Eurasia Notes #10 - Belt And Brace

War jaw is a distraction from reshaping politics and trade

Europe’s institutions, from the European Union to NATO are rooted in outdated social structures, which we ignore at our peril. We struggle in economic and perceptual rivalry with countries like Russia and China that we imagine are fossilized but may be more nimble because they have been through transformation more recently than we.

Brussels’ last human zoo was at the 1958 World Fair. Images are censored. This is from the early 1900s

Tbilisi, Dec 18, 2021

Ukraine hits American headlines when somebody lobs a missile into the separatist quarter causing Russian troops to bristle on their side of the border.

That soon echoes on the fringes of the media. MSNBC will craft another piece of circular logic — a worthy example of photojournalism, with colours and layout carefully chosen in the tradition of the CIA’s stable of Newsweek, Time, Reader’s Digest and National Geographic.

On the airwaves, conservative radio hosts like Hal Turner will foam with excitement and hard-to-verify nuggets: that Russia has closed the Arctic sea lanes and erected radar jamming equipment to reduce America’s warning time — I cannot find any confirmation but Turner’s wildest predictions could not turn the crazy dial any higher than Senator Roger Wicker (Rep, Mississippi) who suggested the U.S. should consider launching a nuclear strike to defend Ukraine.

There is no shortage of Western brinkmanship. In NATO, the Dr Strangeloves or more accurately the Brig Gen Jack D Rippers, continue to gallop to the brink. Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, U.S. Gen Tod Wolters, suggested adding Alliance troops to Bulgaria and Romania in response to Russia’s alleged escalation near Ukraine’s border.

The objective of some neocons is to succeed in joining Ukraine to NATO. If it then installed offensive missiles, the flight time to Moscow would be seven to 10 minutes, or for hypersonics, only five.

The asymmetry of this is obvious. It would be as if the Soviet Union had never withdrawn its missiles from Cuba but instead built some new islands, even closer to U.S. borders until Washington… … … capitulated?

“You can’t be serious, man. YOU CAN-NOT BE SERIOUS! That was on the line.”
— John McEnroe, 1981

Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko this week called it a red line. He said NATO has violated agreements by stationing significant combat capabilities and missile infrastructure on the territory of new Alliance members.

On the ground

That’s the talk. The reality in the field is that periodic lobbing of missiles continues from Ukrainian forces into the breakaway Russian-speaking Donetsk People's Republic (DPR). This happened last month also, and seems to be sporadic.

The real focus, on all sides is economic, not military:

1. War talk is a distraction from financial woes in Europe and U.S.

2. Russia and China build resilience in banking, energy and trade

3. Economic alliances sprout from Belarus to Kazakhstan, Pakistan to Afghanistan

4. Former Soviet satellites combine free markets and multipolar trade

5. European Union and Atlantic structures show their age

One: War talk is jaw

As trillionaire asset managers get more powerful, their push to control every activity becomes blatant: uniting health, social and banking records; fusion of corporation and government; one database, one point of contact; measurement and rationing of all inputs and outputs.

Surveillance and central control has a chilling effect on innovation. It kills initiative and smothers small business in layers of regulation, inspection and compliance. Whatever you call it — Green New Deal, Build Back Better or The Great Reset — it does not liberate potential but caps and freezes it. The lockdowns have shown how they accelerate the redistribution of wealth from the many to the few. By Aug 202I, the Institute for Policy Studies estimates billionaires had increased their wealth by two-thirds.

A series of banking crises were the excuse, either by accident or design. They kicked the can down the road, printing money to inflate asset prices and thus imagine solvency, while banks continued to gambol in the markets. With every bust, the central bankers stand next to the croupier and sweep the collateral off the baize.

See my articles, Bankers Prance to War and Slavery, parts one and two.

Since The Great Reset is not a reset but a push by the richest to own and regulate wealth through state-corporatist governance, they need a cover story for this tyranny and theft. The pandemic is one cover: the World Health Organization declared the pandemic in Mar 2020. Less than three months later, Prince Charles revealed The Great Reset.

If Event Covid is not enough to push the people into three-monthly jabs and vaccine passports, then war is an option. The rich have used it before. It was how they “opened” China in the 1830s. In 1908 the Carnegie Foundation discussed, “is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people?” They decided, no. “So then, in 1909, they raise the second question, and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war?” [1]

Two: Russia and China build resilience

The earthquake of 2021 was the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. This abandoned it to China and Russia's emerging trade zone. The latter’s Eurasian Customs Union with Kazakhstan and Belarus began in 2000 and has grown into the Eurasian Economic Union.

Western sanctions are not the origin of Russia’s attempt to copy the EU but they give it impetus. Russia is not self sufficient, despite its energy wealth, and economic integrity demands reliable trading partners.

It is more than a political construct. It contributes the rail element of the Belt and Road between western Europe and Russia. It is the hydrocarbon fuel hub with long-term contracts to supply oil to China.

Economics, not war, continues to be the focus, although sanctions link them in terms of strategic security. Threats to ban Russia from the SWIFT bank communication system have propelled Russia, India and China to talk — and Brazil is in there, too, after Putin invited Bolsonaro to visit Moscow.

For more see Eurasia Notes #8

Three: Building economic alliances

China is literally “building out” its influence, offering countries to become regional hubs and building logistics infrastructure in return for their participation in security and anti-terror initiatives.

One example is the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan highway, to be accompanied by agricultural training and technology and customs clearance. This was showcased in May 2021 at the second C+C5 meeting of Central Asian states in in Xi’an.

Politics and trade are entwined, as shown by China’s trilateral dialogues with Afghanistan and Pakistan, in which the latter becomes interlocutor and economic opportunities help direct the objective of higher living standards and stability.

For more see Eurasia Notes #7 and Eurasia Notes # 9

Four: Former satellites seek docks

Although Russia's attempt to build a Eurasian Customs Union has progressed slowly, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan have joined the founding members Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Some transition economies, freed from the Soviet Union, combine liberal markets and low taxes with existing logistic advantages.

Georgia is the only country in South Caucasus and Central Asia that can interface with global trade through a seaport, and this can “bolt on” opportunities in China’s economic orbit.

It can make use of free trade agreements with the EU and Turkey, and has already attracted Chinese companies to areas like Tbilisi and Kutaisi.

Five: Architecture shows its age

It would draw gasps in Brussels but the two preeminent institutions of that city, the European Union and NATO are showing their age.

Unless we are honest, we cannot solve this: The United States of Europe is a concept that took shape between the two world wars, and was forged by those who were the financiers and the architects of WW2 and the post-war years. See below for more.

The EU seeks to sublimate Westphalian states with a body that is just as sclerotic, just as statist and bureaucratic, functionary-minded, with a measure in one hand and a funnel in the other — combining every presumption and failing of the Enlightenment law giver.

It ignores everything that the networked age has taught us about the possibility for real-time democratic decision making and choice allocation. And the reason is simple: The European Union, like NATO, are populated with the aristocratic descendants of slave owners whose priority is to hold onto their wealth. Their thinking is characterized by out-dated, discredited, obsolete and unscientific shiboleths like superior blood, entitlement, eugenics: in short, a 500-year old colonial mentality.