To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous. To be a friend of the United States is fatal”

Henry Kissinger

Indeed. In the wake of the Ukraine debacle, many of us are beginning to understand the statement. Here in Europe, all states, including Ukraine, are seeing an unprecedented rise in the cost of living due, mainly, to the sanctions regime, which is hitting us harder than it is hitting Russia.

Meanwhile, US hawks are starting to panic. True, the Ukraine war has consolidated NATO in a big way, and entrenched Russophobia in the West. But as several mainstream foreign policy commentators have warned, the US is loosing its grip on much of the rest of the world. Third world countries no longer take kindly to US and European bullying, financially or otherwise. They resent coercive methods aimed at ensuring support for the US in its conflict with Russia/China. They resent an intricate network of sanctions. In short: The Ukraine debacle is turning into a tectonic shift, as fault lines spread in new and unexpected directions. All of which will not be news to you, I am sure.

Moreover, African states have long suspected that what was denominated “aid” by Western Powers wasn’t really aid at all, rather the opposite.

Again I urge you to listen to (or read) a discussion between three economists about the causes of third world debt here and here. Only if we understand how deliberately imposed financial impediments are hampering development in third-world countries, can we understand the growing anger.

Niger, however is not tied to the dollar, but to the CFA frank, a freak frank as it were. See in this article from Greyzone, under the last sub-heading “ECOWAS as a neocolonial weapon”, how CFA has a stranglehold on Nigerien economy.

What interests me today, however, is how the US is responding to this growing resentment and assertiveness on the part of third-world countries.

There is, for instance, ongoing US pressure

• on Saudi Arabia to desist from de-dollarising.
• on Narendra Modi to abstain from attending the upcoming BRICS meeting in Johannesburg.
• on the Pakistani government to oust and imprison President Imran Khan
• on Ecowas (the West African economic bloc) to engage in a military intervention in Niger
• on Niger to reinstate the former president, who was probably a US puppet in the first place

Meanwhile:

There is growing awareness, in alternative media, of USA’s noxious interference in other countries’ affairs. Mainstream media’s grip is starting to slip a little even in the West. We are seeing a mushrooming of alternative online media that are challenging the virulently belligerent pro-US narrative. Even film makers are starting to grumble, e.g. David Bradbury with his “Road to War“.

What particularly raises concerns in the West, in spite of the Russo/Sino-phobia that is so eagerly fanned by mainstream media, is the massive, ongoing military build-up, and its seemingly inevitable corollary: nuclear war. People, for instance in Australia, are beginning to ponder the following question: If the mainstream media in the USA and EU hate Russia and China that much, do we not have more to fear from the USA and EU than from Russia and China?

And if protecting a “rules-based” order is so costly, in terms of the dent made in tax paying households’ economies and, not least, for our environment and hence future generations, is the “rules-based order” really worth fighting for?

… quite apart from the fact that the said order is anything but rules-based. It is based, inter alia, on diplomacy which is a euphemism for coercion. I hasten to add, that while tact and good manners – the essence of diplomacy, we were told – certainly are assets in the upper echelons of the Corps Diplomatique, they are not indispensable. Bribes, however, are indispensable and threats, and the means to effectuate them. Besides, diplomacy relies not only on well-dressed patricians: Anyone who has seen a reasonably decent Hollywood spy film, will know that part of the game is carried out by professional killers and their ilk.

So yes: to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous. To be a friend of the United States is fatal