FOR THOSE WHO TAKE XI’S ‘NO LIMITS’ FRIENDSHIP TO THE BANK
If you were Xi Jinping, a quintessentially thoughtful strategist, if ever there was one, would you want Putin and Mohammed bin Salman by your side at crunch time?
During the Arab Oil Embargo of the ’70s, in exchange for the Saudis accepting dollars for crude oil (petrodollars), Henry Kissinger traveled to Riyadh and made three guarantees to the ancestors of MBS. The U.S:
• Will help to keep the House of Saud in power
• Will protect them from attack by Iran
• And work to harmonize their relations with the nation of Israel
MBS by his recent utterances and rumors that he declined calls from Biden — denied by state department, of course — seems to have made some strategic re-alignments in his own head.
He seems to have assumed that he can shred Saudi’s secret pact with the U.S. and run to China.
I hope China doesn’t offer guarantees like that. What does MBS bring to the table considering that Putin is offering bargain discounts right now on oil and gas, and shipping Putin’s gas to China is shorter and cheaper?
Xi has his own philosophical understanding of the clash of civilizations occurring between the West and China. He is approaching it differently by, among other things, outproducing everyone.
About three years ago, the West did not commence their war against the Covid-19 pandemic until China resumed production. Then, I remember walking into Wal-Mart and could not purchase a facemask.
China created the CIPS — Cross-Border Interbank Payment System — in 2015 as a parallel to SWIFT in order to broker trade for rogue states — North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.
Right there you see one of the problems in MBS’s assumption. Iran is already on Team China, and it would be problematic to bring in Saudi Arabic without resolving the fight-to-death enmity between them.
I guess you can say that one of the reasons, Iran has not moved on the Kingdom is because U.S’s got their back.
MBS, who ordered the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, is a loose cannon. Frankly, I don’t think Xi has any use for him. But then Saudi Arabia and the UAE were careful to vote in support of Ukraine at the UN General Assembly.
Putin also seemed to have assumed Xi’s support. Note that China was also careful to abstain at the UN Security Council vote. That is not support by any account.
As Russian central bank and merchant banks were thrown out of SWIFT, and Putin and his oligarchs were sanctioned, he turned to CIPS. But the currency of transaction here is yuan.
There is no way around that. And yes, China has the best of two worlds — she operates in both SWIFT and CIPS.
Putin’s oil and gas is pumped on Texan pumps, powered by silicon valley hi-tech, extracted by German engineers, operated by French MBAs, and financed by London and New York. The indigenous input is minimalist, thus it’s essentially a dependency enterprise. Xi has been battling one variant of covid-19 or the other, and may be disinclined to take on extra hassle.
Perhaps the thinking of Hu Wei may be gaining popularity in China, he recently wrote to ‘warn his country that the invasion of Ukraine is revitalizing the West, and that China needs to dump the burden that is Russia.’ — John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
My assumption is that Xi’s primary agenda is global domination by trade. He has built up a BRI route to Europe at a very grave cost to deliver cheap goods to Europe. But Putin has started a dumb war right at the BRI’s Black Sea/Caspian Sea entry point into Europe through the central Asian region.
Again, if you were Xi would you want Putin and MBS by your side as you prepare for a civilizational clash?
