What is happening and what will happen on the geopolitical scene after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022?
And won’t the tectonic effects of Putin’s February war have an effect comparable to the global aftermath of Lenin’s October Revolution in 1917?
The Bolshevik coup in Petrograd against Kerensky’s Provisional Government succeeded because of the promised “peace, bread and land” of the impoverished and starving people of World War I.
Lenin’s uprising liquidated bourgeois Russia in one fell swoop and shook the rest of the capitalist world, which is still struggling with the recurrence of communism. And the modern Chinese “relapse,” a successful hybrid between communism and capitalism, has every chance of seizing the dominance of American capital.
Who in 1917 thought that the storming of a Russian palace would sweep away dozens of crowned figures around the world, throw down the gauntlet of capitalism, abolish colonialism, and turn Eastern Europe red in a quarter of a century?
The second month of the war in Ukraine is coming to an end, and world money markets, energy exchanges, and food chains have been shaken by revolutionary upheavals threatening the foundations of the post-World War II financial and economic order.
Even strategists at the World Economic Forum in Davos refuse to believe what is happening. Klaus Schwab and company remain gravely silent about their failed plans for a “zero business” and a new economic order, in which they were to be major players and Putin was a pariah, not a partner.
By the way, at the Davos forum held a year ago, Putin warned Western powers that he was challenging the so-called Washington Consensus established after the last world war.
Nobody heard him. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West neither respected nor complied with the empire that lost the Cold War, voluntarily renounced communism, and began a humiliating flirtation with Euro-Atlantic capitalism.
The first consequence of the Ukrainian war is not good for the Kremlin. Instead of weakening NATO and turning it into a “book tiger”, Putin’s actions strengthened the pact.
Instead of less NATO, Russia can get more NATO because neutral Sweden and Finland are on the verge of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Three years ago, French President Macron, whose cause is the formation of a European army, announced that NATO was in a “brain death”. Putin not only revived the military bloc by disciplining it but also made it the “gift of the century” for the US military-industrial complex.
After February 24, the stock prices of the largest military companies in the United States jumped sharply. The value of the securities of Lockheed Martin Corporation for the period from January to March this year increased by thirty percent. They are followed by Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics with about twenty percent and Raytheon with about ten percent. For comparison – at the beginning of the year the growth indices of the shares of these giants fluctuated around zero.
Germany alone will give 100 billion euros for the modernization of the Bundeswehr, and at least two-thirds will be for the purchase of 35 stealth fighters F-35, manufactured by the US concern Lockheed Martin. France and other Old European countries are also in the process of speeding up the US arms deal.
And if the US-born Little NATO, including Britain, Poland, and Ukraine, is born, the militarization of Europe will enter a new, difficult-to-control process, paving the way for the next war.
The latest report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acknowledges that the war and related sanctions will have a major impact on the world economy. The IMF warns: price shocks will be felt around the world and the authorities must support poor households, for which food and fuel account for a major share of spending…
The message that the sanctions imposed on Russia will hit the world economy and financial markets with spread to other countries is also alarming.
Who are these other countries?
These are the countries of Africa and the Middle East (especially Egypt, Bangladesh, Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon). They will suffer severely from shortages of wheat, corn, and sunflower, so far supplied by Russia and Ukraine. The crisis is exacerbated by the fact that the export of Russian and Ukrainian wheat across the Black Sea has stopped and it is unknown when and whether it will resume at all.
A famine pandemic is on the horizon, leading millions of migrants. Is this not a war that Europeans have already experienced and that has changed the demographics of Old Europe?
Russia supplies about 40% of the EU’s natural gas, and these supplies are vital to electricity and heating production in Central and Eastern Europe. Terminating them leads to an energy disaster comparable only to war.
Even if suppliers from the Middle East replace Russian gas, which is in the realm of science fiction, tomorrow, its new price will be a catastrophic blow to Europe’s standard of living. In such a scenario, the German industry and the automotive industry will be on the verge of bankruptcy, and unemployment will provoke unprecedented social cataclysms.
The gas war against Russia benefits only one country – the United States. On March 25, the European Commission decided to buy an additional 15 billion cubic meters of US liquefied natural gas. The goal is to replace… 155 billion cubic meters of Russian gas.
Extracted by hydraulic fracturing, shale gas will be transported by tanker. The condition is one – Germany to build two super-expensive terminals, forgetting about the existence of the finished Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. However, the German government has admitted: that we cannot do without Russian gas before the middle of 2024!
The Ukrainian drama also hit the oil market. Sanctioned Russia is the world’s second-largest exporter of black gold, supplying 7 million barrels of crude oil every day. Brent oil prices have already reached $ 120 a barrel, the highest price since 2013. And the trend is toward new price peaks.
The paradox is that punished Russia has a chance to deal with the embargo on gas, oil, and coal exports because it can redirect them to Asian markets, especially China. But at much lower prices, and this will hurt the Russian treasury.
If the lack of gas and oil is the first phase of the war for resources, replacing the dollar with the ruble in energy deals is a burning wick to the powder keg.
Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi lost power and their lives after deciding to give up the dollar in Iraqi and Libyan oil sales. The anti-dollar campaign of Russia, China, and India is now being joined by Saudi Arabia and part of Latin America, a symptom of a currency war.
The alphabetical truth is: whoever fights the currency of great power, enters a war lost to him. And if great powers cling to a currency battle, a world war is on the horizon.
However, there is good news in this pre-revolutionary period. Euthanasia-doomed nuclear power is being revived, and the coal industry, written off by the Green Deal, is taking a breather. Even the Greens in Europe will raise the “white flag” if Europeans replace Russian gas with coal and shale gas next winter.
In October 1917, Russia turned the world upside down. Will we not sink into riots and wars according to the “Russian recipe” a century later?
And what an irony!
In 1917, at the height of the First World War, the German Chancellor sent Lenin to Petrograd in a sealed wagon to drive Russia out of the Entente.
In 2022, the Russian president entered Ukraine to bring out the new Entente called NATO.
