Economic Crisis and Political Unrest

By Jeffrey Nyquist, 27 May, 2020

KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, who successfully predicted all the stages of the long-range communist bloc strategy in 1984, warned us about “the economic weapons of the bloc,” grain and oil. We can readily see that precious metals are also part of this game. As events unfold, it is increasingly obvious that America is under intensive economic attack.

China, Russia, Iran and associated countries are applying pressure across the board to flip America’s allies to their camp; most recently, Saudi Arabia is believed by some observers to have turned against Washington. In response to collapsing oil demand the Saudis did not reduce their oil production. Instead, they increased it — devastating America’s oil industry.

Of course, the Saudis resent America’s energy independence. They resented our past abandonment of their friend, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. They also resent our support for Shiite majority rule in neighboring Iraq. From their point of view, we are not the reliable ally of decades past. We are bungling, erratic, and exasperating.

Resentment is the mother of all treachery. And as we have — for so many years — believed the lies of Russia and China, why wouldn’t we believe Saudi lies? So the Saudis raise their oil production in the midst of a glut, crash the price of oil to less than zero, and pretend they are doing it to hurt Russia when the whole thing is almost certainly Russia’s idea. Who is the big winner in this game? The People’s Republic of China gets to amass millions of barrels of cheap oil. Russia and Saudi Arabia drive American oil producers out of business. The U.S. economy takes a massive hit when it can least afford it.

Here is a strategic victory of incalculable significance. It appears that Moscow and Beijing have persuaded Saudi Arabia to align itself with them; for how can the relationship between Riyadh and Washington be restored after the U.S. energy market has been so devastated? An inevitable break — though officially denied — must come. And there will be a financial hit, as well, when the dollar comes under attack in the next round of battle. Here is Riyadh’s Rubicon. There is no going back. And we must not forget an old rule of Bedouin politics: Treachery leads the betrayer to become more paranoid than his victim; for the betrayer must expect payback, and must thereafter distance himself from his victim.

If this is so, we are at the beginning of a very desperate sequence of events in which economic warfare becomes the heart and soul of the Great Game. It is easy to predict that the economic war against America will intensify. China and Russia will use all their economic weapons — and it is clear that they have been preparing for a long time.

The idea here is to cripple the U.S. economy, prevent effective U.S. war preparations, distract the political authorities with internal unrest, force currency devaluation, collapse tax revenues and incite domestic violence between various political camps, and divide America from its allies.

If Saudi Arabia has flipped to the Moscow-Beijing bloc, pressure will build for other countries to change sides. The unfolding economic reality will be grim, indeed, for any nation that stands with America; for America — as the defender of the West — is the primary target. Any nation that turns against the United States will be given a pass. Any nation that opposes the Moscow-Beijing bloc, will suffer accordingly.

Serious economic and financial pressure will be applied against Japan, the EU, Australia, India, Brazil, etc. If these powers give way to Russia and China, America’s economic isolation will be assured. America would then suffer slow strangulation, economic collapse and domestic political turmoil. Even if the West holds firm, the economic weapons of the bloc will be deployed, one by one. The softening of allied resistance will be encouraged every step of the way. We will read and hear that China is the economic leader of the world. Who dares break their economic ties to China? Small countries and backward countries will tremble.

The threat against Japan and Europe will involve the denial of strategic resources coming from the Middle East and Africa. Moscow and Beijing are sure to make a series of devastating moves — long in preparation. The attack on America’s oil industry, by collapsing oil prices, is only the beginning. China and Russia have been stockpiling gold and strategic resources for decades. They are laying siege to us, having already set aside the necessary supplies for a prolonged struggle. Their military units have been modernized, their nuclear arsenals upgraded — all in readiness prior to economic disruptions calculated to prevent America from ever catching up.

Are the people in Russia and China economically suffering? Yes. They suffer as subjects of autocratic regimes are destined to suffer — in every age, for all time. In China the ranks of the People’s Armed Police have swollen. Revolution against the regime is impossible. Its organization is geared entirely toward security and the smashing of dissent. Disobedience is punishable by death. Who dares stand against the Chinese Communist Party? Its might is measured in millions of armed troops, missiles, nuclear weapons, and a blue water navy with its sights set on control of the Pacific Ocean.

The Russian and Chinese preparation for the present phase of economic warfare has been long and arduous. All American presidents, from Reagan to Obama, wittingly or unwittingly helped the Russians and Chinese achieve the advantages they now wield against us. Washington made a conscious decision to build up China. The United States is presently vulnerable to Moscow and Beijing’s economic warfare. This is also due to years of fiscal irresponsibility and bad national habits. During decades of prosperity we encouraged indebtedness — at all levels of government, and in the private sector. Congress gave money to various interest groups. Welfare payments ballooned. Pensions ballooned. Obama Care was instituted and nobody had the courage to overturn it. Politicians have even suggested the concept of “guaranteed income.” It was all madness. We could afford none of it, neither could we afford the military adventures that followed the 9/11 provocation. Meanwhile, our enemies watched from afar, encouraged by our lack of foresight,

An unprecedented economic crisis is now underway. This crisis will have political effects unlike anything we have seen. It is not an exaggeration to say that the shocks already administered will require great patience and discipline from the American people, and great statesmanship. Imagine millions of desperate Americans without work, facing food shortages. Imagine a bankrupt federal government — and bankrupt states, counties, municipalities. All bankrupt together.

The divide between right and left will be exacerbated. The left will say that capitalism has failed. A downward spiral will begin, propelled by the voting public. We will be driven by the left to destroy our economic wherewithal because of a flaw in our ruling political ideology.

The Great British historian, Lord Macaulay, predicted the future unraveling of America’s economy in a letter written in May 1857. Macaulay’s prediction was based on his analysis of American institutions. Discussing the life of Thomas Jefferson with an American author, Macaulay wrote, “You are surprised to learn that I have not a high opinion of Mr. Jefferson, and I am surprised at your surprise. I am certain that I never wrote a line, and … uttered a word indicating an opinion that the supreme authority in a state ought to be entrusted to the majority of citizens [counted] by the head; in other words, to the poorest and most ignorant part of society.”

According to Macaulay the United States was becoming increasingly democratic throughout the nineteenth century. And this tendency, he argued, was dangerous to liberty and to the country’s economic well-being. As Macaulay explained, “I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.”

Macaulay pointed to the French Revolution and to the tendency of democratic movements to despoil the rich. “You may think that your country enjoys an exemption from these evils,” Macaulay wrote to his American correspondent. “I will frankly own to you that I am of a very different opinion. Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World, and, while that is the case, the Jefferson politics may continue to exist without causing any fatal calamity.”

Eventually, of course, the United States must fill up with people. It must lose its economic advantages. “[T]he time will come, noted Macaulay, “when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us.” America will then be urbanized, with a large population of “artisans.” Then it will happen that large numbers of these artisans will sometimes find themselves out of work. “Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test,” wrote Macaulay. “Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million, while another cannot get a full meal.”

With the supreme power in the hands of a discontented multitude, what kind of government are they likely to elect? Would it be a government committed to “the security of property and the maintenance of order”? Or would it be a government that gets through hard times by robbing the rich “to relieve the indigent”? Eventually, wrote Macaulay, the Jeffersonian bent of the United States will result in the destruction of property, the plundering of the wealthy. “It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the government, and the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy.”

As we see today, all levels of government in America are involved in relieving the distress of the poor and unemployed, and we also see that this is presently accomplished by taxing the rich as well as by taking on debt. Presently the United States has the most progressive income tax system in the industrialized world. The problem here, in respect of the future, is the role played by the rich in investment and general economic progress. Without the rich, there is no future economic opportunity for the poor.

The process Macaulay wrote about, as anyone with eyes can see, is now on the point of playing out. The COVID-19 crisis has brought things to a head. Macaulay explained to his American correspondent, “I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning, that you will act like people who should in a year of scarcity devour all the seed-corn, and thus make the next a year not of scarcity, but of absolute famine. There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation will increase the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.” As the process of unraveling continues, he added, “Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians … as the Roman Empire….”

The “barbarians” who lay in wait are the Russians and Chinese. The communist demagoguery they have supported in Africa and Latin America, especially in their control of Venezuela and South Africa, is predicated on the dynamic Macaulay outlined in 1857. When people are struggling in poverty, why not encourage them to despoil the rich and thereby empower the militant left (which works closely with Beijing and Moscow)? Here is the dynamic of a popular socialist revolution. The way things are playing out now, this destructive process falls directly in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy of asymmetric warfare.

Economic warfare is imbedded in Moscow’s long-range strategy. This strategy was described in detail by Czech defector Jan Sejna, in a 1982 book titled We Will Bury You. Starting on page 100, he described a plan to hobble the U.S. economy and foster domestic unrest. There is no question that the communists have long intended to bring down the U.S. economy through a series of strategic moves. We can now see these moves taking place. It is a process that will continue as military pressures intensify.

NOTES AND LINKS

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/27/producers-warn-america-is-facing-protein-shortage-in-coronavirus-era/