Democracies vs Autocracies – America’s Last Stand?

America’s political agenda, especially foreign policy and the war in Ukraine in particular, largely determines German and European policies towards Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. No secret is made of this either, but with every new sanction against Russia it is pointed out that everything was decided in consultation with the allies. Germany and other NATO countries have been ordered to self-impose trade and investment sanctions that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine.

According to the US President and the State Department, Ukraine is just the opening scenario in a long-running clash between two opposing factions, the democrats and the autocrats, that is dividing the world into economic alliances. The global divide between East and West will drag on for many, many years. Americans want a unipolar US-centric dollar economy and Eurasia aspires to a multi-polar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public and private economies.

America’s Democrats want to shift the world economy out of the hands of governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under US control. US diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to promote privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependence on US technology, oil and food exports. Countries that oppose American ideas of financialization and privatization are labeled dictatorships and autocracies.

The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global rupture is Germany.

The steel, chemical, machinery and automotive industries are most dependent on imports of Russian gas, oil and metals from aluminum to titanium and palladium. But despite two Nord Stream pipelines being built to bring cheap energy to Germany, Germany has been urged to decouple from Russian gas and deindustrialize, which of course suits climate rescuers very well.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said „Germany should replace cheap Russian pipeline gas with high-priced US LNG gas“. The Germans are now building LNG terminals in a hurry, in the false hope of being able to free themselves from dependence on Russia. The federal government has budgeted 5 billion for the expansion of the infrastructure and released it in the budget.

The result will be that German industry will become uncompetitive. Insolvencies will spread, employment will decline, and Germany’s prosperity will plummet. The Americans don’t care.

Most political theories assume that nations act in their own interest. Otherwise, they are satellite countries that do not have their fate in their own hands. Germany subordinates its industry and standard of living to the dictates of US diplomacy and the self-interest of the American oil and gas sector. It does so voluntarily — not because of military force, but out of an ideological belief that the world economy should be run by US Cold War planners.

The neoliberal demand for a US-dominated world economy is wrapped in flowery words and acts under the guise of „democracy“. America’s „world economic religion“ is the strict implementation of the Great Reset of Professor Dr. Klaus Schwab, „You will no longer own anything and you will be happy“. Already in 10 years the impoverishment of the population should have become reality.

The World Bank, IMF and central banks dictate economic practices and set the terms that all member governments must follow. As Margaret Thatcher said of her neo-liberal privatization that was destroying Britain’s public sector, „There Is No Alternative (TINA)“ .

Trade sanctions are a form of excommunication. They reverse the principle of the Westphalian Peace Treaty of 1648 , which made each country and its rulers independent of foreign interference. President Biden characterizes US interference as ensuring his new antithesis between “democracy” and “autocracy”. By democracy he means the well-funded establishment that creates financial prosperity by lowering living standards for working people, as opposed to mixed public-private economies that aim to promote living standards and social solidarity.

In today’s New Cold War, the West’s neoliberal ideology mobilizes fear and hatred of „the other“ and demonizes nations pursuing an independent path as „autocratic states.“

The broken promise

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 promised an end to the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved, Germany was reunited, and American diplomats promised an end to NATO because the Soviet military threat was gone. The Russian leadership cherished hope that, as President Putin put it, a new pan-European economy would emerge from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

The Russians expected Germany, in particular, to get involved in Russia and build the largest economic area in the world together with Putin. Russia would pay for this technology transfer by supplying gas and oil, as well as nickel, aluminium, titanium and palladium.

A NATO eastward expansion was inconceivable for the Kremlin at the time. Today we know that American interests were different and that America did everything possible to prevent Putin’s vision of creating the world’s largest economy without America, China and the Middle East from becoming a reality.

The Germans had their hands full with reunification, and meanwhile the Americans were expanding their relations with the states on the eastern border of Western Europe. They promised the countries freedom, security and prosperity, sponsored pro-Western candidates such as B. Volodomyr Zelenskyj, invested in trade relations and the establishment of „democratic structures“. American Middle East expansion went hand in hand with the construction and placement of US military bases on the eastern border of Western Europe. The Kremlin felt increasingly threatened by NATO expansion.

Ukraine, the poorhouse of Europe and one of the most corrupt and criminal countries in Europe , is run by oligarchs and far-right parties that identify with German Nazi ideology in many areas.

The destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline sums up American underhandedness. Since reunification, the United States has been demanding that Germany detach itself from its dependence on Russian energy. These demands were rejected by Gerhardt Schröder, Angela Merkel and German business leaders. They pointed to the obvious economic logic of mutual trade between German manufacturers in Russian raw materials.
The US problem was preventing Germany from approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Victoria Nuland, President Biden and other US diplomats showed that the way to do this was to incite hatred of Russia. The New Cold War was designed as a new crusade. This is how George W. Bush described America’s attack on Iraq to seize its oil wells. The US-backed 2014 coup created a puppet Ukrainian regime that has spent eight years bombing the Russian-speaking eastern provinces. NATO thus provoked a Russian military response. The result is that the world is splitting into two camps: US-centered NATO and the nascent Eurasian coalition.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz told China that it should stop subsidizing its economy, otherwise Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China. Exactly as Americans would like it to be. The German Council on Foreign Relations is a neoliberal „libertarian“ arm of NATO that calls for Germany’s deindustrialization and increasing dependence on the United States.

The last stand between America and Russia will be fought at the expense of the Germans. We are the ones who suffer, not the politicians, who will go on with their fine lives without restrictions. For us, a continuation of this policy means nothing less than having to make do with much less than has been the case up to now. The citizens of Germany have never been rich; the politicians in our republic made sure of that. The „rich Germany“ that one hears about all the time only affects the top of the social pyramid, but not the majority of Germans.

That is the context for today’s struggle in Ukraine, which is meant to be just the first step in an anticipated 20-year US struggle to prevent the world from being more honest with one another and undermining the imagined dominance of the US establishment. This process will force Germany and Europe into dependence on US supplies of LNG. The American strategy is to make it clear to the Germans and the EU that they are militarily and energy dependent on the United States. That may be true militarily, but not in terms of energy policy.

There have been no demands from Western governments for a negotiated end to this war because no war has been declared in Ukraine. The United States is not declaring war anywhere because, under the US Constitution, it would require a declaration from Congress. So US and NATO armies bombard, organize color revolutions, meddle in domestic politics (making the Westphalian treaties of 1648 obsolete), and impose the sanctions that are tearing Germany and its European neighbors apart.

America wants to harm other countries by denying them access to the world energy market, especially the Russian one, and increase their dependency on America.

Note on the world map: The sham or nominal democracies are not shown in the map. Germany, for example, is a sham democracy. Being able to vote does not mean living in a democracy.