The War in Ukraine will follow its pre-ordained path of blood and suffering but it is only the overture to a bigger War because Putin decided to start a barbecue next to the Powder Magazine.
This bigger War will not be fought with Guns, although this cannot be excluded, it will create the same miseries and deaths as a conventional one.
It is expected that Russia will reduce and subsequently stop deliveries of Natural Gas to Europe before the end of the year.
Putin can afford to do so because the Russian gas bought by Europe so far is at a rate that covers Russia’s total military expenditure by 150%.
Putin has built a big War chest and he can carry on attacking for about a year and must force a solution within this time frame.
The solution for Russia is to subjugate Europe through Recession/Depression and strong Civic unrest.
Europe will see a chain of bankruptcies and its Governments will try to continue the pretense of a socially caring State.
Then Putin will have Europe at his mercy because Europe will still need Russian gas for years and will fold diplomatically to ensure Energy supplies.
That is War by other means.
Russia is putting on fire the Ukrainian grain crops from Kramatorsk to Odesa.
The summer harvest is just getting underway under bombardment. Between the inability of Ukraine to export its last year’s crop which is still filling the silos and the difficulties of harvesting the new one most Ukrainian farmers will go bankrupt and the famine will continue in 2023 in many parts of the World.
That is War by other means.
Those are only some examples of War by other means.
Europe is already crumbling.
The case of Britain is a case in point. Further to the self-inflicted wound of Brexit and the Pandemic, the cost of Energy and particularly gas has given the coup de grace to the British Economy.
Important studies from Universities and Financial institutions have found that a total of 4.4 million households in Britain are struggling (one in six) with “serious financial difficulties” across the entire population.
Over 2 million British people can afford to eat only one day in two.
The proportion of households considered “secure” has dropped from 38% to 31%.
The fate of Britain is a very strong alarm bell for governments worldwide but particularly in the European States, as they emerge from the pandemic and dive into the Ocean of War, Energy prices, Recession, and Stagflation crisis globally.
The devaluation of the Euro by the World markets is proof of what is the anticipated situation in the EU.
Brussels recognizes the problem but provides no solution other than meetings of Euro-area finance ministers.
In both Britain and EU cases, the hardships are only likely to get more intense and painful as winter approaches, with Energy costs sky high.
The world has never witnessed such a major energy crisis in terms of its depth and its complexity, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said recently at a global Energy forum in Sydney. “We might not have seen the worst of it yet — this is affecting the entire world”.
This winter in Europe will be very, very difficult,” Birol said. “This is a major concern, and this may have serious implications for the global economy”.
The principal issue is not only the blatantly lacking leadership in the West, and not only there, but the fact that after three-quarters of a Century of Peace and Prosperity the Civic Administrations of most States are not geared to face the perfect storm of calamities hitting the World. They do not have any knowledge or experience to face and handle those issues.
As the Pandemic demonstrated the failure of most Health systems, Inflation and Energy are demonstrating the systemic inability of most Governments’ administrative mechanisms to cope.
In the whole World, social unrest fed by ballooning prices of everything unbalances the Social Contract, brewing a winter of discontent that will lead to Social explosions some of which are already happening.
The Ruler’s March of Folly is getting on well also in China.
Xi destructively punished the big Chinese Tech Corporations that are the pillars of China’s prosperity and growth, following a Maoist logic to gain political power at the expense of the economy.
The leadership of those Corporations wanted a more rational, global, and Economy centric China instead of an imperialistic one.
Xi by attacking them sends an already wobbling Chinese Economy into recession.
It is accurately reported that:
“Chinese authorities on Sunday violently dispersed a peaceful protest by hundreds of depositors, who sought in vain to demand their life savings back from banks that have run into a deepening cash crisis.
Since April, four rural banks in China’s central Henan province have frozen millions of dollars worth of deposits, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of customers in an economy already battered by draconian Covid lockdowns”.
On top of Covid, a tremendous heat wave is hitting China, melting roofs and roads in 68 Cities including the long-suffering Shanghai.
China is handling those disasters with its usual mix of enforcement and oppression.
The collateral damage of Ukraine’s War is the destruction of the dream of the rebirth of the Silk Road of China (BRI).
The end of the Silk Road was to be the new European Eldorado for Chinese goods and services. That Eldorado lost its buying power together with its appetite for doing business with China.
The Chinese Economy is wobbling.
About 10% of dollar-denominated sovereign debt is at a high risk of default, said portfolio manager Lisa Chua in an interview with Bloomberg. Russia and Sri Lanka have already defaulted this year, and there are now a record 19 developing countries with sovereign debt trading at distressed levels.
Copper prices, the surest indication of the future of the Economy, are dropping to pre-2020 levels.
Even Oil traders anticipate recession and are dropping the price of Oil. Not Gas, Oil only.
All the above make clear that the Global Economy is about to be pushed over the edge this Winter.
What is all leading to is global Social unrest will make the Yellow Vests look like holidays.
With unemployment increasing and real wages dropping a lot, “People are four meals away from Revolution” is the old forgotten dictum.
Of those four meals, two or more are already skipped in the World. Sri Lanka is just a foretaste of things to come.
People do not wish to understand the emerging hard realities.
The French cafes and the British pubs were full of a merry clientele in the Spring of 39 when Madrid was falling. War was declared on September 39. Cafes and Pubs were still full until May of 40.
Then realization came.
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