par oleg nesterenko – le 21 décembre 2022

 Oleg Nesterenko is president of the CCIE, the European Center of Commerce and Industry, in Paris. 

[GUSNOTE: oleg nesterenko IS NOT A STUPID JOURNALIST LIKE Stephen Bartholomeusz — Senior business columnist AT THE SMH WHO WRITES  "The West is tightening the screws on Putin’s cash machine" WITHOUT ANY UNDERSTANDING OF THE ECONOMIC DYNAMICS]

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OLEG: ROUGH TRANSLATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR...

Members of the Western community are quite comfortable going along with NATO narratives about the causes of the armed conflict in Ukraine and do not embarrass themselves to doubt and test the assumptions that dominate the 'public opinion. 

Yet stepping out of this intellectual comfort zone – which is in fact, psychologically, just a zone of angst – is an important exercise for anyone advocating the search for truth, which can often differ markedly from established narratives. by the main protagonists on the issue. 

In this analysis, I will not go into all the historical elements of each of the conflicting parties which are clearly important and which led to the confrontation in which the world finds itself today, but I wish to highlight the really dominant role, hidden from the naked eye, of the key player in this conflict: the United States of America. 

History shows us that despite appearances, no war in the past has ever had a single cause. At the heart of any major conflict, there is undoubtedly a project [GUSNOTE: THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN THE DESTRUCTION OF RUSSIA SINCE 1917 AS NOTED HERE], made up of multiple causes and sub-objectives to be achieved within the framework of a great ultimate goal, often far beyond the war itself. The triggers put forward by the parties in conflict are only the reflection of an outcome, the tip of an iceberg of deep divisions which not only can no longer be resolved diplomatically, but often the opposite: a diplomatic solution would be a obstacle to the achievement of predetermined and carefully concealed objectives.

Establish democracy 

Basically, the United States of America and, incidentally, the rest of the Western community, maintain that the purpose of the armed conflicts they have instigated throughout the world is to establish regimes of the rule of law, of individual freedoms and collective and to bring the light of democracy to territories that are victims of tyranny, dictatorship and barbarism. However, after studying more than fifty wars and armed interventions carried out since the end of the Second World War, directly by the armed wing of the United States and/or indirectly through satellite countries, and analyzing the final result, we can make a significant observation: 

• either the United States of America is incredibly bad at achieving its goals – because they are never achieved;

• either, and to be more serious, the real reasons for the continuous process of destruction of certain parts of the world do not really have, or to be more precise, have nothing to do with those announced.

The objectivity of this observation is not to be doubted because there are too many precedents of “achievements” whose final results are well known to us. To name only the most important of these, we can cite the wars in Korea and China, in Guatemala, Vietnam and Cambodia, in Iraq, Bosnia and Serbia, in Afghanistan, in Libya and Syria.

Not to mention the many "secondary" US interventions throughout modern history, including direct bombings of civilians such as in Cuba, Congo, Laos, Grenada, Lebanon, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Pakistan.

And even this list is far from exhaustive, as it does not take into account the many confidential operations carried out around the world to establish “democratic values and human rights”.

Observing the general state of “liberated” societies, of their quality of life before and after the process of “democratization” that has taken place, can only cause great perplexity in the observer.

The survival of the United States of America

Without disregarding the fact that the people of the US are, in and of themselves, quite sympathetic and friendly - a fact which can in no way be denied by those who have had experience of communication and interpersonal relations with their representatives, including myself, who have the privilege of knowing a certain number of them who are bearers of high human values and for whom I have friendship and deep respect - one cannot, however, deny also the fact that the freedom of thought of the people of the United States, overwhelmingly, is deeply subject to the power of state propaganda conducted for many decades through virtually every existing information channel directly controlled by "the Deep State” (1) and its lobbyists, pursuing their own agendas on behalf of the US nation.

The noble motives of US armed interventions in the world, as they are presented to the population of the country, differ little from those announced on the international scene.

Contrary to the narratives displayed by some antagonists of the United States, for the "deep state", the real reasons for the repeated large-scale massacres - it is difficult to qualify this modus operandi otherwise - do not have domination as their fundamental ultimate goal. of the world, in itself, for the pleasure of domination.

This formulation would not be entirely accurate because the ultimate goal is much more pragmatic: the survival of the United States of America.

Not only the survival as a state entity, but the survival of the structures which allow the realization of super-profits for the elites on the one hand, and on the other hand, the survival of the model and the standard of living acquired by the country with the end of the Great Depression, with the outbreak of World War II and the revival of the US economy through war industry.

This survival is simply not possible without military-economic, or more precisely military-financial, global domination.

That the US military budget, called the defense budget, alone exceeds one-third of global defense spending is no historical coincidence at all. This is a crucial element in maintaining financial dominance on a global scale.

The concept of survival at the expense of global dominance was clearly articulated at the end of the Cold War by Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense, in his "Wolfowitz Doctrine", which viewed the United States as the only remaining superpower. in the world and whose main objective was to maintain this status: "to prevent the reappearance of a new rival, either in the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, which would constitute a threat to the order previously represented by the Soviet Union Soviet".

The main pillars of the conflict in Ukraine

Let us leave behind the lofty narratives that appeal to the psychological sensitivities of the Western masses to fulfill their assigned role - approval - and examine the real causes, the underlying pillars of a new confrontation within the general framework of the survival of the United States – the conflict in Ukraine.

These underlying and interdependent pillars are three in number:

• the continued global dominance of the US financial system
• the weakening of the European economy by destroying relations between the EU and Russia as much as possible
• the weakening of Russia's position in the context of a future conflict with China

All other elements of the current conflict in Ukraine, on the American side, such as the lobbying of the American military industry, the conquest of new energy markets, the protection of important American economic assets on Ukrainian territory, the systems of corruption, the personal revanchism of the Russophobic elites, those stemming from Eastern European immigration and many others – only appear to me as additions, derivatives and consequences of the three main reasons listed above.

The first of these three underlying pillars of the conflict in Ukraine: the continued global dominance of the US financial system.

The global domination of the US financial system is based on a number of elements, foremost among which is the extraterritoriality of US law, Treasury bonds and the petrodollar.

It is quite impossible to know or understand the real reasons not only for the events in Ukraine, but also for almost all the wars initiated directly by the United States of America, without a precise vision of the elements mentioned. So let's examine them in detail.

The dollar and the extraterritoriality of US law as a weapon of economic warfare

The concept of extraterritoriality of US law is the application of US law outside the borders of the United States, which allows US judges to take legal action on facts occurring anywhere in the world.

The main element serving as a pretext for the prosecution is the use of the national currency of the United States in the transactions.

Thus, the legal mechanisms of extraterritoriality of US law offer US companies a serious competitive advantage. Completely illegal under international trade law, but legitimate under US law.

How does it work?

The extraterritoriality of US laws obliges foreign companies that use the dollar in their operations to comply with US standards and to submit to the surveillance and control of the US state, which allows the latter to legalize espionage economic and industrial sector and to implement actions aimed at preventing the development of competing American companies.

In lawsuits emanating from the Department of Justice, the offending foreign companies are required to “address” their situation by assuming surveillance for several consecutive years under a “compliance program”.

In order to establish their global dominance, countless lawsuits are launched for no good reason, the real purpose of which is access to confidential information of competitors and economic interference.

Moreover, by artificially exposing foreign companies that interest US groups to significant fines in favor of the United States, US justice places the victims in a position where they are not inclined to show hostility to the idea of being taken over by US companies, in order to avoid serious financial losses.

US treasury bonds and petrodollars

There is a term in accounting that refers to bad debts.

US Treasuries are bonds that are bought and redeemed in dollars and are essentially bad debt.

Why ?

Today, US sovereign debt has exceeded $31 billion and continues to grow by millions of dollars every day. This figure greatly exceeds the annual GDP of the United States and transforms most of the securities issued by the United States Treasury into more than doubtful assets, since the latter are redeemable in national currency. A currency that is not, for the most part, backed by real assets.

The solvency of Treasury bonds is guaranteed only by the printing of money and the confidence in the dollar, which is not based on its real value, but on US military domination of the world.

What does this have to do with Russia?

Since Vladimir Putin came to power, the Russian Federation has begun to gradually shed US Treasury bonds. Since 2014, the beginning of the conflict fomented by the United States in Ukraine through a coup, Russia has gotten rid of almost all of the US debt. Whereas in 2010 Russia was one of the top ten holders of US Treasury bonds, with more than $176 billion, in 2015 it only held about $90 billion, which means that the total mass of these assets has almost halved in 5 years. Today, Russia only holds about two billion in US debt, an extremely insignificant amount, comparable to the mathematical error in the world Treasury bond market.

In tandem with the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China is also gradually getting rid of this dangerous debtor. While in 2015 it held more than $1.27 trillion in US bonds, today that amount is less than $970 billion, a reduction of a quarter in 7 years. The amount of US government debt held by China is now at its lowest level in 12 years.

In addition to getting rid of US Treasury bonds, the Russian Federation has begun a gradual process of freeing the world from the petrodollar system.

A vicious spiral has begun: a relaxation of the petrodollar system will hit the US Treasury bond market hard. The fall in demand for the dollar on the international scene will automatically lead to a devaluation of the currency and, de facto, a fall in demand for Washington Treasury bonds, which mechanically leads to an increase in the interest rate on the latter. , making it impossible to finance the current level of US public debt.

Critics of the assumption that a decline in the dollar against many currencies will cause very significant damage to the US economy argue that a weaker dollar will lead to a significant increase in US exports and therefore benefit US producers, which will actually reduce the US trade deficit.

If they are absolutely right about the beneficial impact of the devaluation of the dollar on US exports, they are radically wrong about the final inevitably destructive impact of the process on the US economy, because their position ignores a fundamental element: the United States is a country that has been on a path of deindustrialization for decades, and the positive impact on exports will be relatively small in the face of a gigantic trade deficit. A deficit having already reached record levels in US history in 2021 and with the devaluation of the dollar and therefore higher import costs at all levels, will be absolutely disruptive.

Thus, the “settlement of accounts” with the two responsible for the current situation – Russia and China – is a key element of the survival strategy of the United States.

Petrodollars

With the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreements in 1971, the world's dependence on the dollar began to decline very dangerously for the US economy and the latter had to look for another way to increase global demand for its currency. national.

A way has been found. In 1979, the “petrodollar” was born from the economic cooperation agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia: “oil for dollars”. As part of this agreement, Saudi Arabia has agreed to sell its oil to the rest of the world only in dollars and to reinvest its excess reserves in US currency in US Treasury bonds and in US companies.

In return, the United States made commitments and guaranteed the military security of Saudi Arabia.

Subsequently, the “oil for dollars” agreement was extended to other OPEC countries, without any compensation from the US, and led to an exponential emission of the dollar. Gradually, the dollar became the main currency of exchange and other raw materials, which secured its place as the world's reserve currency and gave the United States unparalleled superiority and enormous privileges.

We are witnessing today a strategic breakdown of relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia due to several major factors, among which a very significant reduction in United States imports of crude oil, of which Saudi Arabia was the main supplier, the end of US support for Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen and President Joe Biden's intention to salvage the nuclear deal with Iran's Shiite mullahs, sworn enemies of the Sunni Saudis.

This triple "betrayal" of the US was very badly experienced by the Kingdom, which is particularly sensitive to questions of honor in bilateral relations. The strategic differences between the two countries came to a head with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, when the Saudi authorities were faced with an existential choice: to continue in the wake of the United States or to join the camp of their main adversaries. , namely China and Russia. The second solution was adopted.

Unlike the US, which neglected the strategic interests of the Saudis, China has instead intensified its cooperation with Saudi Arabia. And this bilateral relationship is not limited to the fossil fuel sector, but is expanding considerably in the area of infrastructure, trade and investment. Not only are large Chinese investments in Arabia steadily increasing and China now buying nearly a quarter of the Kingdom's global oil exports, but the Kingdom's sovereign wealth fund also plans to make significant investments in Chinese companies in strategic sectors.

At the same time, in August 2021, a military cooperation agreement was signed between the Saudi Kingdom and the Russian Federation.

Like Russia, Saudi Arabia has embarked on the path of dedollarization of trade and investment with China.

The joint and synchronized action of Russia, China and the OPEC countries on the path of gradual dedollarization has accelerated with the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, which has brought down the masks, and will have an effect an almost inevitable avalanche against the global dominance of the US financial system in the future, as central banks in many countries are encouraged to rethink the logic of reserve accumulation as well as the merits of investing in Treasuries American.

A declaration of war on the dollar

The military action in Ukraine against Russia and the impending war in the Asia-Pacific region against China are but part of the US reaction, considering the actions of Russia and China against the world domination of the dollar as a real declaration of war.

And the United States has every reason in the world to take this statement more than seriously, because the massive disposal of US Treasury bonds, coupled with the gradual displacement of the petrodollar system by powers like Russia and China, is not nothing but the beginning of the end of the US economy as we know it since the end of World War II – the beginning of the end of the United States as we know it today.

Countries that in the past have dared to threaten the global dominance of the US monetary system have paid dearly for their audacity.

The difficulty is that the Russian Federation, like the People's Republic of China, are military powers that cannot be attacked directly in any way – which would be tantamount to suicide. Only “proxy” and hybrid wars can take place against these two countries.

Today we are in the "Russian phase", tomorrow we will be in the "Chinese phase" of the confrontation.

It is important to note that the events in Ukraine are by no means the first but the third major US dollar war, not to mention the two “cold” dollar wars.

What are these wars other than those we know today?

These are the war in Iraq and the war in Libya. And the two “cold” dollar wars are the wars against Iran and against Venezuela. (2)

The First Great Dollar War

Speaking of the first dollar war, i.e. the war in Iraq, we must put aside the famous vial of imaginary anthrax that Secretary of State Colin Powell shook at the UN on February 5 2003, with the aim of destroying the country and slaughtering the Iraqi people – and remembering the facts. Facts far removed from the American imagination.

In October 2000, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared that he was no longer willing to sell his oil for dollars and that future sales of the country's energy supplies would be made only in euros.

Such a declaration amounted to signing the death warrant of its author.

According to a comprehensive study by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Foundation for American Journalistic Independence, between 2001 and 2003, the US government made 935 false statements about Iraq, 260 of them directly from George W. Bush. And of the 260 deliberately false statements made by the US President, 232 concerned the presence of non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Colin Powell's vial, after the latter's 254 false statements on the same subject, was only the culmination of a long and painstaking preparation of national and international public opinion for the imminent extermination of the Iraqi threat. by the US currency.

And when Saddam Hussein carried out his "threat" in February 2003 by selling more than 3 billion barrels of crude oil worth 26 billion euros, a month later the United States invaded and totally destroyed Iraq, whose tragic consequences we know with the destruction of all the country's infrastructure and a colossal number of civilian victims. To this day, the US authorities firmly maintain that this war had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq's desire to free itself from the petrodollar system.

Given the total judicial impunity for crimes against humanity committed by successive US governments, the latter do not even bother to cover them with stories that deserve any credibility in the eyes of the international community.

The facts are well known and we could have stopped there. But to make even clearer the process of “protecting” US interests, including current events in Ukraine, let’s also talk about the penultimate – the second big dollar war: the war in Libya.

The Second Great Dollar War

Six years have passed since the elimination of the Iraqi threat – a new existential threat to the dollar has emerged in the person of someone who refused to learn the lesson of Saddam Hussein's tragic fate: Muammar Gaddafi.

In 2009, when he was president of the African Union, Muammar Gaddafi proposed to the States of the African continent a real monetary revolution which had every chance of changing the destiny of the continent and which was therefore welcomed with great enthusiasm. : escape the domination of the dollar by creating an African monetary union in which oil and other African natural resources exported would be mainly paid for in dinar-gold, a new currency to be created which would be based on gold reserves and financial assets .

Following the example of the Arab OPEC countries which have their own sovereign oil funds, African oil producing countries, starting with the oil and gas giants Angola and Nigeria, have launched to create their own national funds from oil export revenues. A total of 28 African oil and gas producing countries participated in the project.

Gaddafi, however, made a strategic mistake that not only “buried” the gold dinar, but also cost him his life.

He underestimated the fact that, on the one hand, for the American state and, on the other hand, for the "deep state" of Wall Street and the City of London, it was absolutely out of the question that this project can see the light of day.

Because not only would it put the US currency in existential jeopardy, but it would also deprive the banks of New York and the City of the usual diversion of trillions of dollars from the exports of raw materials from the African continent. The United Kingdom is therefore in full symbiosis with the United States in its desire to destroy a power that represents a threat to their well-being.

Once the “allies” decided to neutralize the new threat, they did not care about the strange temporal coincidence in the eyes of observers: more than 40 years of indifference to Gaddafi, who came to power in 1969, and a new civil war broke out in Libya as soon as he presented a plan for a financial revolution to the African Union.

After the criminal invasion and destruction of Iraq based on a gross and deliberate lie disseminated by the US state to the UN in 2003 through Colin Powell about alleged weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by Saddam Hussein, the United States was unwilling to use the same pattern of action again and had to diversify the implementation of the invasion so as not to expose itself once again to accusations too obvious war crimes.

As the new "Arab Spring" in Libya was about to be completely suppressed by the Libyan state, the US, while remaining in the shadows, used its satellites and vassals, France, Great Britain and Lebanon, to uproot UN Security Council Resolution 1973 against Libya – more than 35 years old – in order to attack and destroy the country.

And the project itself was carried out in violation of the resolution recently adopted by the United Nations: instead of the no-fly zone envisaged by the resolution, direct bombardments of military targets on the ground took place. The attacks were completely illegal and in complete violation of international law: those who voted in favor of adapting the resolution were firmly assured by the authors that the purpose of the action was only to establish an exclusion zone to protect civilians, not to defeat Gaddafi and/or destroy his army.

This means that the United States, under cover of its satellite countries, has once again lied to the UN in order to obtain legal grounds to launch military action and follow a pre-arranged plan in order to destroy a new threat to the world. dollar.

The fact that the real initiators of the destruction of Libya in 2011 was the United States and no one else was a well-known secret.

And since Wikileaks published April 2, 2011 correspondence from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her adviser Sid Blumenthal on the subject, the "secret" has come out of the shadows: Clinton was a key player in the Western conspiracy against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and, more specifically, against the new pan-African currency – a direct threat to the dollar.

Blumenthal wrote to Clinton: "According to confidential information obtained from this source, the Gaddafi government has 143 tons of gold, as well as comparable financial assets...This gold was accumulated before the uprising began and was intended to create a pan-African currency based on the Libyan gold dinar. »

As I mentioned before, no war has a unique reason to be fought. In the case of the war against Gaddafi, it was the same thing: an additional essential reason was the personal interest of Hillary Rodham Clinton to play the role of "iron lady" in the American political environment in view of the next presidential elections. War was tantamount to his political party saying, “Look, I could crush an entire country. So do not doubt that I am quite capable of leading the electoral fight. In April 2015, Clinton ran for president, and in July 2016 she was officially nominated as the Democratic Party candidate.

In the second great dollar war, it is not only the future of Libya, but that of the entire African continent that has been sacrificed on the altar of the well-being of the American economy.

Anyone who tries to jeopardize the US monetary system must disappear if they are not strong enough to lead the confrontation.

However, if it is a power that cannot be crushed directly – as happened with Iraq and Libya – large-scale multimodal indirect attacks are designed and carried out, always remaining within the shadow, by making the aggressor the aggressor, in order to weaken the enemy economically to the point that the latter must abandon his plans to fight against the dominance of the dollar and is forced to concentrate on solving the problems newly appeared.

The second of the three underlying pillars of the conflict in Ukraine: weakening the EU economy by destroying EU-Russia relations as much as possible.

Coups in Ukraine

The maximum and lasting deterioration of relations between Russia and Europe, in particular Germany, which is the center of gravity of European economic power, is a strategic objective of the United States to succeed in weakening the main direct competitor of the US. in world markets – the European Union.

I want to emphasize that I am in no way claiming that the geographic areas targeted by US “interests” do not have deficiencies in terms of democracy and individual freedoms, especially in the Western format.

I argue that the presence or absence of these noble concepts is in no way part of the reason for the US aggressions and is only a publicity pretext.

There are a number of living examples of truly bloody dictatorships, bearing medieval legislation, undisturbed at all by the collective West revolving around the United States, and even actively supported by the latter for the simple reason of their submission to US foreign policy.

After having organized and implemented coups under the cover of "color revolutions": in Yugoslavia in 2000 and in Georgia in 2003, the "orange" revolution was organized by the United States in Ukraine in 2004, with the aim of overthrowing the predominantly pro-Russian moderate right-wing forces and creating a “Counter-Russia” (3), by establishing a new power made up of Russophobic far-right currents, allowing policies that respond to US strategic interests.

The rise to power in Ukraine in 2010 of Viktor Yanukovych and his broadly pro-Russian policies created the need for a new “revolution”. Taking advantage of the popular protests of 2014 (4), the United States once again staged a coup and restored a fundamentally Russophobic and ultra-nationalist government.

Speaking of a US-orchestrated coup, this is not speculation at all, but a proven fact. Not only have a number of statements been made by senior US officials since the war we are living today in this regard, but going back to 2014, we find direct confirmation of this. The evidence, which is the recording of a telephone conversation intercepted and disseminated by the Russian secret services: a conversation between Victoria Nuland, the United States Under-Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, and Geoffrey Ross Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine in 2014. The footage shows Nuland and Pyatt handing out positions in the new Ukrainian government and directly incriminates the US government in the coup.

Russia's opponents would like to question the authenticity of the recording, but this is impossible because Victoria Nuland has made a serious mistake: instead of firmly denying the veracity of the recording, in which the latter incidentally insults the European Union, Nuland formally apologized for her insults towards the EU and thus confirmed the authenticity of the recorded conversation.

Furthermore, on the non-governmental side, the much-maligned George Soros said in a late May 2014 interview with CNN that his foundation's office in Ukraine "has played a significant role in the events currently unfolding in Ukraine."

Coups and the establishment of a “Counter-Russia” in Ukraine by the United States of America could only provoke strategic countermeasures from the Russian Federation. Countermeasures known since 2014 and culminating in February 2022.

Sabotaging the implementation of the Minsk agreements

Compliance with the Minsk Accords, which would have brought about a lasting peace in Ukraine, would have been a real geopolitical disaster for the United States, with far-reaching adverse economic consequences that would have ensued. The failure of the current arrangements was therefore a vital element for the American camp, officially absent from these agreements.

From 2015 to 2022, under the Normandy format, neither Paris nor Berlin succeeded in pressuring kyiv to grant autonomy and amnesty to Donbass. And this for a simple reason: the new Ukrainian president, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko, who came to power following the 2014 coup, was represented at the talks by deep US interests. Interests that correspond well to those of the new Ukrainian elite.

However, as we will see later, such pressure was by no means part of the West's plans.

It was clear that to respect the Minsk agreements, the Ukrainian ultranationalist and neo-Nazi movements – the “armed wing” of the US coup d’etat of Victoria Nuland – had to be disarmed immediately. But the leader of the ultra-nationalist paramilitary organization Right Sector [Pravy Sektor], Dmitry Yarosh, has explicitly stated that he rejects the Minsk agreements, which he considers a violation of the Ukrainian constitution, and that he intends continue the armed struggle.

This position of exponentially growing ultra-nationalist forces suited President Poroshenko, the United States and its Western partners.

There is a very recent video, from November 2022, in which former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko talks about the 2015 Minsk Accords. He explicitly admits:

“I think the Minsk agreements are a skillfully drafted document. I needed the Minsk agreements to get at least four and a half years to train the Ukrainian army, build the Ukrainian economy and train the Ukrainian army together with NATO to create the best armed forces in Europe from the East who would be trained to NATO standards."

According to this statement by a key figure in the Minsk agreements, the real objectives of the negotiations had nothing to do with those displayed - the search for a modus vivendi - but were aimed solely at gaining the time necessary for the preparation of total war.

And the much-talked-about recent interview with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel given to Die Zeit is just an echo of the truth announced by Poroshenko and further confirmation of what Western public opinion has closed your eyes and keep closing them. And it would be extremely myopic to separate these revelations from Merkel from her own “guarantees” given to President Yanukovych in 2014, which were one of the fundamental factors in the implementation of the coup in Ukraine.

The Minsk agreements were, in fact, just a show, a show, and were de facto sabotaged even before being implemented.(5)

Sabotage Nord Stream

Rumors are currently circulating in the Western community about the author of the explosions of the Russian Nord Stream gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. Even setting aside the thoughtless statements made in recent months by various US officials, which considerably incriminate the latter, it is necessary to go back years to say that the sabotage of EU supplies by Russia is in no way part of the hasty operations “in the thick of the action” of the current war, but fits well within the calculated and strategic long-term goals of US geopolitics.

Already, in a 2014 television interview, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged the strategic importance of redirecting Europe's gas and oil supplies from Russia to the US by neutralizing the Russian gas pipelines: “...in the long term, we simply want to change the structure of energy dependence [of the EU]. Make it more dependent on the North American energy platform, on the excellent abundance of oil and gas found in North America..."

With the explosion of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, the goal is finally achieved.

I leave it to you to decide whether it is a coincidence or not that this statement by the head of the United States Department of Foreign Policy took place in the very year of the US-organized coup in Ukraine – l year of the takeover of Ukrainian power by Washington, which led to a total reorientation of Ukrainian policy, the consequences of which we are now suffering.

It is quite obvious that, on the one hand, such destruction of the energy infrastructure was impossible in times of peace, when no propaganda could allow the slightest doubt as to the identification of the sole culprit and beneficiary of such unprecedented event.

On the other hand, that the decommissioning of Russian pipelines immediately changes the structure of European energy dependence and redirects it directly to the North American energy platform, given the existing saturation of Gulf energy demand.

US corporate power finally gained access to the large European energy market and, at the same time, the ability to regulate the production costs of competitive industrial sectors on the old continent.

A bullet in the foot

The facts of economic reality are stubborn: one of the foundations of the competitiveness of European industrial enterprises on the world market vis-à-vis their direct competitors has for decades been the energy supplied by Russia at low prices and guaranteed through long-term contracts.

The voluntary denial (6) by the current European leaders of access to this cheap energy makes the expression "shooting oneself in the foot" quite appropriate to the situation in which European industry finds itself in the short and medium term, as well as in the long term, unless the policy concerned radically changes direction.

One of the “side effects” of the US grab on energy supplies for Europe will be a partial deindustrialization of the EU, which will directly contribute to the new dream” of reindustrialization of a country in decline since the 1970s and to which will contribute the energy-intensive European companies which will no longer be able to continue their normal activity on the old continent and which will seek new ways of developing in the Americas which will keep the prices of access to energy at a relatively low level moderate.

Already in September 2022, the cost of producing industrial goods in Germany jumped by 45.8%, a record since 1949, when the German Federal Statistical Office began its statistical studies. And this trend can only inevitably accelerate.

In addition, the persistent blocking by the German government in recent years of virtually all military-industrial cooperation agreements between France and Germany, which could have led to the significant development of an autonomous European defense industry, is unmistakable proof of the political dominance of the United States over Germany. And the announcement by Berlin, at the start of the war in Ukraine, of an unprecedented order of US armaments only confirms the above.

Even before the sharp phase of armed confrontation in Ukraine, this domination led to several other major American successes, namely a significant weakening of European competitiveness in armaments, an expansion of the market for American military industry and, above all, the neutralization of the danger of a truly autonomous European defense bloc outside NATO, previously mentioned at EU level.

Nevertheless, despite its undeniable success in weakening the economy of its European rival, the Democratic Party, historically proponents of achieving goals through armed conflict (7), made a strategic error in refusing to follow Donald Trump's recommendations to level relations and make peace with his traditional enemy, Russia, in order to prevent it from becoming an important pillar (energy and food) against the main European countries.

At the end of the conflict in Ukraine – the third great dollar war – there will inevitably be a fourth, with China, the exact contours of which we do not yet know.

The Fourth Great Dollar War

The third and last of the main pillars underlying the events in Ukraine: the significant weakening of Russia's position in a future conflict with China, which will be the fourth major dollar war.

It is a question of weakening Russia as a strategic partner of China, both in the economic field, where the two countries have a real complementarity, and in the political-diplomatic and military-technical fields.

But despite China maintaining the status quo on Russia's actions in Ukraine, due to direct threats of serious sanctions emanating from the collective West led by the United States, the latter draws a bitter conclusion: the Sino-Russian alliance remained unshakable.

As in the case of the confrontation in Ukraine and the wars mentioned above, it is important to note the following facts: on the one hand, the war of the United States against China is inevitable, and on the other hand: the real reasons of the future war are again and largely due to China's desire to evade the petrodollar system - which constitutes a "classic" and absolute casus belli from Washington's point of view.

There are a number of facts that necessitate severe action on the part of the US, the main ones of which can be mentioned:

China began buying crude oil from Iran in 2012, paying in renminbi. Iran, whose oil contracts have already been denominated in euros since 2016, rejects the dollar.

In 2015, China launched futures contracts – oil futures on the Shanghai Futures Exchange – whose main purpose is to transact through RMB swaps between Russia and China and between Russia and China. Iran and China – a new strategic element of Chinese geopolitics.

In 2017, China, with its 8.4 million barrels/day of crude oil imports, became the world's largest importer of crude oil and, at the same time, signed an agreement with the Russian Central Bank aimed at buy Russian oil in Chinese currency.

In 2022, as we saw earlier, the PRC enters into an agreement with Saudi Arabia to buy oil also in renminbi.

And these processes, let us remember, are taking place alongside the slow but gradual phasing out of US Treasuries, the mass of which in China has fallen by a quarter over the past 7 years.

An analysis of the Celestial Empire's foreign economic policy initiatives over the past decade clearly demonstrates the growing and exponential threat to the viability of the modern US economic model. Only radical measures taken by the US authorities against the Chinese adversary can stop or at least try to slow down the process of undermining the foundations of the world economy built by the US since the end of the Second World War.

In this logic, a Chinese armed attack against Taiwan is an absolutely necessary precedent for the United States. Everything will be done for this Chinese initiative to take place.

However, let's be realistic: the US state realizes that in the short term, in the years to come, China does not pose a great threat to their economy because:

On the one hand, the internationalization of the Chinese currency is very slow: its weight in world payments is less than 4%, which is negligible in view of the weight of Chinese GDP. The same applies to the share of the renminbi in world official reserves, which remains very low (less than 3%) and is not progressing very much.

On the other hand, given the gigantic volumes of US Treasury bonds accumulated by the Chinese central bank, getting rid of them will take considerable time.

Not to mention that in the short or medium term, the markets do not offer a credible alternative to Treasury bills in terms of liquidity.

An existential threat

At the same time, the US is well aware that in the long term, the ongoing processes pose a real existential threat and, given the experience of the last decades, it is inconceivable that the United States would not carry out preemptive strikes against the author of the new threat.

The long-term work of the US in Ukraine to install a Russophobic ultra-nationalist political regime there and to develop all the elements necessary to place Russia in a situation where its combat capabilities would be weakened is the same provocative work carried out by the United States in Southeast Asia in Taiwan, sabotaging hopes of peaceful reunification under Beijing's "One China" policy. An armed Chinese attack on Taiwan would in itself be a strategic blow for the United States.

The scenario is broadly similar to that of the sabotage of the Minsk-2 agreements, which was the key element that triggered the so-called "unjustified Russian aggression".

Using Taiwan as an instrument, the provocation of “unjustified aggression” by China will have as its main objective the launching of massive sanctions by the collective West, in order to bring down the economy of the main competitor of the US. As it did with Ukraine, which has already shaken the economy of the United States' second largest competitor, the European Union, by depriving its industry of Russian energy supplies.

One of the key elements of the planned sanctions will clearly not be a full-scale synchronized "counter-attack" by the transatlantic coalition, given the growing weakening of old Europe, too exhausted by the Ukrainian conflict and extremely dependent on Sino-European economic ties. It will more likely be an energy blockade of China, led directly by the United States, by closing the Strait of Malacca, on which China depends for two-thirds of its oil and liquefied natural gas imports.

Through the conflict in Ukraine, Western collective sanctions against Russia were to play a key role in the projected collapse of the Russian economy, and therefore in the latter's inability to provide meaningful support to its partner. Asian strategy in the coming conflict, by supplying China with energy by land under the threat of new anti-Russian sanctions, which an economy on its knees could not resist.

The initial plan, which was supposed to work against Russia within a few months, completely failed due to a number of factors demonstrated by the first months of the armed conflict in Ukraine. As a result, US equities have been fundamentally redesigned and geared towards a long-term attrition strategy.

The war of the United States against China, is it already tomorrow?

Being now in an active phase of confrontation against China's energy, military and food "backbone", which is Russia, key actions against China should be launched in the short to medium term - before the Russians are recovering from expected impairment caused by CBO.

However, even discounting the unforeseen element of maintaining Russia's economic resilience to the sanctions shock and despite Washington's belligerent rhetoric about concentrating efforts to fight on two fronts simultaneously: against Russia and China - analysis of US defense planning demonstrates the practical impossibility of the latter for structural reasons.

In 2015, the Pentagon revised its doctrine of being able to fight two major wars simultaneously, which had dominated the Cold War years and up until the year in question, in favor of concentrating funds to ensure its victory in one. only major conflict.

In addition, since the outbreak of the armed conflict in Ukraine, the United States has invested more than 20 billion dollars in its maintenance and sent 20,000 soldiers to Europe, in addition to the contingent already present on the old continent. While, when it comes to supporting Taiwan against China, US senators are only discussing aid of up to $10 billion over the next five years. In other words, the aid is half of what Ukraine received in the first eight months of the war.

For these reasons, it is very unlikely that an armed conflict in the Asia-Pacific region will break out on the US side before the war in Ukraine is completely over. Unless China takes the initiative, aware of the temporary military weakening of its rival.

At the same time, given the Sino-Russian synergy reflected in the Chinese formula "partnership with Russia has no borders", the desire to "neutralize" Russia before a war with China is an integral part of the new doctrine that has dominated the US military in recent years.

Only an extremely aggressive foreign policy, backed by global military and monetary dominance, allows the United States to occupy its current position.

Any other state that has committed even a fraction of the crimes listed in a small part of these pages would be classified by the "international community" gathered around the United States as a criminal and pariah state and would be subject to an embargo " legal" more serious than those of North Korea, Iran and Cuba combined.

Ukraine, a single-use instrument

One of the main reasons why the course of events was not oriented towards the outbreak of Russian-Ukrainian hostilities years earlier, under the presidency of Barack Obama, between 2014 and 2017, is the line of orientation of the White House during this period, which was based on the assumption that the domination of Ukraine against Russia is not an existential element for the United States.

US policy has changed since the Obama era, but despite various statements, its orientation towards Ukraine has not changed one iota.

Ukraine is used only as a one-time tool to weaken Russian power, as a NATO mercenary country, at least for the period of future confrontation with China and, at the same time, to weaken relations economic relations between Russia and Europe.

When the time comes when the US government judges that the "return on investment" in the conflict in Ukraine is sufficient, or when it realizes that the probability of reaching the investment satisfaction threshold is too low, the kyiv regime will be abandoned. Abandoned the same way the Ghani regime in Afghanistan was abandoned, and the Kurds in Iraq and Syria were abandoned after partially fulfilling the missions given to them by the US, against the promise of a Kurdish state. A promise that only engaged those who believed in it.

For these reasons, and given that despite the pressure of unprecedented Western sanctions, Russia continues to maintain both healthy public finances, insignificant public debt, a trade surplus and no budget deficit – the confrontation in Ukraine can only be won by Russia in one form or another.

That said, victory for the Russian Federation is an existential element; for the United States of America, as already mentioned, this is not the case (8).

Post Scriptum

The actions of the United States in recent decades and those that will inevitably occur in the decades to come are an expression of pure capitalism and therefore inherently evil, with the consequence of causing dangerous tectonic shifts, failures fundamentals and an existential threat to a global market economy whose primary goal is to strike a balance; the expression of a capitalism extremely far removed from the liberal postulates of Adam Smith and his somewhat naive ideas on the regulation of capital.

Successive US governments, armed with the fist of the "deep state", corporate power, have not only vindicated the claims of Karl Marx, their hated enemy, but also the wholeness of Fernand Braudel, for whom capitalism is the search for the elimination of the limits of competition, the restriction of transparency and the establishment of monopolies, which can only be achieved with the direct complicity of the state.

Not being a proponent of socialist or communist theories, but observing the current American economic model, it is however difficult for me not to pay tribute to the correctness of their approach to capitalism.

The confrontation on the territory of Ukraine is only the demonstration of an intermediate stage in the struggle of the United States for its survival in its current state, inconceivable without the preservation and expansion of monopolies and unipolar world domination. .

At this point in the confrontation, several basic statements can be made.

The maximum deterioration of relations between Russia and the European Union, and the resulting substantial economic weakening for the latter's direct competitor, is a great achievement for the United States.

But the US strategy has been completely upset by two interrelated fundamental contingencies that are irreversibly changing the face of the world:

First, the Russian Federation has proved, against all odds, incomparably more resilient than expected to the economic pressure exerted by the collective West and has by no means experienced the very significant economic recession hastily announced by its officials.

As a result, Russia was not neutralized in the coming conflict between the United States and China, a major defeat that led to a second cardinal eventuality:

The United States has proven unable to unite the non-Western world around it in its anti-Russian project, despite exerting unprecedented pressure.

The events after February 24, 2022 had the opposite effect: they accelerated the destruction of the unipolar world model of recent history by Russia's success against the collective West, leading to great differentiations and the adoption of positions, explicit or implicit, by the largest non-Western players in the world economy, with the exception of Japan and South Korea, traditional satellites of American policy. The differentiations and positions that cement the bases of the new multipolar world.

This second major defeat poses an existential threat to the United States because, in the long run, it poses an immediate threat to the continued global dominance of the US monetary system.

The irreversibility of the process makes a substantial revision of US strategy towards Ukraine impractical, which could result in a further significant increase in quantitative and qualitative military and financial support, especially since such an initiative increases proportionally the risks of nuclear strikes on US territory.

The near future will tell what Washington's counterattack will be.

* * * * * * * * * *

Oleg Nesterenko is president of the CCIE, the European Center of Commerce and Industry, in Paris. 

* * * * * * * * * *

The following notes have been added to the original text, along with some explanatory links. (XP)

(1) Personally, I don't really like the term "deep state" which, in my opinion, has the double disadvantage of being stamped with the seal of conspiratorial "infamy" and of making those it really represents invisible. that is to say the representatives of what will be called the military-industrial complex, big business or industrial and financial capitalism.

(2) In his text, the author does not address the wars in Afghanistan and Syria which, if they do not have the same monopolizing character as the wars in Iraq and Libya, are not. no less "dollar wars": in the case of Afghanistan, the United States killed two or three birds with one stone: seizing the gas pipelines, controlling opium production and putting sticks in the wheels of China's New Silk Roads. In the case of Syria, although the Syrian subsoil has a relatively low yield, it is still a given, especially since this is the first confrontation between Russia and the United States. United.

(3) The term "Counter-Russia", probably literally translated from Russian, means a "nemesis" nation, that is to say a rival, sworn enemy of Russia.

(4) Originally, the Euromaidan was the expression of the protests of a part of the Western Ukrainian population, pro-European, at the announcement by President Yanukovych that he would not sign the agreements between the EU and Ukraine.

(5) Here, I reiterate my disagreement with this thesis. I do not believe in the sincerity of Merkel's revelations (why did you wait so long before making them?). I think that the Minsk II agreements, of which Russia was an observer, were a real attempt to stabilize the situation in Donbass with reasonable demands: autonomy for the oblast, amnesty for pro-Russian rebels, dismantling and disarmament of neo -Nazis and Ukrainian Russophobes. It also contradicts the desire of the Chancellor at the time to get rid of German dependence on the gas pipeline crossing Ukraine by favoring the Nord Stream project. And for what result today? Ukraine will likely be amputated not only from Donbass but probably from several other eastern oblasts and the German and European economy is on the verge of collapse following the closure of Nord Stream. I bet that François Hollande will not contradict it. What would not these powerful do to (believe) to be on the right side of the handle? If I'm wrong, we can conclude that these are outstanding calculators.

(6) I do not think that the refusal of European leaders to obtain energy supplies from Russia can be described as "voluntary". They forced themselves to do so by submission to the master of Washington. Either out of fear or out of interest.

(7) It is true that in the long list of US imperialist wars, G.W. Bush is an exception.

(8) We can believe here that the author contradicts himself a bit: he affirms above that this confrontation is existential for the United States as much as it is for Russia. Which is perfectly true. I believe what he means is that a Ukrainian victory is not essential for the United States. What is, however, and which is in itself already a victory for the US, is that the EU has cut itself off from Russia.

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