*Hey, anything's better than ending up like Greece, they figure.
http://journal-neo.org/2015/06/25/sanctions-and-the-birth-of-the-new-russia/
25.06.2015 Author: F. William Engdahl
Sanctions and the Birth of the New Russia
Column: Economics Region: Ukraine in the world
"I want to share my impressions from a recent visit to St. Petersburg where I was invited to speak on a panel titled “Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste.” The title is another version of the old Chinese proverb, “A crisis also presents new opportunities.” This is what is emerging today in the Russian Federation and radiating outwards across the broad expanse of Eurasia and into all Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
"For want of a better term, I will call what is developing a New World Ordering. This is to differentiate it from George H.W. Bush’s US-dominated New World Order, proclaimed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in a speech on September 11, 1990 to the US Congress, where he declared, “Out of these troubled times, our…objective – a New World Order – can emerge…”
"Today it is clear that the New World Order of Bush was intended to take unscrupulous advantage of the disorder following the end of the Soviet Union to forge a unipolar world where one tiny group would dictate to the entire world its terms of existence.
(((Push it hard enough and it's all about the oligarchs. First they won in Russia, then they won everywhere else, then they couldn't manage politically and everything fell into the hands of spies like Putin. Hence, the Twenty-Teens.)))
"Pursuit of that has been the sole aim of the US foreign policy and their wars, fear campaigns, under three US presidents over the past quarter century since the end of the Soviet Union. (((The only fun part of reading contemporary Russian propaganda is the pleasure of seeing that somebody is really impressed with the deftness of US foreign policy.))) It motivates the US-instigated civil war in Ukraine, (((that was social media, actually))) in Syria, (((that was also caused by social media))) against China in the East China Sea, (((that part the US is genuinely upset about))) US covert backing for ISIS (((doesn't exist.))). It drives the US economic sanctions against Russia, sanctions which Washington has arm-twisted the EU into supporting, much to the detriment of the EU and their economies. (((This has it backwards, because the square was called "EuroMaidan" not "USMaidan." In the mystic world of Eurasian Orthodoxy, everybody just stares into the middle-distance and makes stuff up by revelation, Rasputin-style.)))
"What I witnessed not only in St. Petersburg but also in other recent visits to Russia is something I can only call extraordinary. Rather than cower in terror at the endless barrage of attacks and economic and financial sanctions thrown at her, Russia and her leadership are becoming more confident and, crucially, more self-reliant and aggressive in a positive way as never before. Some examples will illustrate. (((I don't believe these Potemkin examples, but they're really interesting. Fantastic, even.)))
"Organic Food Leader (((Who knew?)))
"Today’s Russian leaders have realized that what was considered under the corrupt Yeltsin era to be a liability—Russia’s agriculture—is one of her greatest assets.
"I had occasion in the context of this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, to speak with the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture who told me the government has made a strategic decision to use the sanctions and Russian “counter sanctions,” namely banning imports of major food products of the European Union, to build a Russian natural or organic food production.
"Deputy Minister, Sergey Levin, told me that Russia already today has banned any commercial planting of GMO seeds. His comments were echoed at the Forum by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich who announced that Russia will not use genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Russian Agriculture Minister, Nikolai Fyodorov has pledged to keep Russia a GMO-free country. At a meeting of deputies representing rural areas recently he declared in reference to GMOs, that the government will not “poison their citizens.” (((That would be a first. More like they'll poison their citizens, but only with FSB-approved polonium.)))
"They have realized that the abundantly rich, fertile Russian soil, owing to the Cold War requirements of diverting most chemical production into the military defense sector, has largely avoided the heavy soil application of agrochemicals that have done severe damage to the farmlands of the United States and much of the European Union since 1945. American agribusiness methods have been marvelous for increasing harvest yields but not for maintaining nutritional quality of the food produced. Here is where Russia has realized it can become a major world producer of organic, non-GMO quality agriculture products. Fertile Russian agriculture lands become even more strategic to world food supplies as the similarly fertile black soils of Ukraine are being destroyed by war and chaos there. (((This is right out of the Lysenko handbook – Ukrainian chaos destroys soil, sure it does, doc.)))
"Russia as energy catalyst
"What was also abundantly clear during my St. Petersburg talks and observations is the tremendous Russian dynamic of creating change in the existing world order. Sanctions are forcing Russia to do very good things.
"Ridiculously ineffective Washington efforts to try to block western capital for Russian companies, especially energy companies, and the dramatic escalation of NATO provocations around Russia have forced a decision to strategic self-reliance or to cooperation with non-NATO trade partners.
"The diversity of such strategic trade deals that emerged from St. Petersburg is impressive. Andrew Korybko, journalist and analyst with Moscow’s Sputnik News detailed some of the most significant of the deals that emerged from the Russian forum. Korybko points out that far from being regarded internationally as a pariah state, as a “rule-breaker” of rules of the Washington game, today’s Russia is becoming a magnet of international interest unprecedented her history.
"That was demonstrated in the attendance at the annual St. Petersburg forum. Despite strong efforts by the silly US State Department to discourage attendance in St. Petersburg, this year a record number of paid participants, some 10,000, joined in three days of intensive discussion and signed over 200 contracts worth $5.4 billion in new trade deals with Russia, with tens of billions in new deals in serious negotiation. Attendance was some 25% more than a year ago, and a record for the 19 year-old forum, despite the repeated Washington and Brussels efforts to demonize Russia and Putin.
"Sending a clear signal to their NATO-tied governments that they do not regard Russian sanctions as a hindrance to further cooperation with Russia in development of Russia’s vast undeveloped hydrocarbon resources, Britain’s BP and the Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, as well as Germany’s E.ON, made major new agreements with Russia in St. Petersburg. (((Ever wonder how the world became, as the Pope remarked, "an enormous pile of filth?" Ask an oil company. Even ISIS still moves product into their eager hands.)))
"Russian energy giant Gazprom and Shell signed a memorandum on the construction of a third technical line for a liquefied natural gas plant on Sakhalin Island on Russia’s Pacific Coast. Gazprom also signed a memorandum on the construction of a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea with E.ON, Shell and Vienna-based OMV oil and gas company.
"The Baltic deal calls for construction of a new gas pipeline to Germany alongside the current Nord Stream line. The new project will have a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters annually, twice as much as the current Nord Stream volume. (((Presumably this will keep the Germans warm after the EU breaks up and the Euro no longer exists.)))
"Despite tense relations between Moscow and Brussels, Europe will need more gas in the near future and Russia is the only country that can meet the demand at a competitive price. “Considering the decline of local extraction of gas in Europe and the increase in demand European companies need to develop new infrastructure to guarantee Russian gas supply to European consumers,” Gazprom said in a statement.
"After foolish Brussels attempts to sabotage further Gazprom-EU gas deliveries, it has dawned on EU governments that as chaos in Ukraine spins out of control, a major share of the EU gas pipeline supplies from Russia threatens to go down with it. (((Why not just shut it off and see what happens? Or better yet, hire a few little-green-men and blow the pipelines up in a hundred places.)))
"As a consequence of EU pressures on Bulgaria and other EU states, last December, during talks with Turkish President Erdogan in Ankara, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced, to the shock of Brussels, that South Stream, a $45 billion project to deliver Russian natural gas via underwater pipeline through the Black Sea to Bulgaria and on to other Balkan and southern European markets, was dead.
"Instead, Putin announced talks with Erdogan to create what is now called Turkish Stream, a pipeline that will bring Russian gas through Turkey directly to the borders of Greece. What route it takes to which EU countries from that border will depend on EU decisions.
"Notably in that context, during talks in St. Petersburg between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Russian officials including Putin and Russian and Greek energy ministers, Greece signed a memorandum to bring Russian gas from the Turkish Stream pipeline into EU member (at least still so), Greece. Greece and Russia signed the memorandum for the project, which Tsipras described as “Greek Stream.” At the same conference, Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik revealed that “Serbia will unquestionably participate in the Turkish Stream.” (((In the New Cold War, there's just no question that Serbia is winning. If there was a Grexit Greece allied with Serbia it would be like Yugoslavia reborn, only more so. You can't "Balkanize" all the time unless you re-unite every once in a while.)))
"That was by no means all in terms of energy deals reached in St. Petersburg. Gazprom and French gas company ENGIE discussed the need for new routes of direct gas supplies to Europe. And Russian oil giant Rosneft signed a deal with the British oil and gas company BP who bought a 20 percent stake in Taas-Yuryakh Neftegazodobycha in Eastern Siberia, creating a new British-Russian energy joint venture.
"For those in the West claiming, as the neo-conservatives at the US State Department and in the Obama White House or office of Defense Secretary “Ash” Carter do, namely that Putin is stealthily laying the basis for rebuilding the Soviet Union, were there any basis to it which is not at all clear, the more Russia’s economy depends on mutual cooperation and respect for EU countries, the more absurd such charges become. (((I'm pretty sure that a Russian wrote this sentence.)))
"Surprise Saudi, India deals
"As if the scale and diversity of those new deals were not sufficient, agreements of Putin’s Russia with highest-level representatives of Saudi Arabia and of India underscored the avant garde role Russia is playing increasingly in creation of a multi-polar New World Ordering…."
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/06/25/sanctions-and-the-birth-of-the-new-russia/
