By: Carlos Fazio | Part 2 of 2

With arrogance and disdain, the Biden administration’s diplomacy of force circulates in several lanes. It’s the advantage of being an empire. After unleashing a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to appropriate the hydrocarbon market in Europe and subordinate Germany more, it has just crossed a red line with China with the Pearl Harbor or Gulf of Tonkin-style provocation starring Nancy Pelosi with her visit to Taiwan. In an effort to preserve declining imperial hegemony in the world, the “deep state” that controls the strings of the White House has decided to intensify hostilities against the two Eurasian nuclear ballistic powers endowed with raw materials and advanced technology, which could generate a large-scale conflict.

Combining with the deliberate quasi paralysis of the world economy by the covid regimes, the war of “sanctions” of the US and NATO against Russia brought the European energy market to an alarm phase and fueled a recession and inflation in the euro zone of large proportions that could intensify next winter. The b ig winner of the European energy debacle was the United States, which for the first time in history became the world’s leading exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG), surpassing that carried by Russian pipelines. In April 2022, France,Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Poland accounted for 54.1 percent of total GLN exports. In addition to the high price of gas (six or seven time higher than the normal figure and needed to heat their homes and supply energy to companies), these five European countries must pay 40 percent more for LNG for processing and transport.

In the long term, the Biden administration’s goal is to destroy the central role of Russia in the world energy economy. In 2021, Rusia was the world’s second largest oil producer (536 million tons), behind the United States (711 million) and ahead of Saudi Arabia (515 million), which in mass means, respectively, 13, 17 and 12 percent of world production. The imposition of “secondary sanctions” that would punish foreign buyers who don’t comply with US restrictions, could block the possibility of doing business with US corporations in China, India, Turkey and other countries that buy Russian hydrocarbons.

In the short term, the main loser from coercive US and NATO sanctions to bring about regime change in the Kremlin and decouple Russia from the world economy is Germany. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and he collapse of the USSR, Germany had been constructing a block of interdependent economies that group together, on its western flank, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland, and on the eastern flank, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, with different roles, with Germany as the hegemonic center. That converts Germany into the world’s third economic power, behind the US and China, a country that became Germany’s main trading partner.At the same time, Teutonic industrial circles had created synergies between China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, with the goal of integrating states that would bring together logistical, productive and energy-exporting zones, and importers of industrial goods from China and Germany. Russia, with its Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, served as the indispensable connector between China and Germany. In addition, Russia supplied the “German bloc” with cereals, fertilizers, nickel, uranium and “critical” metals like titanium, scandium and palladium. Subordination to the US obliged Germany to weaken its ties with China and to close its channels of communication with Russia, which will reduce its sub-imperial role in Europe.

Faced with the scarcity of hydrocarbons derived from the policy of global chaos promoted by the US, which led France, Germany, Italy and Austria to return to the use of coal, exhibiting the rhetorical scam about the “green transition.” Washington and Brussels had to resort to two producer countries that are members of the “axis of evil” in order to rescue the “civilized world:” Iran and Venezuela, which have managed to survive years of illegal coercive measures.

Within the framework of the US geopolitics of oil. the Venezuelan case is paradigmatic. Venezuela, with the world’s largest proven hydrocarbon reserves, managed to defeat a State coup by the Pentagon and the CIA in 2002 and successive forms of unconventional warfare (of fourth generation, hybrid, cognitive, cybernetic, soft coup, economic-financial, cultural and media warfare), including assassination attempts against President Maduro, the confiscation of PDVSA (the state oil company) abroad and the seizure of the physical assets of CITGO, its subsidiary.

As former National Security Adviser John Bolton and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper just cynically admitted, both participated in the Trump plans to overthrow Maduro and even assassinate him. In his book, A Sacred Oath, Esper explains: “Operation Sentinel to intercept Iranian and Venezuelan ships on the high seas was part of the Pentagon’s oil and naval blockade against both countries to prevent trade relations and the exchange of oil technology between the two nations. With the intention of destroying the Venezuelan energy structure and infrastructure, Esper reveals that during a meeting with the puppet president Juan Guaidó in Washington, in February 2020, a direct US military invasion was contemplated; the theft of Venezuelan oil in international waters; the naval blockade of Cuba and Venezuela although it was an “act of war” under international law, and an aerial or amphibious military attack with US special forces on the strategic José A. Anzoástegui Petroleum and Petrochemical Industrial Complex, in eastern Venezuela. He also exhibits the participation of the former National Security Adviser, Mauricio Claver-Carone (now head of the IDB), in the failed Operation Gideon, on May 3, 2020, with mercenaries and former US marines.

As Donald Trump said on Friday, August 5, to troll Biden, now “we are a nation that begs for oil from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and many others.”

Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Monday, August 8, 2022, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2022/08/08/opinion/019a2pol and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee