MH17 in Context: “Empire of Chaos”, Isolating Russia
World public attention is now fixed on the aftermath of the destruction of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in Donbass in
the midst of the Ukrainian civil war. This horrific event is doubtless
an immense tragedy worthy of unequivocal condemnation. Before any
serious investigation to ascertain direct culpability was established,
though, the regime in Kiev and its Western puppet masters spared no time
in cynically exploiting this tragedy to gain the maximum dividends to
bolster their increasingly weakened position.
Unsurprisingly, and with great alacrity, the Kiev regime and the
West made not tentative statements, but bold and often hysterical
declarations blaming Russia and the militias of Donbass for the
tragedy. At the same time, much of the Western and Kiev regime’s tenuous
“social media” evidence is already discredited by discerning analysts. [1]
Regarding the tragedy of Flight
MH17, context is not only instructive but indispensable. Overall, it is
no exaggeration to say that at no historical junction since World War II
has global political, geopolitical, diplomatic, and economic conditions
converged in such a manner to produce conditions conducive to the
outbreak of a general world war. With the world’s unabated transition
from unipolarity to multipolarity, the diminishing of Anglo-American hegemony continues to drive the Empire towards increasingly exporting chaos and conflict to prop itself up. One need only look, inter alia, at East Asia’s militarization, Iraq, Honduras, Venezuela on multiple fronts, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine itself—the state of which is the direct result of a US-NATO ‘regime change’ operation.
More specifically, the MH17
tragedy’s immediate response should be viewed as part of a long-term US
project to geopolitically checkmate Russia—the only great power with the
wherewithal and historical dynamism to consistently oppose Western
hegemony. MH17 accelerates a strategy that acts through multiple
vectors: encirclement through aggressive NATO expansion; subversion
through “illegal instruments of soft-power;” economic
warfare through unilateral sanctions; and ultimately dismemberment via
partition — the so-called “Brzezinski Plan.” This ambitious project to
impose a Carthaginian peace on the Russian Federation was faltering when
the MH17 tragedy struck.
As we shall see, the Kiev regime
and its puppet masters in Washington faced defeat on all levels.
Internationally, the recent Obama regime effort to “isolate” Russia into
becoming a pariah state was an abject failure: Moscow continued its
path of economic and strategic cooperation with a multitude of emerging
and status quo states in the world’s transitioning multipolar framework.
Notably, Russia solidified its strategic alliance with China through a
colossal $400 billion dollar economic energy deal. Additionally—in what
is a world historical watershed—Moscow helped to broker the BRICS multilateral development bank. This is the first challenge to the “economic hit men” of
the Western dominated IMF-World Bank complex—a sinew of continued
Western and Anglo-American hegemony. Additionally, Washington’s attempt
to recruit Europe in its bid to “isolate” Russia was unsuccessful with
the general European response being tepid at best.
On the ground in Donbass, the
Ukrainian armed forces faced tremendous losses and encirclement. They
also faced mounting international awareness of the wanton savagery and human rights violations of
its punitive ethnic cleansing operation against the entire population
of Donbass—which in Orwellian terms it calls an “Anti-Terrorist
Operation.” Additionally, signs of a domestic backlash against the human
cost of this so-called “ATO” and its forced conscription started to
manifest. Meanwhile, the Ukraine’s economy continues a downward economic
spiral with the effects of the Western demanded neoliberal austerity regime already being felt by the general populace – and only beginning.
The West and Kiev’s
exploitation of the MH17 tragedy is intended to reverse these defeats.
The tragedy is a boon to the NATO bloc on a number of levels: it
provides justification for Russia’s US assigned bête noire
status on the international level; increased US militarization of
Eastern Europe, including a potential direct NATO troop presence in
Ukraine; while also preparing US public opinion for increased
confrontation with Russia; and it gives impetus to Europe adopting a
more virulently anti-Russian position. For the Kiev regime the tragedy
lends itself to its unmitigated vilification of all things Russian; it
conceals their losses on the ground and notably attempts to legitimize
their wanton slaughter of the population of Donbass. Through blaming the
destruction of MH17—a terrorist-like attack eliciting deep emotional
reactions—on Russia and the Donbass militias, it permits the Kiev regime
to associate Donbass’s armed resistance against Kiev’s authority with
outright terrorism. The Kiev regime’s contention that it is waging an
“Anti-Terrorist Operation” in Donbass is thus given credence.
“Isolating” Russia
An omnipresent Western ambition
for the expansion of their strategic ‘bridgehead’ into the Eurasian
super-continent reached its apex with the onset of the Ukraine crisis.
To begin with, the current regime in Kiev is the product of yet another Washington engineered ‘regime change’ operation to
create a NATO state (official or de facto) with anti-Russian animus
directly within Russia’s ‘soft-underbelly.’ As it continued its path of
conducting independent foreign policy, Russia refused to accept NATO’s
Ukraine ‘regime change’ scenario in toto—which, inter alia,
would have rendered the Black Sea a NATO lake. This refusal was
expressed through Russia’s reunification with Crimea. As a result, the
US began a qualitative escalation in geopolitically checkmating Russia:
“isolation.” US Secretary of State John Kerry warned of measures to
“isolate Russia politically, diplomatically and economically” while the New York Times reported, the Obama regime preparing to “retrofit” a “containment” [2] of Russia by holding “together an international consensus against Russia, including even China.”
The US subsequently began an aggressive campaign to pursue this
policy. “President Barack Obama gathered with world leaders in a day of
delicate diplomacy, as he sought to rally the international community
Monday around efforts to isolate Russia,” AP reported. Obama made stops in Asia for his far-fetched attempt to recruit China for this strategy, the London Guardian reported:
“The White House has added meetings with the leaders of China and Japan
to Barack Obama’s visit to Europe and Saudi Arabia next week, as it
seeks to use the six-day trip to build an international coalition and
isolate Russia.” Obama also visited close Moscow ally Kazakhstan as “part of ongoing effort to isolate Russia.”
This attempt to “isolate”
Russia — territorially the largest nation-state in the world, with the
6th largest economy — and the limiting of its supposed “expansionist”
designs (never mind the fact that a democratically elected leader was
overthrown through Washington’s machinations) ended in abject failure.
Moscow’s path of economic and strategic cooperation with emerging states
and Europe continued apace.
In the MENA region
Russia clinched an investment cooperation deal with US Gulf state ally
Bahrain, to US consternation. Regarding this development, a State Department official noted “this
is not the time for any country to conduct business as usual with
Russia.” Russia also notably continued to cultivate its burgeoning
rapprochement with Egypt under the administration Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,
clinching a deal for a below market rate gas export deal.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy had previously stated Egypt would
“seek to nurture and leverage” ties to Moscow. Furthermore, there
exists the prospect of increased military cooperation, akin to Moscow’s
relationship with Egypt during the apex of Egypt’s influence in the era
of Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Crucially, Russia solidified what is now in fact a strategic alliance against the US “Empire of Chaos” with China. This took form through a $400 billion energy deal in addition to economic development for Crimea and industrial cooperation in the field of aviation with China. This deal, called by one analyst the manifestation of a “new Eurasian century-in-the-making” included
provisions whereby “the giant, state-controlled Russian energy giant
Gazprom will agree to supply the giant state-controlled China National
Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) with 3.75 billion cubic feet of liquefied
natural gas a day for no less than 30 years, starting in 2018…the
equivalent of a quarter of Russia’s massive gas exports to all of
Europe.” Additionally, the major Chinese and Russian central banks
clinched deals to begin making payments in their own domestic
currencies. RT reported:
VTB, Russia’s second biggest lender, has signed a deal with Bank of China, which includes an agreement to pay each other in domestic currencies. ‘Under the agreement, the banks plan to develop their partnership in a number of areas, including cooperation on ruble and renminbi settlements, investment banking, inter-bank lending, trade finance and capital-markets transactions,’ says the official VTB statement.
Implicitly, the dollar, a sinew
of US world supremacy, is excluded from this immense forthcoming
deepening of Sino-Russian economic cooperation. That Russia and China
committed to a colossal 30 year $400 billion deal signifies a long-term
partnership between the two world powers that speaks of a strategic
component.
At the Fourth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures, China called for a new regional security pact including Russia and Iran.
“We need to innovate our security cooperation (and) establish new
regional security cooperation architecture,” Chinese President Xi
Xinping remarked. Xi also issued a veiled warning against the US’s anti-Chinese militarization in East Asia,
asserting “To beef up military alliances targeted at a third party is
not conducive to maintaining common security in the region.” The facts
speak of a Chinese recognition that the same vectors of subversion and
encirclement arrayed against Russia are arrayed against it. Far from
aiding in the “isolation” of Russia, or other quixotic American dream scenarios,
China understands it must lean on Russia in a mutually beneficial
relationship to check the “Empire of Chaos.” Indeed, it was US
theoretician Zbigniew Brzezinksi, an eminence grise of Obama
regime foreign policy, who once referred to a potential
Russo-Chinese-Iranian alliance as the most “dangerous scenario” for US primacy on the Eurasian super-continent. [3]
Such a harrowing anti-US strategic framework is arguably beginning to
take form, albeit still inchoate. In the wake of the US attempt to
“isolate” Russia, signs of a Russo-Iranian rapprochement emerged. As the New York Times reported Russia
began negotiating an $8 billion to $10 billion energy deal with
Iran. The deal also included a provision for Moscow to export 500
megawatts of electricity and the construction of new hydroelectric and
thermal generating plants with a transition network in Iran.
Russo-Iranian relations have been mixed with disagreements over the
Busheir nuclear reactor and the Moscow’s non-fulfillment of a contract
for the shipment of Russia’s advanced S-300 SAM.
The US’s increasingly aggressive posture against Russia increases
Moscow’s willingness to adopt a position more beneficial to Iran in both
cases.
Meanwhile, India—a stalwart Moscow ally—under the new administration of Prime Minister Narenda Modi expressed a desire to deepen its ties with Russia on a multitude of levels. After placing Russia as “our country’s greatest friend,” Modi
indicated India was keen to deepen Russo-Indian cooperation including
in the areas of defense, investment, trade, and nuclear energy. A
prospective $40 billion major Russia-India energy pipeline is also in discussion, and the Indian Navy will have arrived in Vladivostok in
Russia’s Far East for naval exercises. In another positive development,
after years of mutual acrimony with Japan due to issues such as
territorial disputes, rapprochement between the two neighbors continued with Japan already procuring 9.5 percent of its liquefied natural gas from Russia. Also worth noting is the signing of the treaty by Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan that brings into being the Eurasian Economic Union,
pending the ratification of each country’s respective parliaments. This
is Moscow’s answer to large economic blocs which increasingly come to
dominate the international political landscape. This effectively
nullifies the Obama regime’s Kazakhstan avenue of “isolation” against
Russia.
Outside of the Eurasian
super-continent Russian President Vladimir Putin also made successful
inroads with a tour of Latin America. Putin began his Latin American
tour by writing off 90% of Cuba’s debt,
a figure of $32 billion. Putin also signed an agreement for oil
exploration in Caribbean waters which contain most of the estimated 124
million barrels of Cuba’s crude.
Putin met with Uruguay’s
President Pepe Mujixa to discuss the construction of a deep-water port.
The Russian president made a stop in Nicaragua with an unannounced visit
to President Daniel Ortega. The leaders discussed the deliveries of
agricultural machinery, the placement of GLONASS land
stations on the territories of Nicaragua, as well as interaction in
other areas such as pharmacology. Putin met also with Venezuela’s
Nicolas Maduro, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales among others.
In Argentina, Putin and President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner signed an agreement for peaceful nuclear energy with Russia helping to build its third nuclear reactor.
Russia will aid in areas such as the design, operation, and
decommissioning of old nuclear power plants. Russian atomic energy
corporation Rosatom will also tender for the construction of two nuclear
power plants. According to Reuters, Russia’s state-owned nuclear company Rosatom would offer “comfortable” financial terms to Argentina. In Brazil, Putin signed a memorandum of understanding with Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff regarding
Rosatom and Brazil’s Camargo Correa, envisioning the construction of a
nuclear power plant and a spent fuel storage facility in Brazil.
The BRICS Alternative
Perhaps, the most potentially threatening to the “Empire of Chaos”—yet auspicious for the developing world—was the establishment of the BRICS development bank as
an alternative to the draconian and predatory IMF-World Bank complex.
The US and the West have long been criticized of implementing policies
of ‘neo-colonialism’ acting through these postwar Bretton Woods
institutions. IMF/World Bank economic prescriptions for the ‘developing’
world, known as the ‘Washington consensus,’ have notoriously failed to
facilitate economic development and have often been characterized as instruments of draconian economic exploitation.
For the developing world the
establishment of the BRICS development bank represents the first
significant systematic challenge or counterpoise to this US dollar and
private central bank dominated arrangement. And, as Russian President Putin explained,
it should become “a system of measures that would help prevent the
harassment of countries that do not agree with some foreign policy
decisions made by the United States and their allies.” A Nobel Prize winning economist described the BRICS bank as a “fundamental change in global economic and political power.” According to one analyst:
“Way beyond economy and finance, this is essentially about geopolitics –
as in emerging powers offering an alternative to the failed Washington
consensus. Or, as consensus apologists say, the BRICS may be able to
‘alleviate challenges’ they face from the ‘international financial
system.’ The strategy also happens to be one of the key nodes of the
progressively solidified China-Russia alliance.” Taken in context, “For
Russia, the creation of a $100 billion BRICS development bank and a
reserve currency fund worth another $100 billion is a political coup.
Just as the West freezes Russia out of its own economic system as
punishment for its politics in Ukraine… Russia is tying itself into the
financial superstructure of the next generation of economic
heavyweights: India, Brazil, China and South Africa.” Overall, these
developments pose an enormous challenge to the Western-dominated
economic order since the end of World War II.
(To be continued)
Chris Macavel is an independent political analyst. He writes for the blog “The Nation-State” at thenationalstate.wordpress.com.
He seeks to enlighten about the growing dangers of NATO imperialist
ambitions and Wall Street domination in American political life. He is
the author of the forthcoming book “The Myth of the “Arab Spring: How
the Empire Guided the MENA Uprisings”.
Notes
[1] For example see: “Key Piece of Video “Evidence” for Russian Responsibility for Malaysian Plane Shootdown Debunked,” “Audio ‘Proof’ of Ukrainian Rebel Responsibility for Malaysian Flight Downing is Fake,” “US
Admits Its MH17 ‘Evidence’ is Based on YouTube Clips & Social Media
Posts: AP Journalist Challenges State Department Spokesperson on
official narrative,” “Ukraine: No “Western” Interest In INvestigating MH17,” “The Most Pathetic Case of Backpedaling I have Seen in My Life,” “The Catastrophe of MH17: BBC in the Search of “BUK” — The Video Report Censored by BBC,” “The Russian Military Finally Speaks!” “Evidence Continues to Emerge MH17 Is a False Flag Operation,” “Multiple Reports: Ukrainian Fighter Jets Were With Malaysian Flight 17 When it Was Shot Down,”among others.
[2] It must be said that this is not a policy of “containment,” but encirclement. Despite the New York Times’s
claim that the Obama regime pursues a retrofitting of George F.
Kennan’s strategy of “containment,” Kennan – architect of
“containment”– was firmly against continuing NATO expansion against
Russia. He argued this policy demonstrated profound ignorance of Russia.
The Obama regime’s current policy can be understood as a militant and
aggressive policy of NATO expansion against Russia in opposition to
Kennan.
[3] See Zbigniew Brzezinski , The Grand Chessboard,
pp., 55. “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand
coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an “antihegemonic”
coalition united not by ideology but by complimentary
grievances…Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will
require a display of US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and
southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously,” wrote Brzezinski.
No comments:
Post a Comment