Target Russia. Target China. Target
Iran
By Pepe Escobar
May 30, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "SCF
"
- Not
a day goes by without US Think Tankland doing what
it does best; pushing all sorts of scenarios for
cold – and hot – war with Russia, plus myriad
confrontations with China and Iran.
That fits into the Pentagon’s Top
Five existential threats to the US, where Russia and
China sit at the very top and Iran is in fourth
place – all ahead of «terrorism» of the phony Daesh
«Caliphate» variety.
Here I have
come up with some concise realpolitik facts to
counterpunch the hysteria – stressing how the
Russian hypersonic missile advantage renders useless
the whole construct of NATO’s paranoid rhetoric and
bluster.
The US Aegis defense system has been
transferred from ships to land. The Patriot missile
defense system is worthless. Aegis is about 30%
better than the THAAD system; it may be more
effective but their range is also limited.
Aegis is not a threat at all to
Russia – for now. Yet as the system is upgraded –
and that may take years – it could cause Russia some
serious concern, as Exceptionalistan is increasingly
pushing them eastward, so near to Russia’s borders.
Anyway, Russia is still light-years
ahead in hypersonic missiles. The Pentagon knows
that against the S-500 system, the F-22, the
awesomely expensive F-35 and the B-2 stealth
airplanes – stars of a trillion-dollar fighter
program – are totally obsolete.
So it’s back to the same old meme:
«Russian aggression», without which the Pentagon
cannot possibly fight for its divine right to be
showered with
unlimited funds.
Washington had 20,000 planners at
work before WWII was ended, focused on the
reconstruction of Germany. Washington had only six
after the destruction of Iraq in 2003’s Shock and
Awe.
That was no incompetence; it was
«Plan A» from the get-go. The former USSR was deemed
a mighty threat at the end of WWII – so Germany had
to be rebuilt. Iraq was a war of choice to grab oil
fields – mixed with the implementation of hardcore
disaster capitalism. No one in Washington ever cared
or even wanted to rebuild it.
«Russian aggression» does not apply
to Iraq; it’s all about Eastern Europe. Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov anyway has made it clear that the
deployment of the Aegis will be counterpunched in
style – as even US corporate media
starts to admit that the Russian economy is
healing from the effects of the oil price war.
Take a look at my liquid asssets
Here my
purpose was to show that China is not a House of
Cards. Whatever the real Chinese debt to GDP ratio –
figures vary from as low as 23% to 220% – that is
nothing for an economy the size of the Chinese,
especially because it is entirely internally
controlled.
China keeps over $3 trillion in US
dollars and other Western currencies in reserves
while it gradually delinks its economy from the real
House of Cards: the US dollar economy.
So under these circumstances what
does foreign debt mean? Not much. China could –
although they don't do it yet – produce more yuan
and buy back their debt, as much as the US with
quantitative easing (QE) and the European Central
Bank (ECB) as it asks certain 'favorite countries'
(strong NATO supporters) to produce more than their
share of euros.
And yet Beijing doesn't really need
to do this. China, Russia, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) and what's left of the BRICS
(Brazil is on hold until at least 2018) are slowly
but surely forging their own internal currency and
currency transfer system (in China and Russia it
works already internally) to sideline SWIFT and the
Bank of International Settlements (BIS).
When they are ready to roll it out
for the rest of the world to join them, then US
dollar-based foreign debt will be meaningless.
US Think Tankland, as usual,
remains clueless. As one of my Chinese sources
explains, «whenever a Western big mouth mentions
China's debt ‘problem’ they quote a figure that
seems to come out of thin air, and it includes all
debts, central, provincial, city government levels,
estimated all corporate debts, loans from banks
outside China. Meanwhile, they compare this total
number in China with those of Western countries and
Japan's central government debt alone».
The source adds, «China is
operating with a balance sheet of the equivalent to
$60 trillion. Loans from external sources is in the
$11 trillion range while cash and equivalent is in
the $3.6-4 trillion range. All this cash – or very
liquid asset – is the biggest discretionary force in
the hands of China's leaders while nothing worth
mentioning is in the hands of any other Western
government».
Not to mention that globally, Beijing
is betting on what the World Economic Forum calls
the Fourth Industrial Revolution. China is already
the central hub for global production, supply,
logistics and value chain. Which leads us to One
Belt, One Road (OBOR); all roads lead to the
Chinese-driven New Silk Roads, which will connect,
deeper and deeper, China’s economy and
infrastructure all across Eurasia. OBOR will
simultaneously expand China’s global power while
geopolitically counterpunching the so far
ineffective «pivot to Asia» – Pentagon provocations
in the South China Sea included – and improving
China’s energy security.
Sanctions, like diamonds, are forever
Another major Exceptionalistan
fictional narrative is that the US is
«worried» about
the inability of European banks to do business in
Iran. That’s nonsense; in fact, it’s the US Treasury
Department that is scaring the hell out of any
European bank who dares to do business with Tehran.
India and Iran have struck a $500
million
landmark deal to develop the Iranian port of
Chabahar – a key node in what could be dubbed the
New India-Iran Silk Road, connecting India to
Central Asia via Iran and Afghanistan.
Immediately afterwards the US State
Department has the gall to announce that the deal
will be «examined» – as the proverbial
Israeli-firster US senators question whether the
deal violates those lingering sanctions against Iran
that refuse to go away. This happens in parallel to
a mounting official narrative of «unrest»
contaminating former Soviet republics in Central
Asia – especially Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
CIA-paid hacks should know those sources of unrest
well – as the CIA itself is fomenting it.
India doing business with Iran is
«suspicious». On the other hand, India is more than
allowed to formalize a historic military cooperation
deal with the US hazily dubbed the «Logistics
Support Agreement» (LSA) – according to which the
two militaries may use each other’s land, air and
naval bases for resupplies, repairs and
vaguely-defined «operations».
So it’s all hands on deck all over
Exceptionalistan to counter Russia, China and
prevent any real normalization with Iran. These
localized offensives – practical and rhetorical – on
all fronts always mean one thing, and one thing
only; splitting and fracturing, by all means
necessary, the OBOR Eurasian integration. Bets can
be made that Moscow, Beijing and Tehran simply won’t
be fooled.
Pepe
Escobar - Independent geopolitical analyst, writer
and journalist |