Acerca Do Sub

Acerca do sub-
imperialismo brasileiro
Haiti: o que é imperialismo e o que é
sub-imperialismo
por Duarte Pereira [*]
Está-se consumando a crônica anunciada e previsível da nova ocupação

do Haiti pelos Estados Unidos, desta vez aproveitando o terremoto que
devastou o país e sua capital. Os Estados Unidos já desembarcaram 11 mil
militares no país. Ontem, com tropas armadas e uniformizadas para
combate, transportadas em helicópteros de guerra, ocuparam o palácio
presidencial em Porto Príncipe. O aeroporto, não esqueçamos, continua
sendo controlado e operado pelos Estados Unidos, que hastearam sua
bandeira no local e decidem que aviões podem pousar. Nos últimos dias,
deram prioridade a suas aeronaves, principalmente militares, prejudicando
o desembarque da ajuda enviada por outros países e por organizações não-
governamentais. A prioridade foi a segurança, não a vida da população
haitiana, principalmente pobre. O ministro francês da Cooperação, Alain
Joyandet, chegou a protestar: "Precisamos ajudar o Haiti, não ocupá-lo." É
verdade que, tendo cumprido o cronograma inicial de desembarque de
suas tropas, os Estados Unidos poderão autorizar, nos próximos dias, o
pouso de um número maior de aviões de outros países, com técnicos e
equipamentos para remoção de destroços, médicos e remédios para
atendimento dos feridos, água e alimentos para a população desabrigada e
desempregada. A essa altura, porém, a possibilidade de encontrar pessoas
soterradas com vida será mínima e excepcional.
Sem que a mídia dê atenção a este aspecto, os Estados Unidos estão

aumentando também o controle do porto que dá acesso à capital e de toda
a área litorânea do Haiti, com um porta-aviões, um navio equipado com
um hospital de campanha e vários navios da Guarda Costeira, visando a
socorrer feridos, mas também a selecionar e controlar a aproximação de
navios de ajuda de outros países, como o enviado pela Venezuela com
combustível, e a impedir a emigração desesperada de haitianos para a
costa estadunidense em pequenas embarcações..
Não podendo justificar suas ações arrogantes e unilaterais com ordens das
Nações Unidas, o governo de Washington tem argumentado que atua a
pedido do governo haitiano. Mas que soberania pode ter um governo,
como o do presidente René Préval, que não dispõe sequer de forças
policiais e de equipamentos de comunicação e transporte para manter a
ordem pública e organizar o salvamento de seus cidadãos? É significativo
também que o plano de salvamento e reconstrução do Haiti pelos Estados
Unidos tenha sido anunciado, em conjunto, pelo presidente Barack Obama
e pelos ex-presidentes Clinton e Bush – o mesmo Bush que demorou tanto
a agir quando o furacão Katrina destruiu uma grande área dos Estados
Unidos. Quando os interesses estratégicos da superpotência estadunidense
e de suas empresas transnacionais estão em jogo, prevalece como sempre
o consenso bipartidário entre "democratas" e "republicanos" – aliás, uma
confluência bipartidária semelhante se ensaia agora no Brasil com o
PSDB e o PT, apesar das acirradas disputas nas fases de eleição.
O jornalista Roberto Godoy, especializado em assuntos militares, escreve

no Estadão de hoje: "Os Estados Unidos estão fazendo no Haiti o que
sabem fazer melhor: ocupar, assumir, controlar. Decidida em Washington,
a operação de suporte às vítimas da devastação, em quatro horas, tinha 2
mil militares mobilizados – e metade deles já seguia para Porto Príncipe –
enquanto o resto do mundo apenas tomava conhecimento da tragédia. (...)
É a Doutrina Powell, criada no fim dos anos 80 pelo então chefe do
Estado-Maior Conjunto general Colin Powell, aplicada em tempo de paz.
Ela prevê que os Estados Unidos não devem entrar em ação a não ser com
superioridade arrasadora. (...) No sábado, oficiais americanos [seria mais
correto escrever estadunidenses, porque americanos somos todos nós]
estavam no comando do tráfego aéreo. Os paraquedistas da 82ª Divisão e
os fuzileiros navais (...) são treinados para o combate e também para
missões de resgate. Movimentam-se em helicópteros e veículos
convertidos em ambulâncias leves. A retaguarda é poderosa. Um porta-
aviões virou central logística e um navio-hospital de mil leitos chegou no
domingo. Ontem, aviões dos Estados Unidos ocupavam 7 das 11 posições
de parada remanescentes no aeroporto."
A mídia do grande capital, exagerando os saques e os conflitos, cumpriu

seu papel de preparar a opinião pública para aceitar a operação político-
militar dos Estados Unidos como necessária e benevolente. Na realidade,
os Estados Unidos têm contribuído para acirrar os conflitos ao atrasar a
ajuda humanitária de outros países e utilizar aviões e helicópteros para
despejar suprimentos aleatoriamente sobre uma população sedenta,
faminta e desorganizada. Até mesmo o general brasileiro Floriano Peixoto,
comandante da Minustah (Missão de Estabilização das Nações Unidas),
ponderou em videoconferência que os casos mais graves de violência não
são generalizados e disse que as ruas de Porto Príncipe estão
desobstruídas, o que facilita a ação das forças de segurança. Na avaliação
do general, a situação se mostra menos grave do que a versão difundida
pela imprensa. Além disso, quem tem experiência política e já participou
da resistência a regimes entreguistas e autoritários não pode deixar de
receber com ceticismo a qualificação fácil e indiferenciada, difundida pela
mídia, de que todos os presos que escaparam dos presídios destruídos pelo
terremoto são criminosos comuns e integrantes de "gangues de bandidos".
Muitos oficiais e soldados do antigo Exército haitiano formaram milícias,
que declararam seu apoio ao último presidente livremente eleito Jean-
Bertrand Aristide, depois que ele foi deposto em 2004. Seqüestrado por
tropas estadunidenses e levado à força para a África do Sul, bem longe do
Haiti, o ex-presidente Aristide continua impedido de voltar ao país e seu
partido foi proibido de participar das últimas eleições realizadas sob o
controle da Minustah.
Com as diferenças secundárias de motivação e de situação interna, o

roteiro seguido pelos Estados Unidos no Haiti é, portanto, essencialmente,
o mesmo adotado no Iraque ou no Afeganistão: primeiro, destroem-se os
Estados nacionais que esbocem qualquer rebeldia, instalando a devastação
econômica e social e o caos político; depois, utilizam-se essas
circunstâncias deterioradas para justificar a construção de Estados
satélites; por último, esses Estados satélites e corruptos se revelam
incapazes de garantir a paz, resgatar a dignidade nacional e melhorar o
padrão de vida da população (com as exceções de praxe das elites
colaboracionistas), justificando que a ocupação estadunidense se
prolongue indefinidamente. A crise aprofundada pela intervenção externa
cria, enquanto isso, oportunidades de novos negócios lucrativos para os
fabricantes de armas, as empresas de segurança e as grandes construtoras
dos Estados Unidos e de seus aliados.
Para dissipar dúvidas sobre as reais intenções da intervenção
"emergencial" e "humanitária" dos Estados Unidos no Haiti, o diplomata
Greg Adams, enviado ao país caribenho como porta-voz do Departamento
de Estado dos Estados Unidos, declarou ao Estadão em Porto Príncipe: "É
muito cedo para estabelecer prazos [para a retirada das tropas
estadunidenses] e ficaremos aqui o tempo que for necessário [lembremo-
nos de declarações semelhantes tornadas públicas no início da ocupação
do Iraque]. Havia tropas estrangeiras no Haiti antes do terremoto [ah, é?].
Com a tragédia, além de todos os outros problemas, não vejo uma data-
limite no futuro próximo para falarmos aos haitianos 'ok, agora é com
vocês'. Ficaremos aqui por um bom tempo e acho que o Brasil também."
O PAPEL COADJUVANTE DO SUB-IMPERIALISMO

BRASILEIRO
A referência à ação coadjuvante e subordinada do Brasil foi bem esperta.

Que autoridade moral pode ter o governo brasileiro para protestar contra a
ação estadunidense se tem participado da intervenção política e militar nos
assuntos internos do Haiti, ainda que com a chancela formal das Nações
Unidas, chancela já utilizada ao longo da historia da entidade para
encobrir tantas outras intervenções? Participando das operações de
segurança – ou seja, em bom português, de repressão – com o beneplácito
e em benefício dos Estados Unidos, o Brasil espera ganhar o prêmio de
consolação de tomar parte nos negócios de reconstrução do país. Aliás,
grandes construtoras brasileiras, como a OAS e a Odebrecht, já enviaram
equipes técnicas e equipamentos pesados para o Haiti, posicionando-se
para a disputa que virá.
Quem afirma que não existe mais imperialismo no século XXI ou põe em
dúvida o conceito de sub-imperialismo, utilizado para caracterizar a
política externa atual do Brasil, principalmente na América Latina e no
Caribe, tem assim a oportunidade de aprender, em cores e on line, o
conteúdo concreto desses conceitos e dessas práticas. Abrindo bem os
olhos, os patriotas e democratas brasileiros têm o dever de exigir que o
Brasil renuncie ao comando militar da Minustah, retire progressivamente
suas tropas do Haiti e se limite às ações de cunho efetivamente
humanitário. O Haiti não precisa só de ajuda, precisa de soberania. Que os
Estados Unidos realizem seu plano de intervenção e de construção de um
Estado satélite no Haiti com seus próprios recursos humanos e materiais e
sob sua exclusiva responsabilidade. Assim, pelo menos, a situação ficará
mais clara e se tornará mais fácil mobilizar as forças anti-imperialistas e
democráticas no Haiti e nos demais países da América Latina e do Caribe.
Não percamos de vista que um império em declínio, na desesperada
tentativa de reverter o curso histórico que o debilita, pode tornar-se mais
perigoso e aventureiro do que um império em ascensão e paciente.
Estou fechando este parêntese sobre a tragédia haitiana, porque já está

claro que não se trata apenas de uma tragédia natural e humanitária, mas
sobretudo política e militar. Recentemente, um terremoto devastou uma
grande região da China, deixando 87 mil mortos, segundo as estimativas
oficiais. Porque havia e há na China, apesar de sua pobreza ainda grande,
um Estado soberano e ativo, foi possível lidar com as conseqüências da
tragédia sem permitir a intervenção estrangeira no comando das operações
de socorro e reconstrução ou o desembarque de tropas de outros países. A
grande tragédia do Haiti foi a destruição progressiva de seu Estado nas
últimas décadas, com a dissolução de suas forças armadas e policiais, a
precarização de seus serviços públicos e a desorganização e divisão de sua
população.
20/Janeiro/2010
O original encontra-se em http://www.pcb.org.br/haiti1.htm
Este artigo encontra-se em http://resistir.info/ .
23/Jan/10
Humanitarian Disaster In Fallujah: Unprecedented

Numbers of Birth Defects, Miscarriages and Cancer
Cases
By Malak Hamdan
Global Research, April 13, 2010
BRussells Tribunal 12 April 2010
Theme: Crimes against Humanity
In-depth Report: IRAQ REPORT
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Doctors in Fallujah are witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth
defects, miscarriages and cancer cases. According to gynaecologists,
paediatricians and neurologists in Fallujah the numbers of these cases
have been increasing rapidly since 2005 – less than 1 year after the
bombing campaign by the occupying forces in 2004.
The most common birth defects are defects that involve the heart and
the nervous system other defects witnessed by doctors include babies
with two heads, upper and lower limb defects and eye abnormalities.
What is more disturbing is that pregnant women are completely unaware

that they are carrying an abnormal child until the day they give birth –
Traumatizing the mother and the rest of the family.
Preliminary data based on cases documented in January of this year

shows the rate of heart defects in Fallujah to be 13 times the rate found
in Europe. And for birth defects involving the Nervous System based on
data reported for February of this year the rate was calculated to be 33
times that found in Europe for the same number of births.
A significant number of babies die because doctors in Fallujah do not

have the necessary training to carry out certain life saving operations.
There are a number of babies that have TOF’s and other complex cardiac
defects that cannot be operated on by Iraqi doctors and therefore the
result is the needless death of the child. Babies who suffer from NTD’s
are also in need of urgent assistance.
How Can You Help?
1. We are asking for doctor(s) or a hospital from a foreign country to

accept and operate on a child from Fallujah carrying the types of birth
defects mentioned above. Due to the extent of the problem this program
would be needed on regular bases if possible.
2. To send doctors to Fallujah to train Iraqi doctors or/and to conduct

operations in Fallujah itself, if possible.
The original source of this article is BRussells Tribunal

Copyright © Malak Hamdan, BRussells Tribunal, 2010
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O grande buraco negro

e o futuro do dólar
por F. William Engdahl [*]
Durante meses o governo dos EUA insistiu em que o pior da

"recessão" está chegando ao fim e que os primeiros sinais da
retomada estão à vista. A realidade é o oposto. A crise financeira que
começou em agosto de 2007 no pequeno segmento de "sub-prime",
ou de alto risco, relativo ao mercado de dívidas hipotecárias de US$
20 milhões de milhões, está agora se espalhando, legalmente, para o
segmento "prime", ou de alta qualidade. A economia da única
superpotência mundial está a tornar-se cada vez mais parecida com a
do Império Romano no século IV, quando este colapsou em anarquia,
dívidas e caos.
As nações do mundo estão tomando medidas para se afastar da

dependência do dólar. China, Rússia, Brasil e Cazaquistão estão em
busca de uma nova moeda para as reservas. A China está
silenciosamente fazendo acordos bilaterais de swap de moedas com
parceiros comerciais asiáticos, assim como a América Latina e os
antigos países da União Soviética. A principal moeda comercial da
Área de Livre Comércio China-ASEAN[1] provavelmente não será o
dólar. Na América Latina, os países da ALBA [2] estão mudando do
dólar para o sucre como divisa do comércio, a partir de janeiro de
2010. O Mercosul passará a recusar o dólar no comércio exterior em
2011.
Para a divisa de reserva mundial, o pior ainda está por vir.
A REALIDADE ECONÔMICA DOS EUA
A realidade da economia americana é o oposto da propaganda da Wall

Street.
Em termos econômicos reais, a economia dos EUA já está numa

depressão. A economia americana vive sua pior contração desde a
primeira derrocada da Grande Depressão no início dos anos 30.
Como um antigo funcionário do Tesouro no governo Reagan

recentemente declarou: "Não sobrou economia para recuperar. A
economia manufatureira dos EUA foi perdida para as exportações e
para a ideologia do livre comércio. Foi substituída por uma "Nova
Economia" mítica baseada em serviços. Foi alimentada pelas taxas de
juros artificialmente baixas do Federal Reserve, que produziram uma
bolha imobiliária, e pela desregulamentação financeira do 'mercado
livre', o que liberou os gânsters financeiros para atingir novas alturas
de alavancagem de débito e produtos financeiros fraudulentos".
Quando esta economia "virtual" entrou em colapso, a riqueza dos

americanos investida em imóveis, pensões e poupança também
colapsou. A economia da dívida levou os americanos a alavancarem
seus ativos. Eles refinanciaram suas casas e gastaram o capital.
Gastaram seu limite em numerosos cartões de crédito. Trabalharam
em tantos empregos quantos puderam. A elevação das dívidas e os
múltiplos rendimentos familiares mantiveram a economia americana
nas últimas duas décadas.
Agora, subitamente, os americanos já não podem tomar empréstimos

para gastar. Estão afogados em dívidas. Os empregos estão
desaparecendo. O consumo americano, aproximadamente 70% do
PIB, está morto. Os americanos que ainda têm empregos estão
poupando para se prevenir da possibilidade da perda do emprego.
Milhões estão sem lar. Mais de 14% de todas as hipotecas domésticas
estão em incumprimento ou pelo menos com um pagamento atrasado,
um recorde histórico. A tendência é piorar. Alguns estão morando com
suas famílias e amigos; outros estão vivendo em cidades de tendas.
O declínio atual da economia está longe de acabar. Este declínio

continuará até se deteriorar, será extremamente prolongado,
extremamente profundo e não responderá aos estímulos econômicos
tradicionais. A economia dos EUA está presa numa clássica
"armadilha da dívida" do Terceiro Mundo.
A economia Americana sofre de severos problemas estruturais ligados

à relação dívida/rendimento do consumidor. As famílias não
conseguem acompanhar a inflação e já não podem contar com o
aumento excessivo da dívida para encontrar expedientes para manter
o padrão de vida. As questões estruturais não estão sendo tratadas
pelos programas de estímulos de Obama. Elas não podem ser
tratadas sem uma mudança significativa e fundamental nas políticas
econômicas e comerciais do governo, as quais na melhor das
hipóteses ainda arrastarão a depressão econômica durante muitos
anos. Desde 2007 os consumidores americanos têm poupado para
liquidar as suas enormes dívidas de cartão de crédito, automóvel e
moradia. Eles não estão consumindo e não consumirão por um longo
tempo. Nos últimos 12 meses eles reduziram sua dívida em
impressionantes US$ 2 milhões de milhões. Isso reduziu seriamente o
crescimento econômico, e é o motor da depressão. Não há opção.
Se calculamos os dados sem a manipulação oficial ou maquilagem

contábil, a estimava real de desemprego está hoje acima de 22%, não
os 10% oficiais. O PIB está declinando à taxa mais severa desde a
Segunda Guerra Mundial e a aproximar-se rapidamente dos níveis da
Grande Depressão.
A produção manufatureira dos EUA está entrando em colapso. Os

níveis da dívida familiar são os mais altos da história americana,
acima de 300% do rendimento disponível. A dívida corporativa é
igualmente alta. A dívida governamental atingiu seu record e logo
alcançará 100% do PIB. A economia dos Estados Unidos foi apanhada
na armadilha da dívida que ela mesma fabricou.
PERSPECTIVAS PARA O DÓLAR
A partir de 1985, quando os EUA passaram à posição de devedor

líquido pela primeira vez desde a Primeira Guerra Mundial, tornaram-
se o maior devedor líquido mundial. Em janeiro de 2009, a posição de
investimento internacional líquido dos EUA foi de US$ 3,47 milhões de
milhões, segundo o Departamento de Comércio. Isso representa a
diferença entre o valor dos ativos americanos na posse de
estrangeiros (US$ 23,36 milhões de milhões) e o valor dos ativos
estrangeiros na posse de americanos (US$ 19,89 milhões de milhões).
Os EUA, como entidade singular, pública e privada, deve ao mundo
US$ 3,47 milhões de milhões. A maior parte disso é para a China,
assim como para Japão e Rússia. Os EUA são hoje uma
superpotência militar mas um anão econômico. Apenas em 2008, a
dívida líquida dos EUA aumentou de US$ 1,33 milhão de milhões, ou
62%. A tendência não é melhorar, já que salvamentos bancários e
outras proteções econômicas ficam mais caras. Os estrangeiros agora
detêm cerca de 50% da dívida publicamente declarada do governo
federal. Se os investidores estrangeiros reduzirem significativamente
as suas compras de futuros títulos do Tesouro americano, as taxas de
juros dos EUA aumentarão e o dólar desabará. O status de devedor
líquido dos Estados Unidos com estrangeiros está no nível mais alto
da história americana.
A principal fonte de apoio ao dólar vem dos países com excedente

comercial com os EUA, cujos bancos tem poucos lugares mais
seguros para investir esses dólares do que a dívida governamental
dos EUA. Os maiores compradores de dívida em dólar no passado
recente, por diferentes razões, foram os bancos centrais da Rússia,
Japão, e, muito à frente dos outros – o Banco Popular da China.
O modelo americano de défices comerciais e de transacções

correntes não é sustentável. Ninguém pode dizer quando o dólar cairá
ainda mais, mas deve cair nos próximos meses. Somente uma guerra
dramática e inesperada poderá concebivelmente comprar um pouco
mais de tempo para o dólar. E mesmo isso não é certo, tamanhos são
os déficits.
Os Estados Unidos estão hoje presos numa armadilha mortal de

dívidas, assim como a Argentina e outros países do Terceiro Mundo
estiveram nos anos 80. Mas isso não é tudo. As perspectivas de que
os déficits do Governo Federal dos EUA continuem são também
extremamente negativas.
CONCLUSÃO
O orçamento do governo americano saltou de US$ 455 mil milhões em

2008 para US$ 2.000 mil milhões este ano, com outros US$ 2.000 mil
milhões para 2010. Obama acaba de intensificar a cara guerra no
Afeganistão, e iniciou uma nova guerra no Paquistão. Não há maneira
de financiar esses déficits a menos que se imprima dinheiro.
O orçamento do governo americano está deficitário em 50%. Isso

significa que metade de cada dólar que o governo federal gasta tem
que ser tomado emprestado ou impresso. Mas o mundo está ficando
cada vez menos predisposto a emprestar US$ 2 milhões de milhões
por ano a Washington.
O maior credor dos EUA, a China, está avisando Washington para

proteger os investimentos da China na dívida americana, e discutindo
uma nova moeda de reserva para substituir o dólar antes que ele
colapse. A China está gastando seus dólares americanos na aquisição
de ouro e estoques de matérias-primas.
De acordo com fontes bem posicionadas na Arábia Saudita, tem

havido reuniões secretas nos últimos meses entre os principais
produtores de petróleo árabes, inclusive a Arábia Saudita, e, segundo
informações, também a Rússia, com os principais países
consumidores de petróleo, incluindo dois ou três dos maiores países
importadores de petróleo – China e Japão. O seu projeto é criar
silenciosamente a base para quebrar a longa "regra de ferro", que já
dura 65 anos, de vender petróleo só em dólares americanos. Isso iria
ser catastrófico para o papel do dólar.
Nada na política econômica de Obama é direcionado a salvar o dólar

americano. A política de Obama, como a de Bush antes dele, é
controlada pela Wall Street e pela indústria armamentista. A economia
americana caminha para a depressão severa e o dólar irá junto, a
menos que haja uma nova Guerra mundial, que Deus proíba.
Notas:
1- Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Associação das Nações do Sudoeste Asiático)
2- Alianza Bolivariana de los Pueblos de América
[*] Autor de Um século de guerras: a política petrolífera anglo-

americana e a nova ordem mundial (A Century of War: Anglo-
American Oil Politics and the New World Order), publicado em
oito línguas. É um dos mais amplamente analistas da evolução
política e econômica atual, seus artigos e análises aparecem em
vários jornais e revistas, e websites de grande repercussão. Além
de discutir a geopolítica do petróleo e questões energéticas,
escreveu sobre assuntos de agricultura, GATT, WTO, IMF, energia,
política e economia por mais de 30 anos, desde o primeiro
choque do petróleo e da crise mundial de cereais no início da
década de 70. Seu livro Sementes da destruição: a agenda
secreta da manipulação genética (Seeds of Destruction: The
Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation) documenta a tentativa
de controlar o abastecimento de alimentos às populações
mundiais. Ganhou o prémio 'Project Censored Award' para as
Histórias mais Censuradas de 2007-08. Depois de se licenciar em
política pela Universidade de Princeton (EUA), e de estudos em
economia comparada na Universidade de Estocolmo, trabalhou
como economista independente e jornalista de investigação em
Nova Iorque, e mais tarde na Europa. É Investigador Associado
no respeitado Global Research Center ( www.globalresearch.ca )
de Michel Chossudovsky e Professor Visitante Convidado na
Universidade de Tecnologia Química em Pequim. Engdahl
colabora regularmente com várias publicações internacionais
sobre assuntos econômicos e políticos. Seu sítio
web: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net
O original encontra-se em http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?
id=2684 . Tradução de RMP.
Russia and China Challenge US Dollar Domination
By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, December 21, 2017
Region: Asia, Russia and FSU
Theme: Global Economy
107
33 5
175
The Russian government has recently announced it will issue nearly $1

billion equivalent in state bonds, but denominated not in US dollars as is
mostly the case. Rather it will be the first sale of Russian bonds in
China’s yuan. While $1 billion may not sound like much when compared
with the Peoples’ Bank of China total holdings of US Government debt of
more than $1 trillion or to the US Federal debt today of over $20 trillion,
it’s significance lies beyond the nominal amount. It’s a test run by both
governments of the potential for state financing of infrastructure and
other projects independent of dollar risk from such events as US
Treasury financial sanctions.
Russian Debt and China Yuan
Since the August 1998 sovereign default triggered by the West, Russian
state finances have been prudent to almost a fault. The size of the
national government debt is the lowest of any major industrial country, a
mere 10.6% of GDP for the current year. This has enabled Russia to
withstand the US financial warfare sanctions imposed since 2014, and
forced the country to turn elsewhere for their financial stability. That
“elsewhere” is increasingly called the Peoples’ Republic of China.
Now the Russian Ministry of Finance is reportedly planning the first sale
of Russian debt in the form of bonds denominated in Chinese yuan
currency. The size of the first offering, a testing of the market, will be 6
billion yuan or just under $1 billion. The sale is being organized by the
state-owned Russian Gazprombank, the Bank of China Ltd., and China’s
largest state bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China. The move is
being accelerated by reports that the US Treasury is examining potential
consequences of extending penalties, until now concentrated on Russian
oil and gas projects, to include Russian sovereign debt in its sanctions
warfare. The new yuan bond will be traded on the Moscow Exchange and
will aim to sell to mainland Chinese investors as well as international and
Russian borrowers at attractive interest rates.
Western sanctions or threats of sanctions are forcing Russia and China to
cooperate more strategically on what is becoming the seed of a genuine
alternative to the dollar system. The Russian yuan debt offerings will also
give a significant boost to China’s desire to build the yuan as an
accepted international currency.
China Petro-Yuan
The steps to begin issuing Russian state debt in yuan are paralleled by
another major development towards broader international yuan
acceptance vis a vis the US dollar. On December 13, Chinese regulators
completed final testing in preparation for launch of not a dollar-backed,
but rather, a yuan-backed oil futures contract to be traded on the
Shanghai Futures Exchange. The implications are potentially large.
China is the world’s largest oil importing country. Control of financial oil
futures markets until now has been the tightly-guarded province of Wall
Street banks and the New York, London and other futures exchanges
they control. Emergence of Shanghai as a major yuan-based oil futures
center could significantly weaken dollar domination of oil trade.
Since the 1970’s oil shock and the 400% rise in the oil price from OPEC
countries, Washington has maintained a strict regime in which the
world’s most valuable commodity, oil, would be traded in US dollars
alone. In December 1974, the US Treasury signed a secret agreement in
Riyadh with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, “to establish a new
relationship through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the US
Treasury borrowing operation” to buy US government debt with surplus
petrodollars.
The Saudis agreed to enforce OPEC dollar-only oil sales in return for US
sales of advanced military equipment (purchased for dollars of course)
and a guarantee of protection from possible Israeli attack. This was the
beginning of what then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called
recycling the petro-dollar. To the present, only two oil export country
leaders, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Qaddafi, have tried to
change the system and sell oil for euros or gold dinars. Now China is
challenging the petro-dollar system in a different way with the petro-
yuan.
The difference between Saddam Hussein or Qaddafi is that far more

influential countries, Russia and now Iran, with China’s implicit support,
are cooperating to avoid the dollar out of necessity forced by US
pressure. That is a far stronger challenge to the US dollar than Iraq or
Libya could ever manage.
The China yuan oil futures contract now will allow China’s trading
partners to pay with gold or to convert yuan into gold without the
necessity to keep money in Chinese assets or turn it into US dollars. Oil
exporters such as Russia or Iran or Venezuela—all targets of US sanctions
—can avoid those US sanctions by avoiding oil trades in dollars now. This
past September Venezuela responded to US sanctions by ordering the
state oil company and traders to make oil sale contracts into euro and
not to pay or be paid in US dollars any longer.
Gold for oil?

The Shanghai International Energy Exchange will soon launch their
crude-oil futures contract denominated in yuan. The Shanghai
International Energy Exchange futures contract will streamline and
solidify the process of selling oil to China for yuan that Russia began after
sanctions in 2014. This will also allow other oil producers around the
world to sell their oil for yuan instead of dollars. The crude oil futures
contract will be the first commodity contract in China open to foreign
investment funds, trading houses, and oil firms. The circumvention of US
dollar trade could allow oil exporters such as Russia and Iran, for
example, to bypass US sanctions.
To make the offer more attractive, China has linked the crude-oil futures
contract with the option to efficiently convert yuan into physical gold
through gold exchanges in Shanghai and Hong Kong. According to Wang
Zhimin, director of the Center for Globalization and Modernization at
China’s Institute of Foreign Economy and Trade, the possibility of
converting the yuan oil futures into gold will give the Chinese futures a
competitive advantage over Brent and West Texas
Intermediate benchmarks.
Now Russia or Iran or other oil producers are in a position to sell oil to
China for yuan or rubles, bypassing the dollar entirely. The shift is about
to take place in the coming weeks as the yuan oil futures contract is
officially launched. Further in October China and Russia launched what is
called a payment versus payment (PVP) system for Chinese yuan and
Russian ruble transactions that will reduce settlement risk for oil and
other trades.
Already reportedly Russian oil and gas sales to China are being
conducted in Ruble and Yuan and since the foolish US effort to isolate
Qatar in the Persian Gulf, Qatar, a major LNG gas supplier to China has
switched to pricing in yuan. Pressure is growing that at some point Saudi
Arabia breaks its 1974 pact with Washington and sells its oil to China
also for yuan.
Iran to Join EEU

A new element is about to be added to the growing cooperation across
Eurasia centered around China and Russia, namely Iran. According to
Behrouz Hassanolfat of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization, in a
statement carried on Iranian state-owned Press-TV, as early as February,
2018 Iran is set to become a member of Russia’s Eurasian Economic
Union (EEU). Presently the EEU, created in 2015, includes Russia,
Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan to create a large zone for
free transit of goods, services, capital and workers among member
states. Presently the EEU is a market of 183 million people. Addition of
Iran with its more than 80 million citizens would give a major boost to
the economies of the EEU and to its economic importance, creating a
common market of more than 263 million, with skilled labor, engineers,
scientists and industrial know-how.
Iran has already announced, in face of escalating threats from
Washington, that it seeks ways to sell its oil for non-dollar currencies.
Integration into the EEU could bring a solution to this as Iran, Russia and
China inevitably draw closer in face of relentless US pressures on all
three.
Increasingly in proportion to the pressure from the West the nations of

Eurasia are developing modes of growing their economies independent
of US Treasury financial sanctions. In retrospect, it’s likely that those US
sanctions will be seen as one of the more stupid attempts of Washington
to dominate the economies of Eurasia.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a

degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author
on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern
Outlook” where this article was originally published.
Featured image is from NEO.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2017

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107
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175
Articles by:F. William Engdahl
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The Geopolitics of Poland’s “Three Seas Initiative”
Region: Europe, USA
Theme: Global Economy, Oil and Energy
37
8 2
61
Poland’s Three Seas Initiative to date is a thinly-disguised geopolitical

attempt to create a counter to the influence of both Russia to the east
and of Germany to her west. Comparisons with Poland’s ill-fated
Intermarium following World War I come to mind, not without reason.
Following that war Poland’s leader Josef Pilsudski attempted to create a
de facto union of states from the Black Sea to the Baltic to oppose both
Soviet Russia and the German empire under the name Intermarium. If
we superimpose the states geographically from the various
configurations of Intermarium with that of today’s Three Seas
Initiative we see a clear resemblance, if you will, a kind of demarcation
line between Germany in the west and the Russian Federation in the
east. The similarities do not end there.
The current Three Seas Initiative was formally founded in Dubrovnik in
August 2016 and includes twelve central and eastern European states as
members. Member countries span the space between the Baltic, the
Adria and the Black Seas, hence the name. In addition to Poland and
Croatia, members presently include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovenia.
It’s second meeting in Warsaw in July 2017 was attended by the US
President Trump, who gave the group his clear imprimatur.
The question is what political or economic notions are driving Poland’s

Three Seas Initiative? If we look more closely at its initial focus on
energy, much becomes clearer.
US Shale LNG
On July 6, 2017 en route to the Hamburg G20 Summit, US President
Donald Trump made a high-profile stop in Warsaw to attend the second
meeting of the Three Seas Initiative, a project first publicly proposed by
Polish President Andrzej Duda.
While the prime actors, Poland and Croatia, insist that the Three Seas
Initiative is not at all geopolitical, but rather a forum to better integrate
common infrastructure projects north-south in the new EU states of
central Europe, it’s clear that the opposite is the case, it’s geopolitics.
The real driver of the initiative, Washington, is clearly opposed to the
German-Russian undersea Baltic Nord Stream II gas pipeline. Poland for
her part stands to lose gas transit fees as the present transit routes of
Russian gas via Ukraine and Poland would be phased out, but that is not
the major driver. For Germany and for Russia, since the US-initiated
February 2014 Kiev coup d’etat broke Ukraine’s ties with Russia, Ukraine
transit of Russian gas has been a highly explosive and uncertain issue.
In July in Warsaw Trump told his audience, “We are committed to

securing your access to alternate sources of energy, so Poland and its
neighbors are never again held hostage to a single supplier
of energy.” The remarks were a not-so-veiled slap at Moscow where
Washington alleged, falsely, in 2008 that Russia’s Gazprom cut gas
supplies via Ukraine to western European consumers, something Moscow
vehemently denied, stating it was done by Ukraine, with the almost
certain backing of Washington. During the worst tensions of the Cold War
Moscow never disrupted gas deliveries to Europe. They had no reason to
do so in 2008, rather the opposite. However, US-backed President Viktor
Yushchenko did.
A Polish Gas Hub
For their side Poland has dreams of using the Three Seas Initiative to
make Poland into a new gas hub for the EU by importing US Liquified
Natural Gas (LNG).
To ship gas by LNG tanker is a costly process. It requires construction of

special LNG terminals at both port of origin and of destination. The gas
must first by transformed into a cold liquid state at about −260 °F, and
loaded on the specially-made tankers. At destination a similar special
LNG terminal is required where the gas can be again changed from liquid
to gas state for ultimate consumption. All this is quite costly compared
with pipeline gas routes.
By contrast, Russia today delivers most of its gas via pipeline to the EU
market. The cost of Russian gas as a result of this and other factors is
significantly lower. For Poland this seems not to matter. They dream of
replacing Ukraine as the gas transit to the EU with gas from Norway and
LNG gas from the USA and perhaps gas from Qatar if Washington does
not manage to disrupt that via Saudi sanctions.
In late June, 2017 Poland’s new LNG terminal on the Baltic Sea at
Swinoujscie received the first US LNG shipment from the Texas terminal
of Cheniere Energy, currently the only US LNG terminal for export of LNG.
During the Trump visit Poland’s president made clear he wanted long-
term contracts with US LNG suppliers, ultimately to export to other
countries of the Three Seas Initiative in place of Russian gas via Ukraine.
In the process, Poland has dreams of replacing Russia also as supplier to
Ukraine.
Commenting on the Polish wish, Trump declared that “many more” US

LNG shipments will be coming to Poland, but added that the price might
rise. “Maybe we get your price up a little bit, but that’s ok, tough
negotiations,” Trump told his audience in Warsaw. “We are sitting on
massive energy, we are now exporters of energy. Whenever you need
energy, just give us a call.” Tough negotiations, to be sure.
Poland is building a strategy to make it the new energy hub of central
Europe to replace Russian gas. This is at the heart of her Three Seas
Initiative project. The new LNG terminal which was built at a cost of $ 1
billion can accept 5 billion cubic meters of gas per year, about one-third
Poland’s nnual gas consumption. Poland is discussing doubling that.
But that’s only the first part of what in fact is a NATO strategy to drive
Russian gas out of EU markets. The strategy calls for making Poland a
natural gas hub for Central Europe by linking Poland with Lithuania,
Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic through interconnectors.
Blocking Nord Stream II

The Polish Three Seas Initiative on energy infrastructure for importing US
LNG is at one and the same time a strategy against German influence on
EU energy markets and against Russia as major energy supplier. It is no
wonder, given Poland’s gas hub ambitions that the country takes the
lead in trying to block the German-Russian Nord Stream II under-Baltic
gas pipeline.
On November 1, Krzysztof Szczerski, head of the Chancellery of the

President of Poland, announced that Poland’s government will do
everything possible to block Nord Stream II.
“We must be aware of the Nord Stream 2 issue, of what scale of interests
we are facing,” he stated. “We are dealing with the interests of two large
states (Germany and Russia-w.e.), which will launch significant resources
for the implementation of this project. Nord Stream 2 is not a side
project, but a foundation to their interests. Simultaneously, it has a deep
anti-European character (sic!),” he said.
Blocking Nord Stream II is also a high Washington priority. In June, 2017
the US Congress passed and President Trump signed into law severe new
anti-Russian sanctions that among other aims explicitly targeted
investment in Nord Stream II. The latest US economic sanctions against
Russia take direct aim at the companies involved in backing the German-
Russian Nord Stream II pipeline expansion across the Baltic, independent
of Poland transit. If activated by the US President it would impose severe
economic sanctions on EU companies involved in energy projects with
Russia, such as Nord Stream II.
The governments of Germany and Austria immediately registered

vehement opposition to the latest possible US sanctions for obvious
reasons. On June 15 the German and Austrian foreign ministers issued an
unusually US-critical joint statement. They declared in very strong terms,
“Europe’s energy supply is a matter for Europe, not the United States of
America. We cannot accept … the threat of illegal extraterritorial sanctions against
European companies that participate in the development of European energy supply.”
Austria boycotted the Trump July 6 appearance before the Three Seas
Initiative as well to signal its disapproval of the US gas talks.
Poland’s Costly US LNG

On November 21, 2017 Poland’s state gas firm PGNiG signed its first mid-
term deal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries from the United
States, as part of their plan to cut dependence on Russian supplies.
PGNiG said that as part of the deal, signed with Centrica LNG Co. an
Anglo-American energy group, it will receive nine LNG shipments in
2018-2022. The company has not revealed the volumes and prices
agreed under the contract. Market indications are that the Polish
government is paying a huge penalty for its Russo-phobia.
Estimates of Russia’s Gazprom suggest that Poland must pay for winter
2017-18 in the range of $265-$295/1,000 cubic meters. Russian gas via
pipeline is being delivered for an average price of $190/1,000 cu m. If
accurate, it suggests that Poland is paying up to 50% more for its US LNG
deliveries. To deliver that US LNG further to other Three Seas Initiative
partner countries implies far higher gas prices in central Europe.
What is developing are new major EU fault lines around the economic
lifeline of energy, explicitly of natural gas energy. On the one side is the
axis between especially Germany but also Austria, France and other EU
states currently tied to major Russian gas supplies. Now emerges clearly
the opposed axis of Poland allied with Washington.
Role of Atlantic Council

For Washington Poland’s Three Seas Initiative is a win-win situation. That
should come as no surprise when we consider that the Atlanticist NATO
think tank, Atlantic Council, is playing a shaping role behind formation of
the Poland Three Seas Initiative.
The naming of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of
State was no accident. It is part of a longer-term Washington strategy to
make the United States, particularly with its recent exploitation of
unconventional shale gas and shale oil, to become the dominant global
energy power. US actions in Syria and with Saudi Arabia against Iran and
Qatar fit into that strategy. Elimination or sharp curtailing of Qatar LNG
exports, including to Poland, stands to benefit US gas suppliers.
One reason for the Saudi sanctions on Qatar, imposed following the May
21 Trump meeting in Riyadh to discuss creation of an “Arab NATO,” had
little to do with claims that Qatar supported the Muslim Brotherhood,
something that had been true. Saudi Arabia for its part had spent billions
backing every terror group in Syria from Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front,
to ISIS, in its effort to dislodge Bashar al Assad. The real issue for the US-
backed Saudi embargo of Qatar was the fact that Qatar had begun secret
negotiations with Iran on joint development of their shared Persian Gulf
gas fields, the largest known in the world. Were that Qatar-Iran
cooperation to happen with Bashar al Assad firmly in power after
Russia’s intervention in Syria, it would change the entire world energy
geopolitics in Russia’s favor and against the US role.
In reality the Qatar blockade by the Saudis is aimed not at stopping
radical terrorists. It is aimed at keeping Iranian and Qatari and,
potentially, Syrian gas out of the EU gas market, estimated to become
the world’s largest gas consumer in coming years. For Washington,
Poland and their Three Seas Initiative are merely a chess play in a larger
geopolitical game.
The creation of Poland’s costly LNG terminal and its strategy to become a
central European gas hub via the Three Seas Initiative was not an idea
born in Warsaw. It came from Washington, specifically from the
geopolitical strategists of the Atlantic Council. The Atlantic Council,
created by Washington during the height of the Cold War, today is a
major think tank of NATO policy financed by the Pentagon and US
intelligence agencies. Official donors include the US Department of the
Air Force; Department of the Army; Department of the Navy and the US
National Intelligence Council. As well the US State Department and
Energy Department contribute to the Council, along with NATO itself.
In April, 2017 the Atlantic Council held a conference in Istanbul on the
Three Seas strategy. The theme of the conference was “Making the Three
Seas Initiative a Priority for Trump.” The keynote speech was made by
General James L. Jones, chairman of the Atlantic Council, and former
Obama National Security Advisor. The Atlantic Council was present in
Warsaw in July for the Trump appearance at the three Seas
Initiative meeting.
Jones remarked in his April remarks on the Three Seas Initiative, “This is
a truly transatlantic project that has enormous geopolitical, geostrategic,
and geo-economic ramifications.” Jones went on to confirm that the
Three Seas Initiative is designed to “alleviate the Kremlin’s strong hand
in the European energy sector.” Jones noted also that he had spoken with
Secretary Tillerson about the importance of supporting the Three Seas
Initiative: “He understands it. He understands the strategic interest; he
understands the economic interest,” Jones noted.
Another Initiative Shows Limits of Three Seas
On November 27 a quite different forum assembled, hosted by a
member country of the Three Seas Initiative. The China – Central and
Eastern Europe summit in Budapest, hosted by Prime Minister Viktor
Orban included all 12 members of the Three Seas Initiative as well as
non-EU states Serbia, Bosnia Herzogovina, Macedonia and Albania. The
China-CEE countries discussed participation in China’s vast One Belt,
One Road infrastructure to increase European-Eurasian trade flows. They
discussed creation of new infrastructure funds, of currency cooperation
and much more. It was a far contrast to the prospects of the Three Seas
Initiative to spend billions in risky US shale gas LNG projects in order to
alienate Russia and Germany further.
The contrast of the China-CEE summit to that of the Three Seas Initiative
couldn’t be more stark. It shows the geopolitical fault lines of what little
positive Washington is able to offer its European NATO allies today in
contrast with the possibilities to join with China and Russia in building a
new Eurasian infrastructure to Europe.


The Not-so-Minor China Presence in Zimbabwe
Region: sub-Saharan Africa
Theme: History, US NATO War Agenda
7
1 1
Who stands to benefit from the recent military toppling of Mugabe in

Zimbabwe? The military and his own party have “convinced” 93-year-
oldRobert Mugabe to surrender office after 37 years of iron-fisted rule
over one of resource-rich Africa’s richest lands. Little discussed is the
fact that the country holds some of the world’s most valuable mineral
deposits and that China, USA, and former colonial power Britain all have
their eyes on that wealth. The problem is that the US and Britain have
soured their chances by years of severe economic sanctions, leaving
China in a very positive position.
The basic facts leading up to the military intervention are well
documented. Mugabe’s ambitious wife, the 52-year-old Grace
Mugabe, nicknamed “Gucci Grace” by her political opponents for her
lavish lifestyle in one of the world’s poorest countries, apparently
persuaded her husband to fire her main rival to succeed Mugabe as
president. Days before the military intervened,on November 6, Mugabe
fired Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, his long-term ally since
the war of independence from British rule, who went into exile in
neighboring South Africa.
The Mugabe plan was reportedly to make his wife his successor as
President. Mugabe’s two sons,Robert Jr and Bellarmine Chatunga
Mugabe, and Grace Mugabe’s son by a previous marriage,Russell
Goreraza, were also being positioned to take key posts in the Mugabe
regime. All sons were notorious in the country for their playboy lifestyle,
sharing the lavish spending habits of their mother, Grace.
From public evidence, at that point General Constantine Chiwenga,
commander of the Zimbabwe Defense Force and Chris Mutsvangwa,
the head of the powerful War Veterans’ Association, in consultation with
ousted Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, moved to stop the
machinations of Mugabe and wife and stage the putsch. The day Mugabe
fired Mnangagwa, General Chiwenga was in China and was informed that
Mugabe had ordered his arrest on his return. Through aid of loyal
soldiers, he managed to get back to Harare to carry out the putsch
on November 12.
In a mostly bloodless operationChiwenga ordered tanks to control key
government buildings and the Harare airport, which in a touch of irony
had just been renamed the Robert Mugabe International Airport on
November 9. Chiwenga had support of the military and of internal
security forces as well as leaders of Mugabe’s own ZANU-PF party.
Mugabe and his family were put under house arrest. To prevent
appearance of a coup which would draw sanctions from the African
Union, the military spent six days of negotiations to get Mugabe out of
office via public pressure, impeachment threats and hours of cajoling.
On November 21, Parliament interrupted impeachment proceedings to

announce Mugabe had agreed to resign. Although under the Constitution
of Zimbabwe Mugabe should be succeeded by Vice President
PhelekezelaMphoko, a supporter of Grace Mugabe, ZANU-PF chief whip
LovemoreMatuke stated that former Vice President Emmerson
Mnangagwa, now party chairman, would be appointed as President which
was done on 24 November.
British media reports that before moving to oust Mugabe, General
Chiwenga informed Washington as well as Beijing. What it did not report
was the fact that several days before he ordered his tanks to surround
Harare government buildings, General Constantine Chiwenga was in
Beijing on a “routine visit,” where he met with senior Chinese military
officials.
Notably, when Chiwenga returned to Zimbabwe and ordered the house
arrest of Mugabe, the Chinese government responded with a non-
committal statement that Beijing was “paying close attention to
developments.” On November 17, Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman Geng Shuang officially stated that,
“China’s friendly policy toward Zimbabwe will not change. We will
continue to advance friendly cooperation with Zimbabwe in line with the
principle of equality, reciprocity and win-win cooperation.”
China is careful not to tie its economic relations abroad with US-style
interventions into domestic affairs. In this case it would seem Beijing is
interested in an orderly continuity of relations and was persuaded
neither Mugabe nor his wife whom they had formerly regarded as likely
successor, would be able to provide this. It’s clear the Chinese officials
gave General Chiwenga the assurances that Geng Shuang made public
days later. They would back the government of Zimbabwe, not side with
Mugabe, even though a year earlier they indicated they would be willing
to accept Grace Mugabe as successor. For China stability is sine qua non.
Washington and London Try to Gain
For its side, Washington has reacted with cautious optimism. The US
State Department called for the post-Mugabe era to open the way for
Zimbabwe to “rejoin the West” as before the 2000 US and EU sanctions.
US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert called the Mugabe
resignation “a historic opportunity” for the country’s people. She
declared,
“The people of Zimbabwe have firmly voiced their desire for a new era to
bring an end to Zimbabwe’s isolation and allow the country to rejoin
the international community.”
The CIA-tied “private democracy-promoting” NGO, National Endowment
for Democracy wrote,
“there is nothing yet to suggest that Zimbabwe is about to undergo a

substantive shift toward a more democratic and open society based on
the full implementation of its 2013 constitution…”
Translated from the NED Orwell-esk, that “open society”means return to
IMF austerity and US and UK economic domination.
Commenting on the developments and declaring Mugabe must leave, US

Secretary of State for Africa,Donald Yamamoto stated openly,
“The United States would discuss lifting multiple U.S. sanctions on
Zimbabwe if it began enacting political and economic reforms.” He
added, “Our position has always been that if they engage in the
constitutional reforms, economic and political reforms, and move forward
to protecting political space and the human rights, then we can start the
dialogue on lifting sanctions.”
Now we can be certain the full armamentarium of US “human rights” or
fake democracy NGOs will try to reopen operations in Zimbabwe to bring
the country fully into the camp of the IMF and World Bank and draw the
country away from the deep ties to China.
London is also betting it can cut a better deal with Emmerson

Mnangagwa in charge than with Mugabeas head of the former British
colony. According to a Reuters report, hundreds of pages of documents
from the Zimbabwe CIO intelligence agency state that Mnangagwa was
in discussions with the British Ambassador, Catriona Laing, about
leading a transitional government for five years with the tacit backing of
some of Zimbabwe’s military. Mnangagwa reportedly was also in
discussions with dispossessed white farmers about returning the lands
forcibly taken from them in 2000 by Mugabe in a violent land
redistribution that triggered western sanctions.
In 2000 for a complexity of reasons, Mugabe approved radical land
reforms that encouraged veterans from the fight for liberation to occupy
some 4,000 white-owned commercial farms. At least 12 farmers were
murdered. Most fled. They were replaced by Mugabe cronies and
inexperienced black farmers. The agriculture-based economy went into

freefall. Before 2000, farming accounted for 40 percent of all exports. By
2010 it had dropped to just 3 percent. GDP almost halved from 1998 to
2008 and hyperinflation came as the central bank printed money
endlessly in a vain effort to keep the economy afloat.
In December 2001, the US Congress passed the Zimbabwe Democracy
and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) and Zimbabwe was denied access
to IMF and World Bank credit. The result of the West’s severe sanctions
was dilapidated infrastructure, increased poverty, high unemployment,
economic meltdown and hyperinflation.
In October 2015 in an attempt to regain access to western capital cut off

by US and EU sanctions since 2001, Zimbabwe had agreed to the West’s
so-called Lima Process.
The Lima Process called for the Zimbabwe government to pay off some
$1.8 billion in arrears to the World Bank, IMF and African Development
Bank as precondition for getting a new $2 billion IMF credit, hardly a
game-changer for the embattled economy. As part of the deal Zimbabwe
must agree to sharp cuts in the state budget deficit, and reduction of
state sector employment, measures highly unpopular in the economically
depressed country. By 2016, despite some small measures, Zimbabwe
was clearly not going along with the US IMF measures. What intervened
was China yuan diplomacy.
A Chinese Carrot
In December, 2015, clearly realizing it was about to be eased out of
Zimbabwe by the US and UK using the IMF, Beijing sweetened the game.
It prepared a $5 billion aid package independent of any IMF conditions. In
July 2016 Zimbabwe’s Macro-Economic Planning and Investment
minister Obert Mpofuand Agriculture, Mechanization and Irrigation
Development minister Joseph Made negotiated a deal with Beijing, giving
Zimbabwe $4 billion to improve agriculture productivity and $1 billion for
urban low-cost housing as well as US$46 million for the construction of a
new parliament building outside Harare.
Now the stakes become high, with the USA and former colonial masters
UK with the IMF and its “reforms” on the one side, and China on the
other.
Zimbabwe is a treasure of untapped minerals. Under the British colonial

era it was named Rhodesia after British miner and occultist of the
Empire, Sir Cecil Rhodes.
China is today the key trade and investment partner of Zimbabwe.
Minerals Wealth Untapped

As a result of years of Western sanctions and hyperinflation as well as a
ban on western investment, the country’s mining infrastructure is
operating far under potential. The country is enormously rich in
untapped minerals including copper, platinum, gold, diamonds and iron
ore. Only five countries in the world, for example, produce platinum, a
rare metal used among other places in catalytic converters for vehicles.
The leading producers are South Africa and Russia. Zimbabwe is
number five. Total platinum reserves in Zimbabwe are estimated at 2.8
billion tons. Owing to lack of investment, only 2.4 million tons a year are
mined.
Another major metal in Zimbabwe is chromite.Zimbabwe holds some 930
million tons of chromite, but is presently able to mine only 700,000 tons
annually.The largest user of chromite ore today is China. Zimbabwe’s
Great Dyke formation along with the Bushveld Complex in South Africa
hold most of the world’s known chromite, the only ore of chromium
suitable for making stainless steel, nichrome and superalloys used in jet
engines. It is a strategic metal and one the USA produces none of.
Zimbabwe holds the world’s largest diamond mine, mainly for industrial
diamonds. Marange is currently ranked the largest diamond producing
deposit on earth ranging over 300 square miles in Chiadzwa. In 2014 it
produced 13% of world diamond supply.
Two Chinese mining companies, Jinan Mining and Anjin Investments Ltd.
were involved in Marange until Mugabe cancelled the mining licenses of
Jinan and Anjin at the end of 2016 as he became increasingly
incalculable. By 2017 there set in a complete chill in Mugabe relations
with China. It clearly had more to do with economic desperation and
politics than any Chinese behavior in the diamond area. This past August
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe ordered Zimbabwe platinum and chrome
miners to surrender 80 percent of their export earnings to the central
bank as a desperate move to restock dollar reserves.
When Mugabe fired his Vice President, now his successor, Emmerson
Mnangagwa, to prepare the way for his wife Grace to succeed him,
Mnangagwa fled to South Africa in exile. From there he went to China for
discussions in Beijing. The visit was organized by the influential head of
the Association of War Veterans, Chris Mutsvangwa, former Zimbabwe
Ambassador in Beijing. In the 1960’s as a Marxist member of the anti-
British XANU liberation army, Mnangagwa was in Beijing to study at the
Chinese Communist Party’s Beijing School of Ideology. Mnangagwa is no
stranger to China.
The junta around newly-installed President Emmerson Mnangagwa is not
known in Zimbabwe for their acts of Christian charity. In
1980Mnangagwa was Minister of State Security during the Gukurahundi
massacres in which up to 20, 000 mainly Ndebele civilians were killed. In
his inauguration speech he spoke of compensation for disposed white
farmers and of openness to rejoin with the world community, but offered
few details. It is not at all clear if his rule heralds merely a face-change or
genuine new policies to lift Zimbabwe, one of the most economically
endowed lands in Africa, into prosperity. This remains to be seen.
Since 2014 Russia has also entered commercial negotiations with
Zimbabwe, and neighboring South Africa is Zimbabwe’s largest
trading partner.
China, Russia and South Africa are all members of the BRICS group which
founded the BRICS Development Bank, able potentially to offer
Zimbabwe investment for needed mining infrastructure. Now the real
contest for the future of Zimbabwe begins in the post-Mugabe era. We
soon will see who has the real attention of the new government.

Outlook.” where this article was originally published.
Featured image is from the author.

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Nov 19, 2017
7
1 1
9
Russia and China Build Up a New Economic

Geography
Global Research, November 17, 2017
Region: Asia, Russia and FSU
Theme: Global Economy
25
6 19
51
On November 8 Russia’s large mining group Norilsk Nickel announced it

had begun operations at a new state-of-the-art Bystrinsky mining and
processing plant outside of Chita in Russia’s Zabaykalsky Krai. Notable
about the project is the participation of China, as well as the fact that
four years ago the huge copper, gold and magnetite reserves of
Bystrinsky were inaccessible to any market and completely
undeveloped. It’s one example of the transformation of the entire
economic geography of Eurasia that’s growing as a result of the close
cooperation of Russia with China and especially with China’s Belt Road
Initiative, earlier known as the New Economic Silk Road.
The Bystrinsky mining and processing complex is a $1.5 billion project
with total ore reserves estimated at 343 million tons. The huge project is
jointly owned by Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of nickel and
palladium and one of the largest producers of platinum and copper,
along with CIS Natural Resources Fund, a Russian natural resources fund
established by Vladimir Potanin, and by China’s Highland Fund. The new
mine complex is some 400 kilometers by rail from the China border in
Russia’s Siberian Far East.
Chinese participation is not surprising. China is the world’s largest
importer of copper and much of the new mine production will be headed
to China. China’s Belt, Road Initiative (BRI) that is seeing the
construction of thousands of kilometers of new high-speed rail lines
across Eurasia is creating a huge increase in demand for copper as well
as steel and iron ore. The new Russian mining project includes
construction of entirely new infrastructure of roads, rail spurs and
enormous infrastructure in what was previously untouched wilderness.
The mine, the largest private project in Russia’s Far East, will reach full
capacity in 2019.
Bridging the Amur River
Another example of the transformation of the economic geography
taking place between Russia and China is construction of the bridge over
the Amur River or the Heilongjiang River as the Chinese call it. The new
bridge will connect China with Russia in the far northeast of China in the
region of Harbin. To have an idea of the vast distances across the largest
country in the world, the Russian Federation, the Amur River Bridge is
some 1000 kilometers east of the new China-Russia copper mining
complex near Chita.
The new bridge, due to open in 2019, will be a major infrastructure link
facilitating trade between Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Oblast and
China’s Heilongjiang Province with a rail and road bridge link spanning
more than 2 km. A main immediate benefit of the new bridge will be
economical transport of iron ore from the Kimkan open-pit mine in the
Jewish Autonomous Oblast that is owned by IRC Limited of Hong Kong.
The rail section will have both a standard gauge (1435 mm) track and a
Russian gauge (1520 mm) track and a two-lane roadway for cars and
truck transport.
In 2016, after several years of negotiations and overcoming of long-

standing mistrust between the Chinese and Russian partners,
construction began on the bridge. The Bridge will tie into the China
mammoth Belt-Road Initiative by enabling transportation integration into
the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor (CMREC) of the New
Economic Silk Road. The Amur bridge will connect Heihe and the Russian
Far Eastern city of Blagoveshchensk, the administrative center of
Russia’s Amur Oblast where the Amur and Zeya Rivers meet. The Bridge
will then make a connection to the Russian Trans-Siberian Railway and on
to Vladivostok, the major Russian commercial port on the Pacific Ocean.
The Heilongjiang-Blagoveshchensk bridge is operated by one company, a
Russia-China joint venture called Heilongjiang Bridge Company
established in March 2016 in China and its affiliate in Russia was set up
six months later.
China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor

In 2014 at a meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan China’s President Xi Jinping,
Russian President Vladimir Putin and the President of Mongolia
Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, agreed to create a China-Mongolia-Russia
Economic Corridor (CMREC) which has become one of the six priority
corridors of China’s Belt-Road Initiative, the first multilateral cooperation
plan to form part of the Belt and Road Initiative. The CMREC will connect
China’s Belt and Road Initiative with Russia’s proposal for a Eurasian
Union and Mongolia’s Steppe Road program, promoting regional
economic integration. The CMREC has two key traffic arteries: One
extends from China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to Hohhot and on to
Mongolia and Russia; the other extends from China’s Dalian, Shenyang,
Changchun, Harbin and Manzhouli to Russia’s Chita, site of the major
new Russia-China copper project .
Sino-Russian Investment Dollar Free
In September in Vladivostok the heads of the three countries of the
CMREC agreed to closer cooperation in energy and mineral resources,
high tech, manufacturing, agriculture and forestry, to widen services
trade, and cooperation in education, science and technology, culture,
tourism, medical care and intellectual property. This promises a major
transformation to the three country region that during the tensions of the
Cold War was severely underdeveloped and mutually isolated.
At the same September 7 meeting of the Third Eastern Economic Forum
in Vladivostok, China announced it was creating a $15 billion fund to
finance further regional economic cooperation projects with Russia.
China’s Vice Premier Wang Yang said that the investments would target
manufacturing, resources exploitation, infrastructure, agriculture and
tourism.
This follows a July, 2017 visit of Xi Jinping to Moscow where the two
countries signed a series of economic cooperation agreements including
creation of a new US$10 billion China-Russia RMB Investment
Cooperation Fund, which will give access to RMB financing for Russian
projects, including under both the One Belt, One Road and Eurasian
Economic Union initiatives. One project in China’s Hainan calls for a $500
million (RMB equivalent) investment to develop industrial and innovation
parks, high-tech healthcare services, tourism, social infrastructure,
culture and art initiatives as priority areas. Hainan is a main portal of
the China Maritime Silk Road infrastructure.
Additionally the Russia-China development fund is developing a huge
project at the former Tushino airfield northwest of Moscow to include the
Rostec City business park, apartments for 15,000 residents, plus schools
and a clinic in a total investment of $1.5 billion ruble equivalent. The
development involves Russian state-owned corporation Rostec
Corporation as one of the key tenants, and Russian investment company
Vi Holding as a developer.
Further agreement was made between the Russian and Chinese

investment funds, together with Russian Export and FRC International, to
establish a project trade named Dakaitaowa – meaning “to open a
Matryoshka (Russian nesting) doll” in Chinese. The aim of the project is
to promote further growth and export of GMO-free and ecologically clean
Russian agriculture products to the Chinese market.
Moreover China has gained permission from Russia to offer settlement
services in RMB in Moscow through the China ICBC bank. Thereby China
and Russia have effectively bypassed dollar risk in their mutual
economic investments.
All of this development, building up a new economic geography across
the countries of Eurasia is a stark contrast to what Washington has done
since September 2001. According to a new study by the Watson Institute
of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, Washington has
spent a staggering $5.6 trillion on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and
Pakistan since 2001, more than three times what the Pentagon has
claimed in official estimates.
Imagine the United States instead had spent $5.6 trillion on rebuilding
America’s rotted $8 trillion infrastructure deficit in roads, rails, water,
electric grids– what a boost for the American people and for the world it
would be. They might even imagine peaceful cooperation in the
emerging Russian-Chinese Eurasian development, a true win-win for the
world.

China-Ruble Settlement and the Dollar System
Global Research, October 24, 2017
Region: Asia, Russia and FSU, USA
Theme: Global Economy, Intelligence
207
35 16
264
The Peoples’ Bank of China has just announced a payment-versus-

payment (PVP) system for Russian ruble and Chinese yuan transactions.
The stated aim is to reduce currency risks in their trade. The only
conceivable risk would be from the US dollar and potential acts of US
Treasury financial warfare to damage Russian-Chinese trade which is
becoming very significant in volume and value. By December it should
reach $80 billion, a 30% rise over 2016. Yet there is more to this
seeming technical move by China and Russia than meets the eye.
The official announcement, posted on the website of the China Foreign
Exchange Trade System (CFETS) adds the enormously significant note
that CFETS plans to introduce similar PVP systems for yuan transactions
with other currencies based on China’s Belt and Road initiative.
This confirms what I discussed in an article I posted in April 2016, namely
that the grand design behind China’s Belt, Road Initiative (BRI) has an
integral gold-based currency component that could change the global
balance of power in favor of the nations of Eurasia, from Russia and the
nations of the Eurasian Economic Union to China and across all Asia.
Earlier termed the New Economic Silk Road, the BRI is a vast network of
high-speed rail linkages being constructed criss-crossing the countries of
Eurasia including Central Asia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and, of
course, the Russian Federation and extending to Iran, potentially to
Turkey and East Africa. Altogether at present some 67 countries are
participating or have asked to join the ambitious project whose total cost
could run into trillions of dollars and will transform global trade. HSBC
estimates that the BRI infrastructure project, which today encompasses
countries generating almost one-third of global GDP, will generate an
additional $2.5 trillion worth of new trade annually This isn’t chump
change for the world economy. It’s a game-changer of the first order.
Building a dollar reserve currency
Academic presentations of currency theory and of reserve currency
theory tends to be boring beyond at least my patience. This direct
currency settlement move by China and Russian, however, is one of the
most dynamic game-changing developments since Washington’s
Treasury and Wall Street banks came up with the US Dollar system at
Bretton Woods in 1944.
It’s not about reducing currency risks in trade between Russia and China.
Their trade in own currencies, bypassing the dollar, is already significant
since the US sanctioned Russia in 2014—a very foolish move by the
Obama Administration Treasury. It’s about creating a vast new alternative
reserve currency zone or zones independent of the dollar.
The American Century domination that Time-Life publisher Henry Luce

proclaimed in 1941 came into being at the end of the war. In 1945, as
the bombs stopped falling over Europe and Japan, President Harry
Truman made clear to England that there would be no place for the
British Empire as a rival, cancelling US Lend-Lease credits and
demanding bankrupt Britain repay its war debts to Washington, as well
as demanding a dramatic reduction in world trade conducted in Pound
Sterling, then still about 50% of total world trade. The British based their
hopes of rebuilding their Empire on their Commonwealth and its Sterling
Preference trade region.
For Washington and Wall Street after 1945 there was room for only one
dominant monetary power, the United States. Britain was forced to
swallow its huge arrogant pride and turn to the newly-created
International Monetary Fund and to, step-by-step, dismantle the colonies
of the British Empire beginning with India for financial reasons. That
opened the door for the dollar hegemony over the world economy
outside the communist countries. Since 1945 the power of the United
States as global superpower has rested on two pillars—the most powerful
military and the dollar as undisputed world reserve currency allowing
Washington to control the world economy.
In 1944 the Federal Reserve held over 70% of world monetary gold as
part of its reserves. Every other currency was pegged to the dollar. The
dollar alone was fixed to gold. A dollar-hungry postwar world in the
1950s desperately needed dollars to finance reconstruction. The dollar
began its ascent as the currency held by world central banks as reserve
currency or anchor currency, helped by the fact that OPEC countries
agreed to sell their oil only for dollars. Most world trade financing was
done in dollars.
Nixon and the Great Dollar Inflation

Under Bretton Woods, the US Federal Reserve guaranteed that other
countries holding dollar reserves could exchange them for US Federal
Reserve gold at any time. By the end of the 1960’s that began to break
down as France and other countries demanded gold in exchange for what
they saw as inflated US dollars. US industry was rusting from lack of new
investment and US Federal deficits were soaring because of the Vietnam
War. Other nations were no longer willing to accept that the “dollar was
as good as gold.” They demanded the gold, not “as good as.”
After the “Nixon Shock” when President Nixon tore up the Bretton Woods
Agreement in August 1971 to let the dollar float, free of any redemption
in gold, the world had little choice but to accept inflated paper dollars, an
inflation that soared with the 1973 oil price shock engineered by
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and the Rockefeller faction in US
politics. The gold-dollar convertibility suspension was a Washington
reaction to the fact the central banks of France, Germany and other
OECD countries demanded more and more hard gold from the Fed for
their paper dollars and US gold reserves were in danger of being
depleted.
Here began the roots of the most extraordinary global great inflation in
history. Beginning the US budget deficits during the Vietnam War in the
1970s and the 400% oil price rise by 1974, a price that Washington’s
Treasury in a secret deal with Saudi Arabia in 1974-75 insured would be
paid by the rest of the world in dollars, the world dollar supply grew
astronomically. Dollars in global circulation, no longer redeemable in
gold, rose by 2,000% between 1971 and 2015. Production of real goods
did not rise anywhere near 2,000%.
The fact that the dollar remains the most significant foreign central bank
reserve currency, still some 64% of all world reserves at present, with
the Euro at 20% the closest rival, gives the US Government an
extraordinary advantage.
Since 1971, the US has run budget deficits for 41 of the past 45 years,
the sole exception being four years in the 1990’s when the Baby Boom
generation reached peak income and peak Social Security Trust Fund tax
payment. The Clinton Treasury made an accounting manipulation to
count this one-off effect as general Treasury tax income, a fraud. Every
other year since 2001 the US Budget has resumed huge deficits,
exceeding $1.4 trillion in 2009 alone, as in $1,400 billion, during the
financial crisis that began in 2008. In 2000, before the dollar break with
gold, the US deficit was $3 billion.
Rightly so, other countries see this as an enormous disadvantage. Their
US dollar Treasury bond investments for their own central bank reserves
are becoming worthless paper. Because they are more or less forced to
invest the trade surplus dollars earned from their exports in secure US
Treasury bonds or bills or similar US securities, the annual inflow of China
central bank dollars—of Japanese trade surplus dollars, of Russian dollars
before 2014, of German and other trade surplus countries—allows the US
Treasury to keep interest rates abnormally low. That also allows
Washington to finance those deficits with no major stress. This year the
US deficit reached an impressive $585 billion.
In effect, China and Russia in recent years finance the US military budget
by buying US bonds and bills that allow the Treasury to finance that
deficit without raising interest rates. The cynical irony is that that US
military budget financed by Russia and China’s need to hold dollar
reserves against potential currency wars by Washington as was done
against Russia after 2014, is aimed at controlling Russia and China, and
ultimately at destroying their economies.
If the Trump tax cut legislation now becomes law, the US deficits will hit
the moon. This is the backdrop to better understand what China and
Russia and allied countries are preparing in order to reduce their
vulnerability to what is on a ballistic trajectory to a bankrupt global dollar
reserve system. If China, Russia, and other allied countries of Eurasia,
most especially countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and
prospective members such as Iran and Turkey turn to bilateral
arrangements like China and Russia to settle trade, bypassing the US
dollar, the dollar as world reserve currency domina will fall, and other
currencies will replace it. The Chinese Yuan is the leading candidate. The
Ruble as well.
Yuan Reserve Status

The newest move to a direct settlement of bilateral trade between China
and Russia with other countries along the new Silk Road being brought
into the system is a major foundation stone in creation of a viable
alternative to the US dollar as an anchor reserve currency.
A decade ago such an idea was dismissed by Western economists as

preposterous. They claimed it would be decades before the world would
accept the Yuan as a reserve. The yuan was not convertible.
In 2016 China was admitted by the International Monetary Fund as one

of the five leading currency components of IMF Special Drawing Rights
calculated in a currency basket. That step gave the yuan a major boost
in international acceptance.
Before 2004 the yuan was not allowed outside China. Since that time the
Chinese monetary authorities have laid a careful foundation for
internationalization of the yuan. According to the Society for Worldwide
Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), RMB internationalization
is taking place in three phases—first as use for trade finance, then for
investment, and long term as reserve currency. Now that “long term” is
looking remarkably short-term as China exceeds all conventional
economists’ expectations with internationalization of its yuan. This
prospect of the yuan becoming a global anchor or reserve currency
exceeding the share of the Euro in the next few years is what has the US
Treasury, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street banks alarmed, to put it
mildly.
In a 2016 report the HSBC bank reported that since 2012 the Yuan RMB
has become the world’s fifth most widely used payment currency.
Two years ago, in October 2015, China initiated the China International
Payments System (CIPS). While it has signed a cooperation agreement
with the dominant SWIFT, it gives a potential option in event of US
sanctions on China to function independent of SWIFT. In 2012
Washington pressure on the private Belgian-based SWIFT international
bank clearing system, through which virtually every international
transaction between banking institutions goes, to block international
clearing for all Iranian banks, froze $100 billion in Iranian assets overseas
and crippled her ability to export oil. The point was not missed in either
Beijing or in Moscow, especially when some foolish US Congressmen
called for SWIFT exclusion against the Russian banks after 2014.
In March of this year, Elvira Nabiullina, Governor of Russia’s central

bank, stated:
“We have finished working on our own payment system, and if
something happens, all operations in SWIFT format will work inside the
country. We have created an alternative.”
Creating the new currency architecture
The financial demands of China’s vast Belt Road Initiative reach into the
trillions of dollars. Alone in Asia the Asia Development Bank estimates
investment of $8 trillion is needed over the coming years to lift those
economies into efficient growth. Beijing’s founding of the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) last year was a major step towards
securing international financing for the BRI project.
In April 2016 China announced its decision to establish the Shanghai

Gold Exchange, under the Peoples’ Bank of China, as a major
international center for the pricing of gold and gold trading in yuan, with
settlement in physical gold between bullion banks, refiners, producers
and trading houses. Added to this is China’s decision to launch a daily
yuan-denominated price fix on gold that could ultimately displace the
dominant London gold fix, a system that has been accused of
manipulating world gold prices downward for years.
In announcing its Belt Road Initiative the Chinese government, in a little-

noticed comment, declared that the routes of its high-speed railway
projects through the countries of Eurasia will connect now remote,
inaccessible regions known to have large unmined gold reserves, to the
world markets via the BRI.
What China with Russia are doing is not about attacking the US dollar to
destroy it. That is highly unlikely and would benefit no one. It’s rather
about creating an independent alternative reserve currency for other
nations wanting to protect themselves from the ever-more frequent
financial attacks by the US Treasury and Wall Street banks and hedge
funds. It is about building a crucial element of national sovereignty
because the dollar system today is being used to ravage the economic
sovereignty of the rest of the world. As Henry Kissinger allegedly said
during the 1970’s,
“If you control the money you control the entire world.”
The statement by the Chinese government now that its China-Russia

direct payment-versus-payment settlement system will be extended to
other countries of the BRI adds another brick in the careful building up of
this alternative monetary system, a gold-backed alternative,
independent of the politically-explosive US dollar system, that could
insulate the nations of Eurasia from Washington and EU financial warfare
in the coming years.
This is what has Washington in a dither. Their options are fading by the
day. Military, financial, cyberwarfare, color revolution–all are increasingly
impotent from a country that allowed its own industrial and manpower
base to be destroyed in the interest of a financial oligarchy. That was
how the Roman Empire collapsed in the Fourth Century, as did the British
between 1914 and 11945, and as did every empire in history based on
debt slavery.

Outlook.”
This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook where the
image was sourced.

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207
35 16
264
The Transforming China-Pakistan Economic

Corridor
New Eastern Outlook
Region: Asia
153
30 31
291
In May, 2017 the Prime Minister of India refused to participate in the
founding meeting in Beijing of the ambitious Belt-Road Initiative (BRI),
the network of high-speed rail and deep water port linkages across the
Eurasia land mass. The official reason given was that China had gone
ahead with her neighbor state and long-term ally, Pakistan, to begin
construction of a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) without first
consulting India. To read the statement of Modi and the Indian
government it would seem CPEC was tantamount to a China declaration
of intent to invade India. It is worthwhile to look at what the China-
Pakistan project actually entails.
In 2015 Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a bilateral agreement
with the government of Pakistan to construct a network originating from
Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang Province in the far northwest of the country
that borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and of
course, Pakistan. The 3200 kilometers of the CPEC go finally through
Pakistan via several infrastructure arteries to Gwadar in Balochistan
Province on the Arabian Sea near the border to Iran.
As part of the overall BRI project, CPEC is a strategic corridor—one of six
main corridors at present—of China’s grand infrastructure enterprise, an
enterprise on a scale never undertaken by any nation until now. Across
Pakistan a grid of electric power plants, highways and new ports is being
built. A sum of $18 billion investment mainly in coal plants in Pakistan,
$10 billion in construction of new modern highways and the rest in port
and rail construction was mentioned originally when President Xi Jinping
first announced the CPEC in 2015. A new Chinese-built modern deep-
water port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea is a keystone of the project.
Since initially proposed, the CPEC has grown now to an estimated $62
billion in scope, a huge infrastructure investment for one of the poorest
economies in Asia.
A closer look into the various projects of CPEC reveals the most
comprehensive investments in Pakistan’s turbulent history since Lord
Mountbatten in 1947 carved the British India into two states—
predominately Muslim Pakistan and dominantly Hindu India—as the last
Viceroy of India, then promptly retired, leaving behind a calculated
tinderbox of geopolitical tensions and conflict.
Energy in center
The major component of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is dealing
with the severe electric power shortfalls across Pakistan. The CPEC calls
for creation of 17 priority energy projects. One such project is Sahiwal
Coal Power Plant, a$1.7 billion state of the art supercritical coal-fired
power project–high-efficiency low-emissions. The plant is
environmentally compliant with high thermal efficiency to ensure low fuel
consumption, also known as “clean coal.”It began electricity generation
in July with a total capacity of 1,320 megawatts (MW), from two units of
660MW each. It was constructed by China’s state-owned Huaneng
Shandong and the Shandong Ruyi Science and Technology Group and
was finished six months ahead of schedule.
The two Sahiwal power units in Punjab province have already reduced
Pakistan’s power deficit by 25%, a major economic boost to the nation’s
economic capacity.
The CPEC design is to complete a total of over 12,134 MWor megawatts
of electricity-generating capacity by 2019, a major boon to Pakistan’s
economy. At present the total electric generation capacity of all Pakistan
is 20,000 MW according to Pakistan’s Secretary Water and
Power, Mohammad YounisDagha, meaning that in less than two years
the Pakistani economy will add more than 60% of new electric
generation. This is no minor improvement, it is a qualitative leap forward.
The new plants will be a mix of low-emission coal plants and mainly
hydroelectric plants, with an added small contribution from solar and
wind generation. Most of the new electric generation capacity will be in
Pakistan’s Sindh Province which borders Balochistan province to the
west, Punjab province to the north, the Indian states of Gujarat and
Rajasthan to the east, and the Arabian Sea to the south. Sindh, which will
get 5,580 MW of new power plants, is where Karachi, Pakistan’s largest
city and financial hub is situated. Sindh is location of a large portion of
Pakistan’s industry and contains two commercial seaports–Port Bin
Qasim and the Karachi Port.
For the rest of the CPEC energy grid up-build, Punjab will get 2,940 MW,
Balochistan will be given 1,620 MW, Azad Jammu and Kashmir will be
given 1,124 MW and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will be given 870 MW.
Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan
In Azad Jammu and Kashmir, commonly referred to as Azad Kashmir, a
new hydroelectric power station, the Neelum-Jhelum hydro power plant,
a “run-of-the-river” power plant,will divert water from the Neelum River
to a power station on the Jhelum River. The power station will add a
significant 968 MW of electric power. The power station part is 96%
complete as of this writing and due to begin operation in January 2018.
It’s been funded by a combination of the Neelum Jhelum Hydropower
Company, by taxes, bond offerings, and secured loans from a consortium
of Chinese banks and from banks from the Middle East. Construction was
awarded by the Pakistani government to a Chinese consortium CGGC-
CMEC (Gezhouba Group and China National Machinery Import and Export
Corporation) for both the power station and a later dam with “pondage”
storage reservoir. When completed it will add much needed electric
power to the region as well as water storage and land irrigation
for agriculture.
Azad Kashmir together with the contiguous Gilgit-Baltistan is referred to
by the UN and other international bodies as “Pakistan-administered
Kashmir.” The British deliberately left Kashmir borders undefined as a
convenient raw sore, keeping friction between India and Pakistan. De
facto since decades, Pakistan-administered Kashmir including Gilgit-
Baltistan is part of Pakistan. However, this dispute and the fact that
China’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, of geographic necessity, flows
through Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan is the formal reason Modi’s
India decided to stay out of the China Belt Road Initiative, much to
India’s future economic loss to be sure.
The enormous hydroelectric power potentials of the beautiful

mountainous Gilgit-Baltistan, a region given limited self-governing
autonomy by Pakistan in 2009, is impressive. With a population of
1,800,000, it is home to five of the fourteen independent mountains over
8,000 metres (26,247 ft) above sea level.
In September 2009, four years before official announcement of the China

New Economic Silk Road as it was initially called, Pakistan signed an
agreement with the People’s Republic of China for construction of a
7,000-megawatt dam at Bunji in Gilgit-Baltistan. With growing water
supply problems across Pakistan, the once-isolated Gilgit-Baltistan is
becoming strategic for the future of Pakistan and for South, West and
Central Asia as a trade, water and oil corridor Between Pakistan’s
Gwadar Port and China’s Xinjiang.
Clearly one reason Beijing voted to accept both Pakistan and India as full
members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization last year was
anticipation that collectively within the SCO China, India and Pakistan
could peacefully resolve the dispute over Kashmir in the context of
mutually beneficial economic infrastructure development from the BRI.
In June, 2017, China informed the Pakistan government that construction

of the Diamir Bhasha Dam in Gilgit-Baltistan would be a part of the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. In 2006 the Asian Development Bank
(ADB) had committed to finance the dam but after ten years of stalling,
finally backed out under pressure, stating, after a decade, that it was in
“disputed territory,” something that clearly reflected the hidden hand of
Washington sabotage.
The $14 billion dam when complete will produce 4500 megawatts of
electricity through environmentally clean hydropower generation, and
store an extra 8 500 000 acre feet (10.5 km3) of water for the country for
irrigation and drinking, and extend the life of Tarbela Dam located
downstream by35 years. This will protect Punjab and Sindh downstream
from the high flooding of the River Indus.
Rails, Highways, Ports
For China, today dependent on the vulnerable Straits of Malacca for 80%
of its oil imports from Africa and the Middle East, construction of a major
oil pipeline from Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea. This year construction
of a Gwadar-Kashgar oil pipeline that will carry one million barrel per day
(1MMBD) Middle Eastern oil to China, will allow China to shift around 17
percent of its oil import away from the Malacca Strait. The new pipeline
is due to complete by 2021. In 2015 the Chinese Overseas Port Holding
Company (COPHC) took over operation of the Gwadar Port in a lease for
43 years, and Gwadar Port became a formal link between the overland
and the maritime sections of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Ongoing expansion of the port under the China-Pakistan Economic

Corridor project is estimated at $1.6 billion. It will link northern Pakistan
and western China to the deep water seaport. Gwadar will also have a
floating liquefied natural gas facility as part of a $2.5 billion Gwadar-
Nawabshah segment of the Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline project. Gwadar is
only 120 miles from the Iranian border. Construction began in June 2016
on the Gwadar Special Economic Zone, which is being built adjacent to
the port. The Chinese government is financing much of the port
construction via zero interest loans whereby Pakistan must only repay
principal.
Estimates are that the Gwadar oil pipeline to Kashgar in Xinjiang China
will cut the shipping cost and transit time to half of the current circuitous
12,000 km sea route. It also avoids the geopolitically risky Malacca Strait.
China is also building a major oil refinery at the Gwadar port, giving easy
access for doing business with Middle East, Africa and Europe with much
shorter time and distance.
Since the Obama Administration proclaimed its foolish “Asia Pivot”
military redeployment to encircle China in the South China Sea and
beyond, China has prioritized its alternatives for energy and military
security in event of a future confrontation with Washington, something
not at all inconceivable these days. In his 2017 reconfirmation Senate
testimony September 27, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General Joseph Dunford declared,
“I think China probably poses the greatest threat to our nation by
about 2025.”
Since Washington declared its Asia Pivot in 2010 as official military
doctrine to contain China, China definitely sees the US as China’s
“greatest threat.” I can’t say I blame them given all the mischief the US
has been making to isolate China over the past seven years.
A recent study by Beijing’s Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of
Renmin University remarks that the building up of the China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor will not only be a “huge driving force for the
development of China and Pakistan, but also in its stimulation of
coordinated economic development by closely linking up Central Asian,
South Asian, North African and Gulf countries and regions with the
economic, trade and infrastructure connectivity and energy
cooperation.”
The BRI and the CPEC prime corridor of the BRI is not about making
easier a Chinese invasion of India as some Indian and Washington think
tanks claim. It is about intelligent building up the economic space, not
bombing it down as Dunford, Defense Secretary Mad Man, sorry, Mad
Dog Mattis, and others in Washington advocate.

Outlook.”
This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook where the featured
image was sourced.
The original source of this article is New Eastern Outlook
Copyright © F. William Engdahl, New Eastern Outlook, 2017
CIA Backed Color Revolutions

The Dishonest Career of the Remarkable Srđa
Popović
New Eastern Outlook 1 October 2017
Region: Europe
Theme: History, Intelligence, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: THE BALKANS
254
149 28
443
Many readers likely never heard the name of the remarkable Serbia-born
political operator named Srđa Popović. Yet he and his organization,
CANVAS, have played a lead role in most every CIA-backed Color
Revolution since he led the toppling of Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic in 2000, at least fifty according to last count. Now he has
turned his sights on Hungary and Hungary’s popular and defiant Prime
Minister Victor Orban.
On September 8, the professional regime-change specialist Srđa Popović
came to Budapest and joined with the anti-Orban opposition groups in
front of the Hungarian Parliament. It‘s clear that Popović was not in town
to promote his Hungarian book on nonviolent regime change but rather
to give aid to the anti-Orban parties before Hungarian elections in spring
of 2018.
Because of the manufactured aura of “hip doer-of-good-deeds”

surrounding the personality of Srđa Popović, it’s useful to look closely at
who sponsored his remarkable career since he founded a tiny Belgrade
student opposition NGO called Otpor! in 1998 with its now famous
clenched fist logo. The career of Srđa Popović from 2000 until today
suggest a remarkably dishonest manipulator in the service of foreign
intelligence agencies and governments, despite his vehement claims
otherwise.
Serbia’s Otpor!
Popović first came to international notice as the founder of the Belgrade
student political activist organization Otpor! which means “Resistance!”
in Serbian. In October 1998 Popović founded Otpor!, initially as a student
protest group at Belgrade University dealing with student grievances.
That was soon to change. He and other Otpor founders were trained in
the methods of US regime-change specialist Gene Sharp founder of the
Albert Einstein Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts and by US State
Department soft coup specialists such as Belgrade Ambassador Richard
Miles and other trained US intelligence operatives, including election
specialists and public relations image makers.
Guiding Otpor!’s Milošević ouster operation, US Ambassador to

Serbia Richard Miles was a specialist in regime change, far more so
than in classical diplomacy. He orchestrated the CIA coup in Azerbaijan
that brought Aliyev to power in 1993 before arriving in Belgrade, and
after that went on to orchestrate the CIA coup in Georgia that brought US
asset Mikheil Saakashvili to power.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID), widely known as
a CIA front, had channeled the Serb Otpor! Millions of dollars in funds
through commercial contractors and through the US-government-
financed NGOs: the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the
National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute.
The Open Society Institute of George Soros was also funneling
money into Popović ’s Otpor! for the toppling of Milosevic. I have yet to
find a CIA and US State Department regime change or Color Revolution
in which the “democracy-building” foundations of Soros were not in a
kind of harmony with the Washington State Department and CIA agenda.
Maybe just a coincidence.
The NED with all its affiliates was a project of Ronald Reagan CIA
head, Bill Casey, in the early 1980’s to conceal CIA regime change
operations around the world behind the front of a “private” democracy
NGO, the NED. Allen Weinstein, cofounder of the NED admitted to the
Washington Post, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years
ago by the CIA.”
According to Michael Dobbs, who was foreign investigative reporter for
the Washington Post during the Milosevic ouster, the IRI paid for Popović
and some two-dozen other Otpor! leaders to attend a training seminar
on nonviolent resistance at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest in October,1999.
There Popović and the other handpicked Serbian students received
training in such matters as how to organize a strike and how to
communicate with symbols, such as the clenched fist that became their
logo. They learned how to overcome fear and how to undermine the
authority of a dictatorial regime.
The principal lecturer at the secret Hilton Hotel meeting was Gene
Sharp’s associate, retired US ArmyCol. Robert Helvey, a former
Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who trained and then used the
Otpor! activists to distribute 70,000 copies of a manual on nonviolent
resistance in Serb translation. Helvey worked with Gene Sharp, founder
of the controversial Albert Einstein Institution, teaching techniques to the
US government to conceal its coup d’états under the guise of
nonviolence. Sharp was described by Helvey as “the Clausewitz of the
nonviolence movement,” a reference to the renowned Prussian military
strategist.
Popović and his Otpor! NGO were recipients of a major share of over $41
million US government money for their “democracy-building” campaign
in Serbia. Dobbs describes the US involvement:
Behind the seeming spontaneity of the street uprising that forced

Milošević to respect the results of a hotly contested presidential election
on September 24 was a carefully researched strategy put together by
Serbian democracy activists with active assistance of Western advisers
and pollsters… US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the
scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-drive, running tracking polls,
training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a
vitally important parallel vote count. US taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of
spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milošević graffiti on
walls across Serbia.
In short, Popović began his revolution-making career as a regime change
specialist in an operation funded by the CIA, US State Department, US
Government NGOs including the infamous NED and the Open Society
Institute. The question is what did Srđa Popović do after his first helpful
service to Washington in 2000?
Globalization of revolutions
After his success in getting rid of Milosevic for his US Government
sponsors, Popović created a new organization called CANVAS. He decided
to globalize his business model that worked so well in Belgrade in 2000,
to make himself an international “go to” person for making US State
Department fake democracy regime change. CANVAS or the Centre for
Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies calls itself a non-profit, non-
governmental, “educational institution focused on the use of nonviolent
conflict.” According to Wikipedia, CANVAS seeks to “educate pro-
democracy activists around the world in what it regards as the universal
principles for success in nonviolent struggle.”
Popović and CANVAS claim that at least 50% of their obviously
substantial funding for this philanthropic work comes from Popović ’s
Otpor ally, Slobodan Đinović, co-chair of CANVAS and listed as CEO of
something called Orion Telecom in Belgrade. A Standard & Poors
Bloomberg business search reveals no information about Orion Telecom
other than the fact it is wholly-owned by an Amsterdam-listed holding
called Greenhouse Telecommunications Holdings B.V. where the only
information given is that the same Slobodan Đinović is CEO in a holding
described only as providing “alternative telecommunication services in
the Balkans.” It sounds something like a corporate version of the famous
Russian matryoshka doll nested companies to hide something.
Leaving aside the unconvincing statement by Popović ’s CANVAS that
half their funds come from Dinovic’s selfless generosity from his fabulous
success as telecom CEO in Serbia, that leaves the other roughly 50% of
CANVAS funds unaccounted for, as Popović declines to reveal the sources
beyond claiming they are all private and non-government. Of course the
Washington NGO is legally private though its funds mainly come from
USAID. Of course the Soros Open Society Foundations are private. Could
these be some of the private patrons of his CANVAS? We don’t know as
he refuses to disclose in any legally auditable way.
There is no charge for CANVAS workshops and its revolutionary know-

how can be downloaded for free on the Internet. This generosity, when
combined with the countries CANVAS has trained regime-change
opposition group “pro-democracy activists” suggests that the other 50%,
if not more, of CANVAS funding comes from money channels that lead at
least in part back to the US State Department and CIA. The Washington
Freedom House is known to have financed at least a part of the activities
of CANVAS. Freedom House, closely tied to the US neo-conservative war
lobby, gets most of its funding from the US Government.
Popović’s CANVAS claims to have trained “pro-democracy activists” from

more than 50 countries, including Ukraine, Georgia, Zimbabwe, Burma
(actually the legal name since independence from the British is Myanmar
but Washington insists on the colonial name), Ukraine, Georgia, Eritrea,
Belarus, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. Popović ’s CANVAS was
involved as well in unsuccessful attempts to start Color Revolution
regime change against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and the opposition in
the failed 2009 Iran Green Revolution.
Every one of those countries happen to also be targets for Washington
regime-change of governments who refuse to toe the Washington line on
key foreign policy issues, or which contain vital raw materials such as oil,
natural gas or strategic minerals.
Goldman Sachs and Stratfor

Even more interesting details recently came to light on the intimate links
between the US “intelligence consultancy”, Stratfor—known as the
”Shadow CIA” for its corporate clients which include Lockheed Martin,
Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and U.S. government agencies including
the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Intelligence
Agency.
It was revealed in a huge release of internal memos from Stratfor in
2012, some five million emails provided them by the hacker community
Anonymous, that Popović, after creating CANVAS also cultivated very
close relations with Stratfor. According to the Stratfor internal emails,
Popović worked for Stratfor to spy on opposition groups.
Revealed in the same Stratfor emails by Wikileaks was the intriguing

information that one of the “golden geese” funders of the mysterious
CANVAS was a Wall Street bank named Goldman Sachs. Satter Muneer, a
Goldman Sachs partner, is cited by Stratfor’s then-Eurasia
Analyst Marko Papic. Papic, asked by a Stratfor colleague whether
Muneer was the “golden goose” money behind CANVAS, writes back,
“They have several golden gooses I believe. He is for sure one of them.”
Now the very remarkable Mr Popović brings his dishonest career to
Hungary where, not a dictator, but a very popular true democrat who
offers his voters choices, is the target for Popović’ peculiar brand of US
State Department fake democracy. This will not at all be as easy as
toppling Milošević, even if he has the help of student activists being
trained at Soros’ Central European University in Budapest.
Outlook.”
Russia’s Interesting New Oil Geopolitics
Global Research, September 19, 2017
New Eastern Outlook
Region: Russia and FSU
289
25 27
357
Since the 1928 Red Line Agreement between British and French and
American oil majors to divide the oil riches of the post-World War I
Middle East, petroleum or more precisely, control of petroleum has
constituted the thin-red-line of modern geopolitics. During the Soviet
time Russian oil exports were largely aimed at maximizing dollar hard
currency income in any possible market. Today, with the ludicrous US
and EU sanctions on Russia and the Washington-instigated wars in the
Middle East, Russia is evolving a strategic new frame for its oil
geopolitics.
Much has been said about how Russia under the Putin era has used its
leading role as a natural gas supplier as a vital part of its geopolitical
diplomacy. Nord Stream and soon Nord Stream II gas pipelines direct
from Russia undersea, bypassing the political NATO minefields of Ukraine
and of Poland, have the positive benefit of building an industry lobby in
the EU. Especially in Germany, which would think twice about the more
lunatic Russo-phobic provocations of Washington. Similarly Turkish
Stream that gives South East Europe a secure prospect of Russian
natural gas for industry and heating independent of Ukraine is positive
both for the Balkans as for Russia. Now a new element is emerging in the
strategy of Russian state-owned oil majors to develop a new geopolitical
strategy using Russian oil and oil companies.
Matryoshka dolls, Qatar and Rosneft

On December 7, 2016 Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced
that the Russian state had sold a 19.5% share of Rosneft to a joint
venture between Swiss commodity giant, Glencore and the Qatar
Investment Authority for €10.2 billion. Russia retained more than 60%
control by the sale. There was great mystery as to the ultimate details
which were buried in what in Russian is called a matryoshka doll
structure, referring to the famous Russian painted dolls which when
opened, reveal a smaller doll and again, an even smaller doll and so on.
It referred to the nested structure of offshore shell companies used in the
Rosneft-Qatar/Glencore purchase.
Whatever the details of that December sale, which brought the Russian
treasury badly needed funds amid a budget shortfall caused by the sharp
decline in world oil prices, some ten months later, Russia and Rosneft
have now negotiated with Qatar, Glencore and China’s CEFC China
Energy Company Ltd., for CEFC to buy 14% of the 19.5% share of
Rosneft.
Qatar clearly is reacting to Saudi-driven economic sanctions and the

resulting cash drain on its economy by selling most of its share in
Rosneft. The most significant aspect however is that Rosneft for the first
time makes a share holding with a Chinese major oil company in the
process. CEFC, a $34 billion annual income private Shanghai company
with its subsidiaries is engaged in oil and gas agreements worth more
than US$50 billion with companies in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The synergies of the Rosneft-CEFC deal for the elaboration of the
mammoth Eurasian Belt, Road Initiative (BRI) are obvious.
An analyst with Wood Mackenzie, Christian Boermel, commented on
the significance:
“This deal intensifies the energy relationship between Russia and China.
A direct stake in Rosneft will make CEFC China the main driver for the
relationship of Rosneft with China, ahead of CNPC, Sinopec and Beijing
Gas.”
With this deal Russian and Chinese state oil companies will cooperate on
joint oil development around the world, a major cementing of a bilateral
relationship that has emerged as a direct consequence of Washington
stupidity in the past years, first with the 2007 ballistic missile defense
stations in Poland and across the EU aimed at Russia, then the 2014
Ukraine coup d’etat by the CIA and US State Department, obviously
intended to drive a wedge between Russia and the EU, a coup that has
cost the EU economies an estimated $100 billion since 2014 according to
a new UN report.
Like most Pentagon and neocon projects, the Ukraine coup boomeranged
and turned Russia in a most significant way to an Eastern pivot towards
cooperation with China and all Eurasia. Now with Russia’s Rosneft–the
world’s largest publicly traded oil company–in a strategic partnership
with China’s huge CEFC Energy, a significant new element is added to
Russia’s potentials of energy geopolitics, as well those of China.
Russia with Turkey in Iran

In another highly significant geopolitical move, the Russian state oil
company JSC Zarubezhneft announced in August that it has entered a
triangular oil development agreement with the Turkish energy group,
Unit International Ltd. and the Iranian Ghadir Investment Company in
well drilling projects in Iran worth a reported $7 billion. The three
companies will finance and develop energy projects, including
development of Iran’s vast undeveloped oil resources.
Unit International earlier this year signed an agreement together with a
South Korean engineering company to build five gas-fired power plants in
Iran worth $4.2 billion having a generation capacity of 5,000 megawatts,
making them Iran’s largest privately developed power plants. Iran is also
the second largest gas supplier to Turkey after Russia. Clearly here at
least the Sunni vs Shi’ite antagonisms take a back seat to pragmatic
strategic energy cooperation, and that’s all to the good. Wars of religion
never produce good as we see today.
The Turkish joint venture with the Russian state oil company in Iran
comes at the same time Turkey announced that it has finalized purchase
of the advanced Russian S-400 Triumf anti-aircraft system, said to be the
world’s most advanced, over howls of protest from Washington.
Zarubezhneft is a Russian state oil company specialized in drilling

projects outside Russia. They are currently active in Vietnam, Cuba,
Republika Srpska, Jordan and elsewhere. The geopolitical dimension of
those projects, and now the joint Russia-Turkey oil and gas development
agreement in Iran, begins to suggest a geopolitical strategy. Joint energy
development is serving to weave vital economic ties around Russia.
When all these developments are viewed superimposed on a map of

Eurasia, it becomes clear that a new geopolitical relationship, what we
might call an economic energy force field is drawing Turkey closer to
Russia and to Iran, as well as China.
For its part, Qatar, a nominally Sunni country which earned the enmity of
Prince and soon-to-be King,Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia,
did so less for Qatar’s earlier support of the Muslim Brotherhood and
more for its developing relations with not only Moscow, but also with
Shi’ite Iran and with China. Qatar had been in secret negotiations with
Iran for joint development of their shared Persian Gulf natural gas field.
Previously Qatar, along with the Saudis and even Turkey, financed the
war against Bashar al Assad for Assad’s refusal to go with a Qatar gas
pipeline via Syria to Europe. Assad instead joined with Iran and Iraq in an
alternative Iran gas pipeline to Europe and the six-year-long terrorist war
against Assad was launched.
At some point following Russia’s decision to aid Assad in late 2015, in a
pragmatic turn that infuriated the Pentagon and Prince Salman, Qatar
made a new decision along the lines “if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em.”
Qatar entered secret talks with Iran over Syria and over a joint Qatar-Iran
pipeline that would mutually develop the world’s largest known natural
gas field they both share in the Persian Gulf—the South Pars/North Dome
field, by far the world’s largest natural gas field according to the
International Energy Agency (IEA). The battle to control Qatar in a sense
is the battle to dominate world natural gas markets, today almost as
economically significant as oil to the future world economy.
In response to the Trump-Kushner inspired Saudi and UAE-led economic

sanctions against Qatar last June, Qatar has stepped up its relations with
Iran, with Russia and with China, while refusing the impossible Saudi-UAE
demands. The Chinese state bank in Doha has transacted the dollar
equivalent of over $86 billion worth of transactions in Chinese Yuan since
the opening of the Doha branch of China’s Industrial and Commercial
Bank of China in 2015, and has signed other agreements with China that
encourage further economic cooperation.
Then on August 23, Qatar announced it was restoring full diplomatic
relations with Iran, not exactly whatJared Kushner’s friends in
Washington and in Tel Aviv wanted to see. Since the Saudi-led sanctions
to isolate and starve Qatar into submission, Iran has provided Qatar with
sea shipments of fresh food and allowed Qatar planes to cross
its airspace.
Moreover, Qatar relations with Russia are developing. Qatar, Iran and
Russia are the main lobbyists for the creation of the so-called “Gas
OPEC”, which Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United
States vigorously oppose.
Add to this changing force field in the Gulf the fact that Erdogan’s Turkish
government, previously a staunch ally of Saudi Arabia, condemned the
Saudi actions against Qatar. Turkey sent food supplies to prevent
embargo-related shortages in Qatar after June and passed legislation
through parliament to deploy Turkish troops on Qatari soil.
A new geometry
Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Qatar. They are weaving deeper peaceful
economic
ties, walking away in the case of Qatar and Turkey from their ill-
conceived US-inspired war against Syria’s Bashar al Assad, developing
long-term energy cooperation and defense ties. At the heart is Russia’s
emerging new oil geopolitics.
The response to this all from the sinking Titanic that used to be known as
the United States of America, of its military lobby and their Wall Street
bankers who actually run Washington policy via their web of think-tanks,
is infantile: war, destabilizations, color revolutions, sanctions as a form of
economic war, demonization, lies. That’s all rather stupid and ultimately
boring.

Outlook.”

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a

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