Home » Posts tagged 'world order'

Tag Archives: world order

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Oil and the Changing World Order

October 19, 2020

OIL AND THE CHANGING WORLD ORDER

U.S. oil inventories have fallen every week for two months yet WTI has averaged less than $40 per barrel since the end of August. That is because oil has been re-priced and markets are unwilling to pay more for it.

Those who expect a return to 2019 price levels acknowledge that the oil-demand recovery has stalled. They believe that this is because of Covid-19 and that things will return to normal once there is a vaccine.

Perspective

“I don’t think the severity of this downturn has been well understood yet.”

—Sophia Koropeckyj, Moody’s Analytics

What is happening to oil markets and to the global economy is not because of a virus. The virus greatly accelerated what was already happening. Things won’t go back to normal when the virus ends. I wrote that a month ago and nothing has happened since then to change my mind.

The world is in a debt cycle that began fifty years ago. World orders change when debt cycles approach their end. Ray Dalio has studied how and why world orders have changed over the last 1500 years. These are the requisites that changing world orders have in common:

  • High levels of indebtedness.
  • Low interest rates that limit the ability of central banks to stimulate the economy.
  • Large wealth gaps and political divisions that lead to social an political conflicts.
  • A rising world power that challenges the over-extended leading power.

These criteria have clear relevance to the present world order as China challenges U.S. hegemony. Discord created by debt, interest rates and income inequality have been aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic but will not be resolved when the virus is controlled.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia Urges “Independence” From “Imposed World Order” Of US Financial System

July 24, 2019

Russia Urges “Independence” From “Imposed World Order” Of US Financial System

Following Russia signalling last week, its willingness to join the controversial payments channel Instex – designed to circumvent both SWIFT as well as US sanctions banning trade with Iran – new statements from Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called on the international community to free itself from a purely US-controlled international financial system and US dollar dominance. 

“We must protect ourselves from political abuses made with the help of the US dollar and the American banking system,” he said while addressing a ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement held in Venezuela, according to TASS. “We must turn our dependence in this sphere into independence,” he added.

“Let us be multipolar in the spheres of finance and currency,” he said.

Image via Newsmax

The senior diplomat was specifically addressing US-led sanctions and the tightening economic noose, including a near total oil export blockade, on the Maduro government in Caracas. 

The comments also come after early this year the Maduro regime was stymied in its bid to pull $1.2 billion worth of gold out of the Bank of England, according to a January Bloomberg report. The Bank of England’s (BoE) decision to deny Maduro officials’ withdrawal request was a the height of US coup efforts targeting Maduro.

Specifically top US officials, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, had lobbied their UK counterparts to help cut off the regime from its overseas assets, as we reported at the time. Washington has further lobbied other international institutions, and especially its Latin American allies, to seize Venezuelan assets and essentially hold them for control of Juan Guaido’s opposition government in exile. 

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia and China Are Containing the US to Reshape the World Order

February 21, 2019

Russia and China Are Containing the US to Reshape the World Order

Russia and China Are Containing the US to Reshape the World Order

Fortunately the world today is very different from that of 2003, Washington’s decrees are less effective in determining the world order. But in spite of this new, more balanced division of power amongst several powers, Washington appears ever more aggressive towards allies and enemies alike, regardless of which US president is in office.

China and Russia are leading this historic transition while being careful to avoid direct war with the United States. To succeed in this endeavor, they use a hybrid strategy involving diplomacy, military support to allies, and economic guarantees to countries under Washington’s attack.

The United States considers the whole planet its playground. Its military and political doctrine is based on the concept of liberal hegemony, as explained by political scientist John Mearsheimer. This imperialistic attitude has, over time, created a coordinated and semi-official front of countries resisting this liberal hegemony. The recent events in Venezuela indicate why cooperation between these counter-hegemonic countries is essential to accelerating the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar reality, where the damage US imperialism is able to bring about is diminished.

Moscow and Beijing lead the world by hindering Washington

Moscow and Beijing, following a complex relationship from the period of the Cold War, have managed to achieve a confluence of interests in their grand objectives over the coming years. The understanding they have come to mainly revolves around stemming the chaos Washington has unleashed on the world.

The guiding principle of the US military-intelligence apparatus is that if a country cannot be controlled (such as Iraq following the 2003 invasion), then it has to be destroyed in order to save it from falling into Sino-Russian camp. This is what the United States has attempted to do with Syria, and what it intends to do with Venezuela.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Washington Is Changing The World Order Against Its Own Interests

December 13, 2018

Washington Is Changing The World Order Against Its Own Interests

Support your website. It keeps you from living in The Matrix. Donate now.https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/pages/donate/

The hubris and arrogance of Washington have been at work since the Clinton regime to destroy the power and relevance of the United States.

This website has an international audience. The most asked question from this audience is the world order. There is a realization that Washington’s control might weaken, a development people abroad see as hopeful. They ask me for verification of their hope.

Here is my answer:

The world order has already changed.  China has a larger and more powerful industrial and manufacturing based economy than the US, and China’s potential domestic consumer market is four times larger than that of the US. As economies are consumer based, China’s potential is an economy four times larger than that of the US.

Russia has a far more capable military with weapon systems unmatched by the US. The US is drowning in debt, and the illegal and irresponsible sanctions that Washington tries to impose on others are driving the world’s largest countries away from the use of the US dollar as world reserve currency and away from Western clearance systems such as SWIFT.  The United States already has one foot in the grave.  Any country sufficiently stupid to ally with the US is allied with a dead man walking.

President Eisenhower, a five-star general, warned Americans 57 years ago to no effect that the military/security complex was already a threat to the American people’s ability to control their government. Today the military/security complex is the Government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The World Order That’s Now Emerging

November 19, 2018

The World Order That’s Now Emerging

The World Order That’s Now Emerging

The Post-World-War-II world order was dominated by the one WWII major combatant that had only 0.32% of its population (the lowest percentage) killed by the war: the United States. The Soviet Union’s comparable number killed by the war was the highest — it was 13.7% — 4.28 times higher than America’s. The US was the main force that defeated Japan and so won WWII in Asia. The USSR, however, was the main force that defeated Germany and so won WWII in Europe. The USSR suffered vastly more than did the US to achieve its victory. In addition to suffering 4.28 times the number of war-deaths than did US, the USSR’s financial expenditures invested in the conflict, as calculated by Jan Ludvik, were 4.8 times higher than were America’s financial expenditures on the war.

Thus, at the war’s end, the Soviet Union was exhausted and in a much weaker condition than it had been before the war. By contrast, the US, having had none of the war’s battles occurring on its territory, was (by comparison) barely even scratched by the war, and it was thus clearly and overwhelmingly the new and dominant world-power emerging from the war.

That was the actual situation in 1945.

The US Government did not sit on its haunches with its enormous post-war advantage, but invested wisely in order to expand it. One of the first investments the US made after the war was the Marshall Plan to rebuild the European countries that had now become the US aristocracy’s vassal-states. The heavily damaged USSR possessed no such extra cash to invest in (rebuilding) its vassals. Furthermore, the USSR’s communist regime was additionally hobbled by Karl Marx’s labor theory of value, which produced prices that contained no useful information about demand and thus no constructive information for planners. (Planning is essential regardless whether an enterprise is private or public.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The ‘End of Dreams’, and the Saving of Appearances

November 25, 2017

The ‘End of Dreams’, and the Saving of Appearances


Zao Wu-Ki The red sun 1950
Once again, to my delight, we’re back with former British diplomat and MI6 ‘ranking figure’ Alastair Crooke and his Conflicts Forum organization. We posted a few of his articles this year and last. This time, Alastair writes a reaction to one of his own articles posted at Consortium News, which I included in the November 18 Debt Rattle at the Automatic Earth. My short comment then: “Former (and current?!) TAE contributor Alastair Crooke draws his conclusions.” This morning, the Conflicts Forum reached out again:

Dear Raul, We took the hint on a recent posting your site that referred to one of Alastair’s articles! …. and below is a comment piece he has done. It is an attempt to be strategic at where we’re going.

Anytime, guys! My first reaction to that piece was that Alastair makes Donald Trump and Jared Kushner’s role in the Saudi crackdown seem very large, which makes the role played by deep state America look small in comparison. And I’m not so sure about that. The riddle of ‘who’s playing who?’ is not a straightforward one. But that’s by no means a criticism (I ain’t criticizing no MI6!). It’s a question.

First, here are two paragraphs of that article to ‘get in the mood’:

Trump’s Saudi Scheme Unravels

Aaron Miller and Richard Sokolsky, writing in Foreign Policy, suggest “that Mohammed bin Salman’s most notable success abroad may well be the wooing and capture of President Donald Trump, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.” Indeed, it is possible that this “success” may prove to be MbS’ only success. “It didn’t take much convincing”, Miller and Sokolski wrote: “Above all, the new bromance reflected a timely coincidence of strategic imperatives.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Dismal and Hopeful Future

July 22, 2015

The Dismal and Hopeful Future

One doesn’t have to be a brilliant social analyst to see that the contemporary world order is doomed, destined to start visibly crumbling within the next decade or two at the latest. The neoliberal system, in fact the corporate capitalist system, is radically unsustainable. It is too unstable, too universally rapacious, too humanly exploitative and environmentally destructive, too demoniacally self-consuming–for capitalism can profit from its self-immolation!–to last much longer.

Is it even necessary anymore to argue for these claims?

Capitalism means self-sabotage. Its profit-making interest lies in paying wage-earners as little as possible, and ideally in mechanizing and automating them out of existence, for they’re expensive and troublesome with their demands for “rights” and other such nonsense. On the other hand, capitalism needs markets; it needs entities to sell things to, for that’s how it makes profit. Any sort of entity would serve its purposes–alien creatures, super-advanced machines, genetically enhanced chimpanzees, whatever–but, tragically, capitalism has so far been forced to do business with the very beings it exploits and wants to deny income to: humans!

Cruel irony! The mass of mankind, against which capitalism wars in the sphere of production, it has to make nice to in the sphere of consumption, to blandish and cajole into buying commodities. This fusion of consumer and producer in the same being is the tragic contradiction that torments capitalism and drives it to manic-depression–exuberance followed by depression followed by exuberance. The capitalist elite revels in Romanesque orgies as it squeezes money out of the sweat and blood of the workers, but the party ends once markets have, as a result, so shrunk–or the worm of doubt has so grown in the minds of investors–that investment is cut back to the point of ending growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Monetary System, World Order We’ve Had Since 1940’s Are Collapsing: Richard Maybury

March 7, 2015

Monetary System, World Order We’ve Had Since 1940’s Are Collapsing: Richard Maybury

Richard Maybury has been predicting ‘black swan’ events in his newsletter Early Warning Report for the last two decades.

In a recent conversation, he put his finger on something happening around the world. He sees a growing anxiety about global events – “everybody knows there’s something seriously wrong but they don’t know what is really happening,” he said.

A reckoning with policies that have been in place since the 1940’s is taking place, according to Richard. The fallout, he says, has implications for currencies, the military hegemony of the US, and political stability around the world.

US Hegemony Since the 1940’s

“The United Nations, NATO, the Bretton Woods monetary system, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund were all created in the 1940s according to blueprints that were approved in Washington,” Richard explains.

And this ‘world order’ may be coming to an end, he believes: “It’s the collapse of that structure that was built in the 1940s that is behind all of these problems that are popping up in financial markets and economies around the world” (we published a report recently on why many indicators undermine the ‘recovery’ thesis. Download here).

Geopolitical Fallout

Everyone knows that tensions between the US and the Middle East are at all-time highs but Richard also believes the US is facing an untenable situation in its attitude to China. The US has the same approach of policing East Asia, in particular the Sea of China, as it did during the 1940’s, but things have changed, and the US is no longer  the overwhelming power that it used to be, when most of Asia was under-developed relative to the West.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Richard N. Haass | Why the Post–Cold War Order Is Unraveling | Foreign Affairs

November 16, 2014

Richard N. Haass | Why the Post–Cold War Order Is Unraveling | Foreign Affairs.

In his classic The Anarchical Society, the scholar Hedley Bull argued that there was a perennial tension in the world between forces of order and forces of disorder, with the details of the balance between them defining each era’s particular character. Sources of order include actors committed to existing international rules and arrangements and to a process for modifying them; sources of disorder include actors who reject those rules and arrangements in principle and feel free to ignore or undermine them. The balance can also be affected by global trends, to varying degrees beyond the control of governments, that create the context for actors’ choices. These days, the balance between order and disorder is shifting toward the latter. Some of the reasons are structural, but some are the result of bad choices made by important players — and at least some of those can and should be corrected.

The chief cauldron of contemporary disorder is the Middle East. For all the comparisons that have been made to World War I or the Cold War, what is taking place in the region today most resembles the Thirty Years’ War, three decades of conflict that ravaged much of Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century. As with Europe back then, in coming years, the Middle East is likely to be filled with mostly weak states unable to police large swaths of their territories, militias and terrorist groups acting with increasing sway, and both civil war and interstate strife. Sectarian and communal identities will be more powerful than national ones. Fueled by vast supplies of natural resources, powerful local actors will continue to meddle in neighboring countries’ internal affairs, and major outside actors will remain unable or unwilling to stabilize the region.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress