EDITORIAL
Is War Part of a Wall Street Party?
By Anthony Wile - June 21, 2014

The drums of war are beating, as Paul Craig Roberts pointed out in a recent, controversial column posted at The Daily Bell. Certainly, he has a point.

In this article, I'll review his arguments in light of the continued evolution of military and political tensions in Ukraine. At the end of this article, I'll make the argument that these military tensions may be used creatively to fulfill other globalist goals.

Not everything is always as it seems …

Begin with yesterday's announcement that Ukraine's Poroshenko [is] to sign the remaining part of the EU association agreement on June 27. This is being reported by the mainstream media but without the context that makes it a significant event.

What precipitated the Ukraine confrontation was the previous president's unwillingness to sign the agreement. But now the Ukraine's EU-centric administration is moving ahead with a variety of signings. The political provisions have already been signed as of March 21. Now the rest of the agreement is about to be codified.

Here's how the Voice of Russia puts it:

Ukrainian President Petr Poroshenko said Thursday he plans to sign the economic part of the EU association agreement on June 27, during the Ukraine-EU summit in Brussels. "On June 27 I will sign… the association agreement," Poroshenko said.

President Poroshenko said after his inauguration that he was counting on EU membership, and added that the association agreement was a perfect chance for the country to enter the bloc. Poroshenko said he is ready to sign the economic part of the deal, and stressed the need to introduce a free-trade zone with the bloc starting in January 2015.

Estonian President Toomas Ilves, however, said Ukraine's accession to the EU is impossible in the near future. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week that Moscow had no objections to Ukraine's association agreement with the EU and was not planning to impose any sanctions on Kiev.

While Russia seems to be downplaying this latest signing, the tensions continue to build between Russia and the West. The proximate cause is not Poroshenko's friendliness to the EU and the West generally but the military ramifications.

These military issues are a good deal deeper and cut more sharply than trade treaties, as we learn from RT. Here's how an analysis of military ramifications begins:

NATO is preparing a package deal to ramp up the Ukrainian military because it 'must adapt' to Russia viewing it as an enemy, the outgoing chief of the military bloc said.

The deal would be submitted to foreign ministers of member states later this month, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told El Pais in an interview. He declined to go into detail, but said it provides for defense industry reform and modernization of the Ukrainian military.

The alliance may also facilitate cooperation with Ukraine over military training, although whatever exercises of NATO member troops would be held in Ukraine is up to individual countries, Rasmussen said. "We must adapt to the fact that Russia now considers us its adversary," he explained.

… NATO claims that it has been cooperating with Russia in every way until the Ukrainian crisis sparked the cold war hostilities again. It's not quite true, considering the alliance's expansion eastwards in Europe and its plans to deploy a system of anti-ballistic missile defense closer to Russian borders. Both have been done against Russia's objections that such moves compromise Russian national security.

It is certainly true that escalating cooperation between Ukraine and the EU predicts escalating tensions between Russia and the West. This is not in any sense a hypothetical observation. Several years ago, Putin threatened military action if the US put ballistic missiles in Poland.

Here's an excerpt from a Telegraph report back in June 2012:

Russia threatens Nato with military strikes over missile defence system … Russia has threatened Nato with military strikes against in Poland and Romania if a missile defence radar and interceptors are deployed in Eastern Europe.

Gen Makarov has threatened to target Nato bases hosting an anti-missile system designed by the US to protect European allies against attack from states such as Iran … General Nikolai Makarov, Russia's most senior military commander, warned Nato that if it proceeded with a controversial American missile defence system, force would be used against it.

"A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens," he said. Gen Makarov has threatened to target Nato bases hosting an anti-missile system designed by the US to protect European allies against attack from states such as Iran.

Following these threats, the Obama administration produced a "climb down" that pushed forward the date of a missile defense system to 2018 and subsequently made even that date vague.

Wikipedia reports on developments as follows:

The reformulated project announced most prominently by Vice President Biden in October, 2009, would entail smaller, mobile SM-3 interceptors, to be placed by 2018. The whole of the Obama plan "envisions stationing existing SM-3 interceptors as part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense on Aegis-equipped ships in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere by 2011, and on land in Central Europe by 2015, part of a European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA).

A more advanced system would be deployed by 2018, including in Poland as EPAA phase 3, and another generation, theoretically capable of shooting down intercontinental missiles, (EPAA phase 4) by 2020."

Phase 4 was cancelled however in March 2013, triggering some speculation that it was a concession promised by Obama to Dmitry Medvedev before the United States presidential election, 2012; the allegations of Russian influence over this decision were however denied by the Pentagon.

An argument can be made that the same sort of tensions are going to surround the Ukraine as Poland. Never mind that ABM's don't work very well. Here perception is reality. From Putin's point of view, if his allies believe that the ABMs give NATO a significant advantage, then they are going to act accordingly and Russia will be weakened.

If the ABMs actually are any good, then Russia's nuclear arsenal is at risk since Russian missiles can be shot down while they are still rising into the air, which is when such missiles are the most vulnerable. Putin has no significant counter to ABMs in Poland and Ukraine, as the nearest location to US missiles is in Cuba, and that's still very far away from where such nuclear missiles would be launched.

However, the Obama administration's pullback regarding ABMs in Poland provides us with a look at how tensions can be reduced even within the context of seemingly intractable problems.

A nuclear war scenario is certainly possible within the current context, as neither side wants to be perceived as backing down, and this scenario has aptly been supplied by Paul Craig Roberts and others.

But another scenario is indeed a further climb-down that pushes up international tensions nearly to the breaking point before an inevitable solution is discovered.

Looked at cynically, this sort of brinksmanship has numerous advantages for the "neocon" globalists apparently behind these sorts of strategies.

Chief among globalist ambitions is the creation of an international financial system from what I can tell. The escalating crisis in the Ukraine and continued tensions there can certainly be seen as beneficial to what we have called the "Wall Street Party."

As the Dow in particular marches higher – preparatory eventually to a tremendous downturn – escalating military tensions can be massaged to benefit the market meme.

  1. The consistent raising of nuclear tensions justifies continued economic reactions in order to keep Western economies stable and on track. These reactions may indeed include further justifications for continued monetary easing.
  2. International tensions also provide a rationale for a "flight to safety" that reinforces the primacy of Western markets and in particular US bonds and equities.
  3. The up and down security posture of the West versus Russia (and China) can create alternatively a depression of "animal spirits" and waves of euphoria that can lift markets.
  4. Finally, a fluid period of inter-state animosity can provide justifications for an eventual stock market crash that can usher the next phase of economic internationalism.

China and Russia themselves may participate in this next phase, which could include a global currency supported by a basket of underlying currencies including the ruble and the yuan along perhaps with gold and silver and other BRIC currencies.

Bottom line: International tension is good business when it comes to advancing certain dominant social themes. The dialectic itself is heightened by such crises. And, of course, out of chaos … order.

After all, as Carl von Clausewitz once wrote, "War is politics by another name."

Posted in EDITORIAL
loading
Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap