July began with a series of bangs that cannot be ignored.
I’m not talking about the noise coming from both Russia and Ukraine over the ‘counter-offensive’ or who wants to blow up the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant.
I’m talking about the downstream effects that conflict has brought about. The old world is breaking down along sectarian lines as we watch Russia continue to fight the West to a standstill along the banks of the Dnieper river.
And a standstill should be the most likely outcome on all of our geopolitical bingo cards.
From capital markets to geopolitics I’ve been targeting next week’s big NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania as a potential turning point.
All of the conflicts out there today clogging up the headlines, from naval encounters in the Persian Gulf to Janet Yellen stoking conflict with China with her mere presence, reduce to a single conclusion.
Every major power faction in the West is fearing loss of power.
In 2018 this was a big insight into geopolitics. Today it’s passe and with good reason.
It’s obvious.
But that’s where the easy part ends. Because when you reach periods like this, where some players have gone off script and the plan has not survived contact with the enemy, the natural reaction to that is factionalization.
Cartels are meta-stable, all of them. From the local school board to the biggest international convocation of globalists, cartels are only as strong as the current hand held by all the players.
To use my well-worn hockey analogy, when the team is winning there are no problems in the locker room. When the losing starts, that’s when the fingers point, the voices rise, and eventually the coach gets fired because you can’t fire the whole team.
Today French President Emmanuel Macron may just be the coach.
The infighting at the top of the cabal that thinks it runs the world is reaching a fever pitch. The stench of desperation is so thick now they have to send the old folks out to do diplomacy because they don’t sweat as much.
And this brings me to France and Macron.
Long Guillotines
The riots in France have been a long time coming. The middle class has been in revolt for years over Davos policy designed to destroy their lives and force them into pods or be destroyed. From the Yellow Vests initial protests to today’s outright riots, France has been building to this moment for years.
Immigration has riven the strong French identity apart. And now we have the predictable inter-racial violence sparked by the death of a 17 year-old Algerian. But is that the real story? Is it the only angle on this story?
Of course it isn’t. And I’m not here to tell you I know what that real story is but I can tell you, as always, that the timing is dubious especially considering what’s happening at the international level as we approach next week’s NATO summit.
My good friend Alex “All Roads Lead to London” Krainer published a thoughtful piece on France and, predictably, he came to the tentative conclusion that the current explosion of violence in France bears all the hallmarks of a British-led color revolution.
And it’s hard to disagree with him.
France has been a thorn in the side of the march towards NATO expansion and US/UK-led dominance of policy for decades going back to DeGaulle. Even committed globalist leaders like Francois Hollande and Jacques Chirac opposed the way NATO has morphed since the end of the Soviet Union (see Alex’s brief history lessons for context).
Now, it’s not as simple as Macron would like you to believe; he’s the good cop to everyone else’s bad cop when it comes to war with Russia and/or China. But you would be hard-pressed to believe otherwise if you just scanned certain headlines and didn’t dig even a millimeter deeper.
Everyone in the EU has their assigned roles and they play them to the hilt perfectly. The problem comes when those roles clash with the other members of the cabal, some of whom are either getting cold feet or believe the current leadership is off-program.
This is what I think is happening between the Anglosphere and France, in particular.
Macron was not playacting when he was blindsided by the AUKUS alliance and the cancellation of the submarine contract in 2021. His powerbase rests on keeping both the French military, held in very high regard by the French people, and the French military contractors happy.
Losing that contract was a major slap in the face to both. So, this lends some credence to Macron being the point man for the EU’s power play to control/undermine NATO and replace it with his long sought after EU Army.
In the run up to the current war against Russia being fought in Ukraine, Macron has presented himself as the guy trying to stop the madness and avoid war. He very publicly made a call to Moscow before the war broke out to try and intermediate.
Of course the Russians let it be known that Macron only called to reiterate the same old tired demands about Ukrainian territorial integrity. As far as his being the voice of reason in Europe it’s all theatre all the time with Macron.
He’s a master virtue signaler.
What he really wants is what I’ve been saying Davos has wanted from the beginning of the Biden administration: a half-crazed US/UK going to total war against Russia in Ukraine to weaken both sides while he positions France and Germany to be the new defense contractors for Europe.
This would set the stage domestically for Europe to then push for the end of NATO, further subsume national sovereignty into the EU regulatory Borg and eventually roll all of this up into a UN-led global government.
On this front he’s been a useful idiot for old British globalist powers (c.f. Episode #146 of the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Podcast with Richard Poe)
I’ve amended that to now add in marginalizing Italian industry to ensure Franco/German hegemony over the EU as part of the part. We all learn as we go here, folks.
Now, I’m not saying this is a smart plan, or even a very likely outcome, but it is clearly what he and the rest of the fart-sniffing, out-of-touch, arrogant Eurotrash commies want and continue to believe they can get.
So, Macron is playing the long-game for Davos to get Europe independent from the US/UK security architecture of NATO while leading an internal French takeover of the EU itself. And don’t think for a second that he/Davos don’t want to flip this whole project on its head leaving the British as the serfs this time.
This is rankling the old British Neoconservatives and their partners-in-crime at the US State Dept., National Security Council, K-Street think tanks and the CIA.
It’s nothing new, folks.
France and England have always been rivals. And the Brits are constantly triangulating France and the US to keep both off-balance all the time. They use Polish and Baltic Russophobia to triangulate against Germany all the time as well.
It’s what pathological malignant narcissists do.
Triangle Offense
That said, the machinations within the EU are still there with France working with Germany to keep the Italians down while setting itself up to invade northern Italy under the 2021 Treaty of Quirinale signed by PM Mario Draghi (job well done) and witnessed by President Sergio Mattarella.
Both of them Davosians to their core.
Sure it’s hailed as a ‘new level of cooperation between France and Italy,” but it’s exactly what you think it is, a poison pill to ensure Italy has a tougher time leaving the EU and giving France easy access to buying up Italian companies, subverting Italian sovereignty and ingenuity for the glory of France.
Consistently in recent months Macron has been playing “good cop” while on global tour. During the recent meeting between EU leaders and China, for example, the Germans reprimanded China about human rights and supporting Ukraine while Macron signed a big deal for Airbus.
Then there is Macron’s recent attempt to worm his way into the upcoming BRICS Summit in August to which he was rejected to no one’s surprise. But again, it’s just like the phone call to Putin before the war.
“See! He’s the nice Eurotrash commie globalist. He wants to make nice nice with the dirty Slavs and Muslims.”
It’s all so very tiresome.
And that brings me to the arguments made by Alex Krainer and others that the current riots in France look like an attempted color revolution against Macron. Macron’s behavior induced, I’m sure, more than a little schadenfreude in Russian President Vladimir Putin who only last week had to shut down what still looks like a US/UK play against him through Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
After years of watching Macron sneer viciously during attempted overthrows of Assad in Syria and Lukashenko in Belarus only to remain silent during Prigozhin’s rebellion two weeks ago, Macron is now decrying ‘foreign influence’ in France’s troubles demanding social media be shut down, like he was some horrific Iranian mullah, and now openly using dictatorial powers to spy on people through their phones.
I mean, what is he, some kind of vile authoritarian dictator?
Where’s George Soros and his pathetic Open Society Foundation (now having to cut staff drastically as the funding dries up) to decry the clash of governance models? Isn’t France now no better than Russia or China?
The stunning silence is golden as it were.
Heading Off NATO at the Pass
If the UK was behind this French powder keg exploding what would be the proximate cause for it?
It’s no secret that the British are fuming about Defense Secretary Ben Wallace no longer in the line of succession to lead NATO. President Biden, now openly owned and operated by so many people he can’t possibly know who he’s representing anymore as the noose closes in around him at home, crushed Wallace’s candidacy to retain Jens Stoltenberg for another year as General Secretary.
Why Stoltenberg? Consistency in leadership to run out the clock. Because the true heir apparent Ursula Von der Leyen’s term is up next year as EU Commission President, that’s why. Von der Leyen is Klaus Schwab’s girl through and through. And her rising to the top of NATO is all just part of the real plan to deprecate NATO as the EU goes its own way.
In the lead up to next week’s summit Stoltenberg made comments that pricked up the ears of Andrew Korybko who noted the omission of continued arms support to Ukraine in his expectations of what would be achieved.
Stoltenberg:
“I expect Allied leaders will agree a package with three elements, to bring Ukraine closer to NATO. First, we will agree a multi-year programme of assistance. To ensure full interoperability between the Ukrainian armed forces and NATO. Second, we will upgrade our political ties. By establishing the NATO-Ukraine Council. And third, I expect Allied leaders will reaffirm that Ukraine will become a member of NATO. And unite on how to bring Ukraine closer to its goal.”
I agree with Andrew that there is something happening here that the UK, Poles and Baltics are not going to like one whit. They’ve been trying to set up a backdoor treaty with Ukraine to create a NATO tripwire. Polish and Lithuanian presidents were in Kiev in late June discussing the formation of a joint brigade with Ukraine for later this year.
Setting the table for Von der Leyen to succeed Stoltenberg leaves a very Davos taste in NATO’s mouth which would suit Macron to a tee and leave the UK hopping mad.
Have the Europeans finally realized they can’t outlast the Russians in Ukraine because the US military and banking system are saying, “That’s quite enough of that, thank you very much?” If you want to fight for Ukraine, you do it.
If so, then they are ready to call it a day in Ukraine and let their plans to have Blackrock et.al. rebuild the country in Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution image.
With President Biden coming under increasing pressure the window for escalating this war past the point of no return for NATO and the US is closing. Hence the rapidity with which cards are hitting the table and markers getting called in.
And if that is the case then wouldn’t it make sense for the UK to accelerate civil unrest in France, sow internal division at the exact wrong moment, when the Fed and the Bank of Japan are squeezing the European continent between the twin millstones of higher energy costs driving inflation and higher interest rates blowing gaping holes in national balance sheets?
City of London is losing its control over its US colony. The Fed is now wholly independent of the LIBOR board. Our capital markets will trade independently of the concerns within the UK and/or Europe.
It’s no longer “Our banks, your problem” for the US. It’s now “Our dollars, your problem” for Europe.
Think back to Macron’s bitching about the cost of US LNG and the UK announcing major offshore oil and gas investments. This led directly to the ouster of Prime Minister Liz Truss and Europe’s Rishi Sunak coming into power.
With everything moving so quickly, mapping who works for whom at this point is nearly impossible to work out unless you keep the basic principles of triangulation and colonization in mind.
It may all come down to the next couple of weeks in France as this revolt against Macron may just be the biggest blackmail gambit we’ve seen in a long time.
But nothing less than the fate of a 300 year project for world government hangs in the balance. Everyone of these horrific factions wants to rule the world but none of them have the means by themselves to pull it off. So, watching them maneuver each other into the line of fire would be hilarious if the stakes weren’t so freaking high for the rest of us.
But that’s enough for today.
In part II I’ll try and tackle why the financial side of this is almost more interesting than the political side.
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