Analyst: Iran, Russia, Turkey Should Exclude Dollar from Bilateral Trade to Confront US Hybrid War

"De-dollarization is promising but very difficult to implement in practice, to say nothing of doing so right away, which is why it hasn’t achieved much in recent years despite the symbolic success of seriously talking about this and doing it on a very limited basis. The ideal solution would be for Iran, Turkey, and Russia to immediately stop using the dollar in bilateral trade, especially concerning natural resources, and then mandate the same for all of their other partners who want to trade with them too. This, however, requires enormous amounts of reserve funds in order to deal with such large volumes of trade, which would in turn lead to the printing of more currency and possibly runaway inflation," Andrew Korybko, the author of 'Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change', told FNA on Saturday.
Noting that replacing the amount of dollars circulating in the international economy with other currencies is difficult but not impossible, he said, "The best chance of success is for China to get actively involved in this because it’s the only economy remotely capable of competing with the US’, and the rerouting of international trade corridors from the West to the East as part of its New Silk Road vision of pan-hemispheric connectivity provides the People’s Republic with a financial incentive to increase the use of the yuan in bilateral trade with its many partners. This would have to be coordinated with other countries, though, in order to avoid inadvertently weakening their currencies."
"There’s not much of a desire for Iran, Turkey, and Russia to replace the dollar with the yuan even though they understandably trust China much more than the US and have a stake in seeing the Beijing-led Silk Road Century replace the Washington-led American one. Each of these countries has an interest in strengthening their own currencies and encouraging the diversification of the international financial system, though they can’t do this on their own without China taking the lead and understanding that its own interests are best served by empowering its partners’ currencies and not simply seeking to replace the dollar’s role. Therefore, these Eurasian Great Powers would have to hold a serious summit to organize this, but doing so would instantly trigger an exacerbation of the US’ economic war against each of them," Korybko said.
Elaborating on the hybrid war launched by the US, he said, "Hybrid Warfare can be defined in many ways, but my book specifically focuses on the external provocation of identity conflict within a targeted state via NGOs, information warfare, and other means in order to trigger Color Revolution disturbances that then transition into Unconventional Warfare. To simplify, it looks at how foreign countries like the US encourage protests across the world and then manipulate some of the participants into taking up arms against the state and committing terrorist acts."
"The US realized that it’s more cost-effective to wage proxy wars against its enemies by turning their own people against their governments than to directly invade like them like it did to Iraq. If low-intensity pressure can be used to coerce the target into undertaking political concessions ("regime tweaking”), then it doesn’t need to be expanded to the level of overthrowing the government ("regime change”) and/or changing the rules of the game through constitutional reform ("regime reboot”)," the prominent analyst said.
"The so-called "Arab Spring” events were really just a coordinated theater-wide Color Revolution attempt across most of North Africa and the Levant that included a conventional military intervention in Libya in order to experiment with the US’ "Lead From Behind” strategy of state-level proxy warfare (encouraging the Europeans to lead this campaign) and an ongoing terrorist war in Syria, among other consequences. The outbreak of urban terrorism in Ukraine popularly known as "EuroMaidan” is also an example of Hybrid War," he added.
Asked about ways that hybrid war impacts a country, Korybko said, "Hybrid wars may appear to be fast-moving processes but they really require a lot of socio-economic preconditioning before the kinetic phase of provoking a Color Revolution even begins. The targeted demographics need to be made to think that they’re independently acting on behalf of their own interests and not unwittingly doing the US’ bidding, which requires heavy information warfare custom-tailored for each group and usually an economic motivation to take to the streets. The latter element is the most crucial because people are more prone to act when their direct interests seem (key word) to be at stake than for purely ideological reasons, hence the employment of sanctions and other subversive economic attacks against a state’s stability."
"The whole point of Hybrid War is to exacerbate preexisting or potential fault lines within a targeted state’s society by manipulating its people and getting them to clash with the authorities, after which the engagement can be decontextualized, misportrayed, and over-amplified through Mainstream and Alternative Medias (both foreign and domestic) in order to incite more disturbances inside the country and trigger an international reaction that might lead to unilateral or multilateral sanctions. It’s important to mention that the state’s response to these provocations shouldn’t be disproportionate because that plays directly into the US’ hands by generating legitimate grievances where there may not have previously been any because most Color Revolution participants are "well-intended” civilians and not American agents," he added.
"That said, the US relies on small groups of professional provocateurs that infiltrate these movements and then use their majority-peaceful participants as human shields to hide behind as they attack the police and provoke a violent state response. It’s through these devious means that a very small cell of terrorists tries to generate a self-sustaining cycle of violence between the state and civilians that could then transition the Color Revolution that its citizens and sometimes the "international community” was preconditioned through infowars, NGOs, and economic pressure to expect into a full-fledged terrorist war openly aided by foreign states like what happened in Syria. There are, however, strategies for combating this," Korybko underlined.
"The emerging field of "Democratic Security” looks at the preemptive and responsive measures that a targeted state could take for diminishing the success of Hybrid War schemes. To briefly mention some of what this entails, the state must have a solid patriotic base for countering subversive ideological elements from abroad. It also needs to focus on economic reforms when necessary in order to avoid having the failure to do so manipulatively used against them in infowars. Proactively informing the population about Hybrid War scenarios is a powerful deterrent, too, though it must be paired with proper policing during provocations that includes the authorities filming their response in order to challenge decontextualized videos that emerge afterwards to incite more unrest," he said.
Asked about the reasons behind the recent loss in value in the national currencies of Iran, Turkey, and Russia, Korybko said, "Each of those three currencies was already vulnerable to begin with because of systemic weaknesses, which made them susceptible to being destabilized by US sanctions. The US merely took advantage of this and coordinated an asymmetrical financial warfare campaign to complicate the domestic situation in each of its three rivals at the same time. This is a very risky strategy because it could easily backfire by encouraging them all to work together in countering the US’ sanctions, though Washington is betting that one of them will be the "weakest link” and consequently submit to "regime tweaking”."
He elaborated on the specific goals that the US wants to achieve by waging financial warfare on Iran, Turkey and Russia, and said, "The US desires to see Iran strategically withdraw from the Mashriq, the first step of which requires it to remove its advisors from Syria and Iraq, after which the US wants it to abandon its alliance with Hezbollah and stop politically supporting the AnsraAllah in Yemen. While Iran never made it a secret that it would leave Syria upon Damascus’ request after the successful completion of the anti-terrorist campaign there, it’s unacceptable for the country’s leadership to be seen as doing this in reaction to American pressure, let alone to comply with the rest of the demands being made of it."
"As for Turkey, ties with the US have frayed ever since the failed pro-American coup attempt in summer 2016. Ankara no longer trusts Washington, which in turn no longer trusts its Turkish partner after President Erdogan decisively shifted towards Moscow and Tehran following that event. Turkey’s planned purchase of Russia’s S-400 anti-air defense systems will lay the basis for a long-term and very robust military relationship that essentially neutralizes NATO’s influence in the country, so the US wants it to pull out of this agreement. Furthermore, it wants Turkey to stop cooperating with Russia and Iran in Syria and return to playing its traditionally destabilizing role there," Korybko added.
"Concerning Russia, the US wants to inflict enough financial pain on its influential business ("oligarchic”) elite that they succeed in pressuring the Kremlin to "moderate” its foreign policy and not as assertively challenge American dominance in Eurasia in exchange for sanctions relief. In parallel with this, the US would expect Russia to procrastinate on implementing significant Silk Road projects with China so as to keep the People’s Republic more dependent on existing trade routes that the US could more easily focus its attention on destabilizing through other Hybrid Wars. To "sweeten the deal”, the US might make superficial "concessions” in Ukraine and Syria," he said.
Source: FNA