Tag Archives: economic warfare

The Pentagon may not be advocating total war against both Russia and China – as it has been interpreted in some quarters Look at the behavior and its motives rather than the speech and spin. Global hegemony is a zero-sum game for the US. The stakes could not be higher. Obviously, the US has not built the military it has to defend the homeland or even its allies. The US would prefer to prevail through hybrid means rather than kinetically, but if not .... Even an amateur in...

Like most neo-con thinkers, Hook advocates crushing, crippling sanctions that supposedly will suffocate the population to the point that there will be an uprising that overthrows the regime. It's a form of collective punishment--a neo-con pipe dream that destroys nations and people. Hook's mission on Iran is described as coming from Pompeo at the State Dept, but well-placed sources say it's a National Security Council operation, and Bolton's brainchild.... Sic Semper Tyrannis Who's on the...

Not one of his best, but Pepe is always worth the read. It's August, so not much happening to report anyway. Asia TimesSo what will The Sanctioned supergroup do? Pepe Escobar

Important for understanding sanctions as economic warfare. They are neither efficient nor effective unless dependency is high, which Russia's is not relative to the US especially and the West in general.What is happening is "regionalization" toward the Global South and East, which portends eventually to isolate the West.Unfortunately, this make the transition from the use of economic and hybrid warfare to kinetic warfare more likely as the US views itself as losing global hegemony as "soft...

Hysteria reigned supreme after the first round of US sanctions were reinstated against Iran over the past week. War scenarios abound, and yet the key aspect of the economic war unleashed by the Trump administration has been overlooked: Iran is a major piece in a much larger chessboard. The US sanctions offensive, launched after Washington’s unilateral pullout from the Iran nuclear deal, should be interpreted as an advance gambit in the New Great Game at whose center lies China’s New Silk...

Turkey joins Russia in declaring it is under US attack. Erdogan said those who plotted against Turkey in a failed coup attempt in July 2016 were now trying to target the country through its economy, and pledged to fight back. He did not name any countries. This is how WWIII starts. Leaders don't choose such words lightly.The US now engaged in hybrid war with China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. Did I forget anyone?ReutersTurkey is a 'target of economic war',...

The US Congress has revived the so-called “NOPEC” bill for countering OPEC and OPEC+. Officially called the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act”, NOPEC is the definition of so-called “lawfare” because it enables the US to extraterritorially impose its domestic legislation on others by giving the government the right to sue OPEC and OPEC+ countries like Russia because of their coordinated efforts to control oil prices. Lawsuits, however, are unenforceable, which is why the...

"War" is in the air now. Sputnik International Iran Supreme Leader Calls for 'Swift, Just' Legal Action to Face 'Economic War'See alsoReutersIran Supreme Leader calls for action to face 'economic war': state TV

US President Donald Trump is not in control of his own administration, as evidenced by the latest round of sanctions imposed against Russia for the alleged involvement in the poisoning of the Skripals in the UK in March. The sanctions came the same day that US Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., announced on a trip to Moscow that he had handed over a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin from Trump calling for better relations between the two countries.… With even further sanctions against Russia...

Let that sink in. That is throwing down the gauntlet. It's going there. Recall that the US entered WWII as a result of the US blockade of Japan, which Japan interpreted as an act of war and responded by attacking Pearl Harbor. In a sign of how seriously Russia is taking the threat, President Vladimir Putin discussed what the Kremlin called “possible new unfriendly steps by Washington” with his Security Council on Friday. What is especially dangerous is that just about the only Americans...