by Alex Davidson

As a multi-polar world comes into being, challenging American global domination, our planet has become a more dangerous place. The United States unapologetic backing of Israel’s decimation of Gaza and its people and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine serve as current examples. Before the current conflagrations the US-led Western ‘War on Terror’ brought death and destruction to thousands in the Middle East as America’s way of showing who is boss after 9/11.

America will not give up its hegemony over the world gracefully. However, many countries and peoples are now saying ‘enough is enough’ of America (and Europe) running the world. The Global South is not taking it any more. One thing is certain: it will not be a smooth ride to a multi-polar world.

ISRAEL'S WAR ON PALESTINE 

Israel’s war of genocide, scorched earth and ethnic cleansing in Gaza along with its settler colonialism and murders in the West Bank, funded and abetted by the US, has united the world against the carnage. 

While the US continues to send more armaments to Israel, Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State, cynically called on Israel to minimise civilian casualties. Israel has no intention of minimizing civilian casualties. It has already killed 21,978 Palestinians as of 31 December 2023, 0.82 percent of the Gazan population — the equivalent of around 500,000 Brits or 2.7 million Americans. Another 51,000 have been wounded. Half of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the U.N. (1) Israel has assassinated at least 80 Palestinian journalists and over 130 UN aid workers along with members of their families. Civilian casualties are the point. This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinians. The objective is to kill or remove 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza. (2)

The overwhelming call for a ceasefire in Gaza by the international community was expressed in the UN General Assembly resolution passed on 12 December 2023. 153 countries voted in favour of a ceasefire, with 23 abstentions and 10 against. This showed the extent of the isolation of Israel and the US. (3) The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, invoked Article 90 of the UN Charter which states that, “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the UN Security Council any matter, which in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.” This article of the UN charter has only been invoked 3 times in the last 70 years – 1960 (over the Congo), 1979 (over hostages held by Iran) and 1989 (over Lebanon).

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) initial draft resolution at the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire but this was watered down under US pressure. The call for the “urgent cessation of hostilities” was replaced by “creating the conditions for the cessation of hostilities” in order to avoid a US veto. The resolution was passed by 13 votes with 2 abstentions (US and Russia for different reasons). Russia had proposed an amendment calling for a ceasefire which was carried with 10 votes for and 4 abstentions. The US voted against and therefore vetoed the amendment.

Vassily Nebenzia, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN, in his speech commenting on the resolution, which passed, said, “This is not a moment of triumph of multilateral diplomacy but rather a moment of gross unprincipled blackmail, open scorn on the part of Washington for the suffering of Palestinians and the hopes of the global community to put an end to it…”    Ambassador Nebenzia added, “Washington pushed through language that actually gave Israel a licence to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza…” (4)

It should be noted that the UAE is host to the largest American airbase in the Middle East where there are 10,000 US troops. The UAE military is supplied and trained by the US, UK and France.

Israel’s genocidal intent and the ethnic cleaning of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank among other outcomes so far has created divisions between the US and its long-standing Arab allies and within the US itself.

DIVISIONS IN THE US 

In an unprecedented move, Josh Paul, resigned as Director of the US Department of State which oversees US global security assistance annually of over $10 billion in funding and over $150 billion in arms transfers. He received widespread support from his colleagues in the State Department and many of them joined demonstrations. Explaining his resignation Josh Paul said, “I think the policy approach from the US has been security for peace, that if Israel feels secure, it will feel comfortable making the concessions necessary to allow peace. But what we have seen instead is the more secure Israel feels, the more it has pushed the envelope, the more settlements have expanded, the more civil rights have been taken away from Palestinians in the West Bank, the more the siege of Gaza has continued. And so I think we need to step away from that way of thinking and ask if maybe instead of security for peace there’s some way of peace for security.”

He also explained how Israel is unique in the way that the US deals with its arms support: “We are talking about $3.3 billion a year in foreign military financing, which is the state department’s main method for providing military assistance and granting military assistance overseas. Incidentally, the state department’s total budget for foreign military financing typically hovers around $6 billion. So we’re giving more than half of our military assistance globally to Israe…unlike almost every other country in the world, Israel is also permitted to spend up to 20 percent of its foreign refinancing on what we call offshore procurement, which means that it can spend it directly in Israel. The rest of foreign refinancing has to be spent in the US supporting US jobs with the US companies. But Israel gets to spend some of its money domestically, and over the decades that’s actually greatly enabled the expansion of Israel’s own domestic defense industry, which is now a top 10 exporter of defense arms and often competes with the US.” (5) 

The US actions in aiding and abetting Israel has also led to disagreements and tensions with its long-time allies in the Arab world.

ISRAEL AND THE ARAB WORLD 

The Arab states have unanimously condemned Israel’s war on Gaza and it has put pressure on the governments of the countries which signed the Abraham Accords brokered by the Trump administration in 2020 to pull-out of those agreements. Several Arab countries - UAE, Bahrein, Sudan and Morocco - signed these agreements with Israel which were designed to normalise relations between them and Israel. The US smoothed the path to these agreements by selling 50 F-35 fighter jets to the tiny UAE; recognizing Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, making the US the first country in the world to do so; and removing Sudan from the list of designated terrorist states and loaning it $1.5 billion. The US aim was to extend these normalisation agreements with Israel to include Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.

However, since Israel’s war on Gaza the Israeli and Bahraini ambassadors have departed from both countries. Bahrain has seen large demonstrations in support of the Palestinians, which is very unusual as demonstrations are normally prohibited if they are against the government.

Other developments in the Middle East will also not please the Americans including that of the Arab League re-admitting Syria in May 2023 following its suspension in 2011. Meanwhile Israel, while it conducts its war on Gaza, continues to bomb Damascus and the US continues to occupy parts of Syria and steal Syrian oil after its failure (so far) to bring down Assad.

China brokered a deal in which Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore formal diplomatic relations in April 2023. And then in August 2023 both countries applied to join BRICS and were admitted into membership on 1 January 2024. These developments will not be welcomed in Washington.

BRICS

The creation in 2009 of BRICS, the informal organisation bringing together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is an important development in the creation of a multi-polar world order. In 2023 a further fourteen countries applied to join the organisation and at the Summit held in South Africa the following countries were invited to join - Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). With its change of government, bringing to power Javier Milei, Argentina withdrew its application on 30 December 2023. The other invited countries joined BRICS on 1 January 2024.

BRICS has established the New Development Bank, a BRICS payment system and reserve currency. It has a stated aim of reducing the dependence on the use of the dollar for foreign trade.

DE-DOLLARISATION 

A variety of issues have made many countries wary about being too dependent on the dollar. These include US sanctions on Russia, the freezing of some $300 billion of Russia’s foreign currency; and the billions of Afghanistan’s frozen assets given to victims of 9/11 by Biden. This weaponization of the dollar has given rise to a feeling in large parts of the world that America cannot be trusted with their dollar reserves.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a report documenting “a decline in the dollar share of international reserves since the turn of the century,” with central banks around the world increasingly diversifying their holdings. The study noted that this “decline in the dollar’s share has not been accompanied by an increase in the shares of the pound sterling, yen and euro…” Instead, “the shift out of dollars has been in two directions: a quarter into the Chinese renminbi, and three quarters into the currencies of smaller countries that have played a more limited role as reserve currencies.” (6)

In 1999, 70% of global reserves were held in dollars. That is now down to 59% and continuing to decline. The IMF’s first deputy managing director, Gita Gopinath, made remarks reflecting this historic shift, in an interview reported by the Financial Times, titled Russia sanctions threaten to erode dominance of US dollar, says IMF. (7) The Financial Times quoted her as saying, “that Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine including restrictions on its central bank, could encourage the emergence of small currency blocs based on trade between separate groups of countries…We are already seeing that with some countries renegotiating the currency in which they get paid for trade”.

Western sanctions on Russia have forced Moscow’s trading partners to seek alternative payment mechanisms. China and Russia have moved toward boosting their bilateral trade in each other’s currencies. A landmark currency swap agreement between China and Saudi Arabia will further diminish the role of the dollar in international trade. China is Saudi Arabia’s biggest trading partner.

More oil sales are now being transacted in non-dollar currencies such as the renminbi. With the advent of western sanctions Russian oil is now either sold in the local currencies of the buyers or in roubles. The EU was forced to find a way round its own sanctions to allow some EU countries to continue buying Russian oil. Some Indian refiners have begun paying for Russian oil purchased via Dubai-based traders in dirhams. Overall the importance of the dollar has declined significantly from 2014 to 2022 in oil markets.

Oil is one of the most important and widely traded commodities in the world, and it has traditionally been priced and traded in US dollars. This has given the US dollar a dominant role in global financial markets as countries that want to purchase oil must first acquire US dollars in order to do so. Even allowing for moves away from oil into renewable energy sources oil will remain important for some time into the future.

In addition, a strong US dollar is becoming more expensive for emerging nations, leading some to trade in other currencies. In 2023, Brazil and Bolivia began to pay for imports and exports using the Chinese renminbi.

The dollar is still dominant, “But for how much longer?” is the question as the movement away from it is clear.

Ukraine

Ukraine’s much heralded and oft postponed Spring 2023 counter-offensive failed.

“Putin’s Russia is closing in on a devastating victory. Europe’s foundations are trembling.” This was the headline of the Commentary by Daniel Hannan in The Telegraph on 9 December 2023. The subhead elaborated the theme in grave terms: “Kyiv’s counteroffensive has ended in failure. This could be NATO’s Suez moment.” (8)

It is not official, not yet, that Ukraine’s grand counteroffensive, has proven to be a failure and that defeat is in the offing. The closest to such an admission came from Volodymyr Zelensky when the Ukrainian president declared that the counteroffensive “did not achieve the desired results.” This admission reminded one of Emperor Hirohito’s famous declaration on August 15, 1945, when he announced the surrender on Japanese radio. “The war,” he told his subjects, “has not necessarily progressed to our advantage.” 

This failure marked the end of Ukraine’s possibilities of taking back the territory that is now part of Russia. However, the Zelensky regime persists in pushing this unlikely scenario as it desperately pleads for more Western and especially US military aid.

There is now much speculation in the West about the eventual outcome of NATO’s proxy war against Russia. Several scenarios are presented including a Korean-type stalemate with Ukraine effectively cut in two; a period in which Ukraine re-groups, goes into defensive mode and re-arms courtesy of the West preparing for another counter-offensive some time in the future; or Russia takes over the whole of Ukraine and threatens a take-over of the rest of Europe. 

The scenario of Russia threatening the rest of Europe if it wins in Ukraine is designed to deepen Russophobia and scare the peoples of the West into continuing support for Ukraine.  

However, it is not a serious likelihood. Russia’s main aim has always been its own security, secure its access to the Black Sea and defend the interests of ethnic Russians. It has never been Russia’s aim to occupy Ukraine.

This was clear from Russia’s signing of the Minsk Agreements in which it agreed to the creation of the autonomous regions of Donetsk and Luhansk within Ukraine. However, with Ukraine reneging on the Agreement with Western connivance, Russia launched its Special Military Operation. Its stated aims were to de-nazify and de-militarise Ukraine and to make it neutral. Germany and France later admitted to buying time for Ukraine to be further armed, Even after the war had started there were further moves to reach a deal with Ukraine which was scuppered by the US and the UK.

NORD STREAM PIPELINE 

Perhaps the US will settle for an uneasy truce in Ukraine having achieved some of its aims, for example, the killing of the Nord Stream pipeline.

Biden took the decision in the Autumn of 2022 to order a CIA-led team working undercover in Norway, with that country’s special forces - who have been an American asset since the end of the Second World War—to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 1 had been supplying Germany with cheap Russian gas since 2011. The newly constructed Nord Stream 2 was ready to go when it was shut down, under American pressure, by Chancellor Scholz in February 2022. Three of the four Nord Stream pipelines were blown up in September 2022. (9)

The American fear was that Germany, with winter coming on, might decide to keep the Russian gas flowing to keep houses heated and industry running. It also allowed the US to export its more expensive Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to the now needy Germans. So, the ending of Nord Stream was a good deal for American business and achieved a key US aim of stopping Russian gas going to Europe. With the competition eliminated, in December 2023, Sefe, a German state-owned energy firm, struck a $55 billion energy deal with Norway’s Equinor that will supply Germany with one-third of its industrial gas needs for ten years, with an option for a five-year extension. (10)

Besides ending Nord Stream, the US also achieved another of its aims with the further expansion of NATO.  A continuing war would also serve as a way of bleeding the Russian economy, destabilising the country and ultimately perhaps of fulfilling its long cherished aim of dismembering Russia.

Russia, having been deceived over previous agreements with the West, is unlikely to be interested in a new Minsk deal especially since it is winning on the battlefield. The prospects for Ukraine and its people are not looking good. It is a bankrupt and corrupt country entirely dependent on western handouts and military supplies for NATO’s proxy war against Russia.

And then, there is the question of China, seen by the US as an even bigger threat to its dominant position in the world.

A DANGEROUS WORLD

The emergence of a multi-polar world is not welcomed by the US as it sees its interests and its world hegemony threatened. It will use all of its considerable powers to remain dominant in world affairs. It will use its economic clout to enforce its will and if that is not enough then it will use force. And it has considerable force at its disposal. The US military has bases in some 700 locations in around 70 countries. Its military expenditure is $750 billion annually and it spends more than the next 10 highest spending countries added together. (11)

The US and its western allies will not hesitate in causing mayhem and destruction as they have done in the past, are doing at present and will do into the future to defend their long-held dominant and exploitative position in the world.  However, for the overwhelming majority of the world’s people the only option to end war, ethnic cleansing, forced removals, exploitation and poverty is to fight back during the emergence of a multipolar world.

(1) https:www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67670679?utm source=substack&utm medium-email, 10 December 2023

(2) https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/text-translation-Israeli-plan-for-etnic-cleansing-of-Gaza-/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

(3) The ten countries voting against a ceasefire were: Austria, Czechia, Guatemala, Israel, Liberia, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, and the United States.

(4) https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145022

(5) Interview with Josh Paul, The Nation, 30 October 2023, https://www.thenation.com/article/society/josh-paul-resignation-interview/

(6) IMF Working Paper, The Stealth Erosion of Dollar Dominance, 24 March 2022.

(7) The Financial Times, 31 March 2022.

(8) Daniel Hannan, Commentary, The Telegraph, 9 December 2023. Daniel Hannan is a former Tory MEP. He is now Baron Hannan of Kingsclere and sits in the House of Lords.

 (9)  Seymour Hersh How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline, 8 February 2023.

(10)  Germany's Sefe, Norway's Equinor strike $55 billion gas supply deal, Reuters, December 19, 2023.

(11) After the US ($750 bn) the next ten highest countries military spending are China ($237 bn), Saudi Arabia ($67.6 bn), India ($61 bn), United Kingdom ($55.1 bn), Germany ($50 bn), Japan ($49 bn), Russia ($48 bn), South Korea ($44 bn), France ($41.5 bn), Brazil ($27.80 bn).

Damage caused by Israeli airstrike in Gaza city October 2023 pic by Wafa

US military aid for Ukraine pic by US Dept of Defense

More oil sales are now being transacted in non-dollar currencies such as the renminbi. With the advent of western sanctions Russian oil is now either sold in the local currencies of the buyers or in roubles