{"id":74439,"date":"2016-05-30T12:30:57","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T11:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=74439"},"modified":"2016-05-30T12:30:57","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T11:30:57","slug":"target-russia-target-china-target-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/target-russia-target-china-target-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Target Russia. Target China. Target Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pepeescobar\"<\/a>28 May 2016 – <\/em>Not a day goes by without US Think Tankland doing what it does best; pushing all sorts of scenarios for cold \u2013 and hot \u2013 war with Russia, plus myriad confrontations with China and Iran.<\/p>\n

That fits into the Pentagon\u2019s Top Five existential threats to the US, where Russia and China sit at the very top and Iran is in fourth place \u2013 all ahead of \u00abterrorism\u00bb of the phony Daesh \u00abCaliphate\u00bb variety.<\/p>\n

Here<\/a> I have come up with some concise realpolitik facts to counterpunch the hysteria \u2013 stressing how the Russian hypersonic missile advantage renders useless the whole construct of NATO\u2019s paranoid rhetoric and bluster.<\/p>\n

The US Aegis defense system has been transferred from ships to land. The Patriot missile defense system is worthless. Aegis is about 30% better than the THAAD system; it may be more effective but their range is also limited.<\/p>\n

Aegis is not a threat at all to Russia \u2013 for now. Yet as the system is upgraded \u2013 and that may take years \u2013 it could cause Russia some serious concern, as Exceptionalistan is increasingly pushing them eastward, so near to Russia\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Russia is still light-years ahead in hypersonic missiles. The Pentagon knows that against the S-500 system, the F-22, the awesomely expensive F-35 and the B-2 stealth airplanes \u2013 stars of a trillion-dollar fighter program \u2013 are totally obsolete.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s back to the same old meme: \u00abRussian aggression\u00bb, without which the Pentagon cannot possibly fight for its divine right to be showered with unlimited funds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Washington had 20,000 planners at work before WWII was ended, focused on the reconstruction of Germany. Washington had only six after the destruction of Iraq in 2003\u2019s Shock and Awe.<\/p>\n

That was no incompetence; it was \u00abPlan A\u00bb from the get-go. The former USSR was deemed a mighty threat at the end of WWII \u2013 so Germany had to be rebuilt. Iraq was a war of choice to grab oil fields \u2013 mixed with the implementation of hardcore disaster capitalism. No one in Washington ever cared or even wanted to rebuild it.<\/p>\n

\u00abRussian aggression\u00bb does not apply to Iraq; it\u2019s all about Eastern Europe. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov anyway has made it clear<\/a> that the deployment of the Aegis will be counterpunched in style \u2013 as even US corporate media starts to admit<\/a> that the Russian economy is healing from the effects of the oil price war.<\/p>\n

\"russia<\/a><\/p>\n

Take a look at my liquid asssets<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here<\/a> my purpose was to show that China is not a House of Cards. Whatever the real Chinese debt to GDP ratio \u2013 figures vary from as low as 23% to 220% \u2013 that is nothing for an economy the size of the Chinese, especially because it is entirely internally controlled.<\/p>\n

China keeps over $3 trillion in US dollars and other Western currencies\u00a0in reserves while it gradually delinks its economy from the real House of Cards: the US dollar economy.<\/p>\n

So under these circumstances what does foreign debt mean? Not much. China could \u2013 although they don\u2019t do it yet \u2013 produce more yuan and buy back their debt, as much as the US with quantitative easing (QE) and the European Central Bank (ECB) as it asks certain \u2018favorite countries\u2019 (strong NATO supporters) to produce more than their share of euros.<\/p>\n

And yet Beijing doesn\u2019t really need to do this. China, Russia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and what\u2019s left of the BRICS (Brazil is on hold until at least 2018) are slowly but surely forging their own internal currency and currency transfer system (in China and Russia it works already internally) to sideline SWIFT and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).<\/p>\n

When they are ready to roll it out for the rest of the world to join them, then US dollar-based foreign debt will be meaningless.<\/p>\n

US Think Tankland, as usual, remains clueless<\/a>. As one of my Chinese sources explains,\u00abwhenever a Western big mouth mentions China\u2019s debt \u2018problem\u2019 they quote a figure that seems to come out of thin air, and it includes all debts, central, provincial, city government levels, estimated all corporate debts, loans\u00a0from banks outside China. Meanwhile, they compare this total number in China with those of Western countries and Japan\u2019s central government debt alone\u00bb.<\/em><\/p>\n

The source adds, \u00abChina is operating with a balance sheet of the equivalent to $60 trillion. Loans from external sources is in the $11 trillion range while cash and equivalent is in the $3.6-4 trillion range. All this cash \u2013 or very liquid asset\u00a0\u2013 is the biggest discretionary force in the hands of China\u2019s leaders while nothing worth mentioning is in the hands of any other Western government\u00bb.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not to mention that globally, Beijing is betting on what the World Economic Forum calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution. China is already the central hub for global production, supply, logistics and value chain. Which leads us to One Belt, One Road (OBOR); all roads lead to the Chinese-driven New Silk Roads, which will connect, deeper and deeper, China\u2019s economy and infrastructure all across Eurasia. OBOR will simultaneously expand China\u2019s global power while geopolitically counterpunching the so far ineffective \u00abpivot to Asia\u00bb \u2013 Pentagon provocations in the South China Sea included \u2013 and improving China\u2019s energy security.<\/p>\n

Sanctions, like diamonds, are forever<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another major Exceptionalistan fictional narrative is that the US is \u00abworried<\/a>\u00bb<\/a>\u00a0about the inability of European banks to do business in Iran. That\u2019s nonsense; in fact, it\u2019s the US Treasury Department that is scaring the hell out of any European bank who dares to do business with Tehran.<\/p>\n

India and Iran have struck a $500 million landmark deal<\/a> to develop the Iranian port of Chabahar \u2013 a key node in what could be dubbed the New India-Iran Silk Road, connecting India to Central Asia via Iran and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Immediately afterwards the US State Department has the gall to announce that the deal will be \u00abexamined\u00bb \u2013 as the proverbial Israeli-firster US senators question whether the deal violates those lingering sanctions against Iran that refuse to go away. This happens in parallel to a mounting official narrative of \u00abunrest\u00bb contaminating former Soviet republics in Central Asia \u2013 especially Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. CIA-paid hacks should know those sources of unrest well \u2013 as the CIA itself is fomenting it.<\/p>\n

India doing business with Iran is \u00absuspicious\u00bb. On the other hand, India is more than allowed to formalize a historic military cooperation deal with the US hazily dubbed the \u00abLogistics Support Agreement\u00bb\u200a (LSA) \u2013 according to which the two militaries may use each other\u2019s land, air and naval bases for resupplies, repairs and vaguely-defined \u00aboperations\u00bb.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s all hands on deck all over Exceptionalistan to counter Russia, China and prevent any real normalization with Iran. These localized offensives \u2013 practical and rhetorical \u2013 on all fronts always mean one thing, and one thing only; splitting and fracturing, by all means necessary, the OBOR Eurasian integration. Bets can be made that Moscow, Beijing and Tehran simply won\u2019t be fooled.<\/p>\n

___________________________________<\/p>\n

Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. He has been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9\/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of \u201cGlobalistan<\/a>\u201d (2007), \u201cRed Zone Blues<\/a>\u201d (2007), \u201cObama does Globalistan<\/a>\u201d (2009) and \u201cEmpire of Chaos<\/a>\u201d (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is \u201c2030<\/a>\u201c, also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

28 May 2016 – Not a day goes by without US Think Tankland doing what it does best; pushing all sorts of scenarios for cold \u2013 and hot \u2013 war with Russia, plus myriad confrontations with China and Iran. That fits into the Pentagon\u2019s Top Five existential threats to the US, where Russia and China sit at the very top and Iran is in fourth place \u2013 all ahead of \u00abterrorism\u00bb of the phony Daesh \u00abCaliphate\u00bb variety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74439","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=74439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}