inconvenient” facts, it was thus foreseeable in hindsight that the “official narrative” would have to more comprehensively change in an attempt for the Golden Billion to “save face” before its people, ergo Bloomberg’s latest contribution to this perception management end. The public is now being gaslighted into thinking that the sanctions were never meant to bankrupt the Kremlin, stop its special operation, or “Balkanize” Russia, but just erode a little bit of its revenue.

The reality is that the outcome reported upon by Bloomberg is indeed a “bug” and not a “feature” like they’re claiming in hindsight out of desperation to revise history for self-interested soft power reasons. The Golden Billion didn’t fully forecast the lasting consequences of their sanctions since they naively took for granted that they’d immediately bankrupt the Kremlin, stop its special operation, and subsequently “Balkanize” Russia, none of which ultimately transpired.

They can’t rescind their unilateral economic restrictions though since that would be an unprecedented soft power victory for Russia, hence why they began putting feelers out across the market to explore alternative workarounds for ensuring the reliability of their imports, albeit at a premium. India’s pragmatic policy of principled neutrality towards the Ukrainian Conflict in full defiance of US demands upon it to “isolate” Russia ended up being an inadvertent godsend for the West in this context.

Had that globally significant Great Power not ramped up its purchase of Russian oil to the extent that it did in order to withstand the systemic shocks caused by the West’s sanctions and which destabilized dozens of fellow Global South states, then there wouldn’t be excess supply for re-export. After helping them meet their needs, which wasn’t part of some “5D chess master plan” between India and the West but the organic outcome of how events unfolded, they reduced their pressure upon it as a quid pro quo.

It was difficult to explain late last year why the US noticeably began reducing pressure on India to distance itself from Russia, but it was thought at the time that this was simply a delayed recognition of geostrategic reality and was being done for pragmatism’s sake to retain their strategic ties. Now, however, it appears as though India’s indispensable role in the global energy market as the middleman in facilitating the now-taboo Russian-Western energy trade played a role in the US’ policy recalibration.

From this insight, it can be concluded that India succeeded not only in resisting US-led Western pressure upon it vis-à-vis its relations with Russia, but also unwittingly ended up doing the Golden Billion a favor in the process by placing itself in the position to ensure the reliability of their energy imports. This observation speaks to its newfound role as the kingmaker in the New Cold War, which will imbue it with increasingly more influence within the global systemic transition the longer that this struggle continues.

 

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

 

Feb 032023
 
 February 3, 2023  Posted by at 3:26 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Johannes Vermeer The glass of wine c 1658-1660

 

 

Andrew Korybko approached me a few days ago asking if we could share some of his work. I don’t view the Automatic Earth as a publishing platform, and given all the censorship of the past 2-3 years (it’s expensive!), I will be very cautious about letting anyone in. But I like Andrew’s writing, so I said: let’s give it a go.

Then I had to transfer his Word file to the simple text editor I have been using for many years, but that only took half an hour … I don’t like Word. Or Bill Gates. Here’s Andrew:

 

 

Andrew Korybko: The “official narrative” surrounding the Ukrainian Conflict has flipped in recent weeks from prematurely celebrating Kiev’s supposedly “inevitable” victory to nowadays seriously warning about its likely loss. It was therefore expected in hindsight that other dimensions of the information warfare campaign waged by the US-led West’s Golden Billion against Russia would also change. As proof of precisely that, the New York Times (NYT) just admitted that the West’s anti-Russian sanctions are a failure.

In Ana Swanson’s article about how “Russia Sidesteps Western Punishments, With Help From Friends”, she cites Western experts who concluded that “Russia’s imports may have already recovered to prewar levels, or will soon do so, depending on their models.” Even more compelling, she references the IMF’s latest assessment from Monday, which “now expected the Russian economy to grow 0.3 percent this year, a sharp improvement from its previous estimate of a 2.3 percent contraction.”

Neither the NYT, the Western experts that Swanson cites, nor the IMF can credibly be accused of being “Russian-friendly”, let alone so-called “Russian propagandists” or even “Russian agents”, which thus confirms the observation that this dimension of the Golden Billion’s infowar has also decisively shifted. The fact of the matter is that the West’s anti-Russian sanctions failed to catalyze the collapse of that targeted multipolar Great Power’s economy, which continues to remain impressively resilient.

The timing at which this narrative changed is also important because it extends credence to the more widely known new narrative that’s nowadays seriously warning about Kiev’s likely loss in NATO’s proxy war on Russia. After all, if the sanctions achieved the goal that they were supposed to and which the US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) hitherto lied that they supposedly had, then it naturally follows that Kiev would “inevitably” win exactly as they claimed would happen up until mid-January.

With this in mind, the most effective way to “reprogram” the average Westerner after brainwashing them over the past 11 months into expecting Kiev’s supposedly “inevitable” victory is to also decisively change the supplementary narratives that artificially manufactured that aforesaid false conclusion. To that end, the order was given to begin raising the public’s awareness about the failure of the Golden Billion’s anti-Russian sanctions, ergo the NYT’s latest piece and the specific timing thereof.

What’s left unsaid in that article is the “politically incorrect” but nevertheless heavily implied observation that the jointly BRICS– & SCO-led Global South of which Russia is a part has defied the Golden Billion’s demands to “isolate” that multipolar Great Power. No MSM outlet will ever admit it, at least not yet, but their de facto New Cold War bloc has limited sway outside the US’ recently restored “sphere of influence” in Europe, whose countries are the only ones suffering from these sanctions.

The NYT’s latest piece might inadvertently make many members of their public conscious of that, however, and they might therefore increasingly object to their governments scaling up their commitment to NATO’s proxy war on Russia under American pressure. Croatian President Zoran Milanovic recently joined Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in condemning this campaign and raising wider awareness of just how counterproductive it’s been for Europe’s objective interests.

As Europeans come to realize that they’re the only ones suffering from the anti-Russian sanctions that their American overlord coerced them into imposing and that their sacrifices haven’t adversely affected that targeted multipolar Great Power’s special operation, massive unrest might follow. It’s unlikely to influence their US-controlled leaders into reversing course, remembering that the German Foreign Minister vowed late last year never to do so, but could instead catalyze a violent police crackdown.

The reason behind this pessimistic prediction is that a reversal or at the very least lessening of the presently rigid anti-Russian sanctions regime would represent an unprecedentedly independent move by whichever European state(s) does/do so. Seeing as how that didn’t even happen in the eight years prior to the US’ successful reassertion of its unipolar hegemony all across 2022, the likelihood of that happening nowadays under those much more difficult conditions is practically nil.

The US’ “Lead From Behind” subordinate for “managing” European affairs as part of its new so-called “burden-sharing” strategy, Germany, has more than enough levers of economic, institutional, and political influence to several punish any of those lower-tier American vassals who get out of place. It’s therefore unrealistic to expect any single EU member to unilaterally defy the bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions that their own government previously agreed to.

Considering this reality, those leaders who want to remain in power or at least not risk the US’ German-driven Hybrid War wrath against their economies are loath restore a semblance of their largely lost sovereignty in such a dramatic manner. Instead, their most pragmatic course of action is to not participate in the military aspect of this proxy war by refusing to dispatch arms to Kiev exactly as the emerging Central European pragmatic bloc of Austria, Croatia, and Hungary have done.

The population of those countries are thus unlikely to protest against the sanctions even after being made aware of the facts contained in the NYT’s latest piece and naturally coming to the conclusion that the anti-Russian sanctions have only harmed their own economies and not that targeted Great Power’s. Folks in France, Germany, and Italy, however, could very well react differently, especially considering their tradition of organizing massive protests.

In such a scenario, their governments are expected to order a violent police crackdown under whatever pretext they concoct, whether it’s falsely accusing the protesters of employing violence first or accusing them all of being so-called “Russian agents”. Regardless of how it happens, the outcome will be the same whereby Western European countries will slide deeper into liberal-totalitarian dictatorship, which will in turn contribute to further radicalizing their population towards uncertain ends.

Returning back to the NYT’s piece, it represents a remarkable reversal of the “official narrative” by frankly admitting that the West’s anti-Russian sanctions are a failure. This coincides with the decisive shift of the larger narrative driven by American and Polish leaders over the past month whereby they’re nowadays seriously warning about Kiev’s likely loss in NATO’s proxy war on Russia. It remains to be seen what other narratives will change as well, but it’s predicted that more such ones will inevitably do so.

 

 

 

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