Armenia

Now we can add “a major war” to the list of things that have happened in 2020

While almost everyone’s attention was diverted, a major war erupted on the other side of the world.  It has been more than a week since Azerbaijan launched their invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, although the mainstream media in the western world will never use the word “invasion” to describe what is happening.  At most, they will use terms such as “attack” or “offensive”, but without a doubt what is taking place is an invasion.  The population of Nagorno-Karabakh is primarily made up of Armenians, and the region has been self-governing since separatists won an extremely violent war against Azerbaijan in 1994 in which tens of thousands of people died.  Now Azerbaijan is attempting to reassert control over Nagorno-Karabakh, and neighboring Armenia has stepped up to help defend Nagorno-Karabakh.  Unfortunately, this could easily escalate into a much wider war.  Russia has a defense pact with Armenia and a military base inside their territory, Iran has threatened to get involved in the conflict, and Turkey has already sent proxy forces into the region to aid the offensive by Azerbaijan.

Following days of vicious fighting, over the weekend the president of Azerbaijan claimed that his forces had captured the critically important town of Madagiz…

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said late Saturday that his forces “raised the flag” over the strategic town of Madagiz and had taken several villages.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said separatist forces in Karabakh had fended off a large Azerbaijani attack, and spokesperson Shushan Stepanian pointed to intense fighting “along the entire front line” and said Armenian forces had shot down three Azerbaijani planes.

And it is also being reported that Azerbaijan is using cluster munitions to bomb the Nagorno-Karabakh capital of Stepanakert…

The separatists’ foreign ministry said on Monday that shelling of Stepanakert had resumed at 6.30am (0230 GMT), with four shells hitting the city. Residents had spent the weekend cramming into underground shelters and many are leaving.

It released video footage of repeated bursts of heavy shelling and debris from seriously damaged blocks of flats, claiming Azerbaijan had used cluster munitions, which are banned by international humanitarian law.

In response, several towns in Azerbaijan have been getting shelled by Armenian forces…

Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said Armenian forces were shelling three of its towns on Monday, after hitting the country’s second-largest city, Ganja, the day before in what Nagorno-Karabakh’s leader said was an act of retaliation and a “warning” against targeting civilian settlements in the breakaway region. Baku said one person had been killed and four injured in the attack on Ganja.

Hundreds have already died on both sides, and the fighting just seems to get worse with each passing day.

A report from CBS News says that there has been “an unprecedented use of heavy artillery, tanks, missiles, and even kamikaze drones”…

Videos posted online from the battleground show an unprecedented use of heavy artillery, tanks, missiles, and even kamikaze drones as the fighting has escalated. Both countries accuse the other of refusing to agree to cease fire, and neither has shown any willingness yet to reengage in stalled peace talks.

Azerbaijan is wealthier and more powerful than Armenia, and so the Armenians are ultimately going to have a very difficult time trying to stop Azerbaijan from taking quite a bit of territory from Nagorno-Karabakh.

But what happens if other parties start to join the conflict?

One analyst that spoke with CBS News says that Russia and Turkey could both potentially get involved…

“All the signals were in place, everything was telling that escalation was coming. And there was diplomatic silence,” Olesya Vartanyan, senior analyst for the South Caucasus region at the International Crisis Group, told CBS News.

“We are definitely one step away from a large-scale war in the region,” she said, noting that such a conflict could embroil Russia, Turkey, or both.

And actually we know that Turkey is already flying proxy fighters into the region to help Azerbaijan with the invasion.  In fact, dozens of those fighters have already died…

Early Sunday morning, the bodies of more than 50 Syrians killed in a conflict raging far from their own borders—in a land many had barely heard of a few months ago—were returned home for funeral preparations.

They were members of militias that had fought previously in northern Syria, then Libya, and now in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh—but always on behalf of Turkey.

As I mentioned above, the Russians have a defense pact with Armenia, and they also have a military base located in the country.

Russia and Turkey were on opposite sides in the war in Syria, and they have increasingly irritated each other in recent years.  It would seem to be unthinkable that the Russians would just stand aside and allow Turkey to have their way in this new conflict, but so far the Russians haven’t made a major move.

When they do, however, it will probably be a big one.

On top of everything else, the Iranians are warning that they may take “reciprocal measures” if the fighting continues to spill over into their territory…

Iran warned that it would take reciprocal measures if fighting between its neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan spills over and endangers security across their borders with Iran.

Iran’s Interior Minister Rahmani Fazli urged the two countries to contain the fighting after clashes over their long-standing war over the Nagorno-Karabagh region erupted last month, according to a statement shown on Iranian state TV.

This is yet another example that demonstrates that we are living during a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and experts agree that this new war has the potential to eventually become a much larger conflict.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans have never even heard of Nagorno-Karabakh, and most of the population would not be able to locate Armenia or Azerbaijan on a blank map of the world.

And the mainstream media in the United States is so obsessed with covering President Trump’s every move 24 hours a day that they are almost entirely ignoring this conflict.

But this war is a really big deal, and we should all be paying close attention to it.

Whoever wins the presidential election in November is going to have to deal with this crisis, and if things are not handled very, very carefully events could spiral out of control very rapidly.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

Russia Is Going To Pass A Law Formally Dumping The U.S. Dollar

Vladimir Putin 2015 - Public DomainRussian President Vladimir Putin has introduced legislation that would deal a tremendous blow to the U.S. dollar.  If Putin gets his way, and he almost certainly will, the U.S. dollar will be eliminated from trade between nations that belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States.  In addition to Russia, that list of countries includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.  Obviously this would not mean “the death of the dollar”, but it would be a very significant step toward the end of the era of the absolute dominance of the U.S. dollar.  Most people don’t realize this, but more U.S. dollars are actually used outside of the United States than are used inside this country.  If the rest of the planet decides to stop accumulating dollars, using them to trade with one another, and loaning them back to us at ultra-low interest rates, we are going to be in for a world of hurt.  Unfortunately for us, it is only a matter of time until that happens.

When I first read the following excerpt from a recent RT article, I was absolutely stunned…

Russian President Vladimir Putin has drafted a bill that aims to eliminate the US dollar and the euro from trade between CIS countries.

This means the creation of a single financial market between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

“This would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domestic currency markets”, said a statement from Kremlin.

For a long time, tensions have been building between the United States and Russia over Syria, Ukraine, the price of oil and a whole host of other issues.  But I didn’t anticipate that things would get to this level quite yet.  It is expected that Putin’s new bill will become law, and this is only one element of a much larger trend that is now developing.

You see, the truth is that Russia and China have both been dumping dollar-denominated assets for months.  The following comes from a recent piece by Mac Slavo…

Last year Russia began unloading massive amounts of their US dollar reserves. In the month of December 2014 alone Putin sold some 20% of the country’s U.S. Treasurys, a move that further increased tensions surrounding what can only be described as economic warfare between East and West.

Then, as if part of a coordinated effort, this summer it was revealed that China had implemented a similar strategy, dumping half a trillion in dollar denominated assets.

But that’s just the beginning of the end for the US dollar. Amid a major meltdown in Chinese stock markets the People’s Republic sold off billions in dollar assets last week in what was reported to be an effort to stabilize their collapsing financial markets.

And now, as Russia’s economy collapses under the weight of American and European sanctions, including what many believe to be widespread downward manipulation of oil prices, Vladimir Putin is sending a clear signal to the central bank of the world’s reserve currency.

China has the second largest economy on the entire planet, and Russia has the tenth largest.  In recent years, these two superpowers have become much tighter.  For example, just consider this headline from Sputnik News that I came across just today: “Crippling US Foreign Policy Draws Russia, China Closer Together“.

And I don’t know if you have noticed, but U.S. relations with China have turned rather sour lately.  Lots of accusations about spying and trade violations have been flying around, and just this week five Chinese warships were spotted off the coast of Alaska.  In the months ahead, expect our relationship with China to continue to unravel.

If China and Russia were to both fundamentally reject the U.S. dollar at some point, much of the rest of the world may choose to follow suit.

So why is that important?

The fact that most of the nations of the world use our dollars to trade with one another creates a tremendous amount of artificial demand for our currency.  In other words, the U.S. dollar is valued much higher than it otherwise would be just because it is the de facto reserve currency of the planet.

As a result, we can import massive amounts of products at super cheap prices.  When we go to Wal-Mart or the dollar store, we can fill up our carts with lots and lots of ridiculously inexpensive stuff.  Our standard of living is way higher than it actually should be.

And because the U.S. dollar is used so widely in global trade, major exporting nations end up with giant piles of our currency which they have been willing to lend back to us at ultra-low interest rates.  This has made it possible to fund our massively bloated federal government and to go 18 trillion dollars in debt.

If the rest of the world stops using our dollars and stops playing our game, we will be in a tremendous amount of trouble.  The cost of imported products would absolutely skyrocket and our standard of living would go way down.

In addition, the federal government (along with state and local governments) would have to pay much more to borrow money which would rapidly create a gigantic debt crisis.

So Russia knows where they could really hurt us.  Most of the “power” that America currently projects around the world is based on having the de facto reserve currency of the planet.  If you take our financial power away, we would be far, far less imposing on the global stage.  Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. military is rapidly shrinking and has largely been defanged by the Obama administration.

A lot of people that will read this article will not understand this, but it is very, very important to keep an eye on this emerging Russian/Chinese alliance.  I believe that it is going to play a critical role in world events during the years ahead.

So do you agree with me or do you disagree?  Please feel free to join the discussion by posting a comment below…