The Washington/Wall Street elites are fully aware that both Moscow and Beijing won't accumulate US dollars anymore. As for the Masters of the Universe plutocrats who manipulate/control the value of the US dollar, a case can be made that one of their purposes is wrecking the US's industrial base and the nation's middle classes.
Moscow, meanwhile, has adjusted to the new "instability." The weak ruble has a positive effect -- already stressed by President Putin -- by forcing Russia to diversify its manufacturing and become more self-sufficient.
Of course, the problem remains for Russia to pay the foreign interest on its debt in US dollars. Moscow could always declare a moratorium in debt repayments. The ruble might go down even more. But as everyone from Lukoil to Rosneft converts more US dollars into rubles, that will drive the ruble back up. Not to mention that the ruble is shorted as it stands. The bottom line is that Moscow has learned yet another lesson for the immediate future: never become indebted to the West.
What's certain is that the Empire of Chaos won't relent in its strategy of heating up the new arc of instability -- inside Europe, across the economic/financial spectrum -- and instrumentalizing its pre-fabricated New Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
The Kremlin seems to know exactly how high the stakes are. As The Saker told me in an email...
"Putin is telling both the West and the Russian people that there is a long war in progress and that the Russian people have to morally be prepared to accept sacrifices for the survival of Russia. This is one more step in the 'coming-out' of what I call the 'Eurasian Sovereignists' in which the US [has] now openly declared as a Russophobic (Russia-hating and Russia-fearing) enemy, and the Europeans as a powerless colony. Military power is not directly a factor in this, the internal power balance between the pro-Western 'Atlantic Integrationists' and the 'Eurasian Sovereignists' is."
It's all here -- from the debacle of a regime (Bretton Woods) to the current, provoked crisis, all brilliantly explained by Mikhail Khazin. Russia is getting ready to rock. Is the West?
Pepe Escobar's new book is Empire of Chaos. Follow him on Facebook.
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