LETTER: US and Nato assert global domination in Ukraine

The disastrous war the US and Nato launched against Iraq in 2003 was not a “mistake”.  The destruction of Iraq, and America’s 20 years of “forever wars”, were a deliberate but reckless neo-con miscalculation that the dominant US empire could forever impose its military and financial hegemony throughout the world. 

The obsession of the US and Nato to assert America’s global domination is now backfiring in the even more disastrous war in Ukraine. In his letter, Johan Verster notes that “the real war [in Ukraine] is currencies, with Russia being capable of destroying the dollar” (“Real reason for Putin’s actions”, March 17). 

True enough, the collapse of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is on the horizon. The imminent financial and economic depression will eclipse the 2008/2009 crash. In addition to Switzerland’s Credit Suisse, 186 US banks have already been identified as highly vulnerable following Silicon Valley Bank’s bankruptcy. 

Contrary to Alan Pullinger’s comments, Verster also notes that the defeat in Ukraine of the US and its EU vassal states holds “the prospect of a new economic liberation for not just Russia and China, but almost the entire underdeveloped world” (“SA’s Russia dalliance poses ‘catastrophic risk’, says FirstRand CEO”, March 2).

Saudi Arabian oil — otherwise known as “black gold” — has funded the dollar for the past 50 years, since Henry Kissinger cut a deal with the Saudis in 1973 that Opec oil would be sold for dollars only. Kissinger quadrupled the price of oil from $3 to $12 per barrel. That deal provided the US with seemingly unlimited funding for its wars, paid for by the rest of the world — including SA and other non-oil producing countries that have since suffered 50 years of economic stagnation. 

The deal was that the US would protect the Saudi royal family against domestic insurrection. Yet even the Saudis are now “jumping ship”, selling their oil in Chinese yuan or Indian rupees, and who, with the Iranians plus South Americans, have applied to joins Brics. While SA may be the relative minnow in Brics, a new (albeit hugely problematic thanks in large measure to US self-centred belligerence) era beckons.

With its young and multiplying population, Africa may even replace China as the world’s manufacturing factory. A new digital monetary system to replace the dollar and US Treasury bonds will evolve — perhaps including gold, perhaps not.

After a year of demonising Putin as the “new Hitler”, there is growing awakening among Americans that provoking the war in Ukraine has devastated Ukraine and is unwinnable. Even the New York Times and Washington Post are now changing their tunes, realising that the US has lost yet another war, and Ukraine will soon have to surrender to whatever terms Putin imposes. 

Meanwhile, while Russia and China reaffirmed during their recent negotiations in Moscow their commitment to a peaceful resolution, the warmongering secretary-general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, has again called for still more weapons to be poured into Ukraine. 

Terry Crawford-Browne
World Beyond War SA

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