{"id":51187,"date":"2014-12-15T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T12:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=51187"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:12","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:12","slug":"the-new-european-arc-of-instability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/12\/the-new-european-arc-of-instability\/","title":{"rendered":"The New European ‘Arc of Instability’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pepe<\/a>

Pepe Escobar<\/p><\/div>\n

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The European Council on Foreign Relations and Berlin think-tank Friedrich Ebert Stiftung have just reached more or less the same conclusion.<\/p>\n

If the dangerous stand-off between the EU and Russia over Ukraine is not solved, the EU could face, up to 2030, a military build-up in eastern Europe; a new arms race with NATO as a protagonist; and a semi-permanent \u201czone of instability\u201d<\/em> from the Baltic to the Balkans and the Black Sea.<\/p>\n

What these two think-tanks don\u2019t \u2013 and won\u2019t \u2013 ever acknowledge is that a new European \u201carc of instability\u201d<\/em> \u2013 from the Baltic to the Black Sea, as myself and other independent analysts have stressed \u2013 is exactly what the Empire of Chaos<\/a> and its weaponized arm \u2013 NATO \u2013 are working on to prevent closer Eurasia integration.<\/p>\n

By the way, the Pentagon excels in fabricating \u201carcs of instability.\u201d<\/em> The previous one was \u2013 and remains \u2013 massive, stretching from the Maghreb to Xinjiang in western China across the Middle East and Central Asia.<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/a>

Chris Hondros \/ Getty Images \/ AFP<\/p><\/div>\n

Moscow has totally identified the plot; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov<\/a>, once again, has made it crystal clear, in detail.<\/p>\n

And crucially, some influential sectors in Germany also did, as in members of the cultural elite destroying the notion of a new war in Europe: \u201cNot in our name.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The same applies to those that always preach more transatlantic cooperation, extol the US\u2019s \u201cdefining\u201d<\/em> role in Germany, and effusively praise Germany as the most American country in Europe; that\u2019s the case of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper \u2013 which stands for the core of the political and economic establishment in Germany.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still in an embryonic stage, and has not yet made Chancellor Angela Merkel see the light; but a reverse reengineering of Atlanticist relations is already in progress in Germany.<\/p>\n

The SWIFT war <\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the proverbial group of extremist US senators, plus the notorious poodles\/vassals of Britain and Poland, haven\u2019t stopped lobbying to shut Russia off from SWIFT \u2013 just as they did with Iran.<\/p>\n

This would be nothing but yet another declaration of (economic) war \u2013 or the economic counterpoint to NATO hysteria. In fairness, a great deal of the EU \u2013 especially Germany \u2013 knows this is madness.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s top financial paper Handelsblatt<\/a> recently published a key interview with head of VTB-Bank Andrei Kostin, which has still not been translated into any major English-language paper.<\/p>\n

Kostin went straight to the point: \u201cOf course, there is a plan B [in the case of Russia being shut off from the SWIFT bank system], but in my personal opinion it would mean war \u2013 if this type of sanction will be introduced. America and Europe did that against Iran but with Iran at that time there were no diplomatic relations, only military containment…if Russian banks\u2019 access to SWIFT will be prohibited, the US ambassador to Moscow should leave the same day. Diplomatic relations must be finished. Banking is the most vulnerable part of the Russian economy because the system is based so strongly on the dollar and the euro.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Next May, Russia\u2019s Central Bank is planning to introduce an analogue to SWIFT \u2013 after key consultations with China. It\u2019s always important to keep in mind that China set up a parallel SWIFT to do business with Iran under sanctions. But still there will be a window of four months for a lot of nasty things to happen after a Republican-controlled US Senate is empowered in January.<\/p>\n

All that glitters\u2026<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the golden rule. Why is Russia buying so much gold? With the US dollar forced upward and gold downward, it makes total business sense to sell gas for inflated dollars and then buy cheap depressed gold; that\u2019s what the Chinese call a \u201cwin-win.\u201d<\/em> And of course on both counts, the West loses.<\/p>\n

The Washington\/Wall Street elites are fully aware that both Moscow and Beijing won\u2019t accumulate US dollars anymore. As for the Masters of the Universe plutocrats who manipulate\/control the value of the US dollar, a case can be made that one of their purposes is wrecking the US\u2019s industrial base and the nation\u2019s middle classes.<\/p>\n

Moscow, meanwhile, has adjusted to the new \u201cinstability.\u201d<\/em> The weak ruble has a positive effect \u2013 already stressed by President Putin \u2013 by forcing Russia to diversify its manufacturing and become more self-sufficient.<\/p>\n

Of course, the problem remains for Russia to pay the foreign interest on its debt in US dollars. Moscow could always declare a moratorium in debt repayments. The ruble might go down even more. But as everyone from Lukoil to Rosneft converts more US dollars into rubles, that will drive the ruble back up. Not to mention that the ruble is shorted as it stands. The bottom line is that Moscow has learned yet another lesson for the immediate future: never become indebted to the West.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s certain is that the Empire of Chaos won\u2019t relent in its strategy of heating up the new arc of instability \u2013 inside Europe, across the economic\/financial spectrum \u2013 and instrumentalizing its pre-fabricated New Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Black Sea.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin seems to know exactly how high the stakes are. As The Saker told me in an email, \u201cPutin is telling both the West and the Russian people that there is a long war in progress and that the Russian people have to morally be prepared to accept sacrifices for the survival of Russia. This is one more step in the ‘coming-out’ of what I call the \u2018Eurasian Sovereignists\u2019 in which the US [has] now openly declared as a Russophobic (Russia-hating and Russia-fearing) enemy, and the Europeans as a powerless colony. Military power is not directly a factor in this, the internal power balance between the pro-Western \u2018Atlantic Integrationists\u2019 and the \u2018Eurasian Sovereignists\u2019 is.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all here \u2013 from the debacle of a regime (Bretton Woods) to the current, provoked crisis, all brilliantly explained<\/a> by Mikhail Khazin. Russia is getting ready to rock. Is the West?<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Pepe Escobar, from Brazil, is the roving correspondent for Asia Times\/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the author of <\/em><\/em>Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2007), <\/em>Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2007), and <\/em>Obama does Globalistan<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2009). His new <\/em>book is Empire of Chaos<\/a>.<\/em> He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 rt.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What these two think-tanks don\u2019t \u2013 and won\u2019t \u2013 ever acknowledge is that a new European \u201carc of instability\u201d \u2013 from the Baltic to the Black Sea, as myself and other independent analysts have stressed \u2013 is exactly what the Empire of Chaos and its weaponized arm \u2013 NATO \u2013 are working on to prevent closer Eurasia integration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}