by means of Alastair Crooke†
The West’s radical attitude towards Russia threatens to collapse the entire economic system through which it imposed its rule on the planet.
These ‘wars’ are increasingly seen in the West as existential events – that is, ‘all or nothing’ events – and their scope is increasing. Why wars in the plural? Well, the military confrontation in Ukraine is about to reach its peak; the war over Russia’s sweeping changes in the global monetary order plunges Western states into a voiceless whirlwind; Europe is on the brink of economic abyss; and the Russia-China ‘war’ to rearrange global ‘rules’ is also coming to an end (albeit at a slightly slower pace).
However, the PSYOPS war in the West is really in a league of its own. The wall of toxicity that swells, rises and falls on the shores of Russia represents a sea storm like none we’ve seen before. Clearly his intent is to blackmail President Putin beyond “evil,” to turn him into such a twisted satanic demon that any sane Russian oligarch will rush to replace him with a more docile, Yeltsin-esque figure.
Only, it doesn’t work. Western officials behind the PSYOPS “curtain” don’t know when to stop. They pull harder on the levers and turn the dials higher and higher, until the wave of entrenched hatred of all things Russian has produced the opposite effect: Not only is Putin more popular, but it has sparked a violent reaction in Russia against the West as a whole.
The net effect, therefore, has been precisely that the Ukraine issue has turned into a Manichaean existential nightmare. The Anglo-Saxon world written in headlines that “war is all or nothing”: if Putin is not defeated (in the sense of being completely defeated in battle), the West simply cannot survive.
The problem with the West taking things to such an all-or-nothing climax is that it also risks being “nothing”. Indeed, it is clear that it is not allowed to argue with the “evil” demonic forces: no political dialogue. Everything or nothing.
The obvious corollary of this confrontation in binary terms of good and evil is that the rest of the world must be subjected to a grand inquisitorial mechanism to discover the heretics, and then force them, to counter any failure to support Ukraine against Russia. revoked, on pain of being burned at the stake. The inquisitors spread all over the world: the Euro-repeatists are the first (the Orbàns); the PakistanIndia, Turkey, Gulf States, etc. to follow.
Only, again, it doesn’t work. The non-west senses in the air a realm that weakens, that wavers, that stir, as Hercules, armed with his sword, descends into Hades (the underworld) to fetch the three-headed hound Cerberus, whose one of the heads spreads human terror from what waiting for us around the next corner. (The fear is indeed increasing.)
And that’s what drives this all-or-nothing fear: the sea change predicted by Russia’s insistence on payment in rubles (for now only for gas supplies) and by an already resurgent ruble, now tied to gold and commodities.
By playing both sides: by pegging the ruble to gold and then by pegging energy payments to the ruble, the Bank of Russia and the Kremlin are fundamentally changing all the operational assumptions of the world trading system (by replacing transactions faded in dollars with solid currency transactions, supported by commodities), while triggering a reorientation of gold’s role as a bulwark of the monetary system.
If a majority of the international trading system starts accepting rubles for the supply of commodities, it could propel what Wall Street guru Zoltan Pozsar provides such as the death of the petrodollar and the advent of Bretton Woods III (ie a new monetary world order).
The world is watching intently. They see the landscape moving. When the collective West confiscated all the foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of Russia, the latter decreed that the Russian state reserves in euros, dollars and US treasury bills were no longer “good money”. They were worthless as “currency” to pay debts to foreign creditors.
The message was pretty clear: if even a major G20 state can have its reserves canceled in no time, then for those who still have “reserves” in New York, go get them elsewhere (if possible)! Because tomorrow’s commercial currencies are backed by commodities, and no longer by constant dollars.
Of course, of those looking at another aspect (market oil prices), the most observant will be China (with its vast gold reserves) and the major crude oil producers, who will see that Russia’s actions – if they continue – could lead to that Russia is not only stealing gold pricing from the LBMA and COMEX (gold exchanges), but who knows, in conjunction with other producers, gold pricing also from oil on US commodity exchanges?
In a very real sense, the West senses an existential danger. We’re not just talking about dedollarization, we’re talking about something more fundamental. The Western financial system consists of an inverted pyramid of highly leveraged paper money “instruments” (many of which are known as derivatives), resting on the smallest base, the top of the pyramid. This is called “internal money”.
It is of a larger size than that of its pawns at the base – sometimes called “outer silver”. External money represents something real: oil, gas, energy, food, metals, etc. A guarantee that is real.
Remove the outer money from the base of the inverted pyramid… and (possibly) crash.
Well, that’s what happens. Putin is pushing Russian gas away from the base of the pyramid by insisting that the entire payment process and collateral value remain within the ruble’s realm. And if other states follow suit and expand to other resources… Crash.
The irony is that the West has brought this situation upon itself. Putin didn’t do it. They did it. They did it when Russia-phobic “hawks” in Washington stupidly started a fight with the only country – Russia – that has the required raw materials to lead the world and initiate the shift to another monetary system—an alternative system, anchored in something other than fiat money, backed by nothing but the Federal Reserve’s ability to print dollars endlessly.
And then they destroyed the “complete trust and promise” of the US Treasury to commit to contractual payment – by stealing Russian reserves.
source : Al Mayadeen
translation International network
