Highly Recommended: Luongo On The New Geopolitical Gameboard
I really can’t recommend Tom Luongo’s latest analysis highly enough:
There’s so much involved, but Luongo hits on some of the basic and very important issues, especially how Putin’s strategy is likely to be a global game changer. I’ve already cited other analysts saying this is likely the end of Globalism as Davos knows it. That should be good news for the world and for the US—if we’re smart enough to react accordingly, in line with the reality of human nature. Here are a few excerpts
First Luongo explains the “ruled based order” that the US has become used to: We say ‘jump’ and they ask ‘how high’? Americans have come to think of this order as part of the nature of geopolitics—the end of history, as neocons like to say.
Here’s the thing. Up until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and yes, it is an invasion, justifiable or otherwise) there was something called the ‘rules-based order’ promoted mainly by the US but also supported directly by the European Union and the Commonwealth.
The rules of the ‘rules-based order’ were simple. We make the rules, you follow them. We reserve the right to change the rules whenever we want to suit our purpose.
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For months we’ve been treated to the dumbest and most infuriating facsimile of diplomacy I’ve ever witnessed. It beggared belief listening to the nauseating virtue signaling of US ‘diplomats’ who refused to engage Russia’s concerns in even a half-serious manner while blaming them for every issue on the planet.
It was as clumsy as it was stupid, to quote Darth Vader.
It was clear that Putin and his staff would be given this ultimate option, invade Ukraine and face global opprobrium or kneel before Zod.
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It goes back to the statement, most likely made by then Vice-President Dick Cheney, on the ‘reality-based community,’
“That’s not the way the world really works anymore … We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’“
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... I wrote back in March 2018 that Putin’s State of the Union address where he unveiled new weapon systems was a major turning point.
For the next four years we have seen a steady escalation of neoconservative insanity in a vane [sic] attempt to push US missile systems closer to Moscow, contra to all signed international agreements, UN resolutions about resolving the breakaway republics of Ukraine and, frankly, common decency.
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The old game entered its spiral towards conclusion [in December] when Russia sent and published publicly its draft proposals for a new security architecture concerning Russia and NATO’s relationship in Eastern Europe.
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The US was now the rule-taker rather than the rule-maker. You knew this because it prompted multiple rounds of scurrying to Moscow by officials from all over the West trying to talk the Russians off their new game.
Now Luongo shifts, importantly, to sanctions—because that’s the only card the West thinks it has. Recall that yesterday at the UN China, India, and the UAE refused to get on board with condemning Russia. As noted, that may be only three countries, but it’s an enormous chunk of the world economy. Anyone who thinks Russia has no alternatives should reconsider. No one’s saying this is simple, but that applies in both directions. Also, please note re Nordstream 2 that the current delay was probably baked in months ago, before Russia reset the rules. Do not count on Germany remaining in anti-Russian gas solidarity.
For months I’ve been telling you that Nordstream 2 would eventually be turned on and that Russia would not be kicked out of the SWIFT telecommunications network regardless of what happened.
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Less than a day after Russia wiped out both Ukraine’s military power and political architecture, President Sundowner confirmed that all the West’s threats were as empty as the heads of the Millennials running the propaganda desk at the State Dept.
After months of threatening Russia with expulsion from the SWIFT financial messaging system, Europe complained and someone finally showed some sense.
Cutting Russia out of SWIFT would mean the end of the EU as anyone has known it or wishes it could be in the future. It would mean the end of the petrodollar system.
Russia is too systemically important to the global commodity trade that goes far beyond energy. It supplies not only the marginal barrel of oil and BTU of natural gas, but pound of nickel, palladium, titanium, enriched uranium and tungsten. It’s a major supplier of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, potash, and urea.
As Luongo is quick to point out, beyond oil and natural gas—meaning, staying warm in winter in Boston—fertilizer, ultimately, means eating when you’re hungry. We’ve all heard about the fertilizer shortage, right? Anyone who thinks Russia can’t play a counter-sanctions game should reconsider. I can’t predict how this will play out, but Russia actually does have alternative markets in the world commodity trade. If Zhou is too dumb to figure that out, Germany and the rest of Europe is certainly not. The US currently exempts most of those critical Russian commodities from sanctions. But will Russia continue shipping to the US and taking our money, or will it seek alternative markets—even for a portion of that trade?
Russia held all the cards in the negotiations over Ukraine and we recklessly pursued a policy of insults and amateurish propaganda, refusing to believe Russia wouldn’t make her final stand.
By putting boots on the ground, planes in the air and missiles up the ass of every Ukrainian military installation across the country, Russia turned the ‘might makes right’ argument of the US and Europe on its head.
As Putin told the West—meaning, the US—in 2018 when he unveiled Russia’s new weapons systems, including hypersonic missiles: Now you will listen to us.
So Biden and Davos got the war in Ukraine they’ve been begging Russia for. The problem for them now is Russia isn’t playing their game anymore and they are wholly unprepared for the next one.
Do yourself a favor—follow the link and read it all.
Via MoA:
Britain has had the stupidity of sanctioning the Russian air carrier Aeroflot. In a counter move Russia prohibited British Airways from flying over Russian territory. Normally all flights from Britain to the Far East cross Russian airspace. These will now have to be redirected to other routes which will significantly increase their flight time and fuel burn.
I’m reading now, thank you. What I can’t help but notice is these same globalist ideologies that called in Ukraine to give up THEIR nuclear weapons in 1994 (because that was going to end the Russian nuclear threat??) are coming from the same place as pretending licking down the economy and flattening a generation of kids was going yo somehow stop a globally endemic respiratory virus.
These people are idiots and they need to go. They only cause suffering to not solve, only extend, problems and cause incredible suffering with collateral damage.