I will try to pick out major points as an appetizer - you should read all three!

Middle East under UK/US control

Her latest trilogy starts out with the story of how Britain took control of the Middle East oil in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman empire.

The British Navy switched from coal to oil by 1914. To secure a safe supply Persian fields were the firsts to be grabbed - only to be taken anew in the 1950s when the democratic government tried to nationalize. Arab land was smartly split up in new ‘Concession States’, drawing border lines to separate the oil areas from the most populated parts to ensure peoples could not politically claim it. After OPEC raised it’s head, it was kept in place by means of Production Sharing Agreements that kept the majors in control with ownership of the oil in the ground. When Nixon gave up on the Gold Standard in 1971 the Middle East oil became the new collatteral for the Petrodollar. “The loop was closed: oil to dollars, dollars to Treasuries, Treasuries to deficit, deficit to military, military to protection of the oil…After 1974, whoever controls the flow of oil controls the demand for the world’s reserve currency.” The later wars - to this very day - have all been about enforcing the continued control of the oil flow.

Enters China

Financing the US deficit has ‘built Virginia suburbs and London townhouses, but not Basra.’ In the 2020s another ‘development partner’ enters the scene. China offers infrastructure construction for oil - turning the oil flow into a tool for local social development instead of pure extraction. ‘…for fifty years, the Arab world’s oil bought the protector’s deficit. Under the counteroffer, the same oil buys schools, rails, water and industry’. Then in 2023 Beijing brokers the Iran-Saudi diplomatic restoration deal and the US-Protector gets horrified. ‘The US-empire’s entire post-1979 position in the Gulf rested on the feud: Iran as permanent threat, the Gulf states as permanent clients, protection as the product and fear as the sales force.’ The Petroyuan’s stature grows and the US answers with new wars.

Why is China’s offer so different?

The Yugoslav Model

Lily in a surprising turn brings in Yugoslavia!

Because Tito’s Yugoslavia proved that a small country can refuse empires and live. Yugoslavia industrialized ‘without becoming either a colony or a barrack’ - thanks to the economic policy of workers self-management of enterprises. However, in 1948, after the Tito-Stalin split, the United States froze Yugoslavia’s gold. Tito learned that dollars held inside the American jurisdiction can vanish. Yugoslavia had to keep their reserves beyond the US reach - this was one part of the start of the euro-dollar market, serving as a prototype of the later petrodollar design. Later with the oil shock of 1973, Yugoslavia, as an energy importer had become dependent on Western bank credits and were broken. After the Volcker shock and raising interest rates IMF brokering turned Yugoslavia into seperate conditioned republics, leaving the federal level without means - leading strait up to the wars of the 1990’s. Yugoslavia was too small to avoid being eaten by the financial beast.

But the idea had traveled east.

An idea spreading

The Yugoslav independence of both the Western powers and the Soviet Union had been noticed in Beijing. ‘When China’s reform generation went looking for how to combine plan with market, socialism with development, they studied the only working model in existence: Yugoslav self-management and the mixed economy… China studied the path, scaled it, and built on it’ - at a scale the US cannot suppress - and it is coming back to the world via the Middle East.

Links:

https://lily357.substack.com/p/the-long-concession

https://lily357.substack.com/p/the-counteroffer

https://lily357.substack.com/p/the-locksmiths-republic