Will Macedonia Be Removed From The Map In 2018?

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

The future looks very grim for Macedonia as the newly installed pro-Western coup “government” wastes no time in dismantling the country’s identity and selling out sovereignty to some of its hostile neighbors, both of which could have the cumulative effect of erasing what is constitutionally known as the Republic of Macedonia from the world map by sometime next year and replacing it with a domestically reconstituted “federalized” (internally partitioned) entity internationally recognized by a “politically correct” “compromise” moniker.

Backdrop To The Balkans

The tiny South-Central Balkan country of the Republic of Macedonia is in dire straits right now, but most of Europe – let alone the rest of the world – has no idea that this is the case because the Mainstream Media narrative is that the state’s two-year-long political crisis was “resolved” when the patriotic VMRO-DPMNE government of Nikola Gruevski was replaced in a “constitutional/electoral coup” that followed Color Revolution and even Hybrid War provocations. The author wrote about this in a Sputnik piece at the time from May 2017 titled “The Macedonian Crisis Isn’t Over, and a Bigger Balkan One is Just Beginning”, and the reader should review that article and also skim through his Oriental Review & Sputnik archives on the topic if they’re not already familiar with the contextual backdrop of what happened and why.

In a nutshell, the Republic of Macedonia was targeted for Hybrid War destabilization in order to offset Russia and China’s Balkan megaprojects of the Balkan Stream gas pipeline and Balkan Silk Road, respectively, that are expected to transit through the country, though with the former possibly being redirected to Bulgaria instead. In any case, a trumped-up “surveillance” scandal was used as the Color Revolution “trigger event” for attempting to coerce a Regime Tweak (political concessions), the failure of which forced the external conspirators and their internal Soros-backed SDSM “opposition” collaborators to move towards the next step of Regime Change, though eventually the decision was made for a Regime Reboot (constitutional change) to fundamentally cripple the country and forever prevent its key integration in the emerging Multipolar World Order.

The point of this piece isn’t to chronicle all of the author’s previous analyses on the topic, nor to reiterate his explanation about what’s previously been happening and why, but to engage in forward-focused reporting and scenario forecasting in raising awareness about the fraught future that awaits the Republic of Macedonia.

The Great Partition

The newly installed pro-Western coup “government” of Zoran Zaev and his Soros-backed SDSM cohorts has swiftly moved to cut a serious of external and internal deals that are bound to endanger the country’s existence by next year. For starters, despite denying it all throughout the 2016 campaign, his party is now aggressively trying to push through “bilingualism” in setting the institutional precedent for what logically seems to be the country’s inevitable forthcoming “federalization” (internal partition). Concurrently with this, he also signed a “treaty” with neighboring Bulgaria that essentially makes Macedonia a junior-rank partner susceptible to being swallowed up by its civilizationally similar brethren to the east in the event of a serious domestic crisis, such as the one that could be sparked on command by the country’s “federalization” and de-facto partial absorption into the revived Nazi-era geopolitical project of “Greater Albania”.

The formal international partition of the Republic of Macedonia between Albania and Bulgaria is what the author predicted back in May 2015 and which was even indirectly responded to by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the time during the height of the country’s Color Revolution crisis, but this process has since taken on an unofficial form as well if Macedonia is “federalized” into an Albanian western half simultaneously with its eastern one being socio-economically subsumed by Bulgaria, with this latter scenario being facilitated by the Albanian “bilingualism” push and recent “treaty” with Bulgaria. Some Macedonians have keenly picked up on this plot, but that’s why the ruling authorities have sought to imprison patriotic citizens and political figures in order to intimidate the rest of the population into passively allowing this anti-constitutional and even treasonous process of state dismantlement to continue.

Zaev’s “Dictatorship Of The Proletariat”

At the same time as SDSM is locking up its political opponents, it’s also trying to pass through a controversial “amnesty” proposal for freeing convicted criminals, which might even apply to Daesh terrorists who are returning to the country. Despite the “government’s” heavy American-ordered pressure on civil society, the Republika online information outlet was brave enough to write about this appalling dichotomy in pointing out how imprisoned terrorists and free patriots are poised to switch places if Zaev gets what he wants. This alone speaks to the silent “lustration” process that’s being carried out in the country right now to “cleanse” its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”), as well as academic, media, and other institutions, of all opposition to the coup-imposed authorities.

Interestingly, SDSM is establishing a sort of “dictatorship of the proletariat” in Macedonia, seeing as how the party presents itself as a “leftist-socialist” one, and true to the tradition of this ideological camp, it’s using the cover and slogans of the working class (“proletariat”) to set up an actual dictatorship in the country. Just like it’s usually happened in the past, “leftist-socialist” demagogues are distracting the masses with high-sounding platitudes and crafting a media-acceptable narrative for their external backers to hide behind in “justifying” the seizure of power by an elite group of individuals who are far removed from the actual concerns of the working class. History has a curious way of repeating itself, as the EU is the warped ideological successor of the Soviet Union taken to its most dystopian socio-cultural and dictatorial extremes, so there’s a certain “logic” behind why this faux “leftist-socialist” “government” is so fawning towards Brussels.

But unlike during the Soviet period of the Old Cold War when any ideologically aligned country could join the Eastern Bloc, in the “EuroLiberal” era of the New Cold War there are certain bureaucratic obstacles that prevent the free accession of aspirant states to both the EU and NATO, namely – pun intended – the Republic of Macedonia’s constitutional name. The aforementioned post-modern unipolar structures occupying Western Eurasia are set up in such a way that new admissions must be consensually agreed upon by all existing members, and in this case Greece is adamantly opposed to Macedonia joining either of these two. What might have at one time been viewed as a “curse” in the chaotic international uncertainty immediately following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, this “veto right” has actually turned into a “blessing” because it formally kept Macedonia out of both organizations until the present day.

Name Games

Nevertheless, the US-installed coup “government” of Zaev’s SDSM wants to change that, but the only way that he can do so is if he gets rid of Macedonia’s constitutional name and therefore erases the country from the map. It doesn’t matter if it’s called “New Macedonia”, “Northern Macedonia”, or “The Central Balkan Republic” like has been speculatively reported, or even the author’s own admittedly absurd prediction of the “Federation of Vardar Albania”, but the fact of the matter is that it won’t be the Republic of Macedonia, a name which has taken on a semi-sacred aura as the torchbearer of Macedonian identity across its rich history. The EU Commissioner signaled that he expects Zaev to change Macedonia’s name by next year, which would then allow the country to be fast-tracked into both the EU and NATO and thus formalize its occupation by the Western elite.

All of this should rightly enrage any Macedonian, but Zaev and his fellow underlings are unfazed because they don’t have any patriotic affiliation to their homeland. Just like their Soviet predecessors, their loyalty lies with an ideology, not a nation, which is why they’re literally selling Macedonia out to Albania, Bulgaria, and the EU in order to please Greece and therefore fulfill the US’ grand strategic vision of annexing their country to its hegemonic unipolar institutions in order to more effectively disrupt, control, or influence China’s (and possibly Russia’s) Balkan megaproject(s). The final step is to remove Macedonia’s constitutional name and replace it with a “compromise” one, but the run-up to dealing a deathblow to this ancient country is the destruction of the monuments to Macedonia’s civilizational heritage that were built as the flagships of the former VMRO government’s Skopje 2014 project.

Monument Mockery

To add insult to injury, the “Cultural Marxist” erasure of all visible signs of Macedonia’s historical uniqueness will probably be directly supervised by Hoyt Brian Yee, Victoria Nuland’s successor and expected replacement of current US Ambassador to Macedonia Jess Baily. Yee was just as responsible for Macedonia’s coup as Nuland was for Ukraine’s, yet at least the Eastern European country wasn’t totally humiliated to the point of having her officially oversee the destruction of its monuments to Lenin, the founder of Ukraine’s first-ever statehood no matter how “politically incorrect” it is for its ultra-nationalists to ever acknowledge. In Macedonia’s case, however, the Balkan country is being forced to endure the shame of having the man most directly responsible for their coup placed in charge of seeing out the destruction of monuments representing a much older civilizational heritage than just the past 100 years.

If the Skopje 2014 monuments, especially the horseman in the city center that’s clearly supposed to be Alexander the Macedonian, are destroyed, then it will probably be impossible to prevent Macedonia’s name change and its subsequently swift annexation into the EU and NATO alongside the state-supported suppression of its people’s culture, history, and civilization. The “government’s” plan to make a mockery of Macedonia’s monuments and disown its very identity could function as an emergency “trigger event” for sparking a “reverse-Color Revolution”, which the author previously analyzed as the creative utilization of Color Revolution techniques by patriotic individuals for multipolar and pro-sovereignty purposes, just like what was attempted in May when concerned citizens unsuccessfully tried to prevent their parliament’s takeover by a former Albanian separatist-terrorist who was designed by Zaev as that body’s “speaker”.

A Third Force Is Calling

If Macedonians don’t band together to stop what is being falsely marketed as an “apolitical and anti-corruption municipal decision”, then it might be inevitable that their country will cease to exist in its present name and possibly even state (per an internal and/or external partition) by next year. If the monuments fall, Macedonia falls, once and for all, which is why the last chance to save Macedonia is to save its monuments. VMRO has the greatest potential to organize legal and peaceful demonstrations in support of this pressingly important issue, but some of the party elite are unfortunately partly compromised due to what can only be postulated is American blackmail pressure against them, be it the threat of physical violence or illegal arrest on fake pretexts (“anti-corruption”, “abuse of power”, etc.) by the coup “government”. As such, a Third Force needs to eventually emerge, possibly growing out of VMRO and the various civil society movements aligned with it, in order to counteract the limitations being imposed on the former ruling party and serve as a bridge for attracting “moderate” SDSM supporters who were misled during the last election.

The protection of Macedonia’s monuments – and accordingly its statehood, civilization, and identity – mustn’t be framed as a partisan political issue, which isn’t at all what VMRO is doing but its potentially pivotal role in being the organizational center of such a civil society movement might make it easier for SDSM and its American-Soros backers to manipulate the perception that it is, which is why it’s essential that a Third Force develop in leading the way during this historically crucial moment. Whatever it’s called and however it’s formed, this Third Force will be the vanguard actor protecting Macedonia from dismantlement, with its members understanding that it’s now or never to safeguard their state because its very existence is incompatible with the EU and NATO’s plans expansionist plans. The Republic of Macedonia is slated to be removed from the map so that its people and territory can be formally annexed to these two unipolar structures under Zaev’s “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and all indications point to 2018 being the make-or-break year where Macedonia’s patriots will either prevail or the country itself will perish.

Another Step Towards The Sovietization Of American Media

Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

This week the US Department of Justice Criminal Division forced the Russian-funded television network RT (formerly Russia Today) to register as a “foreign agent” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Failure to comply would have risked arrest of RT’s management and seizure of its assets. The move comes on the heels of Senators’ recent demands that terrified tech giants Twitter, Facebook, and Google act as ideological filters.

With no discernable defenders among America’s media establishment, RT rightly denounced the selective FARA mandate as an attack on media freedom – which it is. But more ominous is what the move against RT says about America’s rulers’ further intention to limit the sources of information available to its subjects.

As Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute writes:

“RT America is a news organization operating in the United States that is funded at least partly by a foreign government. So is the BBC. So is Deutsche Welle, France24, Al-Jazeera, and numerous other foreign media organizations. It is assumed that they all to a degree reflect the editorial interests of those who pay the bills.

 

“The same is true with other, non-state funded media outlets, of course. It’s up to us to factor these things in when we consume media. That’s what it means to be a free people.

 

“A core value in a free society is that our own government has zero power over what we read, what we watch, how we think, how we come to interpret current events, the conclusions we draw based on these inputs, and so on. These are private matters over which any government that is not tyrannical should have no sway.

 

“The real insidiousness of tyrannical systems is that the government most lasciviously seeks control over most private spaces — including the most private space called our brain, our intellect, our conscience. We must be free to follow our interests down whatever path they may lead us so that we may reach our own conclusions and then perhaps test them ourselves in the marketplace of ideas.”

The attack on RT (and another Russian network, Sputnik, which evidently has not yet been given a deadline for registration) is a milestone in the degeneration of the American official (call them what you want – corporate, legacy, mainstream) media into PR agencies for the governing establishment and its ideological imperatives. We’ve been moving along this path for a while now, and it’s going to get worse.

Long gone are those halcyon days of yore when Americans could just sit back and watch CBS’s Walter Cronkite with total confidence they were getting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. (For youngsters who have no idea who the hell Cronkite was, just Google “most trusted man in America.”) Back in the naïve infancy of the TV age, from about the 1950s until the beginning of the 1990s, there was a common national media culture that reflected the established, generally liberal, mainly Democratic tilt of the American inteligentsiya that was almost uniform among the (then only) three networks and a handful of major newspapers and magazines. To be sure, that was also a ruling class media of a sort, but it reflected a broad and deep social consensus.

Those days are no more. Perhaps the unraveling of media trust and social consensus alike started in earnest with Vietnam. But still, for decades afterwards there still seemed to be plenty of empty cranial receptacles for government and corporate propaganda of the first Gulf War under Bush 41, Bill Clinton’s phony humanitarian wars in the Balkans, Bush 43’s Iraq War, and Obama’s Libyan and Syrian imbroglios. Sadly, there are many such cranial receptacles even today.

By its attack on RT, the US government is officially telling us that only the mainstream media (MSM) can be regarded as are purveyors of Truth (with a capital T) and that anybody not on the approved list is fake. How do we know? Why, the MSM themselves tell us! The Washington Post’s “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” CNN’s “Facts First.” The New York Times’ “The Truth is Hard.” (The fact that certifiably authoritative and truthful media are militantly hostile to Russia, not to mention to Donald Trump, is purely coincidental.)

A lot of Americans don’t buy it anymore, though. Some of the skepticism falls along purely partisan lines reflecting increasing moral and political polarization: our media (which I exclusively consult) tells the truth, but your media (which I don’t consult) are liars. About one-third of Americans get their talking points from, say, Michael Moore, and from Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, with their related internet echoes, while another third gets theirs from Rush Limbaugh, and from Sean Hannity on Fox News, and their internet echo chambers. Increasingly, there is nothing like a national dialogue on anything, but rather two entirely separate, diametrically opposed ideological cultures – and alternate realities – each demonizing “them.” This is why when after Barack Obama’s election the Tea Party appeared, the GOP fell over itself trying to co-opt them, while the Democrats denounced them as a mob of racists and subversives. When later the “Occupy” and Black Lives Matter movements broke out on the Left, the Democrats tried to figure out how to channel it while top Republicans denounced it as gang of commie anarchists and losers.

With the election of Donald Trump the divide intensified further to one of latent civil war.

At some point the false picture of pseudo-reality (as Alain Besançon called it in the late Soviet propaganda context) diverges so far from real reality that the official media narrative becomes useless and even counterproductive. While a majority of Americans probably are still glued to the partisan outlets of “their” side of the political divide, there is a growing sense across the spectrum that not only the MSM but even partisan media like Fox News and MSNBC are untrustworthy.

In the past, notably in the totalitarian societies of the 20^th century, maintaining the credibility of official media required the physical repression of alternatives. Today, such a crude approach is unnecessary and almost technologically unfeasible, even for such undemocratic countries as Iran, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia (though North Korea may be successful through the sheer unavailability of modern communications technology to most of the population). Instead of suppressing dissent, is it sufficient to maintain major media’s role as gatekeeper and certifier of reliability.

Which brings us back to the impact of foreign media like RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation, Al-Jazeera, CGTN, Press TV, often in parallel with alternative media like Zero Hedge, Lew Rockwell, Antiwar.com, Ron Paul Institute, and others, to break through the information firewall but arguably then being influenced by the agenda of the sponsoring foreign governments. In any case, a growing segment of the American public is discovering a skill once well-honed by the citizens of the former communist countries: reading between the lines of the official media (which is assumed to be full of lies) and making informed comparisons to samizdat alternative media, foreign sources, and the rumor-mill to guess what the truth might be.

Make no mistake – what has started with RT won’t end with RT. Our betters have decided they need to protect our minds from “propaganda” penetration that might cause us to doubt the truth of what CNN and the Washington Post tell us.

Citizens! Be grateful for such wise leaders and dedicated information workers! Smash the enemy voices that seek to undermine our democracy as we march boldly into the radiant future!

NATO: A Dangerous Paper Tiger

Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The Chinese have a genius for pithy expressions and few are more packed with meaning, while immediately understandable, than "paper tiger". NATO is one, but paper tigers that overestimate their powers can be dangerous.

Some Russians are concerned that there are today more hostile troops at the Russian border than at any time since 1941. While this is true, it is not, at the moment, very significant. The Germans invaded the USSR with nearly 150 divisions in 1941. Which, as it turned out, were not enough.

Today NATO has – or claims to have – a battle group in each of the three Baltic countries and one in Poland: pompously titled Enhanced Forward Presence. The USA has a brigade and talks of another. A certain amount of heavy weaponry has been moved to Europe. These constitute the bulk of the land forces at the border. They amount to, at the most optimistic assessment, assuming everything is there and ready to go, one division. Or, actually, one division equivalent (a very different thing) from 16 (!) countries with different languages, military practices and equipment sets and their soldiers ever rotating through. And, in a war, the three in the Baltics would be bypassed and become either a new Dunkirk or a new Cannae. All for the purpose, we are solemnly told, of sending "a clear message that an attack on one Ally would be met by troops from across the Alliance". But who"s the "message" for? Moscow already has a copy of the NATO treaty and knows what Article V says.

In addition to the EFP are the national forces. But they are in a low state: "depleted armies" they"ve been called: under equipped and under manned; seldom exercised. The German parliamentary ombudsman charged with overseeing the Bundeswehr says "There are too many things missing". In 2008 the French Army was described as "falling apart". The British Army "can"t find enough soldiers". The Italian army is ageing. Poland, one of the cheerleaders for the "Russian threat" meme, finds its army riven over accusations of politicisation. On paper, these five armies claim to have thirteen divisions and thirteen independent brigades. Call it, optimistically, a dozen divisions in all. The US Army (which has its own recruiting difficulties) adds another eleven or so to the list (although much of it is overseas entangled in the metastasising "war on terror"). Let"s pretend all the other NATO countries can bring another five divisions to the fight.

So, altogether, bringing everything home from the wars NATO is fighting around the world, under the most optimistic assumptions, assuming that everything is there and working (fewer than half of France"s tanks were operational, German painted broomsticks, British recruiting shortfalls), crossing your fingers and hoping, NATO could possibly cobble together two and a half dozen divisions: or one-fifth of the number Germany thought it would need. But, in truth, that number is fantasy: undermanned, under equipped, seldom exercised, no logistics tail, no munitions production backup, no time for a long logistics build up. NATO"s armies aren"t capable of a major war against a first class enemy. And no better is the principal member: "only five of the US Army’s 15 armoured brigade combat teams are maintained at full readiness levels". A paper tiger.

This reality was on display – for those who could see – in the "Dragoon Ride" of 2015. Intended "to assure those allies that live closest to the Bear that we are here", it was a parade of light armoured vehicles armed with heavy machine guns. Although breathlessly covered in the US media ("Show the world some of the firepower the United States and its NATO partners have in Eastern Europe"), it is unlikely that any watcher who had served in a Warsaw Pact army was impressed by what was in effect a couple of dozen BTR-50s. And neither was the US Army when it thought about it: a rush program was put into effect to give the vehicles a bigger weapon. The first one was delivered a year later. So now the US Army has a few lightly armoured vehicles with cannons. Something like the Soviet BTR-80 of the 1980s. Meanwhile, the Russians have the Bumerang-BM turret. Years of kicking in doors and patrolling roads hoping there are no IEDs are poor preparation for a real war.

No wonder NATO prefers to bomb defenceless targets from 15,000 feet. But there too, the record is unimpressive. Consider NATO"s last "successful" performance against Libya in 2011. No air defence, no opposition, complete freedom of movement and choice of action; and it took 226 days! Kosovo, a similar air action against a weak opponent, took 79 days. Meanwhile the years roll by in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Not, in short, a very efficient military alliance even when it is turned on against more-or-less helpless victims.

But there is one obvious question: does NATO take all its Russian threat rhetoric seriously, or is it just an advertising campaign? A campaign to bring in £240 million from the Baltics, an extra eighty billion for the US military-industrial complex, US$28 billion for Poland, Patriot missiles for Sweden, billions for F-35s for Norway (but no hangars for them), spending increases in the UK, Germany, France, Canada, Czech Republic and so on. A Russian threat is good for business: there"s poor money in a threat made of IEDs, bomb vests and small arms. Big profits require big threats. As I have written elsewhere, Russia was thought to be the right size of threat – big enough, but not too big. And they thought it was a safe target too – remember Obama in 2015 and his confidence that Russia didn"t amount to much?

Or so they thought then. What is amusing is that NATO is starting to worry about what it has awoken: "aerial denial zones", British army wiped out in an afternoon, NATO loses quickly in the Baltics, unstoppable carrier-killer missile, "eye-watering" EW capabilities, "black hole" submarines, generational lead in tanks, "devastating" air defence system, "totally outmatched". Russian actions, both diplomatic and military, in Syria gave NATO a taste: the Russian military is far more capable than they imagined. And far better wielded. The phantom conjured up to justify arms sales and NATO expansion now frightens its creators. A particularly striking example comes from General Breedlove, former NATO Supreme Commander who did much to poke Russia: he now fears that a war "would leave Europe helpless, cut off from reinforcements, and at the mercy of the Russian Federation." Not as negligible as they thought.

To what should we compare this weak, incompetent but endlessly boastful and belligerent alliance? In the past I have suggested that NATO is a drunk that drinks to cure the effects of its last bender. Is it a child in an endless tantrum, frightening itself with the stories it tells itself? Like the Warsaw Pact it is frightened of contradicting information or opinion and insists they be blocked. Certainly it is an exemplar of complacent self delusion: "Projecting Stability Beyond Our Borders" boasts about the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. The unicorns roam free in NATOland.

There is no reason to bother to read anything that comes out of NATO Headquarters: it"s only wind. There is one response. And that is Libya. When they say stability, respond Libya. When they say terrorism, respond Libya. When they say peace, respond Libya. When they say dialogue, respond Libya. When they say values, respond Libya. NATO is dangerous in the way that the stupid and deluded can be. But, when its principal member starts demanding its members "pay their share", and the people of five members see Washington a greater threat than Moscow, maybe its final days are upon us.

But incessant repetition becomes reality and that"s where the danger lies. Hysteria has reached absurd proportions: 2014"s "gas station masquerading as a country" decides who sits in the White House; directs referendums in Europe; rules men"s minds through RT and Sputnik; dominates social media; every Russian exercise brings panic. This would all be amusing enough except for the fact that Moscow doesn"t get the joke. While the NATO forces on their border may be insignificant at the moment, they can grow and all armies must prepare for the worst. The First Guards Tank Army is being re-created. I discuss the significance of that here. When it is ready – and Moscow moves much faster than NATO – it will be more than a match, offensively or defensively, for NATO"s paper armies. And, if Moscow thinks it needs more, more will come. And there will be no cost-free bombing operations at 15,000 feet against Russia. NATO"s naval strength, which is still real, is pretty irrelevant to operations against Russia. And still the paper tiger bares its paper teeth.

In other words – and I never tire of quoting him on this – "We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way". NATO has been kiting cheques for years. And rather than soberly examine its bank account, it writes another, listening to the applause in the echo chamber of its mind.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." We can only hope that NATO"s coming destruction does not destroy us too.

The White House Is Being Warned: North Korea Is Planning A "Devatstaing EMP Attack" On America

Marine Corps veteran Tommy Waller, director of special projects at the Center for Security Policy, has warned President Trump about the EMP threat facing the United States.

"Winston Churchill once said, "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it"...

 

The surest way for history to be kind to President Trump is for him to write it, by being the first leader to truly address the existential threat of EMP.

 

The first and foremost thing he must write is an Executive Order establishing his own EMP Commission in the White House - a task force that draws from the experience of the previous EMP Commission."

The grim warning is directed at North Korea and their ambitions to unleash a devastating atmospheric nuclear explosion above the United States that would collapse the nation’s power grid.

Most are aware by now that North Korea has successfully tested ICBM missiles and detonated nuclear devices throughout 2017. Put two and two together, and this is a dangerous cocktail fueling the regime in North Korea. It’s also a perfect recipe for Waller to further his agenda and urge President Trump to create a special commission to prepare for an EMP attack, such as the Manhattan Project in the 1940s in developing the nuclear bomb.

Here is what he had to say:

For those able to execute an unconstrained analysis of today’s threat environment, the single most urgent concern for America is what threatens her electric grid. Without electricity, the America we know today ceases to exist – and our enemies know this.

 

Elites in the U.S. government know this too, but most have chosen to ignore these threats and to ridicule, silence, and stymie anyone willing to speak the truth about them.

Waller also warns the whole system of 16 critical infrastructure components are dependent upon electricity and the idea an EMP could wipe out critical systems would be devastating for the survival of the empire.

America’s 16 Critical Infrastructures range from Water & Wastewater Systems to Food & Agriculture to Nuclear Reactors, Materials & Waste – and all of them depend upon electricity.

 

America’s need for electricity creates the ideal conditions by which an adversary can take advantage of Sun Tzu’s “Supreme art of war,” which is “to subdue your enemy without fighting.”

 

In 1999, with full recognition of this reality and enraged with American policy in the Balkans, Vladimir Lukin (the head of the Russian State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee) threatened a U.S. Congressional delegation by stating: “If we really wanted to hurt you with no fear of retaliation, we would launch a Submarine-launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM), [and] we would detonate a nuclear weapon high above your country and shut down your power grid.”  

With fear in place, Waller is pushing for the first Executive order, establishing his own EMP Commission in the White House.

What’s very interesting is that the Obama administration already did this by passing an Executive Order on October 2016 preparing the nation for ‘Space Weather Events’, which would contribute to a total power grid collapse.

Here is snippet of section 1 of the executive order:   

Space weather events, in the form of solar flares, solar energetic particles, and geomagnetic disturbances, occur regularly, some with measurable effects on critical infrastructure systems and technologies, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), satellite operations and communication, aviation, and the electrical power grid. Extreme space weather events — those that could significantly degrade critical infrastructure — could disable large portions of the electrical power grid, resulting in cascading failures that would affect key services such as water supply, healthcare, and transportation. Space weather has the potential to simultaneously affect and disrupt health and safety across entire continents. Successfully preparing for space weather events is an all-of-nation endeavor that requires partnerships across governments, emergency managers, academia, the media, the insurance industry, non-profits, and the private sector.

What’s even more peculiar are that high ranking officials are speculating a total power grid collapse across the United States is nearing,  but as mentioned above the Obama administration’s Executive Order is emphasizing ‘Space Weather Events’. On the other-hand, Waller is stressing that a total grid collapse will be due to a ‘North Korean EMP’.

The question: Who will be right? 

At this moment, the source of the total power grid collapse is unclear and conflicting —all depending on who you talk to, but there is one clear message. A total grid collapse in the United States is coming and it’s evident in the information above. 

In a blog post on Ripon Forum, the magazine of the moderate GOP Ripon Society, Waller wrote:

After massive intelligence failures grossly underestimating North Korea’s long-range missile capabilities, number of nuclear weapons, warhead miniaturization, and proximity to an H-Bomb, the biggest North Korean threat to the U.S. remains unacknowledged — nuclear EMP attack.

 

North Korea confirmed the EMP Commission’s assessment by testing an H-Bomb that could make a devastating EMP attack, and in its official public statement: “The H-Bomb, the explosive power of which is adjustable from tens of kilotons to hundreds of kilotons, is a multi-functional thermonuclear weapon with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP attack according to strategic goals.”

 

The Pentagon and some states have started to take action to protect the electric grid from an EMP attack, but the administration and Congress have largely shrugged off the concerns, according to EMP advocates.

 

Previous congressional testimony has suggested that 90 percent of humans within the area of an EMP attack would die in a year, either from hunger, lack of water and health care, and violence.

What would the aftermath of an EMP attack look like?

"But The Elites Will Just Ban Bitcoin!"

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

I was thinking about this as I"ve been reading....and re-reading the absolutely brilliant book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari, who is one of my new favourite thinkers.

In particular, there is a chapter which takes a sword to the notion that empires always crush rebellions with an iron fist:

Throughout history empires have crushed rebellions with an iron fist, and when its day came, a sinking empire used all its might to save itself, usually collapsing into a bloodbath. Its final demise generally led to anarchy  and wars of succession. Since 1945 most empires have opted for a peaceful early retirement. Their process of collapse became relatively swift, calm and orderly. In 1945 Britain ruled a quarter of the globe. Thirty years later it ruled just a few small islands.

 

In the intervening decades it retreated from most of its colonies in a peaceful and orderly manner. Though in some places such as Malaya and Kenya the British tried to hang on by force of arms, in most places they accepted the end of the empire with a sigh rather than with a temper tantrum.

He goes on to discuss the French empire, who were more stubborn (no surprise there)... but in terms of historical context pretty orderly:

Its collapse involved bloody rearguard actions in Vietnam and Algeria that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet the French too, retreated from the rest of their dominions quickly and peacefully, leaving behind orderly states rather than chaotic free-for-all.

More recently, of course, we had the collapse of Stalin"s version of heaven, and as Harari explains, pretty damn peaceful, all things considered:

The Soviet collapse in 1989 was even more peaceful, despite the eruption of ethnic conflict in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Never before has such a nightly empire disappeared so swiftly and so quietly. The Soviet Empire of 1989 had suffered no military defeat except in Afghanistan, no external invasions, no rebellions, nor even large-scale Martin Luther King-style campaigns of civil disobedience. The Soviets still had millions of soldiers, tens of thousands of tanks and aeroplanes, and enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the whole of humankind several times over. The Red Army and the other Warsaw Pact armies remained loyal. Had the last Soviet ruler Mikhail Gorbachev, given the order, the Red Army would have opened fire on then subjugated masses.  

 

Yet the Soviet elite, and the Communist regimes through most of Eastern Europe (Romania and Serbia were the exceptions), chose not to use even a tiny fraction of this military power. When its members realised that Communism was bankrupt, they renounced force, admitted failure, packed their suitcases and went home.

Three empires vaporised, and the elites basically walked away.

Do we have an empire today?

Sure, we could say this is the US, but actually if we look at the way the world operates, this particular empire is more closely tied to the global economy than any previous one. That global economy is largely influenced by central-bank-driven credit creation and fiat currency, which is incidentally how we have such an enormous sovereign bond bubble.

Now, we can debate where we"re at in the cycle of this particular empire, but we do know we"re not at the beginning. The bigger question is: How exactly does it end, and what replaces the existing clearly broken monetary system.

Which brings me to Bitcoin and an oft stated contention.

"They"ll Ban It"

Let"s tackle this one head on because there"s been ample reason and opportunity for governments to do just that.

Like Russia who already tried and failed.

Governments can indeed effect a ban but they clearly cannot affect that ban in practice where it matters.

And this is the reflexive beauty here. With each crisis of confidence, Bitcoin acquires more users.   

But this doesn"t affect us right? We"re living in the civilised, developed world.

Nah, that"s just those lazy Mediterranean Europeans. I mean, they"re not even proper Europeans really.

Argentinians? They"re all mad.

Venezuelans? Aren"t they like Argentinians on steroids? Crazier than dogs in a cat factory.

Pffft! Well, this is Africa. What do you expect?

All of these countries are really piddly little places sporting Banana republic governments and finances.

If we are to listen to Jamie Dimwit we"re led to believe that Bitcoin is only for banana republics and criminals. It couldn"t possibly happen to "our" countries.

And then this week, something spectacular happened.

Saudi Arabia proved that Bitcoin is not just for criminals and poor people trying to escape currency debasement. It"s also for the Uber wealthy, who thought they were part of the system and then found that...ah....NO, they"re not (surprise!).

Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia, in a recent statement on Reuters called Bitcoin, Enron in the making.

This thing does not make sense. It’s unregulated. It’s not under the control of the U.S. Federal Reserve or any other central bank.

Um... PRECISELY!

Pride comes before a....

 

With all his accounts now frozen, I suspect that like Venezuelans... and Zimbabweans... and Argentineans... and Cypriots, Prince "Bitcoin is Enron" Alwaleed may be waking up to the utility that bitcoin provides. Clearly he never thought that utility would be applied to him.

I"m sure that all of the governments of these countries would dearly love for Bitcoin NOT to be around, except perhaps for Japan, who would gladly see their currency debased and who have legalised and accepted Bitcoin.

The Problem for Government is Twofold

First: A country such as Zimbabwe has capital controls.

This doesn"t and won"t stop folks from finding ways of getting their money out of the country. Necessity is the mother of invention. So yes, it can be banned but it can"t be enforced. The decentralised nature of bitcoin means that there is no Bitcoin HQ guarded by dobermans, electric fences, and Vin Diesel.

Second: And I"ve pointed this out to those saying governments will ban it. Their response, which isn"t stupid, is that they can shut down the miners. Like China just tried. Andreas Antonopoulos tackles this adequately in this clip.

Start at 2.30.  

Everything is becoming decentralised. We need only look at the president of the United States, the first head of state to run government policy via Twitter.

Twitter, unlike Bitcoin, does have an HQ, and if the stern faced men in pointy shoes wanted to, they can indeed shut it down. But clearly the power of an individual today has never actually been greater. This at a time when the nation state is in its death throes.

There are multiple forces driving Bitcoin right now, but lurking over the horizon is one which may well change the entire financial and economic landscape.

I don"t know what happens in the short term, and I don"t know what happens in the long term but the probabilities lie in Bitcoin going much much higher.

Given where I started this missive and looking at how a number of previous empires went relatively quietly into the night, is it too much to consider that in the next major crisis something similar may just take place?

I"ll leave you with a photo from the future. This is a guy waiting for Bitcoin to crash so he can buy some.

 

- Chris

"Bitcoin is not "unregulated". It is regulated by algorithm instead of being regulated by government bureaucracies. Un-corrupted." — Andreas Antonopoulos.

P.S. We"ll be diving into some cool themes next week. Make sure you"re signed up for the intel.

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Liked this article? Then you"ll probably like my other missives on

this topic as well. Go here to access them (free, of course).

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Mission Creep In Darkest Africa

Authored by Eric Margolis via Orinetal Review,

The British Empire, which at the end of the 19^th century ruled one quarter of the earth’s land surface, is long gone. But its robust successor and heir, the United States, has set about enlarging it.

As I sought to explain in my last book ‘American Raj – How the US Rules the Muslim World,’ the US imperium exerts its power by controlling tame, compliant regimes around the world and their economies. They are called ‘allies’ but, in fact, should be more accurately termed satrapies or vassal states. Many states are happy to be prosperous US vassals, others less so.

The US power system has successfully dominated much of the world, except of course for great powers China, Russia and India. Germany and much of Western Europe remains in thrall to post WWII US power. The same applies to Canada, Latin America, Australia, and parts of SE Asia.

There is one part of the globe that has remained free from heavy US influence since 1945, sub-Saharan Africa. But this fact is clearly changing as the US military expands its operations the width and breadth of the Dark Continent.

We are seeing a rerun of the fine old 1930’s film, ‘Beau Geste’ which was taken from a cracking good 1924 Victorian novel by C. Percival Wren. Set in French North Africa, Wren’s dashing French Legionnaires end up defending a remote fort against masses of hostile Arab and Berber tribesman.

The novel and film negatively shaped western attitudes to the Arab world and its peoples but glorified the French Foreign Legion. Wren claimed to have been a member of the Legion which was the primary enforcement arm of France’s African colonial empire.

The famed Legion, which fought from Mexico to Indochina, has now shrunken to a pitiful 8,000 men. France’s thread-bare finances proved a deadlier enemy than Saharan horsemen.

Even so, the Legion is still used by Paris for sudden shock interventions across West Africa to support client French regimes and punish those who challenge the status quo. I’ve lifted  a glass with many Legionnaires. They are an amazingly tough bunch: you never know whether they are going to kill you or buy you drinks.

US troops have now stepped into the boots of ‘La Legion.’ Almost unnoticed, US Special Forces – our version of the Legion – have been slipping into Africa, the newest and most exciting market for the Pentagon.

Creation of the new US Africa Command in 2007, with headquarters in Germany, was discreet but it signaled active US military and geopolitical interest in resource-rich Africa, a key target of Chinese interest. No one in Washington seems to know how many US troops operate in Africa, but it’s at least 12,000 not counting mercenary contractors and CIA units. There was consternation in Congress when these facts emerged last week.

The key US base in Africa is at Djibouti, a poxy, fly-blown French colony on the Red Sea that is also shared by the Legion and, curiously, a Chinese naval station. US forces in Djibouti operate into Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Central Africa. US forces in West Africa operate in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Liberia, Uganda, and anywhere that pro-US regimes are under pressure. Mali and Chad, where nomadic tribes battle the central government, are key operating regions. Both are under nasty dictatorial regimes backed by Washington.

As in the British Empire, the ‘natives’ are kept under control by small numbers of skilled Western troops. There’s no need for big battalions of regulars. The key is western air power and intelligence. Particularly so in often barren sub-Saharan West Africa where French and US warplanes patrol the skies. `We have the Maxim gun (machine gun) and they have not’ wrote a Victorian poet. Nothing much has changed.

France’s previous president, Francois Hollande, charged into a local tribal squabble in Mali, a key uranium supplier, between black town dwellers and nomadic Tuareg and assorted Islamists. Unable to afford the spreading war, France asked for US help and got it. The bitterly anti-Muslim Trump administration could not miss a chance to attack Muslims in West Africa under the banner of ‘anti-terrorism.’

A ‘terrorist’ in this case is anyone who challenges the western-dominated political order, from Malian nomads to Central African Republic rebels. In the brutal dictatorial regimes of former French West Africa the only effective opposition comes from groups calling themselves Islamic. This pulls the chain of the Trump administration and its Christian fundamentalist allies at home who seek to uproot fast-spreading Islam from Africa.

So off the US military charges into Africa, with little understanding of the region and even less strategic planning. It’s Vietnam-style ‘mission creep’ all over again.

Washington is still trying to figure out what happened to Herzegovina in the Balkans while it plunges into darkest West Africa. That’s why Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron are so chummy these days.

Is Saudi Arabia's Grand Strategy Shifting?

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

Even in this era of global paradigmatic changes, Saudi Arabia’s shifting grand strategy is perhaps one of the most surprising developments to occur thus far, but the fast-moving Russian-Saudi rapprochement is likely to provoke an Iranian “zero-sum” reaction which could complicate Moscow’s multipolar efforts in managing the “New Middle East”.

Vladimir Putin with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at the official greeting ceremony, Moscow, October 5, 2017 (Photo: kremlin.ru)

Most observers were taken aback by what to many seemed to be the inexplicable visit of Saudi King Salman to Moscow this week, wondering how and why the two long-standing Great Power rivals were able to get so close to one another in such a short period of time – and apparently without much public fanfare, too – in making this historic event possible. The usual Alt-Media demagogues decried this as a sellout of Russia’s fundamental national interests, with the most extreme pundit-provocateurs even ranting that it amounts to President Putin siding with “terrorists” such as Daesh and Al Qaeda, especially in light of Moscow’s decision to sell the much-vaunted S-400 anti-air missile systems to Riyadh and even set up a Kalashnikov production plant in the Kingdom.

Had the Saudi Arabia of 2017 been the same country as it was half a decade ago, or even last year for that matter as some could argue, then there might be some rhetorical substance to this outlandish claim no matter how false it would still be, but what most people don’t realize is that Saudi Arabia is in the process of comprehensive changes to its foreign and domestic policies, and that there’s a very high likelihood that it will moderate its traditional behavior in becoming a more responsible actor in international (and especially regional) affairs. A lot of this has happened away from the public eye, at least in the sense that the developments weren’t “sexy” enough to draw widespread attention from most media outlets and commentators, but these piecemeal changes have altogether contributed to the formation of what looks to be a totally new grand strategy.

Russia’s Rationale

Before getting into the details of the drastic policy changes that Saudi Arabia has been up to lately, it’s important to comment a bit on why Russia is embracing its erstwhile nemesis. For starters, Russia’s foreign policy is driven nowadays by the “progressive” faction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which believes that their country’s 21^st-century grand strategic ambition should be to become the supreme balancing force in the Eurasian supercontinent. To this end, they’re diligently employing “military diplomacy” and “nuclear diplomacy”; the first in selling arms to rival states in order to preserve the status quo between them and prevent a hot war from transpiring (which is the opposite of the US selling weapons in order to tip the balance in favor of its preferred partner and spark the said conflict that Russia wants to avoid), and the second in utilizing its global leadership in nuclear energy technology to make important strategic inroads with non-traditional partners.

Multipolarity In Action

Concerning Saudi Arabia, this has seen Russia sign deals with it for the S-400 anti-air missile system and Kalashnikov production plant (“military diplomacy”), and Rosatom’s proposal to build Riyadh’s first-ever nuclear power plant (“nuclear diplomacy”). Of course, there’s also traditional and energy diplomacy at play here as well, the former as it relates to cooperation in uniting the Syrian “opposition” as a prerequisite to resolving the War on Syria, and the latter when it comes to both sides’ participation in the historic OPEC+ output deal from last year and subsequent renewal earlier in 2017. Moreover, none of this is occurring in a multipolar vacuum either, as Russia’s premier Chinese partner has been making great strides with Saudi Arabia in the same timeframe, including by inking two sets of deals totaling than $130 billion in the past six months alone.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz in Moscow (photo: kremlin.ru)

Riyadh’s Reforms

Most of the Chinese-Saudi agreements were signed in the framework of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s ambitious Vision 2030 project for diversifying away from his Kingdom’s present oil-exporting dependency and towards a more “real-sector” economy. This can’t happen unless crucial socio-cultural reforms are made in Saudi Arabia, and the young prince – who’s far from a fundamentalist Wahhabi in real life and therefore something like a “rock star” among his country’s majority “moderate-prone” youth population (over half of which is under 25 years old)  – recently undertook the pivotal decision to allow women to drive in the future, understanding that this a necessary step to increasing their future participation in the economy. It can be expected that more such reforms might follow in the future, such as the possible reopening of movie theaters and maybe even one day lessening the patriarchal legal restrictions placed on women’s freedom of movement.

Unipolar Pushback

Mohammed Bin Salman’s reforms aren’t without controversy, however, as they’ve produced a lot of resistance among the country’s ultra-fundamental clerical class, as was explained in the author’s recent analysis about “Why Allowing Saudi Women To Drive Is Very Dangerous”. The fact of the matter is that Saudi Arabia isn’t a pure “monarchical dictatorship” in the structural-political sense, but a “dual dictatorship” between the monarchy and the clergy, but the Crown Prince’s socio-culturally modernizing reforms are being perceived of as an unprecedented “power grab” which de-facto constitutes a “soft coup” by the monarchy against the clergy. In turn, the most extreme clerics could become a pressing national security risk if they rally their followers against the monarchy in fomenting unrest, whether manifested through street protests, a royal coup, or terrorism. It’s the fear of this happening which explains the Kingdom’s recent crackdown and the author’s subsequent investigation into “Who’s Really Trying To Overthrow Mohammed Bin Salman?”

 As the aforementioned article concludes, the only serious player with the clandestine competencies to pull this off is the US, which is considering the “Balkanization” of the Kingdom into a collection of emirates aided by the duplicitous connivance of its regional UAE ally. This was elaborated on more in depth by the author in his work a couple of months ago explaining “The Machiavellian Plot to Provoke Saudi Arabia and Qatar into a ‘Blood Border’ War”, but the overriding idea is that the US has had an interest in betraying its decades-long ally ever since the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal was agreed to, which the author predicted in his summer 2015 piece about a “Polar Reorientation In The Mideast” that also described the strategic contours that would eventually lead to the present-day Russian-Saudi rapprochement. It’s this Great Power convergence between Moscow and Riyadh, as well as the latter and Beijing, which is driving the US to wage an incipient but increasingly multifaceted Hybrid War on Saudi Arabia.

Rosatom SEO Alexey Likhachev with his Saudi counterpart after signing program documents in nuclear sphere (photo: kremlin.ru)

Stopping The Saudi “Deep State” Conspiracy

Mohammed Bin Salman must masterfully manage to tame both the radical clerics and domestic terrorists if he’s to have a chance at avoiding a US-backed royalist coup against him. He already has the support of the majority-youthful masses who could come out to the streets to support him in the event of a sudden coup, just like they did for Turkish President Erdogan during last year’s failed pro-US coup attempt, so this infers that he needs to win the backing of the military-security services in order to preemptively suppress clerical-terrorist destabilizations before countering the royalist conspiracy that’s  taking form. However, Saudi forces are embroiled in the bloody War on Yemen, which was one of the first decisions that he made as Defense Minister and is therefore attributed entirely to him, but would have probably happened regardless of whoever was in power at the time due to the geopolitical dynamics involved.

In fact, the author forecast that a forceful Saudi response could be expected to developments in Yemen as early as September 2014 in his article about “Syria’s Yemeni Opportunity and the Rise of the Shia Circle”, which deliberately analyzed events from Riyadh’s sectarian perspective in an attempt to better understand the Kingdom’s future response. Likewise, the follow-up piece in January 2015 about “Yemen: The Saudi Coup That Totally Backfired” presciently concluded that “the Saudis are expected to hit back as hard as they can against the phantom ‘Iranian menace’ that they’re attributing their Yemeni failings to”, and that “no matter which form it takes, it’s not going to be pretty.” In any case, the only way for Mohammed Bin Salman to be confident in the support of his military-security services is to downscale the disastrous War on Yemen and eventually follow the Syrian peace format in resolving the conflict there in as much of a “face-saving” way as possible.

That, however, won’t necessarily endear him to any of the conspiratorial royals who are plotting his ouster, many of whom are reportedly irreconcilably opposed to him for his high-profile foreign policy failings in the aforementioned War on Yemen and Qatar Crisis, which is why the young prince so urgently needed to make up for them with a dramatic success elsewhere, ergo the reason why he decided to commence his country’s now-successful rapprochement with Russia. Conversely, it’s precisely because of his pivotal role in carrying out this game-changing foreign policy rebalancing that the US wants him out, and Washington sent a very clear message to Riyadh of its displeasure just the other day when it announced that it will be halting some of its military exercises with “Gulf countries” until the Qatar Crisis is resolved. Reading between the lines, this is the Pentagon voicing its strong opposition to King Salman’s visit to Moscow and Saudi Arabia’s S-400 deal with Russia, thereby signaling to its in-country proxies that it’s time to commence their planned regime change operation.

Russia-Saudi Arabian talks in extended format in Moscow, Oct 2017 (photo: kremlin.ru)

Moderating The Monarchy

All in all, Mohammed Bin Salman is trying to compensate for his earlier errors of judgement in “moderating” his country’s foreign policy to the most realistic extent possible under the present circumstances, which in an historical comparison amounts to an unprecedented pivot of sorts towards the Multipolar World Order.  This doesn’t just have geopolitical implications, however, as there’s the very real possibility that Saudi Arabia might de-dollarize new Vision 2030 and energy contracts with its new non-Western partners, which would in effect equate to the death of the “petrodollar”. The author predicted this in a late-September forecast after it became abundantly clear that the country was no longer as solidly in the American camp as most observers had considered it, especially following its fast-moving rapprochement with Russia and the $130 billion’s worth of deals that the Kingdom signed with China.

The combined effect of these two multipolar realignments, as well as the likely downscaling of the War on Yemen and the “Damocles’ Sword” potential that Saudi Arabia has for dealing a deathblow to the dollar, are increasingly turning Mohammed Bin Salman into the “Saudi Saddam”, in that he’s now being targeted for elimination by the US because this one-time American subordinate was brave enough to chart his country’s own sovereign path in the world. If he can successfully withstand the US-encouraged “deep state” coup against him being waged through the Hybrid War mechanisms of a rebelling clergy, a possible domestic terrorist insurgency (as partial blowback from Saudi Arabia’s support for such groups abroad), and a royalist plot, among whatever other means might soon make themselves available, then it’s expected that the end result will be a considerable moderation of the Kingdom’s destabilizing activities in the region.

Irate Iranians

Background Concepts:

While the welcoming of Saudi Arabia into the multipolar fold as a responsible member of the international community would be celebrated by many because of the far-reaching consequences that it could have in altering the entire course of the New Cold War, there’s one multipolar party which would actually be incredibly irate at this happening, and that’s Iran. The Islamic Republic is caught in an intense security dilemma with the Kingdom, inspired partly by the centuries-old but previously long-dormant Sunni-Shiite split, and also the US’ efforts since the 1979 Revolution and especially after 9/11 to exacerbate this into taking on geopolitical dimensions all across the international Muslim community (“Ummah”). Iran and Saudi Arabia both conceive of international affairs as being a “zero-sum” game between them, and it’s very likely that Riyadh and its media surrogates will intentionally misportray King Salman’s visit to Russia as being against Tehran instead of epitomizing Moscow’s skillful geopolitical balancing act.

It’s understandable if Iran feels uncomfortable with these optics, though it should recognize that Russia’s overall intent is truly apolitical and driven by neutral Great Power considerations, not anything directed against it personally no matter what the forthcoming Saudi psy-ops might infer.

That being said, it’s very tempting to perceive of events through the aforementioned “zero-sum” prism in seeing any betterment of Russian-Saudi relations as being to the overall detriment of Russian-Iranian ones, which in turn might prompt an asymmetrical response or set thereof from Tehran in countering what some of its leadership might truly believe is Russia’s “unfriendly” and “humiliating” gesture by hosting the Saudi King, selling him S-400 anti-air missiles and state-of-the-art Kalashnikovs, and bidding to produce the Kingdom’s first-ever nuclear power plant. This isn’t speculation either, as Iran already isn’t happy with the de-facto alliance that Russia has struck with “Israel” in Syria, which is explained in detail in the author’s earlier work rhetorically questioning whether “Anyone Still Seriously Thinks That Russia And Israel Aren’t Allies?”

Phase 1: Syria

Moreover, Iran doesn’t like how Saudi Arabia is the main reason why it hasn’t been invited to join BRICS, and while the other four members are in a technical sense equally responsible for this too, it’s only Russia which is courting Saudi Arabia in a way which could make Iran uneasy given how impactful the latest rapprochement will be for Syria. Therefore, even though Iran’s official media has been largely silent on the implications of the Russian-Saudi rapprochement, it can’t be ruled out that the millennia-experienced Iranian diplomats are preparing one of their stereotypically asymmetrical responses to what’s happening, and that it could most immediately have consequences for Syria. For example, Iran could make the Astana talks more difficult by siding more closely with Damascus in attempting to rebuff the joint Russian-Turkish efforts to get the Syrian government to enter into certain political-administrative concessions (e.g. a “phased leadership transition” and “federalization”) as part of a comprehensive peace plan that would meet the interests of most external parties to the conflict and therefore maximize Moscow’s geopolitical “balancing” capabilities.

Phase 2: Caucasus

Apart from that and stepping its response up a notch, there’s also the possibility that Iran could work with India to redirect the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) from Azerbaijan and Russia to Armenia and Georgia instead, the latter route of which was predicted in the Mideast chapter of the author’s book-length analytical series about “The Chinese-Indian New Cold War” and would allow both on-the-fence Great Powers to pioneer a trade route to the EU. This would be a geopolitically troubling development for Russia and contribute to its perception that Armenia has become an “obstructionist” actor vis-à-vis Moscow-led Eurasian integration processes and has probably been totally taken over by the powerful American-based diaspora lobby, though China’s latest inroads in building its second-largest embassy in the post-Soviet space in Yerevan might help to “balance” everything out in preventing this potential move from being completely disastrous for multipolarity. Nevertheless, if Iran takes this step in rerouting some or all of the NSTC to Armenia, Georgia, and the EU, then it would probably mean that it’s also seriously considering expanding its asymmetrical response to the third phase of operations in the Balkans.

Phase 3: Balkans

The third and final escalatory phase of Iran’s most realistic responses to any perceived “security dilemma” with Russia after Moscow’s rapprochement with Riyadh would be if Tehran seeks to broaden its asymmetrical measures to include energy and geopolitical dimensions in the Balkans. The author wrote about the future role that post-sanctions Iranian energy exports to Europe could have in challenging Russia’s present market dominance in certain regions, and while this might not happen if the EU reimposes sanctions against the Islamic Republic in compliance with American pressure, it still can’t be entirely discounted that Iranian LNG exports to Croatia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and even Poland could be in the cards, as well as its exit from the OPEC+ output agreement. However, the most destabilizing consequence of Iran’s irritability with Russia could be if it decides to return to its post-Yugoslav role in breaking up Bosnia, using the Serbs as stand-ins for the Russians in a new proxy war. That’s the most extreme step that Iran could take and there’s nothing right now which indicates that it will happen, but it should nevertheless be included as the worst-case “dark scenario” forecast.

Concluding Thoughts

Royal Pivot:

Saudi Arabia’s grand strategy is shifting away from its former Western-/unipolar-centric focus to a more diversified one of “multi-alignment’ with multipolar leaders such as Russia and China, motivated in part by the US’ hostile energy and geopolitical actions against it. On the domestic front, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is modernizing his country’s socio-cultural situation by enacting belated reforms that will complement his ambitious Vision 2030 project of multisectoral economic diversification away from its present dependency on oil exports. Taken together, the international and domestic dimensions of Saudi Arabia’s grand strategic shifts are expected to have game-changing implications in altering the global dynamics of the New Cold War, to say nothing of what would happen if the Kingdom de-dollarizes its future Vision 2030 and energy deals with its new non-Western partners, hence why the initiator of all of this, Mohammed Bin Salman, is now the “Saudi Saddam” in the sense of being targeted for elimination.

Iranian Reaction:

That’s not all that there is to it, however, since even in the event that the young prince is successful in thwarting his myriad Hybrid War adversaries and the wide variety of weaponized threats that they’re poised to utilize against him, it’s unlikely that this will result in multipolar stability in the Mideast, owing mostly to the fact that Iran is expected to be incredibly irate at its hated rival being feted as a privileged partner by Russia and China. The difference between the two Eurasian Great Powers, however, is that Moscow’s outreaches to Riyadh are having direct consequences for Syria, particularly as it relates to possibly “counterbalancing” or even “rolling back” Iran’s intended post-Daesh influence in the Arab Republic, or so it may seem, which is why Tehran looks much more suspiciously at Moscow than it does at Beijing. The problem, though, is that Russia isn’t doing any of this “against Iran”, but in the “larger multipolar interests” of becoming the supreme “balancing” force in the Eurasian supercontinent, which in and of itself necessitate having excellent relations with Saudi Arabia.

Scenario Forecasts:

If the Iranian leadership is misled into viewing Russia’s ties with Saudi Arabia as part of a “zero-sum” game and not the “win-win” strategy that it’s actually intended (key word) to be, then it’s very likely that the Islamic Republic will resort to one of its stereotypically asymmetrical responses honed by millennia of diplomatic experience in making its silent disagreements well known. This would be an unfortunate development because it would mean that Russia’s sincere efforts to balance and then mediate the Saudi-Iranian/Sunni-Shiite rivalry would be for naught, and that the US’ unstated goal of redirecting Iranian attention away from Saudi Arabia and towards Russia would have been partially successful. Nevertheless, should this happen, then it’s expected that the three-phase tier of escalatory responses could see Iran create “complications” in the Astana peace process; redirect the North-South Transport Corridor away from Azerbaijan and Russia and towards Armenia, Georgia, and the EU; and begin actively competing with Russia for part of the European energy market. At the worst, it might even try to restore its destabilizing influence in Bosnia and spark a proxy war against Russia’s Serbian partners there.

American Backup Plan:

None of Iran’s forecasted responses are certain, or even that it will negatively appraise the fast-moving Russian-Saudi rapprochement in the first place, but in the possible event that it does, then it would inadvertently be playing into the US’ intended strategy of indirectly using Iran as a backup plan for replacing Saudi Arabia in countering Russian interests in the Mideast, Caucasus, and the Balkans. In addition, Riyadh’s reversal from the unipolar camp to the multipolar one would leave the US without a regular source of jihadi recruits, thereby necessitating that it scout elsewhere in such countries as Sudan, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. The most likely scenario to happen in the near future is that Iran’s suspicions of the Russian-Saudi rapprochement manifest themselves subtly in Syria, at least at first, while the US begins looking to non-Mideast “Global South” countries for mercenaries while concurrently commencing its regime change operation in Saudi Arabia.

The best outcome would be if Russia’s multidimensional diplomatic efforts could bring Saudi Arabia and Iran together in a “New Détente” like how Iraq’s Muqtada al-Sadr unsuccessfully tried to do, all the while assisting both of them in warding off the US’ Hybrid War threats, but the most likely result is that this wishful thinking eventuality is still a far way’s off, if it ever happens at all, since the US is well known for flexibly adapting its unipolar grand strategy to accommodate for any multipolar contingency such as this one.