風蕭蕭_Frank
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反華鷹派推動北約向亞洲擴張可能會摧毀西方軍事聯盟
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/08/04/nato-expand-asia-china-russia/
作者：拉迪卡·德賽、邁克爾·哈德森； 2023-08-04
政治經濟學家拉迪卡·德賽 (Radhika Desai) 和邁克爾·哈德森 (Michael Hudson) 與地緣政治分析師佩佩·埃斯科瓦爾 (Pepe Escobar) 一起討論戰爭鷹派將北約擴展到亞洲以遏製中國的努力可能會如何摧毀西方軍事聯盟。
北約拓展亞洲 佩佩·埃斯科巴爾 拉迪卡·德賽 邁克爾·哈德森
政治經濟學家拉迪卡·德賽 (Radhika Desai) 和邁克爾·哈德森 (Michael Hudson) 與地緣政治分析師佩佩·埃斯科瓦爾 (Pepe Escobar) 一起討論戰爭鷹派將北約擴展到亞洲以遏製中國的努力可能會如何摧毀西方軍事聯盟。
您可以在此處找到更多地緣政治經濟時間劇集。
成績單
RADHIKA DESAI：大家好，歡迎來到第 15 期地緣政治經濟時間，這是一個討論我們這個時代的政治和地緣政治經濟的節目。 我是拉迪卡·德賽。
邁克爾·哈德森：我是邁克爾·哈德森。
拉迪卡·德賽：今天我們再次請到傑出的流動記者佩佩·埃斯科瓦爾。 歡迎，佩佩。
佩佩·埃斯科巴： 謝謝。 很高興再次與你們在一起。
拉迪卡·德賽：今天我們將繼續上一期地緣政治經濟課開始的討論，題為“北約越界：對俄羅斯的戰爭，對中國的戰爭”。
上次我們討論了維爾紐斯峰會離開北約的方向，以及峰會暴露出的聯盟內部分歧； 對俄羅斯的代理人戰爭進展如何； 以及拜登聯合所謂民主國家反對所謂獨裁國家的計劃如何如此關鍵地依賴於這場戰爭的結果，從目前的跡象來看，這對烏克蘭來說並不好，對北約來說也不利。
然後我們繼續討論歐洲和其他美國盟友能夠維持北約團結的外觀多久，就在我們說話的時候，這種團結正在破裂，最後我們討論了糧食協議（黑海糧食倡議）是如何破裂的。
現在，討論已經使我們能夠將我們的框架擴展到歐洲之外，並將世界視為一個整體，因為，正如我們的討論中非常清楚的那樣，你無法理解穀物交易的破裂，除非你將其放在更大的範圍內。 帝國主義長期以來試圖剝奪世界大多數國家的糧食安全，這是一個殘酷的曆史背景。
因此，今天我們將繼續討論，重點關注北約從北大西洋公約組織轉變為北大西洋公約組織、南大西洋公約組織和太平洋公約組織的危險，因為拜登將導致對中國發動一場不斷擴大和深化的混合戰爭 涉及貿易、技術、外交和軍事方麵，但越來越接近某種軍事戰爭。
因此，我們再次圍繞幾個問題進行討論，所以我將首先提出第一個問題：
美國在所謂印太地區對華的更廣泛意圖和戰略是什麽？
最近發生的事件對該地區意味著什麽？ 我想到的是中國和俄羅斯高級官員訪問平壤以紀念朝鮮戰爭停戰70周年等活動。
我想到的是西方國家對中國與所羅門群島（眾多太平洋島國之一）最近達成的協議的歇斯底裏。
美國最近宣布向台灣提供新的一攬子軍事援助，這基本上將通過某種總統令來完成，所使用的軍事縮編計劃與拜登總統為助長烏克蘭戰爭而使用的相同。
總體而言，我認為該地區的緊張局勢正在加劇，這要歸功於幾年前 AUKUS 的宣布，以及所謂的四國聯盟（或新興聯盟，無論你怎麽稱呼它）的重新啟動。 美國、韓國、日本和印度。
當然，北約最近宣布將中國視為威脅。
美國的戰略並不容易理解，因為一方麵似乎在努力通過最近安東尼·布林肯、珍妮特·耶倫等美國高官的來訪來推動對話，另一方麵， 美國的行動繼續加劇各方麵的緊張局勢。
那麽，邁克爾，你為什麽不先向我們介紹一下你對此事的看法呢？
邁克爾·赫德森：嗯，今天距離美國被趕出阿富汗才兩年，我們看到烏克蘭的失敗再次重演。
因此，美國和北約失去了烏克蘭，但他們希望繼續戰鬥，因為拜登表示，這是一場針對中國的戰鬥，需要二十年，也許三十年。
因此看來太平洋甚至北極可能成為美國新的幹擾區。
現在，特別是俄羅斯和中國正在與朝鮮合作開發港口，以開展從太平洋經北極到北歐的新貿易。 所以美國在軍事上正在失敗，但看起來是這樣
幾年後就會失去歐洲。
而美國自20世紀90年代以來的戰略計劃就是將華沙條約組織納入北約。 它已經做到了，但現在看來它做得有些過頭了。 最終的代價可能是失去以德國、法國和意大利為首的西歐。
我們已經看到，在過去的幾天裏，自從我們上次廣播以來，隨著經濟和就業的下降，我們看到整個歐洲發生了騷亂。
還有人討論，以巴斯夫公司為首的德國化學工業將何去何從？ 他們宣布不會在德國進行任何進一步的資本投資。 他們表示，他們麵臨著將工廠遷往美國的壓力。 他們已經在中國設有工廠。
那麽，像拉脫維亞、愛沙尼亞和立陶宛的人口自1990年以來減少了約三分之一一樣，德國工業人口放棄國家後會去哪裏呢？
當你觀察這一切在地緣政治上的表現時，就會發現波羅的海和中歐在經濟上並不重要。 他們的人口正在減少。
隻有波蘭具有軍事價值，因為它夢想恢複 16 世紀的狀態，當時它控製著斯堪的納維亞半島和波羅的海的大部分地區。
所以美國一直在堅持，要麽你支持我們，要麽反對我們。 即將到來的突破可能會讓西歐進入俄羅斯和上海合作組織的軌道。
當他們最終做出決定時，如果他們真的決定了，“哎呀，我們不應該失去與俄羅斯的貿易。 現在我們被告知停止與中國的貿易。 也許我們不應該這麽做”。 如果他們改變決定，這將是不可逆轉的。
你可以說，同樣受到壓力的南半球國家 — — 事實上，全球大多數國家 — — 他們被迫做出選擇，要麽選擇工業經濟正在萎縮的美國，要麽選擇“支持美國”。 與不斷擴大的金磚國家+以及上海合作組織合作。
那麽，未來幾年這些國家將在哪些方麵進行重組呢？
美國可以讓英國成為附屬國。 我認為，英國的命運將對那些采用美國式金融資本主義而不是社會主義工業化和公共服務作為人權的國家發出警告。
PEPE ESCOBAR： Michael 向我們介紹了大局，對吧？ 我想重點關注過去幾天發生的事情，這是一件巨大的事情，我想說，對於地球上的大多數人來說，這是完全不可預見的，那就是俄羅斯將朝鮮、朝鮮重新提升到一個非常重要的地位。 影響力巨大的全球南方力量。
因此，我們接待了[俄羅斯]國防部謝爾蓋·紹伊古，就像平壤的米克·賈格爾一樣。 他受到了真正的搖滾明星般的歡迎，整個過程，包括與金正恩的私人接見，顯然還有朝鮮整個領導層的歡迎。
當然，泄露的是許多軍事協議和加強軍事合作的可能性。
沒有泄漏的是其中最好的部分，因為這是地緣經濟部分。
俄羅斯人到底想對平壤做什麽？ 他們希望將平壤與韓國、首爾融為一體。 當然，這將意味著俄羅斯在兩者之間發展某種中間人的外交。 他們有可能做到這兩點，因為他們在首爾也受到尊重。
符拉迪沃斯托克東部經濟論壇已經討論過這一點。 這些討論，至少是三四年前在符拉迪沃斯托克開始的。 他們的目的基本上是建設一條橫貫朝鮮的鐵路，這條鐵路將與西伯利亞大鐵路連接起來，將朝鮮和俄羅斯遠東地區連接起來，然後一直穿越歐亞大陸。
假設您是首爾的三星商人。 你看著它，說：“哇，我不再需要使用貨輪了； 隻要修建一條鐵路，我就可以直接進入俄羅斯遠東地區巨大的發展中市場，更不用說通過俄羅斯進入整個歐亞大陸了。” 非常非常簡單。
我想說，在中國的投入下，它遲早會成為一條高鐵。 考慮到中國人已經在俄羅斯投資高鐵，並且考慮到如果將西伯利亞大鐵路複製成中國人將修建的橫貫西伯利亞高鐵，這條橫貫韓國的高鐵將由中國人建造。 鐵路也可以由中國投入和技術投入來建設。
並通過中國絲路基金、金磚國家開發銀行、俄羅斯銀行等提供融資。這可能是東歐亞大陸風格的金融重組。
所以他們當然正在討論這個問題，並且將會重新討論這個問題，他們將在九月初於符拉迪沃斯托克舉行的下一屆東方經濟論壇上更深入地討論這個問題。 所以，從字麵上看，它指日可待。
因此，現在發生的這種情況非常非常重要，因為這是一種
序言他們將在下一屆東方經濟論壇上討論什麽。 所以大家對這個安排都很滿意。
朝鮮，因為他們被帶回了歐亞大陸部分地區貿易的前沿。 朝鮮和韓國之間達成某種地緣經濟協議的可能性。
俄羅斯，開發遠東，將遠東與朝鮮一體化。
當然還有中國，因為這也整合了歐亞大陸的這一部分，這個歐亞大陸北部的框架。
它是金磚國家的一部分。 它是上海合作組織的一部分。 我想說，這給我們留下了朝鮮遲早融入歐亞經濟聯盟的可能性。
這太棒了，因為我看到這種情況至少發生在兩個階段。
第一階段，歐亞經濟聯盟與朝鮮達成自由貿易協定，就像與古巴或東南亞越南的自由貿易協定一樣。
他們還正在與印度尼西亞合作，與印度尼西亞達成歐亞經濟聯盟自由貿易協定。 他們也可以對朝鮮做同樣的事情。
太棒了，這繞過了美國的製裁，因為基本上是 EAEU，俄羅斯占 EAEU 火力的 80%。 他們可以設計一種涉及朝鮮的完全繞過美元的結算機製。
歐亞經濟聯盟向東北亞擴張，這一點非常重要。 中國人也會喜歡它，因為他們也可以，即使他們不是歐亞經濟聯盟的一部分——不要忘記普京和習近平已經說過，而且指令已經在那裏了——“一帶一路”倡議 、“一帶一路”和歐亞經濟聯盟，它們必須趨同。
這將是“一帶一路”倡議與歐亞經濟聯盟融合的完美範例。
這就是為什麽，在我看來，紹伊古扮演的米克·賈格爾的這次訪問，在地緣經濟和地緣政治上都可以推斷出這一點。 我想說，西方主流媒體甚至沒有提及或幾乎沒有提及它，這也不足為奇。
拉迪卡·德賽：這絕對是真的。
我的意思是，人們想得越多，事實就是美國的戰略在該地區停止發揮作用隻是時間問題。
首先，我的意思是，美國可以將北約擴展到太平洋的想法不會被推翻，因為太平洋地區曆史上一直專注於自身的經濟發展。
中國人本質上是把自己的經濟發展戰略與北約的一切安全化戰略對立起來，本質上把一切都變成軍事衝突或軍事聯盟。 我們將看到這兩種願景在該地區的爭論。
我想說，基本上，每個人都開始意識到美國在亞洲所做的事情，美國在世界各地所做的事情，至少自第二次世界大戰以來，如果不是之前的話，隻是時間問題， 本質上，美國說它正在為世界提供保護； 事實上，美國一直在收取保護費。
什麽是保護球拍？ 保護費是承諾提供安全保障，防止你自己製造的危險，這樣你提供安全的承諾就顯得可信和有吸引力。
例如，美國繼續在朝鮮半島製造不團結。 事實是，絕大多數韓國人，無論南北，都深深渴望某種形式的統一。 毫無疑問。
事實證明了這一點：周期性地，政府上台推動統一進程，但隨後美國介入並擾亂統一進程。
隻有當韓國人意識到這一點時，他們才會停止投票給這些勢力。 我認為這隻是時間問題。
同樣，就台灣而言，我們已經看到，在即將舉行的選舉前夕，我想，幾個月後，你們就會與希望促進和平和解的國民黨並肩出現。 對於中國來說，一個新政黨的出現也將做同樣的事情。
這將從根本上將民進黨排除在外。 所以他們不會贏。
同樣，你也在報紙上看到，雖然日本近年來簽署、宣布了新的軍事政策，人們說這對於一個和平憲法的國家來說是不可想象的，但實際上你看到絕大多數日本人是 不會加入任何由美國領導的針對台灣問題針對中國的戰爭。
最後，我真正想說的是，你給出的有關朝鮮問題可能發生的情況的精彩細節，是更廣泛壓力的一部分，我喜歡將其視為施加的壓力。 經濟磁力，中國的經濟引力。
任何國家都不能不對此做出回應。 因此，我們將看到一種轉變，但與此同時，就我們可以預期在新時期發生的情況而言
美國試圖在未來幾年，甚至幾十年內阻止這種不可阻擋的發展發生。
邁克爾，你說我同意你的觀點，在某種程度上，美國似乎正在考慮一場長達數十年的戰爭。 但我們也在報紙上讀到，美國覺得現在有必要做點什麽，因為他們認為，到2027年，中國才有能力真正抵抗美國的軍隊。
但是，是的，我的意思是，這是對下一個問題的一種延續，基本上是，美國可以從其盟友那裏得到什麽？
邁克爾·赫德森：日本有點斯德哥爾摩綜合症，它認同美國，因為美國轟炸了它。 盡管擁有與中國的出口貿易機會，但其右翼政府仍然願意失去這個市場，並再次為美國犧牲其經濟，就像它在《廣場協議》和《盧浮宮協議》中所做的那樣。
韓國確實是這一切的關鍵，部分原因是它在船舶製造方麵非常重要，而且它麵臨著繼續削減向中國出口先進船舶的壓力。 《華爾街日報》剛剛對此進行了長篇報道。
但如果它看到了中國市場的前景 — — 正如佩佩所解釋的，整個歐亞市場，由於鐵路 — — 它將決定它將選擇什麽：出口市場來解決軍事開銷和威脅 朝鮮，還是會繼續支持美國？
它可能不得不告訴美國撤走其占領軍，因為我認為朝鮮戰爭仍然在合法地進行。 因此，我們最終可能會看到 1950 年開始的朝鮮戰爭結束。
佩佩·埃斯科巴：你的問題是美國將做什麽。 隻要環顧四周，看看他們在南半球或全球多數地區的某些地區無法做到的事情。
例如東南亞。 嗯，我住在【東南亞】； 這是我的家。 很久以前，94 年我搬到了東南亞。
所以我現場關注東盟十國、東南亞十國、俄羅斯、中國、印度、美國的關係。
如今，大家都知道，整個東盟的第一大貿易夥伴是中國。
我們還知道，美國在一些東南亞國家比在其他國家擁有更大的回旋餘地。
比如新加坡，我們平時開玩笑說新加坡是美國在東南亞的航母駐地，與印度尼西亞、馬來西亞並列。
印度尼西亞和中國之間的關係越來越密切，最後，當然，在蘇哈托時代以及之後不久，雙方都存在很多相互猜疑。
中國人非常非常聰明地向印度尼西亞解釋，“看，我們對你們的島嶼，即南海的納土納群島沒有任何設計”。 所以印尼人比較放鬆。
所以現在他們正在談論生意，例如，你知道，中國的投資，這是印度尼西亞“一帶一路”倡議的一部分。
眾所周知，菲律賓仍然是時斷時續的美國殖民地。
但例如，美國人在緬甸、老撾和柬埔寨的滲透率絕對為零。 這是中國的領土。 這些地區都有一帶一路倡議項目，比如中國人建造的從雲南到萬象的絕對非凡的高鐵。
我看到它建在湄公河對麵的森林中央。 這是隻有中國人才能做到的事情。 除此之外，他們在創紀錄的時間內做到了這一點，因為老撾政府說，“好吧，來這裏，做一切”，這就是要走的路。
在泰國，將會有一個延期，因為，當然，由於外國幹涉，由於泰國遊說集團內部的鬥爭，泰國人甚至還沒有開始完成他們自己的延期，你看。
但這證明東南亞對於中美關係而言 關係，這是一個平衡的行為。 但這些國家中的大多數都清楚地知道從現在開始會發生什麽。
他們的第一大貿易夥伴是中國。 中國對所有這些國家的影響力將繼續非常非常強大，無論是直接還是間接，通過所有這些國家的華人僑民，我們稱之為“竹子互聯網”，它在所有這些國家都很強大。
南美：南美，他們基本上是對陣阿根廷和巴西，當然，美國人有戰術上的勝利。
以阿根廷為例，他們強迫阿根廷獲得一筆貸款來支付國際貨幣基金組織的另一筆貸款。
所以基本上，該計劃是讓阿根廷無限期地乞求國際貨幣基金組織貸款。 所以這是 A 計劃。沒有 B 計劃。
巴西的情況要複雜得多。 但就目前而言，這是一次戰術上的勝利，因為盧拉政府的回旋餘地非常非常小。
我們有一份著名的你要做的事情清單，傑克·沙利文親自前往巴西利亞分發給巴西新政府。
很明顯，
金磚國家內部的盧拉必須非常非常小心。 每次他一開口談論去美元化，我們都會看到環城公路上的人在減少。 所以非常複雜。
當然，在整個非洲，我確信我們將討論這一點，我們基本上正在觀察第二波非殖民化浪潮。
現在，最後，在布基納法索、馬裏、尼日爾、岡比亞，新一代年輕的非洲愛國者們終於迎來了真正的機會。
當然，還有非常非常重要的盟友，不僅是俄羅斯和中國，還有馬格裏布的阿爾及利亞，後者明確支持薩赫勒地區的所有新政府。
因此，不僅對美國而言，而且對整個西方集體來說，無論有沒有非洲司令部，他們都在一點一點地被驅逐出非洲。
當然，在西亞，他們仍然堅持敘利亞等國家。
如今，隨著烏克蘭戰爭的發生，每個人似乎都忘記了敘利亞的三分之一仍然被美國人占領。 他們幾乎每天或每周都在掠奪石油和小麥。 這完全從任何地方的敘述中消失了。
即使在西亞，敘利亞戰爭也還沒有結束。 敘利亞戰事仍在繼續，敘利亞三分之一的領土被非法占領。
所以我們取得了戰術上的勝利。 與此同時，真主黨日益強大。
所以美洲到處都在失去地形。
當然，[美國]在歐洲取得了戰術勝利。 他們設法使德國和歐盟與俄羅斯分離。 但這並不是永恒的。 這是目前的戰術勝利。 這種情況可能會在幾年內發生改變。
當然，在整個歐亞大陸，我們都知道正在發生什麽。 上海合作組織、金磚國家+、俄羅斯大歐亞夥伴關係、一帶一路倡議。 我們十月份將在北京舉辦一個論壇。
就是這個。 現在的歐亞大陸是歐亞人控製的歐亞大陸，沒有外國幹涉。
當然，我們仍然有顏色革命的嚐試。
我很快就要回中亞了。 我現在要去看看哈薩克斯坦正在發生什麽。 哈薩克斯坦，他們太難受了； 考慮到一年半前他們遭遇了顏色革命，他們正試圖對衝自己的賭注。 並且還有續集。 這件事還沒有被控製。
所以，夥計們，這是一個非常複雜的情況。 我想我們都同意，就戰術勝利而言，美國人取得了一些重大勝利。 但就整體戰略而言，他們幾乎在每個大陸都在失敗。
拉迪卡·德賽：哈薩克斯坦對此重新考慮這一事實是一件非常重要的事情。 因為據我了解，在所有中亞共和國中，它是最親西方的。 它是美國資本滲透最多的地方，等等。
這真的很有趣。 你說得對，情況非常複雜。
但我們可以看到曆史的暗流流向何方。 它正在從美國轉向中國和俄羅斯等。
但與此同時，暗流也是一回事。 但從表麵上看，美國將繼續嚐試並做出嚐試來阻止這種情況的發生。 會有一些徒勞的嚐試，但它們將會實現。 人們會為此付出代價等等。
但是，如果你嚐試這樣做，你就會知道，正如你所說，美國實施這一切的能力正處於危險之中。
正如我們過去所討論的，這方麵的一個跡象是，你知道，美國不能——今天有新聞稱，美國將利用為烏克蘭設立的削減設施向台灣運送武器。
但事實是，美國媒體本身（更不用說其他地方）也報道稱，美國生產當今戰區行動所需武器的能力實際上非常薄弱。 是無法生產的。
美國向其嬌生慣養的軍工聯合體提供了大量資金來生產無用的武器 — — 或者這些武器還不夠。
要知道，他們非常擅長生產那些無法在戰場上使用的高價大件物品。
現在，這確實是對資本主義、對美國式壟斷資本主義的一個令人著迷的評論，你擁有一個嬌生慣養的軍工聯合體，無法生產你需要的東西，但你仍然繼續支持他們。 所以這是一個矛盾。
當然，你知道，在美國即將進入緊鑼密鼓的競選活動中，還有許多其他人。 即使在美國，[烏克蘭]戰爭也不受歡迎，這是顯而易見的。
每隔一天，一些報紙上就會有一些文章說，“你知道，當我們可以在美國投資時，為什麽我們要向烏克蘭發送這麽多錢？”等等。
那麽美國有什麽選擇呢？
我的意思是，邁克爾，你最近寫了一篇論文，其中你說美國已經失去了理性計算它應該做什麽的能力。
做什麽，什麽策略就會獲勝。 也許你可以對此說些什麽。
邁克爾·赫德森：英特爾等美國芯片製造商正在強烈抗議中國占其市場的三分之一。
因此，如果拜登政府告訴他們停止向中國出售先進芯片，那麽政府就會被告知，好吧，你可能必須向我們提供 500 億美元的補貼。
美國財政部真的會被要求取代中國市場嗎？ 這就是國會已經在爭論的問題。
那麽，如果真的如此，這種贈品將如何影響明年的美國總統和國會選舉呢？ 這已經是一個問題了。
商業捐助者不會向拜登政府和民主黨提供資金，因為他們不知道該怎麽辦。
另一方麵，唐納德·特朗普試圖通過比民主黨更加反華來獲得選票。
因此，最大的未知數是，中國將如何應對美國搬起石頭砸自己的腳的行為。 它是否願意扭轉局勢並通過實施製裁進行報複？
而且它對美國實施製裁的能力比美國對中國實施製裁的能力要強得多。
一周前，中國發出了警告，停止了镓（占世界供應量的 80%）和鍺（占世界供應量的 60%）的出口。
而8月1日，中國剛剛宣布限製稀土出口。 稀土是製造複雜芯片技術所需的磁性特性的關鍵。
因此，中國可以簡單地對沒有太多貨幣價值但具有關鍵技術價值的貿易實施製裁，並且可以將原材料貿易限製在上海合作組織的盟友之間，然後說：“好吧，看，我會 為你提供所有材料，你就可以製造美國和西歐不再能夠製造的東西，因為他們沒有隻有我們可以提供的東西”。
那麽問題是，中國的政治心態何時會決定真正打美國式的製裁消極戰爭，而不是經濟貿易應該打的競爭性成本削減、高科技戰爭？ 這就是問題所在。
拉迪卡·德賽：當然。 而且，你知道，邁克爾，當你說話時，我想起了這樣一個事實：當然，對俄羅斯的製裁應該是“將盧布貶為瓦礫”，並且推動俄羅斯經濟倒退。 進入石器時代等等。
當然，如果他們沒有戰勝俄羅斯，他們也不會戰勝中國。 我們知道，正如您所說，也許中國應該更多地參與其剛剛采取的行動，以拒絕向西方提供其所需的重要投入、其所需的重要原材料。
但即使沒有這樣的限製，中國也已經讓美國的製裁變得毫無用處，因為它在芯片技術等方麵迅速加速了創新。
你知道，如果中國人真的卷起袖子說我們要解決這個問題，那麽這個問題將在相對較短的時間內得到解決。
台灣人能做到，中國人為什麽不能？ 你不知道，中國人很樂意依賴進口，因為它們很容易獲得。 但如果他們不這樣做，他們就會開發自己的。
因此，製裁對於中國來說也將產生巨大的反作用。 事實上，以更大的方式。
因此，非常清楚的是，不太可能出現像亞洲北約這樣的東西。
事實上，正如我之前所說，鑒於烏克蘭戰爭的失敗，真正的問題將是歐洲北約能否生存。
PEPE ESCOBAR： Radhika，我可以稍微改變一下話題嗎？ 談到邁克爾剛才所說的，我突然意識到，對帝國的製裁的最終形式是去美元化。
因為如果不改變地緣經濟範式，多極一體化就不會發生。
所以我想先做一些介紹，然後我將直接問邁克爾一個問題。 因為他可能是世界上第一的專家，可以在不參與談判的情況下為我們提供信息，好吧，他們計劃做什麽？
這是關於所謂的金磚國家新貨幣。 我從金磚國家夏爾巴人那裏了解到，由於許多非常複雜的原因，南非不會在三周內宣布金磚國家新貨幣。
首先，他們沒有時間。 其次，他們的談判幾個月前才開始。 這是我在莫斯科討論過的事情； 你需要五年、六年、七年的時間來設計一個這樣的係統，如果不是十年的話，然後開始實施它並首先在企業中進行測試，然後在民族國家中進行測試。
南非將要宣布增加以本國貨幣計價的雙邊貿易，這
是他們已經在做的事情。 他們已經在研究替代解決方案。
所以基本上，從五種金磚國家貨幣開始——值得注意的是，[它們的名字]都以“R”開頭。 這非常非常奇怪，不是嗎？ 顯然，如果我們用人民幣代替人民幣，那麽我們就有人民幣、雷亞爾、蘭特、盧比和盧布。
因此，我們將把 R5 結合起來，組織一個替代的支付結算係統。 這將是邁向以五國貨幣進行多邊貿易的第一步。
不要忘記我們將迎來“金磚五國+”。 所以我們不會有五個； 我們可能會有七個、八個、九個甚至十個，具體取決於成為金磚國家+成員的第一波和第二波候選人。
然後擴大與這些國家貨幣的多邊貿易。 當然，構建，好吧，讓我們開始設計一個係統，然後嚐試將其出售給我們各個國家的企業，然後也出售給其他國家。 這將意味著上海合作組織、歐亞經濟聯盟等。
歐亞經濟聯盟，他們至少在三年前就已經開始討論替代貨幣了。 他們仍在討論它。 就像，你知道，兩個月前，[著名俄羅斯經濟學家]謝爾蓋·格拉濟耶夫(Sergey Glazyev)前往北京與中國人討論這個問題。
從本質上講，這是一件極其複雜的事情。 當然，考慮到中國人尤其害怕美國的二級製裁。 所以這一切都極其複雜。
因此，我向邁克爾提出的問題是，考慮到中國擁有自己的支付係統，首先在金磚國家內部製定替代支付係統，然後擴展到金磚國家+，然後出售該支付係統，理想的路徑是什麽？ 俄羅斯人有自己的支付係統； 伊朗有自己的支付係統。
因此，將這些整合在一起，您就可以在這個新框架內繞過美元來結算貿易。 然後你會讓你的大企業、大公司、個別國家說，“嗯，這是一筆很棒的交易，太棒了”。
因此，現在如果我們是土耳其的一家公司，我們可以與俄羅斯公司開展業務，並且我們使用替代支付係統。
繼續前進的最佳方式是什麽？ 我們什麽時候才能達到可以真正討論繞過美元和歐元的替代貨幣的階段？
邁克爾·赫德森：實際上，拉迪卡和我專門為此係列專門製作了兩個節目來解決這個問題。 我們指出，當人們說金磚國家貨幣時，他們所想到的就是類似歐元的東西，你可以用它來買賣東西，無論是購買鋼鐵還是在雜貨店消費。
你是絕對正確的。 那是遙遠的，因為你需要政治一體化才能實現這一點。
但我們真正談論的是什麽，我們談論的貨幣並不是真正的貨幣；而是貨幣。 它是一種銀行信貸，一種銀行結算係統，非常類似於國際貨幣基金組織的特別提款權，隻不過它不受美國控製。
但最重要的是，這就是[約翰·梅納德]凱恩斯在 1944 年[布雷頓森林會議]中通過 Bancor 所支持的。 它隻是央行之間支出的一種結算手段。
所以它不是通用貨幣。 這是央行之間結算信貸的一種手段。 信貸顯然將基於人造銀行貨幣，與成員國都支持的原材料價格掛鉤。
它將非常像紙黃金。 目前，持有彼此貨幣或美元的替代方案是黃金，因為黃金是一種沒有負債的資產。 這隻是你可以投資的東西。但你必須以某種方式賺到錢來購買黃金。
自 1991 年之前的貶值運動以來，許多國家都放棄了黃金。 各國過去常常將黃金交給美聯儲，在黃金市場上進行結算、買賣，以穩定匯率。 他們從未要求歸還他們的黃金。
最後，幾年前德國問了，美聯儲說，對不起，你的黃金都沒有了。 我們壓低了黃金價格，以防止人們通過向大宗商品交易商抵押美元而放棄美元。 我們沒有任何黃金可以給你。
世界上還有多少黃金留在美聯儲？ 我們不知道。
因此，為了避免如何真正結算新黃金的問題，金磚國家銀行將創建一個信用體係，所有國家都有信用相互買賣，並以本國貨幣結算，這樣，例如中國，就贏得了 不要持有太多阿根廷貨幣——特別是因為阿根廷剛剛完成了貨幣互換，以向國際貨幣基金組織支付其本應清償的外債。
所以我們談論的是央行特殊貨幣，而不是一般支出貨幣。 有兩件事不同
在公眾討論中，人們常常感到困惑。
RADHIKA DESAI：是的，如果我可以補充一點，因為 – 你知道，邁克爾和我在我們的項目中共同完成了這方麵的工作，在我們共同撰寫的一篇論文中； 然後，邁克爾也獨立地完成了《超級帝國主義》等方麵的工作； 我自己在地緣政治經濟方麵的工作實際上主要是——在《地緣政治經濟》一書中——它主要是對美元體係的批評，我認為美元體係從未穩定運行。
所以它總是陷入危機。 為了看起來能發揮作用，[美元體係]需要通貨膨脹，特別是在 1971 年之後，非常危險的金融活動泡沫。
原因很簡單。 你知道，散漫的言論——順便說一句，其中包括很多從事散漫言論的學者——對英鎊體係自然性的散漫言論，然後美元體係以某種方式讓每個人都明白了這一點，是的，當然 ，最強大國家的貨幣應該是世界貨幣。
但事實上，正如我們所表明的，這是一種極其不穩定的情況。 則無法獲得。
這就是為什麽凱恩斯在 1944 年代表他的國家發表講話 — — 不願意他的國家受到美元的外部權威的影響，因為他知道英鎊無法再扮演它曾經扮演的角色，並且非常清楚為什麽會這樣 就是這樣——提議了bancor。
從本質上講，這將國際失衡問題的解決與社會內貨幣的普通需求完全分開。
因此，在一個社會中，必須運行貨幣才能創造充分就業，這是一種在國內發揮作用的具有生產活力、生態可持續的貨幣。
但這種要求往往可能與維持其國際價值的需要直接背道而馳。
順便說一句，人們常常將黃金混淆：黃金不是貨幣。 當黃金被用作貨幣時，就表明沒有貨幣。
黃金是一種商品。 你知道，邁克爾說這是一種沒有負債的資產，但也許說它是一種商品更恰當。
所以這有點像，你知道，回到以物易物。 所以你給我鋼鐵，我給你黃金。 這就是兩種商品的交換。 它恰好是一種被廣泛接受的商品。 但人們提出了其他建議。
但從本質上講，訴諸黃金、德國人和其他國家說我們希望收回黃金等等，這是美元體係不起作用的跡象之一——順便說一句，這是眾多跡象之一。
因此，從本質上講，我想說的是，需要發生什麽？ 你知道，你最初的問題是，你知道，這些貨幣計劃將如何運作，等等？
所以我想說，第一步當然是在這些貨幣之間建立一個相對穩定的匯率體係——我們假設是 5 盧比。
那麽，讓我們說，你知道，五個盧比的相互匯率是多少，並試圖穩定它們等等？
然後，從長遠來看，這種係統可以發揮作用。 他們甚至可以創建一種基於 5 盧比的 Bancor——盡管凱恩斯最初說過，我們甚至不要使用任何貨幣； 讓我們將 Bancor 的價值與一籃子幾十種交易最廣泛的商品聯係起來，因為這才是國際貿易中最終重要的因素。
所以你可以這樣做，也許你可以做到這一點，但你可以從穩定價值觀開始。
但我認為重要的一步必須是，你必須嚐試在所有貿易夥伴之間建立相對平衡的貿易。
這是為什麽？ 因為，邁克爾說，我們必須確保，你知道，中國最終不會擁有太多的阿根廷貨幣或其他什麽，或者五個國家中的任何一個最終不會擁有太多對方的貨幣。
因為它表明一個國家從另一個國家購買了很多東西，但是那個國家大量出口，其出口收入卻沒有任何用處。
現在，這需要五個盧比的持有者製定一個發展計劃，例如，讓我們假設中國和俄羅斯之間存在貿易關係。
那麽，中國和俄羅斯必須確保每個人都願意用從對方國家賺到的錢來購買東西。 因此，如果它不存在，那麽也許應該有投資和機會來發展生產該東西的能力。
因為，你看，凱恩斯安排的天才之處在於它內部有機製來迫使人們、迫使國家走向平衡。 順差國家和逆差國家同樣有責任努力解決資本流動和貿易方麵的失衡問題。
因此，一旦建立了這些機製，就會產生激勵，比如說，如果中國有太多盧布，那麽中國就會說，“好吧，俄羅斯人，我們將幫助你們發展這種生產能力，這樣你們就可以出口更多的產品”。 X、Y、Z 給我們，等等”。
所以我認為這就是需要的
完畢。 最後一點，凱恩斯的天才在我們這個時代非常明顯，因為正如凱恩斯所說，穩定的體係應該努力消除持續的失衡。
現在，將目光轉向美元體係。 它主要依賴的一件事是持續失衡的產生，因為在持續的貿易赤字和與世界其他地區的經常賬戶赤字的基礎上向世界提供貨幣，意味著整個體係都依賴於失衡 ，這意味著它是不穩定的。
所以，正如你所說，佩佩，這是一件非常複雜的事情，需要時間來解決。
但如果人們在誤解下工作，那麽事情就不會解決，比如，你知道，我們需要創造一種像歐元這樣的貨幣，而不是像班科爾這樣的貨幣。
邁克爾·赫德森：關於美元，隻有一件事。 你剛才提到，每個討論美元體係的人都會談論美國是如何提供美元的。
在我的書《超級帝國主義》以及我多年前為阿瑟·安德森撰寫的作品中，美國私營部門完全處於平衡狀態。 1950年以來，年複一年，從朝鮮戰爭到越南戰爭，私營部門、貿易和投資都處於平衡狀態； 它根本沒有向世界提供任何額外的美元。
美國向世界提供美元的全部赤字都是軍事赤字。 它曾經被稱為美元過剩。 為了阻止這種情況，[法國]戴高樂將軍不斷用[美元兌換]黃金。
金磚國家和五盧比的新體係要解決的問題是，不能通過在其他國家周圍建立800個軍事基地來支付信用，將它們鎖定在依賴體係中。
您將使國際支付結算係統非軍事化。 這是這一切的基本目標。
美元體係是一個軍事化體係。 美元是美國在海外的軍費開支。
這是世界和平的首要原因，美元體係應該被取代。
拉迪卡·德賽：我同意就貿易而言，美國貿易在很長一段時間內保持平衡，比你想象的要長。
但當然從 20 世紀 80 年代開始，美國的貿易逆差也對當前的[賬戶赤字]做出了自己的貢獻。 目前美國的貿易逆差占美國 GDP 的 3% 至 4%。
邁克爾·哈德森：不，這絕對是虛構的。 它基於虛構的統計數據。
大部分貿易逆差是石油。 當石油進入時，它被算作貿易赤字。 但隻有大約 10% 的石油價格是用非美元支付的。 所有進口的石油均來自美國石油公司。
抵消的是，這方麵的收入、支付的利息或生產這種石油的成本都是在美國製造的。
因此，資本賬戶和收入賬戶上都有投資流入，以抵消根本不涉及外匯的石油進口的虛構支付。
拉迪卡·德賽：好吧，我不太清楚你的意思，因為事實是，美國以美元支付石油費用。
但讓我進一步指出一點，那就是，你知道，人們傾向於關注美國的貿易赤字，然後他們說，“看，中國人購買了這麽多美國國債，所以他們本質上是在為貿易融資” 赤字，所以這是一種相互支持的體係”——“中美國”等等。
但實際上，人們忘記的是，真正維持美元體係運轉的不是中國的融資，也不是中國購買美國國債；而是中國的融資。 維持美元體係運轉的是金融活動的大規模擴張，這種擴張是雙向的。
因此，舉例來說，如果你看一下統計數據，關於正在發生的所有國際資本流動的金融統計數據，其中大部分是在 2008 年金融危機爆發前以美元計價的資產，中國人在 幾乎沒有在其中發揮任何作用。
歐洲扮演了最大的角色，也是世界上最完全融入美國金融體係的地區，它產生了這些導致 2008 年金融危機的有毒證券。
因此，歐洲成為世界上受 2008 年危機影響最嚴重的地區也就不足為奇了。 2008年的危機為2010年的歐元區危機奠定了基礎，等等。
這就是為什麽當人們將 2008 年發生的事情稱為全球金融危機時，我確實發現糾正他們很重要。 它沒有什麽全球性的。 這是一場北大西洋金融危機。
邁克爾·哈德森：沒錯。
PEPE ESCOBA： 我想向你們倆提一個問題。 因為我想起了中國人正在做的一些非常聰明的事情，也許他們正在為整個南方國家樹立榜樣。
你知道他們現在在上海交易所，特別是海灣合作委員會有石油期貨交易。 這很有趣。
所以GCC去了上海證券交易所。 他們出售石油期貨。
中國人買。 他們付人民幣。
但隨後海灣合作委員會說，看，我們不需要那麽多人民幣。 你知道，你要用這麽多人民幣做什麽？
中國人說，沒問題。 您可以通過上海交易所、清算所或香港（如果您願意）用黃金交易人民幣。
這絕對是精彩的。 您認為這是否可以擴展到其他金磚國家，從其他金磚國家開始，然後如果我們讓伊朗和沙特阿拉伯成為金磚國家+的一部分，采用相同的機製？
RADHIKA DESAI：我認為這可行。 我想說的是，正如我所見，黃金的作用始終是殘餘的。
如果世界上所有的貨幣實際上都是由黃金支持的，我們將遭受大規模的通貨緊縮，因為世界上沒有足夠的貨幣，因為世界上沒有足夠的黃金。
邁克爾·赫德森：黃金隻為國際收支提供資金，而不是一般活動，作為黃金匯兌本位，而不是金本位。
再說一次，黃金是一種替代品，是美元最簡單的替代品，因為每個人都接受它。
花了幾千年的時間，但他們最終決定了一些他們可以接受的替代方案。
這是向金磚國家人造貨幣的過渡。 這是向遠離黃金的過渡——國際貨幣的理念不是美國貿易赤字的體現，而是美國軍費開支的體現。
RADHIKA DESAI：那麽，進一步補充一點，我想說，本質上，當人們購買黃金時，他們所說的是他們不想要錢；他們想要錢。 他們想要一種商品； 他們想要那種商品，等等，一種容易交易的商品，所以某種資產。
所以從這個意義上來說，這是一個好主意。 你知道，黃金的作用，我經常喜歡說英鎊本位製，在19世紀末20世紀初，英鎊匯兌本位製經常被稱為金本位製，你知道，因為英鎊是有黃金支持的。
但有兩件事。 第一，該體係的天才實際上在於為英鎊創造了如此廣泛的國際接受度，以至於它很少能兌換成黃金。 至於這樣做的原因和機製，我們可以談談。
但關鍵是，它很少能兌換成黃金。 凱恩斯在他的《印度貨幣與金融》一書中寫道，這實際上是國際金本位（英鎊本位）運作的入門讀本。 稍後我將解釋為什麽一本關於印度貨幣和金融的書應該作為金本位的入門讀本。 但讓我先結束這一點。
他指出，英格蘭銀行的黃金數量少於阿根廷儲蓄銀行。 他為此感到自豪。 他還曾斥責法國人持有黃金。 他說，看，你不需要，等等。 但這是另一組問題。
現在，讓我來看看英國人是如何做到這一點的。 因為他們畫的——我的意思是，所謂的金本位實際上和黃金沒有什麽關係，除了黃金是價值的基準之外； 黃金價格是英鎊價值的基準，英鎊偶爾也可以兌換成黃金。
而且，你知道，在那些日子裏，確實有一些金幣流通。 但這確實是一個非常有限的角色。
英鎊本位製的真正基礎是英國從其殖民地（主要是英屬印度）獲取的盈餘，這就是為什麽要寫一本關於印度貨幣和金融的書，這本書實際上描述了盈餘如何從印度轉移到英國。 為了做到這一點采用了哪些機製？
所以我的觀點是，這就是為什麽這本書是金本位的入門讀本。 金本位製的真正基礎是英國從殖民地提取的盈餘，然後作為資本出口輸出。
去哪裏？ 到歐洲、北美和大洋洲，在某種程度上還到南非——也就是說，到它的所有定居者殖民地。
因此，如果你以不同的方式思考的話，英國會從其非殖民殖民地——英屬印度、非洲、加勒比地區——獲取盈餘，並將其作為資本出口出口到其殖民殖民地。
這確實是一件非常種族化的事情，但事實就是如此。 這主要是錢的去向。
因此，英國通過輸出資本為世界提供流動性，而不是像美國後來那樣通過赤字。
美國別無選擇。 美國沒有可以擠壓的殖民地來提供盈餘以出口到世界其他地區。 因此美國必須扮演不同的角色。
回到你的問題，我認為中國的“以物換金”戰略是一個很好的建立信任措施。
而且，你知道，目前交易量還足夠少，因此它可以做到這一點。 我的意思是，最終，該係統應該運行良好，以至於不需要黃金。
現在，問題又來了，如果中國試圖以美元的模式實現其貨幣國際化，它實際上會紅色
讓中國走向美國那樣的經濟，即去工業化和基礎設施老化。 所以它不會這樣做。
這就是為什麽邁克爾和我，以及任何思考這個問題的人總是說，你不應該以這種方式使你的貨幣國際化，但不要達到任何顯著的程度； 相反，你需要這種有助於解決國際失衡的人造貨幣。
佩佩·埃斯科巴： 所以你是對的，拉迪卡。 這是北京的官方立場。 他們希望人民幣國際化進程非常非常緩慢。
拉迪卡·德賽： 是的，是的，完全正確。
所以，各位，我應該說，你們知道，我們像往常一樣進行了非常廣泛的討論，非常棒。
我們大約一個小時，我們不想超過一個小時太多。 那麽，我請你們兩位說一下你們想說的結束語。
邁克爾·赫德森：嗯，你又回到了我們在本次討論的第一部分中提出的觀點，即美國的製裁旨在孤立俄羅斯的原材料以及中國的信息技術和造船業。
這些不符合美國盟友、中國亞洲鄰國、甚至美國的經濟利益。
歐洲被告知要從美國、韓國、日本和台灣購買石油和天然氣——
基本上，我們回到了貿易本質上是經濟還是國家安全的問題。 現在看來，考慮到美國的軍事存在，兩者都會出現。 這將具有經濟性和國家安全性。
我認為，鑒於北約坦克、導彈和防空武器的失敗，美國很難利用任何軍事影響力。 這個想法基本上是美國正在拒絕美元。
乍一看，金磚國家和全球多數新興國家的想法似乎令人難以容忍，但這並不比諾貝爾獎的想法更令人難以容忍——
我想提出一個建議，就像基辛格因摧毀老撾和柬埔寨、用橙劑覆蓋越南森林而獲得諾貝爾和平獎一樣，或者奧巴馬因卡紮菲所希望的摧毀利比亞、沒收其黃金而獲得和平獎一樣。 用於非洲黃金貨幣並將其上交，以及奧巴馬最後的法案以在烏克蘭組織親納粹政變開始了今天的危機，我認為美國正試圖迫使歐洲人相信戰爭也是和平 感覺塔西佗描述了一位英國酋長說羅馬正在製造沙漠並稱之為和平。
但鑒於我們過去一年半所看到的情況，我可以想象拜登總統獲得今年的諾貝爾和平獎。 它會完美契合。 它符合摧毀一個國家烏克蘭的傳統資格。
但實際上，他能得到它還有一個原因。 拜登和布林肯以及他們的新保守派團隊推動了全球多數派的大多數共同努力，創造了一種替代以美國為中心的世界的方案，而這個世界已經變得越來越一邊倒。
在拜登政府的領導下，美國正在迫使除北約衛星國之外的世界其他國家建立新的經濟秩序。 這就是我們一直在討論的內容。
這種新的國際經濟秩序與聯合國在被美國接管之前最初應該建立的路線是一致的。
每個國家的糧食生產自給自足。 他們不必通過貿易逆差來進口糧食，因為就像俄羅斯能夠在糧食方麵實現獨立並成為糧食出口國一樣，其他國家在擺脫世界銀行的影響後也可以做同樣的事情 國際貨幣基金組織試圖阻止它。
新的經濟秩序將是社會主義路線的混合經濟，以提升整個經濟，至少是擴大後的金磚國家和上海合作組織的經濟。
並且將更加關注和平一體化，而不是軍事和金融一體化。
事實證明，北約在烏克蘭的戰爭已成為這一新世界秩序的巨大催化劑。 僅僅因為這不是拜登和布林肯的初衷，並不意味著這不是實踐中的效果。
請記住，18 世紀的法國官員 [Charles Maurice de] Talleyrand 在談到一項政策時說：“這比犯罪更糟糕，這是一個錯誤”。 你可以說這完美地描述了美國的政策。
但讓我們相信它犯了這個偶然的錯誤，正是這個錯誤促使全球多數群體團結起來，創造了世界銀行的替代品、國際貨幣基金組織的替代品以及失敗的以美國為中心的單極秩序的替代品。
佩佩·埃斯科巴：嗯，我與一群中國作家和學者保持著聯係，他們總是非常著迷。 事實上，其中之一，邁克爾隻是在談論錯誤。
他們說，這是帝國曆史上的第一大錯誤，他們將無法挽回。 和T
中國人有一點犯錯誤的經驗，對嗎？
好吧，我想說的是，三周後我們將舉行金磚國家峰會。 因此，邁克爾剛才告訴我們的一切都將在金磚國家峰會上討論。
這就是夏爾巴協作過去幾周一直在做的事情。 夏爾巴協作實際上是在組織和設計金磚五國+（金磚國家+）擴張的程序、將要發生的事情、議程和程序。
因此，三周後，我們將發生地緣政治、地緣經濟地震。 毫無疑問。 謹提醒大家，有一份 BRICS+ 潛在成員名單。
這很有趣，因為它們是與金磚國家平行的組織的一部分，稱為金磚國家之友。 隻要有金磚國家峰會，就有金磚之友峰會。 他們互動，也有自己的迷你峰會。
這正是兩周前在南非發生的最多的事情。 我會給你清單。 伊朗、沙特阿拉伯、阿拉伯聯合酋長國、古巴、剛果民主共和國、科摩羅、加蓬和哈薩克斯坦。
因此，第一層，第一波金磚國家+可能會來自這些人，其中一個、兩個、三個或四個。 還有白俄羅斯，雖然不在金磚國家之友之列，但與俄羅斯關係非常密切。 而白俄羅斯也申請加入金磚國家。
不幸的是，您會注意到，在此列表中沒有阿根廷。 我想我們在之前討論過這個問題，因為我想說，阿根廷基本上被迫撤回了對金磚國家的申請。 而這一點，他們不知道如何在布宜諾斯艾利斯解釋。 但這就是目前的情況。
那麽你能想象我們是否擁有一個全新的世界嗎？ 伊朗、沙特阿拉伯、阿聯酋同為金磚國家成員。
因此，我們將把金磚國家+與歐佩克+直接聯係起來，與中國的主要能源來源直接聯係起來，與海灣合作委員會上海交易所出售石油的機製直接聯係起來。 如果你想要黃金，你也可以獲得黃金。
那麽你能想象在兩三天內完成這一切嗎？ 我們將會把這件事顛倒過來。 也許這就是世界經濟新秩序的開始。 瞧。
拉迪卡·德賽： 是的，當然，各位。 所以，是的，讓我簡單說幾句話來結束這個話題。
第一，我認為，你知道，你正在談論錯誤。
但如果從長遠的曆史角度來看，美國霸權的整個計劃就是一個錯誤。 我們隻是看到美國在試圖維持其發展的過程中犯下了最新的、越來越絕望的錯誤。
這是我很長一段時間以來的論點。 把問題帶回北約，這至少在形式上是我們的主題，當然，北約一直是美國霸權的工具。
但如果你回想幾十年前，你會發現人們，很少有人真正談論北約。 因為美國的霸權範圍要廣泛得多。 北約是美國霸權更大結構的一部分。
現在已經到了美國在世界大事上對北約的依賴程度已經達到了美國力量的中流砥柱的地步。
你知道，美國權力的支柱是——人們不太談論它的部分原因是它總是脾氣暴躁。 歐洲人和美國人之間總是存在緊張關係等等。 因此，就美國霸權而言，那裏並沒有什麽可看的。
現在，所謂的美國霸權已經變得依賴於這個機構，這確實說明了美國的實力已經下降了多遠、有多低。
所以也許到此為止，我想我們應該結束今天的節目了。 敬請期待我們更多的節目。 希望佩佩，在即將舉行的峰會或類似活動之後，我們會再次邀請您回來評估它們。
佩佩·埃斯科巴： 非常感謝。 我的榮幸。
拉迪卡·德賽： 非常感謝。 再次感謝我們的攝影師 Paul Graham。 當然，一如既往地感謝本·諾頓主持我們的節目。
再見了，大家。 下次再見。 再見。
Anti-China hawks' drive to expand NATO into Asia may destroy Western military alliance
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/08/04/nato-expand-asia-china-russia/
Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson are joined by geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar to discuss how the war hawks’ drive to expand NATO into Asia to contain China may destroy the Western military alliance.
By 
You can find more episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour here.
Transcript
RADHIKA DESAI: Hello everyone and welcome to the [15th] Geopolitical Economy Hour, a program that discusses the political and geopolitical economy of our time. I’m Radhika Desai.
MICHAEL HUDSON: And I’m Michael Hudson.
RADHIKA DESAI: And today we have once again Pepe Escobar, roving reporter extraordinaire. Welcome, Pepe.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Thank you. It’s an enormous pleasure to be with you guys again.
RADHIKA DESAI: And today we are going to continue the discussion we started in the last Geopolitical Economy Hour, entitled “NATO Out of Bounds: War Against Russia, War Against China”.
Last time we discussed where the Vilnius Summit had left NATO, and the divisions within the alliance that the summit had exposed; how the proxy war on Russia was faring; and how the Biden project of uniting so-called democracies against so-called autocracies relies so critically on the outcome of this war, which by present indications does not look good for Ukraine, and it does not look good for NATO.
We then went on to discuss how much longer Europe and other US allies could sustain the appearance of NATO unity, which is cracking as we speak, and ended with a discussion of how the grain deal [the Black Sea Grain Initiative] had broken down.
Now that discussion already permitted us to expand our frame out of Europe and to take in the world as a whole, because, as it became very clear in our discussion, you cannot understand the breakdown of the grain deal unless you put it in the larger context of how imperialism has a long and murderous history of attempting to deny food security to most of the world.
So now today we are going to continue that discussion by focusing on the danger of NATO being transformed from a North Atlantic Treaty Organization to a North and South Atlantic and Pacific Treaty Organization, as Biden leads to an ever-widening and deepening hybrid war on China with trade, technology, diplomatic, and military aspects, but which is coming ever closer to some kind of military war.
So once again, we framed our discussion around several questions, so I will just begin by posing the first one:
What is the United States’ wider intention and strategy vis-a-vis China in the so-called Indo-Pacific region?
What do recent events mean for the region? I’m thinking of events such as the visit of high-ranking Chinese and Russian officials to Pyongyang to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the armistice in the Korean War.
I’m thinking of Western hysteria over the recent agreement between China and the Solomon Islands, one of a very large number of Pacific island nations.
The recent announcement of a new package of military aid to Taiwan from the United States, which essentially is going to be done by a kind of presidential decree, using the same military drawdown program that President Biden has been using to fuel the war in Ukraine.
And generally, I’m thinking of rising tensions in the region, thanks to the announcement of AUKUS a couple of years ago, and the reactivation of the so-called Quad alliance, or incipient alliance, whatever you want to call it, between the United States, South Korea, Japan, and India.
And of course, there has been the recent NATO declaration that it considers China a threat.
U.S. strategy is not easy to understand, because, while on the one hand, there seems to be some effort to promote dialogue with the visits of recent high-ranking U.S. officials, such as Antony Blinken and Janet Yellen, while on the other hand, U.S. actions continue to ratchet up tensions across all the fronts.
So, Michael, why don’t you start us off with your views on this matter?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, today is just two years since America was driven out of Afghanistan, and we’re seeing a repeat of the defeat in Ukraine.
So the U.S. and NATO have lost Ukraine, but they want to keep the fighting going because Biden said this is a fight against China that’s going to take two decades, maybe three decades.
So it looks like the Pacific and even the Arctic may become the new U.S. disruption zone.
Now, especially since Russia and China are working with North Korea to develop ports for the new trade from the Pacific via the Arctic to Northern Europe. So the United States is losing militarily, but it looks like it’s going to lose Europe in a few years.
And the American strategic plan since the 1990s was to absorb the Warsaw Pact into NATO. And it’s done that, but now it looks like it’s overplaying its hand. And the cost ultimately may be to lose Western Europe, headed by Germany, France, and Italy.
And we’re already seeing, in the last few days, just since our last broadcast, we’re seeing riots throughout Europe as the economy and employment are declining.
And there’s discussion, where is the German chemical industry, led by the BASF company, going to go? They’ve announced they are not going to make any further capital investments in Germany. They say that they’re being pressured to move their facilities to the United States. And they already have facilities in China.
So where will the German industrial population go when it abandons the country, just like Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania’s population have fallen by about one-third since 1990?
When you look at how this all works out geopolitically, the Baltics and Central Europe are not important economically. Their population is declining.
And only Poland has a military value, because of its dreams of recovering where it was in the 16th century, when it controlled most of Scandinavia and the Baltics.
So the U.S. is pushing the insistence, either you’re with us or against us. And the break that’s coming may move Western Europe into the Russian and SCO – Shanghai Cooperation Organization – orbit.
When they finally make the decision, if they do decide, “Gee, we shouldn’t have lost the trade with Russia. And now we’re being told to stop trading with China. Maybe we shouldn’t have made that”. If they reverse their decision, this is going to be irreversible.
And you could say the same of the Global South countries that are being pressured – and indeed, most of the Global Majority – they’re being forced to choose, either you’re with the U.S., whose industrial economy is shrinking, or you’re with the expanding BRICS+, plus the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
So where are these countries going to realign over the next few years?
The U.S. can keep England as a dependency. And England’s fate is, I think, going to be a warning to what happens to countries that adopt U.S.-style finance capitalism instead of socialist industrialization and public services as a human right.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Michael gave us the big picture, right? I would like to focus on something that happened these past few days, which is enormous, and I would say, for most of the planet, quite unforeseen, which is Russia bringing back North Korea, the DPRK, to the rank of a very important Global South power with enormous reach.
So we have [Russian] Ministry of Defense Sergei Shoigu received like Mick Jagger in Pyongyang. He got a true rock star welcome, the whole thing, including a private audience with Kim Jong-un and obviously the whole leadership of the DPRK.
What leaked, of course, was the possibility of many military agreements and increasing their military collaboration.
What did not leak is the best part of them all, because it’s the geoeconomic part.
What do the Russians really want to do with Pyongyang? They want to integrate Pyongyang with South Korea, with Seoul. And of course, this will mean Russia developing a sort of go-between, diplomacy between both. And they have the possibility to do both, because they are also respected in Seoul.
And something that has already been discussed at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. These discussions, they started at least three or four years ago in Vladivostok. And what they’re all about basically is to build a trans-Korean railway, which is going to connect with the trans-Siberian and connect both Koreas to the Russian far east, and then all the way across Eurasia.
So imagine that you are a Samsung businessman in Seoul. You look at that and say, “Wow, I don’t need to use cargo tankers anymore; I can have direct access to the enormous developing market in the Russian far east, not to mention the whole of Eurasia via Russia, just by building a railway”. Very, very simple.
Which sooner or later, and I would say, with Chinese input, could become a high-speed rail. Considering that the Chinese are already investing in high-speed rail in Russia, and considering that if there is a duplication of the trans-Siberian into a trans-Siberian high-speed rail is going to be built by the Chinese, this trans-Korean railway could also be built with Chinese input, technical input as well.
And financed via a Chinese Silk Road Fund, the BRICS Development Bank, Russian banks, etc. It could be a reorganization of finance, East Eurasia style.
So they were discussing that, of course, and this is going to be re-discussed, and they’re going to get deeper into it at the next Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in early September. So it’s around the corner, literally.
So the fact that this is happening now, it’s very, very important, because this is a sort of a preamble to what they’re going to get into at the next Eastern Economic Forum. So everybody is happy with this arrangement.
North Korea, because they are brought back to the forefront of trade in the parts of Eurasia. The possibility of having some sort of geoeconomic deal between North Korea and South Korea.
Russia, developing the far east and integrating the far east with the Koreas.
And China, of course, because this also integrates this part of Eurasia, this Northern Eurasia framework.
And it’s part of BRICS. It’s part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. And this opens, I would say, this leaves us with the possibility of North Korea sooner or later getting integrated into the Eurasia Economic Union.
And that’s fantastic, because I see that happening in at least two stages.
The first stage, the EAEU strikes a free trade agreement with North Korea, just like the ones they have with Cuba, or with Vietnam in Southeast Asia.
And they are also working with Indonesia to have an EAEU free trade deal with Indonesia. They could also do the same thing with North Korea.
And fantastic, this bypasses US sanctions, because it’s going to be – the EAEU basically, Russia is 80% of the firepower of the EAEU. They can devise a settlement mechanism involving North Korea that bypasses the US dollar completely.
You have expansion of EAEU to Northeast Asia, which is very important. The Chinese are going to love it as well, because they can also, even if they’re not part of the EAEU – don’t forget that Putin and Xi have already said, and the directives are already there – the Belt and Road Initiative, BRI and EAEU, they have to converge.
And this would be a perfect example of convergence between BRI and EAEU.
So that’s why, the way I see this visit by Shoigu as Mick Jagger, it extrapolates it everywhere, geoeconomically and geopolitically. And it’s no wonder that it was not even mentioned, I would say, or barely mentioned in Western mainstream media.
RADHIKA DESAI: That’s absolutely true.
And I mean, the more one thinks about it, the fact of the matter is that it is only a matter of time when the US’s strategy will stop working in the region.
So first of all, I mean, this idea that the United States can extend NATO to the Pacific is not going to wash, because the Pacific region has historically focused on its own economic development.
The Chinese are essentially pitting their own strategy of proposing economic development to the NATO strategy of securitizing everything, and essentially turning everything into a military conflict or a military alliance. We’re going to see the contestation of these two visions in the region.
And I would say, basically, it’s a matter of time before everybody begins to realize that what the United States is doing in Asia, what the United States has been doing around the world, at least since the Second World War, if not before, is essentially, well, the United States says it is providing protection to the world; in reality, the United States has been running a protection racket.
What is a protection racket? A protection racket is to promise to provide security against dangers that you have yourself created, so that your promise to provide security appears credible and attractive.
So, for example, the United States has continued to foment disunity on the Korean Peninsula. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of Koreans, North and South, deeply yearn for some form of unification. There is absolutely no doubt.
And this is attested to by the fact that, periodically, governments come to power that have advanced progress towards unification, but the United States then comes in and disrupts it.
It’s only when Koreans realize this that they will stop voting for those forces. And I think it’s a matter of time.
Similarly, in the case of Taiwan, already we are seeing in the run-up to the elections that are due, I think, in a few months, you have in the appearance, side by side with the KMT that wishes to promote peaceful reconciliation with China, the emergence of a new party that is going to do the same.
This is going to essentially push the DPP out of the picture. So they’re not going to win.
Similarly, also you read in the papers, although Japan has signed, has pronounced a new military policy in recent years that people say should be unthinkable in a country with a pacifist constitution, but in reality you see that the overwhelming majority of the Japanese are not going to join any kind of US-led war against [China over] Taiwan.
And so finally, what I’m really driving at is that the wonderful specifics that you gave about what can happen just in the case of North Korea, this is part of a wider set of pressures that I like to think of as the exertion of the economic magnetism, the economic gravity of China.
And no country can afford not to respond to that. And so we are going to see a shift, but at the same time, in terms of what we can expect to happen in the next few years, maybe even few decades, is an attempt on the part of the United States to stop this inexorable development from occurring.
And you were saying, Michael, that I agree with you, that, at one level, it looks as the United States is looking at a multi-decade war. But we also read in the papers that the United States feels compelled to do something now, because they think that they have up to 2027 before China will become capable of really resisting US forces.
But yeah, I mean, this is a kind of a segue into the next question, which is basically, what can the US expect from its allies?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Japan has sort of a Stockholm Syndrome, and it identifies with the United States because the US bombed it. And despite its export trade opportunities with China, its right-wing government is still willing to lose this market and sacrifice its economy for the United States once again, just as it did in the Plaza and Louvre Accords.
And South Korea is really the key to all of this, partly because it’s so important in ship making, and it’s being pressured to continue cutting back its export of sophisticated ships to China. The Wall Street Journal just had a long report on that.
But if it sees the promise of the Chinese market – and as Pepe has explained, the whole Eurasian market, thanks to the railroad – it’s going to decide, what it is going to choose: the export markets to resolve the military overhead and the threat of North Korea, or is it just going to continue to back the US?
It’ll probably have to tell the US to remove its occupation troops, because I think the Korean War still is legally on. So we may finally see an end of the Korean War that began in 1950.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Your question is what America will do essentially. Just look around and see what they are incapable of doing in several parts of the Global South or the Global Majority.
For instance, Southeast Asia. Well, I lived in [Southeast Asia]; it’s my home. I moved to Southeast Asia in ’94, a long time ago.
So I followed the relationship between the ASEAN 10, the 10 members of Southeast Asia, with Russia, China, India, and the US on the spot.
And nowadays, everybody knows that the number one trade partner of all ASEAN is China.
We also know that the U.S. has more margin of maneuver in some of the Southeast Asian nations than in others.
For instance, Singapore, we usually joke that Singapore is an American aircraft carrier station in Southeast Asia, side by side with Indonesia and Malaysia.
More and more relations between Indonesia and China are being, finally, there was a lot of mutual suspicion during the times of Suharto, of course, and immediately afterwards.
And the Chinese have been very, very clever to explain to Indonesia, “Look, we don’t have any designs on your islands, the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea”. So the Indonesians are more relaxed.
So now they are talking business, for instance, like, you know, Chinese investments, part of the Belt and Road Initiative across Indonesia.
Philippines, we all know, it remains an on-off American colony.
But the Americans, for instance, have absolutely zero penetration in, for instance, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. This is Chinese territory. And these have Belt and Road Initiative projects all over the space, like the absolutely extraordinary high-speed rail that the Chinese built from Yunnan to Vientiane.
I saw that being built in the middle of the forest across the Mekong River. It’s something that only the Chinese are capable of pulling off. And they did in record time on top of it, because the Laos government said, “OK, come here, do everything”, and it’s the way to go.
In Thailand, there’s going to be an extension, because, of course, of foreign interference, because of Thai lobbies fighting among themselves, the Thais haven’t even started to finish their own stretch, you see.
But this proves that Southeast Asia, in terms of Chinese-U.S. relations, it’s a balancing act. But most of these nations know exactly what’s going to happen from now on.
Their number one trade partner is China. And Chinese influence in all of them will continue to be very, very strong, directly and indirectly, via the Chinese diaspora in all of them, what we call the “bamboo internet”, which is strong in all of these nations.
South America: South America, what they basically, against Argentina and Brazil, of course, the Americans have tactical victories.
In case of Argentina, for instance, they forced Argentina to get a loan to pay another IMF loan.
So basically, the plan is to get Argentina to keep begging for IMF loans ad infinitum. So this is plan A. There’s no plan B.
Brazil is much more complicated. But for the moment, it’s a tactical victory, because the margin of maneuver of the Lula government is very, very slim.
And we have the famous list of what you’re going to do, that Jake Sullivan went personally to Brasilia to hand out to the new Brazilian government.
So obviously, Lula inside BRICS has to be very, very careful. Every time that he opens his mouth and he talks about de-dollarization, we see people shrinking in the beltway. So very complicated.
And across Africa, of course, which I’m sure we’re going to discuss, we are watching basically a second wave of decolonization.
And now, finally, the real thing with a new generation of young African patriots in Burkina Faso, in Mali, in Niger, in Gambia.
And of course, with very, very important allies, not only Russia and China outside, but Algeria in the Maghreb, who plainly supports all these new governments in the Sahel area.
So in terms of not only the U.S., but the collective West as a whole, they’re being expelled little by little, with or without AFRICOM, from Africa.
And of course, in West Asia, they still cling to, for instance, Syria.
Everybody seems to forget nowadays, with the war in Ukraine, that one-third of Syria is still occupied by the Americans. And they are plundering oil virtually on a daily or weekly basis, and wheat. And this disappeared completely from the narrative anywhere.
Even in West Asia, the war in Syria is not over. The war in Syria continues, and there is an illegal occupation of one-third of the Syrian territory.
So we have tactical victories. At the same time, we have Hezbollah growing stronger and stronger by the day.
So the Americas are losing terrain everywhere.
[The US has] tactical victories in Europe, of course. They managed to get Germany and the EU separated from Russia. But this is not eternal. This is a tactical victory for the moment. This could change in a matter of a few years only.
And of course, across Eurasia, we all know what’s happening. Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS+, the Greater Eurasia Partnership conducted by Russia, Belt and Road Initiative. We’re going to have a forum in Beijing in October.
This is it. Eurasia now is Eurasia controlled by Eurasians, and without foreign interference.
Of course, we still have attempts at color revolutions.
I’m going back to Central Asia soon. I’m going to see what’s happening in Kazakhstan now. Kazakhstan, they are so uncomfortable; they’re trying to hedge their bets, considering that they suffered a color revolution a year and a half ago. And there are sequels. This thing is not controlled yet.
So it’s a very mixed picture, guys. I think we all agree that, in terms of tactical victories, the Americans have some serious ones. But in terms of the overall strategy, they are losing virtually in every continent.
RADHIKA DESAI: And the very fact that Kazakhstan would be having second thoughts about this is a very important thing. Because from what I understand, of all the Central Asian republics, it is the most pro-Western. It is the most penetrated by American capital, and so on and so forth.
So that’s really fascinating. And you’re absolutely right that the picture is very complex.
But we can see where the undercurrent of history is going. It’s going away from the United States and toward China and Russia and so on.
But at the same time, the undercurrent is one thing. But on the surface, the United States will continue to try and make attempts to block this from happening. There will be vain attempts, but they will be made. People will pay the price for it, et cetera.
But still, if you try to, you know, as you say, the United States’ ability to conduct all this is in danger.
One indication of this, as we’ve discussed in the past, is that the U.S. cannot, you know – today it’s in the news that the U.S. is going to use the drawdown facility that has been created for Ukraine to send weapons to Taiwan.
But the fact of the matter is, what’s also being reported in the U.S. media itself, let alone elsewhere, is that the U.S. ability to produce the sort of arms that are necessary for theater operations today is actually very weak. It is not able to produce.
The United States provides vast quantities of money to its pampered military-industrial complex to produce weapons that are of no use – or they are not sufficient.
You know, they’re very good at producing high-priced, big-ticket items that cannot be used on the battlefield.
Now, this is really a fascinating comment on capitalism, on American-style monopoly capitalism, that you have a pampered military-industrial complex that cannot produce what you need, and you still keep supporting them. So that’s one contradiction.
And of course, there are also many others, you know, within an election campaign about to go into high gear in the United States. The unpopularity of the [Ukraine] war, even in the U.S., will be clear.
Every other day, there is some item in some or the other newspaper saying, “You know, why are we sending so much money to Ukraine when we can invest in the U.S.?”, etc.
So what are the U.S.’s options?
I mean, Michael, you recently wrote a paper in which you said that the United States has lost any capacity to rationally calculate what it ought to do, what strategy will win. Perhaps you can say something about that.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the U.S. chip makers like Intel are protesting very loudly that China represents one-third of their market.
And so if they’re told by the Biden administration to stop selling sophisticated chips to China, then the government is going to be told, well, you’ll have to make up maybe a $50 billion subsidy to us.
And will the U.S. Treasury really be asked to replace the China market? That’s what’s already being debated in Congress.
So if it does that, how is this kind of giveaway going to affect the U.S. presidential and the congressional elections just next year? This is already an issue.
And business donors are not giving money to the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, because they’re wondering what to do.
And on the other hand, you have Donald Trump trying to get votes by being even more anti-China than the Democrats.
So the great unknown is how China is going to respond to the U.S. shooting itself in the foot. Is it going to be willing to turn the tables and retaliate by imposing its own sanctions?
And it has a much stronger ability to impose sanctions on the U.S. than the U.S. has to impose sanctions on China.
And [China] fired a warning shot a week ago by stopping the exports of gallium – it produces 80 percent of the world’s supply – and germanium, which it does 60 percent.
And on August 1st, China just announced that it has limitations on rare earth exports. And rare earths are a key to making the magnetic characteristics that are required for sophisticated chip technology.
So China can simply impose sanctions on trade that doesn’t have much monetary value, but a key technology value, and can limit the trade in raw materials only to its Shanghai Cooperation Organization allies, and say, “Well, look, I’ll provide you with all the materials, and you can make what the United States and Western Europe are no longer able to make, because they don’t have what only we can supply”.
So the question is, when will China’s political mentality decide to actually fight the U.S. type of negative war with sanctions instead of the competitive cost-cutting, high-technology war that economic trade is supposed to fight? That’s the issue.
RADHIKA DESAI: Absolutely. And, you know, as you were talking, Michael, I was reminded of the fact that, of course, sanctions against Russia were supposed to, you know, “reduce the ruble to rubble” and, you know, push the Russian economy back into the stone age and whatnot.
And, of course, if they didn’t win against Russia, they are not going to win against China. We know that, as you say, rightly, that perhaps China should engage a little bit more in the kind of action that it has just undertaken to deny the West important inputs that it needs, important raw materials that it needs.
But even without such restrictions, China is already making U.S. sanctions useless, because it has rapidly accelerated its innovation in chip technology and so on.
And you know that if the Chinese really roll up their sleeves and say we are going to attack this problem, that problem will be solved in relatively short time.
If the Taiwanese can do it, why can’t the Chinese? It’s not you know, the Chinese have been happy to rely on imports since they were easily available. But if they are not, they will develop their own.
So the sanctions are going to boomerang big time vis-a-vis China as well. In fact, in a much bigger way.
And so the thing that becomes very clear is that it’s very unlikely that there’s going to be anything like an Asian NATO.
In fact, given the failure of the war, as I’ve argued before, in Ukraine, the real question will become whether even a European NATO can survive.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Radhika, can I change the subject a little bit? Touching on what Michael just said, it dawned on me that the ultimate form of sanctions against the empire is de-dollarization.
Because if you don’t change the geoeconomic paradigm, nothing’s going to happen in terms of multipolar integration.
So I’d like a little introduction and then I’m going to ask Michael a direct question. Because he’s probably the number one specialist in the world that can give us, without being part of the negotiations, that can give us, OK, what are they planning to do?
It’s about the so-called BRICS new currency. What I learned from BRICS Sherpas is that there won’t be an announcement of a BRICS new currency in South Africa in three weeks, for a number of very complex reasons.
First of all, they don’t have time. Second, their negotiations started only a few months ago. And this is something that I discussed in Moscow; you need five, six, seven years to design a system like that, if not 10 years, and start to implement it and test it with businesses first, and then with nation states.
What is going to happen in South Africa is they’re going to announce an increase in bilateral trade in their own currencies, which is something that they already do. And they are already working on alternative settlements.
So basically, starting with the five BRICS currencies – which significantly, [their names] all start with an “R”. That’s very, very quirky, isn’t it? Obviously, if we use renminbi instead of yuan, so we have renminbi, real, rand, rupee, and ruble.
So we’re going to have the R5 together, organizing an alternative settlement system of payments. And this will be the first step towards multilateral trade in their own currencies, the five.
Don’t forget that we’re going to have BRICS+. So we’re not going to have five; we’re going to have maybe seven, eight, nine, or even 10, depending on the first wave and the second wave of candidates to become parts of BRICS+.
And then expanding multilateral trade with these national currencies. And, of course, building, okay, let’s start designing a system, and let’s try to sell this to our businesses in our individual nations, and then to other ones as well. And that will mean the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Eurasia Economic Union, etc.
The Eurasia Economic Union, they have already started discussing an alternative currency three years ago, at least. And they’re still discussing it. Like, you know, two months ago, [Prominent Russian economist] Sergey Glazyev went to Beijing to discuss this with the Chinese.
Essentially, it’s an extremely complex thing. And, of course, taking into consideration that the Chinese are terrified of American secondary sanctions, especially. So this is all extremely complicated.
So my question to Michael would be, what would be the ideal path in terms of elaborating an alternative payment system inside BRICS first, then expanding to BRICS+, and then selling this system of payments, considering that the Chinese have their own payment system; the Russians have their own payment system; Iran have their own payment system.
So getting these all together, so you can settle trade within this new framework, bypassing the U.S. dollar. And then you’re going to have your big enterprises, your big companies, individual nations say, “Well, this is an excellent deal, fantastic”.
So now if we’re a company in Turkey, we can do business with a Russian company and we use an alternative payment system.
What would be the best way to proceed ahead? And when would we reach a stage where we can actually discuss an alternative currency in terms of bypassing the U.S. dollar and the euro?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, actually, Radhika and I have devoted two programs of this series to just that question. And we pointed out that what people think of when they say BRICS currency is something like a euro that you can use for buying and selling things, either buying steel or spending at the grocery store.
You’re absolutely right. That’s far away, because you need political integration to have that.
But what we’re really talking about, and what the kind of currency that’s being talked about isn’t really a currency; it’s a bank credit, a bank settlement system, very much like the SDRs [Special Drawing Rights] for the IMF, except it won’t be controlled by the U.S.
But most of all, this is what [John Maynard] Keynes supported in [the Bretton Woods Conference in] 1944 with the bancor. It’s a means of settlement only for spending among central banks.
So it’s not a general currency. It’s a means of settling credits among central banks. And the credits are apparently going to be based on the artificial bank currency, tied to the price of raw materials that the member countries all support.
And it’ll be very much like paper gold. Right now, the alternative to holding each other’s currencies or U.S. dollars is gold, because gold is an asset without a liability. It’s just something that you can invest in. But you have to somehow earn the money to buy the gold.
Many countries have left their gold, since the pre-1991 movement devaluation. Countries used to leave their gold with the U.S. Federal Reserve to settle, buy, and sell in the gold market to stabilize their exchange rates. They never asked for their gold back.
Finally, Germany asked a few years ago, and the Fed said, I’m sorry, all your gold is gone. We’ve kept down the price of gold to prevent people from moving away from the U.S. dollar by pledging it to commodity dealers. And we don’t have any gold to give you.
And how much of the world’s gold has been left with the Federal Reserve? We don’t know.
So to avoid the problem of how to really settle new gold, the BRICS bank will create a credit system where all the countries have credit to buy and sell with each other to be settled in their own currency, so that China, for instance, won’t hold too much Argentinian currency – especially since Argentina has just done the currency swap to pay the IMF for its foreign debt that it should have simply wiped out.
So we’re talking about a central bank special currency, not a general spending currency. There are two different things that are often confused in the public discussion.
RADHIKA DESAI: Yeah, and if I may add to that, because – you know, Michael and I have done work on this together in our programs, in a paper that we jointly wrote; and then also, independently, so Michael has done his work in Super Imperialism and so on; and my own work on geopolitical economy, is really, it’s primarily – in the book called Geopolitical Economy – it’s primarily a critique of the US dollar system, which I argue has never worked stably.
So it has always run into crisis. And in order to appear to function, [the dollar system] has required the inflation, particularly after 1971, of very dangerous bubbles of financial activity.
And the reason for that is very simple. You know, the loose talk – which, by the way, includes a lot of academics who engage in loose talk – loose talk of the naturalness of the sterling system and then the dollar system has given everybody to understand that somehow, yes, of course, the currency of the most powerful country should be the world’s currency.
But this is, in fact, as we’ve shown, an extremely unstable situation. It cannot obtain.
And that’s why Keynes in 1944, speaking on behalf of his country – not willing his country to be subject to the external authority of the dollar, knowing that the sterling can no longer perform the role it once used to perform, knowing intimately well why that was so – proposed the bancor.
And essentially this completely separates out the issue of international settlement of imbalances from the ordinary requirements of money within a society.
So within a society, money has to be run in order to create full employment, a productively dynamic, ecologically sustainable currency that will work domestically.
But often the requirements of that may go directly counter to the need to maintain its international value.
And gold, by the way, often people confuse it: gold is not money. When gold is used as money, it shows that there is no money.
Gold is a commodity. You know, Michael said it’s an asset without liabilities, but maybe it’s even more pertinent to say it’s a commodity.
So it’s a bit like, you know, going back to barter. So you give me steel and I’ll give you gold. That’s the exchange of two commodities. It just happens to be a widely accepted commodity. But people have proposed other things.
But essentially, the resort to gold, the Germans and others saying we want our gold back, etc., it’s one of the signs – one of the many signs, by the way – that the American dollar system is not working.
So essentially, the point that I’d like to make, therefore, is what would need to happen? You know, your original question was, you know, how will these currency plans work, etc.?
So I would say that the first step would be to, of course, create a relatively stable system of exchange rates between these – let’s just assume it’s the five Rs.
So let’s say, you know, what is the mutual exchange rate of the five Rs, and to try to stabilize them and so on?
And then, in the long run, you know, this kind of system can work. They can even create a sort of bancor based on the five Rs – although originally Keynes had said, let’s not even not use any currencies; let’s just tie the value of bancor to a basket of a few dozen, most widely traded commodities, because that’s what ultimately matters in international trade.
So you could do that, and maybe you can get there, but you can begin by stabilizing the values.
But then I think the big step would have to be, you would have to try and create relatively balanced trade among all the trading partners.
Why is that? Because, Michael said that we have to ensure that, you know, China does not end up with too much Argentinian currency or whatever, or any one of the five does not end up with too much of the currency of the other.
Because what it shows is that one country buys a lot from another country, but that country, which is exporting a lot, has no use for its export revenues.
Now, that would require a development plan among the holders of the five Rs so that, for example, let’s assume a trade relationship between China and Russia.
Well, China and Russia have to ensure that each would want to buy things with what it earns from the other country. So if it’s absent, then maybe there should be investment and opportunity to develop the capacity to produce the thing.
Because, you see, the genius of Keynes’s arrangement was that it had mechanisms within it to force people, force countries to move towards balance. Surplus countries were equally responsible, as were deficit countries, to try to address imbalances, both in terms of capital flows and in terms of trade.
So once you create those mechanisms, then you create an incentive for, say, if China has too many rubles, then China says, “OK, Russians, we are going to help you develop this productive capacity, so that you can export more of X, Y, Z to us, etc.”.
So I think that’s what needs to be done. And just one final point, Keynes’s genius is really apparent in our time because, just as Keynes said, a stable system should try to eliminate persistent imbalances.
Now, move your eyes to the dollar system. The one thing it primarily relies on is the generation of persistent imbalances, because to provide the world with money on the basis of your persistent trade deficits and the current account deficits with the rest of the world, means that the whole system is reliant on imbalances, which means it is volatile and unstable.
So, as you rightly say, Pepe, this is a very complex thing, and it’s going to take time to work out.
But it won’t be worked out if people are laboring under misapprehension, such as that, you know, we need to create a currency like the euro rather than a currency like bancor.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Just one thing about the dollar. You just mentioned, and everybody who discusses the dollar system talks about how the US has been providing dollars.
In [my book] Super Imperialism, and my work for Arthur Anderson years ago, the US private sector is exactly in balance. Since 1950, year after year, from the Korean War to the Vietnam War, the private sector, trade and investment, is just in balance; it hasn’t provided any extra dollars at all to the world.
The entire US deficit supplying dollars to the world has been military. It used to be called the dollar glut. It was to stop that, that [French] General de Gaulle kept cashing in [dollars for] gold.
What the new system of the BRICS and the five Rs are going to cure is that the credit is not going to be paid by building 800 military bases around the other countries, to lock them into a dependency system.
You’ll have the international payment settlement system demilitarized. That’s the basic aim of all this.
The US dollar system is a militarized system. The dollars are US military spending abroad.
That’s the number one reason for world peace, that the dollar system should be superseded.
RADHIKA DESAI: I agree that in terms of trade, US trade was balanced for a long time, like longer than you might imagine.
But certainly starting in the 1980s, the US trade deficit also made its own contribution to the current [account deficit]. The US trade deficit is today between 3 and 4 percent of US GDP.
MICHAEL HUDSON: No, that’s absolutely fictitious. It’s based on fictitious statistics.
Much of the trade deficit is in oil. When the oil comes in, it’s counted as a trade deficit. But only about 10 percent of the price of this oil is paid in non-dollars. All the oil that’s imported is from US oil companies.
And the offset is the earnings on this, the interest paid, or the cost of producing this oil are all made in the United States.
So you have investment inflows on the capital account and on the income account to offset the fictitious payments of oil imports that don’t involve foreign currency at all.
RADHIKA DESAI: OK, I’m not quite sure what you mean, because the fact of the matter is that the whole point is that the United States pays for this oil in dollars.
But let me just make another further point, which is that, you know, people tend to focus on the US trade deficit, and then they say, “Look, the Chinese are buying so many US treasuries and so they are essentially financing the trade deficit, and so this is a kind of a mutually supportive system” – “Chimerica” and all that.
But in reality, what people forget is that what’s really keeping the dollar system going is not Chinese financing, not Chinese purchases of US treasury securities; what keeps the dollar system going is the vast expansion of financial activity, which goes in both directions.
And so, for example, if you look at the statistics, the financial statistics about all the international capital flows that were going on, the bulk of them being in dollar-denominated assets in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis, the Chinese played hardly any role in it.
The biggest role that was played, the part of the world that was most fully integrated into the US financial system, which was producing these toxic securities that led to the 2008 financial crisis, was Europe.
And therefore, it is no wonder that Europe was the part of the world that suffered the most from the 2008 crisis. The 2008 crisis set the foundation for the 2010 Eurozone crisis, and so on and so forth.
And that is why I really find it important to correct people when they term what happened in 2008 a global financial crisis; there was nothing global about it. It was a North Atlantic financial crisis.
MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s right.
PEPE ESCOBAR: I want to pose a question to both of you. Because I was reminded of something very clever that the Chinese are doing and maybe they are setting an example for the whole Global South.
You know that they have now oil futures being traded at the Shanghai bourse, especially the GCC. It’s fascinating.
So the GCC goes to the Shanghai bourse. They sell their oil futures. The Chinese buy it. They pay yuan.
But then the GCC says, look, we don’t want all that yuan. You know, what are you going to do with so much yuan?
The Chinese said, no problem. You can trade your yuan with gold using the Shanghai exchange, a clearing house, or in Hong Kong if you want.
This is absolutely brilliant. Do you think that this could be expanded to the other BRICS, starting with the other BRICS, and then if we have, for instance, Iran and Saudi Arabia being part of BRICS+, adopting the same mechanism?
RADHIKA DESAI: I think that can work. I would say that, you know, the role of gold, as I see, is always residual.
If all the money in the world were actually backed by gold, we would suffer massive deflation, because there wouldn’t be enough money in the world, because there isn’t enough gold in the world.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Gold only finances international balances, not general activity, as the gold exchange standard, not the gold standard.
And again, the gold is an alternative, the easiest alternative to the dollar, because everybody accepts it.
It’s taken a couple of thousand years, but they finally decided something that they can accept as an alternative.
It’s a transition to the BRICS artificial currency. It’s a transition to something away from gold – the idea of an international currency that is not the embodiment of not the U.S. trade deficit, but U.S. military spending.
RADHIKA DESAI: So then to further add to that, so I would say that essentially, when people buy gold, what they’re saying is they don’t want money; they want a commodity; they want that commodity, etc., an easily tradable commodity, so some kind of asset.
So in that sense, it’s a good idea. You know, the function of gold, I often like to say that the sterling standard in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the sterling exchange standard was often called the gold standard, you know, because sterling was backed by gold.
But two things. Number one, the genius of the system actually lay in creating such wide international acceptability for the sterling that it was rarely exchanged for gold. And the reason and the mechanisms by which this was done, we can talk about it.
But the point is, it was rarely exchanged for gold. Keynes writes in his [book] Indian Currency and Finance, which is actually a primer on the functioning of the international gold standard, the sterling standard. And I’ll come in a minute to why a book on Indian currency and finance should serve as the primer on the gold standard. But let me just finish this point.
He makes the point that the Bank of England had less gold than the Caja of Argentina. And he prided himself on that. And he also used to berate the French for holding gold. He says, look, you don’t need to, et cetera. But that’s a whole other set of questions.
Now, let me come to how the British were able to do this. It’s because they drew – I mean, the so-called gold standard actually had very little to do with gold, except for the fact that gold was the benchmark of the value; the price of gold was the benchmark of the value of sterling, and sterling was occasionally exchanged into gold.
And, you know, in those days, some gold coins did circulate. But that was really a very limited role.
The real foundation of the sterling standard was the surpluses that the British drew from their colonies, chiefly British India, which is why a book on Indian currency and finance, which is really a description of how surpluses were transferred from India to the UK. What were the mechanisms employed in order to do this?
So my point being that that is why this book is a primer on the gold standard. And the real foundation of the gold standard was the surpluses Britain extracted from its colonies, and then exported as capital exports.
To where? To Europe, to North America and Oceania, and to some extent to South Africa – that is to say, to all its settler colonies.
So if you think about it in a different way, Britain drew surpluses from her non-settler colonies – British India, Africa, the Caribbean – and exported them as capital exports to her settler colonies.
This is really, it’s quite a racialized thing, but that is the way it was. It is primarily where the money went.
And so Britain provided the world with liquidity by exporting capital, not by running deficits as the US would do later.
The US had no choice. The US didn’t have colonies which it could squeeze to provide surpluses to export to the rest of the world. So the US had to take a different role.
So to come back to your question, I think that the Chinese strategy of allowing things to be exchanged for gold is a good confidence-building measure.
And, you know, at the moment, the transactions are few enough that it can do so. I mean, ultimately, the system should work so well that it does not need gold.
Now, there again, the question is, if China tried to internationalize its currency on the model of the dollar, it would actually reduce China to the sort of economy the US has, of de-industrializing and aging infrastructure. So it will not do so.
That is why Michael and I, and anyone who thinks about it, always says you should not internationalize your currency in that way, not to any significant extent; instead, you need this kind of artificial currency that will help settle international imbalances.
PEPE ESCOBAR: So you’re right, Radhika. And this is the official position in Beijing. They want to go very, very slow with the internationalization of yuan.
RADHIKA DESAI: Yes, yes, exactly.
So, folks, I should say, you know, we’ve had a really wide-ranging discussion, as usual, absolutely fantastic.
We’re about an hour and we’d like not to go too much over an hour. So let me ask you both to say any closing remarks you want to say.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you’ve been brought back to the point that we’ve been making in part one of this discussion, which is the U.S. sanctions were designed to isolate Russia’s raw materials and China’s information technology and shipmaking.
These are not in the economic interest of America’s allies, or of China’s Asian neighbors, or even the United States.
Europe is being told to buy its oil and gas from the U.S. Korea, and Japan, and Taiwan –
Basically we’re back to the issue of whether trade is going to be economic or national security in nature. And it seems now, given the U.S. military presence, it’s going to be both. It’s going to be economic with national security.
And I think it’s hard to see getting the U.S. using any military leverage at all, given the failure of the NATO tanks and the missiles and the anti-aircraft. And the idea is that basically the U.S. is, the dollar is being rejected.
And at first glance, the thought of the BRICS and the Global Majority emerging may seem outrageous, but it’s no more outrageous than the thought that the Nobel —
I want to make a suggestion that, just as the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Henry Kissinger for destroying Laos and Cambodia and covering Vietnam’s forest with Agent Orange, or Obama was given the Peace Prize for destroying Libya and confiscating its gold that Gaddafi had hoped to use for an African gold-based currency and turning it over, and the final Obama act starting today’s crisis with organizing the pro-Nazi coup in Ukraine, I think that America is trying to force Europeans to believe that war is peace in the same sense that Tacitus described a British chieftain of saying that Rome was making a desert and calling it peace.
But in view of what we’re seeing in the last year and a half, I could imagine President Biden getting this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. It would fit in perfectly. It meets the traditional qualifications of destroying a country, Ukraine.
But actually, there’s another reason which he can get it. Biden and Blinken and their neocon team have driven most of the entire Global Majority together to create an alternative to the U.S.-centered world that has become increasingly one-sided.
And under the Biden administration, the United States is forcing the entire rest of the world, except for its NATO satellites, to create a new economic order. And that’s what we’ve been discussing.
And this new international economic order is on the lines that the United Nations was supposed to be created in the first place, before it was taken over by the U.S.
Self-sufficiency in food production for each country. They won’t have to run a trade deficit to import food, because, just like Russia was able to make itself independent in grain and become a grain exporter, other countries can do the same thing, when they’re freed from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund trying to block it.
The new economic order will be a mixed economy along socialist lines, to uplift the entire economy, at least of the expanded BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
And there will be a focus more on peaceful integration instead of military and financial integration.
So it turns out that the NATO war in Ukraine has turned out to be this grand catalyst for this new world order. And just because this wasn’t Biden’s and Blinken’s original intention doesn’t mean that it’s not the effect in practice.
And remember, [Charles Maurice de] Talleyrand, the French official in the 18th century, said of one policy, “It’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder”. And you could say that that describes American policy perfectly.
But let’s give it credit for this fortuitous blunder that has driven the whole Global Majority together, to make an alternative to the World Bank, an alternative to the IMF, and an alternative to the failed U.S.-centered unipolar order.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Well, I am in touch with a group of Chinese writers and scholars, and they are always absolutely fascinated. And one of them, in fact, Michael was just talking about blunders.
They said, this is the number one blunder in the history of the empire, and they won’t be able to recover. And the Chinese have a little bit of experience with blunders, right?
Well, I would like to finish basically saying that in three weeks we’re going to have the BRICS Summit. So everything that Michael was telling us a little while ago is going to be discussed at the BRICS Summit.
And this is what the Sherpas have been doing these past few weeks. The Sherpas were actually organizing and designing the proceedings, what’s going to happen, the agenda, and the procedures for BRICS Plus, the expansion.
So in three weeks, we’re going to have a geopolitical, geoeconomic earthquake. There’s no question about that. Just to remind all of you, there is a list of potential members of BRICS+.
This is fascinating because these are part of an organization parallel to BRICS called Friends of BRICS. Whenever there is a BRICS Summit, you have Friends of BRICS Summit as well. They interact and they also have their own mini summit.
And this is exactly what happened in South Africa, what, two weeks ago, maximum. I’ll give you the list. Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Comoros, Gabon, and Kazakhstan.
So probably the first tier, the first wave of BRICS+ is going to come from these guys to one, two, three, or four of these. And there’s also Belarus, which was not in Friends of BRICS, but it’s very close to Russia. And Belarus also applied for BRICS.
You will notice that in this list, there’s no Argentina, unfortunately. And this, I think we discussed this in our previous, because Argentina, basically, they were, I would say, forced to withdraw their application toward BRICS. And this, they didn’t know how to explain that in Buenos Aires. But this is what it is at the moment.
So can you imagine if we have just in terms of the brand new world ahead? Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as a member of BRICS.
So we’re going to have BRICS+ directly linked to OPEC+, directly linked to major sources of energy to China, directly linked to that mechanism at the Shanghai bourse of the GCC selling oil. And if you want gold, you can have your gold as well.
So can you imagine this in a matter of two or three days? We’re going to have this thing turning upside down. And then maybe this is the beginning of the new world economic order. Voila.
RADHIKA DESAI: Yeah, absolutely, folks. And so, yeah, let me just wind this down by making just a couple of remarks.
Number one, I think that, you know, you were talking about blunders.
But if you look at the long term historical point of view, the whole project of American hegemony has been a blunder. We are just seeing the latest and ever more desperate blunders of the United States in trying to keep it going.
This has been my argument for a very, very long time. And bringing the matter back to NATO, which was at least formally the subject of our thing, NATO has always, of course, been an instrument of U.S. hegemony.
But if you cast your mind back a couple of decades, you will see that people, very few people really talked about NATO very much. Because U.S. hegemony was much more extensive. NATO was one part of a larger structure of U.S. hegemony.
Now we’ve come to a point where the U.S.’s purchase on world events relies on NATO to such an extent that it has become the mainstay of U.S. power.
And this mainstay of U.S. power was, you know – part of the reason people didn’t talk about it very much is because it was always fractious. There were always tensions between the Europeans and the Americans and so on. So there was not much to see there in terms of U.S. hegemony.
And now that so-called U.S. hegemony has become reliant on reliance on this outfit is really telling, is really telling about how far, how low U.S. power has sunk.
So perhaps with that, I think we should end today’s today’s show. Please look forward to more shows with us. Hopefully, Pepe, we will have you back another time, after these upcoming summits, or something like that, to assess them.
PEPE ESCOBAR: Thank you so much. My pleasure.
RADHIKA DESAI: Thanks very much. And thanks again to our videographer, Paul Graham. And of course, as always, to Ben Norton for hosting our show.
Goodbye, everyone. And see you next time. Bye bye.
