Dethroning the Reserve Currency

Cultural Strategic Synergies

[Simorgh; Iranian phoenix]

Published: 2024-08-28

---

Introduction

On Neutrality Studies a recent US "think tank" proposal to re-instantiate the old Cold War "containment" policy was exposed for the warmed up, ineffective failure that it will be, if pursued. To this, a potential understanding of the strategy being pursued by the growing concert of nations aligned against the G7 West is suggested. This suggestion is placed in a context illuminated by Paul Craig Roberts in his frank discussion with Alkhorshid on Dialogue Works about US warmongering, its foreign action rather than policy.

Please excuse the restating of some recent history which is likely familiar to readers of this newsletter. It sets context.

Recently, in Syria

On August 23rd, 2024, CENTCOM admitted that persons under its command had "killed Hurras al-Din ... in a targeted kinetic strike in Syria". CENTCOM's Command Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, delivered the political message in line with the Global War on Terror, an illegal global war without UN Security Council approval:

“CENTCOM remains committed to the enduring defeat of terrorists in the CENTCOM area of responsibility who threaten the United States, its allies and partners, and regional stability"

The assassination in Syria cannot be justified under international law. It is a direct interference in Syria's domestic affairs. There was no judicial process. No charges were laid. The murdered man did not have his day in court, but was murdered (intentionally killed) with "kinetics" as an act of war by the US military in a foreign country which it is occupying.

Also on Friday August 23rd, 2024, in Syria, "Israeli warplanes carried out a series of attacks on four different targets in and around the provinces of Hama and Homs and central Syria". The illegal attacks by the genocidal armed forces of Israel murdered 3 and violently assaulted 10 others. It was also an illegal act of war against Syria.

Recent history, in Syria

The US maintains two areas of illegal occupation in Syria, one in the northeast, on the Syrian oilfields and their most productive agricultural land, the other in the southeast, at the key trade and transport corridor between Syria and Iraq. The southern occupation is also supported by "Tower 22", further to the south in neighbouring Jordan, where US forces invited their by the Jordanian government were recently attacked. That attack displayed how pitifully those US soldiers were defended despite the colossal amount of money the US spends on its military.

These two illegal occupations of Syria are the end result of the civil war, turned international terrorist operation, which was armed, trained and funded by the US and UK via their foreign military intelligence organisations, the CIA and MI-6. Operation Timber Sycamore by the CIA was to arm and train religious extremists to overthrow Syrian President al Assad in the wake of the "Arab Spring". It was supported by various local nations, including Turkiye whose President Erdogan saw an opportunity to attack the Kurds in northeastern Syria and northern Iraq.

Another outcome of this failed coup via G7 funded, religious extremist, terrorists was a rise in Iranian influence in the region. The rise of ISIS, predicted by the US Defence Intelligence Agency in an assessment, in areas bordering Syria and Iraq, destabilized the region, directly contradicting CENTCOM's stated objectives. ISIS was indirectly armed by the US, from weaponry provided to "their terrorists" and collected from fleeing Iraqi defence units trained and armed by the US. ISIS was primarily defeated by Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units, called for by Iraqi senior Shia Cleric al Sistani and coordinated by Iranian Republican Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi military leader Abu al Mahandis. These two military leaders, whose Iraqi forces defended Baghdad against the advancing ISIS terrorists, were assassinated in a single US drone strike approved by President Trump at Baghdad Airport on 2020-01-03.

A third significant development was trialed by MI-6 during the Western facilitated terrorist insurgency in Syria. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (its equivalent of the US State Department) funded media organisations and a "civil defence" organisation in Syria, the White Helmets. The White Helmets were commonly co-located with the foreign armed and funded, terrorist insurgents. With their media partners the White Helmets generated the horrific imagery for the war to be broadcast by major Western media organisations. The Netflix "documentary" "The White Helmets" even won an Oscar.

The horror being shown was often generated by the terrorists with which the White Helmets cohabited. The most famous media deception by the terrorists and their Western media partners was the Douma chemical weapons attack hoax. This was used by the US, UK and France as a justification, again with no UN Security Council approval, to attack Syria. The hoax's unraveling revealed the level of control which the US exerted on the UN chemical weapons watchdog (the OPCW), undermining its purpose to eradicate the use of these horrific weapons. The key datapoint ignored by Western media was that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who convinced President al Assad to destroy his chemical weapons. This was done aboard a US ship equipped for that purpose in the eastern Mediterranean before the hoax in Douma.

These three points, the occupation of Syria, the rise of Iranian influence, and Western media propaganda via foreign funded organizations, are a context for the local population for the dual attacks on Friday last week, one by the CENTCOM occupiers and the other by the genocidal Israeli occupiers.

Ukraine

While the US and UK were arming and funding a terrorist insurgency in Syria, they were also arming and funding a civil war in Ukraine being executed by local Nazi militias which had been integrated into Ukraine's armed forces.

Following the 2014 coup managed by US State Department official 'Toria Nuland, an unelected government was approved by her and sealed by President Biden. His family profited financially from the coup via his son's appointment to Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The controlled and corrupt government of Ukraine refused to participate in the Minsk II Accords, unanimously approved by the UN Security Council as the political solution to the civil war. Tasked with facilitating the Accords' implementation, France and Germany willfully undermined them to allow the continued NATO arming and training of Ukraine, as later admitted by their leaders Merkel and Hollande.

Both conflicts were orchestrated, to the benefit of various corrupt individuals and to NATO's arms manufacturers, by Western foreign military intelligence organisations, the aforementioned CIA and MI-6.

One should add to this background the historic agreement of collaboration between China and Russia, announced just before the start of Russia's entry into the NATO armed civil war in Ukraine with its Special Military Operation. Another important point of context is the theft of assets from national Reserve Banks of three nations by the West. They are Venezuela ($2 billion USD in gold by the Bank of London), Afghanistan ($7 billion USD by a US bank) and Russia (more than $250 billion USD by European, British and US banks).

These are the key historic events for the current state of geopolitical affairs.

Containment and Response

The tired old "containment" thinking being resuscitated by the US foreign policy community was quickly demolished by Moeini and Petro in their discussion with Lottaz. They do describe its evolution from an ideological containment to a military one, which moves us to the present. When the USSR agreed to the INF Treaty with the US, both sides admitted that their nuclear arms race was a purposeless, dangerous stupidity. Soon after, the USSR disbanded and the US declared its "victory", its Fukuyama "end of history" moment.

Despite repeated calls to not pursue an expansion of NATO, and promises to the USSR that this would not be done, the US complied instead with the avarice of its military industrial complex (MIC). The MIC's control over US foreign policy is now so deep that actions with no measurable strategic benefit, other than arms sales, are enacted by the US executive. The recent NATO invasion of the Russian Federation is an astounding example. The operation had to have been known of by the CIA and MI-6. Claims of Western "surprise" are bald faced lies or engineered ignorance.

In C.P. Roberts' remarks on Dialogue Works he suggests that until Russia responds militarily to the ever escalating provocations from the US and its key ally the UK these provocations will continue. His point is well made within the framework of Western thinking. It, perhaps, fails to embrace a wider, different cultural understanding.

On the one hand the Russian Security Council's policies, under the guidance of President Putin, have demonstrated to the nation and the world a stellar recovery from the economic evisceration of Russia at the hands of the "Chicago Boys" western economic policies in the 1990s, from which Russian oligarchs also profited. Russia has now, not only world leading military technology, but also super-power level diplomatic influence.

Russian Federation President Putin is, first and foremost, a lawyer. Russian policy has been cautious and guided by international and Russian domestic law. Russia's support for the Donetsk and Lugansk Independent Republics in its Special Military Operation was legal under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Russia's associated invasion of Ukraine's Kherson and Zaporozhye oblasts was not. Both were prompted by the prevention of a genocide in Donbas, which had been slowly grinding on during the Nazi led Ukrainian civil war under the cover of an "anti-terrorism" operation and was just about to rapidly accelerate. In the days before Russia's Special Military Operation there was a 20 fold increase in shelling in the Donbas, a preparation for a Ukrainian offensive. In this Ukrainian Nazi led genocide against the Russia speaking people of the Donbas, we see a correlation with the conflict between the Israeli Zionist terrorists and the Palestinian people.

Why has Russia not responded suddenly and violently to the US in response to NATO's invasion of its territory in the Kursk oblast? Why has Iran not responded violently to Israel's assassination of Hamas' political leader Haniyeh in Tehran? These questions haunt the Western commentariat.

An answer to them may be found by considering the process and objectives which have slowly been revealed over the past decade while these wars in Syria and Ukraine have been fought.

Its the geoeconomy, stupid

While the US dollar remains the world reserve currency for international trade, the US can print money with little risk. This, in turn, fuels its MIC. Individuals profit from investing in the corporations which produce the armaments which are paid for by the US government using taxes and printed money or loans which the US government feels no need to service. The constant military spending and use of its military as a tool of illegal international influence will never stop until the US dollar is dethroned from its reserve status.

There will be no peace until the US must actually pay to wage war.

A strategy to achieve this dethroning is being pursued by an ever growing collection of nations, lead primarily by China, Russia and Iran. As this newsletter has been reporting, the main international organisations which are facilitating this fundamental objective are BRICS+ and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation). Each also has a bank, the New Development Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, respectively. These loosely correspond to the US International Monetary Fund, the US use of which was made famous by John Perkins in his "Confessions of an Economic Hitman".

The US, at the behest of its MIC, is fighting "kinetic" wars. Behind every "kinetic" war is an economic one. Escalating the kinetic wars, while the US still holds the reserve currency, is a losing proposition for the nations the US treats as its adversaries. Instead, the non-kinetic economic war is the one which requires their constant, careful pursuit. There is, naturally, a risk in this strategy.

Kinetic attacks on a nation state induce a desire for a response: to defend national pride, revenge. This is the political risk in ignoring the ever escalating provocations from the US and its eager, lawless acolytes. The risk calculus is: For how long, and to what extent, can these nations mitigate the political upheaval which US warmongering creates in their native populations while the collection of nations develop the economic capacity to force the US to service its debts?

Behind geopolitics is geoeconomics.

Before concluding, lets examine what the actual consequences have been to the two provocations from which many Western commentators expect Iran or Russia to exact revenge.

In the case of Russia, the response was made not to the actual invasion, but to the authorization to use NATO weapons against targets with Russia's 1991 borders. The widespread Russian attack with missiles and drones on 2024-08-26, 20 days after the invasion, was an extension of an existing strategy of attack against Ukraine, namely to severely weaken its electric power generation and distribution. It was weeks earlier than the August 6th invasion, in response to the NATO authorization, that Russia announced its intention to support asymmetric foes of the US. This was a "symmetric" response, because Russia correctly views Ukraine as a US puppet-regime proxy military. The US and its NATO allies are arming Ukraine against Russia, so why should not Russia and its allies arm other forces against the US?

Many analysts understood Russia's response to mean groups like Ansar Allah in Yemen. The US and France have recently been ejected from the African Sahel by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. One can expect Russia to aid the local governments in maintaining security to neutralize any precursor for a Western return.

Analysis aside, what President Putin did after the NATO weapons use approval was to immediately visit North Korea and form a mutual defense alliance. Recent technology transfers, or at least some license to use, between Russia and North Korea, included precision, intercontinental range missiles. Russia loaded a nuclear gun, pointed it at the US, further developed a market for its military technology and killed nobody.

The current response to the Israeli assassination of former Hamas political leader, lead negotiator, and official guest Haniyeh in Tehran immediately after the inauguration of new Iranian President Pezeshkian has also been non-violent. Russia has supplied Iran with sophisticated anti-missile defense systems (S-400s) and reportedly an advanced electronic warfare system capable of "scrambling" NATO cruise missiles at considerable distance. It has also provided the specialize technicians to operate them, and warned Israel that attacks on them are an attack on Russia.

The assassination accelerated the military partnership between Iran and Russia, which was well under way after Iran's support for Russia in the Special Military Operation by supplying drones and/or their designs.

This close relationship between Iran and Russia is new. Like Russia and China, Russia and Iran are natural enemies. China and Iran (Persia) are ancient powers to whom Russia is a recent, only one thousand year old upstart. The neighbouring territory of the Caucasus, sitting between the Black and Caspian seas, has been used by other powers to play Iran and Russia against each other for well over a century. To be fair, they've had their own hands in this too.

Today, Iran has joined Russia and China. They are a central triplet in building a new anti-hegemonic world. They are common to both BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. There is one other nation, the newly independent (1948) and rising power, India, which shares this membership intersection. The four are the core power behind the drive to free the world of US belligerence and its economic shackles.

The US is happily creating trouble for all of them. Ukraine invades Russia. Israel assassinates in Iran. The US has run coups on India's east in Bangladesh and west in Pakistan. The US is arming Taiwan and building bases in the Philippines.

Civilizational Cultural Synergies

Western European culture looks disapprovingly upon the Asian cultural trait of not "losing face". While there are certainly racist elements in this condescension, there is also a lack of understanding.

The urge for revenge is a very human emotion, but is very primitive. Eastern philosophical and religious thought emphasizes moving beyond one's primal urges and maintaining a balance in one's life. In a more Western phrasing, one should employ one's rationality to avoid being trapped into basal responses. Avoiding being triggered into primitive responses is a component of this avoidance of a 'loss of face' cultural understanding. Another component is to not place one's friends or guests in a circumstance where they would lose face; being considerate, an extension of hospitality.

The control being demonstrated by China and Iran may partially come from a mastery of basal desire for revenge; controlling one's responses to align with one's greater interests. Russia's control may come more from an analytic rationality, but it is certain to be partially influenced by eastern and southern Asian understandings. Elements of this cultural exchange, this control and holistic thinking, can be seen emerging between China and Russia in the language of their strategic cooperation documents. The cultural exchanges between these ancient civilizations are often lost to Western analysts who themselves are trapped by their blindness to the style of thought and behaviour they entail.

Within the geoeconomic battle to dethrone the reserve currency are cultural strategies born of millennia of the study of humanity and history. How important these prove, history will decide.

or support this work via Buy Me A Coffee or Patreon.

Sources

US Says It Killed Senior Member of Hurras al-Din in Syria, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-08-25

At Least Three Killed in Israeli Airstrikes on Central Syrian City of Hama, Jason Ditz, Antiwar, 2024-08-25

[Tower 22] Mystery Solved: US DoD Killed Soldiers, YesXorNo, 2024-02-11

Unwinding the Generated Syrian Civil War, YesXorNo, 2023-01-05

The Red Line and the Rat Line, Seymour Hersh, London Review of Books, 2014-04-17

Leaked docs expose massive Syria propaganda operation waged by Western govt contractors and media, Ben Norton, The Grayzone, 2020-09-23

The Mechanics of Politics by Other Means, From the 50's to the 20's : A study in USA foreign political mechanics [updated], YesXorNo, 2021-09-07

“Neo-Containment” Is A CATASTROPHE For The USA. ｜ A. Moeini & N. Petro [BCRuPfrvQCY], Moeini & Petro in discussion with Lottaz, Neutrality Studies, 2024-08-22

Paul Craig Roberts: Defeat for Israel? What the Media Isn't Telling You! - NATO's Devastating Gamble [wrMov1z-wnA], Roberts interviews by Alkorshid, Dialogue Works, 2024-08-23

Ray McGovern ： Kiev’s Suicidal Russian Invasion [FmYeIMmyU3U], McGovern with Napolitano, Judging Freedom, 2024-08-26

Capt. Matthew Hoh： Israel on the Edge of Defeat？! Ukraine in Total Chaos？ [5xODetto3Go], Hoh with Alkhorshid, Dialogue Works, 2024-08-27

---

Copyleft: CC0