MoA - No, NATO Will Not Get Ready For War

 I had a good laugh when I read this nonsense:

NATO to boost troops on high alert to over 300,000 -Stoltenberg

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO will boost the number of troops on high alert by more than sevenfold to over 300,000, its secretary-general said on Monday, as allies prepared to adopt a new strategy describing Moscow as a direct threat four months into the Ukraine war.
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Stoltenberg said NATO in future would have "well over 300,000" troops on high alert, compared to 40,000 troops that currently make up the alliance's existing quick reaction force, the NATO Response Force (NRF).

The new force model is meant to replace the NRF and "provide a larger pool of high readiness forces across domains, land, sea, air and cyber, which will be pre-assigned to specific plans for the defence of allies," a NATO official said.

NATO does not have 300,000 troops to put on high alert. The troops are controlled by member states and I see no willingness by any of them to shoulder the costs that a real high alert status would have. Units on high alert means that they fully manned with no one on vacation and with enough supplies ready to sustain weeks of battle. All of that costs money. Member states will instead designate existing units as 'high alert' ones and change nothing else in their usual equipment and training.

The statement is pure NATO public relations fluff. Stoltenberg did not even ask or inform member states before he made that announcement:

Stoltenberg’s announcement caught the top defense officials of many NATO members off guard, leading them to question which of their forces, if any, were being included in the 300,000 figure.

“Maybe it’s number magic?” said one senior European defense official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about the confusion.

Several senior European security policymakers said they were taken by surprise, with no advance notice of the plan to expand NATO’s quick-response force from its current size of 40,000 in light of the Ukraine war and Russia’s ongoing military threats to NATO territory.

This was one of the ideas that are typical for NATO bureaucrats who live in their own fantasy world. They are the reason why the French president Macron has called NATO 'brain dead'. And no, it is really nothing more than an idea:

A NATO official, speaking on the condition of anonymity per the alliance’s ground rules, said that country-specific numbers still needed pinning down. Even the 300,000 total is theoretical for the moment: “The concept has not been fully worked up yet,” the official said. “We will have to do more to build up the model before we can work out what national commitments can be.”

Even so, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht has already said her country will offer up 15,000 troops — a full division.

Lambrecht offered nothing. She will put the fake 'high alert' label on an existing division and change nothing else. That she did this is actually quite revealing. If Germany as one of the bigger NATO countries offers only one division size element where will the other 19 division size elements come from that are needed to make up a 300,000 strong force? Do they even exist?

NATO is just a shadow of its former self. Member states now have only a few troops that can be designated to work under NATO. Even those lack ammunition and depot weapons to make up for eventually losses. Some now even lack the industries to make more systems and grenades. They are also unable to make new ones that are fit for their purposes.

Neither of the big or small 'modern' weapons that were given to Ukraine has made a difference. The Javelins had empty batteries, the British NLAW anti-tank weapons were too weak to defeat Russian armor. Switchblade suicide drones are not controllable under Russian electronic warfare conditions. Stinger missiles have heat sensors that are too slow to acquire a fast moving target. The 'light' howitzer M-777 are too light for real battle conditions and tend to break.

NATO countries have put too much money into their air forces which will be unable to break through Russia's excellent air defenses. NATO's air defense is in contrast too weak. Just ask the Saudis how well their Patriot systems worked against Yemeni drones. Those systems can do nothing against Russia's medium range missiles. System like Iskander and Kalibr, of which Russia has many, are hard to find in NATO armies.

What is the last time NATO units have trained under electronic warfare conditions?

The New York Times interviewed nearly two dozen Ukrainian soldiers over the last several weeks who all pointed to similar problems: Russians jammed their radios constantly; they didn’t have enough communication gear; and they often had difficulty getting through to a commander to call for artillery support. Talking to units stationed nearby was also an issue, they said, which has led to Ukrainian forces occasionally firing on one another.
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The General said that his two off-the-shelf radios were jammed constantly.

“They would use the stronger signal on the same frequency,” he said.

Troops in more specialized units have been issued U.S.-supplied encrypted radios and can speak to one another unhindered, one soldier said, but the radio’s high output means the Russians can find the locations they are broadcasting from.

“This is why we stopped communicating and only communicated the necessary minimum, such as if an evacuation was needed or an urgent help,” the soldier, who goes by the name Raccoon, added.

Materially NATO is not ready to fight. Politically it is also not ready.

John Helmer quotes excerpts from an interview with the former chief of staff of the Polish army, Miecyslaw Gocul:

You complain, and [NATO Secretary-General] Jens Stoltenberg has announced: “The NATO summit in Madrid will be groundbreaking. With a new strategic concept, we will make a fundamental change in NATO’s deterrence and defense.”

Before the NATO summit in Warsaw [in 2016]), at the Pact’s military committee, I asked Stoltenberg: what will be the guarantees for the eastern flank? He replied with a question: what else does Poland expect? I said straight out: security and prosperity, which is what the rest of us sitting at the table want.”

“Just like then, I hear the same slogans today, such as ‘do more with less’. There are also other fine-sounding calls, but these are only political slogans calculated for a positive public reaction and minimizing costs. They do not really bring about any political and military solutions.
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Now the tension between Russia and Lithuania is growing, because the sanctions are blocking the Kaliningrad Oblast more and more. Could this be a hotspot?

If Putin wanted to start the war further and decided to cut a corridor through the Baltics to the Kaliningrad District at the Suwałki Gap, what forces could stop him? Could the forces of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland stop Putin? Not at all. Putin will not be stopped by the Americans, who are present on the eastern flank only in small numbers. I repeat, Russia talks and calculates only with strong countries and organizations. And NATO in our region is weak.

It indeed is. And except for few east European hot heads, everyone hopes that it will stay so. None of the bigger NATO member countries wants a large fight with Russia. That includes the United States. Why then prepare for it? Why buy weapons that will never be used?

On the other side Russia does not want anything from Europe. It does not have an ideology that seeks expansion. It wants to be left alone.

NATO is a cold war relict that was kept alive to give the U.S. some political advantages. Its real purpose has never changed: keep Germany down, Russia out and the U.S. in Europe. That will only change when western Europe starts to rebel against it.

Unfortunately the chances for that are low.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/06/no-nato-will-not-get-ready-for-war.html#more

You’re either with us or you’re a “systemic challenge” | The Vineyard of the Saker

 After all we’re deep into the metaverse spectrum, where things are the opposite of what they seem.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Fast but not furious, the Global South is revving up. The key takeaway of the BRICS+ summit in Beijing,  held in sharp contrast with the G7 in the Bavarian Alps, is that both West Asia’s Iran and South America’s Argentina officially applied for BRICS membership.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has highlighted how BRICS has “a very creative mechanism with broad aspects”. Tehran – a close partner of both Beijing and Moscow – already had “a series of consultations” about the application: the Iranians are sure that will “add value” to the expanded BRICS.

Talk about China, Russia and Iran being sooooo isolated. Well, after all we’re deep into the metaverse spectrum, where things are the opposite of what they seem.

Moscow’s obstinacy in not following Washington’s Plan A to start a pan-European war is rattling Atlanticist nerves to the core. So right after the G7 summit significantly held at a former Nazi sanatorium, enter NATO’s, in full warmongering regalia.

So welcome to an atrocity exhibition featuring total demonization of Russia, defined as the ultimate “direct threat”; the upgrading of Eastern Europe into “a fort”; a torrent of tears shed about the Russia-China strategic partnership; and as an extra bonus, the branding of China as a “systemic challenge”.

There you go: for the NATO/G7 combo, the leaders of the emerging multipolar world as well as the vast swathes of the Global South that want to join in, are a “systemic challenge”.

Turkiye under the Sultan of Swing – Global South in spirit, tightrope walker in practice – got literally everything it wanted to magnanimously allow Sweden and Finland to clear their paths on the way of being absorbed by NATO.

Bets can be made on what kind of shenanigans NATO navies will come up with in the Baltics against the Russian Baltic Fleet, to be followed by assorted business cards distributed by Mr. Khinzal, Mr. Zircon, Mr. Onyx and Mr. Kalibr, capable of course of annihilating any NATO permutation, including “decision centers”.

So it came as a sort of perverse comic relief when Roscosmos released a set of quite entertaining satellite images pinpointing the coordinates of those “decision centers”.

The “leaders” of NATO and the G7 seem to enjoy performing a brand of lousy cop/clownish cop routine. The NATO summit told coke comedian Elensky (remember, the letter “Z” is verboten) that the Russian combined arms police operation – or war – must be “resolved” militarily. So NATO will continue to help Kiev to fight till the last Ukrainian cannon fodder.

In parallel, at the G7, German Chancellor Scholz was asked to specify what “security guarantees” would be provided to what’s left of Ukraine after the war. Response from the grinning Chancellor: “Yes … I could” (specify). And then he trailed off.

Illiberal Western liberalism

Over 4 months after the start of Operation Z, zombified Western public opinion completely forgot – or willfully ignores – that Moscow spent the last stretch of 2021 demanding a serious discussion on legally binding security guarantees from Washington, with an emphasis on no more NATO eastward expansion and a return to the 1997 status quo.

Diplomacy did fail, as Washington emitted a non-response response. President Putin had stressed the follow-up would be a “military technical” response (that turned out to be Operation Z) even as the Americans warned that would trigger massive sanctions.

Contrary to Divide and Rule wishful thinking, what happened after February 24 only solidified the synergistic Russia-China strategic partnership – and their expanded circle, especially in the context of BRICS and the SCO. As Sergey Karaganov, head of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy noted earlier this year, “China is our strategic cushion (…) We know that in any difficult situation, we can lean on it for military, political and economic support.”

That was outlined in detail for all the Global South to see by the landmark February 4th joint statement for Cooperation Entering a New Era – complete with the accelerated integration of BRI and the EAEU in tandem with military intelligence harmonization under the SCO (including new full member Iran), key foundation stones of multipolarism.

Now compare it with the wet dreams of the Council on Foreign Relations or assorted ravings by armchair strategic “experts” of “the top national security think tank in the world” whose military experience is limited to negotiating a can of beer.

Makes one yearn for those serious analytic days when the late, great Andre Gunder Frank penned ” a paper on the paper tiger” , examining American power at the crossroads of paper dollar and the Pentagon.

The Brits, with better imperial education standards, at least seem to understand, halfway, how Xi Jinping “has embraced a variant of integral nationalism not unlike those that emerged in interwar Europe”, while Putin “skillfully deployed Leninist methods to resurrect an enfeebled Russia as a global power.”

Yet the notion that “ideas and projects originating in the illiberal West continue to shape global politics” is nonsense, as Xi in fact is inspired by Mao as much as Putin is inspired by several Eurasianist theoreticians. What’s relevant is that in the process of the West plunging into a geopolitical abyss, “Western liberalism has itself become illiberal.”

Much worse: it actually became totalitarian.

Holding the Global South hostage

The G7 is essentially offering to most of the Global South a toxic cocktail of massive inflation, rising prices and uncontrolled dollarized debt.

Fabio Vighi has brilliantly outlined how “the purpose of the Ukrainian emergency is to keep the money printer switched on while blaming Putin for worldwide economic downturn. The war serves the opposite aim of what we are told: not to defend Ukraine but to prolong the conflict and nourish inflation in a bid to defuse cataclysmic risk in the debt market, which would spread like wildfire across the whole financial sector.”

And if it can get worse, it will. At the Bavarian Alps, the G7 promised to find “ways to limit the price of Russian oil and gas”: if that doesn’t work according to “market methods”, then “means will be imposed by force”.

A G7 “indulgence” – neo-medievalism in action – would only be possible if a prospective buyer of Russian energy agrees to strike a deal on the price with G7 representatives.

What this means in practice is that the G7 arguably will be creating a new body to “regulate” the price of oil and gas, subordinated to Washington’s whims: for all practical purposes, a major twist of the post-1945 system.

The whole planet, especially the Global South, would be held hostage.

Meanwhile, in real life, Gazprom is on a roll, making as much money from gas exports to the EU as it did in 2021, even though it’s shipping much smaller volumes.

About the only thing this German analyst gets right is that were Gazprom forced to cut off supplies for good, that would represent “the implosion of an economic model that is over-reliant on industrial exports, and therefore on imports of cheap fossil fuels. Industry is responsible for 36% of Germany’s gas use.”

Think, for instance, BASF forced to halt production at the world’s biggest chemicals plant in Ludwigshafen. Or Shell’s CEO stressing it’s absolutely impossible to replace Russian gas supplied to the EU via pipelines with (American) LNG.

This coming implosion is exactly what Washington neocon/neoliberalcon circles want – removing a powerful (Western) economic competitor from the world trading stage. What’s truly astonishing is that Team Scholz can’t even see it coming.

Virtually no one remembers what happened a year ago when the G7 struck a pose of trying to help the Global South. That was branded as Build Back Better World (B3W). “Promising projects” were identified in Senegal and Ghana, there were “visits” to Ecuador, Panama and Colombia. The Crash Test Dummy administration was offering “the full range” of US financial tools: equity stakes, loan guarantees, political insurance, grants, technical expertise on climate, digital technology and gender equality.

The Global South was not impressed. Most of it had already joined BRI. B3W went down with a whimper.

Now the EU is promoting its new “infrastructure” project for the Global South, branded as Global Gateway, officially presented by European Commission (EC) Fuhrer Ursula von der Leyen and – surprise! – coordinated with the floundering B3W. That’s the Western “response” to BRI, demonized as – what else – “a debt trap”.

Global Gateway in theory should be spending 300 billion euros in 5 years; the EC will come up with only 18 billion from the EU budget (that is, financed by EU taxpayers), with the intention of amassing 135 billion euros in private investment. No Eurocrat has been able to explain the gap between the announced 300 billion and the wishful thinking 135 billion.

In parallel, the EC is doubling down on their floundering Green Energy agenda – blaming, what else, gas and coal. EU climate honcho Frans Timmermans has uttered an absolute pearl: “Had we had the green deal five years earlier, we would not be in this position because then we would have less dependency on fossil fuels and natural gas.”

Well, in real life the EU remains stubbornly on the road to become a fully de-industrialized wasteland by 2030. Inefficient solar or wind-based Green Energy is incapable of offering stable, reliable power. No wonder vast swathes of the EU are now Back to Coal.

The right kind of swing

It’s a tough call to establish who’s The Lousiest in the NATO/G7 cop routine. Or the most predictable. This is what I published about the NATO summit . Not now: in 2014, eight years ago. The same old demonization, over and over again.

And once again, if it can get worse, predictably it will. Think of what’s left of Ukraine – mostly eastern Galicia – being annexed to the Polish wet dream: the revamped Intermarium, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, now dubbed as a bland “Three Seas Initiative” (with the added Adriatic) and comprising 12 nation-states.

What that implies long-term is a EU breakdown from within. Opportunist Warsaw just profits financially from the Brussels system’s largesse while holding its own hegemonic designs. Most of the “Three Seas” will end up exiting the EU. Guess who will guarantee their “defense”: Washington, via NATO. What else is new? The revamped Intermarium concept goes back all the way to the late Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski.

So Poland dreams of becoming the Intermarium leader, seconded by the Three Baltic Midgets, enlarged Scandinavia, plus Bulgaria and Romania. Their aim is straight from Comedy Central: reducing Russia into “pariah state” status – and then the whole enchilada: regime change, Putin out, balkanization of the Russian Federation.

Britain, that inconsequential island, still invested in teaching Empire to the American upstarts, will love it. Germany-France-Italy much less. Lost in the wilderness Euro-analysts dream of a European Quad (Spain added), replicating the Indo-Pacific scam, but in the end it will all depend which way Berlin swings.

And then there’s that unpredictable Global South stalwart led by the Sultan of Swing: freshly rebranded Turkiye. Soft neo-Ottomanism seems to be on a roll, still expanding its tentacles from the Balkans and Libya to Syria and Central Asia. Evoking the golden age of the Sublime Porte, Istanbul is the only serious mediator between Moscow and Kiev. And it’s carefully micromanaging the evolving process of Eurasia integration.

The Americans were on the verge of regime-changing the Sultan. Now they have been forced to listen to him. Talk about a serious geopolitical lesson to the whole Global South: it don’t mean a “systemic challenge” thing if you’ve got the right kind of swing.

https://thesaker.is/youre-either-with-us-or-youre-a-systemic-challenge/

Paradoxically, the Soviet Union, the ultimate symbol of communism, was created by international bankers | The Vineyard of the Saker

 By Guilherme Wilbert for the Saker Blog

One of the great post-World War II myths, which is repeated like a mantra by starched college students with a syndrome of embracing all the causes of the world, is that the Soviet Union was built on the strength of the people and remained so during the years when it was a de facto country, but this could not be further from reality. Nothing could be further from the truth than that.  What happens is that the Soviet Union was a great political-economic power project of a small international clan that had a certain fondness for the idea of dominating a country, especially one that was in tatters like Tsarist Russia.

It all begins, really, with Jacob Schiff, an international banker born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1847 and who migrated to the United States when the American Civil War ended. There he joined the Kuhn & Loeb Co. and gradually worked his way into what would be known as the “Schiff Era.  He became a director of the City Bank of New York, Wells Fargo and more. He was an ace with business.

In 1904 in New York when Jacob Schiff’s firm Kuhn & Loeb Company raises funds to make a loan to Japan, which would be used in the Russo-Japanese War against Tsarist Russia. Jacob did not support Tsarist Russia, in fact, all the people I will mention here did not even support the idea of Russia continuing along the lines of the Romanov Family.

So Schiff met with Takahashi Korekiyo, who was the Finance Minister of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, and this was the bridge for his $200 million (equivalent to billions in 2016!) loan. He really spared no effort to finance the war that would be the beginning of the Russian downfall. It was simply half of what Japan had to use for the war. I mean, Japan was not doing well at that time either. But what could have been the reason for such generosity from Schiff? Well, not much is understood to this day, but some historians believe that because he dealt a lot with anti-Semitism at the time, he saw this loan as a kind of response to what Russia had been doing to the Jews in the Kishinev Pogrom, which today is Chișinău, Moldova. As well as thinking that gold at that time wasn’t worth much compared to the Japanese national effort to win a war.

Well, Japan won the war, the Treaty of Portsmouth is signed, and it is believed that it all happened thanks to the generous loan, since it was made possible for the country to buy more weapons with the borrowed money, and Schiff made his name. His and the Jewish people’s.

This loan had serious international consequences, since it became evident at that time how powerful the Jewish people (at least the bankers) were, and then, the 1903 writing, called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, came to light, showing that there was not only nonsense written in this book, but much that really happened and was witnessed at that time.

Jacob Schiff received from Japan the Order of the Sacred Treasure; and in 1907, the Order of the Rising Sun, the Gold and Silver Star, the second highest of the eight classes of that Order. Schiff was the first foreigner to receive the Order personally from Emperor Meiji at the Imperial Palace. Finally, the Japanese knew how to thank the German who helped them at that moment.

At this moment we are witnessing the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War through a loan making it possible to buy more weapons to fight the Russians, here, it is 1905.
September 5, 1905 to be exact.

And then the First World War breaks out, on July 28, 1914. Gavrillo Princip had killed the Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Francis Ferdinand. The Austro-Hungarian Empire declares war against Serbia, Princip’s home country, and then, everything really begins. Remember: where there is war, there is money, and if there is money, there are bankers.

Jacob Schiff, knowing that the First World War had started, asked the President of the United States at the time, Woodrow Wilson, to try to stop the war as soon as possible, since his family was still in Germany, and would actively participate in the First World War. And so, another loan.

Schiff ended up lending money to France for “humanitarian causes”.

The banker made sure that none of his money went to Imperial Russia, the country did not even receive any help from the international banker during the Tsarist era. And it is obvious that the country was already in a bad way, in fact, the Russian people’s feeling towards the Tsar was not the best, but nobody had even considered assassinating what would be the last Emperor of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, Nicholas II.

During the Romanov Empire in Russia, most of the Bolsheviks (who would be known as such years after the Tsarist regime fell) were exiled from Russia for criminal-political reasons and ended up going to countries satellite to Russia. Names like Kaganovich, Yagoda, Beria, Kamenev, Stalin, Yezhov, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Sverdlov, Rykov, Zinoviev, Molotov, Emakov, and more, who would come to help consolidate what would be known as the Soviet Union were in exile for crimes they committed in Nicholas II’s Russia.

It was 1918, the First War was over, and along with it came the year of the assassination of the Romanov Family, a dark year for Russia, which would lose its last emperor to the Bolshevik faction that would take power a few years later.

Well, it was not only Jacob Schiff who sympathized with the idea of ending Czarist Russia, Swedish air began to blow inside New York and Olof Aschberg, who had allegedly made a loan to Germany during World War I, which was bad for his image and forced him to change the name of his bank, which would be known as Svensk Ekonomiebolaget, also showed interest in overthrowing the Czar and setting up a new Russia, along Communist lines.

Olof was already a member of the Communist Party of Sweden and met, during a meeting at the Young Socialist Congress of Sweden in 1917, Willi Münzenberg, who was part of the Communist Party of Germany and advocated a reconstruction of Russia after the fall of the Tsar.

So there you have a sneaky history of the biggest and first communist empire after the fall of Romanov dynasty. Many are the sources.

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References: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312916740_Jewish_Bankers_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union_1900-1940_The_Case_of_Kuhn_Loeb_and_Company

Guilherme Wilbert is a Brazilian law graduate interested in geopolitics and international law.

https://thesaker.is/paradoxically-the-soviet-union-the-ultimate-symbol-of-communism-was-created-by-international-bankers/

The War Spreads to Asia - Vox Popoli

NATO is attempting to bring Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand into its underpowered alliance:

NATO should stop looking for “imaginary enemies” in the Asia-Pacific and never be allowed to set up a version of the bloc in the region, China’s envoy to the UN has said.

“We firmly oppose certain elements clamoring for NATO’s involvement in the Asia-Pacific, or an Asia-Pacific version of NATO on the back of military alliances,” Zhang Jun said at a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday.

The diplomat’s statement came after Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand were invited for the first time to attend the annual NATO summit, which opened on Tuesday in Madrid, Spain.

John Kirby, a senior White House security official, said last week that the participation of the four nations was not an attempt to forge “an Asian version of NATO,” but “an indication of the linkage of global security between Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”

Translation: they’re not attempting to forge an Asian version of NATO, they’re going to bring their Asian satrapies into NATO.

This is complete nonsense. All four states don’t even begin to counterbalance the military and economic weight of China. But it could be worse; they could have invited the island of Taiwan to join NATO, although I suppose we can’t entirely rule out the possibility that they’ll be dumb enough to do that too.

And China is clearly not happy with NATO’s actions.

As a product of the Cold War and the world’s largest military alliance, NATO has long clung to the outdated security concept and become a tool for certain country to maintain hegemony. NATO’s so-called new Strategic Concept is just “old wine in a new bottle”. It still has not changed the Cold War mentality of creating imaginary enemies and bloc confrontation. We solemnly urge NATO to immediately stop spreading false and provocative statements against China. What NATO should do is to give up the Cold War mentality, zero-sum game mindset and the practice of making enemies, and stop seeking to disrupt Asia and the whole world after it has disrupted Europe.

Zhao Lijian, Foreign Ministry, 28 June 2022

NATO directly caused and continuously strengthened Europe’s security dilemma and the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a manifestation of its disastrous consequences. Facts have proven that the extreme pursuit of absolute security under the name of collective defense will eventually lead to confrontation between camps. In other words, NATO is by no means an antidote to Europe’s security crisis, but poison. If anyone spreads such poison to East Asia, which is called “the oasis of world peace and development,” the behavior is insidious and appalling…  In any case, NATO cannot change the nature of being a military and political bloc. Its very existence poses a threat to world peace and stability.

Asia-Pacific countries should not stand under ‘dangerous wall’ of NATO, Global Times, 29 June 2022

The most significant thing about NATO’s expansion to the South Pacific, other than the fact that the US military is now observably preparing for direct military conflict with both Russia and China at the same time, is that the Philippines were not invited, presumably to avoid the humiliation of having the invitation declined. This suggests that the Philippines are continuing to exit the US orbit and will side with China once the war actually comes to the Pacific.

At the invitation of the Philippine government, Special Representative of President Xi Jinping and Vice President Wang Qishan will lead a delegation to attend the inauguration ceremony of President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos on June 30 in Manila, the Philippines.

CCTV: Could you share the arrangements for Vice President Wang Qishan’s trip to the Philippines and China’s expectation for the trip?

Zhao Lijian: China and the Philippines are close neighbors facing each other across the sea and important cooperation partners. China always sees the Philippines as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy. With the concerted efforts of both sides, China-Philippines relations have been growing with a sound momentum, delivering tangible benefits to both peoples. Not long ago, President Xi Jinping had a phone conversation with President-elect Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos. They reached important common understandings on staying committed to good-neighborliness and friendship and pursuing shared development, which pointed the way forward for bilateral relations.

Vice President Wang Qishan’s upcoming trip to the Philippines as President Xi Jinping’s Special Representative for President Marcos’ inauguration ceremony fully demonstrates the great importance China attaches to the Philippines and bilateral relations. We believe this trip will help both sides to carry forward our friendship, cement mutual trust, expand cooperation, open up broader prospects for bilateral relations, and bring more benefits to both countries and peoples.

So, does anyone still seriously believe all this is just about Ukraine?

DISCUSS ON SG

 https://voxday.net/2022/06/29/the-war-spreads-to-asia/ 

Iron Curtain 2.0 - Vox Popoli

 The USA is establishing a military base in Poland and NATO is increasing its high-alert troops from 30,000 to 400,000. It’s probably nothing, right?

America will deploy thousands more troops to Europe along with fighters, air defences and ships, Joe Biden announced today, as NATO reinforces its eastern flank in a new Iron Curtain to protect the continent from Russia.

Joe Biden, speaking at a NATO summit in Madrid today, announced the creation of a new base for the US Fifth Army Corps in Poland – the first permanent American base in the country – along with 3,000 extra soldiers to be sent to Romania and ‘enhanced’ troop rotations for the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Two more squadrons of F-35 fighters will be deployed to the UK, Biden added, along with additional air defence systems for Germany and Italy, and another two destroyers which will be stationed at Rota Naval Station in Spain, bringing the total to six.

Meanwhile NATO formally invited Finland and Sweden to join the alliance after Turkey dropped its opposition, and announced it will boost troops on its eastern flank by almost 4,000 compared to March this year.

It comes after alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg yesterday announced NATO’s high-alert force – troops which are not deployed but can be quickly sent into battle in the event of war – is being increased from 40,000 to 300,000.

The question is: how are these 400,000 troops going to be armed when NATO is already running out of ammunition after sending its existing stocks to the Ukrainian military? Too bad the greater part of the manufacturing capabilities of the Arsenal of Democracy was moved to Mexico and China, while the quality of the labor force has declined precipitously since 1940.

Anyhow, this puts the ball squarely in the Sino-Russian court. Even though time is on their side, it might make more sense to get things rolling before NATO actually finishes its mobilization. My guess is that Russia would prefer to let China make the next move and open up the second front before it strikes NATO directly, and it’s not in China’s interest to let Russia get too weakened before it gets involved.

DISCUSS ON SG

https://voxday.net/2022/06/29/iron-curtain-2-0/

Russia Humbles Experts Who Forgot the Economy Is Global | RealClearMarkets - By John Tamny

 It’s too easily forgotten by the deep and not-so-deep in thought that production is all about the getting. Goods and services always flow. Everywhere. Without regard to embargoes and sanctions.

To be clear, if you’re producing you’re getting.

In the 19^th century, England was at war with seemingly every European power of that time at varying times, but the British people still consumed European plenty as though it had all been produced in Manchester. Really, what serious non-British producer in Europe or elsewhere was going to let wars or political decrees of the sanction kind deter profitable engagement with well-heeled customers? The very notion….

Yet this very notion continues to permeate policy and economic commentary. It’s possible it’s something in the water at the New York Times, or just the people Bret Stephens is bumping into, but his commentary about Russia and Ukraine before the invasion indicated backsliding on the thought processes of this always excellent-to-read writer, and normally clear thinker.

Stephens was of the view that the U.S. could utilize banks to cut off the flow of dollars to Russia (yes, Russia is dollarized to some degree as most backwards countries are), but might be careful in doing so. Why? Because Russia could cut off flow of its energy supplies to Europe. And winter was coming….No, none of this was going to happen. The economy is global.

Let’s talk real stuff. For one, there was no way the Russians were going to sit on their energy. Not only would doing so be the same as giving up market share, but doing so would bankrupt Russia the country along with many businesses inside. The oil and gas were going to flow, period. And when market goods flow, there’s no accounting for their final destination. Put in an easily understandable way, while the U.S. has an embargo against Iran, iPhones and other U.S. plenty are still all over Iran. Get it?

It seems Stephens’s New York Times is now getting it. In a report last week, Victoria Kim, Clifford Krauss and Anton Troainovksi wrote that “When the United States and European Union moved to curtail purchases of Russian fossil fuels this year, they hoped it would help make the Russian invasion so painful for Moscow that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin would be forced to abandon it.” From there they acknowledged that such a scenario was “remote at best,” and that other countries in the closed economy that is the world economy like China and India had “swooped in to buy roughly the same volume of Russian oil that would have gone to the West.” You think? Do you think some of what’s sold to “China” and “India” hasn’t already found its way to the Europe that Putin was allegedly going to starve of oil and gas? Figure that during WWI the U.S. embargoed Germany only for U.S. trade with Scandinavian countries to soar. Coincidence? Think again. Trade with Germany never stopped if you seek a clarity.

Seriously, how did serious people gloss over the economics of this so blithely? And it wasn’t just Stephens. His former colleagues at the Wall Street Journal claimed that European countries were now going to suffer their mindless pursuit of green energy with Russia’s invasion in full swing. Oh yes, that’s right. Market actors were just going to kiss off one of the world’s biggest zones of prosperity? More realistically, markets always work around the decrees of political types.

Regarding dollars, it’s no different. As is always the case, most dollars are circulating outside the U.S. as is. Put another way, the global economy mocks troglodytic notions of “money supply” and Gresham’s Law. In the global economy, producers require reasonable measures of value to transact, and as a consequence dollars circulate the globe as a natural market phenomenon. Stephens missed this in presuming force could somehow starve the Russians of what is the world’s currency. Markets always have their say.

Still, it speaks to a chance for the great Stephens to use his important perch at the Times to reject the latest laugh line about the Fed “raising rates” to stop inflation. He’s needlessly jumped on that bandwagon, and it’s beneath his world-focused genius. Indeed, if we ignore that inflation is currency devaluation that can be corrected by well-timed comments from Treasury as is, we can’t ignore that what the Fed vainly presumes to take away via “rate hikes” will be made up for by global credit inflows.

As always, there’s only one economy when it comes to production. And money always finds the productive. The experts in foreign policy will seemingly never learn what experts at the Fed apparently haven’t learned themselves.

John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, Vice President at FreedomWorks, a senior fellow at the Market Institute, and a senior economic adviser to Applied Finance Advisors (www.appliedfinance.com). His most recent book is When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason. 

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2022/06/28/russia_humbles_experts_who_forgot_the_economy_is_global_839389.html

Behind the Tin Curtain: BRICS+ vs NATO/G7, by Pepe Escobar - The Unz Review

 

Once upon a time, there existed an Iron Curtain which divided the continent of Europe. Coined by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the term was in reference to the then-Soviet Union’s efforts to create a physical and ideological boundary with the west. The latter, for its part, pursued a policy of containment against the spread and influence of communism.

Fast forward to the contemporary era of techno-feudalism, and there now exists what should be called a Tin Curtain, fabricated by the fearful, clueless, collective west, via G7 and NATO: this time, to essentially contain the integration of the Global South.

BRICS against G7

The most recent and significant example of this integration has been the coming out of BRICS+ at last week’s online summit hosted by Beijing. This went far beyond establishing the lineaments of a ‘new G8,’ let alone an alternative to the G7.

Just look at the interlocutors of the five historical BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa): we find a microcosm of the Global South, encompassing Southeast Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, Africa and South America – truly putting the “Global” in the Global South.

Revealingly, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s clear messages during the Beijing summit, in sharp contrast to G7 propaganda, were actually addressed to the whole Global South:

• Russia will fulfill its obligations to supply energy and fertilizers.
• Russia expects a good grain harvest – and to supply up to 50 million tons to world markets.
• Russia will ensure passage of grain ships into international waters even as Kiev mined Ukrainian ports.
• The negative situation on Ukrainian grain is artificially inflated.
• The sharp increase in inflation around the world is the result of the irresponsibility of G7 countries, not Operation Z in Ukraine.
• The imbalance of world relations has been brewing for a long time and has become an inevitable result of the erosion of international law.

An alternative system

Putin also directly addressed one of the key themes that the BRICS have been discussing in depth since the 2000s — the design and implementation of an international reserve currency.

“The Russian Financial Messaging System is open for connection with banks of the BRICS countries.”

“The Russian MIR payment system is expanding its presence. We are exploring the possibility of creating an international reserve currency based on the basket of BRICS currencies,” the Russian leader said.

This is inevitable after the hysterical western sanctions post-Operation Z; the total de-dollarization imposed upon Moscow; and increasing trade between BRICS nations. For instance, by 2030, a quarter of the planet’s oil demand will come from China and India, with Russia as the major supplier.

The “RIC” in BRICS simply cannot risk being locked out of a G7-dominated financial system. Even tightrope-walking India is starting to catch the drift.

Who speaks for the ‘international community?’

At its current stage, BRICS represent 40 percent of world population, 25 percent of the global economy, 18 percent of world trade, and contribute over 50 percent for world economic growth. All indicators are on the way up.

Sergey Storchak, CEO of Russian bank VEG, framed it quite diplomatically: “If the voices of emerging markets are not being heard in the coming years, we need to think very seriously about setting up a parallel regional system, or maybe a global system.”

A “parallel regional system” is already being actively discussed between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China, coordinated by Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics Sergey Glazyev, who has recently authored a stunning manifesto amplifying his ideas about world economic sovereignty.

Developing the ‘developing world’

What happens in the trans-Eurasian financial front will proceed in parallel with a so far little known Chinese development strategy: the Global Development Initiative (GDI), announced by President Xi Jinping at the UN General Assembly last year.

GDI can be seen as a support mechanism of the overarching strategy – which remains the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), consisting of economic corridors interlinking Eurasia all the way to its western peninsula, Europe.

At the High-level Dialogue on Global Development, part of the BRICS summit, the Global South learned a little more about the GDI, an organization set up in 2015.

In a nutshell, the GDI aims to turbo-charge international development cooperation by supplementing financing to a plethora of bodies, for instance the South-South Cooperation Fund, the International Development Association (IDA), the Asian Development Fund (ADF), and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Priorities include “poverty reduction, food security, COVID-19 response and vaccines,” industrialization, and digital infrastructure. Subsequently, a Friends of the GDI group was established in early 2022 and has already attracted over 50 nations.

BRI and GDI should be advancing in tandem, even as Xi himself made it clear during the BRICS summit that “some countries are politicizing and marginalizing the developmental agenda by building up walls and slapping crippling sanctions on others.”

Then again, sustainable development is not exactly the G7’s cup of tea, much less NATO’s.

Seven against the world

The avowed top aim of the G7 summit in Schloss Elmau at the Bavarian Alps is to “project unity” – as in the stalwarts of the collective west (Japan included) united in sustainable and indefinite “support” for the irretrievably failed Ukrainian state.

That’s part of the “struggle against Putin’s imperialism,” but then there’s also “the fight against hunger and poverty, health crisis and climate change,” as German chancellor Scholz told the Bundestag.

In Bavaria, Scholz pushed for a Marshall Plan for Ukraine – a ludicrous concept considering Kiev and its environs might as well be reduced to a puny rump state by the end of 2022. The notion that the G7 may work to “prevent a catastrophic famine,” according to Scholz, reaches a paroxysm of ludicrousness, as the looming famine is a direct consequence of the G7-imposed sanctions hysteria.

The fact that Berlin invited India, Indonesia, South Africa and Senegal as add-ons to the G7, served as additional comic relief.

The Tin Curtain is up

It would be futile to expect from the astonishing collection of mediocrities “united” in Bavaria, under de facto leader of the European Commission (EC), Fuehrer Ursula von der Leyen, any substantial analysis about the breakdown of global supply chains and the reasons that forced Moscow to reduce gas flows to Europe. Instead, they blamed Putin and Xi.

Welcome to the Tin Curtain – a 21st century reinvention of the Intermarium from the Baltic to the Black Sea, masterminded by the Empire of Lies, complete with western Ukraine absorbed by Poland, the Three Baltic Midgets: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Czechia and even NATO-aspiring Sweden and Finland, all of whom will be protected from “the Russian threat.”

An EU out of control

The role of the EU, lording over Germany, France and Italy inside the G7 is particularly instructive, especially now that Britain is back to the status of an inconsequential island-state.

As many as 60 European ‘directives’ are issued every year. They must be imperatively transposed into internal law of each EU member-state. In most cases, there’s no debate whatsoever.

Then there are more than 10,000 European ‘rulings,’ where ‘experts’ at the European Commission (EC) in Brussels issue ‘recommendations’ to every government, straight out of the neoliberal canon, regarding their expenses, their income and ‘reforms’ (on health care, education, pensions) that must be obeyed.

Thus elections in every single EU member-nation are absolutely meaningless. Heads of national governments – Macron, Scholz, Draghi – are mere executants. No democratic debate is allowed: ‘democracy,’ as with ‘EU values,’ are nothing than smokescreens.

The real government is exercised by a bunch of apparatchiks chosen by compromise between executive powers, acting in a supremely opaque manner.

The EC is totally outside of any sort of control. That’s how a stunning mediocrity like Ursula von der Leyen – previously the worst Minister of Defense of modern Germany – was catapulted upwards to become the current EC Fuhrer, dictating their foreign, energy and even economic policy.

What do they stand for?

From the perspective of the west, the Tin Curtain, for all its ominous Cold War 2.0 overtones, is merely a starter before the main course: hardcore confrontation across Asia-Pacific – renamed “Indo-Pacific” – a carbon copy of the Ukraine racket designed to contain China’s BRI and GDI.

As a countercoup, it’s enlightening to observe how the Chinese foreign ministry now highlights in detail the contrast between BRICS – and BRICS+ – and the imperial AUKUS/Quad/IPEF combo.

BRICS stand for de facto multilateralism; focus on global development; cooperation for economic recovery; and improving global governance.

The US-concocted racket on the other hand, stands for Cold War mentality; exploiting developing countries; ganging up to contain China; and an America-first policy that enshrines the monopolistic “rules-based international order.”

It would be misguided to expect those G7 luminaries gathered in Bavaria to understand the absurdity of imposing a price cap on Russian oil and gas exports, for instance. Were that to really happen, Moscow will have no problems fully cutting energy supply to the G7. And if other nations are excluded, the price of the oil and gas they import would drastically increase.

BRICS paving the way forward

So no wonder the future is ominous. In a stunning interview to Belarus state TV, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov summarized how “the west fears honest competition.”

Hence, the apex of cancel culture, and “suppression of everything that contradicts in some way the neoliberal vision and arrangement of the world.” Lavrov also summarized the roadmap ahead, for the benefit of the whole Global South:

“We don’t need a new G8. We already have structures…primarily in Eurasia. The EAEU is actively promoting integration processes with the PRC, aligning China’s Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian integration plans. Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are taking a close look at these plans. A number of them are signing free trade zone agreements with the EAEU. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is also part of these processes… There is one more structure beyond the geographic borders of Eurasia.”

“It is BRICS. This association is relying less and less on the Western style of doing business, and on Western rules for international currency, financial and trade institutions. They prefer more equitable methods that do not make any processes depend on the dominant role of the dollar or some other currency. The G20 fully represents BRICS and five more countries that share the positions of BRICS, while the G7 and its supporters are on the other side of the barricades.”

“This is a serious balance. The G20 may deteriorate if the West uses it for fanning up confrontation. The structures I mentioned (SCO, BRICS, ASEAN, EAEU and CIS) rely on consensus, mutual respect and a balance of interests, rather than a demand to accept unipolar world realities.”

Tin Curtain? More like Torn Curtain.

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/behind-the-tin-curtain-brics-vs-nato-g7/