Authored by Pepe Escobar,
It’s a dazzling Tuscan winter morning, and I am inside the legendary Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, founded in the early 13th century and finally consecrated in 1420, in a very special place in History of Art: right in front of one of the monochrome frescos painted in 1447-1448 by master of perspective Paolo Uccello, depicting the Universal Deluge.
Paolo Uccello: Universal Deluge. 1448 fresco at Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Photo by Pepe Escobar
It’s as if Paolo Uccello was depicting us – in our current times of trouble. So inspired by neoplatonic superstar Marsilio Ficino – immortalized in a chic red robe by Ghirlandaio at the Cappella Tornabuoni – I tried to pull off a back to the future and ideally imagine who and what Paolo Uccello would feature in his depiction of our current deluge.
Let’s start with the positives. 2024 was the Year of the BRICS – with the merit for all the accomplishments going for the tireless work of the Russian presidency.
2024 was also the Year of the Axis of Resistance – until the serial blows suffered during the past few months, a serious challenge which will propel its rejuvenation.
And 2024 was the year that defined the lineaments of the endgame in the proxy war in Ukraine: what remains to be seen is how deep the “rules-based international order” will be buried in the black soil of Novorossiya.
Now let’s turn to the auspicious prospects ahead. 2025 will be the year of consolidation of China as the paramount geoeconomics force on the planet.
It will be the year where the defining battle of the 21st century – Eurasia v. NATOstan – will be sharpened in an array of unpredictable vectors.
And it will be the year of advancing, interlocking connectivity corridors – the defining factor in Eurasia integration.
Not by accident Iran is central to this interlocking connectivity – from the Strait of Hormuz (through which transits, daily, at least 23% of the world’s oil) to the port of Chabahar, which links West Asia with South Asia.
Connectivity corridors to watch are the return of one of the top Pipelineistan sagas, the 1,800 km-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline; the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which links three BRICS (Russia-Iran-India) and several aspiring BRICS partners; the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project; and last but not least, the fast advancing Northern Sea Route (or Northern Silk Road, as the Chinese call it), which will eventually become the cheapest and fastest alternative to the Suez canal.
A few days before the start of Trump 2.0 in Washington, Russia and Iran will finally, officially sign a comprehensive strategic partnership deal in Moscow, over two years in the making: once again, a key deal between two top BRICS, with immense, cascading repercussions in Eurasia integration terms.
A completely sealed channel of negotiation
Dmitri Trenin, respected member of Russia’s Foreign and Defense Policy Council, has what is so far the most realist road map for an acceptable end of the proxy war in Ukraine.
“Acceptable” does not even begin to describe it – because from the point of view of the collective West political “elites” which bet the farm and the bank on this war, nothing is acceptable except Russia’s strategic defeat, which will never happen.
As it stands, President Putin is in fact containing elite sectors in Moscow who favor not only cutting off the head of the snake but the body as well.
Trump for his part has less than zero incentive to be dragged into a further quagmire; leave that to the clueless European chihuahuas.
So a possible drive towards a wobbly “peace” agreement also suits the Global Majority – not to mention China, which understands how war is bad for business (at least if you’re not in the weaponizing racket).
When it comes to an always possible “existential” escalation, we’re not out of the woods yet; but there are still three weeks left for some major terror-fueled coup, as in a false flag.
The first two months of 2025 will be absolutely decisive, when it comes to sketching a possible compromise.
Elena Panina from RUSSTRAT has offered a concise, and sobering, strategic assessment of what may pan out.
What Trump essentially craves, like a trashy McDonald’s burger, is to look like the ultimate Alpha Male. So Putin’s tactical negotiating strategy will not be focused on undermining Trump’s tough guy act. The problem is how to pull it off without undermining Trump’s pop star power – and without adding more fuel to the NATOstan warmongering pyre.
Putin holds an array of trump cards close to his chest – related to Europe, the Brits, China, Ukraine itself and the Global South as a whole.
Determining spheres of influence will be part of a possible agreement. The thing is no specific details should be leaked – and must be kept impermeable to Western intel.
That means, as Panina notes, Trump needing a completely sealed channel of negotiation with Putin, which even the MI6 cannot crack.
A tall order, as privileged Zio-con silos across the Deep State are dizzy with the latest Old Testament psycho-pathological victories in Lebanon and Syria, and the way they enfeebled Tehran. Yet that does not mean the Iran-Russia-China-BRICS link is in jeopardy.
The dynamics are set; tread carefully
Putin and the Security Council should be ready to implement a quite complex, step-by-step diplomatic game, as they know that the trifecta of defeated, supremely angry Democrats, Brits and Bankova will apply maximum pressure on Trump and turn him into “an enemy of America” or some similar crap.
Moscow will accept no truce and no freeze: only a real solution.
It that doesn’t work, the war will continue in the battlefield, and Moscow has no problems with that – or with more escalation. The final humiliation of the Empire of Chaos will then be total.
Meanwhile, Cold War 2.0 between China and the U.S. will advance more on the pop sphere than in substance. The sharpest Chinese analysts know that the real competition is not over ideology – as in the original Cold War – but over technology, from AI to upgrading seamless supply chains.
Moreover, Trump 2.0, at least in principle, has less than zero interest in unleashing a proxy war – Ukraine-style – on China in Taiwan and the South China Sea. China has way more geoeconomic resources than Russia.
So it’s not exactly intriguing that Trump is floating the idea of a G2 between the U.S. and China. The Deep State blob will see it as the ultimate plague – and fight it to death. What’s already certain is assuming this goes ahead, the European poodles will be left drowning in a dirty swamp.
Well, political “elites” that appoint braindead specimens like the Medusa von der Lying and the batshit crazy Estonian chick as top representatives of the EU; who start a war against their most important energy supplier; who fully support a genocide broadcast 24/7 to the whole planet; who are obsessed on eradicating the culture which has defined them; and who at best pay only lip service to democracy and freedom of speech, these “elites” do deserve to wallow in filth.
On the Syrian tragedy, the fact is Putin knows who the real enemy is; certainly not a bunch of Salafi-jihadi head-chopping mercenaries. And the Sultan in Ankara is also not the enemy; from Moscow’s perspective, for all his lofty dreams of replacing “Central Asia” with “Turkestan” in Turkiye’s school textbooks, he is a minor geoeconomic and even geopolitical player.
To paraphrase the inestimable Michael Hudson – perhaps our Marsilio Ficino dressed by Paolo Uccello as a writer in a chic red robe – it’s as if in this pre-deluge juncture American elites were saying, “The only solution is total war with Russia and China”; Russia is saying, “We hope there’s peace in Ukraine and West Asia”; and China is saying, “We want peace, not war.
That may not be enough for reaching a compromise – any compromise. So the dynamics are set: the U.S. ruling class will keep imposing instances of chaos while Russia, China and BRICS will keep testing in the “BRICS lab” de-dollarization models, alternative set ups to the IMF and World Bank, and eventually even an alternative to NATO.
An anarchy and War of Terror cornucopia on one side; cool-headed, coordinated realism on the other. Be prepared – for anything. From Renaissance Florence, one of the – few – peaks of humanity, now living in memory, tread carefully across this flame-filled 2025.
