India’s RCEP Refusal, Russia’s Eurasian Vision, and Next Week’s BRICS Summit — Andrew Korybko

Andrew Korybko is more pessimistic than Pepe Escobar on this. I think he may be a bit too pessimistic. India's strategic alignment is a balancing act for the government in power. India has along history of playing the US and Russia against each other for its own advantage. The really big issue is the relationship of India and China, traditional enemies that are still locked in various disputes over boundaries. Here again, India is using the US as a hedge with respect to China.

Getting the Eurasian alignment right, both in the East and relative to the West is going to occupy the next several decades at least, and the Modi government is not going to be around that long to deal with it. So we will see. 

India, Russia and China are wily players, focused on national interest, which includes regional peace, world peace, and a prospering global market to which they have access. But that all have domestic issues also, and these limit international flexibility. Hovering over this process is a Western hegemony led by the US that doesn't want to lose global dominance after having it for half a millennium.

GlobalResearch
India’s RCEP Refusal, Russia’s Eurasian Vision, and Next Week’s BRICS Summit
Andrew Korybko

BRICS Now a Larger Share of World Economy Than G7 — Constantin Gurdgiev

Checkpoint Asia
BRICS Now a Larger Share of World Economy Than G7

Constantin Gurdgiev

Pepe Escobar — Greater Eurasia coming together in the Russian Far East

The Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok has become a crucial part of strategic integration between China, Russia and other countries in northeast Asia, a graduation assimilation set to transform the current world system…

Contrary to misinformed or manipulated Western hysteria, the current Vostok war games in the Russian Far East’s Trans-Baikal, including 3,000 Chinese troops, are just a section of the much deeper, complex Russia-China strategic partnership. This is all about a matryoshka: the war game is a doll inside the geoeconomic game.

In ‘China and Russia: The New Rapprochement’, Alexander Lukin, from the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, lays down the roadmap in detail; the evolving, Eurasia-wide economic partnership is part of a much larger, comprehensive concept of “Greater Eurasia”. This is the core of the Russia-China entente, leading to what political scientist Sergey Karaganov has dubbed, “a common space for economic, logistic and information cooperation, peace and security from Shanghai to Lisbon and from New Delhi to Murmansk.”

Without understanding the Big Picture enveloping debates such as the annual gathering in Vladivostok, it’s impossible to understand how the progressive integration of BRI, EAEU, SCO, ASEAN, BRICS and BRICS Plus is bound to irreversibly change the current world-system.

Asia Times

Greater Eurasia coming together in the Russian Far East

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — The real BRICS bombshell

Summary of the annual BRICS summit in Xiamen.

Asia Times

The real BRICS bombshell

Pepe Escobar

also by Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar explores how David Lynch's dystopian wonderland – the original and latest incarnation – informs current geopolitical and metaphysical forces. Potential spoiler alert

How Twin Peaks unveils our world

Pepe Escobar — Asia Times Against all odds, BRICS nations get their act together

Despite the China-India border standoff, US economic warfare against Russia, and other woes, the five countries' trade ministers concentrated on creating conditions for better cooperation.

Amazing how money greases the wheels.

Asia Times
Against all odds, BRICS nations get their act together

Pepe Escobar

BRIC Manufacturing and Service PMIs: July

Russia and China look decent.

true economics
3/8/17: BRIC Manufacturing PMIs: July

3/8/17: BRIC Services PMI: July
Constantin Gurdgiev | chairman of the Ireland-Russia Business Association, contributor and former editor of Business & Finance Magazine, and lecturer in Finance with Trinity College, Dublin

Ruslan Ostashko — American Hysteria: Sanctions, Disinformation, and Terrorism can't stop BRICS

I want to draw your attention to one fact that has caused a very painful sensation in the US, specifically in the State Department and CIA. If you recall, they recently made titanic efforts to organize the impeachment of now already ex-Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The operation was long, dirty, and American ears stuck out from behind the scenes so much that in the end it became indecent. After power was sized by the Americans’ protege, Michel Temer, many expected that the end of BRICS was on its way. In practice, it turns out that the Americans were blatantly cheated.
Temer arrived in Goa with a whole cohort of Brazilian businessmen and stated that he welcomes needed investments in the country. There was not a word about leaving BRICS or the collapse of BRICS. All conversations were only about money.

The Americans should be offended. It turns out that Brazil did not find its Poroshenko. This is a striking failure of US foreign policy.

Fort Russ
American Hysteria: Sanctions, Disinformation, and Terrorism can't stop BRICS 
Ruslan Ostashko, PolitRussia - translated by J. Arnoldski

Pepe Escobar — Kill List: Smashing the 'B' in BRICS

Pepe Escobar parses the opaque situation in Brazil.

In the process, he offers this summary of neoliberalism:

Neoliberalism may have failed, as even the IMF research wing has concluded. But its rotten corpse still encumbers the whole planet. Neoliberalism is not only an economic model; it surreptitiously takes over the juridical realm as well. In another perverse facet of shock doctrine, neoliberalism cannot prevail without a juridical framework. 

When constitutional attributions are redirected to Congress that keeps the Executive under control while generating a culture of political corruption. Politics is subordinated to economics. Companies engage in campaign financing and buy politicians to be able to influence the political powers that be.…

Where the US fits in:

And that brings us once again to The Big Picture, as we proceed in parallel with an analysis by Rafael Bautista, the head of a decolonization study group in La Paz, Bolivia. He’s one of the best and brightest in South America who’s very much alert to the fact that whatever happens in Brazil in the next few months will drive the future not only of South America but the whole Global South.

Exceptionalistan’s project for Brazil is no less than the imposition of a remixed Monroe doctrine. The main target of a planned neoliberal restoration is to cut off South America from the BRICS – as in, essentially, the Russia-China strategic partnership.…

This article is must-read in its entirety to grasp the geopolitical significance of what is happening in Latin America — and by implication also in Africa, were the US, China, and Russia are all involved also.

The Empire is on the move. Divide and conquer is still the imperial agenda.

Sputnik

Kill List: Smashing the 'B' in BRICS

Pepe Escobar

Alexander Mercouris — Modi in Washington: Why India Will Not Become a US Ally

Reflects my thoughts on hearing that India was supposedly pivoting toward Washington and away from Russia and BRICS. That was more wishful thinking. India continues to fun a balancing act tilted toward those it can count on, and that's not the US. India's future does not lie with the West, especially as a vassal of Washington. Not gonna happen.

Indian Prime Minister Modi’s just completed visit to Washington has reinforced fears that India is evolving into a full-fledged ally of the US.

The grounds for thinking this were ably discussed by my colleague Andrew Korybko in two fine pieces he has written for The Duran. For those interested in the details of the moves the US and India have been making towards each other, there is no better place to start than those two articles (here and here).

Is India however really abandoning its traditional policy of non-alignment to forge an alliance with Washington that would in effect bury the BRICS arrangement?
I have no doubt that that is what Washington itself believes. I am sure that in the aftermath of Prime Minister Modi’s visit, Washington’s huge foreign policy establishment is busy congratulating itself on its success in detaching India from Russia and China.

The champagne corks in Langley and Foggy Bottom are no doubt flying as I write this, and I have no doubt that Andrew Korybko has reproduced with absolute accuracy the way the whole India play is looked upon by people inside the Beltway.

However I suspect that from New Delhi things look rather different. I am quite sure that both the hopes and fears of an Indian alliance with the US are exaggerated.
Before discussing my reasons for saying this, it is necessary to provide some background.

The Duran
Modi in Washington: Why India Will Not Become a US Ally

Alexander Mercouris

‘Rousseff impeachment is part of global elite’s Latin American experiment’ — RT interviews Adrian Salbuchi

The push to impeach Brazil’s president is part of a regional plan by global elites aimed at weakening the Latin American powerhouse and potentially undermining the BRICS alliance, political analyst and international consultant Adrian Salbuchi told RT.

Geopolitics and geostrategy.

So I think we shall be seeing a growing experiment, shall we call it, a global experiment of getting police forces, which are basically poor people, to fight against protesting workers, who are also, basically, poor people, while the major power circles will look down on this from their 40th or 50th floor boardroom.

RT
‘Rousseff impeachment is part of global elite’s Latin American experiment’
RT interviews Adrian Salbuchi, founder of the Argentine Second Republic Movement

Alastair Crooke — The ‘Hybrid War’ of Economic Sanctions

U.S. politicians love the “silver bullet” of economic sanctions to punish foreign adversaries, but the weapon’s overuse is driving China and Russia to develop countermeasures, as British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains.

Actually, sanctions are a blessing in disguise. The less non-Western countries have to do with the West financially and economically, the better off they will be. They need to develop parallels instead. After all, they are the ones who have the natural resources that the West needs. The West should be coming to them rather than the other way around.

Ironically, David Ignatius in his article gives the game away: Lew is not going soft, saying that the US needs to use its tools more prudently; far from it. His point is different, and Ignatius exposes it inadvertently:

“U.S. power flows from our unmatched military might, yes. But in a deeper way, it’s a product of the dominance of the U.S. economy. Anything that expands the reach of U.S. markets — such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership in trade, for example — adds to the arsenal of U.S. power. Conversely, U.S. power is limited by measures that drive business away from America, or allow other nations to build a rival financial architecture that’s less encumbered by a smorgasbord of sanctions.”

This latter point precisely is what is frightening Lew and Ignatius. The tables are turning: in fact, the U.S. and Europe may be becoming more vulnerable to retaliation (e.g. Europe, with Russia’s retaliatory sanctions on European agricultural products) than China and Russia are, to unilateral Treasury or Fed warfare.

This is the new hybrid war (and not the hot air issuing from NATO). Lew and Ignatius know that a parallel “architecture” is under construction, and that Congress’ addiction to new sanctions is just speeding it into place.

So, why then is the U.S. Treasury so zealous in undermining the effectiveness of JCPOA’s agreed lifting of sanctions? Well, probably because Iran has less leverage over the global financial system than either China or Russia. But also perhaps, because “Iran sanctions” are (erroneously) viewed by U.S. leaders as the Treasury’s “jewel in its crown” of geo-financial success.

What may be missing from this hubristic interpretation, however, is the understanding that Iran’s experience will not be lost on the others, nor on the SCO when it convenes its next meetings on how to combat Western “color revolution” operations (with Iran likely joining that organization as a member, rather than an observer, this summer).

Consortium News
The ‘Hybrid War’ of Economic Sanctions

Alastair Crooke

See also

Eurasia Review

China-Iran: Common Grounds For Cooperation – Analysis
Taipan Bharadwaj

China has warned the US that it will protect its sovereignty in the disputed waters of the South China Sea and rejects attempts to use international laws and freedom of navigation as a pretext to undermine its national security interests.

In a meeting with US President Barack Obama at the fourth Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC, his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping said that while he believes in the peaceful resolution of conflicts through direct talks, China will take steps to protect its national interests and sovereignty.
“China will firmly safeguard the sovereignty and related rights in the South China Sea,” Xi said in a meeting, according to Xinhua news.
While acknowledging that Beijing “respects and safeguards the freedom of navigation and overflight other countries are entitled to under international law,” Xi stressed that China will “not accept any freedom of navigation as an excuse to undermine China's sovereignty and national security interests.”

RT
Xi warns Obama against threatening China’s sovereignty & national interests

Pepe Escobar — Brazil, like Russia, under attack by Hybrid War, and more

As the BRICS are the only, real counter power to Exceptionalistan, a strategy had to be developed for each of the major players. Everything was thrown at Russia – from sanctions to full demonization, from a raid on its currency to an oil price war, even including (pathetic) attempts to start a color revolution in the streets of Moscow. For a weaker BRICS node, a more subtle strategy would have to be developed. Which brings us to the complexity of Hybrid War as applied to the current, massive political/economic destabilization of Brazil.

In the UW manual, swaying the perceptions of a vast “uncommitted middle population” is essential in the road to success, so these uncommitted eventually turn against their political leaders. The process encompasses everything from “supporting insurgency” (as in Syria) to “wider discontent through propaganda and political and psychological efforts to discredit the government” (as in Brazil). And as an insurrection escalates, so should the “intensification of propaganda; psychological preparation of the population for rebellion.” That, in a nutshell, has been the Brazilian case.

RT
Brazil, like Russia, under attack by Hybrid War

Pepe Escobar

See also

Fort Russ
Navalny Secretly Met With the Ideologists of the Ukrainian Maidan in Moscow
Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
Lifenews

He says it was done by US and UK secret services and that he is going to go public with the evidence

Russia Insider

BOMBSHELL: French Counter-Terror Boss: ‘I Have Proof Who Killed Litvinenko - It Wasn’t Russia’

Ricky Twisdale

Eric Draitser — BRICS Under Attack: The Empire Strikes Back In Brazil

Political movements are always funded. Follow the money. Yes, some of it is traceable to the Koch brothers, claims Draitser.

Mint Press News
BRICS Under Attack: The Empire Strikes Back In Brazil

Eric Draitser

See also

Chapter 10: ‘They key purpose of the Cold War … was to block trade’

In this chapter, Ellsberg criticizes common misconceptions about the Cold War period of U.S. history.

“The understanding of the Cold War that 99 out of 100 Americans hold right now … is a fairy tale,” he explained.

While most people believe the United States acted to stop Communism from spreading outward from countries like China and Russia, Ellsberg suggested that the financial domination of global markets was a far more important factor propelling the Cold War.

“The key purpose of the Cold War paradigm, both in Europe and in Asia, was to block East-West trade,” he said.

With NATO and U.S. forces now encircling China and Russia with military bases, East-West tensions are rising anew. The U.S. is also seeking to inflame tensions in Ukraine after supporting a coup there.

America’s ultimate goal, according to Ellsberg, is always to dominate a region in order to put pressure on nearby countries whose interests stand in opposition to American interests. Those maneuvers, he said, are always backed with “the threat of first use of nuclear weapons.”…

Daniel Ellsberg: Most Americans Believe A ‘Fairy Tale’ About The Cold War

Guo Yiming — China's exclusion from TPP and TTIP against globalization

The major international trade pacts known as the TPP and TTIP will involve historical errors without China's participation, a Chinese expert claimed during the annual conference of the Istanbul Chamber of Industry on Saturday.

Wang Wen, executive dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, a think tank under Beijing's prestigious Renmin University, made the remark during a session on the rise of free trade agreements.

As the only Chinese representative invited to the event, Wang voiced his concern on the exclusiveness and creating negative influence for the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that are set to launch a new revolution in the international economic and trade system.

"Fresh trade protectionism is taking shape with new forms, and the unnecessary internal frictions in competition between developed countries and emerging economies continue to grow," said Wang, expressing concern the negative influences of TPP and TTIP could cause large scale strategic misjudgment, and increase tensions and uncertainties in the global economic and political systems.

He said the controversial trade pacts, which exclude all emerging economies, such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, and whose standards are obviously favorable to the developed nations, overlook the former's rights, and constitute a powerful rejection and even discriminate against them. He regarded the pacts as a de facto trade barrier protecting the developed countries' interests.…

Protectionism masquerading as "free trade."

China.org.cn
China's exclusion from TPP and TTIP against globalization

Guo Yiming

Matias Vernengo — The strange and misunderstood reasons for the Brazilian crisis

Matias catches us up  on Brazil.

Naked Keynesianism
The strange and misunderstood reasons for the Brazilian crisis
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

Anna Garde — BRICS Network University promises new syncretic model of global education

On November 18 in Moscow, the ministers of education of the BRICS countries signed a document which opens a new page in the history of the association. This document was the “Memorandum of Understanding”, the goal of which is establishing a BRICS Network University. This initiative was discussed for the first time during a joint ministerial meeting in 2013 in Paris. The initiative was launched by the Russian University of People’s Friendship which has already become a member of an international network of universities (in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, for example). In 2014, the heads of states of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa supported the initiative at the BRICS summit in Fortaleza, and in July 2015 was supported in the Ufa declaration and noted it in the Strategy for Economic Partnership. In November, this project received separate documentary reinforcements at the ministry level.

The essence of the project is forming a new generation of professionals qualitatively different from other those with other critical thinking skills with high qualifications and the ability to make unconventional decisions in economics and social problems.

The basic method of functioning of the university is organizing double degree programs which involve high academic mobility. For example, a two-year master program has been proposed in which the first year is held in one’s country of resident and the second in another BRICS country. The working languages of the university are Russian, Chinese, and English. 

A description of the  systems of education in the BRICS countries follows.

Fort Russ
BRICS Network University promises new syncretic model of global education

Anna Garde, PolitRussia
Translated for Fort Russ by J. Arnoldski

The BRICS Post — BRICS Foreign Ministers vow to strive for ‘equitable world order’

BRICS foreign ministers held talks on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York on Tuesday.

The meet, an annual feature, intended to take stock of developments since the BRICS Summit in Russia earlier this summer.

The main focus- for ministers from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa- has been the stalled IMF reforms as well as UNSC expansion, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East.

“The BRICS Ministers reiterated their intention to contribute to safeguarding a fair and equitable international order based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, as stated in the Ufa Summit declaration,” said a joint statement.…

The BRICS Post
BRICS Foreign Ministers vow to strive for ‘equitable world order’

TASS — Several big Russian banks already use SWIFT equivalent — banking official

A number of big Russian banks are already using the equivalent of SWIFT created by the Central Bank, the regulator’s Deputy Chairman Olga Skorobogatova said at Finnopolis 2015 conference on Friday.

"Some big banks are already signing bilateral agreements and using the system [alternative to SWIFT - TASS]," she said.

Simultaneously with Russia, China is also launching with own system of banking transaction system. Earlier Russian Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseyev said creation of an equivalent to SWIFT within BRICS could become the next step of creating behind-the-border systems of banking info exchange. 

Russia & India Report
Several big Russian banks already use SWIFT equivalent — banking official
TASS

Ekaterina Bilnova — Iran Nuclear Deal Ushers in Era of New Great Game for Eurasia

According to US geopolitical analyst and StopImperialism.com editor Eric Draitser, Washington is planning to engage Tehran into the Western political fold, neutralizing Iran as influential geopolitical player in the Middle East. 

"Anyone who understands the imperial and hegemonic agenda of the US should immediately understand that there is an ulterior motive for Washington in securing this deal, one which has nothing to do with morality, peace, or cooperation. Instead, the US wants to transform Iran from a regional and global adversary into something of an asset," Draitser underscored.

According to the geopolitical analyst, once integrated into Western economy Iran may abandon its longstanding Shiite allies, Syria, in particular. The stakes would be too high for Tehran, which will run the risk of losing hundreds of billions of dollars and "crippling its own economy."

However, "the single most important objective for US strategic planners though is to prevent Iran's integration into the emerging non-western, Eurasian political, economic, and military architecture," Draitser pointed out.

The West has finally realized that such institutions as BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the New Silk Road projects pose a substantial threat to the US-dominated world order and its Bretton Woods monetary system.

The "triple alliance" of Russia, China and Iran may ultimately undermine the West's strategy aimed at maintaining control over the Eurasian continent, developed by the British back in the 19th century and dubbed "The Great Game."…

Sputnik
Iran Nuclear Deal Ushers in Era of New Great Game for Eurasia

Ekaterina Bilnova

BRICS Challenges the "Double Standard" of the West — Prabir Purkayastha interviews Vijay Prashad

Video and transcript.

Real News Network
BRICS Challenges the "Double Standard" of the West

Prabir Purkayastha interviews Vijay Prashad, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College