Epocalypse Revisited Part Two: The New Globalism

I promised my two-part Patron Post would lay out how the war and all the global sanctions will likely bring profound shifts to the “world order,” altering and accelerating the path toward globalization and control. I realize that is the opposite of what many are saying; and, as we’re on the leading edge of this, there are no emergent trends to go by; so my conclusions may be well off the mark, but I present them for you to ponder.

Globalism gets reoriented

The following statement from by Goldman Sachs’ head of hedge hogs, gives the prevailing view. I quoted it in part in my last article and saved part of it for consideration of what he has to say under the globalism topic of this article. He describes the current period of extreme volatility in everything, not just stocks, as follows:

If you take a really big step back, one can argue the past few weeks have poured kerosene on a tectonic shift that’s taken shape over the past six years: a push away from globalization and towards regionalization. in essence, we’re witnessing an inflection that is the photographic negative of the period that spanned from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the Brexit vote in 2016. Far be it from this English major to go too far with this line of deep thinking, but I think the trend is clear for all to see now … it has only been amplified by the East/West geopolitical tension … and, it marks a paradigm shift from the world I came up in.

Zero Hedge

I agree with the tectonic shift but not with the fact that it will end in less globalization. I’m going to be a bit of a Lone Ranger on this one. What I see, instead, is events, such as Brexit, which have torn at the fabric of what is now old-world globalization, are the kinds of counterforces that always come along. The the present war and it sanctions are the catalyst that will bring a reformation to globalism that re-energizes it, but along a sharp East-West divide.

Even the Goldman guy says,

If stocks are to live in the future, one can see a path to major fiscal expansion — and, more elementally, a much strong European Union (emphasis on Union)

The Western expansion

I think the West may become more politically Eurocentric because that is where the crisis lies. If there is anything a strong common enemy can do it is to bind disparate people together as allies around the battlefield. The greatly intensified threat on Europe’s eastern border has already accomplished that, and I believe that unification around Europe to beat the enemy at its door will intensify naturally unless Putin winds up being taken out by some inside job. If the latter were to happen, that could jolt things back but still on a re-energized path to globalism, albeit working to eliminate the divide that just started to form. (I’ll stay out of the hypotheticals, though, and just focus in this article on how current events, as they stand, are changing globalism.)

Bear in mind, most of those Eastern European nations that feel threatened are NATO nations; so, as goes Eastern Europe in this military reunification, so goes NATO. Canada, Australia, and the US already have tight ties with the UK, also a major NATO nation, so you can see where I am going with this:

With Russia as a common enemy, sanctions applied by NATO nations become a common problem for NATO nations to wrestle with together in terms of their unintended but inevitable consequences for those nations in order to hold the sanctions together as a war strategy. At the same time, the effectiveness of such never-before-experienced global financial unity in crushing Russia will inspire all to work together to strengthen the ties that bind those nations. They will have to help each other with all the shortages and problems described in my last Patron Post, or the sanctions won’t hold.

I mentioned already the centrifugal counterforce pushing out from this Eurocenter of rotation, which is that sanctions could cause protectionism where nations hoard the food and other necessities they produce for themselves, which would deliver a serious blow to globalism, but I’m inclined to believe the center will hold while there is a common enemy so that protectionism won’t rise to such a level that it separates these nations because the sanctions will fail if that kind of protectionism ran too far. If they CAN work together, they will all suffer some but make it through.

Ultimately, you have the UK’s many strong ties with other commonwealth nations, such as India, drawing those nations in, too, as well as some former colonial ties other European nations have. They will use those ties to strengthen their sanction coalition. That creates the basis for a lot of rallying together by the West to beat Russia down where a lot of working together is needed to protect each other from the negative side effects of all these sanctions, which will be severe. There will be rough patches along the way, of course.

That said, we haven’t seen that happen yet with India, which is dependent on Russia for military weapons and other things. That’s evidence for the moment that I may be wrong; however, I have no illusions about how hard some of these situations will be to manage; and so far the allies, working together, seem to have respected each other’s abilities, understanding some nations will be hit far more severely than others, so will need time to work out solutions that avoid collateral damage.

India, for example, may just be receiving some latitude to figure out how to walk the line and make things work as far as it is able. They are, after all, culturally an eastern nation. Plus commonwealth ties with India are more strained than with Canada and Australia. In the same way, Eastern nations like Japan and South Korea are likely to remain aligned with a Western orientation because of the ties they’ve developed and the greater importance of those connections for their economies.

It’s become a situation where these nations now either all hang together to help each other live through these sanctions, or they shall all fall apart. (To be clear, I’m not arguing here that I want globalism because I definitely don’t. I think it will be the most dangerous monster of all in time now that we’ve experience how far nations will go to control your behaviors during the Coronacrisis. I am arguing that all the present forces work to make globalism move from appealing in the eyes of the many who did want it to appearing essential in the eyes of the many now. What I want doesn’t matter. This is how these forces are pressing in, and I make my projections based on reality, not wishes.)

I believe the sanctions also inspire tighter globalism among those nations imposing them because they were so immediately effective in crippling Russia. They do more than require global cooperation to work; they inspire it because of how effectively they have already worked. Nations will like that sense that, united, they can press other nations to behave better, believing that may help avoid war in the future … though, of course, it won’t. But it will be an appealing belief.

These nations will have to work together closely on energy and food and other shortage problems to avoid being damaged almost as badly as Russia. (The ultimate weakness, though, of a unity built around a common enemy is that, if and when the common enemy is defeated, the unity tends to fail, just like we saw after WWII where Russia sharply divided from the other allies after Germany was defeated.)

Goldman Guy argues via a colleague as follows:

Mark Wilson, GMD: “for the second time in as many years, Europe experienced its ‘Hamilton moment.’ ever since its founding, the fractured politics of the European ‘Union’ have been all too evident, perhaps best illustrated in numerous episodes of the last decade as the uneven financial consequences of the GFC roiled a still adolescent political construct. Yet, the unified strength of purpose shown by the European alliance in response to recent events is mightily impressive — this time led by Germany, as she showed willingness to subjugate the gigantic cost of an increasingly expensive commodity burden to the broader political will of her allies. Merkel’s recent departure may have emboldened Putin’s resolve to take his chosen course, given the presence of newer and (perceived) untested European leadership; yet, Germany’s metamorphic developments in response to this crisis have been dramatic: Schulz has overseen 3 seismic policy initiatives in shockingly short order –

* a historic expansion in re-armament spend,

* the cancelled certification of NordStream 2, and

* a radical new energy plan aimed at cutting dependence on Russian gas [this is even more radical when you consider this government includes the world’s strongest Green Party representation].

Ultimately, the unanimity & assumed political influence of the European Union has come of age in the last 2 weeks.”

The last line is key. Those are the traits I’m talking about. This war has resulted in a greatly intensified unification of Europe that draws all other NATO nations into that tightened relationship because of the common enemy. Any influence it brings will be a sense of empowerment that nations also find attractive. Again, I am not making any comment about what should be. I don’t live in a world of “should be’s.” I am talking plainly about what actually is. And we increasingly live in a woke world that loves to change behavior through social influencers.

Russia became, in European eyes, an immediate existential threat. Whether you view that as merited or not, that was and is the response. Faced with an existential threat, internal problems like Grexit pale by comparison. (Those conflicts will re-emerge when the common enemy is gone; but, for the time, they tend to get put away.) Competition between the euro and the dollar would become a barrier to the unity that is perceived as essential to survival; so, I think that competition will become lessened by the sense of what this refound unity can accomplish.

The China Syndrome

Reorienting the East has become more problematic.

Goldman, while thinking we are seeing a further breakdown in globalism, lays out the following scenarios, with respect to the impact on globalism, saying of the situation…

• argues for a major retooling of the West’s power and defense complexes;…
• from a growth and capital markets perspective, it argues for North America as it argues against China;
• more broadly, it argues for a schism between DM and EM markets. On that last point, in the context of the UN General Assembly Resolution censoring of Russia, of the five BRICS countries, just one voted for it (Brazil) … three abstained … and (obviously) one voted against (China).

On the latter point, you can see it may break apart the bond between the BRICS.

It is with respect to these last two points that I come to my views on how this diminishes China’s role. One of the statements I’ve made from the onset of Putin’s War and the world’s rapid simultaneous move to global sanctions against Russia was that it tears apart the ruble-yuan axis that threatened the petro-dollar. (See: “The Big-Dollar-Big-Bear Ruble Rumble.”) Many disagree, but I would go further to say, as Goldman does here, that it even argues for the fading of China.

China’s zero-tolerance for COVID has already badly damaged its economy with more lockdowns than any other nation has experienced. (Serves them right for inventing this virus and letting it escape since such things should never be played with in the first place. And, yes, I think it probably was helped along with US funding by Dr. Fauci, but that’s an argument I’ve made elsewhere.) China’s stock market is already breaking up badly. It will be all China can due to keep its yuan in the basket of currencies it recently entered with the International Monetary Fund. Membership in that basket is essential to the yuan being any part of a global currency at all. If China sides to closely with Russia, these sanctions may be applied against it to some degree to where China could lose its global trade status with the Eurocentric (in control) IMF.

Just as we all feared back in the 80s and early 90s Japan was going to overrun the US economy, and then it faded to a distant competitor, China is going to be taken down a few notches here. I doubt it will choose to take on Taiwan in this environment because the Chinese culturally are nothing if they are not cautious and pragmatic. Taking on Taiwan like Russia has taken on Ukraine would almost certainly add all those sanctions to China, creating an even worse global meltdown, but also the end of any hope that the rest of the world will work cooperatively with China. China has waited and watched for the global response, and has probably seen a lot more than it wanted to. That is why we see it treading so carefully now.

As China fades in financial influence, struggling hard as it is with its own full-spectrum market failures, what we will see is a very different kind of globalism that becomes cracked into two fiercely competing spheres that are both crippled, but the East moreso. The West, enraged by Russia, will easily comprise more than half of the world (economically) because they will cling to the West to survive these sanctions, and an axis of China, Russia and some wing nuts like North Korea, Venezuela, Iran and some other Middle Eastern nations, such as Syria.

We could have a true world at war along such a divide; however, I THINK China will, because of its cultural temperament, try to walk a cautious middle road and, so, not invade Taiwan or start a war in the South China Sea, so long as the US tamps down concerns there, rather than doing something stupid to blow them up like those visits we see Mike Pompeo making. So long as China doesn’t feel the West is closing in on Taiwan, it is not in a strong position right now to attack anything because it has more problems than most nations at present, and the loss of any significant amount of Western trade would be a crushing blow. It is not that it will suddenly be at ease about the West. Far from it. It just lacks the power right now to do much. Putin’s War made a tough situation due to two years of COVID lockdowns much worse for China.

That is the kind of precarious time we live in. If Xi pulls a Putin with Taiwan, I don’t see how we avoid some version of WWIII. I’m not saying it would necessarily go full nuke; but it would, in the very least, be a heck of a conventional war. I think the Chinese would rather keep prospering from their well-developed global trade routes as they have for the past couple of decades because they are pragmatic like that, rather than blow all of that hard work to bits because that is what is at stake here for China if it goes full Russiatard.

Putin, unless he quickly gets replaced, has destroyed Russia with an invasion that created massive outrage from the rest of the world beyond all that he likely anticipated. China has to decide if it wants to add itself to that burning financial rubbish pile. (Again, I’m not talking here about how I think the world SHOULD respond. I am purely talking about how it clearly DID respond, and that response has turned Russia into such a leper that no nation that seriously wants to be part of global trade wants to touch it right now, though some nations are trying to walk the fence because of how important Russia is to them and how uncertain they are about how to step between the land mines.

This will leave Russia an enraged and bitter bear unless some internal coup takes out Putinazi, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that blue-sky scenario. He’s proven pretty adept at offing his political challengers. So, we have a West that becomes more globalized and some kind of piece of the world that conglomerates around Russia that becomes more enraged and embittered. How isolated that smaller chunk is remains to be seen as does how enraged and wild it becomes.

On the China side of the sea, I see hesitancy in China to stand too close to Russia, at least, until things cool and the movement of the tectonic plates here becomes more clear. So the eastern side of this global axis is likely to be weaker and fractured.

The bitter bear may be a more dangerous bear to deal with unless the people of Russia can get Putin out and turn this around. That is like taking Hitler out. It could have done a world of good for Germany. That’s impossible to say, but it didn’t happen until the wind-up of the war caused him to apparently take himself out by swallowing his own bitter bullet pill. As I promised, for my own projections, I’m staying with what we know is in play not with hypotheticals, even though they are within the realm of possibility. So, what we know we have is an angry, bitter, and largely isolated and desperate Putin.

The Greater NATO Nations

Putin’s War, on other side of the theater, has resulted in a total reunification of NATO and a greater and more welcomed presence of the US in Europe than we’ve seen in decades, reversing a NATO-weakening trend that picked up speed during Trump’s term:

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and his push to upend the broader security order in Europe may lead to a historic shift in American thinking about defense of the continent. Depending on how far Putin goes, this could mean a buildup of U.S. military power in Europe not seen since the Cold War.

The prospect of a bigger U.S. military footprint in Europe is a remarkable turnaround from just two years ago.

In 2020, President Donald Trump ordered thousands of American troops out of Germany as part of his argument that Europeans were undeserving allies. Just days after taking office, President Joe Biden stopped the withdrawal before it could start, and his administration has stressed NATO’s importance even as Biden identifies China as the main long-term threat to U.S. security….

“We are in a new era of sustained confrontation with Russia,” says Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia and former deputy secretary-general of NATO. He argues that the United States, in cooperation with NATO allies, will need to establish a more muscular stance to deal with a more threatening Russia. That is especially so in Eastern Europe, where Russia’s proximity poses a problem for the three Baltic nations that are former Soviet states…

In just the past two months, the U.S. presence in Europe has jumped from about 80,000 troops to about 100,000, which is nearly as many as were there in 1997 when the United States and its NATO allies began an expansion of the alliance that Putin says threatens Russia and must be reversed. By comparison, in 1991, the year the Soviet Union dissolved, the United States had 305,000 troops in Europe

AP

That is a fast flip that Putin never saw coming out of his invasion. By the end of Trump’s term, the number of US troops in Europe was all the way down to 64,000. So, Putin’s War has resulted in significant reunification and strengthening of NATO. That new trend has already shown it has the power to continue because it has even united Republicans and Democrats on that issue when they have never been more divided than they were after four years of Trump. The MIC, of course, favors it, so it has that politically unifying power fully behind it, too.

Whether one sees that as good of bad, is not the point That is the trend that Putin has re-established and certainly cemented in place for years to come by rousing all the old fears of Europe and the US. The old, Cold War is back on. Putin made it so.

Numerous Army headquarters units also have been sent to Poland and Germany. Austin also sent F-35A fighter jets to NATO’s eastern flank and Apache attack helicopters to the Baltic states.

The Military Industrial Complex loves that stuff!

Mara Karlin, a senior Pentagon official, says,

The Pentagon must “ensure that we’ve got deterrence of Russia and that we can absolutely 150% say that NATO is safe and secure,” not just in light of Russia’s invasion but for the longer term.

This is a major trend reset that increases globalism throughout the West, tied by NATO, because it is not just Republicans and Democrats that stand largely in favor of it. It is for the first time in a long time nations across Europe that stand in favor of a greater US presence binding them together from a common defense standpoint. NATO has also likely broadened with more nations wanting to join out of fear over what they see Russia doing. Again, I’m not writing about what you or I want or should want. I’m writing about what IS.

This not just a broader NATO, it is an intensified NATO:

Putin’s war in Ukraine has prompted a rethinking of regional defense needs not just by Washington but also some European allies, including Germany, which last month broke with a longstanding policy of not exporting weapons to conflict zones by sending anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine. Germany also committed to a much bigger defense budget.…

Vershbow, the former deputy NATO secretary-general who is now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, recommends that the U.S. and NATO move beyond their current reliance on light, battalion-size battle groups in Eastern Europe to instead deploy heavier, larger and permanent forces there.

Putin may have wanted less NATO, but his actions have assured more NATO than ever for years to come. The old trend is the new trend, more convinced of its own purpose and necessity than it has been since the fall of the USSR.

The NATO-Russia Founding Act, signed in 1997 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is also now being cast aside due to the new reality of Russia being an invading nation on Europe’s eastern flank.

A new report by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. It argues that the restrictions on NATO’s military presence in Eastern Europe as described in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act are irrelevant in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We are in new, dangerous territory — a period of sustained tensions, military moves and countermoves, and major intermittent military crises in the Euro-Atlantic area that will ebb and flow for at least the remainder of the 2020s, if not longer,” the report says.

From a defense standpoint, Putin accomplished what no one saw coming only a matter of months ago — total reunification and rededication and expansion of NATO and likely the end of old treaties with Russia. The goal from this point forward will be to crush Putin, not to figure out how to work with him — to beat him into submission by superior economic force and military force (via a NATO-supplied Ukraine), and that requires a more globalized front on the Western side of the world’s axis.

I am sure some will quarrel with me that this should never be — that a stronger NATO will be a bolder and more activist NATO as well a financial burden the US cannot keep carrying. Probably so. Doesn’t matter. Not in terms of whether and how it changes the world. It is a major shift, firmly established by the old fears that Putin has reignited, and it is a trend back to globalism, but a revised globalism — one with a different axis.(By which I’m not referring to Axis allies, but to the geo-political axis around which the globe revolves.)

The Southwestern hemisphere

The geopolitical axis is even shifting rapidly in Latin America toward greater globalism with an East-West divide:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reverberated across the globe, including in the Western Hemisphere, where both Washington and Moscow see the crisis as an opportunity to shift regional alliances in their favor.

Denver Gazette

So far, most nations in the southern half of the Western Hemisphere are holding out against chasing an alignment:

U.S. and Russian officials engaged in a flurry of diplomatic talks with Latin American and Caribbean leaders before the war started. The pace of diplomacy has only intensified since the fighting began. And many countries in the region have responded by walking a delicate line, declining to support Russia’s invasion abroad without forcefully condemning it at home.

However,

“There’s been a lot of travel by Russian officials to Latin America and the Caribbean in the months prior to and following the invasion of Ukraine. Some of that is bluster. Some of that is tangible and concerning….”

Where diplomacy has not worked for Moscow, the White House says that Russia is working to destabilize democracies across the region through coercive diplomacy, disinformation and cyberattacks.

While it’s too early to know how the axis of power will shift in these southern regions, clearly the battle of persuasion is intense, sometimes hostile, and both sides — Russia v. most of the rest — are vying for alignment in this region. So, it is intensified globalism, but with no clarity on whether these regions will persist in remaining as neutral as they can or will choose sides.

The recent pace of that activity has alarmed allies and forced the administration to devote more diplomatic and economic resources to fight back.

The administration’s strategy, the official said, is to increase its engagement with governments across the Western Hemisphere – including longtime adversaries of the United States and allies of Russia. Just in the last week alone, the Biden administration boosted staffing at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba and launched talks with President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

Russia’s influence in the region, which has been strong back to the days of the former Soviet Union as it financed numerous communist juntas and governments, has grown in recent years under Putin, but the US, of course, believes it will win in a new push-comes-to-shove battle of persuasion because it has most of the world’s trade behind it right now:

“Russia seeks a Cold War-like response from the United States, where we’re dividing the region into those who are friends and who are allies,” the official added. “That would certainly be a mistake.”

So far, the response from nations with long allegiances to Russia has, as with China, been an effort to remain neutral in order to preserve trade relationships; but the US does have a long reputation of strong-arming other nations. So, this will likely remain for some years an area of political combat that will seek to polarize globalism between the East and the West, or, if the US has its way between Russia and the Rest.

That won’t be a battle easily won:

As two nations within the BRICS – an economic association of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, five emerging economies – Brazil and Russia have grown increasingly intertwined in recent years, with Bolsonaro and Putin fostering a strong personal relationship.

Before their meeting in February, the Kremlin said that Putin planned to raise “current issues in today’s global order” with the Brazilian president. Bolsonaro, for his part, said he went to Moscow to secure a deal on Russian fertilizers for Brazil’s agricultural sector.

So far, the West has only one NATO ally in South America, and that is Colombia. Russia has many alliances in the region, including Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Cuba to name a few. So, it’s far from decided how the geopolitical axis will align through the lower regions of the Western Hemisphere, and this could turn that region into an area of intensified conflicts. None of these nations, including Cuba, seem too enthusiastic about Putin’s War in Ukraine, and they don’t want the stench of death that is all over Putin to rub off on them; but old alliances will not likely give way easily.

Here is the tightrope Latin America is trying to walk:

While Cuba has aligned with Putin by parroting the Kremlin’s justifications for the invasion and spreading disinformation about the conflict through its state media, it is trying to walk a fine line in its public statements, avoiding condemnation of Russia but also staying away from a full endorsement of the war. Russia is an important creditor and the two countries have strengthened military and security cooperation in the past few years. But Europe and Canada are also important trading partners and investors in the country and the Cuban leadership is wary of further sanctions that could tank the island’s economy, already in shambles.

The world is fractured, but an intensified globalism is working its hardest on both sides to cement the pieces to line up with one side or the other. So, what I see is a more intense but bifurcated globalism. Putin already got himself effectively kicked out of the G-7, etc. with his take-over of Crimea. Now the war is on. All nations are willingly referring to Putin’s invasions of Ukraine as either World War III or a potential World War III.

At home, Cuba’s messaging to its people on the war has been a different story. State officials have blamed the United States for the conflict, and Cuban state media has joined Russia Today and Telesur, a Venezuelan-led channel, in a propaganda campaign to justify the invasion. Cuban state media is also promoting the Kremlin’s allegations that the U.S. has financed a program to develop chemical weapons in Ukraine. U.S. officials have forcefully responded to those claims, calling them “outright lies.” The Ukrainian government has also denounced the allegations as false.

You can see this conflict has already drawn the whole world into it, though not yet at war.

Nicaragua’s full-throated support for Russia’s “battle for peace,” as Daniel Ortega referred to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, came as little surprise, as the two countries have become closer in the past few years, especially through military cooperation, much of which is cloaked in secrecy.

I don’t see less globalism in any of this, even though that is the main thing I have been reading in financial and political media. This isn’t a division into nationalism. It is a crude piecing-together of nations in alliances that could become an intensified military battle over which set of nations rule the world, or the deciding factor may be pure economics. The Russian side of Latin America was already largely impoverished, and will become more intensely so for any nation that fully sides with Russia, likely ending up with sanctions against those nations that do:

While Russia has presented itself as an alternative to the U.S., even providing Nicaraguan officers with counternarcotics training and helping Ortega stay in power, it has little to offer in terms of economic aid, even before the recent widescale sanctions that have severely impacted its economy.

Conclusions

As I mentioned in the first half of this series, one of the most significant counterforces to globalism will be the self-preservation aspects of protectionism. We’ve already seen that in the understandable ban on agricultural exports by Ukraine, as clearly Ukraine will have all it can manage to feed its own people, and we’ve seen it in the similar moves by Argentina.

There will be strong moods in many nations, including likely the US, to either ban exports of food supplies or to place heavy tariffs on them to preserve supply within each nation. Where we are talking about critical food supplies, that kind of protectionism is likely to prevail. In the US, however, protectionism in the form of export tariffs my rise more to stem the rise in food prices than because of a need to save critical food supplies in order to avoid starvation. I am inclined to believe that, at the end of the day, the politicians in all Western nations that have created these sanctions will realize the only way they can hold their sanctions together is if they help each other with critical supplies.

At the same time, the intensified diplomacy in Latin America to get nations to align with one of two sides shows how Putin’s War has brought new intensity to globalization, but it’s globalization along a polarized axis. Russia is forced by the sanctions to scramble hard for solid trade alliances. The West is pressed to stop him in order to make the sanctions work. These pressures likely lead to tighter globalization, not looser, in a bicameral world.

They will also likely lead to separating currency systems. It won’t be a case of the yuan-ruble alliance crushing the dollar and replacing it throughout the world. China doesn’t begin to have the strength to do that right now with so many huge economic problems of its own and its dependence on Western trade, and the Russian ruble will be lucky to survive at all. Rather, those nations on the Eastern side of the earth’s geopolitical axis will have to create something that may be around the yuan to save themselves, but it won’t have much play among the greater (in size and economic might) Western alliance, which may form a tighter currency bond around the dollar or the euro or some new creation that melds their interests.

That I would see not so much as a dollar crash as an emergence. One formed out of an emergency. It won’t be that Russia and China crushed the dollar because, at a time like this, I doubt other nations in the Western alliance will want to see the dollar crushed. I’ve decided to save The Emergence for another post, though, because this one has plenty to digest, but soon I’ll be writing about how a digital, cashless society will likely develop from this newly polarized realignment of global alliances.