From: https://thecradle.co/Article/Columns/14747
Via: https://www.unz.com/pescobar/geopolitical-tectonic-plates-shifting-six-months-on/
Geopolitical Tectonic Plates Shifting, Six Months on
PEPE ESCOBAR • AUGUST 24, 2022 • 1,300 WORDS • 193 COMMENTS
Six months after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) by Russia in Ukraine, the geopolitical tectonic plates of the 21st century have been dislocated at astonishing speed and depth – with immense historical repercussions already at hand. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way the (new) world begins, not with a whimper but a bang.
The vile assassination of Darya Dugina – de facto terrorism at the gates of Moscow – may have fatefully coincided with the six-month intersection point, but that won’t change the dynamics of the current, work-in-progress historical drive.
The FSB may have cracked the case in a little over 24 hours, designating the perpetrator as a neo-Nazi Azov operative instrumentalized by the SBU, itself a mere tool of the CIA/MI6 combo de facto ruling Kiev.
The Azov operative is just a patsy. The FSB will never reveal in public the intel it has amassed on those that issued the orders – and how they will be dealt with.
One Ilya Ponomaryov, an anti-Kremlin minor character granted Ukrainian citizenship, boasted he was in contact with the outfit that prepared the hit on the Dugin family. No one took him seriously.
What’s manifestly serious is how oligarchy-connected organized crime factions in Russia would have a motive to eliminate Dugin as a Christian Orthodox nationalist philosopher who, according to them, may have influenced the Kremlin’s pivot to Asia (he didn’t).
But most of all, these organized crime factions blamed Dugin for a concerted Kremlin offensive against the disproportional power of Jewish oligarchs in Russia. So these actors would have the motive and the local base/intel to mount such a coup.
If that’s the case that spells out a Mossad operation – in many aspects a more solid proposition than CIA/MI6. What’s certain is that the FSB will keep their cards very close to their chest – and retribution will be swift, precise and invisible.
The straw that broke the camel’s back
Instead of delivering a serious blow to Russia in relation to the dynamics of the SMO, the assassination of Darya Dugina only exposed the perpetrators as tawdry operatives of a Moronic Murder Inc.
An IED cannot kill a philosopher – or his daughter. In an essential essay Dugin himself explained how the real war – Russia against the collective West led by the United States – is a war of ideas. And an existential war.
Dugin – correctly – defines the US as a “thalassocracy”, heir to “Britannia rules the waves”; yet now the geopolitical tectonic plates are spelling out a new order: The Return of the Heartland.
Putin himself first spelled it out at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Xi Jinping started to make it happen when he launched the New Silk Roads in 2013. The Empire struck back with Maidan in 2014. Russia counter-attacked coming to the aid of Syria in 2015.
The Empire doubled down on Ukraine, with NATO weaponizing it non-stop for eight years. At the end of 2021, Moscow invited Washington for a serious dialogue on “indivisibility of security” in Europe. That was dismissed with a non-response response.
Moscow took no time to confirm a trifecta was in the works: an imminent Kiev blitzkrieg against Donbass; Ukraine flirting with acquiring nuclear weapons; and the work of US bioweapon labs. That was the straw that broke the New Silk Road camel’s back.
A consistent analysis of Putin’s public interventions these past few months reveals that the Kremlin – as well as Security Council Yoda Nikolai Patrushev – fully realize how the politico/media goons and shock troops of the collective West are dictated by the rulers of what Michael Hudson defines as the FIRE system (financialization, insurance, real estate), a de facto banking Mafia.
As a direct consequence, they also realize how collective West public opinion is absolutely clueless, Plato cave-style, of their total captivity by the FIRE rulers, who cannot possibly tolerate any alternative narrative.
So Putin, Patrushev, Medvedev will never presume that a senile teleprompter reader in the White House or a cokehead comedian in Kiev “rule” anything. The sinister Great Reset impersonator of a Bond villain, Klaus “Davos” Schwab, and his psychotic historian sidekick Yuval Harari at least spell out their “program”: global depopulation, with those that remain drugged to oblivion.
As the US rules global pop culture, it’s fitting to borrow from what Walter White/Heisenberg, an average American channeling his inner Scarface, states in Breaking Bad: “I’m in the Empire business”. And the Empire business is to exercise raw power – then maintained with ruthlessness by all means necessary.
Russia broke the spell. But Moscow’s strategy is way more sophisticated than leveling Kiev with hypersonic business cards, something that could have been done at any moment starting six months ago, in a flash.
What Moscow is doing is talking to virtually the whole Global South, bilaterally or to groups of actors, explaining how the world-system is changing right before our eyes, with the key actors of the future configured as BRI, SCO, EAEU, BRICS+, the Greater Eurasia Partnership.
And what we see is vast swathes of the Global South – or 85% of the world’s population – slowly but surely becoming ready to engage in expelling the FIRE Mafia from their national horizons, and ultimately taking them down: a long, tortuous battle that will imply multiple setbacks.
The facts on the ground
On the ground in soon-to-be rump Ukraine, Khinzal hypersonic business cards – launched from Tu-22M3 bombers or Mig-31 interceptors – will continue to be distributed.
Piles of HIMARS will continue to be captured. TOS 1A Heavy Flamethrowers will keep sending invitations to the Gates of Hell. Crimean Air Defense will continue to intercept all sorts of small drones with IEDs attached: terrorism by local SBU cells, which will be eventually smashed.
Using essentially a phenomenal artillery barrage – cheap and mass-produced – Russia will annex the full, very valuable Donbass, in terms of land, natural resources and industrial power. And then on to Nikolaev, Odessa, and Kharkov.
Geoeconomically, Russia can afford to sell its oil with fat discounts to any Global South customer, not to mention strategic partners China and India. Cost of extraction reaches a maximum of $15 per barrel, with a national budget based on $40-45 for a barrel of Urals.
A new Russian benchmark is imminent, as well as oil in rubles following the wildly successful gas for rubles.
The assassination of Darya Dugina provoked endless speculation on the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense finally breaking their discipline. That’s not going to happen. The advances along the enormous 1,800-mile front are relentless, highly systematic and inserted in a Greater Strategic Picture.
A key vector is whether Russia stands a chance of winning the information war with the collective West. That will never happen inside NATOstan – even as success after success is ramping up across the Global South.
As Glenn Diesen has masterfully demonstrated, in detail, in his latest book, Russophobia , the collective West is viscerally, almost genetically impervious to admitting any social, cultural, historical merits by Russia.
And that will extrapolate to the irrationality stratosphere, as the grinding down and de facto demilitarization of the imperial proxy army in Ukraine is driving the Empire’s handlers and its vassals literally nuts.
The Global South though should never lose sight of the “Empire business”. The Empire of Lies excels in producing chaos and plunder, always supported by extortion, bribery of comprador elites, assassinations, and all that supervised by the humongous FIRE financial might. Every trick in the Divide and Rule book – and especially outside of the book – should be expected, at any moment. Never underestimate a bitter, wounded, deeply humiliated Declining Empire.
So fasten your seat belts: that will be the tense dynamic all the way to the 2030s. But before that, all along the watchtower, get ready for the arrival of General Winter, as his riders are fast approaching, the wind will begin to howl, and Europe will be freezing in the dead of a dark night as the FIRE Mafia puff their cigars.
(Republished from The Cradle by permission of author or representative)
"Geopolitical Tectonic Plates Shifting, Six Months
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• 190 Comments
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loner feral cat says: August 24, 2022 at 9:49 pm GMT • 5.6 days ago ↑ The
• Thanks: Nancy • Replies: @Doug Ryler, @Rubicon
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PetrOldSack says: August 25, 2022 at 12:41 am GMT • 5.5 days ago • 200 Words ↑ The “West”, the cigars of FIRE. Indeed a show of weakness: proxy wars (using second and third tier actors to achieve nothing but attention span catches (how long does the impact of a single dead maiden last?)), bringing the Western Europe dysgenic populations to kneel, essentially giving up and cannibalizing own property. Use of scorched earth tactics of own territory. All of this is short term post-hoc improvisations, well out of bound with the initial reset as planned. The long term goal is now to retract physically into “Brasil” enclaves (Finance Kabal members need to park their asses somehow out of the rain. The strongholds look more and more as medieval fortress enclaves, abbeys and castles, with wastelands spanning the globe). It will make them (Kabal members) sitting duck targets, loosing the cape of invisibility. These are interesting times. The thing is now deflecting mayhem to the world’s useless eaters, setting up all against all others. A gray zone (what i have pointed out February of this year already) is fast developing. • Replies: @annamaria
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littlewing says: August 25, 2022 at 4:48 am GMT • 5.4 days ago ↑ Come on man. • LOL: Realist • Replies: @ThreeCranes
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Ace says: August 25, 2022 at 5:01 am GMT • 5.3 days ago • 100 Words ↑ A few years ago I thought PCR was a bit out there but now I see he’s had the number of the political class all along. Now I see him as an excellent weather vane and always a great starting point to understanding the issues. Mr. Buchanan, whom I’ve long respected, in contrast, seems to have lost much of his fire and finds normality in aspects of the current abomination that is the US. Then there are George Will and Peggy Noonan who have all the pizazz of a bowl of mashed potatoes.
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Zachary Smith says: August 25, 2022 at 5:13 am GMT • 5.3 days ago • 100 Words ↑ Suppose you’d written something like this, would YOU allow comments? The Lies About World War II The “death camps” were in fact work camps. Auschwitz, for example, today a Holocaust museum, was the site of Germany’s essential artificial rubber factory. The man [Paul Craig Roberts, ergo Pepe Escobar ] is an elderly ignoramus. https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/05/15/the-lies-about-world-war-ii
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WingsofADove says: August 25, 2022 at 5:50 am GMT • 5.3 days ago • 200 Words ↑ "For an economist Roberts seems lacking in basic skills of determining best war policy for what is essentially an economic restructuring of world trade." Had Putin gone ‘full Roberts’, ie followed the ravings of an uniformed elderly man in Florida, Ukraine would be a smoking ruin and Russia would have proven it intended to rule by the bomb, which of course it cannot do worldwide. Rule by bomb doesn’t work anymore as Afghanistan has shown. Putin and Lavrov have made it clear the game is not confined to Ukraine, it’s a well thought out plan to undercut the Empire by challenging their control of currency and trade. To do this they need to reassure allies and convince potential allies that they are not in the Rule by Bomb game. As Escobar repeatedly points out, Putin’s ‘target audience’ is no longer the EU, the USA, the UK, Australia, it’s all the rest of the world. One would also have to agree with Escobar that the Putin plan, if one may call it that, is working. The Empire is losing in Ukraine and Worldwide. Paul Craig Roberts needs to allow comments so he can feel some cold wind of reality in his face. Instead he’s smelling his own farts and saying ‘ah, a good year for the roses!’. • Agree: Notsofast, RoatanBill, LJ, Joe Levantine, Rubicon
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Anon001 says: August 25, 2022 at 7:11 am GMT • 5.3 days ago • 400 Words ↑ Dear Pepe, here’s some food for thought – I hope that you, Saker, Martyanov, Rolo, et.al. won’t mind my raining a bit on your Putin groupies parade, so to speak. IMHO, something between the current two extremes (NATO side and your side) is good for some balance. Re BRICS: Didn’t Putin say that he values G20 more than BRICS [1]? How’s that for fighting globalists? Re “Partners”: Didn’t Putin publicly promise to continue supplying energy to “partners” [2]? How is helping countries, that literally want to physically destroy Russia, anything but high treason of Putin? BTW, Lukashenko wanted to cut all energy supplies to US/EU immediately after they started sanctions, but Putin did not agree. Re globalist immunization agenda in Russia (this is bonus for Pepe): Latest developments in that area in Putin-run Russia are looking as globalist as ever [3]. Re Russophobia: Guy Mettan may help with that 1000-year long hatred of Russia [5]. IMHO, roots of this hatred are purely spiritual and eschatological. Re Pepe: “The Empire struck back with Maidan in 2014.” Re Pepe: “Russia counter-attacked coming to the aid of Syria
in 2015.” After 22 years of Putin’s rule, we have: “Country’s birth rate has plummeted to levels not seen since 1943”, “Life expectancy has fallen by 4.5 years.”, etc. [4]. Thoughts? [Putin spent 3 decades starting around 1991, trying to join the West. You could argue that he was a very slow learner. –FNC] — references — [1] Kremlin: BRICS Can Not Replace
G20 | 2022-07-14 | Sputnik International: [2] Kremlin says Russia is
reliable gas supplier, blames Europe for problems | Reuters [3] Big Pharma & Russia unveil
identical clot-shot scams – Coincidence or fate? by Edward Slavsquat [4] Russia’s demographic crisis is
slightly worrying: [5] Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to
Anti-Putin Hysteria • Replies: @Gerhard57NL
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GMC says: August 25, 2022 at 7:36 am GMT • 5.2 days ago • 200 Words ↑ Great Article – thanks – There is a better solution = start using those hypersonic weapons on those FIRE bases. How many hits on their bases before they get the drift. If China and Iran were to join in , it would be decisive. One of our problems is We don’t know how many deals have been
struck between all these countries fighting one another. In order to beat this Western Cabal, you have to take out
more than just the Dollar. The whole rotten system has to be taken out
and that means my paragraph I has to be started. Possibly, Russia and China think that they can beat these guys with their own strategy and keep the Western Cabal on their own side of the world, until it all come crashing down. But the FIRE won’t go out completely , as we’ve seen in the past – they always make a come back. • Replies: @RoatanBill, @Kurt Knispel
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Anonymous[417] • Disclaimer says: [Dugin versus P. Escobar] August 25, 2022 at 8:21 am GMT • 5.2 days ago • 800 Words ↑ Dugin – correctly – defines the US as a “thalassocracy”, heir to “Britannia rules the waves”; yet now the geopolitical tectonic plates are spelling out a new order: The Return of the Heartland. Yep, the US Empire is shifting bases. OTOH, P. Escobar is a tad optimistic in his prospects for the “Global South”. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, feckless though they appeared, in geopolitical terms were an attempt to incorporate the “Heartland” into Globalism. [This seems to be a rather low quality analogy to work with. Why not use, e.g., eastern expansion of NATO –FNC] The incorporation failed for several reasons: Sub 85 IQ, no religious sanctions for failing at industrial work (Ordinarily called a “work ethic” in the literature on industrialization), very high transportation costs, high levels of internal strife, various US failures in part due to dominance of US domestic political considerations over tactical, operational, and even strategic considerations, and finally a US belief that it had sufficient force to suppress any opposition. And the US was tossed out, not only from Iraq and Afghanistan, but the entire region plus North Africa. Turkey is thinking of re-building the Ottoman Empire and North Africa is mostly a basket case. No Heartland domination for Globalization, and it’s lost the South Mediterranean shore as well.. This failure was roughly contemporaneous with the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) defection from Globalism, but after de facto US abandonment of Africa as a losing proposition. Bingo, East Asia and Africa not part of Globalism. The US is now in process of being ejected from Europe and Russia (insofar as the US had any influence there since Putin’s new nuclear weapon’s systems were developed). Europe is not talking about a rough “5 to 10” winters ( https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/eu-controlled-demolition ) which will be a lot harder because most of Europe’s export industries will be shut down for lack of energy and chemical feedstocks. It is unlikely that Europe will remain US subject allies, the more so since Europe could claim protection under the Russian Federation’s (RF’s) “nuclear umbrella” if it switched suzerains, or even developed a rough coalition of equals. Dugan is right about the US, at least to an extent. The classic “Thalassocracy” or, to use McKinder’s terms, “Oceanic Power”, uses its military dominance of the oceans or seas to control trade routes. The US has been using its military dominance of the oceans and seas to make Globalism possible. Globalism is the free availability of sea lanes for nations loosely allied with the US or neutral (e.g. India). That’s coming to an end, although it won’t be formally over until the US is ejected from Europe. The US is prepared to become an Oceanic power, one that dominates militarily but does not protect non-allied shipping. It has run out of resources, and the losses described above have effectively destroyed Globalism. P. Escobar is not right about this, though: What Moscow is doing is talking to virtually the whole Global South, bilaterally or to groups of actors, explaining how the world-system is changing right before our eyes, with the key actors of the future configured as BRI, SCO, EAEU, BRICS+, the Greater Eurasia Partnership. Exactly the same factors that made extension of Globalization to the Global South (some are listed above) make industrialization of that area impossible. The Global South will continue as it has since 1945 — desperately poor. It may well be colonized after a fashion by an RF/Europe based government. It will also not be able to include North America, and may find that a future US is in a position to reimpose the Monroe Doctrine. So: P. Escobar 1. sees the bigger picture, but IMHO is getting overly enthusiastic about the Global South’s prospect, and 2. IMHO does not see an approaching coalescence of necessity between Europe and the RF. Funny how WW I and WW II were fought precisely to avoid the present situation. Right now, Germany dominates Europe in most respects (WW I was to prevent that), and Europe/Russia appear likely to coalesce because neither can remain industrialized without the other (WW II was largely fought to prevent German dominance of such a coalescence, but ended up simply delaying the coalescence). Man proposes, the reward matrix disposes. This relates to another story —
diminishing resources necessitating a dark future. The story sounds good, but in the real world the resources are still available, and the
article says as much (e.g. Venezuela still has considerable oil, but also a
political situation that doesn’t permit that oil’s extraction). It’s just that Globalization doesn’t control the
resources anymore; the US has withdrawn from or dares not enter the
territories where lie the resources. A world without Globalization will be poorer than the present world, and will have a smaller population and considerably more warfare. Beyond that, reliable prediction is difficult.
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Commentator Mike says: August 25, 2022 at 8:33 am GMT • 5.2 days ago • 100 Words ↑ PCR must be reading Anglin, now he’s a regular on the UR, and subconsciously picked up Andrew’s habit of taking credit for the actions of world leaders. Anglin often writes that Putin, Ping, etc. must be reading his posts and taking tips. But PCR’s pronouncements are usually pretty sound. [Pepe Escobar appears to be Paul Craig Roberts' new less academic self. –FNC] To think that he was once a Reganite.
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