by Claudiu Secara

A Geopolitical Earthquake on steroids.

One can actually speculate at this point as to how the shuffling of the cards in the deck is rearranging the new positions throughout the Trans Atlantic hemisphere. And when I say hemisphere, I mean from Vancouver to Vladivostok clockwise.

A new understanding is springing up between the US and Russia on the long-fought-over division of their spheres of influence. These two are emerging as the principal condominium supremo.

The losers? Israel. It is a big surprise but not entirely unexpected. Israel has been sacrificed and it is now neutralized. No more Greater Israel. Some new forms of accommodation with the Palestinians will follow. Meanwhile, Israel is on notice to scale back its military actions and its killings, and to release the long-suffering Palestinian prisoners. The rest is just hot-air rhetoric.

The next major tectonic split is over Europe. The Russians did not even accept to loosen their grip over the once Great Britain. The rupture is radical between the whole of Europe and the US. For now the EU will act as a standalone power. But for how long? In a not so distant future, it will merge with Russia. Tough negotiations ahead. How much they can still preserve of the old Europe is up for negotiation.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the US is taking everything from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego.

Now that explains why Putin did not defend Assad in Syria and that also explains some of the debacle in Romanian elections, or even the Transnistria losing its energy imports, for example. This new grand bargain has been long in the works but not to the knowledge of most of the characters on the big stage. Until the day when this is fully revealed, which is about now, some actors didn’t get the new memo and have been acting on the old instructions.

But this seems to be the new direction, like it or not.