Recent Facts, Figures and Thoughts on Our Hybrid Third World War

Did you know that the Collective West has levied over 9,600 illegal sanctions on Russia since the CIA overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014 and Crimea made itself Russian again? And still Russia's economy is doing quite well regardless? The financial aspect of the Hybrid War has blownback and is causing further hurt to the already crippled Neoliberal economies of the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals. And the global macroeconomic situation will continue to favor Russia and China. In a very funny item, Goldmann Sachs says there's a 35% chance of the Outlaw US Economy going into recession--funny because the economy's been in recession since 2008 when the data isn't twisted to show otherwise as this example from Shadowstats shows:

"Reporting of Nominal (not adjusted for inflation) economic data becomes increasingly bloated and distorted in times of accelerating inflation, consider: Net of surging CPI-U consumer inflation, March 2022 Real Retail Sales declined by 0.7% (-0.7%) month-to-month and by 1.5% (-1.5%) year-to-year, yet the headline Nominal March Retail Sales gained monthly by 0.5% and annually by 6.9%, reflecting nothing more than ongoing massive increases in price levels."

Today at a meeting on economic issues, Putin said the following;

Obviously, the main negative factor for the economy in recent years has been the sanctions pressure, the next sanctions pressure of Western countries. The hope was to quickly shake up the financial and economic situation in our country, provoke panic in the markets, the collapse of the banking system, a large-scale shortage of goods in stores.

But we can already say with confidence that such a policy towards Russia has failed, the strategy of economic blitzkrieg has failed. Moreover, the sanctions were not in vain for the initiators themselves. I am referring to the rise in inflation and unemployment, the deterioration of economic dynamics in the United States and European countries, the decline in the standard of living of Europeans, and the devaluation of their savings.

Russia, as I have already said, has withstood this unprecedented pressure. The situation is stabilizing, the ruble exchange rate has returned to the levels of the first half of February and is determined by an objectively strong balance of payments. According to the results of the first quarter, the current account surplus of the balance of payments exceeded $58 billion, and this is a historical maximum. Cash foreign currency is returning to the country's banking system, and the volume of citizens' deposits is growing.

And as Phase Two of the Special Military Operation (SMO) gets underway, we get this update by the venerable Alastair Crooke:

There are serious fault-lines radiating out from this EU-U.S. attempt to reassert its’ ‘liberalism’ – one which insists it will tolerate no ‘otherness.’ On issues such as the agenda of a scientific-technological élite and on ‘winning’ in Ukraine, there can be no other perspective. We are at war.

So what will happen? The most likely outcome is Russia’s economy will not collapse (even were the EU to go the whole hog on energy and ‘everything’ else). China will stand with Russia, and China is the ‘global economy’. It cannot be sanctioned into capitulation.

Checkmate? Well, what might the West’s Plan III be? The war frenzy; the visceral hatred; the language which seems designed to exclude a ‘coming to political terms’ with Putin, or the Moscow leadership is still there, and the Neo-cons are smelling opportunity:...

But the Pentagon does not buy it [Neocon argument to ignore possible nuclear war]. They know what nuclear war implies. So the bottom line is that sanctions will hurt, but not collapse the Russian economy; the real war (and not the PSYOPS war of Russian military incompetence and failure) will be won by Russia (with any EU & U.S. military supplies of large equipment to Ukraine being vaporised as they cross the border); and the West will experience what it fears most: Humiliation in its attempt to reaffirm the liberal rules-based order.

Europe fears that without a resounding reaffirmation, it will see fractures appearing across the globe. But those fractures are already present: Trita Parsi writes that “non-Western countries tend to see Russia’s war very, very differently”:

“Western demands that they make costly sacrifices by cutting off economic ties with Russia to uphold a “rules-based order” have begotten an allergic reaction. That order hasn’t been rules-based; instead, it has allowed the U.S. to violate international law with impunity. The West’s messaging on Ukraine has taken its tone-deafness to a whole new level, and it is unlikely to win over the support of countries that have often experienced the worse sides of the international order”....

The most salient feature of last week’s first-round of the French Presidential election was that even should Macron win on 24 April (and the Establishment and its media will do anything to ensure his win), it will be Pyrrhic. A majority of French voters voted on 13 April against a system of inter-locking interests between the state and the corporate sphere.

French voters perceive themselves to be on a runaway train of higher inflation, declining living standards, more supra-national regulation, more NATO, more EU, and more American diktats.

Now, they are being told that soaring food, heating and fuel prices is the price worth paying to cripple Russia and China and ‘preserve the moral fabric of the liberal order’.

NATO technocrats on both sides of the pond are tearing their hair out as nothing goes as presumed. After all, Europe's hoi polloi has no issues with Russia--Russia's their friend with low cost energy that keeps them employed and could also enhance their diets if allowed. Rather, Euro-elites are their bane and the Yellow Vests begin to go Euro-wide. And none of Europe's MSM can be trusted with any event.

All this and more drives me to think that Russia has a golden opportunity to gain what it proposed last December--the removal of NATO from its borders and rollback to 1997 status--which would mean a huge, sudden escalation. Meanwhile, lurking in the background is Sergei Glazyev's ideas on the formation of a new international financial order that's dedollarized, the outlines of which can be read here and here, and I do suggest reading both in the order presented.