The Duran Podcast - G7 and the decline of empire

Episode Date: June 16, 2024

G7 and the decline of empire

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the G7 meeting taking place in Italy and the BRICS meeting that's wrapped up in Russia. The foreign ministers meeting as well as the finance ministers or just the foreign ministers. I believe so. Yeah, I think it was the foreign ministers, but there were certainly people from the finance side there also. And that is the most important part of this now because it's the finance. side, it's moving forward. Yeah. Do you want to start with the bricks then and go to the G7 or the G7 first? No, let's start with the G7 because I think we can get that out of the way fairly quickly.

I mean, even in the West now, the fact that there's been a G7 meeting is attracting less and less attention. I mean, the only thing these people have done is that they've come up with an agreement to provide Ukraine with the $50 billion loan, which, as we've discussed in an honor, the video is one of the stupidest ideas on the planet. But anyway, they've come up with that idea. In practice, in every other respect, these G7 meetings now have just become meaningless

and empty rituals put together by people who are completely out of ideas. The G7, when it was first launch. I can remember when it was, by the way, there was a summit in Rambouillet in Paris, which was called by the French president of that time in 1968, just Gadistan.

It was also supposed to be an economic summit, an informal summit of Western leaders, to try to keep the world economy, as it that was, on track. And at one point, it serves some kind of a purpose. But the G7 is now a shrinking part of the world economy. And even if it was a larger part of the world economy, the leaders in question are all underwater politically, Shultz, Macron, possibly Biden, definitely soon act, and they're out of ideas. They really have no plan going forward, and it shows. I mean, they're not really managing any part of the world economy anymore. So they're issuing meaningless talking points increasingly taking, I suspect, We haven't yet seen the final communicate, but I suspect it's going to take a very strong line against Russia, obviously, but probably against China too, despite the fact that the Europeans are completely tied up in trade with China.

But in terms of, you know, a real plan going forward about how to move things forward, they're not going to come up with anything like that. Now, the contrast with the bricks who are expanding is becoming more and more striking because they've had this foreign minister's meeting and the foreign ministers all came. I believe they all came. The Russians obviously chaired it because they're the chair of the bricks this time. And the Russians are telling us a number of things. The first is that there's going to be another wave of Bricks expansion, probably this year. And all kinds of countries like Thailand, for example, are queuing up to join Bricks. Might be Algeria as well. Algeria was very annoyed last year that it wasn't able to join.

And I suspect this time they probably will be invited if they do want to join. Colombia, by the way, is another possibility. So that's one thing that the Russians are telling us is coming. The second thing that the Russians are telling us is that the bricks are now moving very far forward with setting up their own finance and trading mechanisms. Apparently this is, we're actually going to have a completed proposal by the time of BRICS Leaders Summit in September, which, you know, isn't that far off now. And what is clearly happening is that the BRICS are emerging as a trading group of the major

non-Western economies. It's an alternative trading group with its own financial. payments and messaging architecture and its own regulatory systems and things of that kind, operating in parallel with the existing trading system, financial and trading system, which is operated by the West. So what we're looking at is a major bifurcation in world trade. The G7 ineptly and pretending to lead the existing financial and world trading system. An alternative one being created at extraordinary speed.

And that's what came out of this meeting, this meeting in Russia. It's what's going to come, I'm sure, from the leaders meeting in September. in Kazan. And Putin today, by the way, is giving a major speech to the Russian foreign ministry officials in which he's talking about also creating a new security architecture. For the whole of Eurasia, NATO will be invited to participate, apparently. But that would mean participating alongside China and India. Unlikely they would agree. But anyway, a new security architecture being created, at least in central and eastern Eurasia, if not the whole of it. And that also, in some respects, ties up with the brakes.

Yeah, he is saying a new security architecture in all of Eurasia. Absolutely. That's what Putin is saying at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What's the point of the G7 anymore? I mean, I don't understand what the point of it is. I was under the impression that the G7 was about finance, economics, trade. But they don't even spend one minute talking about that or addressing that. They invite Zelensky.

What is Zelletsky? What is you created Zalensky doing at the G7 meeting? I mean, this is absurd. It really is absurd. And then they have these ceremonies where they're signing these security agreements with Ukraine. There's no place for this stuff at the G7. Do this on your own time, Biden and Zelensky. Yeah.

This has no place in the G7. None of this stuff. It's this is just all PR tactics. It's just all PR. That's all it is. And PR, the G7, it doesn't really deal with the concerns of the G7 and their place in the world. and in world trade. Their focus is on destroying Russia and China.

How does that help the finance, the financial situation of these countries in the G7 going after Russia and China? Going after China, that's going to help your financial situation, G7? I mean, the G7 should just be dissolved or it should be named something else. I don't know. Maybe call it the group of countries plus the man in the Greek. T-shirts. Giving money to each other.

I don't know what to call it anymore because there's no purpose to it. Zero. There's zero purpose to the whole thing. You're completely right. I mean, by the way, there have been articles in the Chinese media that are making exactly that point that the summit meeting, the G7 musings now, have become just meaningless rituals. I mean, the security agreement that is being made between Zelensky and Biden,

is a case in point. In itself, it provides for nothing beyond what the United States is already doing. It is not a treaty. So the United States is not entering into any treaty commitments for Ukraine. It is not undertaking to defend Ukraine. And it's only going to function as an executive order of the president, which means that a future president could simply set it aside at the drop of a hat or the flush of an ink pen.

I mean, it is a meaningless thing. But it's often the way, by the way, anybody who is familiar with the fall of empires will know that as empires decline, the ceremonies become more and more elaborate. The rituals become ever more. more elaborate and ever more complicated, because the people who are leading this declining and collapsing empire seem to somehow need the reassurance of the ceremonies in order to

persuade themselves that they still matter. So this is what the G7 is. By God, as the Bricks is a genuine, purposeful organisation. At its call it, I mean, maybe some of the members, of the bricks are just passengers. But at its core, there is a very dynamic, China, Russia, to a great extent, despite what people think, India triangle that's driving it forward. The very fact that there are tensions between India and China, by the way, probably to some extent, even intensify that quality of dynamism. And, I mean, they have a plan.

And, you know, it might not be a plan that works out in. all its details. I mean, you know, all kinds of things could go wrong. But anybody who's worked in business or law, or war or anything like that, knows that the person who has the plan tends to be the person who wins. And the real focus of decision making is moving away, drifting away from the G7 because, as I said, a ritual, ceremonial meeting in which they all sign up to whatever agenda it is

that the Americans have drawn up for them. The American bureaucracy has drawn up for them. A little bit like Politburo meetings became, apparently, in the Brezhnev era Soviet Union, when, you know, they all met in a splendid room. They spent hours, as droning over speeches that had been drawn up for them. They signed off on documents.

They never really meant anything. That's basically what the G7 has become. It's as an empty ritual, very, very different from the much more purposeful institution that it was when it was first set up. But it's got no answers to any of the real problems of today. It's not connected to the reality of the lives. are the people of the West, who are the people that the G7 is supposed to represent. As you say, people like Zelensky get invited, who have no real role in any of the decisions that ought to be made. But it makes the people who would turn up feel important.

And, you know, for someone like Rishi Sunak, who's going to be out of the job of Prime Minister, It's a nice consolation that you can turn up to this meeting for the last time, meet all the important leaders there, have the champagne at the can of Pays, and he comes back to London, feeling refreshed and welcome with some people, even if not with the people, he was supposedly elected to serve. Not that, of course, he was elected, but that's another story. Yeah. Even Politico, they read an article with a title, something like along the lines of Maloney and a bunch of lame ducks meet it at the G7. They called everyone there lame ducks. Yeah, they are. I mean, the G7 is useful. Call it something else. Call it something else because it has nothing to do with the well-being of the citizens of the G7 countries.

Just real quick, I want to pivot back to Putin's speech at the foreign ministry. And he did in fact say that there does need to be a new security architecture in Europe, in Eurasia, and that Atlantisism is over. over. This is done. It's over and it's time to move on. And obviously, multipolar and bricks is the, is the future. Putin at this speech that he gave, he also said that Russia is is ready for, for negotiations with Ukraine. But he put out his terms. And his terms are, well, his terms really should not surprise anybody because we've been talking about Putin's terms and they are tough. But he said if the West, if the United States and Ukraine agree to these terms, then Russia's open to negotiating and end to the conflict. Basically troops leaving Russian territories, would they consider to be

Russian territories, Alexander, that includes Herzl, Zaporosia, as well as other cities, which are being fought over today. Russia is basically saying Ukraine has to leave. We consider these areas, these regions, the entirety of Herzlund and Zaporos. We consider these to be Russians. Now, of course, he talked about Ukraine's neutrality, Ukraine not joining NATO and Ukraine committing to neutrality. So no NATO, non-aligned, nuclear-free Ukraine, demilitarization of Ukraine in accordance with the down-Bold agreements, and of course the protection of the Russians in Ukraine, the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine. And Putin, once again, said, these are the terms. If the United States, if Ukraine does not accept, then the conflict will continue. And, you know, what can we do?

This is not, we're not going to bear the responsibility of this conflict continuing, because once again, these are the terms to negotiate to find the peace. What are your thoughts on? No, I mean, this is exactly, we've been talking about this many, many, many times. Notice that he's talking about peace in Ukraine at the same time now as he's talking about a Eurasian architecture, which of course means ultimately the restructuring the security system in Europe. In Putin's mind and in Russian mind, the two are links. But of course, that orbit guarantees that the West will never agree to this. So Putin can afford to be or appear to be reasonable, and he is.

Nothing that he's proposing, by the way, goes against the fundamental core interests of the Western powers. I mean, they could agree to this with a peace in Europe, stable situation, crisis in Ukraine would be ended. We wouldn't need to lift the sanctions. asking us to lift the sanctions in response. We could agree to all of this in the West. Life would go on. People in Berlin and Paris and Venice and Rome and London would continue to be fully secure. We could agree to all of this.

Ukraine could agree to this. And of course, it would be saved. It would lose territory that is going to lose anyway. But it would save hundreds of thousands of lives, probably it would have a future as a country. But they're not going to agree to this. Because of course, from their point of view, there are two problems with it. Firstly, it basically means the death of the neocom project.

You know, breaking up Russia, fragmenting it, engineering regime change there, isolating China. That's what Putin means, by the way, when he says Atlanticism is dead. The Nicon project, in effect, he's telling us is dead. It can't play out. But of course, the Niacons will never accept that. Hell will freeze over before the Niacons admit that this project, which is really Project Russia, it's not Project Ukraine, has failed. So they will never agree to it for that reason.

But the other reason they won't accept it, at least this particular group. of leaders we have now will not accept it is because it would be an enormous political and geopolitical defeat and Biden, Sunac, Schultz especially, Macron, they can't go back to their voters and say, look, we went through all of that, we spent all that money, all of those tens of thousands of people were killed, your living standards fell, the inflation became along, and we ended up giving to the Russians more than they were asking for at the beginning. I mean, it is, it would be too big a cell even for the Biden team to spin. So they're not going to do it for that reason as well.

So they're not going to give up Project Russia. And they're not going to admit the scale of the defeat that this was. would be. So they're not going to agree to it, despite the fact that on any objective analysis, these are very reasonable terms. Most of the people in these regions, in Donets, definitely, in Lugans, definitely, in Crimea, absolutely, in Zaporosier and Husson as well, probably would prefer to be in Russia. I mean, you're not imposing on the people there something that they don't want. That's the reality, even though, of course, again, no one in the West will admit to it. But no one in the West is going to agree to this. They're going to come up with all kinds of reasons why

they can't agree to us, that they won't agree to it, that it would justify aggression, that it would enable Putin to achieve an ascendancy over Ukraine, which, by the way, it would They would do all of those things. They'll come up with every possible explanation, why they won't accept it. And of course, by doing so, they're signing the death warrant for Ukraine. Because the Russians will advance westwards. They will regain all of these territories. At some point, they will also take Kharkov, and they'll probably take Adessa as well.

And it's quite likely they may take Kiev too. and Ukraine will be devastated and tens and tens of thousands of people will die and it will all be for nothing. But that's not probably something that the neocons and

the Western leaders worry too much about. Yeah. All right, we'll end the video there. The durand.com. We are on odyssey, bitch shoot, rumble telegram and also go to the Duran shop.

use the code Football 24 and pick up some football merch take care