Dubai
If Casablanca were filmed today, it would be called Dubai. The classic film centers around Rick’s Café Américain, where the owner, played by Humphrey Bogart, offers drinks, music and gambling, with intrigue on the side. The exotic setting was Morocco during World War II. What defined Casablanca was its neutral mélange where enemies could mingle at ease. Nazis, refugees and gunrunners sat at adjacent tables to drink champagne and sing “As Time Goes By.”
So it is in Dubai, an island of relative calm surrounded by wars in Afghanistan and Libya, instability in Iraq and Lebanon, transition in Tunisia and Egypt, and bitter enmity between Israel and Iran. It is the ultimate bad neighborhood. In place of Rick’s, there is Atlantis, an over-the-top resort on the artificial Palm Island, itself dredged from the seafloor and laid out in a palm shape so vast it can be seen from space. Inside Atlantis are the best restaurants in town, where Israeli agents, Iranian provocateurs, Russian hit men, Saudi arms dealers and local smugglers sit side by side, escorted by tall, leggy blondes who look distinctly out of place in the desert.
What they find in Dubai is what Rick’s customers found in Casablanca—neutral turf where they can meet, recruit and betray one another without immediate fear of arrest. Dubai is conducive to international intrigue. The weather is excellent from October through March. Dubai is in the midst of a danger zone, surrounded by Mumbai, Lahore, Tehran, Istanbul, Cairo, Khartoum and the pirate dens of Somalia. It has excellent air and telecommunications links with the world. It is famously overbuilt—it boasts the world’s tallest building and plenty of postmodern glitz to dazzle visitors from more traditional and repressive societies.
All this glamour and intrigue are also accompanied by some Hollywood-style violence. In March 2009, a Russian warlord was shot dead in the upscale Marina section of Dubai, near some of its best beaches and hotels. Two suspects, one Tajik and one Iranian, were arrested and gave confessions implicating a member of the Russian Duma acting on orders from the strongman of Chechnya, Ram-zan Kadyrov. In a touch straight out of Ian Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun, the victim was shot with a gold-plated pistol smuggled in by a Russian diplomat.
An even more spectacular murder took place in January 2010, when Israeli surveillance agents and hit men—working in teams, traveling on fake passports, wearing disguises and using heavily encrypted cell phones—assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas operative, in his Dubai hotel room as he waited to complete an arms deal with his Iranian suppliers. Dubai has a low crime rate, but when it comes to terrorists with enemies, even the desert is not safe.
Historically Dubai thrived on two activities, pearl diving and smuggling. Today pearl diving is a small business carried on in part as an attraction for tourists. Smuggling is bigger than ever. The long wharf on the Creek, the old part of Dubai, is piled high with electronics, appliances, spare parts and other goods headed for Iran. The amount of gold and currency inside boxes marked with Sony or HP logos is anybody’s guess. Across Baniyas Road, which runs alongside the wharf, are Iranian banks where letters of credit can be arranged on the spot to finance the shipment of goods—without regard to U.S. trade sanctions. On the Creek itself are the dhows—beamy, high-prowed wooden sailing vessels with large lateen rigs ready to embark on the voyage across the Persian Gulf to Bandar Abbas and other ports on the Iranian coast. In Dubai, smuggling is not even vaguely disreputable; it is a way of life.
Dubai is an international financial center and tax haven, its boulevards and backstreets choked with international banks. Dubai is the principal offshore banking center for Iran. Major Dubai banks act as correspondents to Iranian banks for the facilitation of payments and foreign exchange transactions with the rest of the world, including Iran’s conversion of its reserves into euros and gold and slow dumping of the dollar. Dubai also acts as the banking center for the Somali pirate trade. While pirates, hostage crews and patrolling navies engage in standoffs in the Arabian Sea, pirate agents make the rounds in Dubai to negotiate ransom and provide wire instructions for final payment.
For tangible wealth, there is the gold souk, one of the largest marketplaces in the world, where gold in every form—jewelry, coins, bars and ingots—is for sale and then reexport in attaché cases to private hoards around the world, no questions asked. Dubai has a commodities center with separate glass skyscrapers named after the Arabic words for gold, silver and diamond. Beneath these towers is one of the largest, most secure vaults in the world, managed by Brink’s. With Swiss banking secrecy under attack and oligarchs being harassed in Russia, converting wealth into untraceable gold and securing it in the desert is an attractive strategy.
The gold that changes hands in the souk is the tip of the iceberg of wholesale wealth that transits Dubai. Paper currencies move continuously from engravers to central banks to customers, much of it circulating outside its home country. Dubai is the world’s largest transshipment point for paper currencies. At secure sites near the Dubai airport, massive amounts of banknotes are stored, awaiting return to their issuing banks.
Espionage, assassination, gold, currency and an international mix of actors at the crossroads of the world give Dubai its standing as the new Casablanca. Dubai, like Casablanca, is just a mirror of its time and place. Were it not for the corruption and dysfunction of the wider world, Dubai would have no clientele. Every war needs its neutral venue, and in the currency wars Dubai fills the bill. There is no currency anywhere that is not money-good in Dubai—at a price.
Moscow
A visitor to Moscow quickly becomes familiar with the sight of the so-called Seven Sisters: a group of gray Soviet-era skyscrapers, each about 150 meters, or 450 feet, high, commissioned by Stalin and built in the late 1940s in a kind of neo-Gothic totalitarian style, with the symmetry, massiveness and reach-for-the-sky spires beloved by bureaucrats everywhere. They are spread around Moscow in a huge ring so that one of them dominates the skyline in any direction. While different in details, they are sufficiently similar in form to create a sense of déjà vu. A visitor can leave one of the sisters, the Moscow State University, say, and travel across the city only to encounter a look-alike, such as the former Leningradskaya Hotel.
There is an eighth sister, newly arrived and set back on a large open site on Nametkina Street, outside the innermost ring roads surrounding central Moscow. It is suitably massive and about the same height as the original seven, with a pyramidlike roof reminiscent of the pointed spires of the sisters. But the resemblance ends there. The new sister, finished in 1995, has a gleaming postmodern exterior of blue glass, steel and concrete. In keeping with this up-to-date look, it has an up-to-date function: it is the headquarters of Gazprom, the largest company in Russia, the world’s largest natural gas company and the mainstay of the Russian natural resources–based economy. Gazprom and the Russian state are as one in the exploitation of natural gas—what they call the “blue fuel,” in reference to the clean burning properties revealed in its blue flame.
Even in an age of government bailouts of entire industries, it is difficult for Westerners to grasp the scope of Gazprom’s operations and its links to the Russian government. It is as if ExxonMobil, J. P. Morgan and Time Warner were a single company, with Bill Clinton as its CEO. Gazprom’s revenues are about 10 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product. Gazprom produces over 85 percent of Russia’s natural gas and over 20 percent of the world’s supply. It controls almost 20 percent of global gas reserves and 60 percent of Russian gas reserves. It is fully vertically integrated, including exploration, production, transmission, processing, marketing and distribution. In addition to energy, it has major interests in media, banking and insurance, and operates an internal investment company.
Dmitry Medvedev, elected president of Russia in 2008, twice served as chairman of the board of Gazprom. The current chairman, Viktor Zubkov, is the deputy prime minister of Russia—that is, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man. The CEO, Alexey Miller, is a Putin crony from their St. P
etersburg days in the 1990s. While the company’s stock is traded on several exchanges, it is nevertheless controlled by the Russian state.
Gazprom’s long-range plans seem more like a study in military tactics than corporate strategy. It speaks of the Chinese vector, exploitation of the Yamal Peninsula and establishing bases in the Arctic. The military comparison is more than a metaphor. In 2007, the Russian Duma authorized Gazprom to create its own security force, with powers far beyond normal security companies—in effect, a corporate army like the ones the trading firms of the mercantilist age deployed. Gazprom also has a strategic enemy that it is determined to destroy. The enemy’s name is Nabucco.
Nabucco is a new natural-gas pipeline consortium backed by members of the European Union and the United States that will allow Europe to obtain natural gas without depending on Russia. It is a direct threat to Gazprom’s near monopoly on natural gas supplies to Europe through pipelines transiting Ukraine and Belarus. Nabucco is an attempt to circumvent these pipelines in a way that neither uses Russian natural gas nor passes through Russian territory. Nabucco would source its gas initially in Azerbaijan and later Kazakhstan and Iraq. It will traverse Turkey on its way to Europe.
One of the critical links in the larger Nabucco scheme is the South Caucasus Pipeline that runs through Georgia. With the invasion of Georgia in August 2008, Russian armored columns were used to threaten Nabucco and support Gazprom’s dominant position. This invasion came at the height of the U.S. bailout of Fannie Mae, and Russia was one of the largest holders of Fannie Mae bonds at the time. By bailing out Fannie Mae, the Bush administration protected Russia’s financial interests with U.S. taxpayer money even as Russia threatened U.S. interests on the energy front. Such is the geopolitical nexus in which the currency wars are fought.
Not only is Russia intent on disrupting Nabucco, it is also sponsoring two alternative pipelines that will deliver gas from Central Asia to Europe but are controlled by Gazprom and transit Russia. Gazprom’s goal is to keep Central Asian supplies bottled up inside Russian pipelines before flowing to Europe. Europe’s energy supplies are largely held hostage by Russia, and Russia has no intention of letting go.
Russia’s use of natural gas as a geopolitical weapon goes beyond threats; it has been put into action several times. On New Year’s Day 2006, Gazprom cut off supplies of natural gas to Ukraine. The effects were not limited to Ukraine but were felt throughout Europe. The stated cause was a billing dispute. While Ukraine had agreed to pay Russia for gas it consumed, Russia had agreed to pay Ukraine for the right to transit its territory to deliver gas to the rest of Europe. Russia could pay its transit fees in kind, meaning that it simply charged Ukraine nothing for some of the gas used by Ukraine. None of these payments were at market rates but were privately negotiated and involved middlemen believed to be diverting the payments to offshore accounts of Russian and Ukrainian officials. This mix of private negotiations, middlemen, payments in kind and off-market transactions ensured that the parties were constantly at odds over who owed what to whom.
Ukraine exploited this confusion to cover up its chronic hard currency shortages and late payments. In time, Russia learned that it could use the same ambiguity for its own purposes—using its disputes with Ukraine to halt shipments to Europe while blaming Ukraine for the stoppages. Russia could take the high ground by posing as an aggrieved creditor while showing Europe the implications of energy dependence.
New Year’s Day 2009 saw another Russian shutdown of deliveries to Ukraine. This time the consequences were more severe, with widespread factory closings in Eastern Europe and unheated homes in the dead of winter. By January 7 the gas war had escalated and direct Ukrainian supplies were reduced to zero. But then Ukraine diverted the transit supplies to its own use, and the shortages spread throughout Eastern Europe, seriously affecting Hungary, Poland and other states. Russia was holding Ukraine hostage, but Ukraine held the rest of Europe hostage to protect itself—a result that might have been foreseen by Russia. Finally, on January 18, an all-night summit conference between Putin and then Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko produced a new pricing plan, and Russia resumed supplies.
It seems unlikely the world has seen the end of the natural gas wars. Putin has recently suggested that the rest of Europe should help Ukraine with its cash shortages to protect itself from the consequences of future supply disruptions. This regionalizes the problem and shows how aggressively Russia is willing to use the gas weapon and the currency weapon in combination.
Russia recently released its official “National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation up to 2020,” an overview of the global strategic opportunities and challenges confronting Russia. In addition to the usual analysis of weapons systems and alliances, the strategy draws the link between energy and national security and considers the global financial crisis, currency wars, supply chain disruptions and struggles for other natural resources, including water. The strategy does not rule out the use of military force to resolve any of these finance- or resource-related struggles.
The perfection of Russia’s use of the blue fuel weapon arises in the midst of the global financial crisis. This provides Russia with its own force multiplier—something that amplifies offensive power beyond its normal value. Russia’s cutoffs of natural gas are devastating at the best of times. Coming amid a European sovereign debt crisis and housing market collapse, the next gas cutoff could have a catastrophic impact.
Of course, victims of blue fuel warfare have a remedy. They can turn their backs on NATO, the euro, the dollar and the West, and rejoin the Russian sphere of influence in exchange for secure, dependable and reasonably priced energy. Russia does not require its new vassals to adopt the totalitarian political systems of the Soviet past. It only requires that they be dependable allies in geopolitical matters and join a regional ruble currency bloc while maintaining a facade of democracy, as does Russia itself.
Russia also speaks openly of the dethroning of the dollar as the dominant reserve currency. While the Russian ruble is in no position to replace the dollar in international reserves, it could become a regional reserve and trade currency for Russian and Central Asian gas suppliers and Eastern European gas customers, dislodging the dollar to that extent at least. For now, it is enough to say that Russia has warned the world of the coming blue fuel wars in both words and deeds. Energy is a wedge used to forge a regional economic bloc with a regional reserve currency, the ruble. The dollar will be left out in the cold.
Beijing
What is most striking about Chinese history is how often and how suddenly it has swerved from order to chaos through the millennia. Despite the appearance of economic dynamism in China today, sudden collapse is entirely possible and could be caused by things such as inflation, rising unemployment, ethnic tensions or a burst housing bubble. Prolonged and widespread unemployment is potentially more destabilizing in China than in the more developed economies, especially when combined with lost upward mobility for tens of millions more citizens.
In addition to normal population stresses, China is sitting on a demographic powder keg in the form of twenty-four million “excess males”—the result of the murder of newborn girls through infanticide and sex-selective abortion under China’s one-child policy. Many are now in their early twenties. It is a sad fact that single, unemployed men in their early twenties are often associated with forms of antisocial behavior, including gangs, murder, drugs and alcohol.
Internal social instability caused by the excess population of single men along with food price inflation and mass unemployment is a greater threat in the eyes of Chinese rulers than the U.S. military. This instability can be smoothed over in part through infrastructure investments that create jobs, which China depends on its currency reserves to finance. What happens when the United States devalues those reserves through inflation? While inflation may make sense to U.S. policy makers, the resulting wealth transfer from China to the United States is viewed as an existential threa
t by the Chinese. Maintaining the real value of its reserves is one of China’s keys to maintaining internal social control. The Chinese are warning the United States that they will not tolerate dollar inflation and will take countermeasures to prevent a loss of wealth. The U.S.-Chinese currency war is just getting started, and the Fed’s quantitative easing makes it entirely plausible to say the United States fired the first shot.
The clearest exposition of Chinese thinking on financial warfare is an essay called “The War God’s Face Has Become Indistinct,” included in a book on unrestricted warfare written in 1999 by Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui of the People’s Liberation Army. One passage in particular is worth quoting at length:Financial warfare has now officially come to war’s center stage—a stage that for thousands of years has been occupied only by soldiers and weapons.... We believe that before long, “financial warfare” will undoubtedly be an entry in the . . . dictionaries of official military jargon. Moreover, when people revise the history books on twentieth-century warfare . . . the section on financial warfare will command the reader’s utmost attention.... Today, when nuclear weapons have already become frightening mantelpiece decorations that are losing their real operational value . . . financial war has become a “hyperstrategic” weapon that is attracting the attention of the world. This is because financial war is easily manipulated and allows for concealed actions, and is also highly destructive.
Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis Page 18
