F. William Engdahl, is a famous economist and writer, author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order”, which has been translated into French, Arabic, Korean, German, Croatian and Turkish. In 2007, he completed “Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of GMO”. He has written on issues of political economy, geopolitics, energy, Worl Trade Organization (WTO), Internaţional Monetary Fund (IMF), for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock and world grain crisis in the early 1970s. He currently lives in Germany and in addition to writing regularly on issues of economics, energy and international affairs, is active as a consulting geopolitical risk economist. In this fall is expected publication of the new book “Entire Dominate Spectru: Plans Geopolitice Backs Raising the Global Military Force to Washington”.
Considering the previous question (about moves USA and sales weapons), can Russia’s actions be set in the registry of a speculative intelligence or of asimetric answer? I take into account that in this year, before and after conflict with Georgia, Russia signed a couple of important agreements related to third party weapon selling contracts (e.g. Syria, Venesuela, China) and has intensified its military exercises etc.
Russia is responding in an entirely assymetrical manner. They are upping cooperation with Venezuela and other nations in the so-called ‘Monroe Doctrine’ countries of Latin America, forcing USA to respond there; they are upping Russian energy diplomacy in Central Asia and beyond, adding to links with nominally NATO countries in EU. They are also responding with increased military exercises designed to signal neutral or uneasy new NATO members from former Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact that NATO may not be the best security for them as USA is poorly prepared to step in to help. Important: Russia is responding by giving $5.4 billion emergency loan to Government of Iceland in its banking crisis, a neglected but now once more strategic NATO member.
As a result of the political instability and the present crises in Ukraine, which lead to new anticipated elections, is it possible to exist a delaying of granting the MAP ? Shall we have a Ukraine about to return under the protective wing of Russia?
In Ukraine anything is possible. More, I would imagine Moscow is using all its economic and persuasive influence (directly or through intermediaries ) to try to support a non-NATO resolution of the crisis. From my point of view, the collapse of the Government in Kiew is directly related to events in Georgia.
Analyzing Prime-Minister Putin movings in some ex-soviet countries (Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, etc), but relations with Iran too, and the economic contracts already signed or about to be signed, we may notice that Russia is doing whatever is necessary to realize a full control over the energy market in the area. Under these circumstances, is there any sense in continuing projects such as Nabucco to contribute to the energetic independence of Europe?
Nabucco is a very political project which is backed by Washington as an attempt to wean the region and the EU away from dependence on Russian natural gas. Nabucco is very badly conceived and bogged down in endless quarrels at the moment. What speaking about ? There is no such thing as ‘EU Energy Independence’. The EU realizes this which is why their response to the events of August in Georgia were so muted opposed to that of Washington. Washington policy is precisely to drive a deep wedge between the EU countries, especially Germany, and Russia. They have not succeeded to date.
About the same subject. Regarding an integrated attitude of declarations and actions, will Europe find a way to communicate in a cohesive voice with Russia?
The EU itself is hopelessly split. It have governments like that of Tusk in Poland where the Foreign Minister Sikorsky is a neo-conservative trained in Washington, and it have nationalist governments trying to defend national interests as best as possible. In such a mixture of political and economic interests different is hard to find a common tone. Washington policy to the EU is and always has been: Divide et impera – Divide and rule.
There have been various speculations about a new cold war, a new iron curtain, isolating Russia. To what extent, at the beginning of the 21st century – under the actual circumstances of a more and more obvious globalization – something like that can be possible?
The Old Cold War in a real sense never ended. One side – The USSR ended it, dissolved the Warsaw Pact and the USSR disintegrated. The other party refused to initiate comparable confidence building steps of winding down NATO, Instead it expended NATO very aggressively east to incorporate every possible former Warsaw Pact member. The attempt by Washington to push Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and to place Missiles and US-controlled missile defense in Poland and Czech Republic shows the farce of the end to the Cold War. The January 2007 US declaration that it would place US missiles and missile defense in Poland and Czech Republic, if you will, can be called the new onset of a New Cold War.
President Medvedev spoke about new security architecture inside a multipolar world. Let’s analyze this concept and to what extent it is possible to materialize it.
What I have so far seen from the Russian press summaries, president Medvedev proposes a closer relation between Russia and the countries of EU, which is understandable and all to the good in my view. We need more details on concrete proposals from the Russian side, but the EU would do well in my view to respond to Medvedew seriously and propose dialogue on it.
