Falling off the escalation ladder

So what can we expect in the new year?  Pepe Escobar says:  Be prepared – for anything.

An extremely complex world situation can be summed, as it is one war, with more wars threatening.

These are not traditional wars and they may start as destabilization, lawfare, removing governments by any means, more appointing of leaders after destabilizing election cycles, more sanctions and more extraordinary renditions of one kind or another.  As we can identify how these wars get started, we may even now accept that there are very few grassroots and real changes in countries, truly driven by the people.  Watch out for the placards and signs neatly printed in English.  That is a dead giveaway.  If countries are at one with their leaders, we will see that trust.  We will see more destabilization being kept artificially alive and in this way it will become easier to peer through the complexity to arrive at the first simple calculus.

The one who falls off the escalation ladder first, is the one who loses.  But our current escalation ladder seems to be stretching into the heavens.  We can expect a state of More Of …. until something happens, until an event threatens the positions on the escalation ladder.  This event may be a false flag that changes the current calculus or it could be a black swan.   It may start as destabilization, lawfare, removing governments by any means, more sanctions, kidnappings, boatnappings, airplanenappings, and lawfare by accusation fed into the western media.

Expect BRICS countries as targets under fire.

Expect more of BRICS as an organization.  There is no slowdown here, as however the BRICS organization appears, every sub-grouping is working and doing their share.  We now have a BRICS journalist society,  teaching and lecturing BRICS journalists.  This will allow a better flow of information.

More of .. more local currencies, the development of more sophisticated necessary economic instruments, and more construction of an alternative economy.  Expect less use of the Dollar.  BRICS, so far are not threatening, excepting the IMF and the World Bank.  The Indian FM, Jaishankar had a television appearance recently where he was attacked on BRICS and stated that India should be congratulated for developing more options, without a threat to current options.  It is a softball approach but anyone who does not live under a rock sees the possibility of the end of the empire being realized.  The softball is however a wise approach.

Expect more SCO, more ASEAN, and more G20 under BRICS type influence.  The poles in multipolarity are now forming into their economic and even defensive nodes as it makes sense.

China will steamroller on with amazing technologies and trade and Belt and Road.  They will keep the likes of QUAD and AUKUS under control and continue with their no-limits diplomacy as can be seen with romancing Japan at the moment.  Nobody besides western media, fast losing relevance, takes Taiwan seriously or as a threat.  It is a stick being used to beat China and the stick is becoming frayed.  Expect more China and Taiwan meaningless threats.

Europe is hard to think about as main governments are in turmoil and deservedly so, in France, Germany Great Britain, and let’s count Canada here.  Europe is becoming impotent.  They lack energy and have a stagnating economy.  In addition, they do not have talented leaders to navigate this phase.  A write-off and it will take years to even glimpse any kind of recovery.

Trump may get Canada as he seems to expect as a 51st state.  This will do nothing to the world at large.  I’ve seen Canadians say they might as well go this direction as their marching orders come from the US empire anyway, so why not make it formal?

As goes Europe, so goes NATO – Irrelevant and surviving on speaking hot air. NATO will not make progress in its quest to move East.  China will take the wind out of its sails in a strategy of area denial.

The countries in the far eastern corner of our world, previously known as the Orient, Myanmar, Island nations, Japan for now, will continue on, trying to obey His Master’s Voice and one by one flipping to the economic miracle of China.  The Philippines will start to become hungry as trade with them will slowly reduce as BRICS start trading in its own Bloc.  They will sit on the fence a little, and then tie relations to China economically even though pretending to be the empire.  South Korea is learning its lesson now.  There are many now asking why the state of war persists between themselves and the North and what is wrong with China anyway.  In this wider region we may see Black Swans and the US troops being carried out.  I expect this to be a slow process and we may not see much early in 2025.  Later in the year we may identify the trend.

The Latin Americas and the Caribbean are in for a stressful time with empire riding them hard.  The thinking generally goes that the moment Trump understands that he will not ride roughshod over China, over Russia, over Iran, and Europe is raped already, he will cast his empirical eyes to his ‘back-yard’.  Everyone remembers ‘Melon’ Musk saying:  “We will coup whoever we want”.

Despite all the big Hollywood pranks and big talk from Milei, his people are hungry.  Argentina may again economically crash.  Brazil will continue in their own strange way, with nobody trusting anyone else.  If there is a leader that I am concerned about, it is LULA.  Venezuela is in for a hard time having lost Brazil as a supportive partner.  The Central American countries are concerned, and each has its own economies and politics to deal with.  Trump threatening Panama, has raised a rage.  Trump threatening Mexico has everyone concerned.  The region is open for coups and neither Russia, nor China are able to do anything about it.  In Mexico, Scheinbaum has escalated to where she can, saying that if the illegal Mexicans in the US are treated badly, Mexico will use all of their over 100 consulate facilities to withstand this.  We will wait to see but people express a vulnerability.  Something that I’ve noticed is that some of the best journalists across the region, have left.

In Africa, the countries of the Sahel, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso actively working to break their bonds of slavery to France and federalizing for strength, are a bright spot.  Senegal has announced that they will kick out foreign forces starting 2025.  In the rest of Africa, the battle only starts now.

Russia will conclude its business with Ukraine.  Every trial balloon to a ceasefire or an ending of the war that Trump’s coterie floated in the press, has been rejected.  Of course, Trump is not interested in ending the war per se, but only interested in ending the financial burn.  He will try to hand the Ukraine to Europe to deal with.  Russia will end it the way Russia wants to end it, probably with China, perhaps with Iran or Brazil in appropriate roles.

The US will keep on winning Hollywood style.  Trump will want to fix it economically and he will have to go out raiding in order to do it.  I expect the empire seated in the US, with its cotery of entitled billionaires, to cause untold harm to those around them and the RoW.  They have had a massive win in terms of Syria, and are riding high on adrenalin.  Trump cannot stop BRICS even in his dreams.  All he can do is to encourage Netanyahu.  We, the RoW cannot live with this empire any longer.

West Asia will have to deal with the zionists.  There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the Syrian headchoppers will be able to deal with Netanyahu.  If the trajectory continues as current, Syria will become Libya2.  Turkiye and their Sultan are becoming irrelevant, as they will not be able to deal with Greater Israel either and will only try to score the piece of land they are interested in.  Leave them to their masters who are now wanting to “deal with Turkiye”.    Hezbollah has just stated that they are waiting for the first 60 days of the so-called cease fire to end and the 61st day everything will be different – they are suggesting that they will start fighting again on this day.  Iran is somewhat of a dark horse currently, as with its new status (after signing the agreement with Russia), it will not want to go to war.  Yemen is being pummelled by US and UK warplanes but they keep on resisting.  The US announced at the UN Security Council that they are ‘defending themselves’, which led to much sniggering behind hands from basically everyone – expect more of the old canards which in reality are empty noise and nobody believes them.  There is talk in the region that Yemen, Hezbollah, Hamas, a new announced Syrian opposition and Iran will coalesce and fight the real fight, the one against Greater Israel and the hegemon.  This is a wide open wound and it is not easy to even think of a prediction as to what is next, never mind structuring such a prediction.  We will see who falls off this escalation ladder first.

Yes, Be Prepared – for anything.