#WesternFinancialWarfare

FINANCIAL WARFARE AND HOW TO BEAT IT.

Financial warfare is a sophisticated form of warfare gaining popularity among western nations as a means to subdue and coerce poorer nations to their exploitative will.

Growing Use Of Sanctions

Western powers continue to use this approach because of globalization, the growing centralization of payment systems, financial institutions and financial resources around western financial centers.

Meanwhile, as the Chinese grow in influence, they entice Africans into partnerships by offering them access to value priced goods, markets, loans and development projects, in sharp contrast to the west and their use of coercion to cajole African leaders into one sided agreements which have no mutual benefit.

As a result, African leaders are walking away from these exploitative asymmetric relationships with the west in favor of China.

China Has Traded With Africa for 600yr

What the west has failed to appreciate is Africans are not meeting the Chinese for the first time today, but for over six hundred years Africans have been engaging in mutual trade with the Chinese without China ever attempting to exploit a single African nation.

Through the old silk and sea routes, the Chinese were some of the first non-African traders that Africans encountered. Remanence of Chinese porcelain, silks and genetic bloodlines are still evident in ports of Kenya and Somalia, indicating trade and social integration of both societies way before Europeans reached the continent.

Problem Of Financial Weapons

What makes the weapons of financial and economic warfare advantageous for western nations is they are covert, imperceptible and often times much more effective than conventional war in pressuring poor nations.

They enable aggressors to seem noble, benign and non-aggressive, yet their damage to economies, infrastructure and lives in the nations under attack is similar to a running war.

Destructive Consequences

More critical is how this form of warfare destroys the social fiber, culture, morality and spirit of a people by disrupting their institutions, livelihood and ability to develop economically under conditions that deceptively appear normal.

Due to the fact that the enemy in this form of war is unseen to most, it often leaves citizens demoralized, paranoid, pessimistic and blaming each other, resulting in internal conflict and fracture.

Examples

Recently, we saw this tactic employed subtly in South Africa, where lending institutions isolated South African SOE’s, refusing to give them loans for close to three years. This resulted in the country getting a credit downgrade, sliding into recession and Jacob Zuma being removed as President of the nation before his time.

A more aggressive form of the former has been at work against Zimbabwe for the past 18yrs, eroding her institutions, weakening her government and destroying the resolve of the people to decolonize.

Similar tactics were employed to weaken Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya before conventional warfare was used to dislodge the leaders and put these nations under western hegemony.

What Must Be Done?

Economic Warfare is an insidious, corrupt and immoral method of war that collectively punishes civilians in a form of warfare not regulated by the Geneva Convention.

It’s a warfare that only previous colonialists have institutions and competitive advantage to implement because of the unjust wealth and global institutions that they built off the exploitation of the same nations they employ economic warfare upon today.

The question now is, how can poorer nations fight such a system?

Educate

• By educating and preparing African citizens to understand financial warfare, its intent and impact on a nation.

• It is critical for governments to understand that in this form of warfare, every citizen is targeted therefore every citizen is a combatant who should be equipped mentally and spiritually to defend the nation.

Investment Over Consumption

• In this education process, African citizens must be educated to understand that consumption and consumerism are weapons of mass economic destruction, because these lead to savings flying out of African treasuries into those of the enemy, depriving us of capital to develop Africa.

• Accordingly, Africans must be trained to consume less western luxuries and to spend more on capacitation and production orientated investment to boost import substitution, domestic production and exports.

• The African diaspora must also be encouraged to save and send money back home as Home Biased Investment.

Intelligence Gathering

• African governments must train their citizens as hackers, accountants, lawyers, researchers, communicators, marketers, scientists, teachers, project managers who go around the world as economic soldiers to earn foreign currency and spy for the nation.

• These governments must set up intelligence departments to collect economic intelligence acquired from western and eastern institutions by their network of citizen spies.

• They must also offer incentives and reward mechanisms to pay for any economic intelligence gathered overseas or in western institutions on and off the continent. Paying more for innovation blue prints, systems intelligence, processes, formulas and patents.

Research And Development

• African government and private partnerships must establish research and development centers to collect and study foreign products, blue prints, patents, formulas, methods, processes and systems with the intent of understanding materials used, how they were built and how to reverse engineer them.

• African citizens in the diaspora must be taught to acquire [steal] knowledge, intelligence, blue prints, trade secrets, manuals, formulas, procedures, processes, material, skills and data on western innovation and to file them with government economic intelligence departments for reverse engineering and institutional knowledge creation.

Resource Control

• African governments must jointly nationalize and control strategic African resources, capital, institutions, labor and markets to ensure that we build capacity, systems and institutions to create a continental cartel for these resources and markets.

• Create central continental institutions to control the marketing and sales of African resources and stop European control of African resources.

Local Production, Import Substitute

• Nations must substitute overseas imports as much as possible with what they can produce locally, regionally and continentally.

For example, right now, all African governments should be buying African built cars like the Nigerian made Innoson or Ghanaian Kantanka for their fleets on condition they are not owned by western manufacturers.

• We must learn to use our own inferior local products to enable us to grow up the learning & experience curves as we build local skills, capabilities, synergies and collaborations to grow the 360 degree value chain.

Continental Trade

• Our nations must depend on trading with each other more than they depend on western trade.

• Regional blocks must start uniting in regional trade, financial alignment and not allow infiltration by western capital as it causes a contagion and dependency on the western financial system.

Build An African Financial System

• Gold, uranium, platinum, tantalite, chrome, bauxite, gas and a basket of strategic resources must be used as the foundation of African reserves and currencies with the intent of eventually building an African currency.
• All African resources and exports must be sold for resource backed Africa currencies.
• African nations must use revenues generated from their resources to create African controlled central reserve banks, banks, investment banks, development banks, insurers and investment companies backed by African currencies.

Crowd Funding/Collaborative Development

• Africans must start a development fund in which each African contributes a dollar a month. Companies can be persuaded to pay more to cover for the millions of Africans who can not make such contributions. From there, after a few years, the collective endowment can be invested in controlling African resources, building infrastructure, research & development or processing resources.
• African governments must cancel and not renew western controlled bank licenses to begin the process of putting African financial institutions into African control.
• African governments must reduce aid, debt, donations, consumption and procurement from western centers to reduce payment flows to the west.
• Africans must be willing to do without certain licensed convenient western products (i.e. computer software, computers and FMCGs) as they foster dependency on western products and payment systems. Instead we must learn to replicate these products, get them from the east or substitute them with alternative solutions.

Realign To Symmetry Relationships

• Create new relationships with non-western aligned economies like China, Russia or BRICS.
• Build a united African trade zone which has a central procurement and selling center for all countries, to neutralize the exclusion of some African companies and countries from global value chains by unilateral western sanctions.

Use Nationals To Bust Sanctions

• African governments must use their citizens who have naturalized in western countries to set up companies that sell, procure and pay for goods and services as agents of the continent (not a specific country) to bust prohibitions and blockages on specific countries.

• Through such agents African governments can buy strategy tools, machines, technology and goods restricted by sanctions.

Those tools and products can be passed off as belonging to a neighbor in the same way South Africa, Rhodesia and Portuguese Mozambique did for each other during the colonial period.

• African countries must start their own off-shore financial havens that obscure transactions in the same way European companies have done with their tax haven.

Take Legal Action Against Sanctions

• Unilateral sanctions are illegal according to the UN and WTO.

• They are also contraventions of human rights and a number of UN Human Rights Resolutions 27/21, 34/13 and 44/215 enjoin nationa that are under illegal sanctions to see reparations and compensation for losses caused by illegal sanctions.

• Nations that are under illegal sanctions should approach multilateral institutions like the UN Human Rights Council, WTO; regional, continental and international courts like the ICJ to seek remedy and compensation for illegal sanctions.

Some will say, just follow western demands to avoid this economic terrorism but the question is are we willing to be slaves or colonies again because that is their prerequisites.

By Rutendo Bereza Matinyarare of Frontline Strat Marketing Consultancy