By Fabio Reis Vianna for the Saker Blog
In a recent article published in the American magazine Foreign Affairs, Christorpher Layne, professor of international relations at the University of Texas, defends the thesis that a hegemonic war between the United States and China, if tensions escalate at the current pace, is not unlikely.
In his article The Return of Great-Power War, the author argues that the intensification of geopolitical competition between the two powers, despite the prevailing view in academic circles, would have explosive potential if we analyze the scenario in the light of history.
In this sense, the majority view argues that the economic interdependence between the two countries would be a factor in reducing the risk of an eventual conflict. As Professor Layne reminds us, if we return to history we would see similarities between the current situation and that which preceded the first great world war.
According to the professor, the current sour relations between the United States and China would remind us, in geopolitical terms, of the troubled relationship between the United Kingdom and Germany in the years before that war.
It is even worth emphasizing that in economic terms, as well as the United States and China, the United Kingdom and Germany maintained very close ties, and there was, therefore, also an interdependence between the two powers at the time.
Something, however, that the author may be mistaken is the idea that the so-called liberal international order led by the United States would be a factor in curbing Chinese pretensions and the so-called “revisionist powers” to destabilize the preservation of peace, maintained through the multilateral institutions created in the postwar period.
This would make sense in the idealized world of Atlanticist analysis, where the rise of new actors had never occurred, and American unipolar hegemony was undeniable.
The so-called liberal international order has been systematically dismantled by its own creators: the United States of America.
Long before Donald Trump was elected – after the September 11, 2001 attacks – the United States, in instituting the war on terror, practically tore apart the fantasy of liberal cosmopolitanism and assumed itself as an imperial power, arrogating itself with the right to intervene in any scenario and against anyone who posed a supposed, generic terrorist threat.
Little is said about this in Atlanticist circles, but the global instability that this irresponsible attitude generated was most likely one of the reasons why such revisionist actors took themselves seriously to project themselves autonomously into the interstate system.
In particular, Russia, which – being harassed by NATO’s enlargement towards its borders – since 2008, in the war in Georgia, has given a demonstration of warlike power that has not been seen for some time.
In fact, the concrete rise of emerging powers is the reason why – and contrary to what Professor Layne maintains – the United States would be undermining the multilateral institutions it once supported.
This attitude has led them to act in a truculent and imperial manner, even against their traditional and historical European allies, which denotes the dysfunctional character of the Trump administration for the United States’ own internal system, that is, the figure of Trump would have driven a radicalization of this new American strategy.
But paradoxically, while in rhetorical terms Donald Trump made this new strategy clearer, in practice his erratic figure became a serious factor in the internal destabilization of the American system, and thus his permanence became seen as a threat to the establishment of the United States.
Thus the election of Joe Biden would serve as a factor in the recomposition of the establishment in the face of a weakened hegemon who loses more and more global influence.
The moment is grave, and the lack of a concrete response to a vaccine, combined with the surprising resurgence of the virus in Europe, shed light on the depth of the crisis and the risk that silently haunts the minds of world leaders: the ghost of rebellions.
According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, “Those who have spoken with Premier Giuseppe Conte describe him impressed by the images of street protests.
As the virus advances again over Italy, the government’s popularity drops sharply.
For historical and geographical reasons Europe is still considered the sounding board of the world, and social dissatisfaction on the continent with the new measures to contain the virus is visible among workers and small businesses, desperate with the ghost of unemployment and bankruptcy.
According to unsuspected IMF researchers Tahsin Saadi Sedik and Rui Xu, “in the years following the pandemics, the countries most affected saw an increase in social unrest. Based on this historical trend, the Covid-19 pandemic may pose a threat to the social fabric in many countries. When inequality is high, the pandemic can fuel social unrest”.
Such a situation could lead to another risk already witnessed along the so-called first wave: the increase of military escalation.
In recent times, one of Brazil’s greatest thinkers, UFRJ professor José Luís Fiori, has been defending the thesis that the current hegemonic power, the United States, when threatened by emerging powers, would have chosen to destroy the Bretton Woods system and go for an all-militaristic valley against its rivals.
What at first could be interpreted as a demonstration of weakness, or a proof that the hegemon would be in decline, in fact, according to Fiori, reinforces the hypothesis that every hegemonic power tends to expand uninterruptedly in order to remain in the leadership of the system, but when threatened, if necessary, it is capable of destroying the system it itself created in order to stay ahead.
Against this backdrop, and as has been happening in Europe, the internal pressure that the pandemic has generated in American society could most likely trigger a reaction from the new democratic government to the outside; that instead of being mere aggressive rhetoric – as has been happening with Trump – could result in some new theater of war, both in the Middle East and next door in Venezuela.
One thing is certain: the industrial-military complex is thirsting for a new war to call its own, and with the democrats back in power, everything gets easier.
The longer a solution to contain the virus takes, the more social dissatisfaction will spread due to the economic collapse generated by the delay.
As in other times when systemic impasses have occurred, it is not difficult to remember the escalation of interstate conflict at the beginning of the 20th century – with antagonistic protagonists the United Kingdom and Germany – which soon deepened into widespread systemic chaos; then descended into popular rebellions.
Hegemonic dispute, abrupt technological changes, precarious work; general and diffuse dissatisfaction: the pandemic is phosphorus.
…
Fabio Reis Vianna, lives in Rio de Janeiro, is a bachelor of laws (LL.B), MA student in International Relations at the University of Évora (Portugal), writer and geopolitical analyst. He currently maintains a column on international politics at the centennial Brazilian newspaper Monitor Mercantil.
The only thing that stops the European governments of doing the collapse is to fight them in a civil war. Nothing else can be done sadly.
Kkkkk esses “pensadores” tupiniquins são piadas prontas. Não basta o Brasil ser um país infestado de analfabetos funcionais e favelas e ainda tem os “esquerdistas de meia tijela” posando de “pensadores”. O Brasil não tem jeito e nem nunca terá.
Google translation,MOD:
Kkkkk these “thinkers” tupiniquins are ready jokes. It is not enough for Brazil to be a country infested with functional illiterates and slums and it still has the “half-left leftists” posing as “thinkers”. Brazil is hopeless and will never be.
É a velha prática da direita precinceituosa, se perdeu em sua crítica não passou de um recalcado que sem ter argumentos tenta desfazer das pessoas, mas saiba que no Brasil apesar de todos os percalços tem um conhecimento do mundo melhor do que amaioria dos norte americanos que não sabem distinguir um pais de outro.
Google Translation/English – Mod.
It is the old practice of the prejudiced right, it was lost in its criticism it was only a repression that without arguments it tries to undo people, but know that in Brazil, despite all the mishaps, it has a better knowledge of the world than most Americans who they do not know how to distinguish one country from another.
“Brazil is hopeless and will never amount to much”? And “Brazilian thinkers are a complete joke”? The fact that there are (still) illiterate people and a great many poor people doesn’t mean the country will never get anywhere. One may understand your pessimism, but as they say in my corner of the world, every rooster was once an egg.
Prof. Fiori’s speculation that the US would prefer to destroy the existing system and launch an all-out war to taking second place to some “upstart” power, is not far-fetched at all, and he is not the first to suggest it: Thucydides was the first.
Everyone understands that red lines are danger points, and many have been warning about this:
– Pat Buchanan: “Ignoring the War Risks of Red Lines” – https://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/ignoring-the-war-risks-of-red-lines/?highlight=red+lines;
– Kevin Rudd: “Beware the Guns of August—in Asia. How to Keep U.S.-Chinese Tensions From Sparking a War” – https://kevinrudd.com/2020/08/04/foreign-affairs-beware-the-guns-of-august-in-asia/
Yet bot the US has been lavishly issuing threats and setting red lines to China, and so indeed has the latter as well:
Yang Jiechi: “The US side should refrain from going too far with meddling. Red lines shouldn’t be crossed.” https://indianpunchline.com/1962-india-china-war-redeux/
And if Blinken, Biden’s choice for Secretary of State, is confirmed, he will probably be as violently confrontational as Pompeo. In an interview at the Hudson Institute, he said:
“We need to rally our allies and partners, … to deal with some of the challenges that China poses.” https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-30/biden-and-blinken-want-alliances-to-confront-china-but-friends-have-changed
So, more cries of “no pasara” in the offing, not less. Hence, more risks of war…
Se você é brasileiro eu te desafio a se postar perante uma escola pública nos rincões do Brasil. A educação fundamental no Brasil é uma piada e o “povo” brasileiro é uma versão tropical dos dalits indianos. Esse teatrinho esquerda/direita nunca teve utilidade e esses comediantes tupiniquins disfarçados de “pensadores” são tão irrelevantes quanto os seus inimigos imaginários da tal “direita cobservadora sei lá quê”. Esses “pensadores” inúteis deveriam sair dos corredores das universidades públicas sustentadas pelos “pobris” brasileiros e tentar observar que os “pobris” brasileiros não precisam deles para nada. Perder tempo em uma sala de aula PAGA pelos miseráveis não faz desse comediante um “pensador”. Talvez engane os tolos que aqui “lutam” inutilmente sendo que mal conhecem o sofrimento das frentes de batalha mas graças aos cereais, bacon e ovos “ruminam” contra os imperialistas malvadões. Eu como brasileiro não conheço um ÚNICO “pobri” que dependa desses idiotas inúteis.
Eles? Complexados e doutrinados as custas do contribuinte “pobri” enquanto os seus donos ganham fortunas fingindo “proteger” os pobris. Enquanto os senhores dos seus donos sustentam a miséria com migalhas o povo brasileiro segue tão miserável e ignorante quanto os dalits indianos. Eu e tantos milhões NUNCA precisou dessa escoria criada a Sustagem e Leite Ninho e agora o tal pensador que passou a infância assistindo Discoverykids quer posar de arauto de alguma coisa? Esses lunáticos além de serem idiotas inúteis irrelevantes para qualquer coisa que seja vivem exclusivamente no mundinho virtual esmolando curtidas e amiguinhos virtuais. No mundo real NENHUM brasileiro precisa desses revolucionários de redes sociais. Continue com a sua lutinha de merda que é muito engraçado. Eu? Posso comer um bife suculento de Contra-Filé porque eu trabalho e não porque dependo dessa escória “pulitizada”.
Yandex translate. Mod:
If you are Brazilian I challenge you to post before a public school in the corners of Brazil. Fundamental education in Brazil is a joke and the Brazilian “people” is a tropical version of Indian dalits. This little left/right theater has never been useful and these comedians tupiniquins disguised as” thinkers “are as irrelevant as their imaginary enemies of such”right cobservadora know what”. These useless “thinkers “should leave the corridors of public universities supported by the Brazilian” pobris “and try to observe that the Brazilian” pobris” do not need them at all. Wasting time in a classroom paid for by the wretched does not make this comedian a “thinker”. Perhaps it deceives the fools who Here” fight ” uselessly being that they barely know the suffering of the battle fronts but thanks to cereals, bacon and eggs “ruminate” against the evil imperialists. I as a Brazilian do not know a single “pobri” that depends on these useless idiots.
Them? Complexed and indoctrinated the costs of the taxpayer “pobri” while their owners earn fortunes pretending to” protect ” the poor. While the Lords of their owners sustain the misery with crumbs, the Brazilian people remain as miserable and ignorant as the Indian dalits. I and so many millions never needed this scum created the sustenance and Nest milk and now The such thinker who spent his childhood watching Discovery kids wants to pose as a herald of something? These lunatics besides being useless idiots irrelevant to anything that is live exclusively in the virtual world giving likes and virtual friends. In the real world, No Brazilian needs these social media revolutionaries. Keep up with your fight which is very funny. Me? I can eat a juicy counter-fillet steak because I work and not because I depend on this “pulitized”.Removed. Mod.
Olá Jackes. Espero que um dia consigas voltar a ser uma pessoa serena e livre de tanto ódio acumulado. Leia coisas que te faça feliz e esqueça um pouco teu ex-amigo. Não vale a pena alimentar rancor. Faz mal à saúde.
Os escravos de Sião se apoderaram do verbo amor e odio e deuturparam o verbo lutar. Só são idiotas inúteis irrelevantes para qualquer coisa que seja. Continue “lutando”. Quem depende de você para alguma coisa?Ninguém? Eu sei! Saia do mundinho virtual e tente compreender quem sequer está preocupado com as suas bazófias sobre política. Um idiota inútil é só um inútil que tem como razão de “existir” meter o bedelho em política. Se recolha ao seu mundinho virtual e continue se entupindo de cereais e bacon.
Google translation,MOD:
The slaves of Zion took over the verb love and hate and deuturped the verb to fight. They are just useless idiots irrelevant to anything. Keep fighting”. Who depends on you for anything? I know! Get out of the virtual world and try to understand who is not even concerned with your boasting about politics. A useless idiot is just a useless one whose reason for “existing” is to put the bedouin into politics. Retreat to your virtual world and keep stuffing yourself with cereal and bacon.
Jackes, honre o cartão de crédito que seu pai te cedeu por pena do filho fracassado que mal consegue prover a própria família, Vá cuidar dos que dependem de você ao invés de perder tempo como hater anônimo de internet. Triste fim de um ex-sonhador absorvido pelo ódio e a inveja.
Google translation,MOD:
Jackes, honor the credit card your father gave you out of pity for the failed son who can barely provide for his own family. Sad end of an ex-dreamer absorbed by hatred and envy.
If the US is to genuinely pursue total war against China, it would need to completely dismantle the existing liberal domestic environment. Culturally, the US is far too fragmented to undertake any project of national, even state-level significance. A war against China would truly be a global project, as every remaining political body would fight for what it perceives as the superior world order.
US gov would need to execute the following:
* Reduce economic dependence on China by an order of magnitude, including rooting out individual financial ties
* Effectively nationalize all social media to implement a strict content control policy
* Terrorize its citizens with a 9/11 style event and severe economic austerity
* Completely reform the Pentagon bureaucracy
In short, it is comically, cosmically impossible. Should they go forward without fulfilling all of these objectives, the results will be beyond disastrous for the Western establishment–domestic revolution will follow.
As things stand, this baring of teeth from the clowns in Washington is little more than mid-20th century LARPing. The hullabaloo achieves its goal of securing paychecks for the aforementioned Pentagon bureaucrats and other special interest groups (Israel).
When Hitler came to power in 1933, the country was completely, hopelessly broke. The Treaty of Versailles had imposed crushing reparations payments on the German people, who were expected to reimburse the costs of the war for all participants — costs totaling three times the value of all the property in the country. People were living in hovels and starving. Nothing quite like it had ever happened before – the total destruction of the national currency, wiping out people’s savings, their businesses and the economy generally. Making matters worse, at the end of the decade global depression hit. Germany had no choice but to succumb to debt slavery to international lenders.
Or so it seemed. Hitler and the National Socialists, who came to power in 1933, thwarted the international banking cartel by issuing their own money. In this they took their cue from Abraham Lincoln, who funded the American Civil War with government-issued paper money called “Greenbacks.” Hitler began his national credit program by devising a plan of public works. Projects earmarked for funding included flood control, repair of public buildings and private residences, and construction of new buildings, roads, bridges, canals, and port facilities. The projected cost of the various programs was fixed at one billion units of the national currency.
One billion non-inflationary bills of exchange, called Labor Treasury Certificates, were then issued against this cost. Millions of people were put to work on these projects, and the workers were paid with the Treasury Certificates. This government-issued money wasn’t backed by gold, but it was backed by something of real value. It was essentially a receipt for labor and materials delivered to the government. Hitler said, “for every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark’s worth of work done or goods produced.” The workers then spent the Certificates on other goods and services, creating more jobs for more people.
Within two years, the unemployment problem had been solved and the country was back on its feet. It had a solid, stable currency, no debt, and no inflation, at a time when millions of people in the United States and other Western countries were still out of work and living on welfare. Germany even managed to restore foreign trade, although it was denied foreign credit and was faced with an economic boycott abroad. It did this by using a barter system: equipment and commodities were exchanged directly with other countries, circumventing the international banks. This system of direct exchange occurred without debt and without trade deficits.
Germany’s economic experiment, like Lincoln’s, was short-lived; but it left some lasting monuments to its success, including the famous Autobahn, the world’s first extensive superhighway. Hjalmar Schacht, who was then head of the German central bank, is quoted in a bit of wit that sums up the German version of the “Greenback” miracle.
An American banker had commented, “Dr. Schacht, you should come to America. We’ve lots of money and that’s real banking.” Schacht replied, “You should come to Berlin. We don’t have money. That’s real banking.”
In Billions for the Bankers, Debts for the People (1984), Sheldon Emry commented: “Germany issued debt-free and interest-free money from 1935 and on, accounting for its startling rise from the depression to a world power in 5 years. Germany financed its entire government and war operation from 1935 to 1945 without gold and without debt, and it took the whole Capitalist and Communist world to destroy the German power over Europe and bring Europe back under the heel of the Bankers.” Such history of money does not even appear in the textbooks of public (government) schools today.
O braço esquerdo e direito de Sião prevaleceu. Hoje? Os servos idolatram o seu deus supremo: os híbridos da iniciativa privada. O populacho “domesticado”. Eles pensam ser de “direita” ou “esquerda” mas só são o mesmo povo de ontem, hoje e sempre.
Google translation,MOD:
Zion’s left and right arm prevailed. Today? Servants idolize their supreme god: the hybrids of the private sector. The “domesticated” populace. They think they are “right” or “left” but they are only the same people as yesterday, today and always.
It was short lived because it realized that it was not sustainable in the long run without the resources that Germany did not posses or were in short supply like petrol, iron, minerals, wheat, and found more expedient to go and grab them from elsewhere without paying (money being in short supply too). It was what Germany did in WW1 and the reparations were proportionate to the amount of destruction and looting that Germans inflicted on his enemies.
Hitler’s debt free money was such a roaring success that lifted Germans out of the poverty imposed by the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. The western banks were so incensed that they had Britain’s Chamberlain declare war on Germany in 1939, that kicked off WW2 and the destruction of Europe.
“The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.” -Abraham Lincoln
And then he was assassinated,
The terrorist Hitler regime was financed by both national and international capital and instrumentalised as the West’s weapon against the Soviet Union. As this operation included the risk of Hitler winning, and a nazi-empire challenging the Anglo-American one, he had to be backstabbed by is Western “friends”.
The Nazis were not only supported financially by Wall Street and to a lesser degree the City of London but also with technology transfers eg ITT, General Motors, Ford and most importantly Standard Oil whose advanced technology of converting oil into coal plus advanced fuels for the Luftwaffe allowed Hitler to start WW2. Indeed, not only did the companies, banks help and support The Nazis but they also did the same for the Bolsheviks.
Both Ford and IBM did business in Germany during WW2 1939 – 45 and were actually compensated by the US government at war’s end for damage done to their factories in Germany.
Hitler’s motivations were lebensraum to the East, and revenge against the Jewish banks for the draconian reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
Would you be surprised that all the banks in Germany supporting financially the first phase of the drive for ‘lebensraum’ that was WW1, were in the hands of the Jews? Max Warburg, the director of M. M. Warburg & Co. in Hamburg, Germany, was a close advisor of Wilhelm II prior (and during) to World War I. He was the elder brother of Paul Warburg, the ‘American’ banker, chief architect of the Federal Reserve Board of the United States. From 1933, he served on the board of the German Reichsbank under governor Hjalmar Schacht, and on the board of IG Farben (when his brother Paul was on the board of the American branch of IG Farben). He sold his bank in 1935 and quietly emigrated to America in 1938.
While everyone sympathizes for the plight of Germany after WW1 you forget that American money, some $700m, financed much of the Hitler eco miracle of the 1930s and paid for the armaments. That was the US MIC so they could setup another war so they could be drawn in too and get $4 trillion. They got a 5000% return. Also other interests in Europe wanted Stalin out for various reasons.
Its a pity similar projects were not funded in UK and US too at the time.
It also created the debts we have to endure even today, from banking crisis to banking crisis, we are broke (deeply in debt), yet damning the financial torpedoes on which we ride into the future..
boy when you input incorrect data the answers are always off.
if my sons do not want wars there are no wars” .
Good article. However, if the US is ever going to get into a real war with China, it better do so real soon.
Unfortunately, even now it appears to late; if we engage now, with 8%, and rising, of the US military obese,
and all the contracting corrupt, if we went to war with China now, we would lose badly.
There’s no comparing US v China and UK v Germany.
For starters it was Germany v Russia + France + UK. In both WWI and especially WWll Germany would have eaten Britain alive in a land war had they squared off mano a mano.
Secondly today total war means total annihilation. China also has nukes not to mention Russia’s nuclear umbrella.
I doubt it. I think that they will reach a nice agreement with China, remove people who create problems and turn to Russia from all sides. When Russia falls first, so will later China in their dreams. With the departure of Trump, the possibility of a reverse scenario is changed. China would no longer be a problem, it will become part of a globalist solution. Of course, first of all Iran. That will drive the bear out of the cave.
All wars are banker’s wars and control of the money supply – should it be privatized as in the US debt based system, or should it be the sole province of the sovereign government as in communist China ?
Everything else is secondary.
The control of humanity is the goal, no money. Elites instead of God or “just below him” as deities. Money is a mean to the goal, like ideology. Technology is part of a means. Science is a means like the church used to be. Media. Even Yellow liberals as the weakest link of the “revolutionaries” are a means. After the battle of ideologies, today black and red work together. Fascism to the elites, socialism to the broad masses.
For the past 70 years or so, the ability of the federal reserve and its member banks who create the US money supply as debt such that no debts = no money has been a powerful means of subjugating a number of countries by toppling any government that shows signs of adopting socialism to improve the lives of their populations using the proceeds from their natural resources, particularly in South America.
Regarding Asia, the US destroyed North Korea, Vietnam by military means.
In the Middle East they destroyed Iraq and Libya.
In Europe NATO was used to subjugate Serbia
History shows a lot of things. But what history does not show is an all out struggle between nuclear powers. Here’s the subject that a lot of our strategic thinkers seem to be avoiding. Just prior to the last US election back in 2016 Daniel Ellsberg published a book called ‘The Doomsday Machine; Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner’. Ellsberg recalled his life as a leading Rand associate working for the Pentagon who personally wrote up the nuclear war plan of 1964. He recalled that the Pentagon policy was to strike both the USSR and the PRC with nuclear weapons, all at once, and right now. The idea of ‘escalation’ that agitates the minds of so many in cyberspace, not excluding Rand wonks, did not apply in Ellsberg’s recollection. Ellsberg wrote the book to put his readers on notice that nothing much has changed in DC policyland.
In comparing the UK and Germany to pre-WW1, what role are the Khazarians going to play in a U.S. China war? They will at least want to conquer the fertile crescent and the the adjoining lands and annihilate Iran. The deep state set up by the Anglo-Zionists subverted the governments of the UK, France, and Russia to wage war against Germany to bring about its destruction and the establishment of Israel.
This time it IS different, because of nukes. Consider the scenario where there is a gamma radiation cloud over the NE U.S., perhaps sent by Russia, in addition to the nuclear material constantly being spewed into the atmosphere by power plants plus the radioactive materials drifting into the U.S. from Fukushima. The government would have to put a total blackout of this information, because as soon as people realize that they have already received a lethal dose, the dollar becomes worthless with all of the negative consequences following.
Also, the clowns in Washington represent the extreme dysfunctionality of the USG. They may be capable of starting a war, but they sure are not capable of winning one. Unfortunately, they are too stupid and blind to take this into consideration.
The UK fought the U.S. in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They instigated the Confederacy to wage war against the Union just like they instigated wars in Europe for a thousand years. They played a hand in the assassination of Lincoln, but our fake history books do not mention that. How smart were they? They lost their empire and are dependent on the U.S. for survival. These are the same people subverting the USG now. The UK also started WW2 by not opposing Germany in Czechoslovakia and guaranteeing Poland’s security which could not be done, and Poland became belligerent with Germany with that worthless guarantee.
Maybe we do need a real War — to destroy USA War Mongers for ever ! Their actions demand extinction.
Europe will be the battleground, not the US. Perhaps NATO will use a sneak attack using Ukraine, while Russia is distracted by the COVID lockdowns.
Merkel, Macron and the Bush family have bolt holes already set up in Paraguay, where the effects of nuclear radiation fall out would be less of a problem. New Zealand is also becoming a popular destination for these “refugees”.
“NATO is the Praetorian Guard of private bankers and corporations. When the Warsaw Pact collapsed, NATO should have been disbanded. It was, however, kept on, with private bankers and corporations going in for the kill, eyeing Russia and hoping for it’s dissipation. The country would be destabilized, after which NATO would march in to protect “human rights” and “democracy”, after which it would break the country up in the name of “democracy”. It never came to that. However, NATO is still in existence, making many Europeans very nervous indeed, not to mention all the money they need to spend on it.
Everything revolves around money. Russia and China are on the rise. The US has responded with sanctions, hoping to injure Russian and Chinese economies and finances. When it comes to Europe, the intent is to divert it towards the US and away from Russia, the demands for the termination of the Nord Stream – 2 gas pipeline being a prime example. And the result ? By the second half of 2016, EU countries lost more than 100 billion of euros in trade with Russia, bitterly resented.
At least one analyst has stated that it’s only a matter of time before a rift develops between the US and European elites. I think it’s inevitable. Europe is looking at the rise of Russia and China, while at the same time losing trade due to sanctions. Worse, Europeans are none too happy of a potential conflict between NATO and Russia. Two world wars have been fought in Europe, and there is no mood for World War Three. I don’t think Washington has grasped this fact.”