by Pepe Escobar with permission by the author and first posted at Asia Times
We have seen how China is meticulously planning all its crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic moves all the way to 2030 and beyond.
What you are about to read next comes from a series of private, multilateral discussions among intel analysts, and may helpfully design the contours of the Big Picture.
In China, it’s clear the path ahead points to boosting internal demand, and shifting monetary policy towards the creation of credit to consolidate the building of world-class domestic industries.
In parallel, there’s a serious debate in Moscow that Russia should proceed along the same path. As an analyst puts it, “Russia should not import anything but technologies it needs until it can create them themselves and export only the oil and gas that is required to pay for imports that should be severely restricted. China still needs natural resources, which makes Russia and China unique allies. A nation should be as self-sufficient as possible.”
That happens to mirror the exact CCP strategy, as delineated by President Xi in his July 31 Central Committee meeting.
And that also goes right against a hefty neoliberal wing in the CCP – collaborationists? – who would dream of a party conversion into Western-style social democracy, on top of it subservient to the interests of Western capital.
Comparing China’s economic velocity now with the US is like comparing a Maserati Gran Turismo Sport (with a V8 Ferrari engine) with a Toyota Camry. China, proportionately, holds a larger reservoir of very well educated young generations; an accelerated rural-urban migration; increased poverty eradication; more savings; a cultural sense of deferred gratification; more – Confucianist – social discipline; and infinitely more respect for the rationally educated mind. The process of China increasingly trading with itself will be more than enough to keep the necessary sustainable development momentum going.
The hypersonic factor
Meanwhile, on the geopolitical front, the consensus in Moscow – from the Kremlin to the Foreign Ministry – is that the Trump administration is not “agreement-capable”, a diplomatic euphemism that refers to a de facto bunch of liars; and it’s also not “legal-capable”, an euphemism applied, for instance, to lobbying for snapback sanctions when Trump has already ditched the JCPOA.
President Putin has already said in the recent past that negotiating with Team Trump is like playing chess with a pigeon: the demented bird walks all over the chessboard, shits indiscriminately, knocks over pieces, declares victory, then runs away.
In contrast, serious lobbying at the highest levels of the Russian government is invested in consolidating the definitive Eurasian alliance, uniting Germany, Russia and China.
But that would only apply to Germany after Merkel. According to a US analyst, “the only thing holding back Germany is that they can expect to lose their car exports to the US and more, but I tell them that can happen right away because of the dollar-euro exchange rate, with the euro becoming more expensive.”
On the nuclear front, and reaching way beyond the current Belarus drama – as in there will be no Maidan in Minsk – Moscow has made it very clear, in no uncertain terms, that any missile attack from NATO will be interpreted as a nuclear attack.
The Russian defensive missile system – including the already tested S-500s, and soon the already designed S-600s – arguably may be 99% effective. That means Russia would still have to absorb some punishment. And this is why Russia has built an extensive network of nuclear bomb shelters in big cities to protect at least 40 million people.
Russian analysts interpret China’s defensive approach along the same lines. Beijing will want to develop – if they have not already done so – a defensive shield, and still retain the ability to strike back against a US attack with nuclear missiles.
The best Russian analysts, such as Andrei Martyanov, know that the three top weapons of a putative next war will be offensive and defensive missiles and submarines combined with cyber warfare capabilities.
The key weapon today – and the Chinese understand it very clearly – is nuclear submarines. Russians are observing how China is building their submarine fleet – carrying hypersonic missiles – faster than the US. Surface fleets are obsolete. A wolf pack of Chinese submarines can easily knock out a carrier task force. Those 11 US carrier task forces are in fact worthless.
So in the – horrifying – event of the seas becoming un-sailable in a war, with the US, Russia and China blocking all commercial traffic, that’s the key strategic reason pushing China to obtain as much of its natural resources overland from Russia.
Even if pipelines are bombed they can be fixed in no time. Thus the supreme importance for China of Power of Siberia – as well as the dizzying array of Gazprom projects.
The Hormuz factor
A closely guarded secret in Moscow is that right after German sanctions imposed in relation to Ukraine, a major global energy operator approached Russia with an offer to divert to China no less than 7 million barrels a day of oil plus natural gas. Whatever happens, the stunning proposal is still sitting on the table of Shmal Gannadiy, a top oil/gas advisor to President Putin.
In the event that would ever happen, it would secure for China all the natural resources they need from Russia. Under this hypothesis, the Russian rationale would be to bypass German sanctions by switching its oil exports to China, which from a Russian point of view is more advanced in consumer technology than Germany.
Of course this all changed with the imminent conclusion of Nord Stream 2 – despite Team Trump taking no prisoners to sanction everyone in sight.
Backdoor intel discussions made it very clear to German industrialists that if Germany would ever lose its Russian source of oil and natural gas, coupled with the Strait of Hormuz shut down by Iran in the event of an American attack, the German economy might simply collapse.
There have been serious cross-country intel discussions about the possibility of a US-sponsored October Surprise involving a false flag to be blamed on Iran. Team Trump’s “maximum pressure” on Iran has absolutely nothing to do with the JCPOA. What matters is that even indirectly, the Russia-China strategic partnership has made it very clear that Tehran will be protected as a strategic asset – and as a key node of Eurasia integration.
Cross-intel considerations center on a scenario assuming a – quite unlikely – collapse of the government in Tehran. The first thing Washington would do in this case is to pull the switch of the SWIFT clearing system. The target would be to crush the Russian economy. That’s why Russia and China are actively increasing the merger of the Russian Mir and the Chinese CHIPS payment systems, as well as bypassing the US dollar in bilateral trade.
It has already been gamed in Beijing that were that scenario ever to take place, China might lose its two key allies in one move, and then have to face Washington alone, still on a stage of not being able to assure for itself all the necessary natural resources. That would be a real existential threat. And that explains the rationale behind the increasing interconnection of the Russia-China strategic partnership plus the $400 billion, 25-year-long China-Iran deal.
Bismarck is back
Another possible secret deal already discussed at the highest intel levels is the possibility of a Bismarckian Reinsurance Treaty to be established between Germany and Russia. The inevitable consequence would be a de facto Berlin-Moscow-Beijing alliance spanning the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), alongside the creation of a new – digital? – Eurasian currency for the whole Eurasian alliance, including important yet peripheral actors such as France and Italy.
Well, Beijing-Moscow is already on. Berlin-Beijing is a work in progress. The missing link is Berlin-Moscow.
That would represent not only the ultimate nightmare for Mackinder-drenched Anglo-American elites, but in fact the definitive passing of the geopolitical torch from maritime empires back to the Eurasian heartland.
It’s not a fiction anymore. It’s on the table.
Adding to it, let’s do some little time traveling and go back to the year 1348.
The Mongols of the Golden Horde are in Crimea, laying siege to Kaffa – a trading port in the Black Sea controlled by the Genoese.
Suddenly, the Mongol army is consumed by bubonic plague.
They start catapulting contaminated corpses over the walls of the Crimean city.
So imagine what happened when ships started sailing again from Kaffa to Genoa.
They transported the plague to Italy.
By 1360, the Black Death was literally all over the place – from Lisbon to Novgorod, from Sicily to Norway. As much as 60% of Europe’s population may have been killed – over 100 million people.
A case can be made that the Renaissance, because of the plague, was delayed by a whole century.
Covid-19 is of course far from a medieval plague. But it’s fair to ask.
What Renaissance could it be possibly delaying?
Well, it might well be actually advancing the Renaissance of Eurasia. It’s happening just as the Hegemon, the former “end of history”, is internally imploding, “distracted from distraction by distraction”, to quote T.S. Eliot. Behind the fog, in prime shadowplay pastures, the vital moves to reorganize the Eurasian land mass are already on.
Germany is now deeply rooted and anchored in its Yankee vassaldom, not the slightest sliver of hope for emancipation anywhere to be seen. Even the supposed “alternative” for Germany is hopelessly submissive to the atlanticist / zionist axis of evil. Wishful thinking often guides Escobar´s analyses. Without a liberated Germany, the Eurasian project will remain clogged and stymied and the European project will remain the laughable caricature and failure it is now with full economic and societal collapse being the inevitable end result.
I would agree with you totally had it not been for the Trump factor. Nobody in the world today take Trump, Pompeo, and their fellow likudniks seriously except of course fellow Likudniks in Israel. Just consider the recent laughable snabback sanctions spectacle. The economic and societal collapse that you mention is more likely to occur inside the USA. World powers, including American occupied and much-abused Germany, are watching and skillfully engineering their futures.
We will have to wait and see… But the degree of the Stockholm syndrome and servility in Germany since end of WW2 is hard to fathom. There are no uncorrupted elites left and the German character has always been unbendable in its opportunism and submissiveness. Its depressing seeing it in action even now when it would be so easy to slip out of the prison cage. Germans will be the last to leave, even if given the keys, due to their perverted sense of loyalty.
They have genuinely been begging for Trump to keep the occupation troops in Germany and play along in even the silliest anti Russia propaganda,the fakest color revolutions, the most criminal drone wars led from their territory etc. No longterm thinking either to future or past, and being cut off altogehter from their past, they will remain mere objects and servants of their ridiculous masters.
you are probably right – what you say reminds me of Michael Lewis’ Boomerang – Germans (and a German investment bank I used to work for) were the last fools to stop buying all the toxic worthless USA bonds – they would have continued buying them had the regulators not blocked Americans from selling them.
You would not believe how snobby and arrogant these German dumb traders were – I used to work as their support on the same floor in London.
You would think they were the brightest traders in the world
But they were just a dumb, slavish fools…
very true, mindboggling how they rejoice in acting as the sewer dump for all the toxic paper, it really is emblematic for their role within the empire. do the dirty work, swallow the filth and put on a nice polite smile. And as you say they do it with their arrogant attitude as if they were the masters of the Universe instead of the last idiotic slave on the plantation, its so hilarious and sad.
I agree totally. My uncle, who is a naturalised German citizen, to this day is reflexively pro American and even calls the People’s Republic “Red China”, a term obsolete for going on fifty years. And he’s not even a native born German. 75 years of enslavement and systematic brainwashing by America have produced a Germany that cannot think or function for itself. Even if America collapsed today, the only way Germany could be revived is if former East Germans took over completely.
yes, once programmed they wont change their tune, the duracell rabitt just keeps on drumming and drumming til he drops dead. America basically is a visibly failed state now, but surely the Germans will remain on the sinking titanic dancing pretending all is well, till they drown. Germany is probably the most tragic country today, considering what it COULD have been and what it has become and will go down in the history books as.
Me as a German see it exactly like you
Germany needs a radical and probably bloody revolution in order to make a u-turn for a better future of the Germans
But that Revolution is not anywhere to see in the next years
My good old Germans are a weak consume based mass of sheep’s
No warriors left
Exactly, hypnotised into their consumerist stupor and career ambitions, a revolution seems like the most fantastic fairy tale of a different universe. Even if by some miracle they were liberated at some point they will view the liberators as aggressors and hate them for destroying their pleasant thoughtless slave status. Not even under the Napoleonic regime was Germany as low, gutless and dishonored as it is today.
If this is true, we are going toward a very ugly cannibalisation process the next 5 years.
As West cant beat East at this stage, who just get stronger and stronger each day, they will in their arrogance and escapism go cannibal on their own.
One trillion Euro to green projects and clima change plus Esper’s declared obstruction of any attempt to peace in Europe, will smash everything left in EU and US of logical thinking and industrial base.
The US has been so preoccupied with the needs of the racist Jewish state in Apartheid Israel that it got blindsided while China and Russia became powerhouses themselves. One can truly say that it was God’s doing to impede the Evil American Empire, as wagged by the evil state of Israel, to become worse than it already has.
http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/israel-the-scourge-of-empires/
Psychopaths tend to be dumber than most people realize
they can appear very powerful at times but due to their mental defects they often tend to self destruct – this includes psychopathic ‘cultures’ i.e. Anglozionazis:
Psychopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task. It’s not just an absence of guilt and remorse.
It’s an aberration in the ability to have and to appreciate real (noncalculated) emotional experience, and therefore to connect with other people within real (noncalcuated ) relationships. It’s ultimately based on lovelessness.
Sociopaths cannot love, by definition they do not have higher values, and they almost never feel comfortable in their own skins. They are loveless, amoral and chronically bored, even the few who become rich and powerful. And they are uncomfortable in their own skins for more reasons than boredom. The absolute self-involvement of sociopathy creates an individual consciousness that is aware of every little ache and twitch in the body, every passing sensation in the head and chest, with acute personalized concern to every radio and tv report about everything from bedbugs to ricin.
The emotional bankruptcy of sociopathy means that the sociopath is forever deprived of an authentic emotional intelligence, a capacity for understanding how people work that is an irreplaceable guide for living in the human world. A person without conscience, even a smart one, tends to be a shortsighted and surprisingly naïve individual who eventually expires of boredom, financial ruin, or a bullet.
Wow! Spoken like an insider.
I find your characterization of the psychopathic ‘type’ so helpful in these times when, quite clearly, a cult of psychopaths rules.
The forms their common rituals take, pedophilia, sex-slavery, infant blood-drinking, adrenochrome addiction rituals, every imagined debasement (see Pasolini’s ‘Salo’) are almost beside the the point.
I wonder what you would say about the influence of the nephew – uncle tag-team of Edward Bernays and Sigmund Freud in the creation of Homo Americanus Accumsan (Yandex translaition of American Consumer Man). The psychopath you describe seems to have many of the ideal features of the ‘consumer’ and the ‘consumer society’ which, as you so aptly put it, is (hopefully) dying now of a bullet to the head. I worry that it will be replaced by something worse.
Kurt Vonnegut, a few years afterwards, warned of a spike in psychopaths being born, or perhaps ‘forming’.
His book about Oppenheimer, ‘father of the atom bomb’ Cat’s Cradle, examines the type, and what kind of world psychopaths would create. It is eerily like the one imploding before our eyes.
Oppenheimer, as the inspiration and target of Kurt’s book, is being replaced on the net, in links clearly directed at students, by a non-Jewish scientist named Langmuir. Here is a study site that does not do that:
http://mrsteelsclass.com/eng20-1/eng20-1novel/catcradleinquiry.htm
Would you agree that a combination of genetics and engineering may have engendered the psychopath- ruled/driven society we are witnessing the collapse of today?
Yes I think it’s always a mix of nature and nurture.
I think the biggest factor is Hollywood and other loud megaphones the most predatory of all psychopathic ‘cultures’ uses to brainwash their victims/hosts, to normalize passivity, psychopath-tolerance and psycho-worship etc…
These psychopaths and their ‘culture’ know it and that’s why they make sure to own these loud megaphones – and they try to introduce as many divisions into their host society so to make it easier to control and harder for their victims to make sense of what is happening
Well said: “The absolute self-involvement of sociopathy creates an individual consciousness that is aware of every little ache and twitch in the body, every passing sensation in the head and chest, with acute personalized concern to every radio and tv report about everything from bedbugs to ricin.”
And – along the way – they tend to be really stupid and demented (ie, Joe Biden, but there are many mores if looked more closely. I am eager to see how famous Epstein fly companies will end up their lives). This is because nature – and, obviously, mankind – is not based on competition; cooperation must goes along with love, care, kindness and all those emotional abilities Sociopaths cannot show.
exactly – I’ve met a few of such wealthy but ultimately incompetent and stupid psychopaths when I lived in LA.
Unfortunately I don’t think anything will change until more people learn about psychopaths, how they operate and how to spot them.
We need some kind of mandatory psychopath test for people in power – to prevent psychopaths from getting there because they cannot care or feel sorry for anyone even if they wanted to due to their mental sickness. So putting them in positions of power is like putting a fox in charge of a hen-house.
One of the most reliable indicators is when we see someone who is obviously a ruthless aggressor who at the same time pretends to be a victim of tries to elicit sympathy.
If you can make your victims feel sorry for you, they will be less careful and it will be far easier to use them and trick them into helping your criminal deeds. Kind of like Israel and how they always and forever pretend to be victims.
And the zios are preparing to abandon the sinking ship and looking at Russia as the future parasite host. Hopefully there are enough people in the Russian government with the awareness to see what’s happening.
Wow! Pepe on top form surveying the current result of everything he’s been writing about in the past ten years.
“I just love it when a plan comes together.” — The A Team
Eurasian integration is the ultimate Bête Noire of the Anglo American nations.
The very idea–never mind actual moves towards Eurasian development–is enough to trigger these Anglo American snowflakes and send them into a massive paroxysm of (impotent) rage, paranoia, and vitriol.
That is why these Anglo American countries are leading a global Two Minutes of Hate campaign against major Eurasian nations like Russia, China, and Iran.
This is true only in the Anglo American-controlled mainstream media but also among their Fake Alternative media and “independent analysts.”
The Anglo Americans as a people are instinctively hostile to any challenge, like from Eurasia, to their Full Spectrum Domination (aka the Liberal Democratic Order) over the entire world.
The Anglo Americans have provoked and fomented 2 world wars in the last century to prevent Eurasian development.
And they are currently waging a covert 3rd World War in this century for the same hidden goal-which even includes a shadow war against their nominal “ally” of Germany, as evidenced by the Anglo American sabotage of the Nordstream 2 project.
World War III – Russia’s War of Independence
https://www.stalkerzone.org/world-war-iii-russias-war-of-independence/
Germany will not ally with Russia, not truly and not in good faith. But maybe with China and Iran.
Geography is destiny. Look at a map of Europe incls. the Ural mountains. Moscow and Berlin are both in Europe. The present political divide is unnatural. Even the Weimar Republic could get along fine with the USSR. And Russia is no longer the USSR
couple of excellent articles here based on what the global bankers are thinking and how the US may be approaching ‘the big reset’ whether it likes it or not. Lot of pressure to move eastwards and to promote Europe as the big financial center of the future (which would be linked to the new silk roads) Much food for thought: obviously lots of fat being chewed and many many doubts about the US.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/24/the-quiet-american-reset/
https://tomluongo.me/2020/07/29/big-lie-eu-fixed-dollar-is-dying-covid-will-kill-you/
Anything that features Germany has to be taken with caution.
Germany is an occupied nation.
Though sovereignty is thought to be part of the German nation-state, on every critical issue, the Germans obey the US.
They also see themselves as leader of the EU.They are not going to give up that role.
Those two facts are powerful forces that will hold back Germany joining Russia and China.
Germany is not only occupied, as you say, but most there have this trauma about having been defeated but what they perceive as sub-human barbarians from the East in WWII.
German superior technology, geman superior organization and efficiency (as they thought) could not stop the eastern ‘hordes’ conquering their precious city of Berlin.
This trauma is today reflected in their view of ‘corrupt, criminal dictatorship’ Putin…holding their ‘Feindbild’ up and continuosly fed by their media.
Cheers from France
Mario Medjeral
La peste negra no retrasó el Renacimiento sino que lo favoreció pues elevó significativa y repentinamente el nivel de vida de la población europea al dejar sus bienes a disposición de muchas menos manos.
Yandex translation. Mod:
The Black Death did not delay the Renaissance, but favored it because it significantly and suddenly raised the standard of living of the European population by leaving their goods at the disposal of far fewer hands.
the black death by itself largely precipitated the death of feudalism and the onset of a wage based economy and the enriching by money and opportunity huge swaths of the otherwise impoverished semi enslaved populace living on estates.
too many death reduced the numbers needed for labor. simple as that
today we have the opposite, the elite oligarchs in the west are using technology, robotics and the coming of AI to replace humans and re assert feudalism within the west to create a gigantic slave state with no recourse.
covid19 is a step being used by them to facilitate this taking place.
wake up folks!
This is spot on. There are many Americans whom are independent thinkers ( well, perhaps just a few ) and the Technocracy is what is driving this lockstep reset. Within some intel circles it has been known for sometime that the Trump cabal has been setting up a transition to move away from the Central Banking systems, fiat currency and dismantle the FED and put the US monetary system back to a Gold standard. Any thoughts here?
Sure, Dr Anom!
Just as German elites in the unconscious main may be consumed with irrational fear regarding the “subhuman genetically inferior slavic hordes” that mysteriously and magically punctured and deflated their Egoic 1000 Year Reich, and American “Blueblood” Atlanticist “Elites” who sponsored Adolf for the purpose of retarding for at least centuries the development of the majority of the earth’s territory and population (in Eur-Asia…..with the emphasis on ASIA), and their British Senior Partners “feel” similarly insecure and particularist in their emotional reactions promoted in their strategic journals as “Real Politik”….many here oversimplify America and easily fall into the Empire Trap of Divide and Conquer……selecting America as the monolithic, homogenously Evil New Enemy practically 100% of whose people, thinkers. leaders ALL……..MUST under all circumstances be dismissed from top to bottom as irretrievably rotten to the core.
This is a profound error of vast, potentially tragic, and woefully incompetent oversimplification.
However, simplification for the purpose of clarification is not ALWAYS to be avoided in favor of the infinite “richness” of complexity which leaves one with no option but to shrug and give up thinking about it……OR choose sides in a cataclysmic World War……….. that some people had enough prescience 75 years ago…..after Hiroshima…….to realize the SIMPLE FACT………. that Great Power Military Clashes were becoming an increasingly untenable means of working out future arrangements on this planet.
The other simple fact is that the majority of humanity (in Asia) has every right to the same (or even far better, for real progress in spiritual, cultural and material well-being is very very far short of its potential….ANYWHERE….) standards of living first reached in the West…….and to strive, work hard and yes, FIGHT for it!
The FINAL simple fact is that while Global Power in the minds of The Empire Geopoliticians may appear to them to be a Zero Sum Game whose Prize for the Winner is SO precious…”Full Spectrum Dominance” ………..that the Old Winners must maniacally commit themselves to never “losing” it….even at the risk of ending all life on the planet……sharing power and responsibility for human destiny has become a necessity and the only reasonable route to “winning” anything” durably…and in human fashion.
And there are plenty of people in the west that understand this.
Be wary …but don’t write them off. Including a few in the current US administration……or soon returning to it….such as Flynn, who unlike his lying, paranoid accusers and framers (Dearlove, Steele, Halper, Brennan, Obama, Clinton, etc) could not stomach support of ISIS to retard that necessary Eurasion development ………….nor submission to the US to those same globalists and their plans for its destruction…….which quite a few people favoring “The East” ..but still fundamentally ..trapped in 1984 understandably…but foolishly…… lust for.
There is another way, and I seriously doubt that Donald Trump has no inkling whatsoever of that other way.
However, he has been slightly constrained from the outset.. by those 100% trapped in Empire Axioms and Behavior..which trapping and constraining a lot of people would like to simply ignore….out of impatience…mental fatigue..distaste……..or whatever……and write off the largest portion of his base…which is sick of the endless wars and IS learning more and more quickly…about their own trance-like responsibility for allowing the current nightmare globalist scenarios to develop…..than most populations anywhere else, I betcha!
MOFA Make Orwell Fiction Again. That’s the resolution to this crisis of humanity.
Pepe,
Really appreciate this high-level analysis. With the Saker you really help us having a high-level perspective of things. It helps us make our own decisions.
Thanks again.
Mais um texto fantástico do Pepe Escobar. Na pior das hipóteses, se eu não puder ser tão otimista pra acreditar, que nos dá novo ânimo diante dos revezes na luta contra o império decadente. Que chegue logo essa multipolarodade e que seja suave esses tempos de hegemonia Asiática.
Google translation,MOD:
Another fantastic text by Pepe Escobar. In the worst case, if I can’t be so optimistic to believe it, it gives us new courage in the face of setbacks in the fight against the decaying empire. May this multipolarity come soon and let these times of Asian hegemony be smooth.
Bravo Pepe. Bravo. I love the symbolisms and innuendos.
One vital necessity for that to happen is for Russians (not Russia, but Russians) to abandon the ridiculous centuries long assumption that they’re a European country, not, as Rudyard Kipling said, the westernmost “Oriental” (Asian) one. Culturally, geographically, and logically, Russia’s future belongs to Asia, where it has no enemies and many friends, and not to the West, where it has no longer any friends (maybe marginal players like Cuba and Venezuela) but lots and lots of enemies. And yet, though Western enmity to Russia has persisted through centuries, from the Napoleonic invasion through WWII and currently with the NATO threat at Russia’s greatly reduced borders, loads and loads of Russians are still seduced with the fiction that if they only do this or that (dismantle their country/overthrow their leaders/sell off their economy) enough, the West will welcome them with open arms. This will never happen, and it’s time that Russians finally got used to it.
Not sure how that’ll work when the majority of Russia’s population, plus its own capital Moscow, is at its Western part. Does this even play a role in the outcome?
That the German population and its lickspittle politicians are still wedded to the notion that their subservience to Empire will stretch far into the future, the real driving force of Germany, namely its industrial powers are obviously on a different tack. The Daimlers, BMWs, VWs, Schneider Electrics, Siemens, Henkels, Bosches, etc, etc know well that they’re coming to a fork in the road, and you can bet they’re gaming that moment every working day.
Two of my friends here in China are German CEOs of German co’s. Neither are anywhere near the same league as the behemoths, but reasonable size SMEs of which there are many in China. Both married Chinese wives and have Chinese children. Whatever it may be in the politicians’ and population’s mind, in that class of mid-sized co. managers and directors, the future is Eurasia.
Large or small, all of them have already made enormous investments in the Eurasian vision, and where they go when push comes to shove Germany will follow, population and politicians both. The day ain’t here yet, but it’s coming and suddenly things will start happening as fast as they did when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the world changed in a matter of weeks.
@Erebus,
Are you sure, though, that business and industry will be able to determine the path of Germany? In the US, for example, people are fond of saying that the politicians have been bought off and it’s the corporations that hold the real powers behind the government. But now we are seeing the government forcing American corporations to bend to its will in its war against Russia and China. Politics, ultimately, trumps business it seems and, more important, politics here is backed by popular support (especially in the case of the hostility toward China).
Yes, there is an all-to obvious split in Germany between the pro-West, forelock-touching media political class and the German business class. The pro-American NATO class is stuck in the late 20th century whereas the business class are more aligned with their business interests with Russia. And this makes sense; Germany is already a big investor into Russia and wants to pursue this wholly rational business strategy, but the political media class are pathetic, out of time and out of ideas. I think that it was Edmund Burke – a conservative political philosopher – who said something to the effect of – nations which cannot change within a changing world will decline into obscurity. NATO is a key example of this sort of thinking. Established in a different era in order to coordinate western military power during the Cold War – since the end of that war NATO has turned into a disruptive force. Pursuing and ‘open-ended’ and ‘ill-conceived’ eastward expansion and in doing so rekindled inter-nation tensions that assuage them.
In geopolitical terms the ghosts of the past drag like a ball-and-chain on present and future development. And this applies to Germany as to everywhere else.
,
National Self-sufficiency is the road to economic and geopolitical power. Please note the policies of the Germany and the US in the late 19th century in overcoming British dominance. Please note:
“For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade.”(1)
In Germany, Friedrich List (1789-1846) who also had scant regard for any ‘free-market’ nonsense and the Ricardian corollary of comparative advantage was instrumental in promoting a system of political guidance from above as a policy for economic development.
‘’ … the first stage (of such a long-term policy) is one of adopting free-trade with more advanced nations as a means of raising themselves from a state of barbarism, and of making advances in agriculture; in the second stage, promoting the growth of manufactures, fisheries, navigation and foreign trade by means of commercial restrictions; and in the last stage, on after reaching the highest degree of wealth and power by gradually reverting to the principle of free-trade and of unrestricted competition in the home and in foreign markets’’. (2)
This was the policy instrumentalised by Bismarck during the middle and late 19th century which enabled Germany to outperform its European rivals, principally the UK.
That’s the way you do it.
When semi-peripheral raw material and food producers go toe-to-toe with industrially high developed economies there is only going to be one winner. South Korea provides another example. As follows:
1. Cheap currency, as with China
2.Preferential access to cheap imported intermediate inputs needed for producing exports
3. Targeted infant industry protection.
4. Tariff exemptions on imports of capital goods needed in exporting industries.
5. Tax breaks for domestic suppliers of inputs to exporting firms.
6. Domestic indirect tax exemptions for successful exportors
7. Lower direct taxes on income earned from exports .
8. Accelerated depreciation for exporters,
I’ll skip 9 to 14
15. The creation of public enterprises to lead the way in establishing new industries.
17. General orchestration of sector-wide efforts to upgrade average technological level through the use of a new generational technology.
18. Government coordination of foreign technology licensing agreements, using national bargaining power to secure better terms for the private sector in the utilising proprietary technology.
19. Setting export targets for firms since the early 1960’s. Firms set their own targets which could be adjusted by the government.
And son on and so on. These are the policies which have catapulted semi-developed state (now who could I be thinking of?) from semi-peripheral to core development.
One yuan is currently (as of 2020-08-28 13:08 PST) at 15 US cents, and one dollar is at ¥6.86 (just yesterday it was ¥6.89).
As of this writing 1000 Korean won is 84.6 US cents.
What constitutes a “cheap” currency if not the low value? Would the Japanese yen be considered ‘cheap’ as well?
Genetics determines potential; circumstances determine behaviour.
Humans have wandered across the face of the earth since first appearance, more so as the means of transport have improved.
Movement means mixing, and breeding. Without movement there is no mixing.
Humans are one race, or species, with numerous varieties, but underlying behaviour is still determined by opportunity.
Countries, like races, are artificial – artifacts of human thought and organisation. Boundaries are of (con)temporary convenience.
Groups of humans conspire and collaborate to achieve some given end, but the future is always uncertain and the end may not be as intended. Whatever, it never lasts, it is doomed to change.
Opportunities bring changes in conditions that persist for periods of time: some long, some short, but ALL temporary.
Pepe Escobar gives an interesting description and interpretation of current changes, importantly in the understanding and acceptance of symbols – especially of perceived, or imagined, wealth. Bits of metal. Bits of paper. Ownerships of bits of earth and bits of human activities. Will the dollar lose its magic? Will some other fiction emerge? Will the humans across Eurasia form a broadly cooperative group? Will some other major grouping emerge?
The best we can do is enjoy the game as it unfolds.
Is the treachery of the Anglos being underestimated again as it was during the world wars? Whoever controls Eurasia, controls the world. The Anglos will not let that stand. They cannot out compete China and Russia, so they will use under handed means, just like they did against Germany. 9ll was the trigger to nullify the Constitution and create the forever wars. They and their usual Zionist partners are trying to expand their foot hold in Eurasia with their military adventures in the middle east. What is the manufactured COVID crisis and BLM unrest going to trigger? There are troops in Afghanistan, and they are agitating Pakistan and India to get into a war which will go nuke and the radiation will incapacitate China and ruin the BRI. This war can be brought about by missiles going across the border or some other deception.
“President Putin has already said in the recent past that negotiating with Team Trump is like playing chess with a pigeon: the demented bird walks all over the chessboard, shits indiscriminately, knocks over pieces, declares victory, then runs away.”
Classic Putin.
Overall I like the article – as I do with mostly all articles from Pepe Escobar.
But as many other commenters, I cannot join the optimism of Pepe regarding a rapprochement of Germany towards China and Russia. Totally not. I try to explain why that seems very unlikely at the moment.
I
As it was already mentioned by Larchmonter445:
„Germany is an occupied nation.“
Yes. And unfortunately not many „Western people“ are aware of this. Actually even millions of Germans are not aware of it. It is important to note that the occupation also made it into the German Law!
Since Germany (at least on paper and regarding international law) is a sovereign state, their Legislative, the parliament could change the law in order to kick out US military – it would take some time, but legal-wise it is possible.
But …
II
Each and every party which has just a few seat in the „Deutscher Bundestag“ (the Legislative n country level) is totally aligned with NATO, the US (and Israel). Besides the “Center parties“ (CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP) – that’s also the case for AfD, „Die Grünen“ and „Die Linke“.
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„Die Grünen“ (green party) evolved in the 80s when millions of Germans were against the deployment of Pershing II (and also against civil usage of nuclear power). „They” have given up their consequent anti-war attitude when Joschka Fischer served as Foreign Minister and as Vice Chancellor when Germany joined the illegal bombing of Serbia. (Also worth to mention that Chancellor Schroeder (from SPD) crushed the German welfare state during the same period.) Nowadays „Die Grünen„ are probably more under NATO’s spell then any other German party.
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AfD – at first sight very often opposing the government – actually do support neoliberal politics and unconditional obedience towards the US. (Digg a bit deeper and figure who founded and supported AfD, any you’ll see that they are a product of the hegemon.)
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„Die Linke“ can be seen as spin-off of the SED of the GDR (East Germany). These roots made it hard to find acceptance within the population, but they had a few very intelligent and integer politics fighting for true „left“ concerns. However, „Die Linke“ now is totally quarreling and also undercut – among others by a very strange (and dangerous) group referred to as „Antideutsche“ as well as by the German Antifa.
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The German national parliament – as we see it now – will never ever change the German law to kick out the US military.
They also will not really oppose geopolitics of the US against states like Iran, Venezuela and Russia and China – even though it is damaging Germany’s own economic interest.
Nobody knows how long Merkel will stay Chancellor, but the “Party soldiers“ on the next lower levels are also very much aligned with NATO/US/etc. The system has been established and hardened over decades. Very difficult to break up this!
~
Regarding Nord Stream II:
While the US took many efforts and break various internal laws to prevent it, so far they only could delay it. Right now its looks like Nord Stream II will be finished very, very soon.
When that will be the case, it it will be interesting to see, what the US will try next to prevent this natural trade between Germany and Russia. Equally interesting will be the reaction of the German cabinet to that next „road blocker“.
I see a chance that this could be the straw that will brake the camel’s back.
~
To finish with an optimistic note:
The extra-parliamentary opposition has raised (once again) due to the strict Covid-19 measures – where the German „Grundgesetz“ has been undermined strongly.
On the 1st of August Hundreds of thousands Germans demonstrated in Berlin under the banner of „WIR FÜR DAS GRUNDGESETZ“. (Police was unofficially talking about 800’000. Main stream media mentioned 15-20K.)
Yesterday, on the 29th of August again a similar demonstration took place in Berlin – “WIR FÜR DAS GRUNDGESETZ – Berlin invites Europe – Fest für Freiheit und Frieden“. Yesterday Robert F. Kennedy jr. also talked in Berlin, since he was invited by some of the organisers.
While the MSM tries very hard to downplay the numbers of the demonstrators and „brand“ them all as Nazis, Covid-deniers and conspiracy theorists – it seems like the number of the Germans who are waking up now is rapidly increasing.
Let’s see where this will lead Germany to …
Some of the protestors were seen waving Russian flags and chanting Putin’s name.
https://ria.ru/20200830/putin-1576480916.html
It seems to me that the fact that Nord Stream II is approaching completion and will soon come onstream suggests that the Germans have not lost sight of their best interests entirely. A project of that size involves a great deal of planning, resource allocation, financial and (more importantly) political backing. That it got even this far indicates rather strongly that the political class isn’t as uniformly, or as deeply pro-US/NATO as your first few paragraphs argue.
It rather suggests that their pro-US stance is a veneer that can be shed as soon as it’s politically expedient. That moment is coming. Every capital on the planet (with some exceptions in denial) knows it. As the US implodes domestically and the U$D’s international status dissipates, the US will have to pull the troops out itself. If anything, the Germans may have to subsidize their exit.
Much better, methinks, to pledge undying allegiance to the dying Empire while preparing for the aftermath of its demise. My read of them is that that’s what the Germans are doing.
Brexit evil
about Euro Army
The Brexit Party leader warned that von der Leyen was a “fanatic for building a European army,” who will make NATO redundant or at the very least a diminishing military influence on the world. Farage also suggested that her main objective, if officially elected, would be to create an EU that will make nation-state parliaments irrelevant.
It is a common mistake, still I’m sorry to see it here. The ruling political party of 93,000,000 members in China is the Communist Party of China – CPC.