All Along the Watchtower: The Follies of History

The ultimate American imperial dream is to engineer a Chinese vassal state

All Along the Watchtower: The Follies of History

There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief

Business men, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None were level on the mind
Nobody up at his word

-Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower (immortalized by Jimi Hendrix)

Nothing beats the beguiling, stony smiles at the Bayon temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia’s Siem Reap to plunge us back into history’s vortex, re-imagining how empires, in their endless pursuit of power, rise and fall, usually because they eventually get the very war they had sought to avoid.

The Bayon was built as a state temple at the end of the 12th century by the undisputed superstar of Khmer empires, Jayavarman VII. Its magical narrative reliefs convey a mix of history and mythology while depicting daily life in Khmer society.

We still don’t know today the identity of the faces shown on the temple’s giant stone carvings. They could be a representation of Brahma, or of Jayavarman himself – a practicing Buddhist. What we do know is that the glorious Khmer empire – incomparable in art and architecture, and even benign in the sense that the mandate for power was based on the king’s relationship with the gods, started to fade after the 15th century, dismembered by war against the Thai and later the Vietnamese.

Stony smiles “all along the watchtower”, displayed as a living commentary on the rise and fall of empires, could easily connect, geopolitically, with a touch of Buddhist impermanence, to our turbulent times of Hybrid War. And to the current American empire.

It’s always amusing to observe how US think tanks, such as CIA outlet Stratfor, constantly celebrate success in undermining Russia via this strategy.

Hybrid War on Russia was engineered in 2014 on two fronts: ordering the Persian Gulf petro-poodles to crash the oil price while imposing sanctions after Russia opposed the coup – actually a color revolution – in Kiev. Hybrid War was engineered at a Deep State level as a tool to try to smash Russia’s outstanding recovery since Vladimir Putin was elected to the presidency in 2000. The undisguised Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski-style goal with the Kiev coup was to draw Russia into an Afghan-style partisan war.

Of course, Russia suffered economically – but then slowly recovered, diversifying production and boosting its agricultural capacity. Yet hybrid warfare always ensures that once economic hardship is engineered, a government necessarily becomes unpopular. Then fakes and traitors are unleashed: Alexei Navalny in Russia, or “protests” in Hong Kong that the Deep State dreams would lead to an uprising in Beijing.

Civil Disobedience in Hong Kong or US Color Revolution Attempt?

A small, radical nucleus of agents provocateurs in Hong Kong, using copycat methods from the Maidan in Kiev, sticks to a single-minded road map: force Beijing to commit a Tiananmen 2.0, thus elevating the all-out demonization of China to the next level.

The inevitable consequence, according to the privileged scenario, would be the “West”, as well as vast sectors of the Global South, boycotting the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, a complex, multi-layered strategy of economic integration that has expanded well beyond Eurasia.

Hong Kong, an irrelevant asset

In Hong Kong, everything is about money and then, on a secondary level, about China.

China’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of $9,700. Hong Kong’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of nearly $49,000 – higher than Germany and Japan. It is no wonder that no one in Hong Kong wants to be “like China.” So money is a key factor for Hong Kongers to fear “Chinese domination.” Only a few outsiders, such as Thai economist Chartchai Parasuk, highlight this.

Hong Kong is becoming increasingly irrelevant for China. At the time of the World Bank-lauded “Asian tigers,” in the early to mid-1990s, Hong Kong’s share of China’s GDP was a hefty 27%. Today it’s a paltry 2.7%.

Hong Kong has been losing importance to China. File pic: Creative Commons/ Brian H.Y.

Capital has been steadily moving to Singapore, whose annual GDP per capita is now even higher than Hong Kong’s. Real wages are now lower than at the start of the decade. And wealthy Chinese mainlanders are buying everything in sight, thus excluding the average Hong Konger from an upwardly mobile trajectory.

Up to now, Hong Kong’s allure, for China, was its unique position as a free-trade mega-port, the proverbial gateway to the mainland, and one of the world’s top financial markets. But that’s increasingly in the past. Shenzhen, across the border, is already China’s top tech hub, and Shanghai is being slowly but surely configured as the top financial center.

China is also being hit, hybrid war-style, with a rolling trade war plus sanctions. The ultimate American imperial “dream” is to engineer a Chinese vassal. This has nothing to do with trade. There’s no logic of avoiding a trade deficit with China only to see the same products produced in Thailand or India. What’s goin’ on is rather hybrid war all over the spectrum: attempts to destabilize and possibly defeat Russia, China and Iran, the three key hubs of Eurasia integration.

New hybrid politics

The Hybrid War strategy has created our current state of financial warfare. And that inevitably implies blowback. The weaponization of the US dollar is leading Russia, China and Iran as well as Turkey, Syria and Venezuela to seriously turbo-charge their drive towards alternatives. They could be anchored to a basket of commodities, or it could be all about gold. Wily investor Jim Rickards defines Russia, China, Iran and Turkey as the “New Axis of Gold.”

Everything that happens geopolitically and geoeconomically in our turbulent times has to do with the US’ do-or-die imperial struggle against the Russia-China strategic partnership. Only total “victory,” by any means necessary, would assure the continuation of what could be defined as the New American Century.

And that brings us to the necessity of reconstructing Clausewitz’s axiom, according to which, originally, war is a continuation of politics by other means.

Clausewitz argued that war is a real political instrument. Now, Clausewitz remixed should read: Hybrid War is Politics by Other Means.

The means now go way beyond conventional war, as in Khmer empire times. They mix irregular and cyber war; fake news; lawfare (as in Brazil); electoral intervention; and even “diplomacy” (of the gunboat or economic blockade variety, as applied against Iran and Venezuela).

All Along the Watchtower, the song, as written by Dylan and delivered by Hendrix as a hurricane approached, is an ominous portent of Apocalypse Now. Hummed along the stones of the Bayon smiling cryptically at us out of centuries of impermanence-defying history, it seems so fitting for our times of Hybrid War.

Watch out: Pale riders are approaching, as the wind begins to howl.

*

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Pepe Escobar, Global Research, 2019

Articles by:Pepe Escobar

Putin warns of financial crisis the world ‘has not yet seen’

“The disregard for existing norms and a loss of trust may combine with the unpredictability and turbulence of the colossal change. These factors may lead to a systemic crisis, which the world has not seen yet,” he said.

“We don’t need trade wars today or even temporary trade ceasefires. We need a comprehensive trade peace,” the president stressed.

source

http://www.rt.com

25 May, 2018

A Chinese container ship docked at the Port of Oakland. © Beck Diefenbach © Reuters

The global economy is facing a threat of spiraling protectionist measures that can lead to a devastating crisis, Vladimir Putin warned. Nations must find a way to prevent this and establish rules on how the economy should work.

The Russian president spoke out against the growing trend of using unilateral restrictions to achieve economic advantage, as he addressed guests of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday.

“The system of multilateral cooperation, which took years to build, is no longer allowed to evolve. It is being broken in a very crude way. Breaking the rules is becoming the new rule,” he said.

Read more

Washington uses sanctions to push its gas to Europe – Germany’s largest energy company

In addition to traditional forms of protectionism such as trade tariffs, technical standards and subsidies, nations are increasingly using new ways to undermine their competition, like unilateral economic sanctions. And nations which thought they would never be targeted by such measures for political reasons are now being proved wrong, Putin said.

“The ability to impose sanctions arbitrarily and with no control fosters a temptation to use such restrictive tools again and again, right and left, in every case, regardless of political loyalty, talks about solidarity, past agreements and long cooperation,” he said.

Putin called for a change of course, for free trade to be defended, and for rules-based regulation of the global economy, which would alleviate the chaos resulting from the rapid technological transformations arising from the development of digital technology.

“The disregard for existing norms and a loss of trust may combine with the unpredictability and turbulence of the colossal change. These factors may lead to a systemic crisis, which the world has not seen yet,” he said.

He stressed that there is a need for transparent universal rules as well as an inclusive mechanism, which would allow those rules to be amended in a way that would be accepted by the international community.

“We don’t need trade wars today or even temporary trade ceasefires. We need a comprehensive trade peace,” the president stressed.

“Competition, clash of interests, has always been, is, and will always be, of course. But we must be respectful towards each other. The ability to resolve differences through honest competition rather than by restricting competition is the source of progress,” Putin added.

The speech comes amid turbulent times for the global economy, in which the nationalist policies of US President Donald Trump have pitted America against other nations which his administration believes to be enjoying unfair advantages in trade. Trump has threatened China, European nations, Canada, and Mexico with trade restrictions, demanding the perceived misbalances be fixed.

The US has also intensified its use of economic sanctions, targeting Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other nations with various punitive measures.

Escobar: How Tehran Fits Into Russia-China Strategy

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

Tue, 08/13/2019

 

Complex doesn’t even begin to describe the positioning of Iran-Russia in the geopolitical chessboard. What’s clear in our current, volatile moment is that they’re partners, as I previously reported. Although not strategic partners, as in the Russia-China tie-up, Russia-China-Iran remain the crucial triad in the ongoing, multi-layered, long-term Eurasia integration process.

A few days after our Asia Times report, an article – based on “senior sources close to the Iranian regime” and crammed with fear-mongering, baseless accusations of corruption and outright ignorance about key military issues – claimed that Russia would turn the Iranian ports of Bandar Abbas and Chabahar into forward military bases complete with submarines, Spetsnaz special forces and Su-57 fighter jets, thus applying a “stranglehold” to the Persian Gulf.

For starters, “senior sources close to the Iranian regime” would never reveal such sensitive national-security details, much less to Anglo-American foreign media. In my own case, even though I have made several visits to Iran while consistently reporting on Iran for Asia Times, and even though authorities at myriad levels know where I’m coming from, I have not managed to get answers from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals to 16 detailed questions I sent nearly a month ago. According to my interlocutors, these are deemed “too sensitive” and, yes, a matter of national security.

Predictably, the report was fully debunked. One of my top Tehran sources, asked about its veracity, was blunt: “Absolutely not.” After all, Iran’s constitution decisively forbids foreign troops stationed on national soil. The Majlis – Iranian parliament – would never approve such a move barring an extreme case, as in the follow-up to a US military attack.

As for Russia-Iran military cooperation, the upcoming joint military exercises in the “northern part of the Indian Ocean,” including the Strait of Hormuz, are a first-ever such occasion, made possible only by a special agreement.

Analyst Gennady Nechaev is closer to reality when he notes that in the event of growing Russia-Iran cooperation, the possibility would be open for “permanent basing of the Russian Navy in one of the Iranian ports with the provision of an airfield nearby – the same type of arrangement as Tartus and Hmeimim on the Mediterranean coast of Syria.”  To get there, though, would be a long and winding road.

And that brings us to Chabahar, which poses an interesting question. Chabahar is a deep sea port, on the Gulf of Oman and the key plank in India’s mini-Silk Road vision. India invested a lot in Chabahar, to have it connected by highway to Afghanistan and Central Asia and in the future by rail to the Caucasus. All that so India may bypass Pakistan as far as trade routes are concerned.

Chabahar, though, may also become an important node of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative. India and China – as well as Russia – are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran, sooner or later, will also become a full SCO member. Only then the possibility “might” – and the emphasis is on “might” – open for the Russian or Chinese navy occasionally to dock at Chabahar, but still not to use it as a forward military base.

Got oil, will travel

On Iran, the Russia-China strategic partnership is working in parallel. China’s priority is energy supplies – and Beijing works the chessboard accordingly. The Chinese ambassador to the United Arab Emirates just issued a trial balloon, mentioning that Beijing might consider escorting oil tankers across the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. That could happen independently or – the dangling carrot – as part of Washington’s Operation Sentinel, which for the moment has managed to find only one “coalition of the willing” member: the UK.

What’s actually happening right now in the Persian Gulf is way more entertaining. As I confirmed with energy traders in Doha late last month, demand for oil right now is higher than in 2018. And in consequence, Iran continues to sell most of its oil.

A tanker leaves Iran with transponder off; the oil is transferred to another tanker on the high seas; and then it is relabeled.

According to a trader, “If you take two to three million barrels a day off the market by sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, plus the OPEC cutbacks, you would have to see a higher price.”

There is no higher price. Brent crude remains near a seven-month low, around US$60 a barrel. This means that Iran continues to sell, mostly to China. That trial balloon floated in the UAE might well be China camouflaging its continued purchase of Iranian oil.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has been proving again and again his diplomatic mastery, running rings around the Donald Trump administration. But all major decisions in Iran come from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. That also applies to Tehran’s position in relation to multi-level forms of support from the Russia-China strategic partnership.

What the past few months have made crystal clear is how Russia-China’s magnetic pull is attracting key Eurasia players Iran, Turkey and Pakistan. And make no mistake: As much as Tehran may be extremely proud of its political independence, it is reassuring to know that Iran is, and will continue to be, a definitive red line for Russia-China.

America Dumps INF Treaty. Time for Russian Missiles in Latin America?

“A more likely scenario, however, is that Putin, in the event Trump ‘goes nuclear’ in Eastern Europe, will deploy round-the-clock stealth submarines armed with ballistic missiles near the American shoreline as an insurance policy.”

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Robert Bridge

August 9, 2019

Washington’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty is just the latest move against Russia that will serve to intensify an arms race on the European continent that is already underway. It may also force Russia to take things to the next level.

Aside from the unprecedented stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction on an epic scale, a whirlwind of regional developments are now underway that foreshadow extremely unsettling consequences. First and foremost is this month’s formal announcement by the Trump administration that it would be pulling out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), signed into force by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan back in 1987.

With the INF consigned to the dustbin of history, the US and Russia are free to design and produce ballistic and cruise missiles within a 500-5,500 kilometer range (310-3,420 miles). Would any NATO country be so foolish as to host these American-made weapons on their territory, thereby opening itself up to a devastating first-strike attack in some worst-case scenario? Poland is one possible candidate. After all, Polish President Andrzej Duda last year offered the United States $2 billion in financing for the construction of a permanent American base on Poland’s eastern border. While the two NATO countries are still considering the idea, it is clear that the eradication of the INF Treaty promises to ratchet up tensions between Russia and its neighbors.

Washington’s pullout from the INF did not occur in a vacuum, of course. It followed in the tank tracks of George W. Bush’s disastrous decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, one of many opportunistic moves committed by the United States in the aftermath of 9/11. With the ABM out of the way, the United States was able to establish a missile defense shield in Romania, just miles from the Russian border. Washington’s overtures to Moscow that it would welcome Russian participation in the project were eventually revealed as a deceitful stalling tactic. Russian President Vladimir Putin was not fooled, however, and wasted no time researching and developing of a lethal array of new weapon systems, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile with unlimited range.

RT

✔@RT_com

‘Listen to us now’: #Putin unveils new Russian nuclear arsenal https://on.rt.com/908e 

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At this point in the updated ‘Great Game’ there is a temptation to say that the US and Russia have entered yet another ‘MAD’ moment, that is, ‘mutually assured destruction’ should one side or the other attempt fate with a first-strike attack. Check mate, as it were. After all, Russia has got its “unstoppable” nuclear-powered cruise missile and other fearsome hardware, while the US has its missile defense shield, as well as numerous NATO set pieces, bolted down in Europe. Everything is wonderful in the neighborhood, right? Well, not exactly.

Comparing the present standoff between the US and Russia to the Cold War realities is erroneous and dangerous for a number of reasons. First, the opportunity for some sort of mishap resulting in all-out war has never been greater. The reason is not simply due to the dizzying amount of firepower involved, but rather due to the proximity of the firepower to the Russian border.  During the Cold War standoff, Moscow, the nerve center of the Soviet empire, was well guarded by the buffer of Warsaw Pact republics. Today, that buffer has practically vanished, and NATO is not only encamped deep inside of Eastern Europe, but – in the case of the Baltic States of Estonia and Latvia – smack up against the Russian border. Although the entire concept of time, distance and space has been made somewhat redundant by the exceptional speed of modern missiles and aircraft, this has not reduced the possibility of NATO and Russia accidentally stumbling into a very bad situation.

Now with the INF Treaty out of the way there is the possibility that Washington will place intermediate-range missiles in Russia’s backyard. Such a move would flush with Washington’s revised nuclear doctrine, which not only aims for increasing its nuclear arsenal, but – in pure Dr. Strangelove fashion – lowering the threshold for which nuclear weapons may be used. To think that Russia will watch passively on the sidelines as the US disrupts the regional strategic balance in its favor would be wishful thinking.

Even as the corpse of the INF treaty was still warm, Mark T. Esper, the new US secretary of defense said he favored the deployment of new American ground-based missiles to Asia, without specifying a precise location.

“It’s fair to say, though, that we would like to deploy a capability sooner rather than later,” Esper said while en route to Australia for foreign policy meetings. “I would prefer months. I just don’t have the latest state of play on timelines.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is reportedly moving ahead with the development of missile systems, including a cruise missile with an expected 1,000 km range and an intermediate-range ballistic missile with a 3,000 to 4,000 km range. With the ‘shield’ of a US missile defense system already established in Eastern Europe, Russia will not sit by idly and wait for NATO’s other hand to pick up a sword.

What options are open to Russia at this point? Aside from its Russia-based defenses already mentioned, Moscow will feel very compelled to move its strike abilities closer to the United States in order to match NATO’s newfound capacity just over the Russian border.

Putin has emphasized that Russia will not deploy ballistic missiles unless the US does so first. If he were required to respond, would Russia consider a permanent missile base somewhere in Latin America, just miles from US shores, mirroring the same situation that Russia faces in Eastern Europe? Imagine a situation where ‘Trump’s Mexican Wall’ became in reality a host of Russian launch pads. Although ti would solve America’s migrant problem, it probably won’t do much to help Americans sleep better at night. Impossible to imagine, of course, yet that is the exact dire scenario Russia faces on its own border with the Baltic States.

A more likely scenario, however, is that Putin, in the event Trump ‘goes nuclear’ in Eastern Europe, will deploy round-the-clock stealth submarines armed with ballistic missiles near the American shoreline as an insurance policy. It is a dreadful new reality to consider, yet as the United States continues with its reckless treaty-trashing posture it is a reality the world will be forced to live with.

Finian Cunningham: NATO’s China Double-Think

© AFP 2019 / Ted Aljibe

“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has always been a euphemism to permit a European cover for American imperialism. Since its formation in 1949, NATO has long been used as a stalking horse for US aggression towards the Soviet Union, and latterly, the Russian Federation. “

Source

sputniknews.com

Finian Cunningham

Aug 8, 2019

The US-led NATO alliance this week designated a whole new hemisphere to itself for “security” operations. No longer merely an “Atlantic” organization, it’s assuming the role of policing the Pacific. Quite a self-promotion.

NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking during a visit to Australia, talked about “the need” to deploy military forces in Asia-Pacific to counter the “rise of China”.

With laughable double-think, Stoltenberg declared: “This is not about moving NATO into the Pacific, but this is about responding to the fact that China is coming closer to us.”

Right. So are there Chinese warships patrolling European waterways, or Chinese missile systems being established along America’s borders? No, the Norwegian former prime minister, who is the civilian boss of the US-led military alliance, “rationalized” his claim about China “coming closer to us” with the following alleged “offensive” behaviour.

“[China] Investing heavily in critical infrastructure in Europe, increased presence in the Arctic and also increased presence in Africa, and in cyberspace,” he added, as quoted by Reuters.

In other words, in Stoltenberg’s view, China’s legitimate development as an economic power is somehow a malign security threat. How dare China do that!

Never mind that cash-strapped European governments have actually welcomed Chinese capital investment for building new telecoms infrastructure, as have many African nations who view China as a much more viable strategic partner after decades and centuries of US and European exploitation of that continent.

China is, in effect, being criminalized by the NATO talking-head for simply becoming a global economic powerhouse. And in that way, Stoltenberg is showing just how abject a lackey he is to his ultimate bosses in Washington.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has always been a euphemism to permit a European cover for American imperialism. Since its formation in 1949, NATO has long been used as a stalking horse for US aggression towards the Soviet Union, and latterly, the Russian Federation. The US-dominated alliance should have been abolished years ago when the Cold War officially ended in 1991. Rather, it has continued to expand, doubling in size to now include some 29 member states.

© AP PHOTO / BULLIT MARQUEZ

A U.S. fighter jet takes off from the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan for their patrol at the international waters off South China Sea Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2019

Now it is expanding its imperialist flunkey-role to target China, in total obeisance to US President Donald Trump’s policy of aggression towards Beijing. Note how Stoltenberg dutifully adopts and spins the Trump administration’s twisted narrative accusing China of being an “emerging threat” to global security.

The reality is the US is the primary threat to world security from its unhinged aggression towards China and simultaneously many other countries, including Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Syria.

With regard to China, Washington’s hostility is propelled by its demise as a global economic power. Accusing China of “currency manipulation” and “unfair trading practices” is just a pretext for justifying unlawful American militarism towards Beijing in a desperate attempt to salvage the chronic economic failure of US-style capitalism.

The Trump administration is brazenly trying to vandalize China’s economic development with punishing trade tariffs backed up with the mailed fist of militarism.

Pentagon chief Mark Esper last week gave notice that the US intends to install ground-based medium-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific. Conveniently, that move came only days after the Trump administration announced its official withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia.

Washington is giving itself a license to ring-fence China with nuclear and other ballistic missiles, which would have been banned under the INF Treaty.

The US and its NATO camouflage are escalating the danger of war in the Asia-Pacific through an unprecedented military buildup in the region. This week, the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan sailed through the South China Sea in the same week that the Trump administration ramped up its trade war with Beijing. In the name of “freedom of navigation”, the US has been steadily increasing its warship presence near Chinese territory (in an analogous way to what it is doing in the Persian Gulf against Iran). Ironically, but with no intention of irony, American publication The Hill reported the USS Ronald Reagan was “a show of strength against Chinese aggression”.

The absurd double-think of the Americans and their NATO minions with regard to China is echoed in similar outlandish claims that Russia is posing a threat to European security – omitting the fact that Russia’s proximity is because NATO has relentlessly moved its forces up to Russia’s borders.

© SPUTNIK / ALEKSEI VITVITSKY

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is holding a press-conference.

Jens Stoltenberg and other European cheerleaders for American aggression are probably the most execrable specimens imaginable. The out-of-control warmongering by Washington against the rest of the world is so flagrant and audacious. And yet we see the pathetic spectacle of toadies like Stoltenberg turning reality on its head, thereby fueling the danger of wars while, no doubt, calculating his next highly-paid job at some future pro-NATO think-tank.

And typically, Western corporate-controlled news media report Washington and NATO’s absurd propaganda claims against China, Russia and others, as if worthy of serious consideration, instead of exposing them with the disdain that such warmongering propaganda deserves. What next? China and Russia are “threats” because they merely exist?

Views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

Russia significantly reduces use of dollar in trade with India, China: Report

Source

http://www.presstv.com

Wed Aug 7, 2019

A new report shows Russia has halved its use of US dollar in trade with India and China. (AFP photo)

A new report suggests Russia has been considerably successful in its pledge to remove the US dollar from trade with others, adding that the greenback has been replaced by local currencies in nearly half of Moscow’s transactions with leading partners India and China.

The RT television network said in a report on Wednesday that Russia had been paid back in its national currency ruble in more than 75 percent of its exports to India as of the end of the first quarter of 2019.

The report said Russia’s trade settlements with China was also shifting toward a pattern of using currencies other than the US dollar, adding that rubles and euros were now the dominant means of such settlements with Beijing.

It added that the share of the US dollar in Russia’s settlements with India and China had reduced from more than 87 percent in the first three months of 2018 to less than 48 percent in the similar period this year.

Russia’s success in de-dollarizing the economy comes as the greenback has traditionally dominated Moscow’s trade with leading partners.

The RT report said that the use of local currencies instead of the dollar in Russia’s trade with other countries had quadrupled in early 2019 compared to the same period last year.

PressTV-Russia, China sign deal to ditch dollar: Newspaper

Russia and China sign an agreement to use national currencies in mutual trade instead of dollar.

It also added that Russia was moving quickly to ditch the dollar from trade with the European Union countries.

The report comes against the backdrop of efforts by Russia to make its economy immune from the impacts of sanctions and punitive measures adopted by the United States.

Russia has been slapped with rounds of economic embargoes and bans since 2014 when a political crisis erupted in Ukraine, leading to the rise of a pro-Western government in the neighboring country.

Russia and countries like China, Iran and Venezuela, who have suffered from US sanctions, have repeatedly declared that they want to fully ditch the greenback from their economic interactions with the rest of the world.

INF treaty: US withdraws from arms control agreement with Russia

Critics say move could ‘exacerbate the mistrust’ between the two rivals and provoke a new arms race.

Source

http://www.aljazeera.com

by Martin de Bourmont

Aug 2, 2019

Friday’s withdrawal means only one soon-to-expire arms control treaty between the US and Russia remains [Kevin Lamarque/Reuters]

Washington DC – The United States on Friday will formally withdraw from a landmark arms control treaty with Russia, claiming it undermines its national security interests.

The move means that only one, soon-to-expire, arms control treaty between the US and Russia remains, leaving critics of the Trump administration and proliferation experts worried about the potential for a new arms race.

In February, Washington had announced that in six months it would suspend its participation in the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty unless Moscow destroyed missiles which the US and its NATO allies alleged that they violate the agreement.

“We can no longer be restricted by the treaty while Russia shamelessly violates it,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on February 1.

US President Donald Trump later alluded to the possibility of a new treaty, saying, “I hope we’re able to get everybody in a big, beautiful room and do a new treaty that would be much better,” though the specific nature of such a treaty remains unclear.

For its part, Russia denied the US allegations and accused Washington of flouting the treaty itself, before giving notice that it would also pull out of the bilateral agreement.

What is the INF treaty?

Signed in 1987 by US and Soviet Union leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the INF treaty was meant to eliminate the presence of land-based nuclear missiles and medium-range arsenals between 500km to 5,500km from Europe.

The treaty’s expiration now enables the US to resume development of its own medium-range, land-based arsenal.

Currently, the US military plans to test a land-based cruise missile and a ballistic missile previously banned under the INF treaty between August and November of this year.

US officials say that the treaty’s collapse ultimately resulted from consistent Russian failures to adhere to its terms.

More specifically, the US and NATO wanted Russia to destroy its 9M729/SSC-8 nuclear-capable cruise missile system.

Russia, on the other hand, insists that it complied with the treaty and that the US withdrawal is part of a larger ploy to weaken norms surrounding the use of nuclear weapons.

Years in the making

Between 2004 and 2005, Russia suggested to the US that since China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran all possessed medium- and intermediate-range missiles, it might have good reason to leave the treaty.

Without actually exiting, Russia then began the covert development of a cruise missile forbidden by the INF treaty, according to US officials.

Speaking to the Hill, Frank Rose, a former assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification and compliance during the previous US administration, said he saw the INF’s demise as “the latest installment in a larger story – and that’s the collapse of the US-Russia bilateral strategic stability framework”.

“These arms control treaties have not kept up to the changes to the security environment,” Rose, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, added.

Jeffrey Lewis, a US expert in nuclear nonproliferation and geopolitics, contends the reason for the INF’s collapse is much simpler.

“There are lots of reasons to pull out, but I think in Trump’s case it’s just wanting to look tough. It’s not more complicated than that. It’s wanting to be transgressive,” said Lewis, an adjunct professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Lewis added that because the INF treaty never seriously prevented the US from maintaining its capacity to defend itself with missiles, he could not accept the government’s contention that scrapping the agreement would improve national security.

“The INF treaty limits intermediate-range missiles that are land-based,” Lewis said.

“It doesn’t limit sea-based or air-based intermediate-range missiles. If there had been some kind of tremendous shortage of these missiles then you know we could’ve seen an expansion of sea-based or air-based missiles, but that’s never happened.”

NATO’s and Russia’s stance

NATO sides with the US on its withdrawal decision, placing the blame squarely on Russia.

In a statement released last February, NATO said that unless Russia honoured its obligations through “the verifiable destruction of all of its 9M729 systems, thereby returning to full and verifiable compliance before the US withdrawal takes effect … Russia will bear sole responsibility for the end of the Treaty.”

On Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated a call to Russia to comply with the treaty in order to save it, while conceding that the agreement’s termination seemed “imminent”.

He also told reporters that NATO “will do what is necessary to have credible deterrence and defence”, though defence ministers in the 29-member military alliance also maintain that “NATO has no intention to deploy new land-based nuclear missiles in Europe.”

Addressing the Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday, Russia’s deputy permanent representative in Geneva, Andrey Belousov, said the US would soon exit the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CNTBT), which bans the testing of nuclear weapons.

“It would appear that through propaganda around false claims about Russia’s compliance there are attempts to prepare international opinion for a US exit from the CTBT and then to blame Russia again for everything,” Belousov said.

US Ambassador Robert Wood furiously denied the charge, calling it “crafty, Soviet-like propaganda”.

New arms race?

The expiration of the August 2 deadline means that the US will now have just one arms control agreement with Russia left.

But the New Start Treaty, which limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads Russia and the US can have to 1,550, is also under threat of dissolution, with US National Security Adviser John Bolton declaring in June that Washington was unlikely to extend it past its 2021 expiration deadline.

“The withdrawal [from the INF Treaty] without a follow-on is the invitation for an arms race,” said Senator Bob Menendez, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Russia will clearly spend money on updating and amplifying its weapons systems.”

While arms control experts are not in complete agreement that Friday’s move will spur a new arms race, they agree with Menendez that allowing for the development of new nuclear weapons is a frightening prospect.

Michael Krepon, the co-founder of the Stimson Center think-tank, said that while he thinks an arms race between the two countries is unlikely due to the US’s ability to vastly spend more than Russia, Washington’s withdrawal from the treaty is “part of the of a much larger and unsettling story of the cutting of the safety net”.

David Wright, a co-director and senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists described the INF treaty as a major diplomatic success that went a long way to making the world safer.

“The fact that the US and the Soviet Union at that point were able to come to an agreement was a tremendous breakthrough. It gave people a lot of hope that even things that seemed like they were sort of insoluble problems between two superpowers locked in the Cold War, there was a way out of that by negotiating,” Wright said.

“If the US pulls out, it’s likely to increase the number of missiles around the world and it’s likely to exacerbate the mistrust between the two countries and the level of spending they put in that’s intended to counter or match what the other side is doing.”