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Vince Dhimos answered a question on Quora.
DO YOU THINK WW III IS POSSIBLE IN 2019 GIVEN THE TENSION BETWEEN RUSSIA, THE STATES AND KOREA? https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-a-third-world-war-is-possible-in-2019-given-the-tension-between-Russia-the-States-and-Korea/answer/Vince-Dhimos Vince Dhimos, Editor-in-Chief at New Silk Strategies (2016-present) If you do a search using the search term WW III in 2019 you will find a rather surprising number of sites anticipating that World War 3 will occur in 2019. This explains why someone would want to ask this question. First, let’s just forget about Korea, which is incapable of maintaining a war against the US for more than a week. It does not have the firepower. And neither China nor Russia would back it up if it started a war. Both have agreed with the US in its rejection of nuclear status for North Korea. As for Russia, it is highly unlikely that this longsuffering country will fall into a trap due to a US provocation. Russia is patiently waiting for the US to destroy itself with its debt and to make more and more enemies with its brusqueness and bullying toward even allies like Germany, which the US ambassador tried to order around as if he were its colonial master. For ex, Trump and his thugs told Europe they should not allow the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 to be built and that they should buy the extravagantly expensive US LNG instead. For the sake of “energy security” (wink wink). No president has ever done anything this utterly sleazy. Europe is used to being treated with respect (although in honesty, all presidents expect it to obey Washington’s orders, but they use diplomacy to convey this message). This behaviour has had at least 2 adverse effects for the US: 1—it has led to a drastic loss of trust in its allies and others. 2—It has induced sanctioned countries and countries threatened with sanctions, like Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq and others, to seek ways to avoid using the US dollar in their foreign trade because the mechanism for enforcing these sanctions involves US banks and the SWIFT system, which is located in Belgium but controlled by the US. These entities deal only in dollars. The means of avoiding the dollar have become quite sophisticated and effective and include a SWIFT-like special purpose vehicle called INSTEX, devised and engineered in Europe to enable international trade with Iran without fear of sanctions. Another mechanism for avoiding sanctions is the Shanghai oil futures exchange, which can, for ex, sell Iranian or Venezuelan oil in yuan (RMB). These sales cannot be traced via the US banking system. Another consequence — the most serious one — is that Russia and China have been working very hard with diplomacy to bring Saudi Arabia over to their side. These efforts have paid off and recently Saudi oil minister Khalid al-Falih warned the US not to sanction Russia any more (http://vestnikkavkaza.net/news/Khalid-Al-Falih-warns-of-dangers-of-new-anti-Russian-sanctions.html). Though he was dimplomatic, he was hinting that they are capable of abandoning the petrodollar and starting to accept yuan, roubles or other currencies for their oil. Saudi wants very much to be China’s no. 1 supplier (Saudi Aramco looks to become China’s biggest crude supplier) and it knows that China would almost certainly allow this to happen IF Saudi were to start selling using the yuan. If any of these means of weakening the dollar leads to the loss of dollar hegemony, Washington will no longer be able to abuse its power by waging senseless wars on phony pretexts and will become just another member of the multipolar world. This is one reason why both Russia and China are avoiding war. As for Iran, it too is part of the de-dollarization scheme and, judging by its forbearance toward Israel — which routinely kills Iranians in Syria — it too is very patient and willing to wait. As a close associate of Xi and Putin, Rouhani definitely knows what they are up to and is also waiting for the US dollar to lose its status as the world reserve currency and the go-to currency for world trade settlements. The end of the US dollar’s special status will be the defeat they are all waiting for. Not a shot need be fired.
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