Global Economic Warfare

US, China, India, Russia and Africa play

Jul 26, 2024

Current Lens

India's chief economic adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran, proposes to promote Chinese investment in India. And Modi asked Putin to help mediate the India-China border dispute. The world is realigning away from the United States, under the gravitational pull of China's supply chains and infrastructure investment.

There are numerous examples of the bitterest of enemies turning into unlikely allies, precisely because they present too great a danger to each other.

Britain and Russia spent most of the 19th century contending in the “Great Game” over India. Britain built the navy with which Japan beat Russia in the 1905 war. But Britain and Russiafought on the same side in the world wars of the 20th century.

Russia and China fought one war in 1929 and an undeclared border war in 1969, but share common interests against the United States and its allies.

The next strategic alignment among past enemies may bring together two of today’s strategic antagonists, namely India and China. At first glance, this seems improbable in the extreme. India and China have a longstanding border dispute that caused several hundred casualties in a clash in 1967 and claimed the lives of several dozen soldiers in another last year.

Negotiations: Very interesting - China facilitated a peaceful accord between Saudi Arabia and Iran to end the Yemen war and now is facilitating Palestinian unity. Most of world new renewable capacity comes from China.

Trump shots down "project 2025" as something from the "radical right" that's full of "misinformation and disinformation".

The document views Africa through the prism of China and access resources. So naturally their policy calls for "countering malign Chinese activity on the continent" and to "correct this strategic failing of existing policy" where "PRC’s companies dominate the African supply chain for certain minerals" and where "African nations comprise major country-bloc elements that shield the PRC and Russia from international isolation". When it comes to the Western Hemisphere and Africa, the manifesto is straight-up ‘colonial’, treating sovereign nations as mere pawns in a grand geopolitical chess game against China and other perceived adversaries. What any person should conclude when reading this project 2025 is that the US has unequivocally become the single greatest threat to global stability and peace. This manifesto isn't just a collection of misguided policies; it's a blueprint for turning America into a rogue superpower, even more unbounded by international law or basic human decency than it was in the past... There must be a serious global reckoning (rising giant BRICS) about how to contain and counterbalance this increasingly erratic and aggressive behavior before it's too late. The movement has started, no stopping now.

Africa’s economic sovereignty. Africa rises with betting on itself and old allies. Notably, the serious drive of connectivity for the continent, uniting countries within Africa seriously working together and perhaps for the first time in long time, putting the people first.

Historical Lens

~1/3 of all nations on Earth now are sanctioned by the US. This disproportionately affects poor countries with over 60% of all poor countries (countries classified as low-income countries by the World Bank) under US sanctions of some kind.

Sanctions have become an immensely corrupt multi-billion-dollar lobbying & influence industry, enriching former US officials who are hired by foreign countries & oligarchs.

Lets delve into deeper into sanction reality.

The 60+ year old US economic, financial and commercial blockade, opposed by 184 UN member countries, opposed at the UN for 30 years, cost Cuba $130 billion, $11,477 for each Cuban, 1.67 times the per capita GDP. The blockade deprives Cubans of food, medicine and wellbeing. Sanctions are a coercive measure which harms ordinary residents in target countries and violates fundamental human rights, depriving people of needed food, medicine and economic opportunity. 

Sanctions on Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Laos, Myanmar, Namibia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, South Sudan, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe should be ended immediately.        

The current president of USA, has the highest rate of sanctions with at some point in his administration a volley of +6K sanctions in just 2 years.

Sanctions have had devastating effects on innocent civilians, directly causing immense

critical medical supplies impossible to import. In Venezuela, they contributed to a financial collapse 3X greater than the US Great Depression. Many including, Syria faces its greatest humanitarian crisis this year after a decade of sanctions.

Worse of all, besides causing immense suffering of civilians in mostly poor countries and enriching a corrupt system, there is very little evidence that sanctions actually work at all.

“nobody in government is sure this whole strategy [of sanctions] is even working.”