Can BRICS’ New Currency Profoundly Change the Global Financial Market? W/Einar Tangen

Hey, and welcome to Geopolitical Trends. We are here. Is Einar is here connecting with me already. So let me pull you up here, Einar, so we both of us can show up on this screen. Sharing the screen.

Okay.

All right, present here, share screen. Okay, I know, Tanga tab. Okay, share. Okay, where is Aina? Right here at the screen. There you are.

Can you hear me? Yes, again, loud and clear. I hope you can hear me. Pleasure to be with you.

Hold on, let me see why the screen is— the audio should work.

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can. Can you hear me?

I can't hear you.

You can't? Okay, that's odd. The microphone is on.

No, no sound.

No sound.

And I have everything on here on my end.

Do you have any mute button? It says everybody can hear and see me.

So no sound here. So let me make sure here. Hey guys, if you can hear the sound, give a thumbs up on the chat box. So to make sure I can hear you. Why am I not able to hear you?

I don't know, it says that I can hear you.

All right, let me figure this out. Why? Yeah, sound is good. It's just I'm gonna— I can hear and see both of you.

Okay, okay, now you can hear me here through here.

Okay, let's see this one here.

All right, test, test.

Sound is working but I can't hear.

The sound is working but you can't hear. That sounds—

Wow. Why the sound is not echo reduced? Mic testing. Okay, default speaker.

Test, test, test, test, test. 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Yeah, testing.

Still can hear. Damn.

Oh, sorry, I'll sign out and come back.

Yeah, everything's working from my end here. So, uh, all right guys, we're just gonna have to wait till Einar will reconnect again because I am not able to hear, to hear him. But yeah, he's right here, I can see him, but I can't hear. You might want to reset as well. Okay, let me reset it, but, uh, let me reset my sound here again just to make sure. Test, test, test. Yeah, okay, it is working here.

My end.

Yeah, I can see you, but I can't hear.

Wow. Yeah, at any time, be ready. Yeah, can you hear me now? Testing, testing. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Okay, wow.

Oh, okay, um, everything's good on my end. I can hear you clearly. My side here, but yes, I think so. Testing, testing. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Test, test. Test, test. Okay. It says everybody can, everybody can see me and hear me. I don't know what else to say.

It's a stream.

Testing, testing, testing, test, test, test, test. Test, test, test. I can hear you. Nothing on from my end. Test, test.

Test, test, test.

Wow. I can hear you. Can you hear me?

No. Wow. We're kind of stuck, Einar. There's the image, but we can't hear each other.

Yeah, well, I can hear you. I can hear you.

Yeah, I can hear you.

Yes, I can hear you. You can't hear me?

I'm gonna just, uh, ask the question, so we'll just go ahead with that and see how this will move forward. Okay, so, well, first of all, thank you so much for being here, Einar. I truly appreciate you, uh, carving out the time. I know how busy you are, and I'm sure our viewers are so excited to— I mean, the moment I mentioned you to them. They're like, okay, we're going to be there to listen to what Einar has to say. So, well, I'm not going to waste too much time here. I'm going to get in into it right away. And I wanted to start by asking the first sort of not a question, but in a form of conversation. What do you make out of the NATO summit's final communiqué? I had a chance to read it. And there was in a section, Section 6 and Section 23, focused specifically on China. And I'm gonna just share with our viewers one brief statement here from the communiqué. It says, and I quote, "Strategic competition, pervasive instability, and recurrent shocks define our broader security environment. Conflict, fragility, and instability in Africa and the Middle East directly affect our security and the security of our partners. The People's Republic of China's stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security, and values. We remain open to constructive engagements with the PRC. What do you make out of this, Einar, given that, given that the summit Here he is focusing on, on, on, on China rather than dealing with the Ukraine issue.

Well, I mean, quite frankly, this is what China had feared all along, that NATO is in fact preparing to have a dual front proxy battle, not involving American troops directly, but using assets in the, in the East, whether it's India, Japan, South Korea, Philippines. I don't think it really matters much to the U.S. who is used, but as long as American soldiers are not directly on the front line. This is due to the failures of all the Middle Eastern conflicts, the failures in Africa, also in South America. So, China is, I think, justified concern, the statement that you've given. Clearly indicates that the US is on a very, very negative side. And I say the US when I mention NATO, simply because NATO is basically motivated by the US. You can see statements from Washington showing up directly in the talk points of other countries, especially the Five Eyes. UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

I can hear.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Your turn. Your turn. You can ask. You can ask. Now I can't hear you. No. No. Uh.

No.

Oh.

All right.

Oh, okay, there you are.

Yeah, I can hear, but you are muted. Yeah, sorry guys, there's some— this technical issue, uh, uh, I don't know why. It's— everything was working earlier and, uh, just all of a sudden it went silent. So, add to stream. So we're trying to see if Einar can reconnect again. Yeah, here he is coming here.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes, can you hear me?

Yes.

Oh, wonderful. All right, we can have a conversation. Lovely.

So thank you, Einar, truly appreciate it. So Yeah, just a quick question, I know, why is the NATO focusing on China? Why is China becoming now the next target for NATO?

Uh, yes, absolutely. I mean, um, the U.S. is signaling that it wants to not have a direct war, as I was saying before, but to have a proxy war, to use others, uh, to, to fight, uh, what they see as an existential threat, uh, to the United States, especially this American exceptionalism doctrine that, you know, post-World War II, the US said it must lead in order to prevent World War III. It doesn't trust anybody. It's based on, you know, the Europeans are untrustworthy because they brought us into two world wars, and the rest of the world are, you know, obviously, uh, they're not white, they don't speak English, except a few exceptions like Australia and New Zealand. And therefore they can't be trusted. Uh, but even with Canada, as we have seen by the leaks, there's a tremendous amount of spying by the US on them, and including Australia. So, um, this idea of not trusting anybody, leading the world, um, or coercing it into one unipolar, uh, liberal democratic capitalist whole, uh, that was the dream. That was what the UN was supposed to foster. It was what the World Bank and the IMF were going to make. As you'll note, every time they have a loan, they include on it ideological things that you have to have an open market, that you have to change your governance. And this is all, you know, based on the theory of the greater good that the United States has. And that's what American exceptionalism is. So China's Um, success is the issue. We would not be having this conversation if China hadn't been successful, but its success is this existential threat, especially to the people in Washington, not to the people of the United States. They, they just want to go about their business like the people all around the world. But the people, the elites in Washington in particular, have this strong belief that unless they're on top, the world will be in chaos. My question is, the U.S. has been on top for quite some time, yet the world is in, in chaos, not only through political conflicts or interference with other countries, but simply on a global stage, the inability of the United States to rally countries around the true existential threats, extinction ones, involving, you know, climate change, the current economic situation, water issues, energy issues. These, these are all things that have to be addressed but are not being addressed, simply in my opinion, as a diversion from the failures of successive American governments who can't deal with their own debt, you know, $32 trillion and counting. Just through the first 6 months of this year, the U.S. has accumulated another $1.4 trillion, which will be added to the debt. I mean, this, uh, it's frightening. I mean, if the— if it wasn't the United States, people would say that this was a Ponzi scheme. The U.S. has not lived within its budget, yearly budget. That means the amount that comes in is exceeded by the amount that goes out every year since 2001. In addition to that, the US has borrowed very heavily for wars and the pandemic, in essence tripling their debt since 2009. So right now, you have this situation where the US is trying to shift the focus on international affairs and blame China. China's at fault for everything bad that's happened in the United States. And why? Because they're not equipped to deal with the current domestic situation?

Well, it's because I feel, Einar, that we can't compete with the Chinese. So what are we left with is to come up with some strategies to undermine and slow down the progress of, you know, why not compete? Because in competition, something good will come out of it instead of embarking on these policies. And this leads me to, uh, get your perspective on Uh, the recent trip of the Secretary of Treasury, Janet Yellen, and before her was the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, and before him was the CIA director. What do you make out of— here is a statement like this emanating from Washington, bashing and, and sort of saying whatever they're saying about China. On the other hand, sending high-ranking officials and asking, oh, with China, can we talk? What do you make out of this double standard?

Well, that's— that's— it's hypocrisy, and I think most people are aware of it. I, you know, as I said, how many times can I slap you before you don't want to shake my hand? I can say, look, you know, I just want to be— you know, we're not going to be friends, but, you know, we should get along. But by the way, I'm going to start kicking you in a few minutes. And I don't want you to react. If you react, that's hostile. And if you're hostile, then I'm going to have to increase the pressure. So these are the tactics of a bully. A bully will come up to you and demand your lunch money. And then if you don't give it to them, they'll punch you. And they say, if you fight, I'll really hurt you. And these are the actions of the United States. I don't know how else you can put it. I'd like to say that, you know, there's some grand strategy here. I mean, you, you hit it on the head. There was that incidence with Tonya Harding where she paid some people to basically break the legs of her friend, right? Her friend and competitor, because she didn't think she could compete. So the only answer was, you know, I'll break her legs and, you know, that'll be good for me. Well, unfortunately, the Tonya Harding, uh, strategy seems to be the strategy of the U.S. I mean, I, I was on with a senior, uh, statesman who had been an assistant national security advisor in a previous administration, and we were talking about the situation. He admitted he doesn't know, right, what the strategy, the Biden strategy is for China, because it's never been enunciated. All it is is we're going to contain China. We're going to try to keep them down. I don't know what that means. Given China's meteoric rise, the idea that you can somehow leverage or batter China into submission, this is the old colonial thinking. We already have the gunboat diplomacy that was used in the past as the US sails warships warships up and down the Taiwan Straits. I mean, literally, after every meeting that they've, uh, that the U.S. has had with China, yeah, they sell a ship up and down the Taiwan Straits, which they know is going to, you know, set the Chinese off. But I think it's deliberate. Um, a lot of what we're seeing here is public relations. The U.S. wants to portray itself as the good guy. All right, and they want to portray anybody who is not part on board with American hegemony, American exceptionalism, as the bad guy. So, you know, what they need is they want to say, oh look, we went over there and we tried to shake their hand and they don't want to talk to us, and then, oh, all of a sudden, you know, they're having war games around Taiwan, or they're, they're sending, uh, you know, planes, you know, it's like it's complete surprise. And this is— it's— I don't know. It's the kind of stuff that I would expect from 11-year-olds. Not people, you know, on a schoolyard playground. This kind of bullying and trying to get reactions and trying to win the favour of the crowd. But the crowd is not being fooled. I mean, look at the situation with Ukraine and Russia. I mean, for the vast majority of the world, the world, the Global South, and also the Central Asia, they look— look at this— they're not applauding Russia's actions, but they quite clearly see that this was a long-term provocation. It didn't happen just a year and a bit ago. It happened, uh, 9 years ago. Well, when, you know, the U.S. backed a political putsch, uh, to remove someone they didn't like because he was pro-Russia, and they wanted their pro-European guy in there. So they just simply did it, and that started what has led to this situation. Donbas basically said, "We're not part of you. We're more Russian. You know, you took away our vote, all right? You canceled democracy in favor of a military solution, all right? And we're out." And that started the civil war that's been raging ever since. So, you know, you look at America's actions around the world, all right. It's not only that the U.S. is running, in essence, a Ponzi scheme financially, but if, if you want to define what a rogue state is, the U.S. fits the bill. A rogue state is an entity that disregards, um, you know, starts wars. Check. U.S. has started wars all over the place. In fact, 81% of all conflicts since World War II have involved the United States, right? Uh, you know, how do you, how do you excuse Afghanistan? You want one guy, so you go and destroy a country. You go into Iraq because you think this guy's a bad guy, and you make up stories about weapons of mass destruction, which turn out to be utter fabrications, right?

You—

and it's, you know, Syria, Yemen, the list goes on and on. Anybody the U.S. doesn't like, if they can't overcome them economically and politically They cancel— they try to cancel them militarily. It has led to a terrible situation. Going forward with these strategies, which rely on systems that do not work, look, if tariffs and exclusions and all this kind of economic pressure worked, why is Iran still there? Why, why is Venezuela still going? Why is Cuba, after all of these years and hundreds of attempts, and not denied, hundreds of attempts to kill Castro, right, to take out a foreign leader? Why? Because, oh, he's not our guy, right?

You know, you—

I mean, there are so many instances. So the U.S. actions in causing war, hey, check, that's a rogue state. Then add to it destruction and disregard for international institutions. The U.S. does not recognize the ICC, the International Criminal Court, although it refers people to the International Criminal Court.

Yeah, that's a misnomer right there.

Well, yes, but it refuses to have the ICC judge its, you know, whether or not it's involved in war crimes. Right? No, the same thing. It's— the U.S. is the lone holdout, I think, except Israel, on the Women's and Children's Protection Act, right? The U.S. is not a member of the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea, which was created because the U.S. insisted that it needed to have more extraterritorial control, in essence, a 200-mile exclusion zone. Why? Because the U.S. is in the middle of the ocean. Didn't care about what kind of problems that this would create internationally and globally with other places in the world. Complete disregard. But here's the irony. The US isn't a signatory to it. But on the other hand, it insists that it has the right and duty to enforce a convention it's not a member to. Right? So then let's look at the WTO. China is always accused of being hostile to international bodies and standards. Well, the WTO doesn't work anymore. Why? Because the US, since the Obama administration— so this is not just Trump, oh, blame it all on Trump. This is going back to Obama. He said, we are not going to allow the appointment of any appellate judges. Well, without the appointment of appellate judge, because countries have a right to appeal. And without an appeal, no judgment is final. The WTO does not work. You can have a preliminary finding, but because there's no appellate system, it doesn't work. Now, why would the US do that? It was winning 90% of the cases that it brought at the WTO. So you're winning 90%, but that's not good enough. You have to win 100%. That is the definition of a rogue state. So everywhere you turn, the US economically, politically, and militarily is using its hegemony to force other countries. Look at what happened with, you know, these chip-making machines in both Japan and the Netherlands. The US went and openly coerced them into saying that they will not sell, which is against their economic interest, they will not sell these machines to China. Now, were these the first-tier machines? No, they weren't even first-tier machines. They were already only selling second-tier machines. But the US said, no, we don't want you selling that. You go to the example of Huawei. The British gave Huawei a clean bill of health, bill of health, through their intelligence things. They, they went through and they said, well, we're going to look at this very closely. They had a full review. The review results was there's no problem with Huawei. The U.S. had a meeting, uh, there were several cabinet officials involved. They were pounding the table telling the Brits, you're either for us or against us. All right, well, it's not about Huawei, it's whether you're on our side or their side. This is the mark of a bully. You're either with me or against me. If you're against me, I'm going to hurt you, right? This, this kind of thing. So you have a rogue state being supported by a Ponzi scheme which is now centering its focus on China, which it sees as its major adversary, all right? And but they don't want to do it directly. They want to have this kind of proxy war. And it's so bad, because one miscalculation and we find ourselves nuclear powers facing off against each other, the possibility of somebody firing by accident or design a nuclear missile, and then we are facing Armageddon. Then we don't have to worry about climate change. We will have literally killed ourselves, right?

Well, this is why I believe the— I mean, I've argued this, Einar, for a long time. The idea of us— even my days in Washington, DC, you know, I have a conversation with colleagues inside and so forth, and whether those from the Pentagon or whatever else, and I was like, hey, the idea of containing China isn't gonna work. It's because the conditions where China is today are not the same as where the Soviet Union was. So that containment policy, you may as well just forget about it because it won't work. And second, it will highlight the failure of our strategy, that if we ever had a strategy towards China to begin with. Just this morning, I, uh, I had to, uh, check on some info in Europe just to confirm few things. And I have family lives in Europe, and I checked on Germany. Well, guess what Germany just did? They told the US, no, we're gonna go with China economically speaking. It's because Germany sees where the trend is going. It's almost becoming clear to them. Of course, that came after the visit of the Chinese representative to, uh, Germany, but the US was pressuring pressuring, rather, Germany not to take the step forward, but they said, no, we will. How are we going to do that with China?

No, I agree with you. I had a meeting with one of the preeminent German think tanks about 3 days ago, and we were discussing this very issue. It was actually last Sunday, so a little more. And, you know, I said, well, what's happening here? He said, well, they issued this report report, but it wasn't approved by the entire German government. It didn't go through the process. It was a unilateral report that was given to try to thread the needle, somehow make the US happy at the same time as preserving Germany's ability to trade with China. You can't have it both ways, and this colonial era idea that you dictate, you know, that the Western powers will dictate the agenda and tell you what you can and can't discuss and what, you know, areas that are all right, we can cooperate, and the rest of the world, no, no, we don't need to cooperate with that. I mean, that's unilateralism. I mean, I mean, the arrogance. Can you imagine showing up to a business deal and says, yeah, we want to make a deal, but we're not going to discuss price because that's not something we're comfortable with. We'll just discuss terms, when you're going to deliver and do all these things. But other things, no, that's not up for discussion.

No.

All right, unless they have absolute control or think they have absolute control, that would be a nonstarter. People would just get up and walk away. So at this juncture, Germany is in a very difficult situation, as you said. Preserving their economy is being decimated. So many companies are moving out simply because they cannot effectively compete at the current prices. They are— you know, their energy costs, if they're using gas, natural gas, is 3 times that of their competitors in the United States. And, you know, I asked a few questions of these think tank personnel who represented business interests, and I said, is Is the US more of a competitor or more of a market? And their answer was, it's actually both, but it's more of a competitor. I said, what is China? Is it more of a market, or is it more of a competitor? They said, no, it's a market. Market. So you have this realization at a very basic level of what this geopolitical sturm und drang is about. Conflict. But, you know, countries that are caught in between, very, very difficult. They're trying, they're trying to, you know, as you said, maintain trade ties with a country that has 120 primary trade relations, uh, ships, uh, with countries around the world. There's only 200 countries, so that gives you an idea. Um, while at the same time, um, basically responding to a bully, the US. You know, they're afraid if we go too far, the US is already putting pressure on us to spend to send more money to and arms to Ukraine. 2% of our budget should go to that. You know, here are the Germans who are suffering. They're losing real income on a month-to-month basis because of inflation. And the government said the answer to this is we're going to spend more money on bombs. I mean, I mean, you know, if you're out there, you're about to lose your house, I don't think, you know, saying, well, you know, it's okay because, my contribution has been part of a sidewinder missile that could blow up a school. I mean, that makes me feel good. Now all of a sudden it's okay that I'm going to lose my house and everything that I've worked for my entire life. And it's because a few Russians will be dead because of my efforts. I don't think so. I think the long-term solution for this is the voters waking up and saying, we don't wants these foreign adventures anymore. All right? The U.S., you know, it's $32 trillion and counting. Large percentage of that has been based on these wars, based on supporting the Pentagon. Note that the Pentagon, the war machine, was exempted from any, uh, any kind of, uh, ceiling, uh, as part of this, you know, raising the debt ceiling. They just said, well, everything— everybody's got a— everyone's got to economize here, but not the war effort. In fact, the new budget is higher than ever, $888 billion, $90 billion of which will go to, uh, you know, the CIA for disinformation purposes and things like this. You know, don't you ever wonder what you get for $90 billion a year? I mean, the mind boggles. All right, then you— then you hear the— you see these papers, these disclosures, whistleblowers showing that, you know, they were using the cash to recruit journalists around the world to basically be their stooges, and that they're, you know, they have these extensive spy networks. So what, what is the big strategy with this? Exactly what you said earlier: accuse others of doing exactly what you're doing, and then claim, you know, oh, you know, we're the good guys. They're China spying. We saw this balloon in the sky. They, you know, this is— we have 32, all right, U-2 spy planes that fly out of Area 51, and they circumvent the world on a daily basis collecting information at about 70,000 feet in the air. And, you know, it's— and we, we say, oh, China's— China used a balloon that we can see and track, and this is sophisticated stuff, you know. And then the next level is, is already here. They, they have now unmanned, um, vehicles that have this, uh, enhanced spying abilities and data collection, uh, that can stay up for much longer because they don't have a pilot. They don't have to worry worry about the comfort of it, worry about the weight, the extra things that are necessary to support a pilot as they go about their business. They can send these things up. They can stay up for almost a day. They can circumvent the world. And as soon as, you know, they can have— they have dozens of them. We have 11,000 unmanned aerial vehicles which collect data for us. Some are in the battlefield, but others are just circumventing the globe. Spying on our neighbors, our allies. Why? Because we can't trust them. They're not American. They don't speak English. You know, why would we trust them? I mean, it's— it really harkens back to an arrogance, and it's the kind of arrogance that, if you look through history, has destroyed empires. When empires believe unassailable and that they must— that they're driven by destiny and the grace of God to rule all. That's generally when they start to fail, unfortunately.

So let me just remind our viewers who's just joining us, we are having a conversation with Einar Tengen. He's the chairman of the Asian Narrative and also a senior fellow at the Tahir Institute. So I'm going to— guys, by the way, once we're done with the conversation here, I'm going to provide you all the links and all that so you can check out Mr. Tenga. He is no stranger to the world of geopolitics and global economics and so forth. Let's turn our attention, uh, if we may, to what just happened with the statement coming out of the Indian government. This pertains to India stating that it will not support the new currency of BRICS. And as you and I know, the emergence of a new currency that is backed by gold will be good for the global economy because it will be a counterweight to the US dollar, because we have abused the, the dollar by now, uh, in imposing sanctions on whomever we want. So what do you make out of India saying no, there is no talks about this, when in reality it is? And also, why did India refuse to sign the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's Development Strategy 2030?

Okay, well, I mean, there's a couple things. I do a lot of work on Indian television, and it's, it's, it's, it's unusual. It's more tabloid TV. It's more for shock and awe. But, you know, you clearly see patterns there, right? First off, in terms of a culture in India, if you have an advantage, use it., right? And you— it's transactional. Um, you know, if, if we can get something from, uh, another party by holding things up, that's smart. That's what you should do. Unfortunately, that may apply to business, but it doesn't really apply to diplomacy. Diplomacy is a long-term game. Yes, there are national interests, but you have to start looking at it. And the reason I say this, if you look at India's track record on the recent, uh, G20 What did they do? They tried to use their position as, as being in charge of it to, in essence, settle domestic issues. They actually went to China and said, hey, listen, if you want to be part of the joint communiqué, you need to give us something on the border. This would be good for our government, right? But that's not what the G20 is about. You're supposed to put aside, to a certain extent, your domestic concerns and start thinking globally. The world is in crisis. It's not in crisis because of the border dispute between China and India. It's in crisis because of, you know, climate change and debts and you name it, the hostilities between the global superpowers. So, this is part of the DNA of how many Indians in government say, okay, we have an advantage, let's use it. In terms of the BRICS, there's some trepidation right now emerging from India. They do not want more members. There are now almost 19 or 20, depending on how you count, who have expressed interest in joining BRICS, which, if they were to join— these are middle powers. The BRICS already economically outperforms the G7. If you add these other middle countries in, it dwarfs the G7. And you suddenly start to realize that there are massive amounts of resources that are now under this umbrella, which is not controlled by the US. It's not controlled by Europe. And you even have defections, France saying, well, you know, we might want to join. What would you think about that? I mean, a complete reversal. You know, it used to be other countries said, well, we want to join, you know, what are we going to have to do? Now it's European powers saying, well, you know, we don't want to be left out, what do we have to do? So, uh, you, you have a— this, the situation where, you know, the— it's, it's growing. But India, against all, you know, rationality, is saying, well, no, no, no, we don't do that. And as far as the gold thing They know it is a good idea. India has significant reserves of gold. On a personal basis, gold is— personal gold within India is massive, because gold jewelry and things like this, these are signs of prosperity. Women's dowries are defined by their gold jewelry, et cetera. It would seem natural for them to do that, but I think they are holding out for something. Now, I do not see it as a counterbalance to the US dollar quite yet. These are still early stages, because you still need a secure way of transacting. You have billions of transactions which are going through the SWIFT system. This is where the US has been abusing, depending on, or using or abusing, depending on your point of view, their power. It was sworn up and down when SWIFT was created, uh, everyone saw the potential for misuse. The U.S. said categorically, we will never use SWIFT, we will never weaponize it, it is too important to the global financial system, uh, it is off limits, uh, we're putting it over in Europe, don't worry about it. And then, you know, you have to worry about it now because it has been weaponized, it's being used. And, you know, this is another example of illiberal America. We always say that, you know, we— why do we dislike other— there's no due process, right? There's— they don't, they don't have a legal system that, you know, gives you a fair, a fair shake. Well, what have we done? We've seized assets of Russians, ordinary Russian people, in addition to, you know, government funds and things like that, without a hearing. No hearing. We just say, oh, he's Russian, we're taking his stuff. I mean, and if you want to promote a world order of laws, you, you, the first thing you need to do is lead by example and obey the laws themselves, and the U.S. isn't doing that. So when I get back to India, India sees the tableau as basically every country for themselves, get what you can whenever you can. And SCO, you know, that, that issue is entangled with their animosity towards China and to a larger degree their animosity towards Pakistan.. And that's a different set of geopolitical calculations between them. India, like the US, like everybody else, insists that we're in the right, we're wonderful, peaceful people. It's just these dirty terrorists from Pakistan and these horrible people from China. Things— I mean, I've been on shows where the host has said, look, you know, China is envious because The Indian man, the Indian man is far superior to the Chinese man. The Chinese man can't think for himself. The Indian man has the ability to, you know, make up his own mind, to voice whatever he wants to voice or she voice— she wants to voice. And, you know, you're kind of awestruck by the enormous enormity of such sayings and things like this. But I mean, this is the kind of cannon fodder that they, they feed the masses on a daily basis. This isn't just one station. Many of the stations, the hosts themselves, not, you know, some right-wing, uh, you know, troglodyte, you know, uh, peddling, uh, national superiority, but the hosts themselves say these types of things. And, you know, they say, well, you know, it's just ratings. We just, you know, we're in the business. This is about money. And That's about eyes on things, and we have to have controversy. But those are the kinds of things that are happening. I mean, India doesn't like to talk about the fact that, you know, it started ahead of China in the 1960s on a per-GDP basis and now is, you know, 5 times behind. I mean, their economy of China is 5 times that of India. And, you know, when you bring that up, they just say, well, no, no, that's not that. We haven't agreed to discuss that. You know, that's not the point. But then they make these kind of racist statements. And I'm not Chinese. I just— I would object to this regardless of who— it doesn't matter the nationality or race of the person. I mean, this is very odd stuff to be saying on television. So, of course, And from that, what I'm saying is you get a sense of how India thinks of the global stage. They realize that it has become multipolar. But instead of saying, well, if it's multipolar, we need to have— to create a fabric in which we can all exist. And that's going to have to be set on a set of principles. China has theirs. They, you know, they say civilization initiative, the development initiative, and the security initiative. They say these are things that we should be able to agree on, that, you know, countries should feel secure. Don't create your own security at the cost of the insecurity of another country. All right, and development is good. I don't know how that you can do it. And that respect for others is ultimately necessary in a multipolar world, because if you don't understand somebody and their point of view, right, you cannot have meaningful conversation. And that means knowing more more about these countries, understanding what their needs are, trying to find consensus. This is not a corporate model anymore. The US, you know, introduced this idea that it's if you have 51%, you do what you want. It doesn't matter about the minority. That's just tough luck. But I think the emerging multipolar world needs really to have a consensus model or they do it. Now, India realizes the consensus model. But they're kind of going against it. They're saying, well, you know, you have to come to us, you have to offer us something if you want us to cooperate. And I would say that that's probably not the best strategy. It may seem— it's what I call a little clever, all right? They are just trying to play the edges, but they don't— they're missing the bigger picture sometimes.

Yeah, and they don't realize that it will backfire one way or another because that's— oh yeah, of the—

Absolutely.

You know, here's the thing, Einar, you know what, because I did, I did two videos on this and I get my share of those comments from individuals that like kind of, well, you need to take step back and think about what you're saying because what you're saying doesn't make any sense. All we are doing here is providing facts. The economy of China cannot be compared to that of India and vice versa. So when you in India calling India is a superpower. No, you can't do that because it's not a fact. And they get so upset and hyped out. And here's the thing, Ayner, that, uh, attracts my attention about these issues or statements from the external, uh, foreign, uh, Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Sarkar, was that all this happened right after the Prime Minister Modi returned from Washington. Because three things happened. This issue with the currency, the second one with the SCO, and the third one was the agreements of India and the United States to allow for the presence or the establishment of a naval, uh, hub, if you will, a US naval hub in India. What will a naval hub be doing in India if it is not for one purpose and one purpose only, which is to encircle China. And that's what's—

well, yeah, but I mean, it's kind of odd. The U.S. has already encircled China, not with one ring, but they have two rings. So I, I, I never quite understood why we put so much time and energy. Uh, the truth is, uh, when you say you're going to have a port of call for a nuclear, uh, you know, submarines, what does that actually mean? They cannot get repaired there. Nuclear submarines spend, uh, two-thirds of their life at sea and one-third in, uh, a dry dock, basically being repaired and maintained. Um, it's very expensive. They have two separate crews, all right? And then they, you know, they, they have to dry dock. Um, you— those dry docks, we're never going to allow those to be somewhere else because we don't trust anybody. So, uh, and they have to do that in the United States. So when you say that, you know, we're going to have a port of call there, it's, it's really just meaningless. All it means is that, okay, there's a nuclear sub there. Um, the value of a nuclear sub is not where— knowing where it is. The value of a nuclear sub is not knowing where it is, e.g., second strike capability. Then in the event of a nuclear, uh, war, a trigger, that mutual assured destruction would occur because these nuclear submarines would unleash their, you know, their rage on whatever country they think started the nuclear war. And at that point, the world has ended. You know, I know we have enough nuclear bombs in the world to destroy the world, you know, a couple hundred times over. Well, I always say you only need to destroy it once. And that's enough. Um, you know, this kind of overkill capacity which, uh, the Pentagon and, uh, other countries like talk— well, you know, we can destroy the world 50 times over. Oh, okay. All right. I don't know what you're gonna do. It's like, I'm gonna kill you, and then I'm— and once you're dead, I'm gonna kill you 50 more times. You're really, really gonna be sorry. You might not know it, but just think about it. I'm gonna kill you 50 times. It is juvenile, but it is scary. Obviously, as I was talking about, things are transactional. Jaishankar, he was here in China one time. He is a very smooth diplomat. If he has a strategy, a true strategy for India, and I do not mean B2B China, I mean the world, I would love to know about it because I, I've studied him, I, you know, met him. Um, I cannot discern any, uh, coherent strategy other than this kind of transactionalism, uh, that defines what they do. So they— when Modi goes to Washington, uh, they offer, you know, Washington offers some things and, uh, they say, well, in return you do X, Y, and Z. And he's like, oh sure, because I want, you know, I want the things I want, the, uh, the F I want, you know, this missile system and that and that type of thing. You know, that's the irony. Right now, the US, the biggest export of the US is becoming arms. And, you know, how is this going to solve anything? When's the last time having a, you know, a bomb created anything? You know, we've had military superiority over the entire world, but has it made it more peaceful? Did we win in Afghanistan, in Iraq? No, I mean, that's, that's why we're going towards proxy wars. We're now willing to fight to the last Ukrainian, or if necessary, the last Taiwanese. You know, we're even willing to sacrifice Japan if it's for a good cause. I mean, and this, this should frighten people. I mean, it really did on a very visceral basis, this idea that, uh, I'm, I'm not going to send my troops into harm's way, I'm going to send your children. Things. I mean, this whole thing with the cluster bombs— 100— over 100 countries have said that they don't want cluster bombs because it has been proven the use of cluster bombs, including by the U.S., has led to the greatest death toll among civilians, especially children. And yet the U.S. says, oh, don't worry about it, you know, a few cluster bombs here and there never hurt anybody. Well, here's the irony. Those cluster bombs are going to be used within Ukraine. So in the future, it's going to be Ukrainian children who are going to pay the price of this, you know, horrible decision. Yes, we've run out of munitions to, to send to, uh, to Ukraine. Well, I would take that as a time to take pause and decide, you know, how long can we send munitions? And maybe Maybe peace, maybe figuring out how we can get to the point where we're not sending munitions. Instead, you know, people are trying to rebuild their country. Uh, no, they don't want to do that. Washington has said point blank, we will not do that. Um, this is not the time. We've not had the military victory. How do you have military victory against a nuclear power like Russia, which dwarfs, uh, Ukraine's military? And, you know, The one thing everybody knows about Russians from World War II and the Napoleonic Wars is they're stubborn. They would rather burn their houses in the fields than allow anybody else to have them, especially if they're invading their, their country. Rightly or wrongly, they feel very strongly about Ukraine. Uh, I always point to people and I said, well, tell me, Russian mafia, where does the Russian mafia come from? They say Odessa. Is Odessa in Russia? And they say, sure it is. I said, no, it isn't. It's on the far southern side of Ukraine. It's a port city as far away from Russia as you're going to get. All right. So, you know, when you identify the Russian mafia in all these movies, all right, and in New York, you know, what do they call it? Little Odessa. That's the place where the mafia hangs out. That's the Russian mafia thing. Well, no, you know, it's not by accident and things like that. And yes, the Ukrainians have a feel of very different— difference from Russia, a lot of it stoked by, you know, what happened during the Cold War period and the Soviet Pact era. They felt that they were under Russia's control. They've had a reaction to it. But that doesn't mean you are going to start sacrificing your children and your husbands and wives wives to a bloody war that will not solve anything. And, you know, it's— you know, you go, you go on to this next step. Why, why is it difficult to have peace in Ukraine? Well, you had Hollande, who was in charge of France at the time, and Merkel, who was in charge of Germany at the time, negotiate two peace treaties, Minsk I and Minsk II. Now, you know, 8 years later Both of them announced that we never had any intention of negotiating in good faith. Those were just delay options while we figured out what our military alternatives could be. So how— I mean, how can you have good faith negotiations with countries who say, well, we're not going to accept anything except, you know, a victory on our terms? So I think a lot of If you start looking at Turkey, China, Brazil, these are countries, middle powers, who are not connected— or connected to both sides, but not connected to this conflict, saying it's time to have peer pressure, to sit down and have guarantors beyond those who have, you know, visceral interests in this. We have to approach this from a global peace point of view. And the US is having none of that. No, no, no, that's heresy. That's against American exceptionalism. That's against everything we stand for. So this is the real difficulty that's out there.

Let alone we couldn't be trusted anymore because we lost credibility. As a matter of fact, I had a conversation yesterday with some individuals from Washington, and there is already conversation inside Congress that they're going to be asking now for the almost pass some sort of a bill or legislation of sort to allow the transfer of weapons from Taiwan to go to Ukraine. They're gonna— that's what, how far they're willing to go. And issue some $3 billion as part of the defense spending bill. I say that's crazy. What are you doing all this for? Why are you fomenting more tensions? I mean, it's ridiculous. We never wanted to allow peace. I know that China proposed the, the 12 peace plan. I had a chance to read it. It was fair. But right there in Washington, for the first time that was initiated, we shut the down on the— we shut the door on that. We said no, ain't gonna work, even though it was, it was logic. I read it. To me, it made perfect sense, and we didn't allow it.

Yeah, you know what, I, I also read it, and, um, And what impressed me about it is there were no imposition of terms, and there was nothing in it for China. I mean, China says, OK, now we need trade, and we want a piece of the rebuilding process, and we'll support this peace process. They just set out 12 terms that, if accepted by all sides, including the cessation of tariffs and sanctions, said, let's use that as a start to begin talks and build trust. And that's basically what that document said. It says, you know, if we're going to have, uh, peace here, there are certain preconditions that we need to understand prior to sitting down the table. So China was merely trying to set the table. But, uh, as you know, you pointed out, uh, the Pentagon and the elites in Washington just say no, that runs contrary to everything that we believe. We must have military victory. Well, where have we had military victory lately? You know, Grenada. Yes, we beat the crap out of a small island manned by a few Cubans. That was, that was really impressive. Other than that, we've lost every single entity. I mean, we're the most powerful military, uh, force in the world. We're, you know, our expenditure is the equivalent of the next 9 And yet we can't win. And that's why we've switched to this proxy idea, and they're in love with it at the CIA and, uh, at the Pentagon. They get to sell all sorts of weapons, as you just pointed out, because once they take those weapons away from Taiwan, guess what? They're going to replace them with better weapons for Taiwan, right? All right. Otherwise, if, if the U.S. really thought there was a threat to Taiwan and it's credible and imminent Why would they be taking away all of the ability of Taiwan to— or compromising the ability of Taiwan to protect itself if they were really fair? I mean, wouldn't that just be a signal to China? Go ahead, take it. Yeah, they're defenseless. We took all the ammunition and missiles, you know, gave them to Ukraine.

This is—

this is your golden opportunity. They can, you know, they have enough— they have enough munitions for the next 5 minutes and that's it. Um, no, I mean, none of it makes sense from a rational point of view. It doesn't make sense from a strategic point of view.

Yeah.

But what we have now is emotional politics. People are trying to find scapegoats, uh, for the things that we can't do. And I, in US, I'm convinced, uh, I was a politician myself. I've seen it in action. I used to run political, uh, political campaigns. It's quite clear. It's looking for a scapegoat. You know, if you can't solve it, it's somebody else's fault. You know, Joe Biden has been in Congress for— in the political process for 50 years. Well, over that 50 years, the U.S. went from 62% of the population being middle class to now 50%. Tell me about how that's victory. Tell me how, you know, you know, basically, wages have stood still for this long period of time. There have been some increases, but in real terms today, uh, Americans are losing, uh, they've lost 4% of their real income, uh, since the beginning of the year due to inflation. So, you know, where, where is the, you know, the efforts to change that? Like you said, where, where are, where's the Sputnik moment where we say, you know, America, we, we can be better. We have the means to compete. We don't have to worry about shutting other people down. What we have to worry about is staying ahead of them. No, nothing, nothing from that angle. Just, you know, we will, we'll cripple them and we'll, uh, create confusion, uh, and wars around the world and sell lots of weapons. And, uh, is that a strategy? Is, is that making the world world better. I mean, you know, we, we, uh, we still are an export country, and it's not, uh, now it's more— it's increasingly more service exports. Those service exports are being threatened by the uncertainty because those services are connected to manufacturing and to goods and how things move around the world. Um, and, you know, yet we seem to be happily going about cutting our own throat and pretending that we're, uh, you know, doing something for the world and for everybody else. We're not.

Well, that's, that's what I read just yesterday. Uh, there's a report that's going to be coming out soon, uh, I think didn't make it out to the public yet, but, uh, uh, and the individual who wrote it, you know, kind of put it straightforward. We are on the verge of a recession by the end of the year, whether we want to admit it or not. And we're most Americans have no clue as to what's going on because they've been, you know, some of us been fed the narrative from the government that the Biden administration is doing this good or that, when in reality it is not. So just before I forget, I want to mention one thing about those weapons from Taiwan that's going to be going. Those are the missiles from the '60s. That's how old they are, which will be useless in Ukraine anyway. So, uh, I want to get your take, Einar, on, uh two visits by two non-official individuals, one of them from the US and one of them from Philippines. They just made a trip to China. What am I referring to here? I'm referring to the recent visit of the former president of Philippines, Duterte, and I'm referring to the former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. One— both of them went to China. Why do you think civilians now, they are in the capacity of civilians are going to China and what is the objective?

Well, I, I think there's two different ones. You can't say they're doing both the same thing. Henry Kissinger, 100 years old, uh, he was the person who said don't go into Ukraine because if you go into Ukraine, the Russians will fight you. I mean, that's not, uh, may fight you, they will. So did Bill, uh, Casey, who's head of the CIA. He said exactly the same things, and yet somehow we found ourselves there. Um, With Kissinger, you know, of course, China, the China portfolio is personal to him because he and Nixon were the ones who, uh, were integral, uh, from the U.S. side in doing it. Uh, he sees the problems. He's spoken about them. He's counseled, uh, Biden, uh, and anybody who's willing to listen, even talk to Trump. And he's told them that this is something that, um, you know, don't— you're going about this the wrong way. You need to engage China in a different way. We have different systems, but don't think that containment is going to do it. Now, he was obviously a, you know, very, very— he was a Cold War warrior. And, you know, he was not able to— you know, even he says we've gone a step too far. So he's there to try to provide some sanity. Obviously, he was invited by the Chinese government. Uh, he told the State Department before he was going to go. It was, uh, the meeting itself was mentioned, uh, during the meeting with Blinken that he had here in China. So it's not a surprise or anything. What's interesting though is the Biden administration's attitude towards it, where they're saying, well, gee whiz, you know, it's just Henry, um, you know, we listen to him, but you know, he doesn't represent us. Um, Maybe he has some secret message that the Chinese want to send to us that they're going to cave on some economic point or something like that. And I was, you know, I was on with a former undersecretary of, um, under— not secretary, under, um, he was a national security advisor, uh, assistant national security advisor, uh, last night. And, uh, he, he was— he, he couldn't, you know, he said, I can't articulate what our, our our strategy is, um, vis-à-vis China. But I can tell you that, uh, if, if Henry comes back with something, it'll be welcomed by the White House. Well, this is a question you should ask yourself. Of all the meetings that have gone on, uh, where, you know, Russia— I mean, the U.S. has gone to China and had these things— what has been offered? Zero.

Nothing.

They won't even take away the, uh, Trump's random designation of the gentleman, Defense Secretary Lee, as being on a blacklist. He was simply the purchasing manager during a long-standing Russia-China, um, security. Basically, China buys, um, engines, jet engines from Russia, and they have for quite some time. And then there was also the missile system, the 400. S-400 system, and he was just in— he was the person in charge at the time of procuring those things. So he was put on the blacklist, and there was no reason for it, right? So at this juncture, they have decided that they don't want to withdraw that. That's why there was no meeting with— it would, you know, it just doesn't make sense if China designated the defense secretary of the U.S. as a unwanted person. Um, but you know, of course the US said, well, you have to take that off or there'll be no meetings. But this is the thing, this is a hypocrisy, accusing others of what you've done yourself and refusing to abide, uh, by any sense of rationality. Um, it can only be seen as provocations. So, but Duterte is a little bit different. Uh, Duterte I think is, uh, really trying to thread the needle He's always been very concerned about the balance between U.S. and Chinese interests. He knows that the Philippines' bread is buttered economically with the Chinese, but the U.S. is a huge source of income from Filipino workers who send money back to, back to the Philippines. Also, militarily, they're very much entwined. So they're trying to thread the needle, but it's American pressure. It's Americans' side who's saying, you're either with us or against us. And if you're against us, we're going to punish you. And you saw that quite clearly in places like Saudi Arabia. MBS made it very clear he was not going to cave into the pressure. He's not going to bankrupt his country so that the US can enjoy, you know, that Biden can get reelected by increasing the amount of oil they're putting out. You saw it in South Africa. Where they, you know, they just bluntly said, you know, says, you, you, Mr. Blinken, you showed up here today and said you don't need to choose. We're not asking you to choose. But 2 days ago, Linda Grenfield, the ambassador to the UN, told me I had to choose. You know, we're no longer colonial possessions, all right? And you're hearing the echoes of this thing from Mexico down to other parts of South America. You're hearing it almost everywhere around the world. Um, now the U.S., very powerful. They can, if they want to, they can exercise— we can exercise tremendous amounts of pressure on individual countries. You know what we're afraid of is that they're going to band together and together they just say no, no. And that really, really bothers Washington. And they see this as China's fault. China's succeeding in an illegal way because it's not our way. All right, it's dirty, it's something wrong, they're cheating. They create this image, but they can't explain it. China has prospered because of hard work and planning. They didn't have resources, they still don't. On a per-person basis, they're near 100 out of 200 in resources per person. They didn't have any money, they were poor as church mice, and yet they, they went from, you know, the opening up period to today to being the second largest economy in the world.. And that, that bothers us in the U.S. because we say that's not possible. So rather than trying to examine it and reflect on it and learn the lessons from what China has to offer, and maybe, uh, you know, not copy the Chinese system but look how we can compete against it, we're just trying to shut it down.

Yeah, or you can just learn from the, uh, how China raised the the number of people from poverty to middle class, which something now we have here in the US. The number of poor people is increasing, and yet the government is not doing anything about it. So, well, this is what I saw. For example, the recent trip by the New Zealand Prime Minister to China also signaled to me that New Zealand, even though member part of the Five Eyes too, that's gonna be, uh, is this, is this a shift away from, or is it just, uh, uh, based on New Zealand, uh, watching what's going on with Australia given the tensions between Australia and China?

Well, I mean, New Zealand is a smaller country and they've, they've always had a complex relationship with Australia. I've met Australians who say they, they're not very— they like Kiwis, the people, but the country they don't like because they always have the sense that New Zealand is trying to take advantage of anything that Australia does one way or the other. If you went to Australia right now, I'm sure people would be saying, "Oh, those Kiwis, they're just trying to use the situation to their own advantage," this type of thing. From their point of view, though, they're simply doing what's necessary to survive. They have an economic relationship with China. They're not going to toss that away. They have different values. But, you know, we had the Treaty of Westphalia where Protestants and Catholics got tired of killing each other. You know, for 100 years they've been slaughtering each other, men, women, and children. And they just got tired of it. They were bankrupt morally and financially. And they just— they had peace. And the basis of peace is what happens in your country is your business. What happens in mine is mine. We can trade. And we will set our borders. And, you know, that, that ushered in one of the longest periods of peace that we've had. And I think China is trying to do the same thing. They're trying to say, look, whether you have different values doesn't mean that we don't have the same goals. And the goals are the betterment of our people. I mean, is there any country out there who says, I don't care about my people, you know, it's all about me? Um, you know, other than Donald Trump. But, uh, I, I just, you know, we're at this situation where We should be cognizant that we are very similar as people. We have the same concerns. And the politics is getting in the way, this trying to shift blame and not take responsibility for bad actions over a long period of time. Listen, I'm sorry. I only scheduled this for an hour, and I have another—

I know, I know. I'm aware.

Can we do this again?

And I was about to say so. Yeah, okay, I just want to let you guys know, Einar gives us this time because he is on schedule. So we are so grateful. Thank you so much, Einar. Truly appreciate it.

No, thank you.

I look forward to having you again here.

So, well, I look forward to it as well. I enjoy the discussion. Your perspective is wonderful, and it's good to have these discussions and really put things out in the open and let people decide. I don't want tell people what they should think, and they have to think for themselves. And, and that's really important in this world, especially as we become more multilateral.

Yeah, well, once again, thank you so much. So, and I'm gonna put the link for our viewers to, uh, get a hold of your, uh, uh, you know, posts in LinkedIn and, and so forth. So I'll take care of it.

Thank you. All right, bye-bye.

Take care, uh, all right guys, here it is. So first of all, let me say thank you to Uh, I will say thanks to Signeur de la Tour. Hope I pronounce it correctly. Thank you so much for your super sticker. I just couldn't interrupt, uh, Einar while he was talking. And, and yes, he did mention to me that, uh, he would only have 1 hour because he had some other scheduled interviews and so forth. Uh, once again, my apologies, guys, for the, the sound system at the beginning. Well, It's one of those things. This is why I always ask, is the sound working? Because it was working for me earlier. So, well, I hope you find this very— you find the conversation with Einar. I will have him again on, on the show here. And I am now in the process of reaching out to an analyst from India, believe it or not. Yeah, somebody who is very objective. And I am gonna set the time and I will keep you posted as to when I will do this. So be on the lookout for some videos I'm going to be releasing this week, and I look forward to seeing you next time. As always, guys, remember, geopolitics impacts your daily life in more ways than one. Till next time, bye-bye.