In a newly released book, “The Colder War,” author Marin Katusa prognosticates that Russia and China will sign a thirty-year oil and gas deal that will not trade in U.S. dollars. This is not new information. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have been moving in this direction for several years. BRIC has two overriding objectives: displace the International Monetary Fund (uses the dollar) with a BRIC-specific currency, thus removing the global advantage of the United States and its western partners; secondly – having achieved a weakening of the dollar, the BRIC currency will invest in world markets and national partnerships, becoming the new monetary power.
Marin Katusa no doubt is one of the premier petrochemical analysts in the world and is consulted widely when nations are forecasting oil and gas futures. One cannot argue with his logic that oil and gas will be the engine that drives super power countries in the future. The BRIC nations make up two thirds of the world’s population. Further, with the exception of Russia, the BRIC nations have young citizenry positioned to generate huge GNP that could never be matched by the U.S. or the European Union. For more detail see the mariner’s post from July 14, 2014.
The mariner wonders if there could be an alternative future. The possibility rests on the western consortium willing to invest heavily in new technology, invest heavily in competitive education, and otherwise diminish the importance of petrochemicals as a source of monetary power.
What no one knows today (except perhaps Nostradamus) is how the world will reconfigure itself. Every element is poised for a chaotic shift: weather, geological activity due to warming, agriculture (already shifted ecologically by two weeks since 1900), future political liaisons, which may not align with petrochemical availability, the new technical age of which we have only faint insights today, and perhaps the transfiguration of the dollar and every other currency into one worldwide currency.
The disadvantages that face the western world are the age of its citizens, the arcane structure of its politics and government, and the lack of population unity for the betterment of everyone. The U.S. especially is run by the one percent who is the wealthiest and currently would have no qualm dropping the dollar and western civilization for a good return on investment with BRIC.
Should the ducks line up, there may be hope for the western culture and its waning dollar. It’s a long shot but maybe the solar system will align in syzygy such that the west will have luck on its side. Whatever, the west, especially the U.S., has no time to lollygag.
Ancient Mariner