“I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
“The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.”
— Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum.
“Elites have always existed. We bring together people of influence, and we hope that they use their influence in a positive way.”
— Klaus Schwab
“In the new world, it is not the big fish which eats the small fish, it’s the fast fish which eats the slow fish.”
— Klaus Schwab
“The key issue is the shift of the center of gravity from the West to the East, the rise of China and India.”
— Klaus Schwab
“When I mention names like Mrs. Merkel, even Vladimir Putin and so on. They all have been Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum.”
— Klaus Schwab
“History shows that epidemics have been the great resetter of countries’ economy and social fabric. Why should it be different with COVID-19?”
— Klaus Schwab
“The new technology age, if shaped in a responsive and responsible way, could catalyze a new cultural renaissance that will enable us to feel part of something much larger than ourselves – a true global civilization. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to robotize humanity, and thus compromise our traditional sources of meaning – work, community, family, identity. Or we can use the Fourth Industrial Revolution to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny. It is incumbent on us all to make sure that the latter is what happens.”
— Klaus Schwab
I don’t know about you, but I am more confused than ever about what is going on out there in reality. The more I read, the murkier things seem. Daily, the murk appears to deepen further.
One persistent theme lately is that a central concept of the “Great Reset” is some form of “globalization”. What exactly is “globalization”, you might wisely ask?
Wikipedia defines it thusly:
“Globalization is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide [emphasis added]. … Globalizing processes affect and are affected by business and work organization, economics, sociocultural resources, and the natural environment. Academic literature commonly divides globalization into three major areas: economic globalization, cultural globalization, and political globalization.”
“Political globalization refers to the growth of the worldwide political system, both in size and complexity. That system includes national governments, their governmental and intergovernmental organizations as well as government-independent elements of global civil society such as international non-governmental organizations and social movement organizations. One of the key aspects of the political globalization is the declining importance of the nation-state and the rise of other actors on the political scene [emphasis added]. William R. Thompson has defined it as ‘the expansion of a global political system, and its institutions, in which inter-regional transactions (including, but certainly not limited to trade) are managed’.”
Globalization seems to be about a global government managed by NGOs
My take so far is that the permanent decline of nation-states as major political players is well underway, with nation-states being steadily replaced by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). This creates in effect a New World Order (NWO) – changes in virtually every aspect global economies, cultures, and politics.
Oddly enough, I read some time ago a rather amazing non-fiction book The New World Order, written in 1940 by H.G. Wells (Time Machine, War of the Worlds). In The New World Order, Wells proposed a framework of international functionalism that could guide the world towards achieving world peace. To achieve these ends, Wells asserted that a socialist and scientifically-planned world government would need to be formed to defend human rights.
With the mess our current world seems to be in right now, a “new world” of some kind might well be a great idea. The devil here, as always, is in the details: Who decides what the “new world” should look like, and who runs it?
Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) has stepped up to this challenge in its own way, starting in about 1971, which kind of makes it responsible to at least some degree for our current mess. Might the WEF simply change things so as to create a new mess (aka NWO)? Not a good track record, at least so far (50 years).
Schwab’s Great Reset and associated Fourth Industrial Revolution grandiose plans, covered in posts (see here, here, and here) a while back, appear to have been blindsided by recent events in Eurasia (see below). There is a New World Order taking shape at an amazing pace and seemingly unraveling most of what the WEF’s Great Reset was planning. How inconvenient.
Globalization is what the WEF’s Great Reset is all about
Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.us wrote an interesting view on globalization on April 1st, 2022: “What Is The “Great Reset” And What Do The Globalists Actually Want?”. His key points were:
- Total global economic centralization
- A one world digital currency system
- A global social credit system
- You will own nothing and be happy by 2030
- Total information control
Sounds a bit like Orwell’s classic 1984, yes? Maybe way more than a “bit”.
Who are the main players in all of this commotion?
Globalists. Hard to tell, for me at least, but I see the WEF, the U.S., Canada, U.K., and EU being pretty active in “globalist” activities.
World Economic Forum (WEF). Klaus Schwab’s WEF seems to be leading the globalist charge but with a strong hand guided by its particular agenda. This bunch also includes Davos Forum (held in Davos, Switzerland) participants.
The West. Primary countries here include: U.S., Canada, U.K., European Union (E.U.), Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand. This bunch is often referred to as the U.S.-U.K., or simply the hegemonic U.S.
Russia. Formerly known as the Soviet Union following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Russia is the main piece resulting from the Soviet Union breakup in 1991. Starting off from a very low place, Russia has become what seems to be the third most powerful nation in the world, after the U.S. and China.
China. China has pretty much kept to itself and gone its own way for centuries. In 1949, Mao Zedong established the Chinese Communist Party (PRC). Mao led it through a disastrous Great Leap Forward from 1958 and then the equally disastrous Cultural Revolution purges of the late 1960s until his death in 1986. From then to the present, China has become an international powerhouse, growing into the world’s second largest economy by 2010.
BRICS. BRICS is the acronym coined in 2001 to loosely associate five major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. This group of nations, driven mostly by China and Russia, has become a Eurasian counterforce to the U.S.-led West.
We now seem to be in some kind of an “Us” vs. “Them” world
Recent events, possibly triggered or accelerated by the Ukraine situation, seem to me to have rearranged these main players into the West (“Us”) and the East, or Eurasia (“Them”). I ran across a wonderful map in several places that reflects this emerging New World Order. I added the “US” and “THEM” group names.
Russia has just decoupled from the petrodollar (U.S.) economy by restricting its sale of oil and many other commodities to payment in rubles, bitcoin, and gold. It also effectively tied the ruble to gold, making it a somewhat non-fiat currency. It has moved away from the SWIFT international payments processing system that the U.S. effectively dominates, to alternative systems such as China’s. As of April 1st, Russia has a “no rubles, no gas” position with E.U. countries like Germany.
The result: Globalization is effectively dead
This Russian move appears to be causing a huge disruption globally, and has bigshots like Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm with $10 trillion in managed assets, saying that the era he helped build is effectively over.
“’The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization [emphasis added] we have experienced over the last three decades’, Fink writes in his annual letter to shareholders of BlackRock, published today.”
“Fink is echoing what’s quickly become the conventional wisdom: That the economic disruptions put in motion by Russia’s unprecedented act of war, coming on top of pandemic supply chain upheaval, have essentially killed off the economic world order established at the end of the Cold War.”
“’The war marks ‘a turning point in the world order of geopolitics, macro-economic trends, and capital markets,’ he writes.”
“The big picture: After decades of outsourcing manufacturing around the world, companies and governments are looking at ways to shield themselves from big global disruptions by making more stuff domestically.”
If globalization is truly dead, then the Great Reset must be dead also. Wonder if this means that we will still own a bunch of stuff in 2030, and we will be unhappy as a result?
Most importantly, the world – economically and politically – seems to be changing from a unipolar, U.S.-driven one to a multi-polar, Eurasian-driven one. Outside of World War III, it is hard to imagine a greater change.
Paul Craig Roberts, President Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy (1981), views this as a watershed event for the West: “The Western World Has Had Its Run”:
“These are major developments with many large implications. The World Economic Forum’s ‘reset’ has likely been replaced by a Russian-Chinese reset. … The Western world’s fate is unclear. … My conclusion is that the days of the West are over. The West is drowning in accumulated mistakes and degeneracy. The moral fiber in the leadership ranks is gone.”
The Ukraine situation now seems to be a distraction, not the main game
While it is still unclear as to the likely outcome of whatever is going on world-wise right now, some general directions are beginning to emerge. The main battle seems to be between the now-struggling West (U.S.-U.K.), and Russia as part of a multi-polar Eurasia. The Ukraine action looks more like just a minor piece of the real game, assuming of course that it does not lead to a nuclear world war.
The petrodollar as a global reserve currency for the old world order is being replaced by a number of regional currencies that are resource-based. Pepe Escobar describes this transition in The Burning Platform: “Meet the New, Resource-Based Global Reserve Currency”:
“Welcome to the birth of the new world system. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in China, after meeting several counterparts from across Eurasia, could not have outlined it better:”
“A new reality is being formed: the unipolar world is irrevocably becoming a thing of the past, a multipolar one is taking shape. It’s an objective process. It’s unstoppable. In this reality, more than one power will ‘rule’ – it will be necessary to negotiate between all the key states that today have a decisive influence on the world economy and politics. At the same time, realizing their special situation, these countries ensure compliance with the basic principles of the UN Charter, including the fundamental one – the sovereign equality of states. No one on this Earth should be seen as a minor player. Everyone is equal and sovereign.”
Goodbye petrodollar hegemony. End of an epoch.
What might all of this global commotion mean to us normal folks?
Good question, to which the only credible answer is probably – “who knows?”
Russia and China dominate the loosely-coupled Eurasian block and seem to be moving on their own, away from all things West. Where will this lead? Looks like a certain major realignment in trade flows globally as the secondary players line up with one side or the other.
Globalization in the WEF Great Reset sense seems no longer to be possible, and hence, is effectively dead. The leaders who “run the new world” will be many and informally organized. Not including lots of very disappointed and frustrated WEF folks.
The enormous advances in communications and systems will likely make the sorting out process here move along quite quickly and flexibly. National cultures can exist side-by-side for the most part rather than being dissolved or merged by globalists. There is no longer any place for one-size-fits-all political and economic “solutions”.
War outside of desperation seems more unlikely now
Russia and China, along with the other BRICS and Eurasian countries, have set a pretty clear, separate course. The West cut them off, resulting in the decision by Russia to make its own way henceforth. Not competitively except at the periphery, so East and West may henceforth operate independently, mostly in their own spheres.
Of course, the West will probably not accept this separation without some kind of a battle. The current round is centered on the Ukraine but Russia seems likely to prevail since its survival depends on doing so. Will Russia then push into NATO countries to enlarge its protective buffer?
In past, the buffer rearrangement would mostly have been accomplished by regional wars and skirmishes. Today, realignment will probably be driven by resource and trade necessities. Think Germany: “German Chemical Giant Warns Of “Total Collapse” If Russian Gas Supply Cut”:
“CEO of Germany’s multinational BASF SE, the world’s largest chemical producer, has warned that curbing or cutting off energy imports from Russia would bring into doubt the continued existence of small and medium-sized energy companies, and further would likely spiral Germany into its most “catastrophic” economic crisis going back to the end of World War 2.”
“A delivery stop for a short time would perhaps open the eyes of many – on both sides. It would make clear the magnitude of the consequences. But if we don’t get any more Russian gas for a long time, then we really have a problem here in Germany. At BASF, we would have to scale back or completely shut down production at our largest site in Ludwigshafen if the supply fell significantly and permanently below 50 percent of our maximum natural gas requirement. Minister Habeck has already activated the early warning level of the gas emergency plan.”
Globalists backed into a corner may become desperate
Ukraine appears to be controlled largely by NATO, which is effectively the U.S. (West) – the primary location of the Globalists. The Ukraine war outcome seems highly uncertain at the moment but Russia is likely to prevail as noted above. This leaves NATO in a precarious spot and probably cripples any remaining hopes of a WEF Great Reset globalization.
Despite on-off talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators, there are no signs of de-escalation on either side. Just today (April 1), the Russian Defense Ministry reported that “Ukrainian Forces Reportedly Blow Up Fuel Depot On Russian Territory In ‘Daring Cross-Border Attack’”:
“The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that two Ukrainian MI-24 helicopters carried out today’s attack on Belgorod, Interfax reports, marking the first official confirmation of the attack by the Russian MoD.”
“Ukraine forces pulled off a rare attack on Russian soil Friday when two military helicopters destroyed a fuel depot in the city of Belgorod, situated roughly 40 miles north of the border with Ukraine.”
“The attack was purportedly carried out by two Ukrainian helicopters that crossed into Ukrainian [Russian?] territory. Videos circulating online purported to show Ukrainian Air Force Mi-24 helicopters flying low over Belgorod just before the strike.”
Such escalations are likely to enlarge and intensify the war, possibly into a major U.S.-Russia confrontation. A miscalculation by either side could erupt into a nuclear exchange where of course everybody loses bigtime. If the Great Resetters conclude that they cannot win, they may decide to make sure nobody else wins either.
Bottom line:
Just when it appeared that the long-planned WEF Great Reset globalization initiative was finally on a roll, some serious Eurasian events seem to be mucking things up. Quite badly in fact. Is this a big deal, or not? Does it really matter much in the grand scheme of Great Reset things? The situation is changing so quickly that it is very hard to conclude much of anything from the current, growing swamp of confusion. Indications so far are that this is an epoch-ending, world-changing situation.
This post was an attempt for me to think about where things might be going, if anywhere, Great-Reset-wise. Hope that you find it helpful.
To be continued next week …
The situation here changes daily and hugely. The Ukraine battles seem to have shifted eastward into the Donbas region. The vital city of Mariupol seems to have fallen – “forever” – according to Ukraine President Zelensky (see Related Reading below). Big changes are likely even in the short timeframe of a week – changes that affect the whole world.
Related Reading
These are a few of the very many stories that caught my eye this week.
Caitlin Johnstone argued in a recent post on The Burning Platform that the real target of what is going on today is China: “The Target is China”:
“And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is the real reason we’ve been hearing so much hysterical shrieking about Russia these last five or six years. It’s never been about Russian hackers. Nor about a Kremlin pee tape. Nor about Trump Tower. Nor about GRU bounties in Afghanistan. Nor about Manafort, Flynn, Bannon, Papadopoulos or any other Russiagate Surname of the Week. It’s not even actually about Ukraine. Those have all been narrative-shaping constructs manipulated by the U.S. intelligence cartel to manufacture support for a final showdown against Russia and China to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world.”
“The U.S. government has had a policy in place since the fall of the Soviet Union to prevent the rise of any powers which could challenge its imperial agendas for the world. During the (first) Cold War the strategy promoted by empire managers like Henry Kissinger was to court China out of necessity to pull it away from the U.S.S.R., which was when we saw business ties between China and the U.S. lead to immense profits for certain individuals in both nations and the influx of wealth which now has China on track to surpass the U.S. as an economic superpower.”
Zoltan Pozsar, Global Head of Short-Term Interest Rate Strategy for Credit Suisse, sees the current situation as a major global game-changer: “Zoltan Pozsar: We are witnessing the birth of a new world monetary order”:
“In a note published earlier, Zoltan Pozsar, Global Head of Short-Term Interest Rate Strategy at Credit Suisse, wrote this crisis is not like anything we have seen since President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off gold in 1971 – the end of the era of commodity-based money. When this crisis is over, the U.S. dollar should be much weaker. He believes the global monetary system will never be the same post the crisis.”
“’We are witnessing the birth of Bretton Woods III – a new world (monetary) order centered around commodity-based currencies in the East that will likely weaken the Eurodollar system and also contribute to inflationary forces in the West.’ – Zoltan Pozsar, Former Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department official, and now Credit Suisse Global Head of Short-Term Interest Rate Strategy based in New York.”
“In a note published earlier, Zoltan wrote this crisis is not like anything we have seen since President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off gold in 1971 – the end of the era of commodity-based money. When this crisis is over, the U.S. dollar should be much weaker. From the Bretton Woods era backed by gold bullion, to Bretton Woods II backed by inside money (Treasuries with un-hedgeable confiscation risks), to Bretton Woods III backed by outside money (gold bullion and other commodities), Zoltan believes the global monetary system will never be the same post the crisis.”
“Zoltan said a crisis of commodities could be unfolding. Commodities are collateral, and collateral is money, and this crisis is about the rising allure of outside money over inside money. Bretton Woods II was built on inside”.
Charles Hugh Smith in his OfTwoMinds blog “The Global Order Has Cracked”:
“Nations that fail to adapt to the end of financialization and globalization will unravel.”
“We all sense the global order has cracked. The existing order is breaking down on multiple fronts. Those who have benefited from this arrangement are doing everything in their power to patch the cracks, while those who chafed under the old order’s chains seek a new order that suits their interests.”
“The task now is to make sense of this complex inflection point in history. Two statements summarize the transition from the existing global order to the next iteration:
1. Finance dominated resources in the old order. Now the roles will reverse and real-world resources will dominate finance. We can’t “print our way” out of scarcities.
2. Reshuffling currencies and credit will not stop the breakdown of the global order’s “waste is growth” Landfill Economy Model.
“Playing financial tricks has extended the life of an unsustainable economic model that glorified ‘growth’ from wasting resources. By expanding credit ‘money,’ the current global order fueled unsustainable consumption driven by unsustainable speculation.”
Last but not least, we have a brief, latest update by Ukraine President Zelensky:
