The Decline of the West has Officially Left The Station
The utilization of the US$-centered global financial system as a weapon has now reached its natural conclusion, that system’s slow-motion death. The US and its Western allies have used this weapon against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan and now Russia. In the latter three cases even stealing the assets of the national central banks. Russia is the “final straw that breaks the camel’s back”, given the scale of its connections with the global economy and its status as a nuclear-armed global power. If Russia can be cut-off from SWIFT and have its assets stolen, the same can happen to any other nation that does not comply with Western demands. The only solution for the non-Western Rest of the World (ROW) is to move to alternative payment systems and non-Western currencies (including gold and silver) for their reserves. This will not be a sudden process, apart from transactions related to Russia, but it will be an inexorable one that marks the end of global Western financial dominance. If Russia retaliates by requiring payments for its exports in rubles, and also perhaps yuan, the move away from the US$ payments system will accelerate.
Central banks will sell US$’s from their reserves as they will need to increase the share of rubles and other currencies as their imports become more denominated in non-US$’s. This will remove a huge source of US$ demand, given how much of global trade is currently transacted in US$, weakening the US$ and making it much harder for the US to pay for its deficits and military expenditures. The coup de grace would be delivered by a China paying for its fossil fuel imports in yuan instead of US$, but China wants a slow deflation of US power rather than a more abrupt one that could trigger dangerous actions by US policy makers. At the same time, countries will strive to borrow money outside the IMF and World Bank US-managed cartel so that they owe as little as possible in US$s.
At the United Nations, the US and the West are finding out that the ROW is either implicitly supporting Russia or saying, “don’t bother us with your wars”. The sanctions against Russia will be a Europe and white settler colony affair, leaving the ROW for Russia to trade with. The lack of support for the West from both India and Brazil must have been a bit of a shock to Western leaders used to getting their own way. The world is changing, and the vast majority of the world’s population is slowly taking the Western boot off their necks. The decline of the West has been accelerated by its refusal to deal with Russia’s legitimate security needs, and the “jumped the shark” nature of its sanctions and cultural responses. For one example of the latter, the push by the nation that illegally invaded Iraq and destroyed Libya to get Russia removed from sports and cultural organizations is seen for the utter hypocrisy that it is by the ROW.
As Russia weathers the Western sanctions, and Europe especially withers in the economic and financial blowback (and Russia’s retaliatory sanctions), the ROW will become emboldened to join the alternative team and establish the new multipolar world.
The Decline of the West has officially left the station.