Un dilema civilizatorio

Lo que sigue es complicado. Habla sobre la caída global en la producción de petróleo convencional, sobre los problemas financieros implícitos en la aplicación de las tecnologías de fracking en las alternativas no convencionales, y sobre la imposiblidad de encontrar sustitutos al petróleo que cumplan con todas las funciones de este. Lo escribió Gail Tverberg en su sitio web, “Our finite World” (http://ourfiniteworld.com/). Lo que se dice un bajón. Está escrito pensando en los Estados Unidos, pero tranquilamente puede hacerse extensivo al resto del planeta. Las implicaciones son profundas y duraderas, capaces de alterar el actual orden político, económico, estratégico y social. Lo que se dice un dilema civilizatorio.
 
Título: Our Oil Problems are Not Over!
 
Texto: "If a person reads US newspapers, it is easy to get the impression that all of the world’s oil problems are over. But this is not really the case.

An Overlooked Part of the Problem: High Oil Prices

A major piece of the world’s oil problem is high price. Prices continue to be far above historic levels, now in 2013.
 

Figure 1. World oil price (Brent equivalent) in 2011$, based on 

BP 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy data.

High oil prices disrupt economies around the world because when oil prices rise, the wages of the vast majority of workers do not rise to compensate. Workers find that they need to adjust their spending patterns because the higher price of oil leads to higher prices for many things, including the cost of commuting, the cost of food, and the cost of buying goods that have been shipped long distance.

When workers adjust their spending patterns, discretionary spending is cut. This leads to patterns we associate with recession, or perhaps just slow growth. Unemployment rises, and there is less demand for new homes and cars.

Governments are also affected, because many of their costs, such as building roads, are higher. They also have to pay benefits to workers who can’t find jobs, or who can only find only low-paying jobs. 

Governments find it increasingly difficult to collect enough taxes because of the low wages of workers. Problems with rising deficits and the debt ceiling become the order of the day. Does any of this sound familiar?

One of our biggest issues today is that we don’t have a way of getting oil prices back down again, without a drop in oil extraction. The “easy to extract” oil (and thus the  inexpensive-to-extract oil) was extracted first. There is still a huge amount of oil in the ground. The issue is that we can’t get it out, except at high prices—the same high prices that either (a) cause recession, or if governments can disguise the problem with deficit spending and low interest rates, (b) cause persistently low employment plus slow growth.

The Recent Rise in US Crude Oil Production

It is true that United States oil production is now higher than it has been in the recent past. The rise in production relates primarily to “tight oil”—the kind of oil production that is enabled by very extensive hydraulic fracturing (also called fracking). (Figure 2)
 

Figure 2. US crude oil production, divided into “tight oil”, oil from Alaska, 

and all other, based on EIA data.

We are often told that this rise in production is because of the invention of fracking. This is not really true; fracking has been used for decades, but not in the quantity it is used today. Oil production is up because oil prices continue to be high. High oil prices allow producers to use fracking in the quantity it is used today, on sites that without the technique would not be able to produce oil. Even with recent improvements in techniques, fracking remains expensive. Continued extraction of tight oil depends on oil prices remaining high.

There are other things besides high oil price that enable tight oil production. One of these things is plenty of credit, available at low interest rates. Tight oil by its nature requires considerable up front investment. Cash flow tends to be negative as production is ramped up. This means that there is a need for a lot of debt financing, so low rates are helpful. Ultra low interest rates, such as those provided by quantitative easing, also enable equity (stock) financing, because investors are so starved for reasonable returns that they will buy stocks of iffy companies, in the hope of capital gains.

Another thing that enables tight oil extraction in the United States is our law structure. In the United States, property laws permit landowners to share in the profits from oil drilling. In most other countries, profits are split between the company and the government, with nothing for local property owners. Because of the financial incentive, US property owners are often willing to put up with the hassles of hydraulic fracturing. This isn’t necessarily true elsewhere.

The United States also has other advantages that are not available in much of the world: lots of pipelines already in place, many drilling rigs available, a reasonable level of water supply, and population which is not terribly dense, so that fracking can often be done away from populated areas. The spread of technology for doing fracking around the world is far from a slam-dunk, because of the many obstacles to extraction elsewhere. These can at times be overcome with different techniques, but this adds another layer of costs, meaning oil prices need to be higher yet.

The amount by which tight oil production will continue to rise is open to a variety of interpretations. If oil prices drop because of recession, there may be very little additional production.  If credit availability dries up, tight oil production may drop. If everything goes well, US production may rise. If miracles happen, tight oil production may even rise in many areas around the world.

As I have indicated previously, I am concerned about a financial discontinuity in the very near future–a few months to a year or two–a discontinuity that is ultimately related to high oil prices. This financial discontinuity could even be related to the current government shutdown, if it goes on for an extended period. If we are reaching a discontinuity, credit markets may be so disrupted and other changes may be so significant that past projections will be irrelevant.

A Second Overlooked Part of the Problem: Inadequate Rise in World Oil Production

The second major issue we are encountering now, besides high oil price, is an inadequate rise in world oil production. Many people are concerned about a possible unplanned decrease in world oil supply (so-called “peak oil”). While this may happen, worrying about this issue misses an important issue that comes earlier: for a growing world economy, we really need a reasonably large annual increase in oil supply.

Even if we include all kinds of liquids that aren’t quite oil, such as ethanol, natural gas liquids, and coal-to-liquid, the growth of oil supply has tapered off considerably in the last 50 years. (Figure 3).

 

Figure 3. Growth in world oil supply, with fitted trend lines, 

based on BP 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy.

If we fit trend lines to historical oil production, we see that the lines become progressively flatter. To make matters worse, the number of potential customers for this oil has been rising, thanks to globalization. The World Trade Organization was formed in 1995. Adding China to the World Trade Organization in December 2001 particularly ramped up demand for all types of energy products, including oil. As China’s use of oil products soared, it put huge pressure on world oil prices. The combination of flat production and rapidly rising demand led to rapidly rising oil prices between 2003 and 2008 (Figure 4, below.) Oil prices temporarily dropped during the Great Recession, but are now back up above $100 barrel.

Figure 4. World crude oil production and monthly average Brent spot oil price, 

both based on EIA data.

Whether or not recent oil production really is sufficient for a growing world economy is debatable. Certainly in terms of supply equaling demand, there was enough. But in terms of how this supply was divided, it has been very unequal (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Oil consumption based on BP’s 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy.

The big historical users of oil, that is the United States, the European Union, and Japan, have seen their use of oil drop, while oil use has continued to rise in the rest of the world. The countries that have seen a drop in oil consumption also tend to be the countries that experienced the greatest downturn during the Great Recession. These same countries are now struggling with slow economic growth and little gain in the number of high-paying jobs available.

There is good reason to expect that oil use and economic growth would be highly correlated. This expected correlation comes in two different directions—from the demand side and from the supply side. From the demand side, if businesses are growing, and if workers have jobs that allow them to buy an increasing amount of goods that use oil (such as cars or motorcycles, or new houses), the demand for oil products is likely to be growing as well.

Availability of oil is also important from the supply side—that is making and transporting goods. As mentioned previously, oil is required to transport goods, and it is used in many other places in the economy—such as in growing food, in the construction of buildings, and as a chemical feedstock. Of course, if oil is cheap, it is much better on the supply side than if it is expensive, because if it is expensive, the high price of oil tends to send the required selling price of goods upward, and (oops!) lead to fewer sales, cutbacks in production and recession.

How Financial Limits Tie in With Oil Reserves

There is a common belief that we have plenty if oil, because companies and governments report high oil reserves. For example, using BP’s 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy, the amount of oil that companies seem to think is extractable is (1668.9 billion barrels of oil reserves/ 31.5 billion barrels of oil produced in 2012) = 53 years worth of oil at the 2012 rate of production. If we look at oil resources that are supposedly available, which include oil that may be available with further exploration and development, the amount seems to be higher yet. So it doesn’t look like there could possibly be a problem.

The reason why this belief is false is because the real cut-off is financial, and those making the estimates have no way of figuring out when the financial cut-off will occur. So they assume that we can extract oil that is very likely to stay in the ground indefinitely. One way of illustrating this problem is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Resource triangle, with dotted line indicating uncertain financial cut-off.

Oil resources in the ground can be thought of as being somewhat like the triangle of resources shown. There is a lot of oil that is expensive to extract near the bottom of the triangle, but relatively little that is inexpensive to extract at the top. Oil companies start with the inexpensive to extract oil at the top of the triangle, and gradually work their way down through the triangle.

The least expensive oil is the oil that can be extracted with minimal problems. It is typically located near the surface, onshore, and can be extracted with the simplest equipment. Most of the easy, and thus cheap, to extract oil is now gone.

Now, if we want oil, we are being force to extract the more expensive oil, found lower in the triangle. Such oil may be deep under the sea, or near the North Pole, or may require hydraulic fracturing to extract. Sometimes the higher oil cost relates to indirect expense. For example, governments of oil exporters usually charge high taxes on exported oil. These taxes are used to keep their populations pacified with food subsidies and other benefits, such as desalinated water, so they do not revolt.

At the bottom of the triangle is an invisible financial limit, which I have shown as a dotted line. One way the limit “works” is by inducing recession in countries that obtain a very large percentage of their energy consumption from high-priced oil. Another way the financial limit works is by inducing financial collapse in oil companies. This happens when companies have huge up-front expense before they can recover their costs by selling  oil they have extracted at high oil prices.

As an example of a company hitting such a financial limit, Brazil’s second largest oil company, OGX, is trying to extract oil offshore Brazil, including the presalt area (that is oil beneath a salt layer that is difficult to drill through). OGX recently missed a debt payment because of its inability to obtain sufficient financing to work its way around a long-term negative cash flow situation.  It reports that most of the oil fields it has explored are not economically viable–the cost of extraction would be higher than the price available in the world oil market.

Because the financial limit is invisible, companies and government agencies have no way of excluding the too-expensive-to-extract oil from their estimates. A reasonable case can be made that at $100 barrel, oil price is already adversely affecting the economy. Without quantitative easing and deficit spending, the economy would be in recession from high oil prices now. Thus we are already hitting the financial limit, even though companies can see a huge amount of more oil that is theoretically available to extract. The only minor catches are that (a) consumers need to be able to afford to purchase the high-priced oil, and (b) oil companies need to be able to obtain ever-more cheap financing to extract it.

How Oil Limits Tie in with Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROI)

Dr. Charles Hall and others have calculated Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) for various fuels (Hall and Klitgaard 2012). The basic premise is that the more energy is needed to extract a fuel, the less efficient it is for providing needing desired energy for society. Hall’s research has shown that over time, the EROI for each fuel extracted tends to decline. This is very similar to the rising cost of extraction over time I am showing in Figure 6. The main difference is that I include all relevant costs, including wage costs, taxes, financing costs, and distribution costs, rather than just energy costs associated with extraction.

I have talked about required oil prices already being too high, and thus causing recession. In many ways, this is parallel to saying that the EROI of oil is already too low, and is leading to recessionary problems.

Some people (for example, Garcia 2009, which seems to be used in used in Randers 2012)  would like to use EROI comparisons to determine what might be a suitable substitute for oil. I do not consider this a suitable use for EROI for several reasons:

* Substitutability away from oil is very poor in the short-term, especially if we are up against a financial limit that will make substitution even more difficult in the future. The use of EROI in this manner assumes that substitution is really possible.

* EROI does not consider some important variables, including the timing of investment (and thus the need for long-term financing), and governments’ dependence on tax revenue from oil. Even in the US, governments obtain considerable revenue from oil extraction. According to Barry Rogers in the Oil & Gas Journal, in North Dakota, the total “government take” amounts to $33.29 on an average $80 barrel of tight oil.

* If substitution were to take place, huge transition costs would be incurred, such as  early retirement of the current vehicle fleet, and higher capital costs (and thus more energy expenditure) related to the new vehicles. Simply considering EROI would miss these costs.

Conclusion

When we hit oil limits, we are really up against Liebig’s Law of the Minimum. Applied in this situation, this law would say that if a necessary fuel is missing, the economy will not operate properly. This law originally was used to describe a problem in raising agricultural crops. If a necessary nutrient (such as phosphorous) was not present, it didn’t matter whether excess amounts of other nutrients were added. The plants could not grow properly unless the missing nutrient was available.

With oil, the situation is pretty similar. The economy cannot operate as usual, without an adequate supply of cheap oil (or in EROI terms, high-EROI) oil. All of the talk about substitution for oil is irrelevant, if our problem is a financial problem we are hitting right now, or in the very near future.

In order to have prevented our financial problems, several years ago we would to have needed to put in place a substitute for oil with very little or no transition costs. Ideally, the substitute could have kept transportation costs very cheap—comparable to the cost before the run-up in oil prices in starting about 2003.  Ideally, the substitute would also have worked for other oil uses, such as for powering irrigation pumps, for powering agricultural equipment, and as a chemical feedstock for asphalt, for medicines, for herbicides and pesticides. To be truly an oil substitute, the new product would need to be available sufficiently cheaply that it could be taxed heavily, to make up for lost revenue from oil royalties and other taxes.

Now we are faced with what looks like an unsolvable problem. We need a cheap oil substitute, yesterday. The stories we heard saying, “Substitutes will work when the oil price rises high enough,” were a bunch of nonsense. The folks who came up with this idea didn’t realize what a negative impact high oil prices have on the economy. A high-priced substitute for oil is not at all helpful. Neither is one with huge transition costs.

Without a substitute, we need to figure out how to live in a very changed world, one facing financial collapse–a very difficult problem indeed.”

Medio millón

Medio millón de evacuados. El número impresiona. Es la cantidad de gente que se está yendo de la región noreste de Andhra Pradesh y el estado de Orissa, en la India, afectados por el ingreso al territorio continental del Ciclón Phailin desde la Bahía de Bengala. (El diario español  El País habla ya de 650.000 evacuados). Unos pocos cientos de kilómetros al noreste del recorrido inferido para el ciclón de hoy, en el estado de Bengala Occidental, está Calcuta (por algún motivo no está marcada en el mapa, pero imagínensela unos 50 km al norte de Haldia, que sí aparece en este mapa). Quince millones de habitantes hacia 2009, según Wikipedia.

Ya hemos señalado en varios posts que es imposible ligar un evento particular, como es el caso de este ciclón, al proceso de calentamiento global actualmente en curso. El fenómeno, sin embargo, es estadístico: al aumentar las temperaturas promedio, aumentan las probabilidades de eventos de este tipo. El planeta se carga de energía. Alguien dijo, por ejemplo, que nunca, desde la última fase glacial, los océanos del mundo estaban tan cargados de energía (la energía es una función de la temperatura promedio, que aumenta). De las interacciones entre el mar y la atmósfera surgen buena parte de los fenómenos climáticos que ocurren en la superficie terrestre. Los ciclones y huracanes, por ejemplo.

Leemos en el sitio web de la BBC:

Título: Cyclone Phailin: Mass evacuations in eastern India

Texto: "As many as 500,000 people in India have been evacuated as a massive cyclone sweeps through the Bay of Bengal towards the east coast.

Cyclone Phailin, categorised as "very severe" by weather forecasters, is expected to hit Orissa and Andhra Pradesh states on Saturday evening.

The Meteorological Department has predicted the storm will bring winds of up to 220km/h (136mph).
A super-cyclone in 1999 killed more than 10,000 people in Orissa.

But officials say this time they are better prepared, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Orissa reports. The Meteorological Department said Cyclone Phailin was due to make landfall late on Saturday evening, Indian time. The centre of the storm was expected to hit the coast around the town of Gopalpur.

Homes at risk

Officials said Cyclone Phailin would bring a storm surge of at least 3m (10ft) that was likely to cause "extensive damage" to mud houses on the coast.

"No-one will be allowed to stay in mud and thatched houses in the coastal areas,'' said Orissa's Disaster Management Minister Surya Narayan Patra.

The army is on standby in the two states for emergency and relief operations. Officials said helicopters and food packages were ready to be dropped in the storm-affected areas.

Meanwhile, the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre predicted that Phailin could produce gusts of up to 296km/h (184 mph), while the London-based Tropical Storm Risk classified Phailin as a Category Five storm - the most powerful.

Fishermen have been asked not to venture out to sea.

Heavy rain and winds have already struck Orissa, where authorities have set up storm shelters for evacuees. Janmejay Mohapatra, a resident of Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar, said it was too dangerous to go out now, as trees were down and debris was flying everywhere.

"Already the rain is very heavy and the wind is gusting at 100-120km an hour," he told the BBC. "The phone lines are down where I am and we have no electricity."

Minister Surya Narayan Patra said:"We are fighting against nature. We are better prepared this time, we learnt a lot from 1999."

India's eastern coast and Bangladesh are routinely hit by cyclonic storms between April and November which cause deaths and widespread damage to property.

In December 2011, Cyclone Thane hit the southern state of Tamil Nadu, killing dozens of people.”

Siguen los signos

Notable. Súbitamente, el planeta entero se está hartando de Occidente y sus diversos alcahuetes. Hoy le toca a la Corte Internacional de La Haya, la rama "jurídica” de la NATO (Morenito Ocampo incluido). Claro, siempre hay un negrito a mano, preferentemente en Africa, para bajarle la caña al menor desliz. Siempre hay un Gaddafi a mano para mostrarle al mundo el largo brazo de la Justicia. A los genocidas de la City, nunca, por supuesto; a ver si les bajan los viáticos para cenar en París este finde.

Este blog nació fruto del asco que me producen estos y otros tantos insectos rastreros (véase: “Libia”: http://astroboy-en-multiverso.blogspot.com.ar/2011/11/libia.html). Por este motivo, produce cierta alegría leer, en el sitio iraní PressTV (¿cuál otro, si no?), la siguiente nota:

Título: African Union slams ICC for treating Africa unfairly

Texto: “The African Union has expressed serious concerns against the International Criminal Court (ICC), urging it to drop cases against Kenyan leadership.

The demand came during a meeting of the 54-member bloc in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, on Friday. Several African leaders asked the court to drop the proceedings against Kenya's leadership and some other member states.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who chairs a two-day meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa, said the AU’s call on the UN Security Council to delay proceedings against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir had fallen on deaf ears.

He also strongly condemned the court for treating Africa unfairly.
"The manner in which the [International Criminal] Court has been operating, particularly its unfair treatment of Africa and Africans, leaves much to be desired," Ghebreyesus told ministers and delegates at the opening of the meeting, adding, "Far from promoting justice and reconciliation ... the court has transformed itself into a political instrument. This unfair and unjust treatment is totally unacceptable."

The meeting is mostly focused on AU’s relationship with the ICC. The bloc accuses The Hague-based tribunal of unfairly hunting African leaders for prosecution.

Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto is currently on trial on charges of crimes against humanity.

Ruto along with President Ohuru Kenyatta are accused of orchestrating post-election violence in 2007, which claimed around 1,200 lives.

Altogether, eight African leaders are currently under investigation by the ICC.

The ICC's active cases all pertain to crimes against humanity committed in the African states of Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda and Kenya.

The African Union has long advocated the fostering of democratic rule in the continent, but has often fallen short with a number of long-serving leaders still clinging to power.”

Más signos

Gente rápida para los mandados, los noruegos. Esta mañana nos enteramos que el Premio Nobel de la Paz fue para el comité de Naciones Unidas encargado de la eliminación de las armas químicas. Comité que, justito justito, está en estos mismos momentos abocado a la tarea de destruir las armas químicas de Siria, como consecuencia de los acuerdos firmados entre (básicamente) Siria, Rusia y Estados Unidos hace pocas semanas. 

Esta es una forma de (1) santificar los acuerdos, lo que parece alejar definitivamente la posibilidad de una intervención armada de la NATO en Siria; (2) lavarles la cara a Obama y Kerry, que tuvieron que aceptar el acuerdo con caripelas más bien pétreas; (3) lavarles la cara a los propios noruegos, que dos años antes participaron alegremente de la carnicería libia, y (4) hacer de cuenta que Europa tiene algún tipo de pensamiento propio frente a Estados Unidos.

En fin, así se hace la Historia. Cada día agrega una señal nueva a estos nuevos tiempos (para entender esto hay que leer nuestro post anterior). Vos brindá tranquilo, Vladimiro; el mundo ya se enteró de lo que pasa. Leemos en el New York Times:

Título: Chemical Weapons Watchdog Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Texto: “LONDON — Urging the destruction of “an entire category” of unconventional weapons, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2013 Peace Prize on Friday to a relatively modest and little-known United Nations-backed body that is currently seeking to destroy Syria’s stocks of chemical arms under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States.

The award to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, usually known by its initials O.P.C.W., took some Nobel-watchers by surprise. In the days leading up to the award, much attention had focused on Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani student who risked her life to campaign for female education.

In its citation the committee said the O.P.C.W. and the conventions under which it was founded in 1997 “have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law. Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons.”

It was the second successive year that the panel, based in Oslo, chose an organization for its accolade. The European Union won the 2012 prize.

Inspectors from the 189-member O.P.C.W. began arriving in Syria this month after a chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus on Aug. 21 killed hundreds of people. Under the Russian-American agreement, Syria is scheduled to become the 190th member of the organization in coming days.

The chemical attack outside Damascus initially drew an American threat of military reprisal before Moscow and Washington reached a compromise arrangement to seek the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks under international supervision.

Thorbjorn Jagland, the former Norwegian prime minister who is chairman of the panel, said chemical weapons had been used by Hitler’s armies in their campaign of mass extermination and on many other occasions by states and terrorists. He denied that the award to a body based in The Hague represented a Eurocentric shift after last year’s award to the European Union."It’s global,” he said.

The organization is supposed to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into force in 1997 with four aims: to seek the destruction of all chemical weapons under international verification; to prevent the creation of new chemical weapons; to help countries protect themselves against chemical attack; and to foster international cooperation in the peaceful use of chemistry.

The identity of the Nobel Peace Prize winner is notoriously difficult to forecast.

Much speculation before Friday’s announcement centered on Ms. Yousafzai, who was shot by a Taliban gunman a year ago in retribution for her campaign. Another front-runner was said to have been Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist who has treated rape victims in the long-running conflict in his native Congo.

But, an hour before Friday’s announcement, the Norwegian public broadcaster, NRK, forecast that the 2013 prize would go to the O.P.C.W. The broadcaster also correctly tipped the European Union as last year’s winner.

The award is worth $1.25 million and will be presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of its founder, the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who established the prize in 1895 in his will. It was the 94th to be awarded since then.

While much attention is focused on Syria’s chemical weapons stocks, the Nobel committee noted pointedly that other countries — including the United States and Russia — had not scrapped chemical arsenals.”

El Cabo de la Buena Esperanza

Una nota desde Moscú, a cargo de Israel Shamir para el sitio web Counterpunch, relata con notable frescura y lujo de detalles el último mes y medio de la Historia Contemporánea. Discutibles unas cuantas cositas, como ocurre con todo artículo de opinión, pero agradable de leer, sobre todo frente a los mamotretos indigeribles de la prensa corporativa occidental. Acá va.
 
Título: Russia, Syria and the Decline of American Hegemony
 
Texto: “First, the good news. American hegemony is over. The bully has been subdued. We cleared the Cape of Good Hope, symbolically speaking, in September 2013. With the Syrian crisis, the world has passed a key forking of modern history. It was touch and go, just as risky as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The chances for total war were high, as the steely wills of America and Eurasia had crossed in the Eastern Mediterranean. It will take some time until the realisation of what we’ve gone through seeps in: it is normal for events of such magnitude. The turmoil in the US, from the mad car chase in the DC to the shutdown of federal government and possible debt default, are the direct consequences of this event.
 
Remember the Berlin Wall? When it went down, I was in Moscow, writing for Haaretz. I went to a press-conference with Politburo members in the President Hotel, and asked them whether they concurred that the end of the USSR and world socialist system was nigh. I was laughed at; it was an embarrassing occasion. Oh no, they said. Socialism will blossom, as the result of the Wall’s fall. The USSR went down two years later. Now our memory has compacted those years into a brief sequence, but in reality, it took some time.

The most dramatic event of September 2013 was the high-noon stand-off near the Levantine shore, with five US destroyers pointing their Tomahawks towards Damascus and facing them – the Russian flotilla of eleven ships led by the carrier-killer Missile Cruiser Moskva and supported by Chinese warships. Apparently, two missiles were launched towards the Syrian coast, and both failed to reach their destination.
 
It was claimed by a Lebanese newspaper quoting diplomatic sources that the missiles were launched from a NATO air base in Spain and they were shot down by the Russian ship-based sea-to-air defence system. Another explanation proposed by the Asia Times says the Russians employed their cheap and powerful GPS jammers to render the expensive Tomahawks helpless, by disorienting them and causing them to fail. Yet another version attributed the launch to the Israelis, whether they were trying to jump-start the shoot-out or just observed the clouds, as they claim.
 
Whatever the reason, after this strange incident, the pending shoot-out did not commence, as President Obama stood down and holstered his guns. This was preceded by an unexpected vote in the British Parliament. This venerable body declined the honour of joining the attack proposed by the US. This was the first time in two hundred years that the British parliament voted down a sensible proposition to start a war; usually the Brits can’t resist the temptation.
 
After that, President Obama decided to pass the hot potato to the Congress. He was unwilling to unleash Armageddon on his own. Thus the name of action was lost. Congress did not want to go to war with unpredictable consequences. Obama tried to browbeat Putin at the 20G meeting in St Petersburg, and failed. The Russian proposal to remove Syrian chemical weaponry allowed President Obama to save face. This misadventure put paid to American hegemony , supremacy and exceptionalism. Manifest Destiny was over. We all learned that from Hollywood flics: the hero never stands down; he draws and shoots! If he holsters his guns, he is not a hero: he’s chickened out.
 
Afterwards, things began to unravel fast. The US President had a chat with the new president of Iran, to the chagrin of Tel Aviv. The Free Syrian Army rebels decided to talk to Assad after two years of fighting him, and their delegation arrived in Damascus, leaving the Islamic extremists high and dry. Their supporter Qatar is collapsing overextended. The shutdown of their government and possible debt default gave the Americans something real to worry about. With the end of US hegemony, the days of the dollar as the world reserve currency are numbered.
 
World War III almost occurred as the banksters wished it. They have too many debts, including the unsustainable foreign debt of the US. If those Tomahawks had flown, the banksters could have claimed Force Majeure and disavow the debt. Millions of people would die, but billions of dollars would be safe in the vaults of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. In September, the world crossed this bifurcation point safely, as President Obama refused to take the fall for the banksters. Perhaps he deserved his Nobel peace prize, after all.
 
The near future is full of troubles but none are fatal. The US will lose its emission rights as a source of income. The US dollar will cease to serve as the world reserve currency though it will remain the North American currency. Other parts of the world will resort to their euro, yuan, rouble, bolivar, or dinar. The US military expenditure will have to be slashed to normal, and this elimination of overseas bases and weaponry will allow the US population to make the transition rather painlessly. Nobody wants to go after America; the world just got tired of them riding shotgun all over the place. The US will have to find new employment for so many bankers, jailers, soldiers, even politicians.
 
As I stayed in Moscow during the crisis, I observed these developments as they were seen by Russians. Putin and Russia have been relentlessly hard-pressed for quite a while.
 
* The US supported and subsidised Russia’s liberal and nationalist opposition; the national elections in Russia were presented as one big fraud. The Russian government was delegitimised to some extent.
* The Magnitsky Act of the US Congress authorised the US authorities to arrest and seize the assets of any Russian they deem is up to no good, without a recourse to a court.
* Some Russian state assets were seized in Cyprus where the banks were in trouble.
* The US encouraged Pussy Riot, gay parades etc. in Moscow, in order to promote an image of Putin the dictator, enemy of freedom and gay-hater in the Western and Russian oligarch-owned media.
* Russian support for Syria was criticised, ridiculed and presented as a brutal act devoid of humanity. At the same time, Western media pundits expressed certainty that Russia would give up on Syria.
 
As I wrote previously, Russia had no intention to surrender Syria, for a number of good reasons: it was an ally; the Syrian Orthodox Christians trusted Russia; geopolitically the war was getting too close to Russian borders. But the main reason was Russia’s annoyance with American high-handedness. The Russians felt that such important decisions should be taken by the international community, meaning the UN Security Council. They did not appreciate the US assuming the role of world arbiter.
 
In the 1990s, Russia was very weak, and could not effectively object, but  they felt bitter when Yugoslavia was bombed and NATO troops moved eastwards breaking the US promise to Gorbachev. The Libyan tragedy was another crucial point. That unhappy country was bombed by NATO, and eventually disintegrated. From the most prosperous African state it was converted into most miserable. Russian presence in Libya was rather limited, but still, Russia lost some investment there. Russia abstained in the vote on Libya as this was the position of the then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev who believed in playing ball with the West. In no way was Putin ready to abandon Syria to the same fate.
 
The Russian rebellion against the US hegemony began in June, when the Aeroflot flight from Beijing carrying Ed Snowden landed in Moscow. Americans pushed every button they could think of to get him back. They activated the full spectre of their agents in Russia. Only a few voices, including that of your truly, called on Russia to provide Snowden with safe refuge, but our voices prevailed. Despite the US pressure, Snowden was granted asylum.
 
The next step was the Syrian escalation. I do not want to go into the details of the alleged chemical attack. In the Russian view, there was not and could not be any reason for the US to act unilaterally in Syria or anywhere else. In a way, the Russians have restored the Law of Nations to its old revered place. The world has become a better and safer place.
 
None of this could’ve been achieved without the support of China. The Asian giant considers Russia its “elder sister” and relies upon her ability to deal with the round-eyes. The Chinese, in their quiet and unassuming way, played along with Putin. They passed Snowden to Moscow. They vetoed anti-Syrian drafts in the UNSC, and sent their warships to the Med. That is why Putin stood the ground not only for Russia, but for the whole mass of Eurasia.
 
The Church was supportive of Putin’s efforts; not only the Russian Church, but both Catholics and Orthodox were united in their opposition to the pending US campaign for the US-supported rebels massacred Christians. The Pope appealed to Putin as to defender of the Church; so did the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. The Pope almost threatened to excommunicate Hollande, and the veiled threat impressed the French president. So Putin enjoyed support and blessing of the Orthodox Patriarchs and of the Pope: such double blessing is an extremely rare occassion.
 
There were many exciting and thrilling moments in the Syrian saga, enough to fill volumes. An early attempt to subdue Putin at G8 meeting in Ireland was one of them. Putin was about to meet with the united front of the West, but he managed to turn some of them to his side, and he sowed the seeds of doubt in others’ hearts by reminding them of the Syrian rebel manflesh-eating chieftains.
 
The proposal to eliminate Syrian chemical weapons was deftly introduced; the UNSC resolution blocked the possibility of attacking Syria under cover of Chapter Seven. 

Miraculously, the Russians won in this mighty tug-of-war. The alternative was dire: Syria would be destroyed as Libya was; a subsequent Israeli-American attack on Iran was unavoidable; Oriental Christianity would lose its cradle; Europe would be flooded by millions of refugees; Russia would be proven irrelevant, all talk and no action, as important as Bolivia, whose President’s plane can be grounded and searched at will. Unable to defend its allies, unable to stand its ground, Russia would’ve been left with a ‘moral victory’, a euphemism for defeat. Everything Putin has worked for in 13 years at the helm would’ve been lost; Russia would be back to where it was in 1999, when Clinton bombed Belgrade.
 
The acme of this confrontation was reached in the Obama-Putin exchange on exceptionalism. The two men were not buddies to start with. Putin was annoyed by what he perceived as Obama’s insincerity and hypocrisy. A man who climbed from the gutter to the very top, Putin cherishes his ability to talk frankly with people of all walks of life. His frank talk can be shockingly brutal. When he was heckled by a French journalist regarding treatment of Chechen separatists, he replied:
 
“the Muslim extremists (takfiris) are enemies of Christians, of atheists, and even of Muslims because they believe that traditional Islam is hostile to the goals that they set themselves. And if you want to become an Islamic radical and are ready to be circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. We are a multi-faith country and we have experts who can do it. And I would advise them to carry out that operation in such a way that nothing would grow in that place again”.

Another example of his shockingly candid talk was given at Valdai as he replied to BBC’s Bridget Kendall. She asked: did the threat of US military strikes actually play a rather useful role in Syria’s agreeing to have its weapons placed under control?

Putin replied: "Syria got itself chemical weapons as an alternative to Israel’s nuclear arsenal." He called for the disarmament of Israel and invoked the name of Mordecai Vanunu as an example of an Israeli scientist who opposes nuclear weapons.

Putin tried to talk frankly to Obama. We know of their exchange from a leaked record of the Putin-Netanyahu confidential conversation. Putin called the American and asked him: what’s your point in Syria? Obama replied: I am worried that Assad’s regime does not observe human rights. Putin almost puked from the sheer hypocrisy of this answer. He understood it as Obama’s refusal to talk with him “on eye level”.

In the aftermath of the Syrian stand-off, Obama appealed to the people of the world in the name of American exceptionalism. The United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional”, he said. Putin responded: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.” This was not only an ideological, but theological contradistinction.

As I expounded at length elsewhere, the US is built on the theology of exceptionalism, of being Chosen. It is the country of Old Testament. This is the deeper reason for the US and Israel’s special relationship. Europe is going through a stage of apostasy and rejection of Christ, while Russia remains deeply Christian. Its churches are full, they bless one other with Christmas and Easter blessings, instead of neutral “seasons”. Russia is a New Testament country. And rejection of exceptionalism, of chosenness is the underlying tenet of Christianity.

For this reason, while organised US Jewry supported the war, condemned Assad and called for US intervention, the Jewish community of Russia, quite numerous, wealthy and influential one, did not support the Syrian rebels but rather stood by Putin’s effort to preserve peace in Syria. Ditto Iran, where the wealthy Jewish community supported the legitimate government in Syria. It appears that countries guided by a strong established church are immune from disruptive influence of lobbies; while countries without such a church – the US and/or France – give in to such influences and adopt illegal interventionism as a norm.

As US hegemony declines, we look to an uncertain future. The behemoth might of the US military can still wreck havoc; a wounded beast is the most dangerous one. Americans may listen to Senator Ron Paul who called to give up overseas bases and cut military expenditure. Norms of international law and sovereignty of all states should be observed. People of the world will like America again when it will cease snooping and bullying. It isn’t easy, but we’ve already negotiated the Cape and gained Good Hope."

Una foto

Todo lo que puede decir una foto, por sus presencias y sus ausencias. El president chino Xi Jinpin, junto a otros líderes del Foro de Cooperación Económica Asia-Pacífico (APEC, su acrónimo inglés) le cantan el Cumpleaños Feliz al presidente ruso Vladimir Putin, el día de ayer, en Bali, Indonesia. El presidente de ese país, Susilo Yudhoyono, toca la guitarra. Obama y su Alianza Transpacífica (TPP), bien, gracias.

La siguiente nota es de Pepe Escobar y apareció en el Asia Times Online el día de hoy.

Título: Shootout at the APEC free-trade corral

Texto: “What a photo - yet another instance of Bali working its magic. Chinese President Xi Jinping leads a "Happy Birthday" for Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Indonesian President Susilo Yudhoyono on acoustic guitar. You know who is not in the picture - he's in shutdown containment mode. US Think Tankland protestations notwithstanding, there could not be a more graphic reminder of the emerging multipolar order. 

And right on cue, the Creditor, somewhat alarmed, pointedly reminded the massive Debtor, via Chinese vice-finance minister 

Zhu Guangyao: "As the world's largest economy and the issuer of the major reserve currency in the world, it is important for the US to maintain the creditworthiness of its Treasury bonds." [1] 

Translation; just as Asia-Pacific gathered to discuss the messier points of economic cooperation at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bali, what everybody was worried about is the scary possibility of the US government defaulting on its colossal debts next week. All this interfered with by a sideshow - the Return of the Extraordinary Rendition in Libya and Navy SEALS getting their butts kicked by a bunch of al-Shabaab jihadis in Somalia, more than enough to bury any coverage of the APEC summit by US corporate media. 

As predicted, China was the star of the APEC show. It's never enough to remember that the 21-member APEC accounts for no less than half of the globe's economic output and trade. Xi insisted APEC should lead and coordinate the maze of free trade negotiations in Asia-Pacific. 

He also insisted that any trade agreement should be "inclusive" - as in including China. Only then would it bear the requisite "win-win" trademark; as if Xi needed to emphasize once more - as he did - that China is the biggest trading partner and export market for virtually every Asia-Pacific nation. 

Behold the "Diamond Decade"

The ongoing blockbuster in Asia-Pacific is the clash of the FTAs; there are a dizzying, over 100 competing free-trade agreements currently in play. Negotiations at the World Trade Organization are, to put it mildly, a mess. So a lot of players resort to bilateral and somewhat multilateral FTAs. Overall, the top contenders are the 16-nation, ASEAN-led Comprehensive Economic Partnership (which includes China) and the 12-nation, US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which excludes China.. 

Xi stressed over and over again that China favors one FTA to cover all of the Asia-Pacific. And as far as Beijing is concerned, that won't be TPP - which is essentially a major US corporate racket that will lower tariffs across the spectrum to the sole benefit of US multinationals and not small and medium-sized firms in developing countries, all this under the cover of a dodgy "highest free trade standard". 

China essentially wants APEC to put order in the court. Obama has been too busy pivoting to himself instead of pivoting to Asia, more specifically Bali, to offer his spin - but the fact is Washington wants to ram up a TPP over its "partners" under a tight deadline, the end of 2013, glossing over key "devil in the details" discussions over market access (sweet if you're a corporate behemoth) and intellectual property (corporate behemoths marketizing everything). 

It gets curioser and curioser when one is reminded that APEC at the beginning was very much a US Asia policy stalwart. I vividly remember covering the APEC summit in Bogor, Indonesia in 1994 - when an undisputed Bill Clinton seemed to be dictating the future of Asia-Pacific. That was a sort of "pivoting to Asia" before the fact - and totally under American terms. Then, after the pivoting was first announced by then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2011, she spun it as the dawn of "America's Pacific century". 

This "Pacific century" seems to boil down, so far, to enforcing an already embattled TPP. Bantarto Bandoro, from the Indonesian Defense University, seemed to get closer to the real picture when he told the Jakarta Globe, "this could be the beginning of the end of American global dominance." 

While the verdict in this Shootout at the Free Trade Corral remains open, workaholic China proceeds. After its spectacular New Silk Road successes in Central Asia, Beijing has just proposed a - what else is new - Maritime Silk Road (MSR) in Southeast Asia, boosting trade between China and ASEAN. 

Once again, Xi was the messenger, in his current tour of Indonesia and Malaysia; he beamed that the MSR would turn the "Golden Decade" between China and ASEAN into a "Diamond Decade". China is the 10-member ASEAN's largest trading partner (over US$400 billion in 2012), with mutual investment at over $100 billion and growing. Beijing sees this coming "Diamond Decade" as the bulk of the political/economic solution for the so far intractable territorial problems in the South China Sea, which pit China against four ASEAN members; Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. 

Xi already embarked on a charm offensive in Malaysia, and it's unclear what Vietnam and the Philippines will make of this "Diamond Decade" when there's so much unexplored, unassigned oil and gas to be found in the South China Sea. Yet once again, Beijing is playing the long game. The 2014 APEC summit will be held - of all places - in Beijing. By then Obama may have found time to do some actual pivoting. And by then that may be too little, too late.”

La banalidad de los progres

Una breve nota de Emir Sader en el diario argentino Página 12 de hoy. Corta, lúcida, impecable. Para los admiradores de Pino, Massita y demás próceres.
 
Título: Todos contra Dilma
 
Texto: “El fenómeno se repite –en Bolivia, en Argentina, en Ecuador o en Brasil–. Sectores que salen de gobiernos –o que siempre se habían opuesto a ellos–, supuestamente por la izquierda, recurren una trayectoria que los conduce a ubicarse en oposiciones de derecha.
 
Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, los Kirchner, Lula y Dilma habrían “traicionado”. Y se habrían vuelto peores que otros, porque siguen haciendo como si defendieran las mismas posiciones que los han proyectado como grandes líderes nacionales. Por ello tienen que ser frontalmente combatidos, derrotados, destruidos, sin lo cual los procesos políticos seguirían retrocediendo, no podrían avanzar.
 
Fue así con sectores que eran parte integrante del gobierno y del proceso liderado por Evo Morales, que han declarado que se ha vuelto el enemigo fundamental a ser combatido, porque habría “traicionado” al movimiento indígena. De ahí la propuesta de un frente nacional en contra de Evo, que debiera incorporar a todos los opositores, no importa cuán de derecha sean ellos. Importa combatir juntos a Evo y a su gobierno.
 
Lo mismo con Rafael Correa. El habría “traicionado” la defensa de la naturaleza y se habría pasado a un modelo extractivista, volviéndose el enemigo fundamental a combatir. De ahí que sectores que se reivindican como los intereses de los movimientos indígenas y ecologistas (aunque han tenido solamente el 3 por ciento de votos en las elecciones en que Correa ha logrado tener el 2/3 del apoyo popular) se alían expresamente con la derecha para combatir a Correa.
 
En Argentina los Kirchner habrían “traicionado” al peronismo, de ahí la existencia de múltiples peronismos disidentes, entre ellos incluso gente que fue de izquierda y ahora se alía con la derecha, todos contra Cristina.
 
Se podría seguir con otros ejemplos, Venezuela, Uruguay. Para operar esa transición de una oposición de izquierda a una de derecha, es necesario demonizar a los líderes de esos procesos, que serían peores que la derecha, para que se sientan libres para aliarse con la derecha en contra de esos gobiernos.
 
En Brasil ese fenómeno se dio, inicialmente, con el partido PSOL y la candidatura de Heloisa Helena a la presidencia, en 2006, que abiertamente hicieron alianza con toda la oposición en contra de Lula. Alianza con la Red Globo y todos los medios oligárquicos, con todos los candidatos opositores, en una acción desenfrenada y desesperada para intentar impedir la reelección de Lula. Abandonaron las críticas de izquierda –sobre la política económica y otros aspectos del gobierno– para adherir a la campaña de denuncias sobre el “mensalao”, sin diferenciarse para nada del tono de la campaña de la derecha tradicional.
 
El fenómeno tuvo continuidad con Marina da Silva, que repitió, de forma mecánica, la trayectoria de Heloisa Helena, en su giro en contra de los gobiernos de Lula y Dilma. La alianza supone la ausencia de cualquier crítica a la derecha –a los medios monopolistas, al sistema bancario, a los partidos de la derecha tradicional, a Estados Unidos.
 
La relación de esos sectores con la derecha tradicional es explícita: a esa ausencia de críticas a la derecha se corresponde una promoción explícita de los candidatos que se disponen a ese rol: Heloisa Helena, Marina, Eduardo Campos.
 
Marina había confiado en los casi 20 millones de votos –por lo menos la mitad de ellos votos conservadores, por su posición en contra del aborto y sus creencias evangélicas– y en sus “redes”, para conseguir las 500 mil firmas necesarias para registrar su partido. No las logró y terminó adhiriendo al Partido Socialista, del cual el principal dirigente, Eduardo Campos, gobernador de Pernambuco, en el nordeste de Brasil, se había apartado del gobierno para lanzar su candidatura, con poco apoyo hasta aquí, según las encuestas.
 
Marina renuncia a ser candidata y apoya a Campos, del cual puede llegar a ser vicepresidente, en un gesto típico de la más rancia política tradicional, después de haber criticado duramente a todos los otros candidatos, proponiéndose como “una nueva forma de hacer política”.
 
En su acto de adhesión a ese partido, nada de ecología, sino el centro en la necesidad de derrotar al PT, como expresión del “chavismo” en Brasil. Confirmando que el antichavismo se ha vuelto el anticomunismo de hoy.
 
Todos contra Evo, todos contra Rafael Correa, todos contra Cristina, etc., etc. En Brasil, hoy, todos contra Dilma.
 
Ninguna palabra sobre el tipo de política económica que desarrollarían en caso de que ganaran. Ninguna palabra sobre el tipo de inserción internacional de Brasil. Nada sobre el rol del Estado. Silencio sobre todo lo que son los contenidos esenciales de una plataforma de gobierno. Sólo se trata de derrotar a Dilma o, por lo menos, dado que eso es muy difícil, impedir que Dilma triunfe en la primera vuelta. Porque hoy los sectores empresariales y mediáticos de la derecha ya dan por sentado que Dilma se va a reelegir.

En todos esos países esos sectores han sido derrotados fragorosamente. Sus operaciones políticas no han dado resultados, por falta de plataforma de gobierno, por falta de liderazgos y de apoyo popular.

El Todos contra Dilma reproduce el mismo fenómeno, con dos listas opositoras –la de los tucanos, con Aecio Neves a la cabeza, y la de Eduardo Campos–, desesperadamente intentando derrotar a Dilma. Un escenario similar al que enfrentan Evo, Rafael Correa y Cristina."

China en América Latina

Una nota de Nil Nikandrov para Strategic Culture da cuenta de la consolidación de la presencia china en América Latina, en particular con el coloso regional, Brasil. Uno se pregunta si el reciente episodio de “enojo” brasileño con USA (como consecuencia de los actos de espionaje de este último en areas clave de la política y la economía brasileñas) no tiene como objetivo servirse de una excusa formal para comenzar el distanciamiento.

Título: Brazil and China's Unstoppable March through Latin America

Texto: “The conflict situation which has arisen between Brazil and the United States due to espionage by the NSA, the CIA and other intelligence agencies has highlighted the existence of deep crisis tendencies in the relations between the «only superpower» and Latin America. The provocation of wars in Africa and Asia in order to establish control over hydrocarbon-rich countries, the early successes of this aggressive strategy and the illusion that they can get away with anything has made the U.S. ruling elite rather giddy with success.  Washington's emphasis on brute force has led to a noticeable «dumbing down» (there's no other word for it!) of its foreign policy, using threats instead of constructive dialog and reasoned arguments. Even outward political correctness has become a useless anachronism for American diplomats.

This explains the hard-line response of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff to the Obama administration's virtual refusal to apologize for its espionage in the country and guarantee that it would not occur again in the future. To the Brazilian leadership, all Washington's attempts to avoid concrete discussion of the problem are equivalent to a display of imperial haughtiness and hostility. If the Brazilians had any hopes for an «equal partnership» with the United States in the 21st century, they are now gone. Theoretically, it is just such a partnership that could have helped Washington to maintain its position in South America. However, the Obama administration fumbled its chance, thus guaranteeing the further penetration of extra-regional powers into the continent.

On the backdrop of the Syrian failure, which revealed Washington's dirty methods of organizing «humanitarian interventions», the Obama administration's failure in Brazil is not so noticeable, but it is a momentous one for the countries of the Western Hemisphere. The Brazilians have finally shown publicly that they are displeased with the hostile actions of the U.S. Previously, difficult issues were kept quiet and, at Washington's insistence, were resolved «through diplomatic channels», that is, they were relegated to oblivion. U.S. diplomats and intelligence agents took the Brazilian leadership's political correctness for weakness and a lack of political will. Several times (during the presidency of Inacio Lula da Silva) the Brazilian government limited itself to «moderate reprimands» even when they had proof of specific subversive activities by Americans. It is sufficient to remember the U.S. intelligence operations for preparing the seizure of the Amazon basin on the pretext of «preserving» strategic reserves of fresh water «in the interests of humanity».

Amid increasing criticism of the U.S. in Brazilian society, President Dilma Rousseff is expanding relations with China, this time without the traditional glances at Washington's possible reaction. China, one of Brazil's partners in BRICS, is skillfully making use of this alliance's potential to strengthen its positions in the country. The Obama administration has no leverage to hinder this. All of the U.S.'s resources are being used to keep the positions it has won in oil-producing countries in Africa and Asia and on maintaining pressure on Syria and Iran. The U.S. is gradually losing political and economic influence in Latin America, and the vacuum is being filled by powerful competitors.

If one were to analyze the intensity of visits of high-ranking Chinese leaders to the continent, Beijing definitely holds first place in this regard. As a rule, the visits are well-planned and end in the signing of specific agreements, and, most importantly, these agreements are subsequently implemented. At the turn of the millennium, the Chinese promised Latin America that it would implement a program for capital investments in the region's economy. The program is being carried out successfully, from Mexico to Chile and from Ecuador to the island states of the Caribbean Sea. Without fuss, step by step, the Chinese are opening up the region, demonstrating the effectiveness of their industry, their aerospace potential, their technologies for manufacturing modern armaments, and their agriculture. The United States can only conduct an increasingly noisy campaign about the growth of the «yellow peril» on the continent, but the Chinese barely react to it. They are confident in their strengths. And that is one more proof that China has come to the Western Hemisphere, including to the U.S., for the long term, or more accurately, for good.

Experts predict the further consolidation of Brazilian-Chinese relations. Dilma Rousseff is essentially giving a signal to other countries: favorable conditions are now taking shape for getting out from under imperial guardianship and seeking alternatives for development and collaboration without ultimatums and dictates. Alliances of states have been created in Latin America, such as UNASUR, SELAC, ALBA and others, for which Brazil's fundamentally independent foreign policy and economic course will mark a rebirth. Previously, many of these alliances' decisions were made with a backward glance at Brazil's position in order not to exacerbate relations with Washington. In particular, this was the case with the issue of creating a South American defense system. The need for one has come to a head. Sooner or later, the United States will be pushed out of foreign territories, but it will resist this with all its might. Is that not why dozens of U.S. military bases have already been created in Latin America?"

Clima

Un reciente artículo de Thierry Meyssan para Red Voltaire lleva por título: “Estados Unidos ya no asusta a nadie”. Un tanto optimista para nosotros, pero útil para los que quieran tomar nota del clima de “cambio de época” que muchos han comenzado a percibir. Pasemos a la nota.

"La Asamblea General de la ONU debía estar debatiendo en estos días la materialización de los Objetivos del Milenio. Pero lo que en realidad preocupa en este momento a los diplomáticos es un tema muy diferente. ¿Sigue siendo Estados Unidos la hiperpotencia que pretendía ser desde que desapareció la Unión Soviética o ha llegado el momento de liberarse de la tutela estadounidense?

Estados Unidos estimó en 1991 que el derrumbe de su rival iba a permitirle liberar las sumas que hasta entonces había reservado a su propio presupuesto militar y dedicarlas a la prosperidad estadounidense. Después de la Operación Tormenta del Desierto, el presidente George Bush padre había empezado a reducir el formato de sus fuerzas armadas. Su sucesor, Bill Clinton, fortaleció aquella tendencia. Pero el Congreso republicano electo en 1995 cuestionó esa opción e impuso un rearme, a pesar de que no se percibía enemigo alguno en el horizonte. Los neoconservadores lanzaban así el país al asalto del mundo, con intenciones de crear el primer imperio global.

No fue hasta que se produjeron los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001 que el presidente George Bush Jr. decidió invadir, uno tras otro, Afganistán e Irak, Libia y Siria, y luego Somalia y Sudán para terminar con Irán, antes de volverse hacia China.

El presupuesto militar de Estados Unidos llegó a representar más del 40% del gasto militar a nivel mundial. Pero aquella extravagancia ha llegado a su fin. Ante la crisis económica, Washington se ha visto obligado a optar por el ahorro. En un solo año, el Pentágono ha licenciado una quinta parte de los efectivos de sus fuerzas terrestres, renunciando además a varios de sus programas de investigación. Ese brutal retroceso, que sólo está comenzando, ya ha desorganizado el sistema en su conjunto. Es evidente que Estados Unidos, a pesar de todo su poderío –superior al de los 20 Estados más grandes del mundo, incluyendo Rusia y China– ya no está actualmente en condiciones de librar grandes guerras clásicas.

Así que Washington renunció a atacar Siria, cuando la escuadra rusa se desplegó a lo largo de la costa mediterránea. Para utilizar sus misiles Tomahawk, el Pentágono habría tenido que dispararlos desde el Mar Rojo, sobrevolando estos Arabia Saudita y Jordania. A lo cual Siria y sus aliados no estatales habrían respondido con una guerra regional, sumiendo así a Estados Unidos en un conflicto demasiado grande para sus capacidades actuales.

En un artículo de opinión publicado en el New York Times, el presidente ruso Vladimir Putin abrió fuego al subrayar que «el excepcionalismo americano» constituye un insulto a la igualdad entre los seres humanos y no puede acarrear otra cosa que desastres. Desde la tribuna de la ONU, el presidente estadounidense Barack Obama le respondió que ninguna otra nación, ni siquiera Rusia, quería cargar con el peso que porta Estados Unidos y que si este país se dedica a estar haciendo de policía mundial es precisamente para garantizar la igualdad entre los humanos.

Esa afirmación no es nada tranquilizadora ya que Estados Unidos reafirma así que se siente superior al resto del mundo y que –a sus ojos– la igualdad entre los humanos no pasa de ser una cuestión de igualdad entre sus súbditos.

Pero el hecho es que ya se rompió el hechizo. La presidenta de Brasil, Dilma Roussef, cosechó aplausos al exigir –también desde la tribuna de la ONU– que Estados Unidos se disculpe por su espionaje contra el resto del mundo, mientras que el presidente de la Confederación Helvética denunciaba la política estadounidense de fuerza. El presidente de Bolivia, Evo Morales, habló de llevar a su homólogo estadounidense ante la justicia internacional acusándolo de crímenes contra la humanidad y el presidente serbio Tomislav Nikolic denunció la farsa de los tribunales internacionales que sólo condenan a los adversarios del Imperio, etc. Hemos pasado así de las críticas emitidas por unos cuantos Estados antiimperialistas a una rebelión internacional generalizada, a la que se suman incluso los aliados de Washington.

Nunca antes se había visto tan cuestionada la autoridad de los dueños del mundo, al menos públicamente, lo cual muestra que, después de su retroceso en Siria, ya no logran intimidar a los demás."

Vo Nguyen Giap

Qué lo tiró. Hay que terminar en los diarios de derecha para tener un obituario decente. En fin. Acá va el del Telegraph, sin firma. Adelantamos la clave del chabón, por si a alguien se le escapa entre tanto palabrerío: parece que el tipo era nacionalista. Naaaaaaaa. Pero si eso no se estudiaba en la Escuela de las Américas!


Título: General Vo Nguyen Giap

Epígrafe: General Vo Nguyen Giap, who has aged 102, was the diminutive and brilliant Vietnamese general who led communist forces in the wars that forced three powerful adversaries – Japan, France and America – out of his homeland.

Texto: “Such was his morale-boosting determination and genius for the feint and swoop that he was often described as a guerrilla leader equalled only by Mao Tse Tung and Che Guevara; and Giap was certainly adept at utilising terrain and highly mobile troops to outwit stronger and better equipped enemies.

But he was far more than just an able coordinator of the small-scale jungle skirmish. Major set-piece battles and broad offensives were well within his compass too, though often at high cost. At home, only Ho Chi Minh was better loved. Abroad, even Giap’s opponents – perhaps particularly his opponents – suggested that he merited a place in the pantheon of great military leaders of modern times, alongside such figures as Wellington and Rommel.

The figure Giap himself most admired and studied, however, was Napoleon. By the time Giap had left school he was able to outline in chalk the phases of all Napoleon’s most celebrated battles. It was an irony later lost on few that, having absorbed those lessons, Giap would score perhaps his most dramatic victory against France.

That moment came in March 1954, after more than seven years of fighting between French forces and Giap’s Viet Minh anti-colonial communist revolutionaries. The French, looking to draw the Viet Minh into a decisive engagement, had parachuted thousands of soldiers into an airbase located in a valley in north-western Vietnam, on the border with Laos. They were unaware, however, that Giap too was looking for a knockout blow, and that his forces had acquired heavy artillery pieces.

Despite the extraordinary difficulty of moving these around the jungle, Giap managed to ring Dien Bien Phu with men and heavy guns, placed on the high ground overlooking the airbase. When the artillery fire began raining down at the beginning of March it became clear that the French were sitting ducks.

For two months they resisted, fending off incursions which came between each new barrage. But on May 1 the Viet Minh launched a huge offensive, and within a week overran French positions. The last words of the radio operator before being cut off were: “Vive la France!” More than 11,000 men were taken prisoner; fewer than 4,000 returned to France alive.

This shattering defeat forced France to the negotiating table, with talks beginning on May 8, one day after the garrison’s surrender. The result was a Vietnam split into a communist north and French-backed south.

Though this division was supposed to be temporary, and the last French forces withdrew in 1956, South Vietnam immediately found a new sponsor – and Giap a new enemy – in the United States.

Vo Nguyen Giap was born on August 25 1911 in Quang Binh province in what is now central Vietnam but what was then, along with Laos and Cambodia, the French protectorate of Indo-China. His father was a literate farmer who sent Giap to the French college at Hue.

Giap’s nationalism – a key characteristic throughout his life that saw him resist overt interference from either Moscow or Beijing – emerged early. He was in his mid-teens when he joined the underground Newannam movement, which called for a unified, independent Vietnam, and he was arrested for fomenting revolution before his 18th birthday.

After his release from several months in jail, he attended the University of Hanoi, and while he studied Politics and Law he taught history at a private school, where his deep knowledge of military strategy, and of Napoleon’s battles in particular, impressed his students. It was while he was in Hanoi that Giap joined the Indo-Chinese Communist Party, which had been founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930. Throughout the 1930s he read widely, deepening his knowledge of military strategy and earning a living as a journalist and from teaching.

In 1939 the Communist Party was banned by the French authorities, and Giap fled into exile in China, leaving behind his wife and members of his family, some of whom died after being locked up and tortured in French jails.

It was in China that he met Ho Chi Minh, and in 1941 they together rebranded the Indo-Chinese Communist Party to form the Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoa (the League for the Independence of Vietnam) — better known as the Viet Minh.

Ho appointed Giap his military leader and, with the support of China, Giap prepared to lead an army back into Indo-China, which Japanese forces had been occupying since the start of the Second World War.
The Viet Minh guerrilla campaign against Japan began at the end of 1944, and Giap’s fighting men quickly forged a working alliance with American forces, sharing intelligence and helping to shelter US pilots who had been shot down.

Soon after the Japanese surrender, the Viet Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and named Ho Chi Minh President and Giap Minister of the Interior. In elections in January 1946, the Viet Minh won 230 out of 300 seats in the new state’s national assembly.

France, however, refused to cede its colonial possessions and, while in theory recognising the Democratic Republic, in fact continued to exert a powerful economic influence in the country that amounted to a rival administration. By December 1946 this uneasy arrangement had exploded into conflict, with Ho calling for the French to be expelled in a national war of resistance. Once again Giap was given the job of leading Ho’s army.

This time, however, his task was more than to harass an army in retreat, as the Viet Minh had done with the Japanese. Instead, Giap had to mobilise, equip and drill an army capable of taking on a highly-trained Western opponent. To do so he produced a handbook on guerrilla tactics, published in 1962 under the title People’s War, People’s Army. This encouraged his soldiers to cultivate the loyalty of locals, without whose support victory would be impossible, and always to engage the enemy at a time of their choosing. “The enemy may outnumber you 10 to one,” he advised, “but if you compel him to disperse his forces widely you may outnumber him 10 to one locally, wherever you choose to attack him.”

The most important quality he tried to instil was patience. Time, he counselled, would inevitably stretch the resources and morale of a colonial occupier. For Giap, meanwhile, the “cause” was more important that the fate of individuals. Absorbing huge losses was not a concern. After all, he noted, “every minute thousands of men died all over the world”.

His plan to sap the French was divided into three stages: guerrilla skirmishes; concerted battles; all-out counter-offensive. By 1951, having spent five years in guerrilla attacks, Giap moved into stage two. By 1953, as France wearied of war, he had moved into stage three and prepared for Dien Bien Phu.

But by 1956, following the French withdrawal, Ho and Giap’s dreams of a united, independent Vietnam appeared as distant as ever when the new American-backed president of South Vietnam refused to call the national elections that had been part of the ceasefire deal after Dien Bien Phu. Vietnam’s “temporary” division appeared to become permanent, and nationalists in the South went into hiding and mobilised as the guerrilla Viet Cong.

Over the next decade, as America intensified its military aid to the South’s government in Saigon, so Giap increased aid to the Viet Cong. Finally, in 1965, America committed hundreds of thousands of troops and launched an air campaign against the North. Giap, in turn, dispatched troops to fight in the South, led by Nguyen Chi Thanh, though Giap remained in overall command.

While Thanh sought decisive engagements, Giap once again counselled patience, taunting America as early as 1967 that its Army was bogged down in an unwinnable war. When Thanh was killed that year, Giap took direct command of the campaign against America in South Vietnam and within months had pulled off another tactical masterstroke.

This came in early 1968, when he appeared to be mustering his forces for a Dien Bien Phu-style ambush on an American fortress at Khe Sanh during the lunar New Year, or Tet. But as America reinforced Khe Sanh, Giap’s men instead launched a general attack on a host of targets across the South. The Tet Offensive, as it became known, did not sweep America from Vietnam or force its diplomats immediately to the negotiating table. But with Tet, Giap, a man who barely stood 5ft tall, had forced a fundamental change in attitudes to the Vietnam War in America, where commitment to the conflict soon began to crack.

The level of Giap’s contribution to the planning of the Tet offensive has since been disputed, with reports of wrangling over detail between him and his senior commanders. But its effect is not in doubt. Peace talks began in Paris the following year.

It would be another four years, punctuated by a series of bloody campaigns, before the last American troops left Vietnam. Even without American military financial backing, which was swiftly suspended, anti-communist forces in South Vietnam continued to fight. But, under Giap’s guidance and – for once – with the odds very much on their side, communist forces eventually swept into Saigon in the spring of 1975, proclaiming the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Giap was named Defence Minister and, the following year, Deputy Prime Minister. But his influence with the Communist Party never matched his own popular standing and, following his departure from the defence ministry in 1980, he was removed from the Politburo in 1982. He retained his position as Deputy Prime Minister and served on the Central Committee until 1991. Some analysts have suggested that his fiery temperament and his greater devotion to uniting Vietnam than to the global anti-capitalist cause stymied his rise.

Vo Nguyen Giap’s first wife, a fellow communist, died in a French prison after he had fled to China in 1939. For the past three years he had been living in a military hospital in Hanoi, and he is survived by his second wife, Dang Bich Ha, whom he married in 1949, and four children.”