Eve, here. European countries apparently haven’t gotten the memo that the US wants them to pay more for defense and become better client states, even though they have to buy weapons from the US (Stas Kapnivik explains that even nominally the EU’s systems depend on US parts, and it will take more than a decade for the EU to develop a replacement), and they are now also dependent on US energy.
The United States perfected this system of so-called debt cropism after the Civil War. Comments from Matt Stoller at A Debtcropper Society in 2010:
The expression “man” in “fight the man” originally referred to the creditor. In the 19th century, “the man” meant “furniture shop” and referred to a merchant who sold the year’s goods, usually on credit, to 19th-century sharecroppers and southern farmers. Farmers were often illiterate and certainly did not understand the arrangements they were entering into, with liens placed on their crops and interest rates ranging from 80 to 100 percent per year. As he approached the supply vendor who would allow him to purchase seeds, equipment, and even the food itself, one farmer looked down, meek and nervous, as he saw his debt listed in a notebook. Because of deflation and usury, farmers usually had more debt at the end of the year than they had at the beginning of the year. Their land was often confiscated and eventually most of them became sharecroppers.
They fell in love with the man and eventually became his slaves. This structure of sharecropping and usury, bound together by political violence, continued in some parts of the South into the 1960s. In the 1960s, Kennedy witnessed the poverty in rural Arkansas and called it “shocking.” These were the fruits of usury and a society built on unsustainable debt.
Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst specializing in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the new Cold War. He holds a doctorate from MGIMO, which is affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Originally published on his website
This would not only be a blow to the Kremlin’s coffers, but also clearly exacerbate the threat to Russia’s national security from the European direction, and the same model is ready to be applied to the south, as well as to the Turkish-led threat from the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke to RT India for an in-depth interview on a wide range of topics ahead of his visit to Russia for the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. One of the most important ones, and one that I’ve spent a lot of time working on, was the United States’ plan to permanently control global energy markets, especially the European Union. I have referenced a US doctrinal document for this purpose, likely alluding to the National Energy Control Council and related policies, as evidence of this goal.
Not only has the United States imposed sanctions on Russian energy, a policy carried over by Trump 2.0 last fall, with new sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, but it is also now adjusting post-Maduro Venezuela’s oil exports as a means of expanding its de facto presence in global markets. Furthermore, the massive disruption in regional energy exports caused by the third Gulf War, triggered by the US and Israel, has created a supply crisis in the EU, which the US expects to supply at higher prices.
But it doesn’t have enough oil and gas on its own to do that completely, and even Venezuela’s exports, which it effectively controls through proxies, won’t be enough anytime soon, as scaling them up requires time and investment. Therefore, Lavrov believes that “the Americans are planning to restore the blown up Nord Stream pipeline… They want to buy it at about a tenth of the price paid by the Europeans… (but) the price is rather determined by the Americans” and therefore believes that it will be much more expensive than the Russian pipeline.
According to Foreign Minister Lavrov, that’s not all. “They also want to control the transit gas pipelines from Russia to Europe through Ukraine to control these flows, and they are open about it. So their goals are perfectly clear. They want to have all important energy supply routes under their control.” President Lavrov “warned about Trump 2.0’s plans for world domination” earlier this year, but the energy side is one of the most important, and it is clearly moving quickly when it comes to Europe.
As a result of the US seeking to permanently control the EU’s energy market by expelling Russia, the US will forever dominate EU foreign policy. As we explained earlier this year, “the United States has weaponized Russophobic paranoia and energy geopolitics to gain control of Europe,” which in turn is accelerating the transition to “NATO 3.0,” which is expected to lead to the construction of a “cordon” around Russia’s western and southern borders, as predicted here.
The western half includes Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Ukraine, and Romania, all potentially subject to Germany, while the southern half includes the joint Turkish-Western subjects of Turkiye, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and perhaps soon Kazakhstan. The southern half was recently detailed here. Furthermore, the vertical gas corridor would weaken Turkish-Russian relations, while Turkiye’s Trans-Caspian pipeline project would intensify tensions between the two countries, both of which are tied to the United States.
A US plan to permanently dominate the EU’s energy market would therefore not only be a blow to the Kremlin’s coffers, but would also clearly exacerbate the threat to Russia’s national security from the European direction. The same model is poised to be applied to the South through the two aforementioned pipelines. The challenge for Russia is therefore the difficult task of halting and then reversing this trend that has gotten out of control. Failing that, these potential threats must be confronted, sometimes directly.
