In English
por Pierre
Charasse
Abajo la versión
en ingles “con vaselina” para los americanos tontos.
UKRAINE CRISIS ACCELERATING THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE
WORLD
by Pierre Charasse
The Ukrainian crisis has not radically changed the
international situation but it has precipitated ongoing developments. Western
propaganda, which has never been stronger, especially hides the reality of
Western decline to the populations of NATO, but has no further effect on
political reality. Inexorably, Russia and China, assisted by the other BRICS, occupy
their rightful place in international relations.
The Ukrainian crisis has highlighted the magnitude of
Western public opinion manipulation by major media.
The manner in which the Western public is
misinformed is impressive.
It is very
worrying to see how many citizens of the world are being lured into a
russophobia never seen even in the worst moments of the Cold War. The image
that enters the collective unconscious through the powerful Western media
machine is that Russians are "barbaric and backward" compared to the
Western "civilized" world. The very important speech that Vladimir
Putin delivered on March 18, after the referendum in Crimea, was literally
boycotted by Western media. [
1]
Putin
explained that the crisis in Ukraine was not triggered by Russia and he
presented, with great rationality, Russia’s position and the legitimate
strategic interests of his country in the post- ideological conflict.
Humiliated by its treatment by the West since 1989, Russia
woke up with Putin and.. has set a great national and patriotic project for
recovering its superpower status of "global" actor by first securing
the safety of its land and sea borders. This is exactly what the West wants to
prevent in its unipolar worldview.
With its posturing and its threats of sanctions, the EU,
slavishly aligned with Washington, shows that it is powerless to
"punish" Russia seriously. Its actual weight is not up to its
ambitions always proclaimed to shape the world in its image. Putin .. has not
yet mentioned limiting the supply of gas to Ukraine and Western Europe but
everyone knows he has this card in hand, which has already forced the Europeans
to think about a complete reorganization of their energy supply, which will
take years to materialize.
Putin enjoys exceptional popularity in his country and in
the Russian communities in neighboring countries, and we can be sure that his
intelligence services have penetrated deeply into countries formerly controlled
by the Soviet Union.. Its diplomatic apparatus gives strong arguments to remove
the monopoly of interpretation of international law from the "West",
particularly on the thorny issue of self-determination. As might be expected,
Putin does not hesitate to cite the precedent of Kosovo to vilify the double
standards of the West, its inconsistencie , and the destabilizing role it
played in the Balkans.
While Western media propaganda had been in full swing after
the referendum of March 16 in Crimea, Western shouts have suddenly dropped a
tone and the G7, at its summit in The Hague, has not threatened to exclude
Russia from the G8, as it had trumpeted a few days earlier, but simply
announced that it "would not participate in the Sochi summit ." This
allowed it the opportunity to reactivate at any time this privileged forum for
dialogue with Russia, established in 1994 at its express request. First retreat of the G7. Obama in turn
hastened to announce that there would be no military intervention by NATO to
help Ukraine, but only a promise of cooperation to rebuild the military
potential of Ukraine, composed largely of obsolete Soviet equipment. Second retreat. Third, .. we do not know exactly what is the status of the
Ukrainian Armed Forces after Moscow’s inviting, with some success, it seems,
the Ukrainian military, heirs of the Red Army, to join the Russian army while
maintaining individual rank. The Ukrainian fleet is already fully under Russian
control.
["Finlandisation".. A master stroke for Putin?.]
Finally, another
spectacular reversal on the part of the United States: there would have been
very advanced secret conversations between Moscow and Washington to adopt a new
constitution in Ukraine, to install a coalition government whose neo-Nazi
extremists would be excluded in Kiev on the occasion of the May 25 elections
and,
especially to impose a neutral
status on Ukraine, its "Finlandisation" (recommended by Henry
Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski) [
2], which prohibits its entry into NATO, but
allows economic agreements with both the EU and with the Eurasian customs Union
(Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan). If such an agreement is reached, the EU will be
faced with a fait accompli and will have to resign itself to pay the bill of
the Russian-US head-to-head.
With such guarantees Moscow could consider its safety
requirements are met. It will have regained its footing in its former sphere of
influence with Washington’s agreement and will refrain from fomenting
separatism in other Ukrainian provinces or in Transnistria (Moldova province
populated by Russians ) while reaffirming its strong respect for European
borders. The Kremlin will at the same time have offered an honorable exit to
Obama. A master stroke for Putin.
Geopolitical consequences of the
Ukrainian crisis
The G7 had not calculated that, by taking steps to isolate
Russia, besides the fact that it will have applied to itself a
"sado-masochistic punishment", it, in spite of itself, precipitated a
process, already well under way, of deep restructuring of the world for the
benefit of a non-Western group led by China and Russia under the aegis of
BRICS.
In response to the G7 communiqué of March 24 [
3]
, the foreign ministers of BRICS have expressed their rejection of any measures
to isolate Russia and they immediately took the opportunity to denounce the
U.S. practices of espionage against their leaders and for good measure they
demanded that the United States ratify the new distribution of voting rights at
the IMF and the World Bank as a first step towards a "more equitable world
order" [
4].
The G7 did not expect such a quick and virulent reply from BRICS.
This episode may suggest that the G20, of which G7 and BRICS
are the two main pillars, could traverse a serious crisis before the next
summit in Brisbane (Australia) on November 15 and 16, especially if the G7
continues to marginalize and punish Russia. It is just about certain there will
be a majority in the G20 to condemn the sanctions on Russia, which will in fact
have the effect of isolating the G7.
In their statement to the press, the ministers of BRICS felt
that to decide who is a member of the group and what is its purpose is up to
all its members "on an equal footing" and none of its members
"may unilaterally determine its nature and its character." The
Ministers call to resolve the current crisis in the context of the United
Nations "with calm, high road vision, by renouncing hostile language,
penalties and sanctions against". A snub to the G7 and the EU! The G7,
which alone put itself in a bind, is warned that it will need to make
significant concessions if it wants to continue to have some influence in the
G20.
[Broken interdependence
with US-EU sanctions]
Moreover, two important events are to occur in the coming weeks.
First, Vladimir Putin will pay an
official visit to China in May. The two giants are about to sign a major energy
deal that will substantially affect the global energy market, both
strategically and financially. Transactions will no longer be in dollars, but
in the national currencies of the two countries. Turning to China, Russia will
have no problem selling its gas production in case Western Europe decides to
switch supplier. And in the same rapprochement, China and Russia could sign an
industrial partnership agreement for the production of the Sukhoi 25 fighter, a
highly symbolic development.
[Second] Elsewhere, during the BRICS
summit in Brazil in July, the Development Bank of the group, whose creation was
announced in 2012, could take shape and offer an alternative to financing by
the IMF and the World Bank, ever reluctant to change their operating financing
rules to give more weight to emerging economies and their currencies beside the
dollar.
Finally there is
an important aspect of the relationship between Russia and NATO which is
sparsely commented in the media but is very revealing of the state of
dependence in which the "West" finds itself as it withdraws its
troops from Afghanistan. Since 2002, Russia agreed to cooperate with Western
countries to facilitate the logistics of troops in the Afghan theater. At the
request of NATO, Moscow authorized the transit of non-lethal equipment for the
ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) by air or land between Dushanbe
(Tajikistan), Uzbekistan and Estonia, via a multimodal platform at Oulianovk in
Siberia. This is nothing less than conveying all supplies for thousands of men
operating in Afghanistan,.. all transported by Russian civilian aircraft, since
Western forces do not have sufficient air assets to support military deployment
of this magnitude. The NATO-Russia October 2012 agreement extends cooperation
to the installation of a Russian airbase in Afghanistan with 40 helicopters
where Afghan personnel are trained in the anti-drug fight which the West has
abandoned.
Russia has continued
to refuse to allow transit through its territory of heavy equipment, which
poses a serious problem for NATO at the time of withdrawal of his troops.
Indeed they cannot travel via Kabul-Karachi land because of attacks on convoys
by the Taliban. The Way North (Russia) being impossible, heavy equipment is
flown from Kabul to the United Arab Emirates, then shipped to European ports,
which quadruples the cost of withdrawal. For the Russian government, NATO
intervention in Afghanistan has been a failure, but its precipitate withdrawal
before the end of 2014 will increase chaos and affect the security of Russia
and may cause a resurgence of terrorism.
Russia also has important agreements with the West in the
field of armaments. The most important is probably the one signed with France
for the manufacture in its arsenals of two helicopter carriers for $ 1.3
billion euros. [
5] If the contract is canceled under the
sanctions, France must repay amounts already paid as well as more contractual
penalties and will lose thousands of jobs. The worst is probably the loss of
market confidence in the French armament industry as noted by the Russian
Ministry of Defence.
Let’s not forget that without the intervention of Russia,
Western countries would have never been able to reach an agreement with Iran on
nuclear non-proliferation, or with Syria on chemical disarmament. These are facts about which the Western
media are silent.
The reality is that because of its arrogance, its lack of
knowledge of history, its clumsiness, the Western bloc has precipitated the
systemic deconstruction of the unipolar world order and offers on a platter to
Russia and China, supported by India, Brazil, South Africa and many other
countries, a "window of opportunity" to strengthen unity of an
alternative block.
The evolution was moving forward, but slowly and gradually
(nobody wants to give a kick in the anthill and suddenly destabilize the global
system), but all of a sudden everything
is going faster and interdependence is changing the rules of the game.
[Mexico : between sinking with the Titanic of the West or join
the BRICKS]
Regarding the Brisbane G20, it will be interesting to see
how Mexico positions itself, after the G7 summits in Brussels in June and BRICS
in Brazil in July. The situation is very fluid and will evolve quickly, which
will require great diplomatic flexibility. If the G7 persists in his intention
to marginalize or exclude Russia, the G20 could disintegrate. Mexico, caught in
the nets of TLCAN and the future TPP, must choose between sinking with the
Titanic of the West or adopting an independent line, more in harmony with its
interests as a regional power with global ambitions, by drawing nearer to
BRICS.
Pierre Charasse.
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