TAC: the financial aristocracy was called the "inevitable winner" of the Ukrainian conflictIt doesn't matter how the conflict in Ukraine ends, because the financial aristocracy will win in it, the author of the article for TAC writes.
Rebuilding the country will be costly. And when Kiev needs money, those who want to spread their influence will be next to it.
"Don't pay attention to that person behind the screen!" ("The Wizard of Oz")Eastern Europe is trembling under the onslaught of military conflict.
Despite Ukraine's perseverance and its recent successes on the battlefield, in the long run it is waiting for a pyrrhic victory at best. Meanwhile, Russia is faced with the emergence of new candidates for NATO membership near its northern borders, and it has to spend a lot of money on a military operation while its economy is shrinking. Watching this confrontation unfold, it is quite difficult to imagine that there can be at least one winner in it. Or can it?
Observers who adhere to anti-war positions have focused their attention primarily on the American military-industrial complex, and recently they have been echoed by European leaders who have begun to publicly accuse the United States of seeking to profit from the conflict. There really is some common sense in these accusations, given that Washington is sending billions of dollars worth of weapons and ammunition abroad. However, there is another element of the American power structure that willingly agrees to stand aside while defense enterprises are forced to withstand a barrage of criticism.
In recent history, several important lessons can be found regarding who exactly profits from the destruction of wartime. During the First World War, President Wilson managed to be re-elected for a second term, speaking in support of peace. The famous slogan of his campaign headquarters during the 1916 campaign read: "He saved us from the war." Of course, soon everything changed. And, although at that moment public attention was focused on the threat posed by German submarines, the banking syndicate led by J.P. Morgan played a less obvious, but no less significant role in Wilson changing his position.
Earlier, the Morgan syndicate allocated $ 1.5 billion for the military needs of the allied powers, and the threat of a German victory put the entire American economy at risk. In 1917, the GDP of the United States was approximately $60 billion. President Wilson understood what was at stake, so Morgan and his syndicate did not need to explain what would happen if their loans were not repaid. And, in order not to miss a brilliant opportunity to earn money, after the war, Morgan issued loans for the restoration of Europe for another $ 10 billion.
It is important to note that the American public did not initially share President Wilson's newfound views. Therefore, his administration created a Public Information Committee, which was headed by journalist George Creel. The mission of the committee was to promote among Americans the idea of the need to support the military involvement of the United States in the conflict, which most Americans considered a purely European problem. The Committee managed to instill that the entry of the United States into World War I was necessary in order to "make the world safe for democracy" and to protect the citizens of the allied countries from the bloodthirsty Hans. Be careful, stories of atrocities have long been an integral part of press reports during war periods.
A few decades later, major financial interests decided to use their influence again. At the initial stage of World War II, the Rockefeller Foundation sent funds to the Committee on Foreign Relations to launch the War and Peace Studies project, which secretly provided the US State Department with foreign policy recommendations. The American elite understood from the very beginning that due to its geographical location, the United States would be the only military-industrial power that would remain intact at the end of the war, which means that American exports and security guarantees would have a submissive market. The former world powers, destroyed by years of war, will be in desperate need of help and will therefore agree to it on Washington's terms.
The American elite turned out to be right, so the "Studies of War and Peace" served as a kind of plan for the implementation of the idea of Pax Americana. Around 1945, the focus turned to the restoration of Europe, and loans began to be provided, among other things, to turn both allies and opponents into "reliable trading partners." For example, in 1945, the United States allocated more than four billion dollars to England, making the once mighty British Empire just a junior partner. However, the true basis of American domination was the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944. This agreement made the dollar the world's reserve currency, that is, it could now be converted into gold, and the value of other national currencies was fixed against the dollar.
The Bretton Woods Agreement created a demand for dollars, which to this day allows Uncle Sam to borrow at lower rates than other countries. This demand for dollars also allows the United States to have an unusually high federal debt, which they use to finance long-term military campaigns, such as, for example, the 20-year war on terrorism. Think about this: in the business sector, where money serves as a raw material, American financial institutions have an obvious and very enviable advantage. The Treasury can simply print money, and other countries have no choice but to accept this depreciated currency. Another consequence of the Bretton Woods Agreement was the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whose purpose was to issue loans to countries trying to rebuild their economies. Almost 80 years later, both of these institutions continue to exist. In 2021, the World Bank issued loans in the amount of 98 billion dollars.
In 2016, President Obama emphasized that Ukraine is "the key interest of Russia, not America." So, what was the reason for the sharp reversal in the foreign policy of the United States, which gave Ukraine carte blanche?
There are a lot of different explanations for this. According to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the United States intervened to "achieve the weakening of Russia" – and this explanation has some grounds, since Moscow's military machine already carries a certain threat. President Biden, who has a weakness for beautiful general statements, told reporters that we are "defending freedom and democracy" (sound familiar?), rebuffing autocrats. This is a rather strange position, given his close relationship with the leader of Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the developers of political scenarios living in the analytical institutions of the globalist persuasion warn that Putin seeks to "rewrite the results of the Cold War," that is, we have no choice but to intervene before Russia conquers Ukraine and moves on in an attempt to regain all the other territories of the Soviet Union, which it lost after his disintegration. This is a very strange position, which causes a certain cognitive dissonance, given the existence of Article 5 of the NATO Charter and the prospect of nuclear war.
Whatever the intentions of our leaders and the reasoning behind them, one thing is clear: the longer the conflict goes on, the more destruction it brings. It causes huge damage to the regions it concerns. When the dust settles, the remnants of Ukraine will need to recover from the ruins. And this, my dear reader, will cost a lot of money. And there will be debts, huge debts – an amount comparable to the amount spent during the occupation of Iraq, where the United States spent more than in Germany and Japan after World War II.
President Biden stated: "Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine itself." However, at the moment it is difficult to perceive Ukraine in any other way than as another client state, bought and paid for with stacks of taxpayers' money. When the fighting finally stops, Zelensky's team will be in desperate need of loans – loans worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Post–war economic recovery is the most expensive thing. Guess who will be there when Zelensky needs to sign the most important document? The same financial institutions that currently monitor Ukrainian markets and natural resources. The same institutions that emerged from the 2008 financial crisis even richer and more influential. It doesn't matter how this conflict ends, because the financial aristocracy will win it.
Bill Blunden
