Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

US threatens sanctions if Pakistan continues gas pipeline project with Iran

By Ahmed Adel | March 28, 2024

Despite Pakistan dealing with a crippling economic situation, the US has shown little concern for its strategic ally’s issues and, instead of offering support, has threatened tough sanctions if Islamabad decides to continue with the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project. Ironically, though, such an action will only push Pakistan closer to China, which the US views as a greater threat to its hegemony than Iran.

“We always advise everyone that doing business with Iran runs the risk of touching upon and coming in contact with our sanctions, and would advise everyone to consider that very carefully,” a US State Department spokesperson told reporters in a press briefing on March 26.

“We do not support this pipeline going forward,” the spokesperson added.

Washington continually emphasises that Pakistan is one of its closest allies and a partner in the fight against terrorism, making the sanctions threat a major development in their bilateral relations. For this reason, Pakistan Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik said on March 27 that Islamabad would seek an exemption from US sanctions over the gas pipeline project.

The Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline, known as the Peace Pipeline, will transport natural gas from Iran to Pakistan. Despite the pipeline’s several years of delays and funding challenges, Pakistan and Iran signed a five-year trade plan in August 2023 with a target of $5 billion. Tehran is evidently desperate for the project to be completed, which had an original deadline of 2015, since it signed the trade plan and overlooked Pakistan not laying the pipeline when Iran has already completed the laying of its 900-kilometre pipeline.

Islamabad claims it could not lay the pipe due to the US sanctions imposed on Iran, but Tehran rejects this excuse. Pakistan is now in a difficult position with the latest US sanction threat when recalling that Tehran issued a third notice in January to Islamabad and announced intentions to go to arbitration court to receive $18 billion for breach of contract.

The threat of US sanctions or paying a huge fine to Iran is only compounding Pakistan’s difficult economic situation, especially as the country is seeking a 24th bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on March 26 that his country needs another IMF loan programme to stabilise its fragile economy. An IMF mission that visited Islamabad for five days earlier this month said Pakistan had to meet IMF conditions, including revising its budget and raising interest rates, generating revenue through more taxes, and hiking electricity and gas prices.

Effectively, ordinary Pakistanis are going to suffer a lot more than they already are.

Islamabad and Washington have had longstanding relations rooted in their opposition to the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, the US became dependent on the South Asian country for supplies during its long occupation of Afghanistan. Due to the US’s double standard of using Pakistan as a security partner but also threatening to worsen the country’s economic situation, China has been able to fill the financial void.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar met with Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing on March 22 in Brussels, where the latter emphasised Beijing’s commitment to aiding Pakistan in addressing its financial challenges. However, just like the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline, Islamabad continues to stall the implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative launched in 2013 to link the Gwadar port in southwestern Pakistan with China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Worsening the situation for CPEC is the constant stream of terror attacks against Chinese workers and nationals.

In the latest attack, on March 26, a suicide bomber in the Shangla district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa rammed an explosive-laden car into a vehicle, killing five Chinese workers and engineers and their Pakistani driver heading to the Dasu Dam, the biggest hydropower project in Pakistan. Less than a week before the suicide attack, Pakistani security forces killed eight Balochistan Liberation Army separatist militants who opened fire on a convoy carrying Chinese citizens outside Gwadar port in the southwestern Balochistan province.

Given that Pakistan is facing a dire economic situation and needs to turn to the IMF and seek more funding from China, US sanctions would be a devastating blow. Sanction threats are especially contradictory for the US since it not only considers Pakistan an ally but overlooks the fact that India invests in the Iranian port of Chabahar, located only 170 kilometres from Gwadar port. Washington overlooks this contradiction since Chabahar rivals the China-funded Gwadar, signalling that the US views China as a much larger threat to its hegemony than Iran, which makes sanction threats more confusing since it will only push Pakistan to be even closer and more aligned with China.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

March 28, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

OREGON URGENTLY SHUTS DOWN SMALL FARMS IN MASS “TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE”

Yanasa TV | March 18, 2024

March 28, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Video | , | Leave a comment

Macron’s Psycho-Play to Keep Aloft the Punctured Balloon of a ‘Geo-Political EU’

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 25, 2024

Charles Michel, the European Council President, has called on Europe to switch to a ‘war economy’. He justifies this call partly as urgent support for Ukraine, but more pertinently, as the need for relaunching the (beached) European economy by focussing on the defence industry.

Calls ring out across Europe: ‘We are in a pre-war era’, Polish PM Donald Tusk says. Macron, after mooting the possibility ambiguously several times, says, “Maybe at some point – I don’t want it – we will have to have operations [French troops in Ukraine], on the ground, to counter the Russian forces”.

What has spooked the Europeans so? We know the French Intelligence briefing reaching Macron in recent days was dire; it seems to have triggered his initial sally into direct French military intervention in Ukraine. French classified Intelligence warned that the collapse of the Contact Line, and the disintegration of the AFU as a functioning military force, might be imminent.

Macron played coy: Might he send troops? At one time seemingly ‘yes’; but then frustratingly the prospect was uncertain, yet still possibly on the table. Confusion reigned. Nobody knew for sure, as the President is nothing if not volatile, and General De Gaulle bequeathed to his successors, quasi-regal powers. So yes, constitutionally he could do it.

The general view in Europe was that Macron was playing complex mind-games, firstly with the French people, and secondly with Russia. Nevertheless, it seems that there could be some substance to Macron’s sabre-rattling: The French Chief of Army Staff said he has 20,000 troops ready to be inserted in 30 days. And the Head of Russia’s SVR Intelligence Agency, Naryshkin, more modestly assessed that France seemingly is preparing a military contingent for sending to Ukraine, which at the initial stage, will be about two thousand people.

Just to be clear however, even a 20,000-man division by standards of classical military theory is supposed to be able to hold at maximum, a 10km-front. An insertion of two or twenty thousand French troops would change nothing strategically; it would not halt the vastly larger Russian steamroller, grinding on westwards. So what is Macron playing at?

Is this all bluff, then?

Likely, it is part ‘grandstanding’ by Macron, pre-occupied to present himself as ‘Mr Strongman Europe’ – particularly toward his French constituency.

His posturing comes however, at a more significant conjunction of events for the so-called ‘Geo-political EU’:

Clarity: Light has pierced, and has illuminated a space hitherto occupied by shadows. It is now as clear as it can be – after Putin’s overwhelming win in elections on a record turnout – that President Putin is here to stay. All the western shadow-play of ‘régime change’ in Moscow simply shrunk to naught in the bright light of events.

Snorts of anger can be heard from some quarters in Europe. Yet they will subside. There is no choice. The reality, as Marianne newspaper, quoting a senior French officer, derisively noting in respect to Macron’s Ukraine’s posturing: “We must make no mistake, facing the Russians; we are an army of cheerleaders” and sending French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “not reasonable”.

At the Élysée, an unnamed advisor argued that Macron “wanted to send a strong signal … (in) milli-metered and calibrated words”.

What pains the EU ‘neocon ever-hopefuls’ more is that Putin’s clear electoral victory coincides, almost precisely, with an EU (and NATO) humiliation in Ukraine. It is not just that the AFU appears to be in a cascading implosion, but that the retreat is accelerating, as Ukraine tries to retreat into unprepared and near indefensible terrain.

Into this grim EU prospect is that second shaft of clarifying light: The U.S. is slowly but surely turning its back on the financing and arming of Kiev, leaving Europe’s impotence exposed for all the world to see.

The EU simply cannot substitute for the U.S. pivot. Yet more hurtful for some is that a U.S. retreat represents a ‘punch in the guts’ for much of the Brussels leadership, who had fallen on the Biden Administration with almost indecent glee, upon Trump’s leaving of office. They used the moment to proclaim the cementing of a pro-Atlanticist, pro-NATO EU.

Now, as former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar perfectly defines it, “France [is] all dressed up – with nowhere to go”:

“Ever since its ignominious defeat in the Napoleonic wars, France is entrapped in the predicament of countries that get sandwiched between great powers. Following World War II, France addressed this predicament by forging an axis with Germany in Europe”.

“Caught up in a similar predicament, Britain adapted itself to a subaltern role tapping into the American power globally but France never gave up its quest to regain glory as a global power. And it continues to be a work in progress”.

“The angst in the French mind is understandable as the five centuries of western dominance of the world order is drawing to a close. This predicament condemns France to a diplomacy that is constantly in a state of suspended animation, interspersed with sudden bouts of activism”.

The problems here for the exalted aspiration for the EU qua global power are three-fold: Firstly, the Franco-German Axis has dissolved, as Germany swerved towards the U.S. as its new foreign-policy dogma. Secondly, France’s clout is diminished further in European affairs as Scholtz has embraced Poland (not France) as its like-minded, ‘best friend forever’; and thirdly, Macron’s personal relations with Chancellor Scholz are on a dive.

The other plane to the EU geo-political project is that the embrace of Washington’s financial wars on Russia and China has resulted in “the U.S. has dramatically outgrowing the EU and the United Kingdom combined – over the last 15 years. In 2008, the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s … America’s economy is now however, nearly one-third bigger. [And] it is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK”.

In other words, being America’s ally, in its ill-judged Ukraine-proxy war, has – and is – costing Europe dearly. Eurointelligence reports that a survey amongst small and medium-sized companies in Germany has registered an extreme shift in sentiment against the EU. Of the sample of 1,000 small and medium sized companies, 90% were unhappy with the EU to varying degrees, driving many to re-locate from Europe to the U.S.

Put plainly, the effort to inflate and hold aloft the notion of a ‘geo-political Europe’ is ending in débacle. Living standards are sinking and Brussel’s regulatory promiscuity and high energy costs are resulting in the de-industrialisation and impoverishment of Europe.

Macron, in a blunt interview in late 2019 with The Economist magazine, declared that Europe stood on “the edge of a precipice” and needed to start thinking of itself strategically as a geo-political power, lest we will “no longer be in control of our destiny.” (Macron’s remark preceded the war in Ukraine by 3 years).

Today, Macron’s fears are reality.

So, to turn to what the EU plans to do about this crisis, EC President Michel says he wants to buy twice as many weapons from European producers by 2030; to use the profits from Russian frozen assets to finance weapons purchases for Ukraine; to facilitate financial access for the European defence industry, including by issuing a European defence bond and getting the European Investment Bank to add defence purposes to its lending criteria.

Michel sells it to the public as a way to create jobs and growth. In reality, however, the EU is looking to create a new slush fund to replace the QE purchases by the ECB of EU states’ sovereign bonds, which the interest rate spike in the U.S. effectively killed.

The defence industry ploy is a means to create more cash flows: The EU’s various mooted ‘transitions’ (Climate, Greening and Tech) clearly required mammoth money-printing. This was just about manageable when the project could be financed at zero cost interest rates. Now the EU states’ debt explosion to fund the pandemic and ‘transitions’ threatens to take the entire geo-political ‘revolution’ into financial crisis. There is a financing crisis underway.

Defence, Michael hopes, may be saleable to the public as the new ‘transition’ to be financed by unorthodox means. Wolfgang Münchau at EuroIntellignce however, writes on ‘Michel’s rosy war economy’ – that he wants a geo-political Europe, and so concludes his letter with the familiar cold war adage – that ‘if you want peace you need to prepare for war’”.

“Are those weapons in Michel’s war economy to speak for our failures in diplomacy? What is our historic contribution to this conflict? Should we not start from there?”

“The language Michel uses is dramatic and dangerous. Some of our older citizens still remember what it means to live in a war economy. Michel’s loose talk is disrespectful”.

Eurointelligence is not alone in its criticism. Macron’s gambit has divided Europe, with a majority firmly opposed to inserting troops into Ukraine – sleep-walking into war. Marianne’s editor Natacha Polony has written:

“It is no longer about Emmanuel Macron or his postures as a virile little leader. It is no longer even about France or its weakening by blind and irresponsible élites. It is a question of whether we will collectively agree to sleepwalk into war. A war that no one can claim will be controlled or contained. It’s a question of whether we agree to send our children to die because the United States insisted on setting up bases on Russia’s borders”.

The bigger question concerns the whole ‘Von der Leyen-Macron’ geo-political gambit of the EU needing to think of itself as a geo-political power. It is the pursuit of this geo-political ‘chimaera’ (in no little part, an ego-project) that paradoxically, has brought the EU exactly to the brink of crisis.

Do a majority of Europeans truly wish to be a geo-political power, if that requires relinquishing what remains of their national sovereignty and autonomy (and parliamentary oversight) to the supra-national plane; to the Brussels technocrats? Maybe Europeans are content for the EU to remain as a trade bloc.

So why is Macron nonetheless doing this? No one is sure, but it seems that he imagines he is playing some complicated game of psycho-deterrence with Moscow – one characterised by radical ambiguity.

His is just another psy-ops, in other words.

It is possible nonetheless, that he thinks his ambiguous on/off threat of an European deployment into Ukraine might just give Kiev enough negotiating ‘leverage’ to bluff Russia into agreeing to ‘rump Ukraine’ remaining in the western (and even NATO) sphere, in which case Macron will claim have been Ukraine’s ‘saviour’.

If this is the case, it is pie in the sky. President Putin, armed with his recent electoral victory, simply swept Macron’s psy-op off the table: ‘Any insertion of French troops would be ‘invaders’ and a legitimate target for our forces’, Putin made explicit.

March 25, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Nuclear Subsidies Galore …

By Kennedy Maize – Master Resource – March 19, 2024

The U.S. nuclear industry in recent days has hit three cherries on the federal money-and-policy slot machine. The open question is whether the largess (some might call it pork) will have the intended results: revitalizing a moribund industry by hitching its wagon to the feverish fear of climate change and long-run animosity toward nuclear rivals China and Russia.

First, the money–the most tangible of the goodies Congress and the White House have doled out. On March 5, the ranking members of the House and Senate appropriations committees rolled out a consensus on six money balls, including the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies bill funding all government nuclear programs for fiscal year 2024. Passage is almost certainly a done deal.

For nuclear, the bill includes the following radioactive goodies:

  • $1.685 billion for Department of Energy nuclear R&D, including a priority for microreactors and accident tolerant fuel. This is a $212 million increase over 2023 funding.
  • $2.72 billion in repurposed supplemental emergency funding for a high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) program for advanced reactor fuel development. This is aimed specifically at Russia (the only significant current supplier of HALEU).
  • $280 million for an assortment of nuclear programs, such as $16 million for hydrogen produced from nukes and $137 million for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

House Legislation Passed (H.R. 6544)

The above Treasury payments followed policy victories for the nukes, including legislation and a new regulatory program.

On February 28, the House by an overwhelming  365-36 bipartisan margin passed H.R. 6544, designed to streamline safety reviews by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and give the Department of Energy some authority to buy electricity through purchase power agreements from commercial nuclear power purveyors.

In some respects, the legislation is a return to the approach of the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission in the early days of atomic energy. In 1974, Congress abolished the AEC, and the all-power congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, in large part because the AEC viewed reactor safety as a poor cousin to promotion the atom.

The language in the House bill, as described by the Hogan Lovells law firm, would require the NRC to revise it mission statement

to ensure that, while upholding the policies of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (AEA), the licensing and regulation of nuclear activities are carried out efficiently without unduly restricting the potential of nuclear energy and to improve the general welfare and the benefits of nuclear technology to society.”

Some observers have suggested this hortatory language is unlikely to survive in the Senate. Senators are trying to combine House provisions with a separate bipartisan bill that passed last year as part of the National Defense Authorization Act but was later axed.

The legislation would also create a cadre of up to 210 Supergrade nuclear ninjas, possibly paid more than NRC commissioners in some cases. According to the bill language, under some circumstances, the NRC chairman Chairman “may, during any period when such a certification is in effect, fix the compensation for such employees or other personnel serving in a covered position without regard to any provision of title 5, United States Code, governing General Schedule classification and pay rates.” These alleged experts appear to have the power to second-guess the Senate-confirmed commissioners.

The House bill would also extend the Price-Anderson federal accident insurance subsidy, first enacted in 1957 and renewed seven times since then. The program expires at the end of 2025. It isn’t clear why this federal subsidy for nuclear is still needed when the industry insists its new, advanced reactor designs are “inherently” walk-away safe. Congress apparently believes it can assess the risks of nuclear energy more accurately than private sector actuaries.

Regulatory Favor

Then there is the third cherry on the governmental slot machine: regulation.

On March 4, the NRC rejected a staff-written draft rule developed over three years for how to regulate the potential new license applications for a variety of advanced reactors. The commission told the staff to rewrite its proposal for a new “Part 53” section of the agency’s authority embodied in 10 Code of Federal Regulations, joining the current sections 50 and 52, which pertain to large light-water reactors.

According to Utility Dive, a key change ordered by the commission “rejected ‘a strict checklist of requirements’ for probabilistic risk assessments while favoring a more flexible framework suited to simplified reactor designs with passive safety features that utilize natural forces, such as gravity or pressure differentials, rather than operator action.”

In a news release, NRC Chairman Christopher Hanson said, “This proposed rule leverages significantly more risk insights than our existing regulatory framework in making safety determinations. Applicants can use our existing regulations today, but this proposed rule will provide future nuclear developers a clear, additional pathway for licensing.” The NRC said it expects to publish the new rule in the Federal Register in about six months.

Legacy of Failure

This latest effort to revive the largely stagnant U.S. nuclear program is the third time in the last nearly 20 years that the government has tried to pump new life into atomic power. The U.S. program started grinding to a halt in the mid-1970s and was barely treading water by the 1990s. The pipeline of new reactor licenses emptied in 1974, and as the final builders of plants under construction either completed or abandoned their projects, the workforce and supply chain infrastructure hollowed out.

In 2005, Congress passed a new “Energy Policies Act,” which offered a smorgasbord of financial goodies for new plants including loans (they called them “loan guarantees” to make them look more palatable to opponents of direct federal subsidies, but the Treasury wrote the checks and received the loan payments), cost overrun protections, and extension of Price-Anderson to 2025.

The 2005 act was largely a failure. The two preeminent U.S. nuclear power developers, Westinghouse and General Electric, ended up sorely financially injured and in Japanese hands. Former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford commented, “They placed a big bet on this hallucination of a nuclear renaissance.”

Then came the first push for “small modular reactors,” designed to downsize the financial risks and construction costs of nuclear power plants. The strategy was the reverse of the “economies of scale” that drove the first generation of nuclear power plants, where bigger was always assumed to be better, but wasn’t.

In 2009, reactor vendor Babcock & Wilcox, which had substantial experience building nuclear power plants for U.S. submarines, announced it would offer a 125-MW pressurized water reactor (later scaled up to 180 MW) and a year later unveiled an alliance with builder Bechtel Corp. They called the project mPower.

In 2012, the Obama administration announced a $500 million program for development of small modular reactors. In 2013, mPower won financial assistance from DOE, with an award up to around $126 million. The same year, B&W tried and failed to sell a majority share of mPower, then cut back funding by 75%. Bechtel soon soured on the project, and it officially ran out of steam in 2017 after failure to find a customer.

During the same time frame, Westinghouse launched a 225-MW small modular reactor program. It quickly cratered, as the Pittsburgh-based company was unable to find a customer for its machines.

Will the latest government attempt to revive nuclear, driven by global warming concerns, succeed? It’s not a given. There’s lots to like about smaller nukes. They produce no CO2, have a relatively small footprint, can be sited fairly close to load.

But the economics aren’t clear, as the NuScale saga demonstrates. Some of the non-LWR advanced reactor designs will present licensing challenges, as there is little history behind them. Sodium cooled fast reactors may be particularly problematic, given the well-known problems of sodium as a coolant and the experience with Superphenix in France and Monju in Japan, plus issues of nuclear weapons proliferation.

———————-

This revised post originally appeared at The Quad Report.

March 24, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Nuclear Power | | Leave a comment

Full-Spectrum Psyop: US Whips Up Fear of Russian Bugaboo to ‘Subjugate Europe’

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 23.03.2024

From the French president’s threats to send troops to Ukraine to a series of media reports on alleged Russian plans to invade NATO, anti-Russian hysteria has reached a fever pitch in European capitals. Meanwhile, one world power has been able to sit back and quietly collect the dividends, says veteran foreign affairs observer Gilbert Doctorow.

European politicians are doing their best to continue ratcheting up tensions with Moscow, with French President Emmanuel Macron reiterating that he may send thousands of troops to Ukraine, Baltic politicians allying with Paris on the issue, and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski saying it’s an “open secret” that NATO soldiers are already in the country.

British and German media have done their part to add fuel the hysteria, citing a recent briefing to Bundestag lawmakers on purported plans by Russia to kick off a “full-scale ‘land, sea and air’ war” with NATO.

“We hear threats from the Kremlin almost every day… so we have to take into account that Vladimir Putin might even attack a NATO country one day,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned in an interview earlier this year.

This week, Polish President Andrzej Duda claimed it was a matter “of common sense” that “Putin, by putting his economy on a war footing, will have such military might that he will be able to attack NATO.” Meanwhile, his top general, Polish Armed Forces Chief of Staff Wieslaw Kukula, has alleged that Russia is actively “preparing for a conflict,” and urging Europe to do the same.

Europe’s defenses are in an unenviable state. Facing a major economic downturn and a $61 billion spending shortfall after giving roughly the same amount away to Kiev for NATO’s proxy war against Russia, European military leaders have warned that they could be left “throwing stones” within hours of a major conflict breaking out as arms and ammo stocks round dry.

But the question no Western officials or media have been able to answer is why Russia – which has over the past three decades expressed a preference for economic cooperation with Europe, rather than fighting its western neighbors, would be interested in invading NATO and almost certainly triggering World War III.

“The whole of NATO cannot fail to understand that Russia has no reason, no interest – neither geopolitical, nor economic, nor political, nor military – to fight with NATO countries,” President Putin said in an interview in December, emphasizing that Moscow and the bloc “have no territorial claims against each other” and could live peacefully.

Puppet Hands at Play

The problem may just be that Russia is taking the hysterical outbursts by NATO officials and Western media at face value, instead of searching for the ‘man behind the curtain’ seeking desperately to keep tensions in place.

“For the United States, the war in Ukraine has failed as a means of weakening Russia so that they can proceed with preparations to fight China. But it has succeeded spectacularly as a means of subjugating Europe. Washington now firmly has its knees on the neck of Europe,” veteran international relations and Russian affairs expert Dr. Gilbert Doctorow told Sputnik.

Economically and politically, the US has been able to extract major concessions from the Europeans over the past two years, plucking hundreds of manufacturers from the continent thanks to an energy crisis sparked by the bloc’s “suicidal” decision to cut off Russian energy supplies, forcing the EU to purchase American LNG at four times the cost, and even trying to saddle Brussels with economic and military aid to Ukraine as Congress remains deadlocked over a $61 billion aid package.

“Here in Europe, the war is now being used to whip up popular enthusiasm for war mobilization of the domestic economies and subjugation of the populace to authoritarian and unlimited powers of the ruling elite,” Doctorow said.

“What remains of free speech and other freedoms can be snuffed out in war hysteria. Moreover, the war fever is being used by [European Commission President Ursula] von der Leyen and the EU Commission in a bid to draw more power into Brussels at the expense of the national governments,” Doctorow warned.

“Some countries are resisting, for example Prime Minister [Mark] Rutte of the Netherlands and even the mealy-mouthed German Chancellor [Olaf Scholz, ed.] are publicly opposed to the proposal of a European debt issuance to finance subsidies to the military production companies, all in spite of van der Leyen. Meanwhile, Macron is on the other side, pushing for greater European centralization for which is the proposed common investment in defense is a nice instrument,” the observer added.

Poking the Bear

Russia’s military buildup “has been reactive to new challenges from the West,” Doctorow stressed, pointing out, for example, that “until the decision of Finland and Sweden to join NATO, Russia had almost no troops on its northwest border. Now, in response to new threats from the northern neighbors, that is being rectified by a big military build-up on the Russian side.”

Something similar can be said of defense budgets, with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recently estimating that Russia’s defense budget amounted to $65.9 billion in 2021 – a fraction of NATO spending of $1.16 trillion ($753.5 billion of that by the US alone) the same year. Even in 2024, with the proxy war with NATO in Ukraine raging and intensifying, Russia plans to spend the equivalent of $140 billion, still just a fraction of the Western bloc, which has again accounted for more than half of all military spending worldwide this year.

Ultimately, Dr. Doctorow emphasized, Western governments are following an old playbook.

“An aggressive foreign policy stand is almost always a convenient way of distracting attention away from domestic failures. And thanks to the boomerang of Western sanctions, European economies are doing very poorly as we go into the June elections” to the European Parliament, the observer summed up.

March 23, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

What caused the US to fall?

By Vladimir Mashin – New Eastern Outlook – 22.03.2024

Europeans and Americans alike are tired of the war in Ukraine. Clear-headed people in the West realise that Russia cannot be defeated: the bravura statements of some officials can hardly hide the obvious truth that the Kiev regime is doomed. More and more observers are coming to the conclusion that the American elite is waging war to “fend off the challenge to its own hegemony”.

In these circumstances, the new book “Defeat of the West” by Emmanuel Todd, a well-known French political scientist and anthropologist, is attracting a lot of attention in the West. According to the historian, the West made a fatal miscalculation when it decided to expand NATO under Presidents B. Clinton and G. Bush: the American elite was drugged by the ideology of “democracy promotion and official demonisation of Russia”. The American ruling elites not only endangered the whole world, but also created great dangers for America’s existence as a single state.

By imposing unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, the United States overestimated its capabilities and failed to rally the major states of the global South to its side. Moreover, the manufacturing base of the United States and its European allies has proved insufficient to supply Ukraine with the equipment (especially artillery) needed to stabilise, let alone win, the war. The United States no longer has the means to fulfil its foreign policy promises.

The United States makes fewer cars than it did in the 1980s and grows less wheat.

But the most important factor explaining today’s problems is the moral and cultural decline of the West – according to Todd, “Too many people want to run things and boss them around. They want to be politicians, artists, managers. And that doesn’t always require learning intellectually challenging things: ultimately, educational progress has led to educational decline because it has led to the disappearance of the values that favour education”.

The US produces fewer engineers than Russia, not only per capita, but also in absolute numbers: the country is experiencing an “internal brain drain” as its young people move from demanding, high-skill, high-value-added professions to law, finance and various occupations that betray the value of the economy and, in some cases, may even destroy it.

According to Todd, the West’s decision to outsource its industrial base is more than bad policy; it is evidence of a project to exploit the rest of the world.

Nor have the Americans succeeded in spreading the federal values they proclaim to be universal. As the United States has modernised, it has come to espouse a model of sex and gender that does not fit well with the models of traditional cultures such as Indian, Islamic and Russian.

Todd believes that many of these values are “deeply negative”. The West does not value the lives of its young. (In 1976, Todd used infant mortality statistics to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union).

Today, Biden’s America has a higher infant mortality rate (5.4 per 1,000) than today’s Russia, and three times that of Japan.

Todd is struck by the inability of the Western elite to distinguish facts from wishes. Newspapers constantly report that President Putin is a threat to the Western order, but the greater threat to the Western order is the arrogance of those who run it.

According to the historian, it sometimes seems that in the United States there are no national principles, only partisan ones, and “each side is convinced that the other is trying not just to run the government but to take over the state”.

Similar assessments can often be heard in the American press. For example, in a commentary on Biden’s speech to the US Congress on 7 March, the well-known columnist Robin Givhan said: “The real audience is not in the parliament, but in the cheap seats outside: in cities where homeless encampments and busloads of desperate migrants are at once enraging and heartbreaking; in towns where fear and confusion drive people to try to rewrite history or hide it from future generations; and in picturesque communities where people want to hold back change because the unknown future seems far more frightening than the sclerotic present. The American people are confused. After all, they elected this dysfunctional Congress.

March 23, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Economics | , | Leave a comment

US opposes Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, trying to halt its construction: Official

Press TV – March 21, 2024

The US assistant secretary of State for South and Central Asia says the United States opposes the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project.

Speaking to congressmen during a congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday, Donald Lu said the US is exerting maximum efforts to prevent the construction of the IP project.

He added that the US is concerned about the strain in Pakistan’s relations with neighboring Iran, particularly on the IP gas pipeline project.

The US official noted that Washington was in contact with Islamabad on the matter.

Emphasizing the importance of monitoring the funding for the mega energy project, Lu said the US is keeping a close watch on it.

“Washington has not received any request from Islamabad regarding sanctions relief, so our efforts to stop Pakistan from Iran’s gas project will continue,” the diplomat added.

Lu claimed that the project was not in the interest of Pakistan as international companies would not invest in it.

Back in February, Pakistan gave the green light for advancing much-delayed work on the joint gas pipelines project with Iran within its territory in a significant step towards enhancing energy cooperation between the two countries.

Pakistan’s Cabinet Committee on Energy (CCoE) granted its approval to start construction on the 80-kilometer pipeline from the Pak-Iran border to Gwadar.

The project, launched in 2013, had initially required Pakistan to finish the construction of the pipeline on its territory by the end of 2014.

However, the project faced prolonged delays due to the potential challenges it posed for Pakistan amid international sanctions targeting Iran.

Pakistan is likely to face an $18-billion fine if it terminates the gas pipeline agreement.

March 21, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s Geopolitical Prospects in the Middle East

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 21.03.2024 

With Russia able to withstand – and virtually defeat – the combined military strength of NATO in Ukraine, its foreign policy and its diplomatic outreach to the rest of the world is bound to gain not only confidence but also become a lot more assertive than it was during the first year of this conflict when Washington launched its so-called “isolate Russia” project. Translating its military gains in Ukraine, Moscow, for instance, recently hosted Palestinian factions to unify them not only for a durable solution to the longest-lasting conflict in the Middle East but also for developing a strong position vis-à-vis Israel. This approach towards Palestine – which also exhibits a visible anti-Israel position – is directly motivated by Moscow’s broad Middle East outreach at a time when the political opinion in the region has turned against Israel and Washington, leaving Israel virtually isolated despite having established ties with several Muslim states in the recent past.

At the same time, this opinion has also become more favourable towards Russia. A recent survey by the Washington Institute showed that a majority of respondents in the UAE (66%), Saudi Arabia (67%), Kuwait (62%), Egypt (57%), Bahrain (68%), Qatar (63%), and Lebanon (72%) agree that the US is no longer a reliable partner and that the Middle Eastern countries “must look more to other nations like Russia and China as partners”.

On top of that is the strong credentials Moscow carries as a security guarantor. Since at least the end of the Cold War, Washington has dominated the region as its key security guarantor, both through its direct military presence and its supply, i.e., sale, of weapons worth billions of dollars to the region. But Moscow dismissed Washington’s dominance via the key role it played in Syria to defeat the US-backed “regime change” operation. Subsequently, it has been successful in helping Syria’s relations with several Arab states, including Saudi and the UAE, to become normal. Moscow, in other words, was successful in translating its military gains into diplomatic victories by becoming a peacemaker in the Middle East. Washington, on the other hand, has not been able to bring peace to the Middle East and/or prevent Israel from committing genocide.

Russia’s Middle Eastern forays are, therefore, in part motivated by Washington’s failures. At the same time, Russia also sees itself as a great military power and a great power needs to have a strong foothold – which does not have to be a military presence – in the region.

If the ultimate objective of any superpower policy is to advance its core interests, non-military means can be very useful too. In the recent past, Russia’s engagement with several Middle Eastern states via the OPEC+ framework has served its key interests well. Via OPEC+, Russia has been able to not only withstand a US-led assault on its economy but also inflict a lot of economic damage on the Western economy. Washington’s inability to break OPEC+ has led to a high inflation rate throughout Europe and North America.

While a lot of Russian ability to accomplish this depended upon the cooperation of other OPEC countries, the latter, including Saudi Arabia, also see Russia as an alternative to Washington. Plus, the partnership with Russia is also paying off. Despite a global growth rate of less than 3 percent in 2023, Saudi’s Aramco earned US$121 billion in 2023, thanks to the careful management of oil supply and prices.

Turkey is another major player in the Middle East that continues to have strong ties with Russia, primarily because of the ways that these ties serve mutual interests. The trade turnover between them increased by more than 80 percent in 2022 to reach US$62 billion. Russia is already Turkey’s biggest source of imports. But this relationship is not costly. On the contrary, Turkey saved US$2 billion on oil imports from Russia by purchasing discounted oil. Ankara was able to do this because it refused to join the US-led regime of sanctions on Russia. As a result, Russia became Turkey’s biggest supplier of energy in 2023.  In 2023, Turkey imported 49.93% of its oil from Russia. A year earlier, the share of Russian oil in the Turkish market was 40.74%. Due to this, the US has been trying for the past few months to impose fresh sanctions on Russia to make Turkey-Russia [trade] difficult. But whether it will have any real impact is not hard to guess due to the increasing availability of alternative channels, i.e., using Central Asian States, to conduct trade and transfer payments.

Still, US efforts to put restrictions on entities from Russia and the Middle East to prevent them from doing trade with Russia itself shows the success Russia has achieved in the Middle East. The US fears that if Russia, like China, continues to expand its relationship with this energy-rich region, it could accelerate US exit from the region, leaving Washington’s efforts to revamp its ties, including via offering strategic defence partnerships to countries like Saudi Arabia, meaningless vis-à-vis Russia.

If even, speaking of a hypothetical scenario, the political opinion in the Middle East were to see a dramatic change to become pro-US, it does not mean an ‘end’ of Russia’s presence in, and relationship with, the Middle East. A core reason for this is the Middle Eastern states’ own desire to reposition themselves in the emerging global order as autonomous players capable of influencing global politics – something that these states can accomplish by, first and foremost, diversifying their foreign policy and reducing, if not fully eliminating, their historical dependence on the US. In this sense, Russia’s engagement with the Middle East is not simply a short-term phenomenon that would just die out the moment Washington offers a deal to the Gulf states that they cannot refuse. It is here to stay, with its prospects of growing brighter than ever.

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.

March 21, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

EU Still Hooked on Russian LNG Despite Bloc’s Hardline Rhetoric

By Chimauchem Nwosu – Sputnik – 20.03.2024

Despite EU efforts to reduce reliance on Russian gas in the wake of the anti-Russian sanctions, recent data shows a surge in Russian LNG imports by France and Spain, suggesting that business is practically proceeding as usual.

Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to France surged to an all-time high in 14 months (from November 2022 to late January 2024), amounting to €293 million, according to Eurostat data obtained by Sputnik.

Last December, French imports of Russian LNG exports were estimated to be €244 million, marking an increase of almost €50 million over the month. Spain’s LNG from Russia amounted to €274 million, 1.7 times higher than in December 2023, and a 12-month-high.

Additionally, other EU countries such as Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Sweden have also purchased Russian LNG. By the end of January, EU nations had collectively spent €684.3 million on Russian LNG.

Since the onset of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the EU has sought to cut its dependence on affordable Russian gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) while simultaneously implementing US-led sanctions against Moscow.

However, despite harsh anti-Russian rhetoric by EU member states like France, recent data by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) revealed that numerous European nations remain hooked on this energy source, while some, like Belgium, facilitate LNG transshipments through their import terminals.

Spain is at the forefront of EU countries importing Russian LNG, having purchased 5.21 billion cubic meters (bcm) between January and September 2023. Following closely behind are France, with 3.19 bcm, and Belgium, with 3.14 bcm. In 2023, the main EU terminals that received significant quantities of LNG shipments from Russia were located in Zeebrugge, Belgium; Montoir-de-Bretagne, France; and Bilbao, Spain, according to IEEFA.

By the end of 2023, Russia had delivered 5.24 billion cubic meters of LNG to Spain, 3.82 billion cubic meters to Belgium, and 2.1 billion cubic meters to the Netherlands. Spain received 40 percent of Europe’s imports, while Belgium accounted for 30 percent. It is worth noting that the supply to the Netherlands increased by 1.9 times compared to 2022.

European countries have not yet banned or restricted importing liquefied natural gas from Russia. The EU is contemplating such action, but there is division among its 27 members regarding the approach to be taken. Major importers of Russian LNG, including Belgium, France, and Spain, assert that severing ties with their Russian suppliers, with whom they have long-term contracts, would not be simple.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly criticized the EU for implementing sanctions against Russia’s oil and gas industry for purely political reasons. He believes that the decision was made under pressure from the EU’s Western allies, rather than being based on economic considerations. Putin has voiced concern about the potential negative impact these sanctions could have on the shared economic competitiveness of both Russia and the EU.

March 20, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Which European Countries are Most Dependent on US Gas?

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 18.03.2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier cautioned that the EU’s decision to stop the purchase of Russian energy supplies was “absolutely political” and would backfire on the bloc.

Every tenth cubic meter of gas used by the EU in 2023 was supplied by the US, with Lithuania the most dependent on the fuel, Sputnik research based on data from the UN platform Comtrade and the International Energy Agency has revealed.

According to the findings, the EU’s gas consumption stood at 330 billion cubic meters last year, 20% less than in 2021.

The US supplied 34.5 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG), or 10.4% of all gas consumed by the bloc in 2023, with Finland, which didn’t buy US gas in 2021, consuming 38,2% last year.

As for Lithuania, it consumed a record 40% of the American gas last year, against 22.3% in 2021.

The research also revealed that an array of other countries increased US gas supplies in 2023, including Croatia, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Poland, Italy and Germany. With 32%, Croatia proved to be the most dependent on US gas after Lithuania and Finland. The only countries that reduced American gas deliveries last year were Greece, Malta and Portugal.

The research comes after a previous Sputnik review of Eurostat data showed that EU countries had to pay some €185 billion ($201 billion) extra on natural gas over the past 20 months after cutting themselves off from cheap Russian pipeline gas.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin earlier warned that the EU’s “suicidal” and politically motivated decision to halt the purchase of Russian energy supplies as part of Western sanctions would come back to bite the bloc.

“Rejection of Russian energy resources means that Europe will systematically become the region with the highest energy costs in the world… This will seriously – and according to some experts irrevocably – undermine the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry, which is already losing the competition to companies in other regions of the world,” Putin underscored.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Latvia urging UK to ‘prepare for war’ with Russia

By Lucas Leiroz | March 18, 2024

The Baltic countries continue their “preparation for war with Russia.” Now, as if it were not enough to engage in a suicidal militarization campaign, Latvia is also demanding that the main NATO countries, such as the UK, also begin adopting radical measures to prepare for the “inevitable” confrontation with Moscow. The main Latvian criticism of the British concerns the military service, with the Baltic country asking the UK to immediately resume conscription policies to increase the size of its forces.

Latvia’s foreign minister, Krisjanis Karins, stated that all NATO countries should follow the Latvian example when it comes to military preparation. According to him, it is necessary to implement special militarization measures and improve defense capacity in the face of the supposed “Russian threat”, which is why Western countries should unite in a common military policy. Karins believes that not all NATO states are efficiently engaged in this military preparation process. In this regard, he criticizes even the stance of key countries in the bloc, such as the UK.

Karins was asked by a journalist from The Telegraph about whether London should adopt mandatory military service for its citizens. He resolutely responded that Latvia “strongly recommends” such an attitude. According to Karins, Latvia is developing a system called “total defense”, in which all the country’s efforts are directed towards expanding military capacity. Efforts include all sectors of civil society, thus requiring a system of total mobilization within which mandatory military service is vital.

“We would strongly recommend this. We are developing and fleshing out a system of what we call a total defense involving all parts of civil society,” he said.

Recently, advancing its militarization policies, Latvia reintroduced military conscription. The measure was justified by the supposed need to expand the “active and ready reserve”, given the apparent “imminence” of an armed conflict. Under current Latvian law, all male citizens between 18 and 27 must complete at least one year of military service – including Latvians living abroad. Karins praises this model and calls on the entire West to adopt it, jointly engaging in “total defense”.

Furthermore, Karins also stated that a growth in defense spending is “inevitable”, thus asking London to reach the minimum target of 3% of GDP with military affairs. The top Latvian diplomat also praised the Finnish recruitment system. According to him, Finland has a small active army, but an extremely strong and “well-trained” reserve, making it possible to immediately enlist citizens for war, if necessary. Karins states that Latvia was inspired by the Finnish model and that all countries should do the same.

In fact, discussions about increasing militarization in the UK are already growing rapidly. Recently, British defense minister Grant Shapps called on the country to prepare for a situation of conflict on multiple fronts in the next five years. According to Shapps, tensions will worsen in the near future, and the UK needs to be prepared to face countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

“In five years’ time we could be looking at multiple theaters [of conflict] including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea (..) Ask yourself, looking at today’s conflicts across the world, is it more likely that that number grows or reduces? I suspect we all know the answer. It’s likely to grow, so 2024 must mark an inflection point,” he said at the time.

In the same vein, the UK’s Chief of the General Staff, Patrick Sanders, has constantly made controversial statements praising anti-Russian warmongering mentality and encouraging his country towards militarization. According to him, the conflict in Ukraine creates an “imperative” for the reconstruction of the British army. Sanders believes that London needs to be able to fight a protracted war on European soil.

“There is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle (…) We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again,” Sanders said. He also recently called on the UK to adopt a system of broad militarization, training “citizen soldiers“. The aim would be to create a strong reserve army among the common people of the country. Indeed, what Sanders calls a “citizen army” is in practice just a disguised model of total mobilization.

As we can see, Latvia’s bellicose ideas may receive broad domestic support in the UK. Currently, the British army has only 75,983 soldiers. Jointly, the army, navy and air force have 184,865 active-duty personnel. The numbers are the lowest in the country since the Napoleonic Wars, which has “worried” pro-war militants. In practice, Western officials and decision-makers have been constantly deceived by their own propaganda, which is why many people actually believe in the “necessity” of fighting Russia.

The main problem is that these measures confront the reality of Western countries. In the UK, there is currently a serious economic crisis, with the country falling into recession and criticism of the government increasing sharply. Engaging in a process of militarization would be, in addition to dangerous and unnecessary, a truly “suicidal” measure for the national economy. It remains to be seen whether this reality will be admitted by the local government or whether irrational pro-war tendencies will prevail in the country.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

EU to use Russian assets to buy arms for Ukraine – Scholz

RT | March 16, 2024

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said that interest accrued from Russian assets frozen in the EU will be used to purchase weapons for Ukraine.

Soon after Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine in February 2022, Western countries froze approximately $300 billion of funds belonging to the Russian Central Bank. Of that sum, the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear holds around €191 billion ($205 billion), which has accrued nearly €4.4 billion in interest over the past year.

Speaking at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin on Friday, Chancellor Scholz said: “We will use windfall profits from Russian assets frozen in Europe to financially support the purchase of weapons for Ukraine.”

The German leader also announced plans to establish a “new capability coalition for long-range rocket artillery,” with procurement to take place “on the overall world market.”

The German chancellor did not provide specifics, and it remains unclear whether he was referring to an entirely new initiative, or to a “long-range” scheme announced by President Macron in February.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last month suggested using the interest from frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine. However, Politico, citing an anonymous EU official, reported on Thursday that Malta, Luxembourg and Hungary had “expressed reservations” about the plan earlier this week.

Moscow has repeatedly warned that any actions taken against its assets would amount to “theft.” It has stressed that seizing the funds or any similar move would violate international law and undermine Western currencies, the global financial system, and the world economy.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »