International tensions have in recent years often led to conflicts between nations, leaving countries to face complicated choices. The world is under constant change, and the most direct results are political instability over vast areas of the globe combined with economic, cultural and often military confrontations. The economic priorities of cooperation and development are increasingly being sacrificed on the altar of protection of geopolitical interests. It is a return to the past where strategic interests prevailed over the economic model prescribed by modern capitalism.
Nations like Russia, China and Iran have in recent years accelerated their rise on the global arena, expanding vital aspects of this in such areas as energy supply, transit of goods, the type of currency used in trade, defense of national borders, the granting of use of airspace, military-industrial cooperation with other nations, the joint fight against terrorism, and a general defense of the principle of national sovereignty. Washington has tried in every way to prevent this growing multipolarity, desperately trying to prolong its two-decade-old unipolar world.
It is in this general climate that Beijing, Moscow and Tehran have had to engage with Western economic reactions in the process of defending their strategic interests. As a result, we have increasingly witnessed in recent years a conflict between economic convenience and politically driven policy decisions. The most difficult challenge faced by these challengers of the status quo lies increasingly in the complicated question of how to manage a situation where geopolitical interests have to fit into a global financial system largely managed and manipulated by Europeans and Americans.
Currently the international financial system, as I have written many times before, is an American affair. The dollar stands as the dominant currency in relation to other financial institutions, and the whole global economic system is mainly conducted through the American currency. But the paradigm is changing, especially in recent years, thanks to supra-national entities like the AIIB and BRICS. Inevitably the IMF’s currency basket will have to incorporate the yuan, starting the process of the slow erosion of the dollar's dominance. The IMF, after years of wasting time trying to delay this event, will welcome from the October 1st, 2016, Beijing as an integral part of the reserve-currency system. Of course one of the most critical aspects is still the private banking sector and how the SWIFT payment system will work, given that it currently lies within the Euro-American orbit. Altogether this blend of public and private sector produces a situation where it is easy to see that the global economic system and its rules are often decided in Washington (IMF, World Bank), New York (Wall Street, FED), London (LSE), Basel (BIS) and Frankfurt (ECB), excluding all the other nations. The financial system is dominated by central banks, international bodies and the huge conglomerate of private banks, all strictly of a North Atlantic orientation.
No comments:
Post a Comment