By Fabio Reis Vianna for The Saker Blog
On October 29th, the Cycle of Seminars on World Economy Analysis, organized by professors Monica Bruckmann and Franklin Trein, received in the Noble Hall of the IFCS-UFRJ, in Rio de Janeiro, the illustrious presence of the former vice-president of the BRICS Development Bank, Professor Paulo Nogueira Batista.
In the midst of the peculiar moment of social upheavals that are spreading throughout the world, the New Silk Road was discussed, a major Chinese project of geo-economic integration of Eurasia through vast road networks, high-speed trains, gas pipelines, fiber optic cables and ports, and that will benefit millions of people (including Western Europe, and incidentally, the African continent and Latin America itself).
To this end, three institutions created in the orbit of this project would play a key role: the Silk Road Fund, the AIIB (Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank), and the NBD (BRICS Development Bank).
As the Brazilian State is a shareholder and founder of the NDB, many financing projects from this global institution could already have been approved and would be very welcome to the staggering Brazilian economy. However, despite the fact that in recent years, specifically from 2003 to June 2018, Chinese companies have invested almost 54 billion dollars in more than 100 projects, according to data from the Brazilian government itself, as of 2017, investments have fallen sharply.
According to a study by the Brazil-China Business Council (CBBC), Chinese investments in Brazil totaled 8.8 billion dollars in 2017 and no more than 3 billion dollars in 2018. A drop of 66%.
The deepening of the Brazilian framing of the US imperial orbit says a lot about this.
With the institutionalization of the New Defense Strategy of the United States, enacted on December 18, 2017, what had been happening in practice since mid-2012 was made official, with the acceleration of the interstate dispute and the escalation of global competition: the American repositioning in global geopolitical chess in an increasingly aggressive and unilateral manner.
Leaving aside the multilateralist rhetoric promoted over the last century, the Americans, faced with the strengthening of the “revisionist” powers Russia and China – questioners of the American centrality in the use of the rules and institutions created and managed unilaterally throughout the 20th century -, now seek to impose their will, without concessions, on the countries of the so-called Western Hemisphere. This is a region to which the United States rightfully attributes itself to the full exercise of sovereignty, for considering its zone of direct influence, thus inadmitting any contestation to its supremacy, not even any strategic alliance of countries that can create an alternative pole of power; much less in the Southern Cone of the continent.
Thus, the position of total alignment of the current Brazilian government with the interests of the Trump administration is very much related to this framing of the Western Hemisphere to the strategy of containing the expansionism of Eurasian actors.
If the deepening of the Eurasian project and the Sino-Russian strategic partnership – within Mackinder’s theory of heartland control – would already be inadmissible on its own, then the participation of a large Western Hemisphere country as a protagonist of an institution contesting old rules established and regulated by the hegemon would be too much: Brazil had to be separated from Russia and China at all costs, even if for this the country had to bear the price of seeing its institutions destroyed and involved in the labyrinth of a near military closure of the regime.
…
The last few months have been very hectic in many different parts of the world, particularly in South America.
Even if for not exactly similar reasons, especially in the specific cases of Peru and Bolivia, the popular protests that took place in Ecuador and Chile would have in common the characteristics of an almost natural reaction of self-protection of these societies to neoliberal restrictive policies.
As if it were an old irony of history, at the very moment when we are experiencing the shredding of interstate competition, there emerges a transmission belt spreading over several countries, as distant as they are disparate among themselves, the spark of social protests.
Curiously, this powerful and dangerous combination of social dissatisfaction and the escalation of conflicts between countries, in other periods of history, would end up being configured in that period of transition between the final cycles and of reconfiguration of the great board of the world system.
In view of this, it is important to highlight the risk of a characteristic in common that is gradually emerging in some South American countries: militarization.
With the escalation of global conflicts, the framing of South America to the North American strategy of containment of Eurasian adversaries and in the face of popular agitations to the deterioration of living standards, the lamentable option for the imposition of naked and crude order arises, bringing back to the political scenario of these countries the presence of the military as guarantors of institutional stability.
The region is moving towards a scenario in which elected governments, facing growing internal unrest, would depend on the military to survive.
The recent events in Peru, Ecuador and Chile do not allow us to lie. Apart from the fact that Brazil already lives under the shadow of a veiled military tutelage of its institutions.
The off-curve point of this story is Argentina and the impressive electoral victory of the Peronist opposition (at a time when the use of destabilizing tools has been frequent to interfere in electoral results, as in the case of the mass spread of fake news via Whatsapp in favor of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil).
Against all odds, in a region harassed by increasingly aggressive interference from the United States, Argentina is heading towards the resumption of a project of an autonomous and sovereign nation.
Faced with the successful destruction of the Brazil-Argentina strategic alliance, which had been strengthening since the re-democratization of the two nations in the mid-1980s, Argentina will face the complex challenge of seeking to expand its international insertion without its former Mercosur partner.
Something interesting said by Professor Paulo Nogueira Batista, in the Cycle of Seminars on Analysis of the World Economy, concerns the current Chinese position in the face of the aggressiveness and truculence of the Trump administration: paradoxically, such aggressiveness would be containing the Chinese expansionist impetus of recent years in South America, which, according to the professor, could open great opportunities for the countries of the region to bargain more favorable agreements for the Chinese. With the paralysis of Brazil and its blind alignment with the New Defense Strategy of the United States, Argentina has the opportunity not only to bargain for favorable trade agreements, but also to occupy the space left vacant by Brazil in the Eurasian integration project.
As Professor Paulo Nogueira Batista rightly said, the BRICS, and especially their development bank (NBD), would be heading toward a process of expansion of their participants.
In the new global geopolitical configuration, in which the intensification of the dispute increases the need of competing powers to guarantee their energy security, South America is already seen by many analysts as the new center of gravity of world oil production, replacing the Middle East. The Coup d’état in Bolivia is a very clear sign that the game will tend to be heavier from now on.
As Professor José Luís Fiori, Brazil’s leading expert on geopolitical issues, warned, “Oil is not the cause of all the conflicts in the international system. There is no doubt, however, that the great centralization of power that is underway in the interstate system is also transforming the permanent struggle for energy security of national states into a war between the great powers for the control of the new energy reserves that are being discovered in recent years. A war that is developing hand in hand, and in any corner of the world, be it in the tropical territory of Black Africa or in the icy lands of the Arctic Circle; be it in the turbulent waters of the mouth of the Amazon or in the inhospitable Kamchatka Peninsula”. https://jornalggn.com.br/geopolitica/geopolitica-e-fe-por-jose-luis-fiori/?fbclid=IwAR1IEPB6xbYL9BOpClmpyeUbonPPsIRPP-BQS7L_dqxZI0sr05jTHQ1Av64
Curiously, shortly before the violent classic coup d’état against President Evo Morales, the government of that country had announced plans to nationalize its production of Lithium.
Global demand for Lithium, essential in the production of cell phone batteries, laptops and electric cars, is expected to triple in the next 15 years.
Not coincidentally, Lithium’s world’s largest reserves are in Bolivia.
If this trend is confirmed, there is no other alternative for whale countries like Brazil and Argentina than to take over the South American strategic project at the risk of ending their days fragmented and swallowed up by the interests and disputes of powers outside the region.
For now, it is up to Argentina to walk alone and out of necessity, to expand economic and geopolitical ties with China and Russia because the tendency is for the country to become the target of the next destabilizing campaigns, “fourth generation” wars and economic suffocation caused by the hegemon.
Fabio Reis Vianna, lives in Rio de Janeiro, is a bachelor in law, writer and geopolitical analyst. He is currently a columnist in international politics for the printed version of the centennial Brazilian newspaper Monitor Mercantil.
The author overlooks one crucial problem facing /Kirchner/Fernández, and it’s the same problem the doomed Morales: namely, the military. The only solution is — or in the case of Morales, would have been — to eliminate the School of the Americas-trained, CIA-bankrolled, high-white golpistas in the military. Only thing is, I’m not sure this is possible, as corrupt thugs with guns rarely surrender power willingly. Hugo Chávez managed, perhaps because he had a military background and could operate quasi from the inside — and this is the only reason Venezuela still exists as an independent country instead of as a de facto colony of the USA.
I wish Argentina luck, but one false move and the military will putsch.
There is a problem with Fernandez. He is pro abortion and pro lgtb. And He is backed by the power of Hsbc and Jewish gangsters.
This is a situation you’re going to find generally. The thing is that social conservatism, such as being against abortion and lgbt issues and similar stuff, happens to be associated with resistance to imperialism in Russia, but most other places it’s the reverse. Kind of an accident of history–just as Russia was experiencing a resurgence of (mostly Orthodox) religion after the end of religion-suppressing Communist rule, the US came to be seen as advancing a socially liberal agenda internationally. And of course the EU tends to be much more serious about socially liberal agendas and is closely aligned with the US. So, opposing a US/EU agenda in certain places seems to include opposing a socially liberal agenda.
But in much of the rest of the world, and certainly in Latin America, it’s the reverse. Imperialism uses socially conservative religion as a vehicle for oppression–traditionally the Catholic church, more recently the American-backed Pentecostals who form a major source of Bolsonaro’s support. For these religions, suppressing the lower classes goes hand in hand with suppressing women, natives, gays and anyone else uppity. Feminists, lgbt, different races, all naturally seem to be fighting for liberty from the same oppressors, so anti-imperialists are gonna be strongly anti-racist, pro-feminist (revolutions in Latin America really ain’t happening without women) and at least somewhat pro-abortion (since it’s a feminist issue) and pro-lgbt etc.
So if you want to buck the empire and have allies in Latin America, you’re gonna have to live with their non-social-conservative ideas, ’cause your potential allies are all going to be like that.
Wrong, HSBC was behind Macri, jews influence everybody in Argentina but gangsters prefer right wing.
Pro abortion and pro LGBT rights is Obama ideology, that did not stop him form being an imperialist. This is not about ideology but economy, stupid.
Agree with Borges, not with corvo, that it seems that he is not living here…
There is NO “military” DANGER in Argentina. They were DESTROYED by successive governments since 1983 to date.
BTW, those “democratic” goverments, were anything but REAL sovereign ones. Just take a look at the permanent “compromise” with the imf… …and fernandez will do EXACTLY the same “trick”, i.e.: keep borrowing.
The only thing I hope is that Argentina strength its ties with Russia and really approached an Eurasianist integration.
I have many doubts about it, sadly. I still “wait and watch”.
Kind regards.
100 % agree, exactly what you said is what I wanted to answer corvo. Army will do nothing in Argentina. They are not dangerous to Argentinian democracy.
Fernandez is smart and from what I heard from him he KNOWS that the future is in Asia, on the other hand he has to pay the debts left by Macri, and the US knows this. Trump has him from the balls.
Salu2
We have Condor 2.0. Progressive goverments are de-stabilized by “lawfare” through the corrupt judicial system and hegemonic media ( see Ecuador, Brazil, etc). Lawfare did not work in Bolivia, they were forced to arrange a coup with help of Brazil and Argentina, local fascist/racist elements and piloted by the US embassy.
Now they are trying a last effort with Venezuela today, calling for disturbances.
In Argentina there is no threat from the army. It has been made in-operative since the war for Malvinas.
Lawfare has been going on in Argentina with deeply corrupt judges like Irurzún, Bonadio, et al, add to it the daily brainwashing of Clarín & La Nación.
Nevertheless the people of Argentina gave Alberto Fernández (the peronist alliance) the vote and from the 10/12 we shall see what Condor 2.0 is planning for Argentina.
Possibly a revolt from our feudal landowners (in protest of the export tax on agricultural commodities)….
energy security? and ‘facing growing internal unrest, would depend on the military to survive.’
wow, over at Gail Tverberg blog ourfiniteworld.com this comes up quite a lost now!
There is no question we cannot sustain our level of civilization with the energy resources we currently have period. And the capital needed to bring new sources of energy on line is simply staggering. Saudi Arabia as one example, though she has enormous amounts of oil in the country has indebted itself to tune of billions if not trillion and needs high oil prices to help pay for it all. This of course isn’t occurring and indeed can’t for how can the consuming masses pay for the increasing cost of everything? Britain to was a classic example when she first started to drill for oil in the north sea. the capital needed was huge but to depend on other countries for her energy and economic security was a no go really!
Houston we have a problem. and here an interesting example. A personal story yesterday in our companies lunchroom. We all heard the story of an Albertan who after moving to BC couldn’t believe the cost of car ownership. The gas price was the first to hit him but to insure his car it would cost 17,000 dollars a year!!!! Yes, you heard that right!!!!!!
We all gasped and though the car of course was an older Toyota Supra worth about 40,000 dollars and because he was new to BC was treated as a young driver with no history this cost still left us all reeling. He cannot afford this and of course few would?
Further imagine this a story that San Jose, California is one of the first of many cities to outright ban the use of natural gas in all new construction. Reminds me of something I heard about Adelaide, Australia. they exported theirs only to run out and have nothing left to fuel their own city! Don’t know how true this is but it makes sense to protect what you have instead of worthless money. Hard assets is where the name of the game is now and Edward Griffin is right along with Gail Tverberg.
https://needtoknow.news/2019/11/san-jose-california-is-set-to-become-the-largest-city-to-ban-natural-gas/
“G. Edward Griffin reveals how inflation cannot go on forever and why the bankers are flooding the economy with money in anticipation of a global collapse. He poses thought-provoking questions about how President Trump was elected, his relationship with Henry Kissinger and George Soros, and his reversal on campaign promises and early accomplishments. -GEG
His last paragraph is the juicy part:
So, what’s the plan by the bankers? Griffin says, “I think I know. They are waiting for the big collapse to come. They will personally be okay because they will have amassed hard assets. They are trying to hold all the gold, all the silver, all the real estate and all the stuff that has value. They want all the tools, factories and food supplies, but everything else, based on numbers, paper and debt, that will collapse. So, they will be able to pick up everything for pennies on the dollar.”
https://needtoknow.news/2019/11/g-edward-griffin-says-bankers-are-going-for-broke-because-the-economy-is-broke/
lol if Morales was a central banker with the knowledge of what was actually going on and the power to do something he would most likely still be in power. Most educated bankers are in places like New York, Switzerland, England, Brussels etc. They will as usual determine the course of economics and history not the likes of a Morales.
The course of economics and history will be determined by the ecological Holocaust-end of story.
This comment is off-topic – please take to the MFC – any further off-topic comments will go to trash. Mod.
sorry for being terribly off target
@ Mulga, Mulga after everything we have been through?
The end of the story has already been written for mankind Mulga and it is a glorious one.
If scientists lie about anything it is this nonsense that faith is blind because God can’t be observed to exist. This is BS pure and simple!!!!!! Faith is neither blind nor is God an absentee landlord over His Creation!!!!
And the proof of it has been written.
O and by the way:
Scientific “consensus” is a popular buzzword commonly used by climate fanatics to “prove” that man-made climate change is a real thing. But is there really even a consensus as these hysterics claim? Not even close.
As it turns out, the climate lobby loves to pull its “facts” right out of thin air, including the newly minted fiction that “More than 11,000 scientists declare ‘climate emergency.’” While this regurgitated mainstream media headline is pretty cut and dry, the claim it makes is patently false, we’ve now learned.
Just like the Greta Thunberg hoax, the notion that more than 11,000 actual scientists are suddenly lamenting an impending “climate emergency” has absolutely no basis in reality.
In truth, these 11,000 “scientists” are actually just 11,000 ordinary people who were duped into believing that cow farts are destroying the planet, and subsequently responded by signing their names on some website.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-11-14-scientists-warning-climate-emergency-are-random-people.html
and
A key claim in a January 2016 article in the scientific journal, Nature, is that there are no longer any living colonies of Acropora – a particular type of coral – at Stone Island off Bowen Harbour in the Whitsundays, and that other corals are now covered in mud.
Dr Peter Ridd’s path to dismissal by James Cook University began with an email questioning claims that the corals at Stone
Dr Marohasy and her team went to find out the true state of the coral reefs around Stone Island.
What they found contradicts the Nature paper and proves this key reef system is very much alive.
Read the IPA’s media release here.
Click here to read Dr Jennifer Marohasy’s articles on climate change and Great Barrier Reef science.
Throughout history, individuals have been crushed by the masses, particularly when their evidence does not concur with the overall agenda. Rational argument is not possible when people think in terms of slogans, especially when some of those in authority have no real firsthand experience of nature
Dr Jennifer Marohasy
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=197903&unapproved=939881&moderation-hash=4f2bdcb584e1180e9a06ff14551840cd#comment-939881
and finally:
Fraud: While the global warming alarmists have done a good job of spreading fright, they haven’t been so good at hiding their real motivation. Yet another one has slipped up and revealed the catalyst driving the climate scare.
We have been told now for almost three decades that man has to change his ways or his fossil-fuel emissions will scorch Earth with catastrophic warming. Scientists, politicians and activists have maintained the narrative that their concern is only about caring for our planet and its inhabitants. But this is simply not true. The narrative is a ruse. They are after something entirely different.
If they were honest, the climate alarmists would admit that they are not working feverishly to hold down global temperatures — they would acknowledge that they are instead consumed with the goal of holding down capitalism and establishing a global welfare state.
Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.
So what is the goal of environmental policy?
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer
https://www.winterwatch.net/2019/04/another-climate-alarmist-admits-real-motive-behind-warming-scare/
Agree with you, milan, on Mulga’s climate pessimism weak mental flank…..invaded by the international banksters….and given up by him…without a fight for any logical consistency.
It’s so much easier to throw up one’s hands and claim moral superiority wagging one’s fingers in people’s faces and warning of their imminent doom than to resolve such glaring strategic inconsistencies ……more happily!
HOWEVER: Disagree on your own concessions to the supposed eternal invincibility of the very same banksters “in places like New York, Switzerland, England, Brussels etc.” that have so successfully “played” Mulga.
Like the South Americans blind sided by their own weak flanks culturally, morally..(in deviancy being an honored part of the “oppressed social coalition”…) ……real progress depends more on an internal battle of the mind and spirit ……….to rid oneself and one’s society ……..of these SO obvious debilitating contradictions planted by the social controllers in places like London’s Tavistock Institute…in order to achieve a strategy not riddled with fatal flaws of inconsistency …….and pessimism.
You have to understand tht MAcri, Piñera and most of these center-right politicians are easy-prey to marxists, they are weak-politicians only worried about a bit less-taxes;
What we are seeing now in South America is the rise of a Christian (mainly evangelical), pro-family, pro-business and anti-corruption conservative movement, they are the new Right-Wingers who are defeating the establishment, they are the future (the election of Bolsonaro and the defeat of Evo were the causes of this movement)
If Russia and China keep insisting on backing the dead-horses, it will lose South America, many right-wingers had a lot of admiration for Putin for defending Christian values at home and abroad, but at the same time the same people got infuriated by Russia stubbornly backing regimes that are completely disfunctional, pro-lgbt and abortion, incompetent and full of corruption; Russia should re-evaluate her strategy, China is learning the lesson and is making tons of deals with Bolsonaro (as a brazilian and a strong supporter of Bolsonaro and Putin, I hope this will happen)
Where does PUTIN support LGBT?
The LGBT all over the earth hates Putin.
WRT China, China is only interested in making money, aka doing business, if there in Africa and people eat human flesh, the Chinese would probably remain silent so long as they weren’t eating chinese flesh
LGBT is a western phenomenon where there is nothing left to steal, so the politicians created “Genital Rights”, this has been going on for 40+ years
“they are the new Right-Wingers who are defeating the establishment,” Bolsonaro is defeating nothing. Bolsonaro IS THE ESTABLISHMENT.
Hey Leo it’s your corporate right-wing capitalist loving overlords that created this alphabet soup group and their right to be as perverted as they wannabe. Name me one country that is officially Communist or was that ever had gay marriage, gay parents, gay parades, a massive porn industry, none, this all comes from the capitalist West. Also every time an extreme right-winger takes over these countries, that legalized this filth, they never rescind it or even care about so called family values.
All the right-wingers care about when they get power is wealth and power, plus sexual perversion goes with wealth and power. You can be sure its your corporate capitalist who you praise that is responsible for this, not some nebulous straw man of Marxist like you loonies claim. I give you an example, Colombia’s right wing regime without hesitation legalized gay marriage nearly a decade ago, meaning fascist Uribismo, didn’t give a shit about family values.
You Alt-Right(s) (removed ad hominem, mod) are projecting your failures on left that had nothing to do with the cultural rot of the West. This is exemplified by your and other right-wingers posting like milan, your inability to take responsibility and look in to yourselves as to the wrongs you have committed. Then again arguing with right-wingers is like arguing with a wall.
Hey Mike, great comment and good you are pointing this out. In Cuba same Sex-marriage is illegal, same in Venezuela. In Colombia and Chile it is legal, so much for that false social conservative / social liberal paradigm. Right wing and anti-corruption haha, that is why Michel Temer the former President of Brazil is already facing corruption charges?
In the vein of this discussion I recommend the article ‘Thy Will Be Done: Brasil’s Holy War’ it discusses how the US actively supported and used Evangelical movements there and elsewhere in South America to further its foreign policy goals. The fruits of which can now be seen in Brazil and to some degree in the Bolivian coup leaders.
As we are having a more in-depth discussion on South America I was wondering to what degree Trump’s inclusion of Brazil into NATO would find resonance in Brazil’s right/white elites? If I remember correctly he proposed something along those lines when Bolsonaro visited him in the White House. What could Brazil gain other than maybe prestige and would the Brazilian military support such a move, especially in light of a possible global escalation between superpowers?
Also, let’s keep Bolivians in our prayers who are currently confronted by armed, out of control military thugs!
Thanks for the support, yeah I had to make my argument against the false straw man called Cultural Marxism, which doesn’t exits, its an invention of modern capitalist societies as something their fascist right wing attack dogs can latch to. If one reads the actual works of Marx they will not much outside of socio-economics, mainly its about economy, industry its history and its end point.
Mark certainly didn’t talk about issues he would have found alien like gay marriage, gender neutral bathrooms, or identity politics. The only identity in his book are the workers and owners of capital, and if that’s not enough, his personal life being married and having 7 children, hardly a model of gender bending perverted identity politics form of marriage in the liberal Capitalist West.
Also, given the nature of our Corporate Capitalist West in terms of work and having your free time taken up by especially in the U.S. by holding multiple jobs, or jobs with long hours, long commutes because its expensive living near work, or working in another part of the country, because of lousy pay. Then the question to all right-wingers is how can someone maintain a family or even have one, to be there to teach your children values when you have to spend half your day working or getting to work. You can’t, that’s where corporate media or corrupt educational institution easily manipulate your kids.
This system in the West also fractures and atomizes the extended family in to tiny atomized barely functioning nuclear family units. So that there isn’t a trusted and familial support from Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and Grandparents as its been historically for Humans since the beginning of the species. No wonder why we have a spate of people losing and going on mass murder spree because of this hyper-individualism. Or also the epidemic of substance abuse because of the hyper-individualist social isolation or disconnection.
I guess its done on purpose here because lack of family, community and solidarity make it easy for the parasitic psychopathic capitalistic elite to control us. So why should they and their fascist attack dogs give one wit about family since that breeds solidarity and community, and with that real resistance.
Yeah it seems to me its the Capitalist oligarchs who should like excess low brow entertainment, sports, porn, identity politics, alcohol and drugs. It’s the real opiate of the masses that keeps them dumb, numb and distracted, it pollutes the minds of children and it makes our corporate overlords more money another side bonus for them.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing your insights.
Great article, sees right into world dynamic how the Belt and Road integration project includes Africa and South America.
However, the author fails to undertand that the military has had its power curtailed in Argentina after the disastrous defeat in Falklands/Malvinas war, their prestige is at an all time low, scarcely can they vie for power and impose neo-liberal plolicies, the neo liberal “democratic” option has been soundly defeated in elections after wreaking havoc in the country, which is submerged in debt with the IMF.
Changing the actors while using the same script will not resolve anything, and that is all that this is. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. That would change it all! Globalism and international banking are the problems, and will Never be the solutions. It’s the same as transferring debt from one credit card to another.