Pepe Escobar – Strategic Culture March 4, 2022
Only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South.
One of the key underlying themes of the Russia/Ukraine/NATO matrix is that the Empire of Lies (copyright Putin) has been rattled to the core by the combined ability of Russian hypersonic missiles and a defensive shield capable of blocking incoming nuclear missiles from the West, thereby ending Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.)
This has led the Americans to nearly risk a hot war to be able to place hypersonic missiles that they still don’t have on Ukraine’s western borders, and so be within three minutes of Moscow. For that, of course, they need Ukraine, as well as Poland and Romania in Eastern Europe.
In Ukraine, the Americans are determined to fight to the last European soul – if that’s what it takes. This may be the last roll of the (nuclear) dice. Thus the next-to-last gasp at coercing Russia into submission by using the remaining, workable American weapon of mass destruction: SWIFT.
Yet this weapon can be easily neutralized by rapid adoption of self-sufficiency.
With essential input by the inestimable Michael Hudson I have outlined possibilities for Russia to weather the sanction storm. That didn’t even consider the full extent of Russia’s “black box defense” – and counter-attack – as outlined by John Helmer in his introduction to an essay that heralds no less then The Return of Sergei Glaziev.
Glaziev, predictably detested across Atlanticist circles, was a key economic adviser to President Putin and is now the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). He has always been a fierce critic of the Russian Central Bank and the oligarch gang closely linked to Anglo-American finance.
His latest essay, Sanctions and Sovereignty, originally published by expert.ru and translated by Helmer, deserves serious scrutiny.
This is one of the key takeaways:
“Russian losses of potential GDP, since 2014, amount to about 50 trillion rubles. But only 10% of them can be explained by sanctions, while 80% of them were the result of monetary policy. The United States benefits from anti-Russian sanctions, replacing the export of Russian hydrocarbons to the EU as well as China; replacing the import of European goods by Russia. We could completely offset the negative consequences of financial sanctions if the Bank of Russia fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure a stable ruble exchange rate, and not the recommendations of Washington financial organizations.”
De-offshore or bust
Glaziev essentially recommends:
- A “real de-offshorization of the economy”.
- “Measures to tighten currency regulation in order to stop the export of capital and expand targeted lending to enterprises in need of financing investments”.
- “Taxation of currency speculation and transactions in dollars and euros on the domestic market”.
- “Serious investment in R&D in order to accelerate the development of our own technological base in the areas affected by sanctions – first of all the defense industry, energy, transport and communications.”
And last but not least, “the de-dollarization of our foreign exchange reserves, replacing the dollar, euro and pound with gold.”
The Russian Central Bank seems to be listening. Most of these measures are already in place. And there are signs that Putin and the government are finally ready to grab the Russian oligarchy by the balls and force them to share risks and losses at an extremely difficult for the nation. Goodbye to stockpiling funds taken out of Russia offshore and in Londongrad.
Glaziev is the real deal. In December 2014 I was at a conference in Rome, and Glaziev joined us on the phone. Reviewing a subsequent column I wrote at the time, between Rome and Beijing, I was stunned: it’s as if Glaziev was saying these things literally today.
Allow me to quote two paragraphs:
“At the symposium, held in a divinely frescoed former 15th century Dominican refectory now part of the Italian parliament’s library, Sergey Glaziev, on the phone from Moscow, gave a stark reading of Cold War 2.0. There’s no real “government” in Kiev; the U.S. ambassador is in charge. An anti-Russia doctrine has been hatched in Washington to foment war in Europe – and European politicians are its collaborators. Washington wants a war in Europe because it is losing the competition with China.”
“Glaziev addressed the sanctions dementia: Russia is trying simultaneously to reorganize the politics of the International Monetary Fund, fight capital flight and minimize the effect of banks closing credit lines for many businessmen. Yet the end result of sanctions, he says, is that Europe will be the ultimate losers economically; bureaucracy in Europe has lost economic focus as American geopoliticians have taken over.”
Gotta pay the “tax on independence”
A consensus seems to be emerging in Moscow that the Russian economy will stabilize quickly, as there will be a shortage of personnel for industry and a lot of extra hands will be required. Hence no unemployment. There may be shortages, but no inflation. Sales of – Western – luxury goods have already been curtailed. Imported products will be placed under price controls. All the necessary rubles will be available though price controls – as happened in the U.S. in WWII.
A wave of nationalization of assets may be ahead. ExxonMobil announced it will withdraw from the $4 billion Sakhalin-1 project (they had bailed out on Sakhalin-2, deemed too expensive), producing 200,000 barrels of oil a day, after BP and Norway’s Equinor announced they were withdrawing from projects with Rosneft. BP was actually dreaming of taking all of Rosneft’s participation.
According to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the Kremlin is now blocking asset sales by foreign investors looking to divest. In parallel, Rosneft, for instance, is bound to raise capital from China and India, who are already minority investors in several projects, and buy them out 100%: an excellent opportunity for Russian business.
What could be construed as the Mother of All Counter-Sanctions has not yet been announced. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev himself hinted all options are on the table.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, channeling the patience of 10,000 Taoist monks, still expecting the current hysteria to fade away, describes the sanctions as “some kind of a tax on independence”, with countries barring their companies from working in Russia under “huge pressure.”
Lethal counterpunches though are not excluded. Apart from completely de-dollarizing – as Glaviev recommends – Russia may ban the export of titanium, rare earth, nuclear fuel and, already in effect, rocket engines.
Very toxic moves would include seizing all foreign assets of hostile nations; freeze all loan repayments to Western banks and place the funds in a frozen account in a Russian bank; completely ban all hostile foreign media, foreign media ownership, assorted NGOs and CIA fronts; and supply friendly nations with state of the art weapons, intel sharing and joint training and exercises.
What’s certain is that a new architecture of payment systems – as discussed by Michael Hudson and others – uniting the Russian SPFS and the Chinese CHIPS, may soon be offered to scores of nations across Eurasia and the Global South – several among them already under sanctions, such as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the DPRK.
Slowly but surely, we are already on the way to the emergence of a sizeable Global South bloc immune to American financial warfare.
The RIC in BRICS – Russia, India and China – are already increasing trade in their own currencies. If we look at the list of nations at the UN that voted against Russia or abstained from condemning Operation Z in Ukraine, plus those that did not sanction Russia, we have at least 70% of the whole Global South.
So once again is the West – plus satrapies/colonies such as Japan and Singapore in Asia – against the Rest: Eurasia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America.
The coming European collapse
Michael Hudson told me, “the U.S. and Western Europe expected a Froelicher Krieg (“happy war”). Germany and other countries haven’t begun to feel the pain of gas and mineral and food deprivation. THAT’S going to be the real game. The aim would be to break Europe away from U.S. control via NATO. This will involve “meddling” by creating a New World Order political movement and party, like Communism was a century ago. You could call it a new Great Awakening.”
A possible Great Awakening certainly will not involve the NATOstan sphere anytime soon. The collective West is rather in serious Great Decoupling mode, its entire economy weaponized with the aim, expressed in the open, of destroying Russia and even – the perennial wet dream – provoking regime change.
Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR, succinctly described it:
“Masks have dropped. The West is not just trying to enclose Russia with a new ‘Iron Curtain’. We are talking about attempts to destroy our state – its ‘abolition’, as it is now customary to say in the ‘tolerant’ liberal-fascist environment. Since the United States and its allies have neither the opportunity nor the spirit to try to do this in an open and honest military-political confrontation, sneaky attempts are being made to establish an economic, informational and humanitarian “blockade”’.
Arguably the apex of Western hysteria is the onset of a 2022 Neo-Nazi Jihad: a 20,000-strong mercenary army being assembled in Poland under CIA supervision. The bulk comes from private military companies such as Blackwater/Academi and DynCorp. Their cover: “return of Ukrainians from the French Foreign Legion.” This Afghan remix comes straight from the only playbook the CIA knows.
Back in reality, facts on the ground will eventually lead entire economies in the West to become roadkill – with chaos in the commodities sphere leading to skyrocketing energy and food costs. As an example, up to 60% of German and 70% of Italian manufacturing industries may be forced to shut down for good – with catastrophic social consequences.
The unelected, uber-Kafkaesque EU machine in Brussels has chosen to commit a triple hara-kiri by grandstanding as abject vassals of the Empire, destroying any remaining French and German sovereignty impulses and imposing alienation from Russia-China.
Meanwhile, Russia will be showing the way: only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South: one day someone had to stand up and say, “That’s Enough”. With maximum raw power to back it up.
This is how doomed the uk really is. Russia, china, india, etc are all able to become completely self sufficient. Lots of space and plenty of resources. The uk on the other hand imports 40% of its food, 20% of its power, will have water shortages in 10 years, and is so disgustingly full as people that only a madman would want to set foot there. The ONLY way out for the uk is to completely change their way of life, a thing that not a single one of them is willing to do. And so they’ll die, neck deep in their own filth and degeneracy. Truly the arse end of empire.
One place where the US may be weak to a Russian response and where no civilians could be killed or injured because there are no longer any civilians there, is an attack on the US base at Diego Garcia. That base will surely have a role in any US action even if it’s just to monitor Russian activity, so a wave of hypersonic missiles precision-striking its facilities there – satellite images showing radar installations wiped out smack dead centre for example – just to show what Russia can do and the US can’t prevent.
This was a good article.. The choice of language would not be my choice, but I recognise many things that I’ve been saying for a very long time.
“The West is not just trying to enclose Russia with a new ‘Iron Curtain’. We are talking about attempts to destroy our state – its ‘abolition’, as it is now customary to say in the ‘tolerant’ liberal-fascist environment.”
I still hold the view that Putin and his team are preparing an all out nuclear strike on the West.
Putin and other big powers wanted a multipolar world, & the West (Washington/London) couldn’t stop this, beacause the rest of the world was slowly devorcing themselves from the US Dollar. So they have gone for this Iron Curtain which is the West’s only way to prevent the visible loss of face… oh, you can’t compare us, because we are different, we are ‘exceptional’.
Yes, Europe, & the UK will suffer economically on a massive scale. The quoted factory closers will also happen here in the UK, they simply won’t be viable. Maybe the regime will print and print. This could buy some time, but it will still crash.
We could see all sorts of social controls, limited social travel, cerfews, rotational power cuts, and rationing. 40% of the world’s wheat exports comes from UKraine and Russia.
Don’t think the US is immune, they are seeing inflation at levels never seen before. Fuel is over 100% up on what it used to be. I went to Bristol yesterday, boy, are sheeple driving much more slowly to eak out the MPG, and it was so quiet.
As an aside, seeing most of the extended family, they are oblivious to what is going on, and a couple of sheeple comments confirms they are truly thicko sheeple.
There may be some US citizens working on Diego Garcia but they’ll be military contractors, but I meant no innocent citizens are there.
And then analysts are already comparing the accuracy of short range Russian missiles such as 9K720 Iskander to Iranian short-range Fateh-313 missiles and yes it seems Iranian missiles are pin-point truly sure-strikes in comparison! Also Russia has utilized drones very little which seems to be their weakest point. This war will be a valuable experience and warm-up for their ground forces and logistics though.
As for sanctions, there is already a club of sanctioned countries that trade with one another; gone are the days of sanctions that truly bite.
as long USA has its special relationship
with UK the other european states specialy
germany will be colonial slave of USA !
THIS RELATIONSHIP + WITH THE
JEWS HAS TO BE DESTROYED !
I already enjoy the expectation of
freezing african + islamic parasites !
MAKE EUROPA AS UNHOSPITABLE
AS POSSIBLE FOR THEM !
If Putin cleans out the WEF rat nest at Sberbank and does some Yiddish house cleaning…
I might take peepee’s meanderings seriously…
By the way Vlad.. before you fuel air bomb the 20.000 ‘black water’ mercenaries supposedly holed up in Poland…
and when you are on your way out of SMERSH central command…don’t forget to feed the dogs of war and do remember to turn off the ‘gas’…
you still supply to the ‘enemy’…..
Love
the empire…
BRILLIANT ARTICLE.
All a society has to do, be able to grow it own food and be able to feed it population. Own its CENTRAL BANK. Resources in any country belong to the people and the profit share with the people who is the real government, Excellent and effective transportation system for the people and less dependency on individual cars and luxury items, Excellent sewer and water system. An education that to not dumb you down( teach truths) and on and on.. Critical Think solve most issues.
A parallel system in place.
U.S and Europe thru the years has created many enemies. Worst of all what they have done to Africa the lab rat testing lab of the world. It is not too late to change. When you dumb down a society, you do the same to yourself.
Some truths( ideas)
Mystic and Yogi
JOINED UP THINKING
we have the most useless and corrupt people in our governments
they import millions of ex USSR people, KGB spettnaz bomb experts from the Russian army, the criminal gangs of the Mafia then they declare war on their homeland,
shit for brains it really is.
Russians i have spoken to say the British army does not stand a chance in hell
our menfolk have been turned into uneducated dumbos, useless socialist types homosexuals nancy boys and men in pink trousers
The Russians say they got rid of socialist nonsense there, why are people having it here ?
I despair about our government i really do they just dont work for us at all
Kill the White men so their children can be scooped up for a new way of life, Jew, Arab, African, Satanist, rapist, etc.
BLAH BLAH BLAH – THIS IS ALL ORCHESTRATED BY A DARK CONDUCTOR.
If you hate people you can celebrate their deaths and if you like them you can celebrate their births. If you want to be miserable, you will have to keep on lying about your motives.
Get out of the city. Get out of the N Hemisphere. Run for the hills.
I didn’t read the article but I get the gist from the comments.
What Russia’s adversaries are up-to is easy to tell, They are goading Russia to put its inter-dimensional weapons into use, not for them to marvel at but to study them for the ‘chinks in their armor’. If any.
Whether it will be of any use to them I have no idea but with the clumsy way they are proceeding by offending everyone they are losing the moral ground and support of the common people who, despite what the media says, are overwhelmingly on Russia’s side.
Won’t be long before Vodka becomes the national drink of many nations.
“Economics” again, a big topic all found in a tiny box in the pocket of a self-loathing kike. None of your manufactured crap matters and the tinkling of your pennies is the sound of demon piss as it hits the faces of the population.
> I despair about our government i really do they just dont work for us at all
Of course they don’t — half of them are foreigners, working for their country.
The consensus is in the long term Russia will survive sanctions. Now look at the West only a fool cannot see the signs of total collapse, the trajectory of all aspects is a steep dive. We are overrun by the third world, we have been feminised by the Feminista mafia, our education system completely in the hands of marxists and our manufacturing base destroyed by free market zealots. Huge energy and fuel prices are round the corner and when food is low who do you think is at the front looting supermarkets. I spent 6 years in nationalism trying to wake up the stupid goy. If there’s any truth to Darwinism these stupid people are going to find out because the people of the West are the epitome of weakness
Yes, what Escobar says about all of these military and economic pressures against poor Russia is most likely true. But is it not all part of some carefully designed “official narrative”, where Putin’s Russia is just one more player on the global stage? Escobar has been rather light in looking squarely in in his writings as what is most likely behind the entire Covid pandemic, the biggest conspiracy and psyop in world history in which all of the power-block nations including Russia have played a key role. That fact where the Cui Bono is obviously the globalist NWO effort toward an all-pervasive world government along with power-block controls toward, he never deals with. Rather we are to believe that a new “cold war” is upon us. If the posturings of these titan forces on the world stage were real, everything would have gone up in smoke long ago, and in any case the Russian establishment would never have been such a willing accomplice in the entire Plandemic.
Putin has ensured that all Russians have been jabbed with his spike-protein Sputnik crap the same as our nations have jabbed as many as they can. No word of any harms from such oppression in that nation, and Putin plays right along with the official narrative. The only question is how these orchestrated hostilities in the Ukraine play into the grand plan of the alleged “necessity” of that pre-announced “one-world government.
For every major psyop there must be blood, and Escobar is very quick to buy into the official narrative that Russia is able to stand up to the West, including Russia with a 2022 military budget $61.7 billion, and the US at $778 billion such that it has a prayer if it started even a nuclear war.
Escobar gives some interesting facts but that is all they are is “interesting”. They never really spell out the big picture which to him is always some kind of mystery beyond human control.
Escobar seems to think that we are essentially victims of developing global technocratic tectonic plates and power blocks clashing together: [i.e., his 2001 book “Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism”], and that shit just happens, as if we are just hapless victims of historical forces way beyond our control. If he is not a closet Marxist and just one more global establishment flake, I would be surprised. If I am wrong then he appears overly careful not to play the blame game too much, which trait is clearly seen in his Jonny-come-lately September 2021 publication about Ben Laden and 9/11, where he ends on the note:
“And yet, like with the assassination of JFK, we may never know the full contours of the whole riddle inside an enigma. As Fitzgerald immortalized, “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” probing like mad this philosophical and existential Ground Zero, never ceasing from asking the ultimate question: Cui Bono? “
“9/9 and 9/11, 20 years later”
https://asiatimes.com/2021/09/9-9-and-9-11-20-years-later/
“ Cui Bono?” Really? As if there is any mystery anymore to what really happened. No, “Give me liberty, or give me death”, as I would rather go down with a Patrick Henry of a Victor Thorn neither of whom played any middle-of-the-road games with half truths or obfuscation. Thorn who wrote “9-11: Made in Israel” named a host of actual people who were major perps along with enough of the uncontradicted and irrefutable evidence such that any one who still thinks there is some mystery either has their head in the sand or is just one more establishment liar.
That the Russians never exterminated the Jew scum and forever banned the Jew destroyers from ever polluting their nation again after maniacal Jews murdered tens of millions of innocent Russians during the early half of the 20th century tells me Russia is just another puppet in this farce.
I do know the big military contracting companies are offering big money, $2,000 per day, $60,000 per month to go over to Poland and Ukraine….and they’ll get plenty of psychopaths to take them up on that offer at that rate.