5 - The path to war, paved with economic failures

The Path to War, paved with economic failures, by Elisa Barwick.

A comparison of the actions of the USA and China since the shockwaves of the 2008 global

financial crisis rocked the globe, provides a telling clue to why the world is on the brink of

nuclear war. It was a dramatic event justifying drastic action, but while China proposed a fundamental

change of course, the USA insisted on more of the same. Even as the laymen collapse and subprime

mortgage explosion were playing out late that year, China pledged immediate and concrete economic

actions to sustain the global economy. Then Chinese president Hu Jindao told the 15th of November

G20 summit on financial markets and the world economy in Washington, D.C. that financial regulation

would have to be strengthened and the international financial system would have to be reformed.

Said Hu Jindao, quote,

The international community should earnestly draw lessons from the financial crisis and make

necessary reform of the international financial system based on full consultations among all

stakeholders. Reform of the international financial system should aim at establishing a new

international financial order that is fair, just, inclusive and orderly, and fostering an institutional

environment conducive to sound global economic development. End quote. Efforts to maintain economic

growth were vital, he stated. To avoid a global economic recession, nations must actively promote

economic development. China led the way by commencing construction of its expansive high-speed rail

network, now over 50,000 kilometers. Furthermore, Hu Jindao promised China would extend greater support

for the developing countries influenced by the crisis. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

Apex summit a week later was one of many forums where Chinese leaders drove this promise.

With Hu Jindao's speech titled, make joint efforts hand in hand to promote economic development.

The West did not listen and continued on its merry way. It forged ahead with mechanisms to

sustain the current financial system such as bank bail-in, i.e. confiscating investor and

deposit of funds to save banks, developed by financial speculators who were unwilling to accept

the game was up. This was followed by countless other tweaks and tricks. Unsurprisingly, these

modifications changed nothing, and the global financial order progressively inched closer to disintegration.

With it, came the rear-guard actions of a failing hegemon trying to maintain its power,

geopolitical games regime change and outright war. New development vehicles. China kept its

promises and continued on its path. The earliest version of what we know today as BRICS emerged from

the formation of the Russia-India-China strategic triangle RIC in 1998. It was based on Russian

foreign minister and Prime Minister Yivgeny Primakov's revolutionary concept of multiplicity.

As current Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has described it, in the aftermath of the 2008

crisis and with the addition of Brazil in 2006, BRIC became focused on reforming global financial

mechanisms. In 2009, the inaugural summit of BRIC was held. South Africa joined the following year.

A major component of China's drive for worldwide development and the BRICS campaign for a new

financial order came in 2013, when the newly elected Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the

Belt and Road Initiative BRI. During a state visit to neighboring Kazakhstan, Gilaed out a grand

perspective in his speech at the Nazarbayev University at Astana on 7 September 2013.

He focused on the necessity for cooperation exchanges and mutual learning to overcome the crisis,

with the example of the ancient Silk Road. Quote, the over 2000 year history of exchanges

demonstrates that, on the basis of solidarity mutual trust equality, inclusiveness mutual

learning and win-win cooperation, countries of different races beliefs and cultural backgrounds,

are fully capable of sharing peace and development. End quote. He declared that China is committed

to the path of peaceful development and the independent foreign policy of peace. While respecting

the choices made by other nations, we do not seek to dominate regional affairs or establish any

sphere of influence he specified, something he had to repeat ceaselessly as the claims of China

using the BRI as a debt trap and influence scheme grew. After highlighting the enormous growth

development and trade potential along the Silk Road economic belt, he added this, quote,

we need to enhance monetary circulation. China and Russia have already had sound cooperation

on settling trade in local currencies and have gained gratifying results and rich experience.

There is no reason not to share this good practice with others in the region. If our region can

realize local currency convertibility and settlement under current and capital accounts,

it will significantly lower circulation cost, increase our ability to fend off financial risks

and make our region more competitive economically in the world. End quote.

That may have sounded like a far off fantasy at the time, but subsequent growth of the BRICS

partnership has brought it into reality and materialized a threat impinging on the dominance

of the US dollar order. The year following the BRI announcement at the July 2014 photo laser

Brazil BRIC summit, the new development bank NDB was established, providing an alternative

financial avenue to developing nations that have been hamstrung by prohibitive IMF and world

bank conditions. In 2016 the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank AIIB commenced operations,

another important condor at for nations seeking development finance. A major BRICS expansion

occurred at the October 2024 BRICS summit held in Kazan Russia. All founding nations supported

a new BRICS Plus platform. By January 2025, BRICS comprised 10 full members and 10 partner states.

The members of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, United Arab Emirates,

Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Iran. Saudi Arabia is sometimes counted as number 11, but has not officially

joined. The partner countries are Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand,

Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. There are many more engaged in some capacity or seeking to join.

After Russia's special military operation in Ukraine was launched in 2022, U.S.

sanctions brought BRICS alternatives to a head more rapidly as nations saw in living color

their entrapment by the U.S. dollar system. The use of alternative currencies for trade and reserves

has spread quickly since. Work is continuing on BRICS pay, an alternative cross-border digital

payment system to seamlessly transact payments in national currencies, and a new investment platform

for joint BRICS development projects is proposed. Meanwhile, there is increasing discussion about

transforming the U.R. into a reserve currency, at least among BRICS nations. Spears of influence.

In the opening days of 2026, the Trump administration made clear it would route out the influence

of China and the BRICS in its backyard South America, and since then, it appears to have made a

similar move in the playground of Anglo-American influence the Middle East. Countries of South

America were informed by U.S. leaders in February that they were expected to be partners against

our adversaries. Refer to two worlds on currency collision course. Alert, the 18th of February,

2026. Along with the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president in January, a strategy to dollarize South

America was launched as indicated by the U.S. national security strategy released in December.

Cuba is now being targeted, with strangling sanctions only to be lifted with a drastic change

of leadership or economic policy. The U.S. president himself openly speculating about taking Cuba

next. The operation to kick China out of the ports it runs on either end of the Panama Canal

was followed by a campaign against the joint Peruvian Chinese business venture that developed

Peru's Chanki Port, a BRIC signature project. A scandal has been contrived to divest China of its role,

asked the president of Peru, and ultimately disrupt the next phase of the plan, a transcontinental

railway corridor connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Refer to a railway connecting two

oceans will transform world trade. Alert, the 4th of June, 2025. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's

plan to redraw the map of the Middle East is being expanded with Trump's Iran War.

Australia's first ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran 1985 to 88 John Lander spelled out

in the 26th of March Citizens Report. Refer to Track 6, that Iran is of crucial importance to the

West because, quote, it is the Western node of the Chinese New Silk Road, and it is the central

node of the North-South corridor running from Russia through all the way down to India, end quote.

Those corridors, he said, are the lifeline for the development of infrastructure and economies

of the whole of Central Asia, and also of South Asia, without which China, nor its vision for the world,

can grow. The USA wants to break the chain but BRICS member Iran holds the cards, not just for China's

success but the rest of the world, when it comes to oil gas and derivative products, or any cargo

paid in U.S. dollars. As more nations are swept up in collateral damage, the blowback on Trump is