Onwards to the Final War for the Annihilation of Western and Eastern Civilizations!
In the light of his failure to achieve any of his or Netanyahu’s goals with respect to Iran over the past couple of months (notice that when push comes to shove, as in the case of the Lebanese ceasefire, Netanyahu sort of does what he is told), Trump’s immediate priority is to stabilize oil prices this weekend in advance of the opening of markets in the East some time tomorrow my time (southern California).
He is doing this with a dramatic turnaround of policy with respect to US sanctions on Russian oil and petroleum products which were due to be reinstated but are now being given a prolonged exemption until May 16.
Prices will be sure to rise from tomorrow, therefore, but the availability of Russia oil that was shipped out prior to April 16 and is still at sea will soften the overall impact of Trump’s abject and embarrassing failure - indeed a US failure, yet again, to defeat a country of the Global South.
In this context we can certainly involve the US failures in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The Iraq 2003 debacle and subsequent ten or more years of occupation and installation of puppet governments in that benighted country in 2011 did leave the US in control over Iraqi oil. Can we say the US “won” in Libya? A difficult thing to argue, in view of the mess created by the removal of Gadaffi, the splitting of the country into two factions, its return to slavery of black Africans, the spill of Libyan arms under CIA direction into Syria and into the Sahel, and development of the gorilla disruptor across the entirety north Africa of various versions of US-backed ISIS militia.
Can we say the US “won” in Syria? Not really. The US has just withdrawn all forces from Syria, seemingly leaving the territory under the control of Turkish-backed terrorist forces and their illegally self-installed head-chopping leader in Damascus, and of an invading Israeli force in the south supposedly there to protect the Druze, with likely future alliances between Israeli and Kurdish forces to pit Israel against Turkey.
But the US did do its little bit to sabotage an ally of Russia and of Iran, and of Hezbollah forces in Syria, and has made Syrian territory more vulnerable to Israeli air assaults on Iran, although these do not seem to have been very effective in the recent or, should I say, current war between the US-Israeli incubus and Iran.
Statements by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant confirm that a major if not the major logic behind the war with Iran is to weaken China by threatening its supply of oil from Iran in the immediate wake of the cessation of the supply of oil to China from Venezuela. Bessant is triggering secondary sanctions against all countries and institutions that deal with China.
Of course, this is not existential in and of itself, since China is largely self-sufficient in energy products overall, and its main energy source is also its firmest ally, Russia, but Chinese interests have been damaged, and costs of imports to China have suffered inflation.
This has also to be put in the context of a decades’ old US gameplan to surround China by US proxies and military bases (including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines) and to put pressure through local terrorist militia against B&RI initiatives and chokeholds on major trading routes to China.
This strategy is beginning to come apart. Iran is hardening its control over the Strait of Hormuz to everyone’s disadvantage, the US included and, even more especially, US allies as in Europe (whose airlines are likely to be deprived of jet fuel within six weeks). The energy pressure shows signs of pushing southeast Asia more firmly in the direction of their major trading partner, China, regardless of US geopolitical strategies. The Kuomintang Party is seeking a new relationship with China. Further West, China has placed pressure on Pakistan to mediate between the US and Pakistan. And in India’s a positive, refreshed relationship is budding between India and China’s major ally, Russia. China has significant economic activity in Afghanistan and in almost all the other “stans” that when push comes to shove will likely see an alignment first and foremost between the foreign policies of these countries with those of Russia and China. Even Europe may be forced to come to terms with Russia when the shortage of oil, fertilizer and other essentials becomes unbearable.
The war in West Asia will very likely resume in a few days’ time. The Houthis will blockade the Red Sea. I suspect that we are about to see that the Dragon has been awakened, and there will be an end to the nice-quiet-polite-guy performance that we have seen so far from China over the course of the geopolitical transformations that began with the US-directed neo-Nazi coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014.
Oil prices will go through the roof. Trump has to be dislodged - not in favor of anyone with a different foreign policy (which is and will remain the restoration of US unipolar hegemony over the world), but in favor of someone who goes about this in a less obviously demented, lunatic fashion. The trouble is that freakish US elites find it very difficult to tell one from the other.
As for Ukraine, Russia is unleashing a new Spring offensive that very plausibly will lead to the fall of Slyvansk and Kramatorsk by the fall or by the end of the year - Russia will therefore have finally succeeded in taking the Donbass and will continue to pose a significant threat to Kiev, Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zapporizhzhia and Odessa.
Russia is currently enveloping Belarus in its war plans, where Belarus is hosting new radar and drone facilities along Belarussian borders with Sumy and Chernihiv, in the wake of the installation of a new Russian version of a Starlinks communications system that is already giving Russia an advantage in the volume and accuracy of drone warfare, and in a manner that is very threatening to Kiev. Behind these new facilities are Belarussian artillery positions and, when necessary, Belarussian infantry. Nor should one forget that Belarus hosts Russian oreshnik and almost certainly other Russian advanced missile launch facilities. Needless to say, Belarussian offers easy access to Russian forces building up along Belarussian borders with Ukraine.
The second half of this year is going to see some very bloody fighting. This is principally engineered by Europe. In the wake of the effective Trump abandonment of the Ukraine crisis to Europe to handle, Europe has more aggressively lent out its territories for weapons production and for of launch of weapons against Russia by Ukraine. Furthermore, led by Germany and on the eve of the payment by the EU of a 90-billion-euro loan to Ukraine, Europe is in the process of deporting back to Ukraine tens of thousands of Ukrainians (perhaps up to 400,000 ultimately) who have sought what they thought would be refuge in Europe. But now the Merz-led neo-Nazis of Germany are handing them back to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian recruiters in Ukraine to be trained and sent unwillingly to their deaths on the frontlines where they will be easily outnumbered by far more significant Russian mobilizations than anything that we have seen so far, perhaps supported again, as in Russia defense against Ukrainian invasion of Kursk in 2024, by north Korean infantry.
Until not very long ago the pretense that Russia had any territorial designs whatsoever beyond the Donbass was an obvious, theatrical fabrication, whose main purpose was to either to keep the US involved or to persuade the US to re-engage in the war. The fabricated character of the pretense has been underlined by Putin’s careful attempt to differentiate his SMO (special military operation) from a full-blown, fully mobilized war, which Russia has always to now shied well away from.
In view of the persistence of European disruptive behavior, its steady flows of massive transfers of cash, weapons and intelligence resources into the hands of one of the most corrupt regimes on earth, its successful sabotage of all peace attempts whether these emerged from the US, from Ukraine or from Russia, and the more recent escalations, as in the case of the Baltics, taking the form of drone production for Ukraine and the launching of drones from or across their territories and targeted at energy and other facilities in Russia itself, we must presume (as Lavrov and Medvedev have long hinted) that this period is over. Europe is an actual threat to Russian interests and Russia has to be prepared to counter and squash this threat. Perhaps it will calculate that it needs to do this before the US can rebuild its weapons stocks, correct its economy, provide decent food to its sailors and in all other ways regroup from its West Asian debacle.