This Cannot Be Hidden...

... anymore.  

The global financial landscape is witnessing a seismic shift as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) boldly moves away from the US dollar in its oil trade dealings. This strategic pivot aligns with the broader ambitions of the BRICS economic alliance, of which the UAE is a recent addition. The changeover, involving the transition to local currencies for oil transactions, marks a significant departure from the long-established dollar dominance in the global oil market.

A hint: SMO plays a huge role here. They continue:

The BRICS Influence and UAE’s Strategic Shift: The BRICS bloc, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, recently expanded its membership to include the UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and Argentina. This expansion signifies a growing inclination towards de-dollarization among these nations, a move that challenges the traditional hegemony of the US dollar in international trade.The UAE’s decision to prioritize local currency over the US dollar in new oil deals is a clear reflection of this sentiment. This move isn’t just a mere policy shift; it’s a strategic maneuver in the complex chess game of global economics. By aligning with the BRICS nations, the UAE is not only diversifying its economic partnerships but also reinforcing its position as a global oil powerhouse. 

No additional comments are needed. Game Over.

I Concur.

Larry's title is spot on: The Rise of BRICS and the Fall of the G20. As Larry posits:

I do not think that the majority of the West’s financial gurus are comprehending the significance of the BRICS countries earnest effort to create an alternative to the dollar. They are calculating that the BRICS countries will fail and will be compelled to be under the thumb of the U.S.-led international financial order. I think they are making a grave mistake. The status of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency is based primarily on belief. As long as foreign countries believe they have no choice but to submit to using the dollar for international trade the system remains intact. But that belief is being seriously challenged. I do not think the system will crumble over night, but the moves by China, India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Africa, Iran and Argentina to make payments for oil and other commodities without using the dollar is accelerating.

And now get a load of this:  

The de-dollarization of Russia-China trade is practically complete, according to Georgy Zinoviev, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s First Asian Department, as cited by RIA Novosti. The official said the share of the US dollar in mutual settlements between the neighboring nations has substantially shrunk over the past two years. “The share of national currencies in Russian-Chinese payments is growing at an extremely rapid pace,” Zinoviev told the news agency. “At the beginning of 2022 it was hovering around 25%, now it is exceeding 80%.” 

Just think about it for a minute--from 25% to 80%+ in 18 months. Unprecedented, this is called dumping. Now, comes this issue of SMO and belief, as Larry pointed out. Ask yourself a question if China believes in SMO? I'll give you the answer--Beijing is in awe from what it observes. And guess what DO they believe now. Now back to the end of 2020. Recall this table:

Since then, the share of G-7 shrunk, while RIC's grew dramatically. But even then (end of 2020), RIC's output combined was much larger that that of G-7. Bar some exceptions such as a serious leadership of G-7 in commercial aerospace and few other fields, what else do they have today? Pretty much nothing. With the exception of the US and Canada, they are resources starved and standard of living declining Sodom and Gomorrah with NO prospects of addressing their debilitating systemic problems. G20-G7==G13. Or, to be prudent, G20-G5 (Europe and Japan)= G15, which is dwarfed by BRICS, now with the addition of Iran and Saudi Arabia. A crunch time for Washington. You could be 100% sure that they will fuck it up no matter what.  

You Will Hardly Find This In The News...

 ... in the West, unless it is in the cellar of the news streams, but... heads of central banks of ASEAN nations have in the agenda of their upcoming meeting in Indonesia... well, judge for yourself. 

Страны АСЕАН — Ассоциации государств Юго-Восточной Азии — обсудят отказ от основных валют, таких как доллар и евро, и переход к расчетам в местной валюте. Этот вопрос будет на повестке встречи министров финансов и управляющих центральными банками стран, которая пройдет в Индонезии. Издание уточняет, что речь идет о цифровой системе, благодаря которой жители одной страны объединения смогут платить за товары и услуги другой страны в собственной валюте. Индонезия, Малайзия, Сингапур, Филиппины и Таиланд уже подписали соглашение о сотрудничестве по этому проекту. Стоит напомнить, что в середине марта президент Индонезии Джоко Видодо призвал региональные власти отказаться от Mastercard и Visa. Он предложил использовать кредитные карты, выпущенные местными банками, чтобы защитить денежные транзакции от «возможных геополитических последствий».

Translation: The ASEAN countries - the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - will discuss moving away from major currencies such as the dollar and the euro and moving to local currency settlements. This issue will be on the agenda of the meeting of finance ministers and central bankers of the countries, which will be held in Indonesia. The publication clarifies that we are talking about a digital system, thanks to which residents of one country of the association will be able to pay for goods and services of another country in their own currency. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand have already signed a cooperation agreement on this project. It is worth recalling that in mid-March, Indonesian President Joko Widodo called on regional authorities to abandon Mastercard and Visa. He suggested using credit cards issued by local banks to protect money transactions from "possible geopolitical consequences."

It is happening right now, right here. Two major geopolitical factors are at play here:

1. Sanctions on Russia and stealing Russia's assets;

2. The way Russia successfully stands alone (initially) against combined West and grinds its combined forces into dust.

Now, with Saudi Arabia moving closer to becoming a full fledged member of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, one can only imagine what resources the BRICS will command, since Saudi Arabia is very keen on joining BRICS too. 

That's strategy, meaning matching your resources to political ends, because any war, a real one, not some PR BS which US elites "fight" primarily in media, and the outcomes are calculated and predicted with certain probabilities. Ah, yes, those Markov Chains, probability matrices and Graph Theory which serious organizations such as general staffs and strategic forecast entities use, after collecting and systematizing all available facts. Unlike it is done in Washington D.C. where they are primarily into the business of juxtapositioning things to produce easily consumed BS by political shysters who infest today America's decision-making circles.

But to succeed in forecasting one must operate with verifiable data--this is not the case with the West. Do we even comprehend a true depth of a crisis. I can only speculate. I speak about it in my latest video:

Elmo Zumwalt's fears have come true in the 21st century. And don't tell me that I didn't warn about it, wink, wink;))

Some Short Explanation.

For those who still think that Russia is intimidated or affected by "freezing" of Russia's funds in the West or some other very PR-driven grandiose statements from the West. I don't like Russian channel Tsragrad TV--it is very, to put it mildly, peculiar one and the presence of a professional BSer and ignoramus such as Sergei Mikheev on its long (very long) info-broadcasts is one of the factors which completely averted me personally from considering this company seriously. Having said all that, in 2020 Google blocked this channel from everywhere. No real explanation was given, but Tsargrad, having a somewhat nationalist slant, was definitely Google's target for a while. Well, guess what. Today, without much ado one of Russia's courts issued the order to arrest first one billion Rubles on Google accounts in Russia in favor of Tsargrad (in Russian).  

This is just the start, many more actions like this one are coming and many more are planned. Vladimir Putin speaking at the meeting on social-economic development of Crimea stated that now Russian banks and companies should not worry about sanctions and can fearlessly move in (in Russian). As I already stated, I reiterate again--the "freezing" of around $300 billion worth of Russia's currency assets in Western banks will be countered and it will hurt like hell Western financial system. Here is the proof. 

And again, I stress it--Petro Yuan is one thing, Ruble-Rupee in Russia-India trade is the whole other story altogether, same as Ruble-Yuan in Russian-Chinese one. USD dominance is being annihilated as I type this. And I can only quote Michael Hudson who himself admitted that he didn't expect this implosion to develop with such a lightning speed. As you know, I am on record--physical economy and its main derivative, state of the art military, is what only matters in real world. The next step, which is already in progress is demolishing any remaining reputation of all Western "rating" agencies and other institutions which exist only for confusion of people around the world in regards to fast declining and unsalvageable Western economies.  Obviously operation in Ukraine will be used by the combined West for covering its own utter economic and foreign policy incompetence, which started to manifest itself long before Russia started to deal with Ukraine up-close and personal, but then again--did you expect anything else? I didn't. 

P.S. In related news, Slovakia allegedly agreed (tentatively--I stress that) to deliver some of Slovakia's S-300s to Ukraine. Interestingly, that tells you that 404's AD is reduced to manpads primarily. If Slovakia goes for it, I think we will have interesting videos of annihilation of those S-300s once they cross the border. 

Something like this--annihilation of the 152-mm battery of VSU near Kiev. I don't even know what they were thinking about deploying in the open field. It is a death sentence. Well...stupid is as stupid does, quoting beloved mama of Forrest Gump.

This Is Important.

And again about dedollarization. 

ЕРЕВАН, 14 мар — Sputnik. Государства-члены Евразийского экономического союза (ЕАЭС) и Китай разработают проект независимой международной валютно-финансовой системы. Об этом договорились участники экономического диалога "Новый этап валютно-финансового и экономического сотрудничества ЕАЭС и КНР. Глобальные преобразования: вызовы и решения", который прошел 11 марта в режиме видеоконференции.Предусматривается, что система будет основана на новой международной валюте, которая будет рассчитываться как индекс национальных валют стран-участниц и цен биржевых товаров. Первый проект вынесут на обсуждение до конца марта.Как подчеркнул министр по интеграции и макроэкономике ЕЭК Сергей Глазьев, Китай первым в мире перешел к этапу восстановления национальной экономики.

Translation: YEREVAN, March 14 - Sputnik. The member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China will develop a project for an independent international monetary and financial system. This was agreed upon by the participants in the economic dialogue "A New Stage of Monetary, Financial and Economic Cooperation between the EAEU and the PRC. Global Transformations: Challenges and Solutions", which was held on March 11 via videoconference. It is envisaged that the system will be based on a new international currency, which will be calculated as an index of the national currencies of the participating countries and commodity prices. The first draft will be submitted for discussion by the end of March. As Sergei Glazyev, Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the EEC, emphasized, China was the first in the world to move to the stage of national economic recovery.

 

Well, isn't it peculiar, right? Resources based currency. Who would have thought, right? Nah, I am being facetious. It was coming and now it is being developed as a concrete project. In general, it is a fascinating topic to research in terms of correlation of resources, physical economy and military power as the main drivers of the geopolitics in the 21st century and as the explanation of the decline of the US Dollar because of that. I am talking, of course, about serious research and not by the US "think-tanks"--those people are academic frauds and know shit about the world outside. Expected from political "scientists" and other, as our friend Arctic Fox says, people with "soft degrees".

Good Ol' Truisms.

F(unny) Man at the Saker's blog beat me to it, damn)) 

Amateurs think strategy, generals think logistics … Or why Ukraine is doomed

Couldn't be more true. The reports of VSU's hardware increasingly being immobile due to lack of fuel are pouring in. So, good ol' truism is truism for a reason. In related news, economics first and yet another truism, while dogs bark, the caravan passes on:

India is stepping closer to setting up an alternative payments system to maintain its trade with Russia, identifying a potential bank, as a top panel examining the issue recommended prioritising edible oil and fertiliser imports as well as payments owed to India, an official aware of the development has said. 

Hindustan Times no less. People ask me all the time: what about dedollarization. Here it is in its full blown glory. That is why Jake Sullivan threatens China:

"It is a concern of ours," he continued, "and we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions."

And while Western media continue to spread fakes from 404, Jake Sullivan better learn (don't hold your breath) the actual correlation of economic and military potentials between what increasingly forms as isolated and fast declining West, headed by the US, and the rest of the world. And here are some pictures for Western mercenaries (primarily good at shooting defenseless civilians) to consider in terms of what I write for many years. These are from Yavorov Range where CIA and NATO "advisers" were training Neonazi forces and now were drilling combat cohesion for mercenaries' "units". As some of those "soldiers of fortune" admit--180 of them are gone. 

Or here:
 

As I am on record--it is one thing to shoot civilians, totally another to be under sustained fire impact of high precision stand-off weapons. Here it is. That is how it looks like and that is precisely how the rear of any--even the best NATO force--will look like in case of the war with Russia. I repeat: NATO watches this operation in a complete shock and awe, especially when one considers that VSU, especially its 80,000 grouping in  the East and which was trained and equipped by NATO is fully surrounded and broken apart and is being annihilated as I type this. 

And now, in order for me to stop constantly explaining why all those Colonel Cassads, Yuri Podolyakas, all other "military experts" are BS spreaders, here is (sadly only in Russian) retired Colonel of the General Staff.

 

It is worth listening, especially in terms of planning. 

In conclusion. As yesterday's Military Approved confirmed, 3M22 Zircon is a very low observable system and is not detectable by present detection means, not to speak of West's interception system (air defense) which cannot shoot it down. With the range of 1,500 kilometers and M=9 this version (first) of Zircon is a radical change of paradigm. So, here is you primer for Sunday. 

UPDATE: here is one of the Nazis complaining about this whole "situation" with wiping out mercenaries at Yavorov Range. 

He laments that poor dears were sleeping at the time of Kalibrs arriving to destination. Right... Russians should have waited until they wake up/s. I wonder with what speed NATO propaganda evaporates at this stage from brainwashed nazi minds in 404. It is a good luck when you die fast, but many are not afforded such a treat and die due to horrendous wounds in agony. That's the real war, fellows. They (NATO) forgot to mention to you what it is to be on the receiving end, because they don't know it themselves. 

They Begin To Suspect Something. Like...Again.

Like now. 

Took them merely a few decades to figure that out. Congressional Research Service prepared the overview of economic sanctions in January this year for 117 Congress and, boy, they finally figured Russia's game out, LOL.

The economic impact of a sanction also depends on the extent to which the target is able to circumvent or adapt to the sanction. The Maduro government of Venezuela, for example,has sought closer economic ties with China and Russia in the face of U.S. sanctions, and the Russian government used its sizeable foreign exchange reserve holdings to support sanctioned firms and focused on creating domestic industries.It is more difficult for the target to find alternative markets when sanctions are imposed multilaterally than when sanctions are imposed unilaterally.

The report is hilarious in a "no shit" or "the hell you say" sense and if Russia's "secret" game (which is in the open since who knows when) was finally "revealed", conclusions like that should give those geniuses in Congress a pause.

Sanctions also impose economic costs for the United States, because they restrict economic transactions in which U.S. individuals and firms would otherwise engage. U.S. business groups have at various points raised concerns that sanctions harm American manufacturers, jeopardize American jobs, and, when sanctions are implemented unilaterally, cede business opportunities to firms from other countries. U.S. sanctions also risk retaliatory measures by the target. For example, the Alaskan seafood industry and Washington State apple and pear producers were negatively affected by Russia’s retaliatory ban on agricultural imports from countries imposing sanctions. Policymakers have expressed longer-term concerns that extensive use of U.S. sanctions that restrict access to the U.S. financial system could erode the status of the U.S. dollar in the global economy. Since World War II, the U.S. dollar has been widely used in international economic transactions, and the United States incurs economic benefits from its widespread use (including lower borrowing rates). The United States has increasingly leveraged the role of the U.S. dollar for foreign policy goals, including restricting access to the U.S. dollar and financial markets for Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. Many foreign governments targeted by U.S. financial sanctions and their economic partners are increasingly exploring and creating ways to reduce their reliance on the U.S. dollar. If countries pivot from the U.S. dollar to alternative currencies, the United States could face higher borrowing costs, among other economic effects. 

Serious countries do pivot away from US Dollar and the dedolarization continues to accelerate even as I type this. Even this fresh graph doesn't tell the whole story, albeit it gives a good hint. 

In related news--shooting oneself in the foot hurts like hell. Committing a suicide also has an adverse effect on one's health etc. Make no mistake, all kinds of BS ratings "proving" that the US Dollar is a coolest most widely-used currency will continue to be concocted in the currency-speculation alternative economic universe in the US, but facts are irresistible things, no matter how one tries to spin them:

The US dollar has lost to the euro as the number one currency for global transactions for the first time in nearly eight years, said the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT). According to Bloomberg citing monthly SWIFT data, the last time the euro was in the number one spot was February 2013. 

Moreover, alternatives to SWIFT, let alone mutual trade in respective currencies, are already in place and this cannot be changed other than by the means of a global war. Does the 117th Congress want to try it and see what happens? Russia cannot be contained in any way: economically, financially, let alone militarily. China? Well, the window of opportunities to do so militarily--economically China dwarfs the United States--is closing really fast and if actual military alliance between Russia and China is formed, the United States will simply be pushed to the periphery of global economic activity, most of which is already concentrated in Eurasia. EU, in this sense, is a secondary matter--it will either disintegrate, with some countries choosing economic monster in the East, or it will continue to sink in its own cesspool of shrinking manufacturing and bizarre totalitarian cults ranging from alternative energy to alternative gender (and mental) composition. Simple as that. If they sink, they can go to hell, as Lavrov so explicitly told Borrell on his recent visit to Russia for EU to go fuck itself. Now, those butt-hurt Europeans contemplate how could this barbaric and backward Russia tell EU to go fuck itself. 

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has said that Russia does not want a dialogue with Europe and has refused to rule out further sanctions on Moscow over the treatment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In a statement on Twitter, Borrell said that his visit to Russia "highlighted that Russia does not want to seize the opportunity to have a more constructive dialogue with the EU. This is regrettable and we will have to draw the consequences," he said.

Yes, Russia and EU are "drifting apart" because  Russia doesn't want to deal with a sanctimonious freak-show which Europe has become. If EU will impose new sanctions on Russia, so be it. They were told this on many occasions. Russia will simply counter-sanction EU and will throw more EU businesses out of Russia. Simple as that. I have been a proponent of a new Iron Curtain now for many years--culturally Europe is done and has no future whatsoever and the rotten corpse of once proud Western Civilization poisons the atmosphere. Russia is not into business of saving those who do not want to be saved. Minimal economic activity should be maintained, possibly some bi-lateral exchange, but the rest--Europe is a moral and economic leprosy-afflicted space which has to be isolated and contained. In fact, the events of the last few weeks give a good indication that the process of containment is ongoing. Boy, I wish I knew Chinese (Mandarin) to be able to read Chinese media about what Wang Yi and Lavrov discussed a few days ago, granted it is available for Chinese press. I begin to suspect something... wink, wink.

Chronicles of De-dollarization.

 RT reports: 

Moscow and Beijing have ramped up the share of settlements in national currencies to 25 percent this year against a modest two percent recorded seven years ago, according to the Russian Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov.“The share of national currencies in our [trade] relations with China is steadily increasing. It has reached about a quarter through the nine months since the beginning of the year. This is quite a big progress,” the ambassador said, citing the Chinese partners.

It was said many times, that, taken in isolation, China-Russia economic conglomerate reaches a very high level of autarky, including in the spectrum of high to very high-tech production. Russia, certainly, begins to look like an autarky--it is increasingly self-sufficient. As events of 2020 have shown, Russia weathered a number of storms without losing her focus on a larger aim of national projects and re-industrialization. Obviously, the virtuoso gambit with oil in 2020 by Russia was something to behold, because it overturned decision-making process in global energy. This is how it goes now:

OPEC, Russia and other oil major producers reached an unusual agreement on production quotas on Tuesday, with Saudi Arabia committing to reducing its oil production by one million barrels a day and Russia and Kazakhstan winning relatively modest production increases... Finding that they were unable to head off Russia’s demand for a production increase, Saudi Arabia appears to have largely given in to preserve at least a semblance of unity. “Instead of letting everything fall apart, the Saudis let the Russians have what they want,” said Bhushan Bahree, an executive director at IHS Markit, a research firm.

Didn't we see it a mile away? We did. With $53 per barrel, Russia's oil export feels just fine. It is a good way to fill coffers with cash, just for the rainy day. There are other ways, of course, to fill those coffers, ranging from grain, to weapons, to gas to even, for FFS, with Russian-made UAZ Patriot getting ready to sell in the United States. 

Italian commercial truck brand Bremach has announced plans to begin selling a Russian-designed 4x4 SUV in the U.S. sometime in 2021. The Bremach Taos is a rebadged version of the UAZ Patriot that first hit the market in 2005 and is similar in size to the Jeep Cherokee. However, the Taos is a true body on frame truck like the Toyota 4Runner that’s been updated with the modern safety systems required to make it street legal in the U.S.

Who would have thought? Good ol' Goat (Kozlik), as a legendary UAZ-469 used to be called, always had it in itself, with its ability to basically drive anywhere, to be turned into this:

There are plenty of those on the roads in Russia. In the US, the suggested price is around $26,000--around the price of a new basic version Forester. We'll see how it will sell, but these vehicles are good for bad roads. I, personally, would love to have GAZ Tigr, preferably with AGS and PKM package, but these are just my dreams.  

Speaking of which, tomorrow's voting and pro-Trump rally in D.C. do not change much, no matter the outcome--the country is hopelessly divided and increasingly cannot live with itself. You all know the truism--house divided etc. I don't hold my breath, plus I had my share of tawdry political spectacles last four years, so the only thing which I am trying to calculate is how fast a totalitarian regime will be imposed on the United States, and if there is a chance to avoid it. 

Oh, Boy, Oh, Boy!

Just when you think that you repeated that USD and US stock market papers are just virtual "values" which are "worth"... well, let's leave at that for now, enough times to drive point home, news come in which in these strange times take it to eleven. From yesterday (in Russian):

Правительство России разрешило инвестировать средства Фонда национального благосостояния (ФНБ) в национальную валюту и гособлигации Китая.

Translation:  Government of Russia allowed to invest resources of the Fund of National Wealth (FNB) into national currency and state obligations of China.

This is exactly what many of us here discussed very recently, and that means acceleration of the removal of the USD as one of many (yes, Pound Sterling, Euros, Swiss Franks are also there) cash (I stress it--cash, not some BS paper) from Russia's main piggy bank. That also shines a light on the long-term policy of growth of trade between China and Russia and that means, among many other things, dedollarization of the oil trade. Reputable "establishment" Gazeta Ru then proceeds to make this astonishing statement:

Доля европейской валюты в отечественном экспорте в КНР за год выросла с 12% до 45,6%. При этом импорт китайских товаров и услуг в Россию почти на 25% оплачивается в «других валютах». Вероятнее всего, это и есть юани. 

Translation: The share of European currency in domestic (Russia's) export to China grew in one year from 12% to 45.6%. Meanwhile, almost 25% of import of Chinese goods and services in being paid for almost 25%  in "other currencies", which, most likely are Yuans. 

This is what drives many people in the US (like yesterday's Paul Brandus) totally desperate and butt-hurt, because removal of USD in mutual payments between geopolitical players who matter IS the end of the petrodollar. It is a very practical end, without much fanfare--just normal everyday economic activity which is ongoing without employing USD and creating a financial fortress and common Eurasian market whose actual size dwarfs US economy even when this economy is valued by Wall Street  fraudst.... pardon me, exceptionalists. Ah, yes, about exceptionalism. Daniel Larison published today a good piece related to Andrew Bacevich's latest article:  

It Took COVID To Expose the Fraud of ‘American Exceptionalism.’ Our leaders were so preoccupied with remaking the world they failed to see that our country was falling apart around them.

Well, I have a minor quibble with this title, because this fraud was exposed way before any COVID was present. In fact, I launched this blog in 2014 to do precisely this, prior to that I formed opinion on this fraud years before. As I state ad nauseam, American exceptionalism is a self-replicating delusion which is organic to the US body-politic as a main prerequisite of achieving anything on the way to power and money. It is also a main driver behind degeneration of American political and intellectual elites. As Larison observes: 

The more that U.S. policies have proved “American exceptionalism” to be a pernicious myth at odds with reality, the more we have heard the phrase used to defend those policies. Republican hawks began the decade by accusing Obama of not believing in this “exceptionalism,” and some Democratic hawks closed it out by “reclaiming” the idea on behalf of their own discredited foreign policy vision. There may be differences in emphasis between the two camps, but there is a consensus that the U.S. has special rights and privileges that other nations cannot have. That has translated into waging unnecessary wars, assuming excessive overseas burdens, and trampling on the rights of other states, and all the while congratulating ourselves on how virtuous we are for doing all of it.

As the recent events of the 2020 have demonstrated so dramatically--to have some "special rights and privileges" one has to perform across the board, from economy, to military to culture, to society. And, I mean, of course, in real terms not by cooking books, declaring defeats victories and praising social illnesses as achievements. The world is not impressed anymore, not to mention this ever present fact that, as I wrote in my latest book:

Today, the same titanic battle for life on Earth is being waged globally for a new, better, freer, more just and more peaceful global order to emerge. This struggle is not for glory and the sword for forestalling evil has been forged. 

But it will be ultimately up to Americans and America's internal struggles to determine if, she can be, as Larison observes:

American exceptionalism has been the story that our leaders told us to excuse their neglect of America. It is a flattering story, but ultimately it is a vain one that distracts us from protecting our own country and people. We would do well if we put away this boastful fantasy and learned how to live like a normal nation.

One can only hope.      

That Is What Real Revolution In Military Affairs Gives You...

When you are the one who drives it. What 10 years ago could have been viewed as an overstepping the red line of US Dollar's hegemony, today is a normal, business-like occurrence. Vladimir Putin effectively offers Russian Ruble as a reserve currency within BRICS in Brasilia at BRICS summit. Starts at roughly 4:00. Albeit the whole report is very interesting. 

Now, Putin may wax all he wants (for the consumption of business people and investors) about Russia's macroeconomic situation which looks, indeed, stable and is not dependent on hydrocarbons market. That is easy. What needs to be emphasized, yet again, is that US Dollar's reserve status in the last 50 or so years is based primarily on the myth of American military power, period. The times when the United States was a manufacturing powerhouse of the globe are long gone, with China taking this position, and, once this American capacity was gone, the only thing which remained, apart from the "soft power" driven primarily by Hollywood, the only thing on which US Dollar's status remained to be based became expeditionary warfare. As Moammar Qaddafi, and few others, learned the hard way--one doesn't question the dominance of US currency, nor US "economic" views. That is, of course, if you are Libya, Iraq or any other location where the pre-deployment of about 300,000 US marines and GIs could be done without interruption from subject or, rather object, to be taught a valuable lesson. Color revolutions are also in this teaching tool-box. 

But those instruments go only so far, until they run into the wall of near-peer, let alone peer, who, actually, can teach its own lessons and draw its own red lines. Once one considers that Russia sits on roughly 30% (by different estimates) of global mineral wealth, has modern economy, stable political system and, what really matters, state-of-the-art Armed Forces armed with some mind-boggling weapons--that is the moment when one, like Russia, can offer a variety of alternatives from increasing the share (already growing) of payments in national currencies, to using Ruble as a main payment tool within BRICS at least. Not only Russia can, but she questions US Dollar's hegemony and, in fact, calls for overthrowing it. She can afford to. In the end, it is Russia, not even China, who now stands guard on Eurasian economic integration and this guard function requires a real high-end military capability, which is a first derivative of economy of scale. As one long-time observer of China noted recently:

No Chinese citizen doesn’t understand what is going on. They are unified that the US is trying to destroy what they built in the last 40 years. And they perceive it as racist, also. It’s a recapitulation of centuries of racist imperialism. The reason the Chinese have stated their strategic relationship and acted in coordination with Russia, more and more every day, is their sense of need of Russia’s titanium spine against the Hegemon. China knows it is not strong enough to handle the storm.

Russia is. In fact that's Russian professional occupation for the last 1000 years--to handle storms. As I continue to state ad nauseam now for years--Russia has a product so valuable, so desirable by so many around the globe, that the question of price is not even that important, even if making Ruble a main currency of BRICS. Stability and peace are the names of this most treasured commodity and it is only the strength of arms which can provide it. How ironic, indeed. 

It Begins To Sink In, Finally, But Too Late.

No, really.

Russian oil exporters are pressuring Western commodity traders to pay for Russian crude in euros and not dollars as Washington prepares more sanctions for the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Moscow, Reuters reported last week, citing as many as seven industry sources. While it may have come as a surprise to the traders, who, Reuters said, were not too happy about it, the Russian companies’ move was to be expected as the Trump administration pursues a foreign policy where sanctions feature prominently. This approach, however, could undermine the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the global oil trade currency.

This situation, which passes as a surprise in the US only, augments well Ron Unz' yesterday's excellent summary of Trump Presidency.

However, although Trump had reached the presidency by advocating a radical populist-nationalist agenda, he has hardly governed in those terms. For his first two years in office, he sunk nearly all his political capital into enacting huge tax cuts for the rich, wholesale Wall Street deregulation, large increases in military spending, and an extremely pro-Israel foreign policy—exactly the sort of policies near-and-dear to the establishment conservative candidates whom he had crushed in the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, his jilted grassroots supporters have had to settle for some radical rhetoric and a regular barrage of outrageous Tweets rather than anything more substantive. With Republicans in full control of Congress, finding excuses for this widespread betrayal was quite difficult, but now that the Democrats have taken the House, Trump’s apologists can more easily shift the blame over to them.

Difficult to argue, because in terms of what really matters, that is tangible economic results, Trump has very little realistically to show for it. As Ron Unz continues:

For foreign policy reasons, I had strongly favored Trump both in the primary and in the general election, but I hardly regarded him as a thoughtful vessel for the positions he claimed to espouse. To put it bluntly, he struck me much like a highly-opinionated construction worker, angrily spouting off on politics in his local neighborhood bar, being right on some matters and wrong on others, but with none of his views based upon any deep understanding of the issues. I suspect that even many of Trump’s strongest supporters have gradually come around to a similar appraisal of their idol.

So did I, but hopes were dashed really fast and as Fred Reed in a moment of utter sheer brilliance observed about Trump he was First Transgender President, Trump Became Hillary. Trump simultaneously became also W and in terms of foreign policy, which in reality matters for the United States way more than it is traditionally credited with, Trump became a neocon in a sense of fanatically following an aggressive dogma and "weaponizing" US economy. So, the world learned fast that the economic war was declared on it and it started acting or, rather, counter-acting and most important strategic move was, inevitably, to slay a holy cow of America's economic "development" (or otherwise) of the last 70 years or so--the US Dollar. 

This is what Trump and people on the American "top" do not recognize, while the US still remains an economic powerhouse:

1. American Deindustrializtion hasn't been stopped while Reindustrialization requires a volume of the investment (money) which simply cannot be printed anymore nor could US treasuries be viewed anymore as a trusted instrument, because...

2. A main pillar of these treasuries--the US military power and ability to control the empire, apart from being grossly inflated to start with, diminished greatly in the last 20+ years and continue to decline because...

3. The actual size of the US economy is much smaller than those proverbial $22 trillion and China outproduces the United States by a great margin in many critical fields and catching up in others. As an example, one of many, the US commercial shipbuilding doesn't even register (0.35% of global tonnage) in this industry, never mind nauseating mantras about US being "largest economy" in the world--it is not, China is. One can review Chinese commercial shipbuilding here, or can review who is a real mover (a hint--they are a gas station) for satellite-constellations in space.

4. Removing, or bypassing, US Dollar as the only global reserve currency--the process which is ongoing and accelerating as I type this--inevitably will cut the US economy "to size" and will accelerate the process of "landing" greatly, hopefully not crash-landing which may force desperate US "elites" unleash a global conflict. 

Trump's trade wars are a good indicator of desperation and these wars only accelerate dedollarization and there is nothing the US can do about it short of unleashing a global military conflict, as I said earlier. Some people in D.C. think about it. Iran's SWIFT snafu is just the latest in a row of the geopolitical and economic prescriptions which do not work and, in reality, harm the United States itself. Well, Trump is correct in one thing for sure--if not for the United States China would have never become what she is today and for that, as the saying goes, United States has only itself to blame. In the end, if not for the way the US treated Russia in 1990s there would have been no fundamental rethinking of Russia's foreign and defense policies. But here we are. Trump merely, rephrasing Clausewitz, continues American aggression by other (economic) means and we are in the brave new world where nobody takes American words and promises seriously anymore. In related news, last week:

ZHUHAI, China (Reuters) - China and Russia on Tuesday unveiled a life-size model of a proposed wide-body long-haul jet at the opening of China’s largest airshow, giving public shape to their joint efforts to break into a market dominated by Boeing and Airbus.