Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB) anticipates...

Global systemic crisis / Second half of 2010: The global system’s four single points of failure

For LEAP/E2020, the second half of 2010 will thus correspond to a new step in the global geopolitical dislocation, characterized by an acceleration in the process of strategic, financial, economic and social convulsions centered on four single points of failure (1) of the international system analyzed in this GEAB issue. The general context is that which has been outlined in previous GEAB reports, that’s to say a recovery … of the world economic crisis after a temporary freeze due to stimulation measures. But before entering into the detail of these anticipations on the unfolding of the economic and financial crisis in the second half of 2010, let’s take note that the beginning of June 2010 provides two particularly striking examples of the accelerated collapse of the global system of these past decades: one in terms of global economic governance, the other concerning the ability of the United States to control its own allies (see GEAB N°46).

Having put recent events, symptomatic of the acceleration of world geopolitical dislocation, into perspective, the four individual points of failure in the second half of 2010 (2), according to LEAP/E2020, are as follows:

• Western public debt: when insolvency becomes intolerable
• European austerity: when contextual growth is abandoned in favour of structural stablility
• Chinese inflation: when China is going to begin to export its inflation
• US contraction: from « hidden mass austerity » to « imposed Federal austerity »

Each one will be affected by a major shock during the course of the second half of 2010, leading to a sectorial, regional or global crisis.

Today’s world, plunged into the global systemic crisis, is in transition towards a new order. The U.S. power is weakening, new powers are emerging and world geopolitical order is reconfiguring. Countries’ major challenge consists of entering the new era in the best possible political and economic position. In this sense, the United States is trying to maintain the domination on its natural region, the Americas.

The facts prove that the strategy is the same as the one applied to the Middle East. If we replace the word “Eurasia” by “America” in the above mentioned excerpt, the parallel is clear, the purpose being (using the same words as the author) to reach the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategics: prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals; keep tributaries flexible and protected; and keep the barbarians from joining forces.

Putting it into the present language, the U.S. is seeking to subordinate to its own interests its backyard in the global economy. It is trying to secure its domination over the new world order, looking for raw materials and energy sources, as well as spaces for its production and investments, at a moment when the global systemic crisis and the resulting economic contraction prove that infinite economic expansion and the related model of raw materials production prescribed to countries in the region by multilateral banks has become untenable. In doing so, they are trying to export their systemic problems to the periphery while importing economic resources from this periphery, by means of loans perpetuating dependence.

In the light of this strategy, it is of vital importance for them, first, to identify which countries are pivotal in any shift of the region’s power balance out of its sphere of influence and, then, to offset, co-opt, and/or control those states.