The Duran Podcast
G7 and the decline of empire
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the G7 meeting taking place at Italy and the BRICS meeting that wrapped up in Russia, the Foreign Minister's meeting, as well as the finance ministers or just I believe so. Yeah, I think it was the foreign ministers, but there were certainly people from the finance side there, they're also and that is that is the most important part of this now. Because it's the finance side that's moving forward. Yeah. Do you want to start with the BRICS then and go to the G7 or the G7 first? No, let's start with the G7 because I think we can get that out of the way fairly, fairly quickly. I mean, even in the West now, the fact that there's been a G7 meeting is attracting less and less attention. I mean, the only thing these people have done is that they've come up with an agreement to provide Ukraine with the 50 billion dollar loan, which as we've discussed in another video is one of the stupidest ideas on the planet, but anyway, they've come up with that idea. In practice, in every other respect, these G7 meetings now have just become meaningless and empty rituals put together by people who are completely out of ideas. The G7, when it was first launched, I can remember when it was, by the way, there was a summit in Rambuyé in Paris, which was called by the French president of that time in 1968, Jisca de Snap. It was also supposed to be an economic summit and informal summit of Western leaders to try to keep the world economy as if that was on track. At one point, it did serve some kind of a purpose, but the G7 is now a shrinking part of the world economy. And even if it was a larger part of the world economy, the leaders in question are all underwater, politically, Schultz, Macron, possibly Biden, definitely soon, and they're out of ideas. They really have no plan going forward, and it shows, I mean, they're not really managing any part of the world economy anymore. So they're issuing meaningless talking points, increasingly taking, I suspect, we haven't yet seen the final communique, but I suspect it's going to take a very strong line against Russia, obviously, but probably against China too, despite the fact that the Europeans are completely tied up in trade with China. But in terms of a real plan going forward about how to move things forward, they're not going to come up with anything like that. Now, the contrast with the Bricks, who are expanding, is becoming more and more striking, because they've had this Foreign Minister's meeting, and the Foreign Minister's okay, I believe they all came. The Russians obviously chaired it because they're the chair of the Bricks this time, and the Russians are telling us a number of things. The first is that there's going to be another wave of Bricks expansion, probably this year, and all kinds of countries like Thailand, for example, are queuing up to join Bricks. It might be Algeria as well. Algeria was very annoyed last year that it wasn't able to join, and I suspect this time they probably will be invited if they do want to join. Colombia, by the way, is another possibility. So that's one thing that the Russians are telling us is coming. The second thing that the Russians are telling us is that the Bricks are now moving very far forward with setting up their own finance and trading mechanisms. Apparently this is where we're actually going to have a completed proposal by the time of the Bricks leaders summit in September, which isn't that far off now. And what is clearly happening is that the Bricks are emerging as a trading group, of the major non-Western economies. It's an alternative trading group with its own financial payments and messaging architecture, and its own regulatory systems and things of that kind, operating in parallel with the existing trading system, financial and trading system, which is operated by the West. So what we're looking at is a major bifurcation in world trade, the G7, ineptly, and pretending to lead the existing financial and world trading system. An alternative one being created at extraordinary speed. And that's what came out of this meeting, this meeting in Russia. It's what's going to come, I'm sure, from the leaders meeting in September in Kazan. And Putin today, by the way, is giving a major speech to the Russian foreign ministry officials in which he's talking about also creating a new security architecture. For the whole of Eurasia, NATO will be invited to participate, apparently. But that would mean participating alongside China and India, unlikely they would agree. But anyway, a new security architecture being created, at least in central and eastern Eurasia, if not the whole of it. And that also, in some respects, ties up with the Greeks. Yeah, he is saying a new security architecture in all of Eurasia, absolutely. That's what Putin's saying at the ministry of foreign affairs. What's the point of the G7 anymore? I mean, I don't understand what the point of it is. I was under the impression that the G7 was about finance, economics, trade. But they don't even spend one minute talking about that or addressing that. They invite Zelensky. What is it? What is Ukraine and Zelensky doing at the G7 meeting? I mean, it is absurd. It really is absurd. And then they have these ceremonies where they're signing these security agreements with Ukraine. There's no place for this stuff at the G7. Do this on your own time, Biden and Zelensky. This has no place in the G7, none of this stuff. This is just all PR tactics. It's just all PR. That's all it is, noise. And PR, the G7, it doesn't really deal with the concerns of the G7 and their place in the world and in world trade. Their focus is on destroying Russia and China. How does that help the financial situation of these countries in the G7 going after Russia and China? Going after China, that's going to help your financial situation, G7? I mean, the G7 should just be dissolved or it should be named something else. I don't know. Maybe call it the group of countries plus the man in the green t-shirts. Giving money to each other. I don't know what to call it anymore because there's no purpose to it. Zero. There's zero purpose to the whole thing. You're completely right. I mean, by the way, there have been articles in the Chinese media that are making exactly that point that the summit meeting, the G7 meetings now, have become just meaningless rituals. I mean, the security agreement that is being made between Zelensky and Biden is a case in point. In itself, it provides for nothing beyond what the United States is already doing. It is not a treaty. So the United States is not entering into any treaty commitments for Ukraine. It is not undertaking to defend Ukraine. And it's only going to function as an executive order of the president, which means that a future president could simply set it aside at the drop of a hat or the flush of an ink pen. I mean, it is a meaningless thing. But it's often the way, by the way, anybody who is familiar with the fall of empires will know that as empires decline, the ceremonies become more and more elaborate. The rituals become ever more elaborate and ever more complicated because the people who are leading this declining and collapsing empire seem to somehow need the reassurance of the ceremonies in order to persuade themselves that they still matter. So this is what the G7 is. By God, as the BRICS is a genuine purposeful organization, at its core, I mean, maybe some of the members of the BRICS are just passengers, but at its core, there is a very dynamic China, Russia, to a great extent, despite what people think. India, triangle that's driving it forward, the very fact that there are tensions between India and China, by the way, probably, to some extent, even intensify that quality of dynamism. And I mean, they have a plan. And it might not be a plan that works out in all its details. I mean, all kinds of things could go wrong. But anybody who's worked in business or law, any or war or anything like that knows that the person who has the plan tends to be the person who wins. And the real focus of decision making is moving away, drifting away from the G7, because as I said, it reads your ceremonial meeting in which they all sign up to whatever agenda it is that the Americans have drawn up for them. The American bureaucracy has drawn up for them. A little bit like Pollot Bureau meetings became apparently in the Brezhnev era Soviet Union, when they all met in a splendid room. They spent hours droning over speeches that had been drawn up for them. They signed off on documents. They never really meant anything. That's basically what the G7 has become. It's as an empty ritual, very, very different from the much more purposeful institution that it was when it was first set up. But it's got no answers to any of the real problems of today. It's not connected to the reality of the lives of the people of the West, who are the people that the G7 is supposed to represent. As you say, people like Zelensky get invited who have no real role in any of the decisions that ought to be made. But it makes the people who would turn up feel important. And for someone like Rishi Sunak, who's going to be out of the job of Prime Minister, it's a nice consolation that you can turn up to this meeting for the last time, meet all the important leaders there, have the champagne at the can of pace, and he comes back to London feeling refreshed and welcome with some people, even if not with the people, he was supposedly elected to serve. Not that, of course, he was elected. That's another story. Even Politico, they read an article with a title, something like, along the lines of Maloney and the bunch of lame ducks, meet it at the G7. They called everyone there lame ducks. I mean, the G7 is used. Let's call it something else, call it something else because it has nothing to do with the well-being of the citizens of the G7 countries. Just real quick, I want to pivot back to Putin's speech at the foreign ministry. And he did in fact say that there does need to be a new security architecture in Europe, in Eurasia, and that Atlanticism is over. This is done. It's over and it's time to move on. And obviously, multipolar, BRICS is the future. Putin at this speech that he gave. He also said that Russia is ready for negotiations with Ukraine, but he put out his terms. Well, his terms really should not surprise anybody because we've been talking about Putin's terms, and they are tough. But he said if the West, if the United States and Ukraine agree to these terms, then Russia is open to negotiating and then to the conflict. Basically, troops leaving Russian territories, would they consider to be Russian territories Alexander? That includes Herzon, Zaparogia, as well as other cities, which are being fought over today. Russia is basically saying Ukraine has to leave. We consider these areas, these regions, the entirety of Herzon and Zaparogia. We consider these to be Russians now. Of course, he talked about Ukraine not joining NATO and Ukraine committing to neutrality. So no NATO, non-aligned, nuclear-free Ukraine, demilitarization of Ukraine in accordance with the Istanbul agreements, and of course, the protection of the Russians in Ukraine, the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine. And Putin once again said these are the terms. If the United States, if Ukraine does not accept, then the conflict will continue. And what can we do? We're not going to bear the responsibility of the conflict continuing, because once again, these are the terms to negotiate to fight the peace. What are your thoughts on? No, I mean, this is exactly what we've been talking about this many, many, many times. Notice that he's talking about peace in Ukraine at the same time now is he's talking about a Eurasian architecture, which of course means ultimately the restructuring the security system in Europe. In Putin's mind, and in Russian mind, the two are links, but of course, that orbit guarantees that the West will never agree to this. So Putin can afford to be or appear to be reasonable, and he is. Nothing that he's proposing, by the way, goes against the fundamental core interests of the Western powers. I mean, they could agree to this with a peace in Europe, stable situation, crisis in Ukraine would be ended. We wouldn't need to live for sanctions. He's not asking us to live for sanctions in response. We could agree to all of this in the West. Life would go on. People in Berlin and Paris and Venice and Rome and London would continue to be fully secure. We could agree to all of this. Ukraine could agree to this, and of course, it would be saved. It would lose territory that he's going to lose anyway, but it would save hundreds of thousands of lives. Probably it would have a future as a country, but we're not going to agree to this, because of course, from their point of view, there are two problems with it. Firstly, it basically means the deaths of the Neocon project. Breaking up Russia, fragmenting it, engineering regime change there, isolating China. That's what Putin means, by the way, when he says, "Atlanticism is dead." The Neocon project, in effect, he's telling us, is dead. It can't play out, but of course, the Neocons will never accept that. Hell will freeze over before the Neocons admit that this project, which is really project Russia, it's not project Ukraine, has failed. They will never agree to it for that reason, but the other reason they won't accept it, at least this particular group of leaders we have now, will not accept it, is because it would be an enormous political and geopolitical defeat. Biden, Sunak, Schultz especially, Macron, they can't go back to their voters and say, "Look, we went through all of that, we spent all that money, all of those tens of thousands of people were killed, your living standards fell, the inflation became along, and we ended up giving to the Russians more than they were asking for at the beginning." It would be too big a sell, even for the Biden team to spin. They're not going to do it for that reason as well, so they're not going to give up project Russia, and they're not going to admit the scale of the defeat that this would be, so they're not going to agree to it, despite the fact that on any objective analysis, these are very reasonable terms. Most of the people in these regions, in Donettes definitely, in Lugans definitely, in Crimea absolutely, in Zaporogia and her son as well, probably would prefer to be in Russia. Now, you're not imposing on the people there, something that they don't want. That's the reality, even though, of course, again, no one in the West will admit to it, but no one in the West is going to agree to this. They're going to come up with all kinds of reasons why they can't agree to it, that they won't agree to it, that it would justify aggression, that it would enable Putin to achieve an ascendancy over Ukraine, which, by the way, would, they would do all of those things, they'll come up with every possible explanation why they won't accept it, and of course, by doing so, they're signing the death warrant for Ukraine, because the Russians will advance, westwards, they will regain all of these territories, at some point they will also take Kharkov, and they'll probably take Odessa as well, and it's quite likely they will take Kiev too, and Ukraine will be devastated, and tens and tens of thousands of people will die, and it'll all be for nothing, but that's not probably something that the near cons and the Western leaders worry too much about. Yeah, all right, we'll end the video there. 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