Ukraine started the war with Russia by massive shelling of eastern Ukraine and a build-up of troops on the Donbass border. (Ukraine – Who is firing at whom and who is lying about it?, Moon of Alabama, 20 February 2022)
The Nato puppet state did this so that its imperialist masters could try to build a brick wall around Russia via sanctions, initiating an economic collapse, re-enslave Germany (which had been drifting toward Russia and China via the Nord Stream 2 project) and, if possible, bring about regime-change in Moscow.
In fact, the opposite is happening.
It is looking more and more like the west is isolating and disunifying itself (after an initial show of unity behind the war aims of the USA).
The consolation prize of the Ukraine war was supposed to be Finland and Sweden’s entry into Nato. But even here Turkey’s wily President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stepped in to obstruct their entry.
The west’s real ‘prize’ will be de-dollarisation of the global economy, massive inflation, rising costs of staple goods and soaring petrol prices. The consequences for western European governments towing the US line will be a rapid decline in living standards and economic chaos.
We will likely see a wave of toppled governments in the coming years. As de-dollarisation of the global economy accelerates, the United States is going to see its currency lose value every day – taking with it the ability to print money at the expense of other countries by exporting inflation round the globe.
After all, it’s one thing to ‘stand with Ukraine’ by putting a blue and yellow flag on your Twitter bio. It’s quite another to insist on sanctioning Russia whilst ordinary Europeans freeze in their apartments so they can serve the foreign policy of the United States.
In Estonia recently the prime minister was forced to resign amid inflation rates of more than 20 percent. Boris Johnson’s government in Britain will likely fall as an indirect consequence of the cost of living crisis facing Britain. We should expect a wave of governments currently towing the pro-Ukraine line to be toppled between now and next winter.
Imperialist thievery provides impetus
Nations across the world seeking to develop their economies have been thwarted by being hostage to an imperialist system. The banks of London happily stole $1bn of Venezuela’s gold in January 2019.
The imperialists likewise stole $3.5bn from Afghanistan’s reserves on 11 February this year, and unknown billions from Iraq and Libya when those countries were invaded in 2003 and 2011 respectively. Joe Biden’s criminal administration stole the Afghan reserves at a point when upwards of eight million of the country’s people were at risk of starvation.
Iran was cut from the Swift system (which facilitates instant payment settlements across borders) by the USA in 2012. In 2016, access was restored under the JCPOA agreement, but the administration of Donald Trump reneged on this agreement and cut Iran from Swift again.
The greatest heist, though, was perpetrated on 13 March 2022, when the imperialists stole $300bn (!) in foreign reserves from Russia.
These events have provided a huge impetus for the countries outside of the imperialist bloc to form alternative organisations and payment systems that are not under the arbitrary control of the pirates (sorry, ‘bankers’) in Wall Street or London – systems in which foreign reserves can’t be stolen at will and countries won’t be locked out of global trade on a political dime.
Even many of the countries on notionally ‘friendly’ terms with the imperialist bloc have understood that their wealth is not safe if it can be ransacked wholesale at will. After all, who knows when they might fall foul of the imperialist diktat?
An alternative payment system is being built
Whilst the Russians started building the SPFS system (a Swift alternative) in 2014, the Chinese began building Cips in 2015.
Nations living under the imperialist yoke and formerly subject to the dollar dictatorship are now on the move. Iran and Venezuela have signed up to a 20-year cooperation ‘road map’, with direct flights between Caracas and Tehran, and Venezuela has praised Iran’s help with its oil industry.
“I believe that our future will be one of pleasing and solid friendships,” President Nicolás Maduro said on a recent visit to Iran. “The future of the world is one of equality and justice and standing up against imperialism. We must build this future together.” (Iran, Venezuela sign 20-year cooperation plan during Maduro visit, Al Jazeera, 11 June 2022)
In 2021, Iran signed a 25-year cooperation deal with China, and this year is negotiating a renewed 20-year cooperation deal with Russia.
As former US presidential advisor Zbigniew Brzezenski made clear in his book The Grand Chessboard, in order to maintain American global unipolar dominance, US imperialism must do everything to ensure that an alliance between Russia-China and Iran does not come to pass that could expel the USA from the Eurasian continent. (1997)
Drunk on American exceptionalism and ‘led’ by the hawks who pull the strings for feeble-minded Joe Biden, the American imperialists (and their Atlanticist lackeys and useful idiots in Europe) have forgotten this lesson.
The small clique of neoconservatives that actually runs the United States and Europe (probably as few as 10,000 people) have only one gear – and that’s escalation.
And that escalation has led to an anti-imperialist alliance being created and strengthened in many institutions, from the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to Brics and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
The CSTO (a military formation) was recently instrumental in stabilising Kazakhstan when the west attempted a coup and colour revolution there in January 2022. Troops from Russia, Belarus and Armenia were able to organise quickly through its joint security mechanisms to put down that US-backed coup attempt. (The US-directed rebellion in Kazakhstan may well strengthen Russia, Moon of Alabama, 6 January 2022)
What we are seeing is the emergence of two opposing blocs: an imperialist one that seeks to stagnate and retard human development and productive forces against an anti-imperialist one that is actually interested in infrastructure development and economic growth for the masses of the world’s people.
The above organisations are gaining more coherence and clarity by the day, and are set to play a major role in the new multipolar world that is emerging. The consolidation of a payment system outside of US control will ensure that freshly-printed US dollars cannot be endlessly sent into the global economy to ‘pay’ for goods and services at everyone else’s expense. The USA may well wake up in the near future, unable to afford its 900+ military bases worldwide and unable to service its $30 trillion debt.
Failure to isolate Russia and emerging multipolarity
The west had hoped to draw a new Iron Curtain over Russia as it once did to the Soviet Union and eastern bloc countries. However, it increasingly looks as if the west has only succeeded in drawing the curtain around itself.
Even India refused to condemn Russia’s operation in Ukraine. Shortly after this refusal, the United States insisted it would start “monitoring India for human rights abuses”, once again shedding light onto how the question of ‘human rights’ is cynically weaponised by the west. (US monitoring rise in human rights abuses in India: Blinken, Al Jazeera, 12 April 2022)
Meanwhile, Venezuela has committed to expanding military cooperation with Russia.
“We have reviewed military cooperation plans and endorsed an area for strong military cooperation between Russia and Venezuela to defend peace, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Venezolana de Television quoted President Maduro as saying. “Defence minister Vladimir Padrino has clear instructions on this matter. We will expand the programme [of cooperation] … Russia is fully supported by Venezuela in the face of the threats from Nato and the western world.” (Venezuela to expand military cooperation with Russia – President Maduro, Tass, 17 February 2022)
On 16 June, Chinese president Xi Jinping restated the legitimacy of Russia’s actions, calling president Vladimir Putin to endorse “the legitimacy of the actions taken by Russia to defend its core national interests in the face of challenges to its security created by external forces”. (Old friends: Xi lends Putin his loyalty as EU leaders line up behind Ukraine, Financial Times, 16 June 2022)
The emergence of multipolarity has long been reflected in the Brics alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Vyacheslav Volodin of the Russian parliament (duma) suggested that, were Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and Mexico to join too, then we could be looking at the “new G8”.
Volodin noted: “The United States has created conditions with its own hands so that countries wishing to build an equal dialogue and mutually beneficial relations will actually form a ‘new G8’ together with Russia.” (The ‘new G8’ meets China’s ‘Three Rings’ by Pepe Escobar, The Saker, 15 June 2022)
A Shanghai professor has explained China’s three-ring theory utilising the liberation war concept of the countryside encircling the city, with the countryside in this case representing the developing nations.
“One hundred years ago, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party proposed the revolutionary path of ‘encircling the city in the countryside’. At this time of ‘unprecedented changes’, China and the developing countries need to break the centre-periphery order of the contemporary world, and the western countries’ suppression of non-western countries, and instead to improve solidarity and cooperation in the global ‘rural’ areas.
“The emergence of a new global system and the deepening of south-south cooperation will create good conditions for China to enter the forefront of the world economy and politics, and to mobilise global resources to build a ‘three-ring’ international system, to resolve international pressures and to break through.” (Building the ‘New Three Rings’: China’s choice in the face of possible complete decoupling by Cheng Yawen, China Environment Net, 13 June 2022)
China’s Belt and Road initiative is joining Eurasia into a coherent economic bloc. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), signed in November 2020, is a trade bloc comprising 30 percent of humanity and 30 percent of global GDP. Both Iran and India are seeking free-trade deals with the Eurasian Economic Union, whilst Russia is robustly pushing for a transit route to India via Iran known as the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). (India-Iran reset gets under way by Melkulangara Bhadrakumar, Strategic Culture Foundation, 22 June 2022)
The first shipment using this corridor, carrying 41 tons of wood laminate, left from St Petersburg to Astrakhan in Iran, before sailing through the Caspian Sea ad arriving at Nhava Sheva port in Mumbai.
India replied to pressure from the USA to stop importing Russian oil by heavily increasing its imports. Russia is moving toward greater use of national currencies with Iran and India to conduct its trade and economic transactions. Increased cooperation between Iran-India and Russia is thus opening the way for a tripartite cooperation in using local currencies for trade. Russia and India are already settling gas payments in a rupee-rouble scheme.
A new bridge linking the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk to the Chinese city of Heihe across the Amur river was opened to great fanfare as Russo-Chinese relations hit a new modern high, facilitating further mutual trade and development.
The military and security pacts being signed, the trade agreements, economic cooperation agreements and infrastructure development roadmaps are providing a concrete alternative to the west’s Malthusian demands to retard growth, impose debt-driven austerity and accept imperialist looting of natural resources via the now infamous ‘structural adjustment programmes’ of the US-controlled World Bank and IMF.
According to Russian economist Sergei Glazyev: “The west has no image of the future but an image of death. Everyone says this is a world hybrid war although it was clear from the beginning it should be considered in a much broader context. Russia is fighting for the preservation of mankind.”
As Lenin pointed out in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: “the rentier state is a state of parasitic, decaying capitalism, and this circumstance cannot fail to influence all the sociopolitical conditions of the countries concerned”. (Chapter 8, 1916)
The west initiated and then escalated the war in Ukraine in an attempt to retain its hegemony. But witnessing the west’s debasement of humanity by its ‘green’ theories on ‘overpopulation’ and ‘de-growth’, and the continual wars it wages against humanity, we see ever more clearly the rank fruits of imperialist parasitism.
The economic war launched against Russia has not turned in the imperialists’ favour. In the arena of economic war initiated by the west, we see emerging a contest between the world of real-estate bubbles, accounting fraud and money laundering, and the world of real productive economies producing real goods – this is what western pundits and politicians are deriding when they discount Russia’s economy as “being the size of Spain/Italy/Texas” or whatever is the latest comparison they trot out.
The last few months have given all concerned a hard lesson in what a real economy looks like, and the difference between those whose wealth is backed by tech-addiction apps, speculation, property bubbles and accounting fraud and those backed by commodities, raw materials and essential food staples.
The imperialist economies are degenerating before our eyes as food and petrol prices rocket, with Britain’s (grossly underestimated) 9 percent inflation at its highest in 40 years.
As the imperialist system continues to decay, the world will continue to strive toward multipolarity as surely as the sun sets in the west and rises in the east.
