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a lesson in the game of geopolitics......

WHAT FOLLOWS IS AN EXTRACT FROM THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION. 

BUT FIRST AN ANALYSIS BY GUS LEONISKY, CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

IT APPEARS THAT EVEN BY THEN IN 1991 VLADIMIR PUTIN WAS “INVESTIGATING” A PHILOSOPHICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PEOPLE, UNDERSTANDING AND RESOURCES.

 

FINDING THE RIGHT DOSAGE OF PUBLIC/PRIVATE ADVENTURISM MIGHT HAVE LED THE YOUNG PUTIN IN EXPLORING DEAD-END AVENUES AS WELL AS FORMULATING IN HIS OWN MIND, WITHOUT REVEALING HIS SECRET — THAT OF MANAGING A FUTURE SUCCESSFUL RUSSIA. TO PUTIN, ONE MR LEONISKY WOULD SAY THAT THE UKRAINIAN PROBLEM IS A SIDE-ISSUE. IT IS NOT WITHOUT COMPLICATIONS OF GEOPOLITICAL STRATEGIES, NOR WITHOUT BENEFITS. 

PUTIN WOULD HAVE BEEN AWARE, FROM HIS HISTORICAL AND LANGUAGE STUDIES, OF THE MACKINDER IMPERIALIST DOCTRINE TAKEN UP BY THE AMERICAN EMPIRE FROM 1917 ONWARDS (SEE MAP ABOVE). 

YET THIS SUBTEXT, LIKE MUCH GEOPOLITICAL INFORMATION CANNOT BE USED OVERTLY. IT IS A SCAFFOLDING, NOT A PRETTY BUILDING. A GAMBLER DOESN’T EXPOSE ALL THE CARDS FOR THE WORLD TO SEE… 

THIS IS WHY IT TOOK PUTIN MORE THAN A YEAR TO SHOW THE WORLD (UNMENTIONED BY THE WESTERN MEDIA) THE TENTATIVELY “SIGNED AGREEMENT” BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE KIEV REGIME IN REGARD TO MAKE PEACE. 

 

KIEV AND ITS WESTERN BACKERS (USA/EU/UK/AUS) PLAYED A GAME OF LOSERS. BRASH AMERICA HAD RELAUNCHED THE NAZI SENTIMENTS IN UKRAINE TO CARRY ON WITH ITS GEOPOLITICAL STRATEGIES (SEE MAP ABOVE). 

AS A GENERALLY TRUSTING BUT SHARP CHARACTER, PUTIN BELIEVED IN THE MINKS AGREEMENTS TO SOLVE THIS ISSUE. WE KNOW THESE AGREEMENTS WERE A WESTERN DECEPTION. MY GUESS IS THAT PUTIN WAS PREPARED FOR THIS DECEPTION BUT DID NOT WANT TO BE THE BAD GUY HERE — THOUGH HE HAS EXPRESSED REGRETS ABOUT NOT DESTROYING THE KIEV MILITARY WHEN HE COULD BACK THEN.

THE ONLY WAY TO PREVENT RUSSIA BEING GUNNED DOWN BY FEBRUARY 2022 WAS TO GO ON THE OFFENSIVE: 

FIRST CARD WAS TO DESIGNATE THE DONBASS REGIONS AS INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES, 

SECOND CARD WAS TO MOVE IN WITH A MILITARY INTERVENTION. 

THE THIRD CARD WAS TO IMPLEMENT REFERENDUMS IN THE DONBASS. 

THE FOURTH CARD WAS TO GET KIEV TO SIGN A PEACE AGREEMENT WHICH WAS GENEROUS TO KIEV. 

 

NONETHELESS, THE GAME WAS RIGGED BY THE WEST. PUTIN KNEW 50/50 THAT THIS WAS GOING TO BE A POSSIBILITY — AS KIEV WAS COAXED BY THE WEST NOT TO SIGN THE PEACE DEAL. SO THE MILITARY INTERVENTION NEEDED TO BE BOOSTED. ANNOYING BUT UNAVOIDABLE.

 

MORE CARDS:

THE DONBASS REGIONS ARE NOW RUSSIAN AND THAT’S IT. THIS IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE.

IMPROVED RUSSIAN MILITARY.

THE WEST IS ROBBING RUSSIA OF ITS OVERSEAS ASSETS… RUSSIAN LOSSES: $500 BILLION!.

GAINING THE DONBASS BACK (USED TO BE RUSSIAN TERRITORY UNTIL 1922) ESTIMATE: $12.5 TRILLION.

INCREASING THE FAIR GEO-TRADE AWAY FROM THE AMERICAN EMPIRE GLOBALISATION: PRICELESS.

 

THE WEST NEEDS TO MAKE A PEACE DEAL. BUT THE AMERICANS ARE BRAINLESS BOOFHEADS. 

SO, WHAT ABOUT YOUNG MR PUTIN’S “DELICATE” EDUCATION AND ASSESSMENT OF GEOPOLITICS? IT HAS BEEN VERY THOROUGH, BUT THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE IS NOT TO BE EXPOSED — EVEN IN HIS THESIS (DISSERTATION). ONE DOES NOT SHOW ALL ONE’S CARDS. THIS IS WHAT HAS BEEN DISCONCERTING FOR THE WESTERN ANALYSTS TO UNDERSTAND VLADIMIR’S MOTIVATIONS AND MOVES…

 

 

 

“The Mystery of Vladimir Putin’s Dissertation”

by Igor Danchenko and Clifford Gaddy,

[Edited versions of presentations by the authors at a Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy Program panel, March 30, 2006]

 

EXTRACT/CONCLUSION BY Igor Danchenko:

 

..... 

In Leningrad, Putin, then a member of the City’s Committee on Foreign Relations, was assigned to negotiate similar resources-for-food agreements. He assigned several private trading companies to facilitate the barter schemes, because the city lacked its own independent mechanisms to execute them. In other words, he delegated authority to the emerging private sector....

To make the story short, Putin’s scheme failed. The deals for the most part fell through because companies never fulfilled their obligations, delivering only a fraction of the initially agreed quantities of food. Luckily, the winter was not a severe one, and household food stocks, a traditional, almost instinctive, survival mechanism, helped to relieve the shortages.

This early experience and failure in his public career taught Putin two lessons. First, in addition to reinforcing his belief in the importance of food security and essential survival, Putin realized that the ultimate currency that a Russian official can have at his disposal is raw materials. It is therefore not surprising to find a lengthy list of strategic materials in Putin’s 1999 article, where he lists basic foods along with uranium, oil and gas, and other materials. To sum up the first lesson, during cataclysmic events, Russia’s ultimate guarantee of survival, and subsequently of wealth and development, is natural resources. Since they are essential to Russia’s survival and security, they should always be kept in strategic reserve.

Putin drew a second lesson from his mismanagement of the resources-for-food schemes: private companies can’t be trusted. Therefore, the state has to exercise some degree of control. Having trusted private companies, he failed because in an unstable and unpredictable environment, private companies may often disregard their obligations and act exclusively for their private interest. In the ideas he expressed in the dissertation, Putin favors a market economy with strong state regulation and preemptive power in the economy.

However, it took another challenge, and partial political fiasco, for Putin to be fully persuaded of the validity of his economic management model. This was the infamous case of the St. Petersburg casinos. The city of St. Petersburg nominally owned a 51-percent share in the newly established gambling business but was unable to control the casinos’ financial flows. As a consequence, profitable casinos cooked their books to show operational losses, thus depriving the city of its share of revenues. As in the minerals-for-food case, the city council and the public accused the Sobchak-Putin administration of corruption and mismanagement. The case was not dropped until Sobchak’s defeat in the 1996 elections and Putin’s resignation.

These cases prompted Putin to devise state strategies for corporate management beyond simple majority ownership. Putin once again voiced mistrust for private enterprises. Speaking about casinos in St. Petersburg, he expressed his deep regret that he didn’t have enough time to “squeeze” cash from the casinos. He says in First Person [p. 102]: “If I had remained in Peter [St. Petersburg], I would have squeezed those casinos to the end and forced them to work for the betterment of society and to share their profits with the city. That money would have gone to pensioners, teachers, and doctors.” Putin also suggested that private companies should operate within boundaries permitted by the state for the betterment of society, therefore, in a way, not necessarily for efficiency and maximization of profits. By growing too rich, companies — in this case casinos — compromise the state’s ability to execute power with the potential to paralyze the government’s effectiveness.

Here is where Vladimir Litvinenko likely comes into the picture. If Putin had wanted to better understand this idea of natural resources and national security, he would have looked for specialists on the issue. He would naturally have come across the leading specialist on the subject, a geologist and director of the prestigious St. Petersburg Mining Institute, Vladimir Stefanovich Litvinenko. Litvinenko informs Putin that the world is running out of resources, and makes a point that we, Russians, cannot waste our own resources; and as we tap them, we should ensure they are continuously replaced or otherwise we are going to quickly deplete them. Putin and Litvinenko agree on many issues: that mineral resources are in the ground, but they need to be made marketable; that their reproduction is a priority; and that the state should reserve its role in regulation and control of resources to as great an extent as possible.

Now, very briefly, a few points about the infrastructure of St. Petersburg. Remember, the entire third chapter of Putin’s dissertation is devoted to the infrastructure of the Leningrad region. Just to name a few things that have happened since Putin became president: the Baltic Pipeline System, the oil terminal in Vysotsk and in Primorsk , modernization of the Kirishi oil refinery, a new coal terminal in Ust’-Luga that opened in 2006, not to mention other upgrades to infrastructure as well as relocation of the corporate headquarters of various companies and the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and many other projects including ports, terminals, highways, roads, dams, tunnels, and, of course, the North European Gas Pipeline. A lot has been accomplished in the city over the last decade.

Finally, here are the two conclusions.

The simple and logical chain of events outlined above shaped Putin’s personality and made his economic and political thought systemic and consistent. At the time of completion of the dissertation, Putin’s approach to management and governance was fully developed. He argues that the cornerstone of his policy — to provide for the well-being of the population and ensure stability — is economic security, and that raw political power and patriotic commitments of governing and enforcement structures need to be complemented with economic state order. To him this order is only sustainable through various control mechanisms over essential strategic commodities. As a former deputy mayor of a large industrial city, Putin is aware of the inefficient and uncompetitive nature of the existing manufacturing sector and Russia’s economy in general. He sees Russia’s mineral resources as the only “hard currency” that ensures not only the economic and political security but also the very survival of Russia. Mineral resources are the ultimate insurance for overcoming any crisis, and they represent a disaster contingency plan. And, of course, they are the source and engine of Russia’s economic and political recovery.

While Vladimir Putin realizes that market economy is the only system capable of effectively delivering on the set goals, he accepts its introduction in Russia with caution and some reservations. He contends that since Russia’s natural resources bear critical strategic properties for the state, their management should not only be heavily regulated but also controlled by the state. Therefore, mineral resources should always remain at the ultimate disposal of the state — regardless of their ownership and the model of the economy. He sees the state as the only institution that can responsibly secure resources for the long-term development of Russia rather than for private corporate interest.

Now, what is the mechanism by which this can be done? Does Putin envision this mechanism? Does he have a strategy model for this? Can we identify and describe this model based on his dissertation? If yes, what is the conceptual framework behind it?

 

“The Mystery of Vladimir Putin’s Dissertation” (NOTE THE DATE: 2006)

 

THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION IS A RIGHTWING WARMONGERING AMERICAN THINK-TANK THAT HAS THE SUBTLETY OF AN ALLIGATOR ABOUT TO SWALLOW A CHICKEN.

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

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golden maths.....

HAVING DONE HIS THESIS ON "THE ECONOMICS OF RESOURCES", PUTIN KNOWS A FEW THINGS OR TWO.....

 

BY Phil Butler The Flawed Math of the Elites and Joe Biden – Shiny Metal Futures

 

 

How straightforward is simple math? If the public relied more on adding things up, the manufactured consent perpetrated by the elites in the West would be impossible. Take the recent Russian gold movements as a perfect example.

Various propaganda channels reported last year that the European Union and G7 wanted to ban Russia’s gold shipments to curtail the Russian economy. However, the math needed to be corrected.

The real reason Western oligarchs and bankers want to limit the precious metal leaving Russia has much more significant implications. Look at the thousand gold shipments since the conflict in Ukraine turned the world order upside down. In a recent story, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has become a key trade hub for Russian gold, having almost 80 tons worth more than $4.3 billion. Yet, in 2021, the UAE only imported about a third as much. But back in 2021, half the world ready to shift to the gold standard again was not a big story.

Now, the BRICS and nations wanting to join the group are discussing a new currency to replace the dollar, one backed by gold. Factor this, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are keen to become BRICS members. Gulf News says this “will forever shift the balance of global power.” The speculation that a new superpower is emerging, if proven out, means that the World Bank and the IMF will face real problems soon. Desperation is the reason — for those wondering about America’s “all in” attitude about the Ukraine crisis.

America’s debt problems, the possibility of my government defaulting on social security payments to retirees, and more – the backlash toward the government by 66 million Americans will be uncontainable. And each of those retirees has family and/or friends, some taking care of their elderly with social security as a help. Talk about a civil disaster! And President Biden is spending hundreds of billions supporting America’s 51st state in Ukraine? This, after having provoked the war in the first place.

Even U.S. presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy Jr. is at the podium revealing Biden’s benefactors provoked the Ukraine conflict. Lesson for those unaware, it’s all falling apart, the lunatic hegemony that went haywire starting with Bill Clinton. As for the unhappy ending to this story of empire, this quote from Gulf News encapsulates the situation:

“The existing economic system and its components, founded 80 years ago, are no longer feasible owing to massive changes in the financial and geopolitical balance of power, the emergence of new economic powers, and the downfall of others. This truth should be properly understood if the world needs to avoid further conflicts getting in the way of an equitable global order.”

The United States of America owes an astounding $31.8 trillion to various creditors. This debt is backed by nothing. By way of perspective, in 1960, the US debt-to-GDP ratio was 52.86%. Today, the debt-to-GDP ratio is 121%. Even though the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement severely curtailed the worldwide gold standard, it was still partially in effect in the 1960s. The standard ended with President Richard Nixon after France, under President Charles de Gaulle, exchanged its reserves of dollars for gold bullion. The U.S. currency plummeted, forcing Nixon to act. Today, we find ourselves in a similar situation, only in reverse. The world is ready to deal with nations backed by something tangible.

The UAE and other nations buying gold from Russia, the second-largest producer of the shiny mineral, is not helping the Russians as much as it is making the math add up. Soon, nations need more gold or other tangible assets to back their currencies in a good place regarding trade and international standing. And this will equal more than the 43 million Americans living below the poverty level. So, for the elites and their puppet in the White House 2+2=War.

 

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2023/06/19/the-flawed-math-of-the-elites-and-joe-biden-shiny-metal-futures/

 

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comfort lost....

 

BY Alastair CROOKE

 

The conditions that gave rise to the golden era that created the ‘Comfort Generation’ no longer are available, Alastair Crooke writes.

The Tragedy that besets the West today consists, on the one hand, of the sheer impossibility for it to continue doing what it has been doing – yet matched only by its impossibility to do anything other.

Why is this so? It is because the conditions that gave rise to the golden era that created the ‘Comfort Generation’ no longer are available: Zero interest credit, zero inflation, a colluding media, and cheap energy ‘subsidising’ a shrinking and increasingly sclerotic manufacturing base (at least in Europe).

Those decades were the West’s fleeting ‘moment in the sun’. But it is over. The ‘periphery’ can manage on its own, thank you! They are doing nicely – rather better, in fact, than the imperial hub these days.

The deeper paradox is that all the easy choices are behind us. And the headwinds of debt, inflation and recession are now buffeting us fiercely. System ‘unravelling’ is already present in the form of government and institutional weakness: the ‘system’ lacked the will to take difficult decisions when it could. Easy choices then were still available, and the easy way invariably was the one taken.

The élites had absorbed the self-centred, spoilt-child ethos of the ‘me’ generation. The Permanent Class indulged themselves,abdicating all concern for their deeply disdained ‘peons’. They brought the present crisis upon themselves. They wiped out two hundred years of financial responsibility in about 20 years.

It is however, what it is – and that is where we are at. And even though it is now increasingly understood that the West cannot persist as if ‘all is fine’ – even as the Rulers try to continue the money printing, the bailouts and with the media narrative washing away their mistakes – they do sense the crisis, the coming ‘Turning’.

So, put plainly, this constitutes the paradox: It is already obvious that to continue doing what western élites are doing in Ukraine touches on the definition of madness (to keep on repeating the same thing, matched only by the conviction that ‘next time’ the outcome will be different). The question that ‘hangs’ is the impossibility of ‘doing anything other’.

The Washington Post casts doubts:

“As Ukraine launches its long-awaited counteroffensive against entrenched Russian occupiers, both Kyiv and its backers are hoping for a rapid retaking of strategically significant territory. Anything less will present the United States and its allies with uncomfortable questions they are not yet prepared to answer”.

“As he heads into next year’s re-election campaign, Biden needs a major battlefield victory to show that his unqualified support for Ukraine has burnished U.S. global leadership, reinvigorated a strong foreign policy with bipartisan support and demonstrated the prudent use of American military strength abroad”.

The impossibility of ‘doing anything other’ than continuing the conflict will be promoted vigorously: Biden needs it, (the weapons provided to Ukraine did not go far enough…), and further, six geopolitical ‘Swing States’ (Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey) are at risk of aligning with the Russia-China Axis, unless Putin is seen to be humiliated:

“[We must act] to prevent a significant weakening in the U.S. position in the global power balance. With the Swing States’ refusal to line up behind the United States on the Russia-Ukraine war, or competition with China, many of these key countries are already drifting away. The threat of a Sino-Russian co-optation of an expanded BRICS — and through it, of the global south — is real, and it needs to be addressed”.

Put starkly: The U.S. must persist in Ukraine. Why? To save the now threatened ‘Rules-Based Order’.

The impossibility of doing other (than keep escalating in the hope of at least ‘freezing’ the conflict, as a long favoured U.S. default option) will be portrayed as compelling. Simply said, the Permanent State lacks the courage to take hard decisions – to say to Moscow, ‘Let us put this unfortunate episode (Ukraine) behind us. Dig out those draft treaties you wrote in December 2021, and let’s see how we can work together, to restore some functionality again to Europe’.

And of course, the ‘impossibility of doing anything other’ applies in spades to the western economic system. The structural contradictions make anything ‘other’ than bailouts and spending more than is earned impossible. It is culturally hard-baked into the self-centred, spoilt-child ethos of the ‘Comfort’ generation who are the western élites. A failure of culture – of courage to face hard choices with integrity.

This is the western paradox. A Greek tragedy is one in which the crisis – at the heart of any ‘tragedy’ – does not arise by sheer mischance, for which no-one is really to be blamed, or could have foreseen. The Greek sense is that tragedy is where something happens, because it has to happen; because of the nature of the participants; because the actors involved make it happen. And they have no choice, but to make it happen, because that is their nature.

This is the deeper implication that flows from today’s tragic dilemma that might well segue into a full unfolding of tragedy in what would correctly be defined as a western ‘war of choice’.

What happened? The nature of the élites changed. The inflated sense of self-importance and self-indulgence displaced that of integrity and looking ‘truth in the eye’. Where are those with stature? Instead we have an élite that believes that there was ‘no risk’: No state, no person nor institution that could resist the heft of combined financial western power weaponised against them.

The backlash however, has started. Anger grows as public discourse debates endlessly ‘the absurd’ (“What is a woman?”) whilst everyone gives up on ever fixing the deeper issues at stake.

In Neil Howe and William Strauss’ 1997 work, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, the co-authors “reject the deep premise of modern Western historians that social time is either linear (continuous progress or decline) or chaotic (too complex to reveal any direction). Instead we adopt the insight of nearly all traditional societies: That social time is a recurring cycle”.

In the Fourth Turning, the crisis arrives. This, the authors write, is when institutional life is reconstructed from the ground up, always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. “People and groups begin to pitch-in as participants in a larger community”.

This possibly represents the dizzying political realignment now under way – the scrambling of all of the traditional categories and leaving in its wake just two sides; not left and right, but insider and outsider.

But Malcom Kyeyune cautions:

“The ruling elite is increasingly angry and bitter that the ruled no longer listen; the ruled, for their part, are bitter that the system so obviously doesn’t act in their interest, nor does it even really pretend to anymore. We might actually wake up one day only to find that neither politicians nor voters think ‘democracy’ is doing very much to help them anymore”. 

This reflects very much the sense that western civilisation’s survival is at stake. The process is likely to reshape western politics along a new faultline, one which finds expression in the confrontation between those wishing for a ‘Green’ upending of human society; a ‘Trans’ world for children; easy immigration; the radical re-ordering of power between ‘Identity’ groups in society; changing of the very nature of Western culture – and those viscerally opposed to all of the above.

 

READ MORE:

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/06/19/an-unfolding-tragedy-the-impossibility-of-doing-anything-other/

 

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