by Claudiu Secara

The latest events in the saga of peace, no peace: Is the escalation of the war and of the sanctions in the cards, or are we witnessing the start of going back to the status quo ante?

It looks less complicated once we connect a few dots. One is the public explanations by Wes Mitchell and Eldridge Colby in Foreign Affairs. And that, in a nutshell, is “sequencing”. One war at a time.

Both of the former superpowers have exhausted themselves and are facing economic disaster, while China is growing at the springy pace of 5.5% a year, far outpacing the obsolescent economies of the combatants. Trump (and Putin), in other words the elites of the two countries, maneuvering behind the public relations puppets, see the signs of impending disaster converging quite rapidly upon both of them.

The US especially is far overextended, going back the last 30-40 years. Russia could tighten its belt as always, on a short term basis, but the cost to its wellbeing is increasing by the day. Russian sources are making a big deal about the victory in the Kursk region and the “liberation” of the last settlements there, but in fact this should be seen as a total embarrassment for the mighty Russian army. Instead of capturing Kiev in two weeks, it took it almost 9 month to fight back a small expeditionary army of Ukrainians. The economy is choking despite all the bragging about modest growth, all of which is related to deficit spending by the government for its military industry while the civilian economy faces high inflation, low wages, lack of development.

On the other side, the US, with its model of hand-to-mouth working class, is just a few months away from running out of the last reserves. An imminent demise of the system is a real likelihood.

So, Trump is talking about saving Russian and Ukrainian lives, as if that’s what keeps him awake at night, when in fact it is the imminent perspective of riots on the streets in the US itself. The Trumpists are talking about fighting one war at a time, meaning settle the war in Ukraine in order to start the war against China. What? The US should be glad if they can negotiate with China a controlled loss of global hegemony. There is no remote possibility that it can challenge China militarily on its own territory. Just watch the million or so drones ballet in the air, perfectly orchestrated by software only the Chinese have.

On the other side, again, Russia has finally admitted through is chief of staff Commander Gerasimov that it was able to take back Kursk only with the help of North Korean troops. He thanked them publicly for that; although Russia had strongly denied it until now. In truth, the Russian army needed the N Korean army to defend its own territory? Hard to believe.

So is there a sequencing, or what? Yes, but of a different kind. What is next in the sequence is not a confrontation with China. That confrontation was already lost. What follows is a confrontation with the irreversible demotion of the US Empire and the need to present defeat as a victory to the world and to the Americans. Takeover of Canada or Greenland?! No way. Even Panama is showing that it doesn’t accept an American takeover of its sovereignty over the Panama canal.

In addition, this is a good time for Europe to emerge from the claws of the US. Sequencing or not, Europe has woken up and realized that it encompasses an almost 500,000 million strong population, an economy unencumbered by a military burden (even at 2 percent of its GDP it is way below what the US and Russia are wasting of their national resources), Europe stands to win big. The Eastern Europeans smell the sweet aroma of freedom from the menacing Russian boots on the ground. Even tiny Moldova has stood up and confronted Russia’s outstretched arm in Transnistria to the utter disbelief of Lavrov and Co. They were very focused throughout the mass media on the events in Moldova and keen to overturn the win by the Romanian electorate, including Moldova‘s decision to further blockade the Russian 5th column in Găgăuz as well as the pro-Moscow Orthodox Metropolitan. That alone stupefied the weak Russia, as they’d forgotten that the Eastern “Moldova” adopted Christianity in around the year 300 (that’s 700 years before Kievan Rus’) and was an integral part of Moldova, read “the Romanian nation,” with a Latin population alien to the Slavic neighbors, who showed up at the shores of Danube Delta two thousand years later.

In sequencing the next developments in Europe, the one entity that no one considered viable, that is the EU, could very well reclaim the continent’s historic heritage, which is Greco-Roman, and restore the balance of power in the multipolar new world with a white European constituency.

But yes, one big victory for Trump should be noted. He managed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on Google Maps. So, it is not all going down in defeat for Trump and the Trumpists