Letters from Vienna #73
Repeating the “Great Reset” of 1973
It is hard to reconcile what we know about Kissinger’s intrigues in the prelude to the Yom Kippur War (see letter #54) with what he himself wrote about his own involvement (on a diplomatic level of course) in the war itself.
Yet there are signs, contradictions, as well as an awful lot of waffle, nonsense and sheer hot air in the printed transcripts of conversations, which make up Kissinger’s book: “Crisis”. There is much talk without much being said, and of that, an awful lot is merely incoherent and literally makes no sense. Exhaustion, nerves, late hours and incompetence undoubtedly played their part but there is more to it than first meets the eye.
What the Machiavellian, manipulative and duplicitous Kissinger displays is that one can indeed “smile, and smile, and be a villain.” On the one hand he appeals to decency, honesty and ideals, on the other: he provides us with a unique vantage point on how he slyly, coldly and ruthlessly maneuvres his Russian counterpart into abandoning Egypt, with catastrophic consequences for relations between the two countries.
The Yom Kippur War would be a mere historical footnote were it not for the fact that it ushered in a new era: the oil crisis, the Arab boycott of the West and the ascendancy of the petrodollar. Much of the wheeling and dealing was done in Vienna, which is why it is an especially apt topic for this series of essays. The war helped facilitate a “great reset” and it is fair to say that the war in the Ukraine is doing exactly the same thing.
The Birth of the Multi-Polar World
To a certain extant the birth of the “multi-polar world” we are currently witnessing has long been delayed.
After the war America was the dominant world power and as George Kennan wrote in February 1948: “We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population…In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”[1]
The result was a series of brutal coups in Guatemala, Iran etc. etc. and imperial “counter-insurgency” wars such as the one in Vietnam (see letters #65 & #68). Yet, ultimately the clandestine actions, brutal mass murders (such as in Indonesia) and conflicts didn’t shore up American dominance but rather undermined it. What hastened imperial decline was the decision on the part of the “Global Elite” to abandon America and transfer their capital to Asia in the 1980s and 1990s.
By 1987 America was faced with “imperial overstretch” and “the task facing American statesmen over the next decades…is to recognise that broad trends are under way, and that there is a need to “manage” affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States position takes place steadily and smoothly…”[2]
What Paul Kennedy didn’t reckon with however was the unwillingness of American oligarchs to abandon their “way of life”. When the Soviet Union fell they essentially went for broke. Instead of “managing affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States position takes place steadily and smoothly” they sought “full spectrum dominance”. Thus, George Friedman wrote in his book: “The Coming War with Japan” (1991): “without the binding element of the Soviet Union, the economic dispute between the United States and Japan will inevitably become political…growing Japanese economic self-confidence will inevitably lead to growing political self-confidence…as Japan is forced to assert itself politically, it follows that it will also assert itself militarily.”[3]
Of Nails and Hammers
From the point of view of the American political establishment every problem, whether economic, social or strategic was viewed from a military perspective and as the infamous, late Madeleine Albright once put it: “What’s the point of having this superb military machine you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”.
As a result, one war followed on the foot of another. There are even those who say that had Hilary Clinton become president in 2016 she’d have taken on the big bear: Russia itself and have gone the way Napoleon and Hitler did.
The essential problem for Americans has been the very success of the system Kissinger created in the 1970s. “The U.S. Treasury, under Jack Bennett, the man who had helped steer Nixon’s fateful August 1971 dollar policy, had established a secret accord with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, SAMA, finalised in a February 1975 memo from U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary Jack F. Bennett to Secretary of State Kissinger. Under the terms of the agreement, a sizeable part of the huge new Saudi oil revenue windfall was to be invested in financing the U.S. government deficits. A young Wall Street investment banker with the leading London-based Eurobond firm of White Weld & Co., David Mulford, was sent to Saudi Arabia to become the principal ‘investment adviser’ to SAMA; he was to guide the Saudi petrodollar investments to the correct banks, naturally in London and New York. The Bilderberg scheme was operating just as planned.”[4]
Instead of being backed by gold the dollar was linked to oil and other countries were forced to buy dollars (and thereby finance American debt) to pay for it. It was the perfect scam.
“This Treasury-bond standard of international finance has enabled the United States to obtain the largest free lunch ever achieved in history. America has turned the international financial system upside down. Whereas formerly it rested on gold, central bank reserves are now held in the form of U.S. Government IOUs that can be run up without limit. In effect, America has been buying up Europe, Asia and other regions with paper credit – U.S. Treasury IOUs that it has informed the world it has little intention of ever paying off…the dollar’s being forced off gold in 1971 led to a new international financial system in which the world’s central banks are obliged to finance the U.S. balance of payments deficit by using their surplus dollars in the only way that central banks are allowed to use them: to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. In the process, they finance the U.S. Government’s domestic budget deficit as well. The larger America’s balance-of-payments deficit becomes, the more dollars end up in the hands of European, Asian and Near Eastern central banks, and the more money they must recycle back to the United States by buying U.S. Treasury bonds…”[5]
The ability to run a deficit means that America is able to adopt an age-old strategy of borrowing to finance imperial wars, which are then payed for by imperial booty. Thus, the American military has been unleashed on the world with horrendous consequences (e.g. Yugoslavia). And when the Americans didn’t attack directly they used European attack dogs (NATO) such as in Libya, or simply used their considerable resources to destabilise a country, such as Syria, before stealing its oil.
The war in the Ukraine is also essentially a war over resources (see letter #67) as well as a geopolitical “game” (see letter #36). Yet the difference is that it might well lead to World War Three.
What is certain is that the “economic sanctions” against Russia are essentially designed to destroy Europe[6]. It seems that the Russians have already decided to redirect their considerable gas and oil supplies toward Asia and are simply waiting for the right opportunity to “turn off the tap”. This is all very much in keeping with the Deagel Death Plan, about which I have previously written. Thus, the population of the UK is forecast to drop from 66m to 15m, the US from 327m to 100m, Germany from 81m to 28m, France from 67m to 39m etc. etc by 2025. [7]
Given this grim reality it would be wise and prudent to start thinking about how exactly one can start growing one’s own food. Otherwise we may very well be faced with starvation.
[1] George F. Kennan, Policy Planning Study, PPS/23: Review of Current Trends in U.S. Foreign Policy, Memorandum by the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Kennan)2 to the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State (Lovett), in Foreign Relations of the United States, Washington DC, February 24, 1948, Volume I, pp. 509-529.
[2] p.534 The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy
[3] p.10 The Coming War with Japan, George Friedman
[4] p.137 Century of War, William F. Engdahl
[5] p.3 Super Imperialism, Michael Hudson