Economic Warfare in the Final Phase - 2007

The following is an excellent article written by the well-known American author and political commentator J.R. Nyquist. For those who are not aware of his writings, Nyquist is an ardent Russophobe. This individual believes that the initial stages of Gorbachev's Perestroika movement that lead to the Soviet collapse was a part of "a long-term strategic deception orchestrated by the Moscow-Beijing Axis." In other words, it was manufactured by top level strategists in the Kremlin in conjunction with the Chinese to undermine the economic supremacy of the western world. According to this line of reasoning, the longterm strategic attempt at the time went sour as the control of the central government was lost and the entire territory of the Soviet Union fell into disarray. Apparently, the recently established Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as well as other geopolitical maneuverings of China and Russia during the last few years, are Moscow's and Shanghai's attempt at realizing their initial anti-American agenda. In my opinion, a lot of the geopolitical matters regarding the "East" that Nyquist writes about does make some sense, if looked upon within a proper context. Nevertheless, this latest piece of his is definitely worth reading.

Arevordi

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ECONOMIC WARFARE IN THE FINAL PHASE

This week the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, warned against Russia’s use of energy as an instrument of foreign policy. Speaking before his ambassadors, the French President said: “Russia is imposing its return [as a great power] on the world scene by employing its assets, notably oil and gas, with a certain brutality.” A great power ought to be gentle in its economic or political superiority. The Russians, however, are accustomed to a more cynical use of their advantages. The language of the Russian president includes mockery, condescension and threats. The West cringes, the East advances. Who cares what the weak countries think? Their feelings are without consequence.

Russia is not only engaged in a military buildup. Russia wants to use its economic muscles. You might ask what economic muscles Russia could have? It is bankrupt, backward, hobbled, demoralized and generally dismissed as an effective economic actor. We must remember, however, that positions in the world economy can change, that tables can be turned. Last June, at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, the Russians called for a “new international financial architecture.” Here is Russia’s “Final Phase” economic strategy. The financial vulnerability of capitalism is growing. Keep pushing oil prices higher. Weaken the dollar. Precipitate the inevitable “crisis of capitalism.” Let the have-not nations rise up. Let them throw off their dollar shackles. Let them unite with Russia and China in “one clenched fist.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes the United States is vulnerable. The emerging economies of Brazil, India and China – combined with Russia – can shove the hollowed-out American economy aside. After all, American economic ascendancy is “archaic, undemocratic and unwieldy,” according to Putin. As for Europe, its dependence on Russian energy exports will assure a smooth process of “Finlandization.” Such a process begins with gentle warnings from Russia’s ambassadors in Europe and ends with self-censorship. Russia’s economic penetration of Europe gives special leverage to Moscow. In other words, the Kremlin has entered into the Fabric of European political life – through agent networks, influence operations and business pressure. These relationships can be used to influence powerful people, to adversely affect the careers of anyone who opposes Russian interests.

Economic influence means political influence. As America is humiliated, as America retreats, Russia advances. The day might come when Europe pays for its energy in rubles. If this occurs, Europe would have to acquire a large store of Russian currency. Russia’s economic position would grow, and so would Russia’s hold on Europe. Moscow wants to build a global old exchange on Russian territory, knocking big financial players to one side. The Russians want to stun the American economy. They want to weaken an already weakened dollar.

In 1984 a Russian defector named Anatoliy Golitsyn wrote of the period following the collapse of communism. He warned of a renewed attack on the West, engineered by KGB strategists. He said that this attack had an economic dimension. In his 1984 book, New Lies for Old, he wrote: “’Liberalization’ in Eastern Europe on the scale suggested could have a social and political impact on the United States itself, especially if it coincided with a severe economic depression. The communist strategists are on the lookout for such an opportunity.” According to Golitsyn, the communist bloc tracks Western economic developments. They watch for developing weaknesses. “The communist bloc will not repeat its error of failing to exploit a slump as it did in 1929-32.” The smartest political observers know that a financial slump resurrects Marxism and its critique of economic freedom.

Referring to a deceptive phase of self-advertised Russian weakness, Golitsyn warned: “Information from communist sources that the bloc is short of oil and grain should be treated with particular reserve, since it could well be intended to conceal preparation for the final phase of the policy and to induce the West to underestimate the potency of the bloc’s economic weapons.” The economic weakness of Russia led Europe to feel safe about their growing dependence on Russian oil and gas. And now it is too late. Now we see how Russia and China have formed a military bloc. We see them supporting the nuclear ambitions of Iran, the paranoid buildup of Syria and Venezuela – the seduction of Latin America and the bloody unraveling of sub-Saharan Africa.

The U.S. financial situation worsens as the old communist bloc gathers its economic, political and military forces. Look at the new Russian weapons – nuclear missiles, tanks, jet fighters and more. Look at Latin America and notice what is happening in Venezuela, Bolivia and Colombia. The communists are advancing under various false flags. They seek the destruction of the United States. It doesn’t matter who is in the White House. It doesn’t matter what policy the U.S. is following. They want to destroy America, because America stands in the way of their plans.

If you live in America and want your children to be free, you’d better wake up. The actions of Russia are not in reaction to American “aggression” or “imperialism.” They are part of a long-established pattern of deception and exploitation. This is how the Russians behave. This is how they’ve always behaved. Most political pundits and “experts” will scoff at this statement. But let me ask them: Is it a coincidence that a KGB-regime has emerged in “democratic” Russia? Is it happenstance that this regime has formed a military alliance with communist China?

Shortly before her death, the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya asked whether the rise of Putin’s Russia was mere happenstance. In answer to this question she took a bullet in the back of the head. The silencing of those who ask the right questions is part of the old communist pattern. According to Mark Riebling, KGB defector Golitsyn’s 1984 book contains 148 falsifiable predictions. Of these predictions, 139 were “fulfilled by the end of 1993 – an accuracy rate of nearly 94 percent.” Today, Golitsyn’s accuracy rate is higher. Having predicted Russia’s use of oil as a weapon, having predicted a future alliance between Russia and China, it might be said that 141 out 148 of Golitsyn’s predictions have come to pass.

In recent months Russia tried to provoke a war between Israel and Syria. It turns out that the paranoia in Damascus was fueled from Moscow. The conventional analyst thinks the Russians are motivated by the prospect of further arms sales to Syria. But this is not the whole answer. Russia seeks to foment a greater military crisis with which to intensify the economic and energy crisis. The Russians and their allies are making trouble where they can. The hour is ripe. The U.S. president is weak. The American economy is troubled. One great push, one more straw upon the camel’s back, and capitalism might be overthrown – once and for all.

Source: http://www.financialsense.com/stormw...2007/0831.html


Another geopolitical essay by Nyquist:

RUSSIA AND THE IRANIAN BOMB

On Aug. 23 Frontpagemagazine.com interviewed Regnar Rasmussen, a military expert and interrogation specialist. The interview is of interest because of Rasmussen’s testimony indicating that Iran purchased nuclear warheads from the “former” Soviet Union in autumn 1992. This is a story that confirms a similar claim made by Yossef Bodansky in his book The High Cost of Peace. Bodansky says the Iranians initially intended to use their newly acquired nuclear weapons in a jihad to destroy Israel. The plan involved strategic coordination with Hezbollah, Syria and communist North Korea (which agreed to a simultaneous attack against American forces in the Far East). Tehran asked its terrorist allies “to refrain temporarily from attacking Western objectives in order not to attract attention to the Iranian-sponsored buildup until they were ready to strike out decisively.” Once the necessary forces were in place, Hezbollah was to play a unique role by setting up the pretext for a devastating assault on Israel. According to Bodansky, Hezbollah would provoke Israel into “a major escalation in Lebanon – so that the planned Syrian and Iranian ballistic-missile barrage against Israeli civilian and strategic objectives could be presented as retaliation for Israeli aggression.” Bodansky also says that a simultaneous terrorist offensive would be launched against the United States while Iranian kamikaze-style attacks would be organized against U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf.

As Bodansky explained in his book, an Iranian nuclear assault on Israel was thwarted when an Israeli helicopter gunship attacked and killed Sheikh Sayyid Abbas al-Mussawi, the secretary-general of Hezbollah (roughly coinciding with the demise of North Korea’s dictator and a subsequent transition crisis in Pyongyang). Those who doubted the veracity of Bodansky’s work must now account for the testimony of Rasmussen, who learned many things from Iranian asylum seekers, including Iranian communists who had been trained in Soviet bloc countries. “The education was genuine and serious,” said Rasmussen, “but what really made my hairs stand on one end was the immense overweight of practical training in the preparation and use of explosives. It was taught to the Iranian students even down to the minutest details that these skills were deemed necessary if their ‘revolutionary aims’ were to succeed.”

The Russians also trained Middle Eastern men at the science of engineering, not so much from the standpoint of building large structures, but from the standpoint of knocking them down at a single blow. The communist bloc had an overall plan when it initiated its massive course of instruction for Muslim youth. And it was Rasmussen’s sense of this plan that was awakened as he watched the events of 9/11 unfold five years ago. “It is very important to bear in mind that the Iranians were nothing more than a tiny minority amongst the recruits of the Soviet Union,” he explained. “My Iranians told me that they had to stick together and protect each other … against the hordes of Arabs surrounding them everywhere on campus.”

Although the majority of communists in revolutionary Iran were slated for Islamic persecution, an elite subset of communists (trained in the Soviet Union) ended up working for the Islamic regime. “I would describe this group as the most dangerous and unpredictable of them all,” noted Rasmussen. The best and toughest communist agents working in Islamic Iran were tasked with infiltrating the Islamic hierarchy and intelligence services. The purpose of this infiltration should be obvious to any student of strategy: namely, to steer a regime of fanatical psychopaths toward conflict with America. This would not prove difficult because, as Rasmussen pointed out in the Frontpagemagazine.com interview, communism and Islamic fundamentalism share a common hatred of individualism and Western values. Furthermore, in terms of Moscow’s current objectives in the fight against Islamic terrorism, the Russians retain the files of each and every foreign student ever trained in the Soviet Bloc. So why haven’t they shared these files with the United States? (The answer should be abundantly clear.)

It seems that the Russians are following the same path they followed during the Cold War. As for Moscow’s supposed war against Islamic terrorism in Chechnya, the Chechen conflict is nothing more than a KGB/GRU organized provocation. The mild and unorthodox Islam practiced by the Chechen people bears no resemblance to the more virulent forms of Islam practiced in the Middle East. Furthermore, the terrorism of the Chechen bandits has been described by former KGB/FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko as staged diversionary operation for renewing Russia’s police state under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. According to Litvinenko, Chechen terrorism was organized and directed, from the outset, by Russian special services and the Russian General Staff. Last year, in an interview with a Polish journalist, Litvinenko stated that bin Laden’s right hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a long-time KGB agent trained in Russia.

Given all of this, it should not surprise anyone that Iran may have acquired nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union. According to Rasmussen, Russia trained many Iranian physicists (a fact reported by many researchers). And Russia continues to train Iranian nuclear experts, as a matter of policy. As anyone who consults a newspaper will see, the Russians will not back down from this activity. Together with their communist Chinese allies, the Russians lend practical support to the Iranians by threatening to use their veto in the U.N. Security Council (to prevent economic sanctions against the Iranian mullahs).

How did the Iranians acquire nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union? Rasmussen describes his involvement with sincere Soviet intellectuals who were moving toward political power after the collapse of Soviet power. The political failure of these people was due, says Rasmussen, to the “intrigues and dirty workings of the old KGB structures behind the curtain we all thought had fallen.” He further added, “Alas, no curtain ever fell. It was only moved to a position further backwards and deep into the dark shades of backstage.” Such a position is necessary if one intends to trigger a nuclear exchange between Muslim and Western countries.

It was a matter of profit and strategic convenience that the communist boss of Soviet Khazakstan, Nursultan Nazerbayev, sold three nuclear warheads to the Islamic leaders in Tehran. The price was supposedly $7.5 billion. This story has been confirmed by other sources, and has remained a closely guarded secret of the Israeli and American governments. Obviously, the Iranians could use the acquired Soviet nukes as models for making their own weapons. Furthermore, it may only be a matter of time before they initiate a nuclear war against Israel and the United States on their own timetable (in coordination with their Chinese, North Korean, Syrian and Russian allies). A strategic sequence logically follows from the thinking of Iran’s leadership, which may be summarized by the oft-heard cry of “death to Israel, death to America.”

Source: http://www.financialsense.com/stormw...2006/0825.html