by Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

The release of a major report last week by the International Energy Agency (IEA) highlighting that India will make up the biggest share of energy demand growth from now until 2040 – ahead of China – comes at just the right time for the U.S.’s new strategy to counter China’s rapidly increasing influence in the Middle East. The details of the IEA’s ‘India Energy Outlook 2021’ only add further weight to the credibility of the U.S.’s attempt to portray India as a viable economic and energy-consuming alternative end user to China for Middle East oil and gas producers that side with the new U.S.-Israel-Arab state alliances.

Specifically, according to the IEA report, India’s energy consumption is expected to nearly double as its gross domestic product expands to an estimated US$8.6 trillion by 2040 under its current national policy scenario (the equivalent of adding another economy the size of Japan to the world economy in less than 20 years). Particularly of note to Middle Eastern hydrocarbons producers will be the projection that India’s oil demand is expected to rise to at least 8.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2040 from about 5 million bpd in 2019, while its natural gas needs are projected to more than triple to 201 billion cubic metres. In explicit potential export dollars terms for Middle East oil and gas producers, India is set to see its net dependence on oil imports increase to more than 90 per cent by 2040 from the current 75 per cent, according to the IEA, and its net gas import dependency increase to around 61 per cent by 2025 from just 20 per cent only 10 years ago.

This outlook is perfect for the U.S.’s new counter-China strategy that politically began most obviously with the signing in August 2020 of the U.S.-brokered Israel-UAE ‘normalisation deal’. This deal announcement heralded that a new corridor of co-operation was being developed from the U.S. (and Israel), through the UAE (and Kuwait, Bahrain, and in part Saudi Arabia) as a regional counterbalance to China’s growing sphere of influence. With Bahrain later following the UAE in making a similar normalisation deal with Israel, Washington has considerable room for optimism that further such deals can be made with the other GCC states, comprising Kuwait (already firmly in the U.S. sphere of influence), Saudi Arabia (Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is believed to be broadly in favour of the UAE-Israel accord), Oman (toying with moving into the China fold), and Qatar (quietly co-operating with Iran over the South Pars/North Dome gas field). The remaining GCC states – Jordan and Egypt – already have similar pacts with Israel.

One key element of the U.S.’s strategy was to provide a focal counterpoint for Middle Eastern hydrocarbons producers to China’s huge buying presence in the international oil and gas sectors, and this is where India comes into the equation. Much of China’s current turbo-drive expansion into the Middle East is predicated in the first instance on the energy sector, given that the oil industry, in particular, involves the movement of huge amounts of money, ships, equipment, technology, and personnel in often disguised ways – confidential bank accounts, intelligence and military personnel who can pass as high-level oil technicians or security people, ships that can disappear through the flick of an AIS switch and so on – that other industries cannot match for activities that countries wish to conduct quietly. Consequently, the starting point for the build-out of the U.S.-Israel-Arab states alliance needed to be focused on the same demand-led power paradigm and this was why shortly after the announcement on the 13th of August 2020 of the U.S.-Israel-UAE-deal it was also stated that the three countries now agree to co-operate in the fields of oil and gas and ‘related technologies’ (which, as China and Russia know in Iran, Iraq, and Syria, can mean absolutely anything). For this, the U.S. needed a powerhouse of a country with limited oil and gas resources of its own that was set to see massive economic growth in the coming years with a corollary ballooning in oil and gas buying from abroad: cue India.

An extremely fortuitous additional factor for the U.S. plan was an increasing willingness on India’s part to take a more aggressive approach towards it neighbour. In this context, the 15 June 2020 clash between some of its military units and those of China in the disputed territory of the Galwan Valley in the Himalayas reflected a much greater change in the core relationship between the two countries than the relatively small number of casualties might have implied. It marked a new ‘push back’ strategy from India against China’s policy of seeking to increase its economic and military alliances from Asia through the Middle East and into Southern Europe, in line with its multi-layered multi-generational ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) project. Until China dramatically upped the tempo of this OBOR-related policy – at around the same time as the U.S. signalled its lack of interest in continuing its own large-scale activities in the Middle East through its withdrawal from the Iran ‘nuclear deal’ and its withdrawal from much of Syria – India had stuck to a policy of trying to contain China.

As a signal of the export dollar largesse that might come to a Middle Eastern oil and gas state that takes the U.S. side against increasing Chinese influence in the region, India has already started to offer attractive benefits to selected companies from the countries that have already signed up to this new U.S. Middle Eastern order, most notably so far the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC). This newly U.S.-aligned group appears to be an ideal corporate proxy to advance such broader policy and power projection all the way up to China’s border through increased co-operation with India. At the moment, ADNOC – already the UAE’s biggest energy producer and OPEC’s third-largest oil producer – is pumping around 4 million bpd of crude oil but is aiming to increase this output by at least another 1 million bpd by 2030, and to increase its gas output as well. With all of this moving forward and, given the U.S. endgame in securing India as a direct counterbalance to China in Asia, ADNOC’s chief executive officer, Sultan al-Jaber, has stated that he looks forward to exploring partnerships with even more Indian companies across the energy giant’s hydrocarbon value chain.

ADNOC has already been granted the unique status of currently being the only overseas company so far allowed to hold and store India’s vitally-important strategic petroleum reserves (SPR). In keeping with the developing scope of this relationship, India’s government recently approved a proposal that will allow ADNOC to export oil from the SPR if there is no domestic demand for it, in the first instance from the Mangalore strategic storage facility (the other major SPR pool being at Padur). This decision marked a major shift in the policy of India in the handling of these vital energy reserves, with the country having previously completely banned all oil exports from the SPR storage facilities. A further sign of this relationship between the U.S.-sponsored UAE and India moving up a gear is the likelihood of ADNOC being ‘top of the list’ of foreign companies that would be considered to buy a substantial stake in the high-profile privatisation of major Indian refiner, Bharat Petroleum. Russian state corporate proxy, Rosneft, had expressed an interest in buying the Indian government’s 53.29 per cent in the company as recently as the middle of 2020 – following a visit to New Delhi in February by Rosneft’s chief executive officer, Igor Sechin – but these overtures have now been sidelined by India.

As far as the UAE is concerned, it would fit well not just into the broader geopolitical manoeuvring that is going on but also – commercially – into the swathe of deals being planned with Indian companies in the UAE. This was underlined by al-Jabber at the end of 2020 when he said: “Today, Indian companies represent some of Abu Dhabi’s key concession and exploration partners…[and] As we continue to work together, I see significant new opportunities for enhanced partnerships, particularly across our downstream portfolio.” He added: “We have launched an ambitious plan to expand our chemicals, petrochemicals, derivatives and industrial base in Abu Dhabi and I look forward to exploring partnerships with even more Indian companies across our hydrocarbon value chain.” This longer-term view accords with the outlook given at around the same time by India’s minister of petroleum and natural gas, Dharmendra Pradhan, as he stated that India’s demand for refined products is expected to rise dramatically, requiring a 40 per cent increase in the its refining capacity to 350 million tonnes a year or 7 million bpd by 2030.

Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

If you are starting to feel like forces controlling the governments of the west are out to get you, then it is likely that you are either a paranoid nut job, or a stubborn realist.

Either way, it means that you have some major problems on your hands.

If you don’t happen to find yourself among the tinfoil hat-wearing strata of conspiracy theorists waiting in a bunker for aliens to either strike down or save society from the shape shifting lizard people, but are rather contemplating how, in the 1960s, a shadow government took control of society over the dead bodies of many assassinated patriots, then certain conclusions tend to arise.

Three Elementary Realizations for Thinking People

The first conclusion you would likely arrive at is that the United States government was just put through the first coup in over 58 years (yes, what happened in 1963 was a coup). Although it is becoming a bit prohibitive to speak such words aloud in polite society, Nancy Pelosi’s official biographer Molly Ball, recently penned a scandalous Time Magazine article entitled ‘The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Elections’ which admitted to this conspiracy saying:

“Even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream- a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” (Lest you think that this was a subversion of democracy, Ball informs us that “they were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”)

Another conclusion you might come to is that many of the political figures whom you believed were serving those who elected them into office, actually serve the interests of a clique of technocrats and billionaires lusting over the deconstruction of western civilization under something called “a Great Reset”. Where this was brushed off as an unfounded conspiracy theory not long ago, even Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister (and neo-Nazi supporting Rhodes Scholar) Chrystia Freeland decided to become a Trustee of the World Economic Forum just weeks ago. In this role, Freeland joins fellow Oxford technocrat Mark Carney in their mutual endeavor to be a part of the new movement to decarbonize civilization and make feudalism cool again.

Lastly, you might notice that your having arrived at these conclusions is itself increasingly becoming a form of thought-crime punishable in a variety of distasteful ways elaborated by a series of unprecedented new emergency regulations that propose extending the definition of “terrorism”. Those implicated under the new definition will be those broad swaths of citizens of western nations who don’t agree with the operating beliefs of the ruling oligarchy.

Already a 60 day review of the U.S. military is underway to purge the armed forces of all such “thought criminals” while McCarthyite legislation has been drafted to cleanse all government jobs of “conspiracy theorists”.

Another startling announcement from the National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin that domestic terrorists include: “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority [and] perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.”

While not yet fully codified into law (though it will be if not nipped in the bud soon), you can be sure that things are certainly moving fast as, before our very eyes, the right to free speech is being torn to shreds by means of censorship across social media and the internet, cancelling all opinions deemed unacceptable to the ruling class.

The Conspiracy to Subvert Conspiracy Theorizing

This should not come as a surprise, as Biden’s new addition to the Department of Homeland Security is a bizarre figure named Cass Sunstein who famously described exactly what this was going to look like in his infamous 2008 report ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (co-authored with Harvard Law School’s Adrien Vermeule). In this under-appreciated study, the duo foresaw the greatest threat to the ruling elite took the form of “conspiracy theorizing” within the American population using as examples of this delusion: the idea that the government had anything to do with the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, or the planning and execution of 9-11.

Just to be clear, conspiracy literally means ‘two or more people acting together in accord with an agreed upon idea and intention’.

The fact that Vermeule has made a legal career arguing that laws should be interpreted not by the “intentions” of lawgivers, but rather according to cost-benefit analysis gives us a useful insight into the deranged mind of a technocrat and the delusional reasoning that denies the very thing which has shaped literally ALL of human history.

In their “scholarly” essay, the authors wrote “the existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.”

After establishing his case for the threat of conspiracies, Sunstein says that “the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups”.

Not one to simply draw criticisms, the pro-active Sunstein laid out five possible strategies which the social engineers managing the population could deploy to defuse this growing threat saying:

“(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.

(2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.

(3) Government might itself engage in counter speech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.

(4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter speech.

(5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help”.

(I’ll let you think about which of these prescriptions were put into action over the ensuing 12 years.)

Cass Sunstein was particularly sensitive to this danger largely because: 1) he was a part of a very ugly conspiracy himself and 2) he is a world-renowned behaviorist.

The Problem of Reality for Behaviorists

As an economic behaviorist and lawyer arguing that all “human rights” should be extended to animals (blurring the line separating human dynamics from the law of the jungle as any fascist must), Sunstein has spent decades trying to model human behavior with computer simulations in an effort to “scientifically manage” such behavior.

As outlined in his book Nudge (co-authored with Nobel Prize winning behaviorist Richard Thaler), Sunstein “discovered” that people tend to organize their behavioral patterns around certain fundamental drives, such as the pursuit of pleasure, avoidance of pain, and certain Darwinian drives for sex, popularity, desire for conformity, desire for novelty, and greed.

One of the key principles of economic behaviorism which is seen repeated in such popular manuals as Freakonomics, Nudge, Predictably Irrational, The Wisdom of Crowds, and Animal Spirits, is that humans are both biologically determined due to their Darwinian impulses, but, unlike other animals, have the fatal flaw of being fundamentally irrational at their core. Since humans are fundamentally irrational, says the behaviorist, it is requisite that an enlightened elite impose “order” upon society while maintaining the illusion of freedom of choice from below. This is the underlying assumption of Karl Popper’s Open Society doctrine, which was fed to Popper’s protégé George Soros and which animates Soros’ General Theory of Reflexivity and his Oxford-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

This was at the heart of Obama’s science Czar John Holdren’s call for world government in his 1977 Ecoscience (co-written with his mentor Paul Ehrlich) where the young misanthrope envisioned a future utopic world governed by a scientifically managed master-class saying:

“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime- sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable”.

The caveat: If Darwinian impulses mixed with irrational “animal spirits” were truly all that animated those systems which behaviorists wish to map and manipulate (aka: “nudge” with rewards, punishments), then a scientific priesthood would indeed be a viable and perhaps necessary way to organize the world.

Fortunately, reality is a bit more elegant and dignified than behaviorists wish to admit.

Why Computer Modellers Hate Metaphysics

On a closer inspection of history, we find countless instances where people shape their individual and group behavior around sets of ideas that transcend controllable material impulses. When this happens, those individuals or groups tend to resist adapting to environments created for them. This incredible phenomenon is witnessed empirically in the form of the American Revolution, Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings [sic], Civil Rights movements, and even some bold manifestations of anti-lockdown protests now underway around the world.

Among the most troublesome of those variables which upset computer models are: “Conscience”, “Truth”, “Intentions”, “Soul”, “Honor”, “God”, “Justice”, “Patriotism”, “Dignity”, and “Freedom”.

Whenever individuals shape their identities around these very real, though immaterial (aka: “metaphysical”) principles, they cannot be “nudged” towards pre-determined decisions that defy reason and morality. Adherence to these principles also tends to afford thinking people an important additional edge of creative insight necessary to cut through false explanatory narratives that attempt to hide lies behind the appearance of truth (aka: sophistry).

As witnessed on multiple occasions throughout history, such individuals who value the health of their souls over the intimidating (and extremely malleable) force of popular opinion, will often decide to sacrifice personal comfort and even their lives in order to defend those values which their minds and consciences deem important.

These rare, but invaluable outliers will often resist policies that threaten to undo their freedoms or undermine the basis of their society’s capacity to produce food, and energy for their children and grandchildren. What is worse, is that their example is often extremely contagious causing other members of the sheep class to believe that they too are human and endowed with unalienable rights which should be defended.

The Intentions Ordering World History

Perhaps, most “destructive” of all is that these outlier people tend to look for abstract things like “causes” in historical dynamics shaping the context of their present age, as well as their current geopolitical environment.

Whenever this type of thinking is done, carefully crafted narratives fed to the masses by an enlightened elite will often fail in their powers to persuade, since seekers after truth soon come to realize that IDEAS and intentions (aka: conspiracies) shape our past, present and future. When the dominating intentions shaping society’s trajectory is in conformity with Natural Law, humanity tends to improve, freedoms increase, culture matures and evil loses its hold. Inversely, when the intentions animating history are out of conformity with Natural Law, the opposite happens as societies lose their moral and material fitness to survive and slip ever more quickly into dark ages.

While sitting in a jail in Birmingham Alabama in 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described this reality eloquently when he said:

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust… One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”

From Plato’s organization of his Academy and efforts to shape a Philosopher King to beat the forces of the Persian Empire [sic], to Cicero’s efforts to save the Roman Republic, to Augustine’s battles to save the soul of Christianity all the way to our present age, conspiracies for the good and counter-conspiracies for evil have shaped history. If one were to begin an investigation into history without an understanding that ideas and intentions caused the trajectory of history, as is the standard practice among history professors dominant in todays world, then one would become incapable of understanding anything essential about one’s own reality.

It is irrelevant that behaviorists and other fascists wish their victims to believe that history just happens simply because random short-sighted impulses kinetically drive events on a timeline- the truth of my claim exists for any serious truth seeker to discover it for themselves.

Back to our Present Sad State of Affairs

Now we all know that Sunstein spent the following years working as Obama’s Regulatory Czar alongside an army of fellow behaviorists who took control of all levers of policy making as outlined by Time Magazine’s April 13, 2009 article ‘How Obama is Using the Science of Change’. As the fabric of western civilization, and traditional values of family, gender, and even macro economic concepts like “development” were degraded during this period, the military industrial complex had a field day as Sunstein’s wife Samantha Power worked closely with Susan Rice in the promotion of “humanitarian bombings” of small nations under Soros’ Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

After the Great Reset Agenda was announced in June 2020, Sunstein was recruited to head the propaganda wing of the World Health Organization known as the WHO Technical Advisory Group where his skills in mass behavior modification was put to use in order to counteract the dangerous spread of conspiracy theories that persuaded large chunks of the world population that COVID-19 was part of a larger conspiracy to undermine national sovereignty and impose world government.

The head of WHO described Sunstein’s mandate in the following terms:

“In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are using a range of tools to influence behavior: Information campaigns are one tool, but so are laws, regulations, guidelines and even fines…That’s why behavioral science is so important.”

Today, hundreds of Obama-era behaviorists have streamed back into influential positions of government under the new “scientifically managed”, evidence-based governance coming back to life under Biden promising to undo the dark days of President Trump.

Ideologues who have been on record calling for world government, the elimination of the sick and elderly (see Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emmanuel’s Why I Hope to Die At 75), and population control are streaming back into positions of influence.

If you think that anything they have done to return to power is unlawful, or antithetical to the principles of the Constitution, then these technocrats want you to know that you are a delusional conspiracy theorist and as such, represent a potential threat to yourself and the society of which you are but a part.

If you question World Health Organization narratives on COVID-19, or doubt the use of vaccines produced by organizations like Astra Zeneca due to their ties to eugenics organizations then you are a delusional conspiracy theorist.

If you doubt that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide or that implementing the Paris Climate accords may cause more damage to humanity than climate change ever could, then you must be a conspiracy theorist.

If you believe that the U.S. government just went through a regime change coordinated by something called “the deep state”, then you run the risk of being labelled a delusional threat to “the general welfare” deserving of the sort of treatment dolled out to any typical terrorist.

It appears that the many comforts we have taken for granted over the past 50-year drunken stupor called “globalization” are quickly coming to an end, and thankfully not one but two opposing intentions for what the new operating system will be are actively vying for control. This clash was witnessed in stark terms during the January 2021 Davos Summit, where Xi Jinping and Putin’s call for a new system of win-win cooperation, multipolarity and long-term development offset the unipolar zero-sum ideologues of the west seeking to undo the foundations of industrial civilization.

Either way you look at it, conspiracies for good and for evil do exist now, as they have from time immemorial. The only question is which intention do you want to devote your life towards?

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times Excerpt

Future historians may register it as the day when usually unflappable Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov decided he had had enough:

We are getting used to the fact that the European Union is trying to impose unilateral restrictions, illegitimate restrictions and we proceed from the assumption at this stage that the European Union is an unreliable partner.

Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, on an official visit to Moscow, had to take it on the chin.

Lavrov, always the perfect gentleman, added, “I hope that the strategic review that will take place soon will focus on the key interests of the European Union and that these talks will help to make our contacts more constructive.”

He was referring to the EU summit of heads of state and government at the European Council next month, where they will discuss Russia. Lavrov harbors no illusions the “unreliable partners” will behave like adults.

Yet something immensely intriguing can be found in Lavrov’s opening remarks in his meeting with Borrell: “The main problem we all face is the lack of normalcy in relations between Russia and the European Union – the two largest players in the Eurasian space. It is an unhealthy situation, which does not benefit anyone.”

The two largest players in the Eurasian space (italics mine). Let that sink in. We’ll be back to it in a moment.

As it stands, the EU seems irretrievably addicted to worsening the “unhealthy situation”. European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen memorably botched the Brussels vaccine game. Essentially, she sent Borrell to Moscow to ask for licensing rights for European firms to produce the Sputnik V vaccine – which will soon be approved by the EU.

And yet Eurocrats prefer to dabble in hysteria, promoting the antics of NATO asset and convicted fraudster Navalny – the Russian Guaido.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, under the cover of “strategic deterrence”, the head of the US STRATCOM, Admiral Charles Richard, casually let it slip that “there is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state.”

So the blame for the next – and final – war is already apportioned to the “destabilizing” behavior of Russia and China. It’s assumed they will be “losing” – and then, in a fit of rage, will go nuclear. The Pentagon will be no more than a victim; after all, claims Mr. STRATCOM, we are not “stuck in the Cold War”.

STRATCOM planners could do worse than read crack military analyst Andrei Martyanov, who for years has been on the forefront detailing how the new hypersonic paradigm – and not nuclear weapons – has changed the nature of warfare.

After a detailed technical discussion, Martyanov shows how “the United States simply has no good options currently. None. The less bad option, however, is to talk to Russians and not in terms of geopolitical BS and wet dreams that the United States, somehow, can convince Russia “to abandon” China – US has nothing, zero, to offer Russia to do so. But at least Russians and Americans may finally settle peacefully this “hegemony” BS between themselves and then convince China to finally sit as a Big Three at the table and finally decide how to run the world. This is the only chance for the US to stay relevant in the new world.”

The Golden Horde imprint

As much as the chances are negligible of the EU getting a grip on the “unhealthy situation” with Russia, there’s no evidence what Martyanov outlined will be contemplated by the US Deep State.

The path ahead seems ineluctable: perpetual sanctions; perpetual NATO expansion alongside Russia’s borders; the build up of a ring of hostile states around Russia; perpetual US interference on Russian internal affairs – complete with an army of fifth columnists; perpetual, full spectrum information war.

Lavrov is increasingly making it crystal clear that Moscow expects nothing else. Facts on the ground, though, will keep accumulating.

Nordstream 2 will be finished – sanctions or no sanctions – and will supply much needed natural gas to Germany and the EU. Convicted fraudster Navalny – 1% of real “popularity” in Russia – will remain in jail. Citizens across the EU will get Sputnik V. The Russia-China strategic partnership will continue to solidify.

[ . . . ]

Eurasia’s western peninsula

So after the end of the Cold War and the failure of Greater Europe, Moscow’s pivot to Asia to build Greater Eurasia could not but have an air of historical inevitability.

The logic is impeccable. The two geoeconomic hubs of Eurasia are Europe and East Asia. Moscow wants to connect them economically into a supercontinent: that’s where Greater Eurasia joins China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But then there’s the extra Russian dimension, as Diesen notes: the “transition away from the usual periphery of these centers of power and towards the center of a new regional construct”.

From a conservative perspective, emphasizes Diesen [Glenn Diesen, associate professor at University of Southeastern Norway, lecturer at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, and one of my distinguished interlocutors in Moscow], “the political economy of Greater Eurasia enables Russia to overcome its historical obsession with the West and establish an organic Russian path to modernization”.

That implies the development of strategic industries; connectivity corridors; financial instruments; infrastructure projects to connect European Russia with Siberia and Pacific Russia. All that under a new concept: an industrialized, conservative political economy.

The Russia-China strategic partnership happens to be active in all these three geoeconomic sectors: strategic industries/techno platforms, connectivity corridors and financial instruments.

That propels the discussion, once again, to the supreme categorical imperative: the confrontation between the Heartland and a maritime power.

The three great Eurasian powers, historically, were the Scythians, the Huns and the Mongols. The key reason for their fragmentation and decadence is that they were not able to reach – and control – Eurasia’s maritime borders.

The fourth great Eurasian power was the Russian empire – and its successor, the USSR. A key reason the USSR collapsed is because, once gain, it was not able to reach – and control – Eurasia’s maritime borders.

The US prevented it by applying a composite of Mackinder, Mahan and Spykman. The US strategy even became known as the Spykman-Kennan containment mechanism – all these “forward deployments” in the maritime periphery of Eurasia, in Western Europe, East Asia and the Middle East.

We all know by now how the overall US offshore strategy – as well as the primary reason for the US to enter both WWI and WWII – was to prevent the emergence of a Eurasian hegemon by all means necessary.

As for the US as hegemon, that would be crudely conceptualized – with requisite imperial arrogance – by Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski in 1997: “To prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together”. Good old Divide and Rule, applied via “system-dominance”.

It’s this system that is now tumbling down – much to the despair of the usual suspects. Diesen notes how, “in the past, pushing Russia into Asia would relegate Russia to economic obscurity and eliminate its status as a European power.” But now, with the center of geoeconomic gravity shifting to China and East Asia, it’s a whole new ball game.

The 24/7 US demonization of Russia-China, coupled with the “unhealthy situation” mentality of the EU minions, only helps to drive Russia closer and closer to China exactly at the juncture where the West’s two centuries-only world dominance, as Andre Gunder Frank conclusively proved, is coming to an end.

Diesen, perhaps too diplomatically, expects that “relations between Russia and the West will also ultimately change with the rise of Eurasia. The West’s hostile strategy to Russia is conditioned on the idea that Russia has nowhere else to go, and must accept whatever the West offers in terms of “partnership”. The rise of the East fundamentally alters Moscow’s relationship with the West by enabling Russia to diversify its partnerships”.

We may be fast approaching the point where Great Eurasia’s Russia will present Germany with a take it or leave it offer. Either we build the Heartland together, or we will build it with China – and you will be just a historical bystander. Of course there’s always the inter-galaxy distant possibility of a Berlin-Moscow-Beijing axis. Stranger things have happened.

Meanwhile, Diesen is confident that “the Eurasian land powers will eventually incorporate Europe and other states on the inner periphery of Eurasia. Political loyalties will incrementally shift as economic interests turn to the East, and Europe is gradually becoming the western peninsula of Greater Eurasia”.&

Talk about food for thought for the peninsular peddlers of the “unhealthy situation”.

by Rick Rozoff

North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg held a press conference today, February 15, at the military bloc’s headquarters in Brussels ahead of the February 17-18 meeting of NATO defense chiefs.

As has been its wont for the past decade or more, NATO arrogates to itself the right to address most every issue on the planet; these include, in Stoltenberg’s comments today, such non-military topics as climate change (“NATO should set the gold standard on reducing emissions”).

As Stoltenberg reiterated in his talk, NATO is a political as well as military bloc, and its politics inevitably align with those of the Pentagon, the U.S. State Department, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Union, the World Economic Forum – in short, the conglomerate that is the post-Cold War neoliberal global order.

Even the title of NATO’s current decade-long project, NATO 2030, is an echo of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. The globalist institutions work in tandem, march in lockstep; NATO’s unique role in the arrangement is providing the bombs, missiles, warships, strategic aircraft and submarines for the advancement of the joint project.

NATO’s current Strategic Concept, adopted in 2010, identifies – among many other issues it feels both qualified and entitled to respond to – piracy, cyber security, climate change and global warming, storms and flooding, rising sea levels, water shortages and drought, cross-border migration, diminished food production, natural disasters, humanitarian crises, dependence on “foreign sources of fuel energy” and supplies emanating from nations NATO desires to drive out of regional and world markets, carbon dioxide emissions, “factories or energy stations or transmission lines or ports” that require protection, the melting of the Arctic ice cap and, residually, international terrorism – though the latter more in Eastern Ukraine than in the Levant where NATO is aligned with active practitioners thereof.

Today the NATO chief advocated upgrading the Strategic Concept, presumably to include yet more pretexts for intervention around the world.

One doesn’t have to look far for a causus belli with such a wide-sweeping panorama of reasons for the world’s oldest and history’s largest military alliance to intervene with its customary array of fighter jets, cruise missiles, drones, depleted uranium ordnance and cluster bombs.

Stoltenberg’s comments came ahead of not only this week’s meeting of defense chiefs but also of this year’s NATO summit in Brussels.

He also alluded to several distinct NATO activities in this single sentence: “We will also address burden-sharing, and our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and will meet with our partners Finland, Sweden, as well as EU High Representative Borrell.”

NATO and the EU are two sides of the same multinational coin, sharing as they do military assets and commanders under Berlin Plus arrangements. Burden-sharing is NATO’s term for among other matters the stationing of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey.

NATO has been involved in the war in Afghanistan since 2001 (“While no Ally wants to stay in Afghanistan longer than necessary, we will not leave before the time is right”) and that in Iraq since 2004 (“I expect Ministers will agree to launch an expanded mission, with more Allied personnel training and advising in more security institutions across the country”). There is no indication that it plans to leave either nation; quite the contrary, NATO has bristled whenever the former Trump administration mooted the point of doing so.

A withdrawal of American and NATO troops from the Middle East and South Asia would be a “violation of Euro-Atlantic trust.” NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan (and in neighboring Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan), where it commanded a 55-nation force that dwarfs any other wartime coalition in history, was an obligation it assumed by the only activation to date of its Article 5 collective military assistance provision, which Stoltenberg also alluded to today (“Spending more together would demonstrate the strength of our commitment to Article 5, our promise to defend each other”).

His most revealing, and surely most alarming, comment was this: “We need to take a more global approach to deal with global challenges….China and Russia are at the forefront of an authoritarian pushback against rules-based international order.”

This is the sort of Manichean rhetoric not heard since the very depth of the Cold War or the World War II fight against the Axis powers.

An authoritarian threat to the international order would seem to demand not only a response, but the most drastic of responses. Notwithstanding NATO’s dubious characterization of the “threat” in question, the bloc is not hesitant to disclose some of the measures it’s resorted to in combating this unprecedented threat.

Stoltenberg mentioned, for example, “Allied deployments in our battlegroups in the eastern part of our Alliance, air policing, maritime deployments and exercises.” NATO multinational battlegroups have been stationed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (all bordering Russia) since 2014, with an equivalent now also in Romania; NATO warplanes have been in Lithuania since 2004 and Estonia since 2014.

He also listed the need to “adopt clearer and more measurable national resilience targets to ensure a minimum standard of shared resilience among Allies,” to address problems “stemming from foreign ownership and influence.” NATO interoperability mandates purchasing arms and equipment only from other NATO members and partners, alleged security concerns aside.

Indeed he added: “To preserve our technological edge, I will propose a NATO defence innovation initiative. To promote interoperability and boost transatlantic cooperation on defence innovation.”

To sustain the announced confrontation with Russia and China, Stoltenberg ended his address by reminding listeners that:

2021 will be the seventh consecutive year of increased defence spending.

Since 2014, European Allies and Canada have contributed a cumulative extra of 190 billion US dollars.

Nine Allies are expected to spend 2 % of GDP on defence.

Twenty-four Allies are expected to spend at least 20 % of investment in equipment.
Conflict with China and Russia doesn’t come cheap. Not in financial terms. Not in diplomatic terms. Nor in economic. Nor, if NATO’s strategy advances in the direction it’s headed toward, in human terms either.